THE INDIANS.
The experiment of educating Indian youth at Hampton and Carlisle is a confirmed success. We have in the office two pictures—one representing a company of these young Indians as they came to Hampton, in their blankets and with their stolid countenances, and the other taken after they had spent a year in the school. The change in dress is less significant than the bright and intelligent look of the faces in the last picture. A visit among them, as they are engaged in the school-room and at various mechanical employments, accounts for the change. The joint education of the two races, the black and the red, seems helpful to both.
Four agencies, the same number as last year, are under our nomination, and we have favorable reports from each. At the Lake Superior Agency some years ago, the Indians wanted blankets, beads and trinkets; now they want a boarding school. At Fort Berthold, 40 new houses were built this season; at the Sisseton Agency, the Indians dress entirely in citizen’s clothing, live in log houses and cultivate 4,025 acres of land, and the scholars in the boarding and day schools show marked improvement; at the S’Kokomish Agency, the morals, manners, health and homes of the Indians are improving—most of the houses have been ceiled and furnished with good, tight floors. More land has been cleared, and 1,000 fruit trees have been set out.
CHINESE IN AMERICA.
Of our mission on the Pacific coast, the efficient Superintendent, Rev. W. C. Pond, says that not only more, but better work has been done this year than ever before. The total enrolment of pupils is 67 greater than last year, but the most marked gains are in those reported as having ceased from idol-worship, and as giving evidence of conversion; in the former, 180 against 137 last year, and in the latter, 127 against 84.