FROM ADDRESS OF CAPT. R. H. PRATT.
Last summer, at Carlisle, during the vacation period, we put out in good families among the farmers, 109 of our children. They all came back (except 29 who are to stay during the winter) immensely advantaged by it, speaking better English, with the Indian diffidence rooted out to a degree that it would have been impossible for us to have accomplished in the same time even at Carlisle, which, from its advantages of contact with civilization, is immensely superior to any agency school. But we went farther. We found that the boys and girls had made such good impressions among the citizens that many desired them to stay, and so the Department was asked to allow a few to remain out for the winter, and go to the public schools with the white children and live in families. The Department gave its consent provided it would cost nothing. So arrangements were made, and we have out for this winter six girls and twenty-three boys.
To make the completest success of Eastern education for the Indians, I would use Carlisle as a sort of cleanser, a bath-tub or something of that kind, where we could wash them, clean them up, get a little understanding of our ways into them, and some understanding of English, and then scatter them out over the country to come in contact with our life. In that way they would learn best how to become citizens of the United States.
But we can rest it here. Whenever Congress gets ready to educate the Indian children as a whole, it will be no difficult matter to determine upon the best methods. Three to five thousand scattered around through the East would still leave forty-five to forty-seven thousand for the agency schools to work upon. That number in schools through the East, just as your Association proposes, sending them into your mission schools, where they may learn right from our life by comparison with theirs, by daily contact, will be found to be the most rapid plan. Make them work, and do not forget to make them fill their places, which they will gladly do when they find they must.