—The Commissioner of Indian Affairs is about to try a new experiment with the Indians. He has given orders forbidding further gratuitous issue of coffee and sugar to them at their agencies. In order to secure application to duty on their part, he says that only as they work, and in payment for their labor, will they receive coffee and sugar rations in future.
—The Tribune says: “The Senate will certainly raise the army to 25,000 men, and concur in the transfer of the Indian Bureau to the War Department. The first will almost certainly be yielded by the House in Conference Committee, and the other has already received its approval.” The same paper contains this paragraph, also: “Before the Indian Bureau is transferred from the Interior to the War Department, however, Congress should strive to comprehend the fact that even the War Department can have very little success in managing Indian affairs unless we contrive to attain some settled Indian policy. We have been in the habit of putting the Indians by turns under the immediate care of missionaries and thieves, of Quakers and Catholics, of army officers and contractors. We have made solemn treaties, and broken them. We have moved them to reservations, and then crowded them off whenever they were found to be in the way. We have pauperized them by promising supplies, and starved them by breaking our promises. We have made a pretence of civilizing them, without furnishing them with any code of law, and of educating them, without furnishing them with any teachers. After supplying them with rifles to fight with, and worrying them into hostilities, we have made war upon them; and when they have proved so conspicuously cruel and treacherous as to deserve swift retribution, we have tried moral suasion. No one ever dreamed that the same tribe was to receive the same treatment for two successive years, and no two tribes ever received the same treatment at the same time. What is first needed is a definite and persistent policy of some kind, so that both Indians and white men will be able to form some clear idea of what will probably happen the day after to-morrow. A bad system is better than no system; any system is better than caprice.”
—A small Indian church was dedicated at Jamestown, Clallam County, Washington Territory, Sunday, May 12th, by Rev. M. Eells. The idea of erecting it originated entirely with the Indians, who bought the lumber, and have done all the work. The windows and casings, nails, paint, oil, and lime came as annuity goods. They have also had encouragement, pecuniarily, from white friends. It is the first church building in the county, although it has been settled for about twenty years, and the first white house in the Indian village.
THE FREEDMEN.
COMMENCEMENT AT HAMPTON INSTITUTE.
BY TELESCOPE.
This always interesting occasion came on the 23rd of May. The special feature of public interest this year was the attendance of the President of the United States, with his private secretary, Rogers, and General Devens and Mr. McCrary of the Cabinet. A large party went, also, from New York and Boston on this most enjoyable and instructive excursion.
The trustees were in session on Wednesday, the 22d, on which day also was held the first meeting of the graduates of Hampton Institute. There were assembled in the beautiful “Whittier Chapel,” on the upper floor of Virginia Hall, a large representation of the 277 who had gone out, most of them as teachers of their race. Of that whole number, not a complaint has been made. They have become good and useful citizens, maintaining the high moral tone of Hampton, and evidencing that growth in character which is the best witness to the existence of a true life within. Says the correspondent of the Springfield Republican: