Correspondent, Keshena, Wisconsin
“The white people will not allow the Indian children to go to the country schools. The Indians in some places have no schools for their own children, and are left without any opportunity to give their children the ordinary, elementary education of a grammar school. In two places under our care here the circumstances are as stated above.
“What the Indians want is a public Government school. If you have any influence and can rouse the Government to action in this matter, I wish you would use your influence. You would be doing a good work.
“The Indian children do better when educated near home. The children want to remain near home; and the parents also like to have them at home.”
Correspondent, Ukiah, California
The next letter is from a full-blood Indian. Some of the sentences are a trifle ambiguous. I know the man to be one who labors under disadvantages. He is doing a good work among his more ignorant fellows.
“Any Superintendent will say that, let a discovery of oil be made upon any child’s land and that boy or girl rises in distinction, develops relatives, friends, and a fond guardian at an alarming rate. Then one of the first moves, after this discovery, is to take the child from school. They can’t bear that the searchlight of learning be turned into the black corners of their schemes. The situation in Oklahoma is indeed alarming! I believe there are more lawyers and land men in Eufaula than in any other little town outside the State, in the United States, and we know they have acquired and are acquiring, fortunes at the expense of the benighted Indian and his allotments.
“In time the ‘benighted Indian’ will be spoken of in the past tense. The rich Indian in this locality is truly an object of pity. The weight of his fortune, the world of uncertainty, indecision and fear in which he lives, is pitiable indeed. If the Indian is sagacious at all, it has to be brought out by the slow process of education and this ‘drawing out’ process is worse than the ‘pouring in’. Eternal vigilance and a world of patience, all tempered with common sense and good judgment, are the tools with which to work against this grafting, and schools, schools. These institutions should be continued indefinitely. As an illustration to the fact that the Creek tribe is waking to the possibilities these schools afford—our capacity is 125 and I venture to say we could have enrolled 300. It was pitiful to turn them away, yet our files were closed early in August!”
Correspondent, Eufaula, Oklahoma
“Those educated away from the reservation have too much done for them to make life a pleasure—they learn and see the easy side of life and the methods by which it can be obtained easily—but when they return home the picture is not so alluring, and when they find that they must depend upon themselves they also realize that they did not learn how to depend upon themselves, and they as a rule give up and go back to the old Indian life more or less, and in the majority of cases altogether.