THIS has been conducted entirely by the government, but generally in such a way as to be a handmaid to religion. On the reservation a boarding-school has been kept up during the ten years of missionary labor, as well as many years before, for about ten months in the year. About half of the time, including the winter, the school has been kept six hours in the day, and during the rest of the time for three hours; the scholars being required to work the other half of the day—the boys in the garden getting wood and the like, and the girls in the house sewing, cooking, house-keeping, and doing similar things.

The position of the one in charge has been a difficult one to fill, for it has been necessary that the man be a teacher, disciplinarian, handy at various kinds of work, a Christian, and, during the last year and a half after the agent left, he had charge of the reservation; while it was almost as necessary that his wife be matron, with all the qualifications of taking care of a family of from twenty to forty. It has been difficult to find all these qualifications in one man and his wife, who were willing to take the position for the pay which the government was willing to give, for during the later years the pay was cut down to the minimum. It has not been strange that with all the burdens frequent changes have taken place. There have been seven teachers in the ten years, but most of them were faithful, some of them serving until their health failed. Yet the school has been carried on generally in as Christian a way as if the Missionary Society had had charge of it. All of the teachers and their wives have been Christians—not all Congregationalists; for it has been often impossible to obtain such; in fact, only three have been; but there has been a plain understanding with the others that they should teach nothing in regard to religion which conflicted with the teachings from the pulpit—an understanding which has been faithfully kept, with one exception. In 1874 the school numbered about twenty-four scholars, but it gradually increased until it numbered about forty, which was more than all the children of school age on the reservation, though it did not include many of the Clallams. They were so far away that it was not thought wise to compel them to remain so steadily so far away from their parents year after year.

The school has been a boarding-school, for nearly all the children lived from one to three miles away, and it has been impossible to secure any thing like regular attendance if they lived at home, while some have come from ten to seventy miles distant.

Attendance on school has been compulsory—the proper way among Indians. While the parents speak well about the school, and say that they wish to have their children educated, yet, when the children beg hard to stay at home, parental government is not strong enough to enforce attendance, especially as long as the parents do not realize the value of education. The children have not all liked to go to school, and at first some of them ran away. The agent and his subordinates could tell some stories of getting runaway children, by pulling them out of their beds, taking them home in the middle of the night, and the like. In this respect the government had the advantage of a missionary society, which could not have compelled the children to attend school.

There was no provision in the treaty for more than one school, and that on the reservation. But after the Clallams at Jamestown had bought their land, laid out their village, built their church, and become somewhat civilized, they plead so hard for a school, offering the use of the church-building for the purpose, that the government listened to them, and in 1878 sent them a teacher. This was a day-school, because funds enough were furnished to pay only a teacher, and nearly all the children lived in the village within less than a half-mile from the school. A very few of the children walked daily five or six miles to school, and some of the better families of the village did nobly in making sacrifices to board their relations, when the parents would not furnish even the food for their children. This school has varied in numbers from fifteen to thirty children, and has been conducted in other respects mainly on the same principles as the one on the reservation. It has been of great advantage to the settlement.

A few of the rest of the Clallam children, whose parents were Catholics, have sent their children to a boarding-school at Tulalip, a Catholic agency, and others have not gone to school, there being difficulties in the way which it has been almost or quite impossible to overcome.

The schools have been conducted entirely in English. This is the only practicable plan, for the tribes connected with the school speak three different languages, and it is impossible to have books and newspapers in their languages, while teachers can not be found who are willing to acquire any one of these languages sufficiently well to teach it. It is also the only wise plan. If the Indian in time is to become an American citizen,—and that is the goal to be reached,—he must speak the English language, and it is best to teach it to him while young. In large tribes like the Sioux, where the children will speak their native language almost wholly after they leave school, and where there are enough of them to make it pay to publish books and papers in their own tongue, it is probably best to have the schools in their native language, as a transition from one language to the other. This transition will necessarily take a long time among so large a number of Indians, and needs the stepping-stone of native schools and a native literature to aid it. But where the Indian tribes are small, as is the case on Puget Sound, and surrounded by whites with whom they mingle almost daily, who are constantly speaking English to them, this stepping-stone is not needed. It is possible for the next generation to be mainly English-speaking in this region; in fact, most of them will understand it whether they go to school or not, and it is not wise, were it possible, to retard it by schools in the native language.

CORRECTING THOMSON’S PRACTICAL ARITHMETIC.

An incident occurred in the school, in 1878, worthy of note. One of the scholars in arithmetic found four examples which he could not do, and after a time took them to his teacher, Mr. G. F. Boynton, for assistance. After the teacher (who was a good scholar) had tried them to his satisfaction, he found that there was a mistake about the answers in the book and told the boy so, and then, in a half-joking way, said to him: “You had better write Dr. Thomson and tell him about it.” The boy did so, telling also who he was. In due time he received a reply from Dr. Thomson, who said that two of the mistakes had been discovered and corrected in later editions, but that the other two had not before been found; and then he wondered how an Indian boy out in Washington Territory should be able to correct his arithmetic. He invited the boy to continue the correspondence, but I believe he never did.