the present moment, when the desire for the education of their children is so general and so urgent among the Indians, would be particularly unwise.

In my report of last year I spoke of the promising results of Indian education at the normal school at Hampton, Va., under the direction of General Armstrong. The number of Indian children at that establishment is being considerably increased. The institution has been visited by many persons interested in that important work, and the gratifying results gained have been evident to all.

Last year I spoke also of the Indian school at Carlisle, then just established by this department, under the superiutendeney of Captain Pratt, as an experiment. It may now be said that it is a mere experiment no longer. The progress made by the Indian pupils there as well as at Hampton in the acquisition of elementary knowledge as well as in agricultural and mechanical work has been sufficient to demonstrate the capacity of the Indian for civilized pursuits. The pupils are instructed not only in the English language, in reading, writing, lower mathematics, geography, &c, but the girls are educated in household work, and a considerable number of the boys are employed as apprentices in blacksmithing, carpentering, shoemaking, harness making, wagon building, tin smithing, tailoring, in a printing office, and in farm work. The progress made by some of them has been remarkably rapid, and in almost all cases satisfactory. The number of pupils at Carlisle has been increased to 196. Some of the products of their labor were exhibited at the county fair, and attracted general and favorable attention. The school is now able to produce some articles to be used at the different Indian agencies, such as shoes, tin ware, harness, and wagons, and when the pupils return to their tribes they can be profitably employed, not only as practical mechanics but also as instructors of their people.

A similar school has been established at Forest Grove in Oregon, under the superiutendeney of Lieutenant Wilkinson, for the education of Indian boys and girls on the Pacific Coast. It has been in operation since February last, and is conducted upon the same principles and with equal success as the schools at Hampton and Carlisle. It has now 40 pupils, representing six different tribes, but the buildings erected are large enough to accommodate 150. There are many applications for admission which will be gratified as funds can be made available for that purpose. Instructions have been given to increase the number of pupils to one hundred. In addition to this, during last year 30 children have been selected from the tribe of Eastern Cherokees and placed in boarding schools in North Carolina, 12 girls at Asheville and 12 boys each at Weaverville and Trinity College, where, aside from elementary instruction, they are to receive training in industrial pursuits. The Indian pupils at Hampton represent thirteen different agencies. At Carlisle there are boys and girls belonging to various bandsof the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, Comanches, Pawnees, Meuomonees, Iowas, Sac and Fox, Lipans, Poncas, Nez Perc6s, Wichitas, Apaches, and Pueblos. About two-thirds of them are children of chiefs and prominent men. A school committee of chiefs and headmen from nine Sioux Agencies on the Missouri River visited Carlisle and Hampton last summer. Likewise delegations from the Lake Superior Chippewas, the Crows, the Shoshones and Bannacks of Idaho, and the Cheyennes and Arapahoes of the Indian Territory. They were all highly delighted with the care taken of the children and the progress they had made in the arts of the white man, and promised their active support and co-operation.

The favor which these schools find with the influential men of the different Indian tribes is of great importance as to the effect to be produced upon the advancement of the Indians generally. Formerly it was thought that Indian children so educated would speedily relapse into the savage habits of their people as soon as they returned to them. This was true as long as all the home influences to be found among the Indian tribes were hostile to the education of any of their members, and those who had received such an education found themselves therefore isolated and despised. This obstructive spirit has now been superseded by a very general and anxious desire of Indian chiefs and influential men to see their children raised in the scale of civilization, and the same influences which formerly were so effective in driving educated Indians back into the savage habits of the multitude surrounding them are now employed in turning the educatiou received by a comparatively few to the advantage of the many. The circumstances surrounding the educated Indian when now returning to his tribe are therefore radically changed. In the old time the educated Indian would have found his people thinking of nothing but their savage pursuits and pleasures, incapable of appreciating his superior knowledge and accomplishments, rather inclined to deride them as useless. Now he will find multitudes of parents anxious to have their children educated like him, and, if possible, to employ him for that purpose. An Indian wagon or harness maker returning to a wild Indian tribe years ago would have found no wagons or harness upon which to practice his skill; but sent back there now, when wagons and harness are in general and profitable use, that skill will be in active and general requisition. And so it is in many other things. I therefore feel warranted in saying that the results gained by this system of education will no longer be apt to pass away as before, but, if properly pursued, will be lasting and generally beneficial. It is, under such circumstances, scarcely necessary to characterize the charge recently made, that Indian children were taken to Hampton and Carlisle by force, against the will of their parents, as utterly groundless. On the contrary, the number of applications on the part of Indian parents to have their children admitted to these schools has been far in excess of our means to accommodate them.

A considerable number of the Indian boys and girls at Hampton and Carlisle have, during the summer vacation, been intrusted to the care of private families in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, where they have received very valuable lessons in household economy and farming, and where they were under the elevating influence of cultivated homes. Their conduct has been generally commended. The number of Indian children educated in these schools is at present necessarily small in proportion to the whole number of children of school age; but the system is capable of great extension, if only the necessary means are provided. It is a mere question of money and of wise and active supervision. In no direction could money be more usefully employed. The success of the schools at Hampton and Carlisle has attracted the sympathy of many benevolent men and women throughout the country, and I have to express my thanks to them for valuable donations with which the schools have been aided. But the continuance and development of these government institutions cannot and ought not to depend upon private munificence. So far the expenses have been defrayed from the civilization fund at the disposal of this Department; but that fund has already been largely drawn upon in establishing and sustaining Indian education at these institutions, and cannot be depended upon to last much longer, especially if the system is extended as it should be. The continuance of this work will then depend upon specific appropriations by Congress, and I cannot too warmly recommend this subject to the favorable consideration of our legislators. As each school is capable of taking care of only a limited number of pupils, the number of such institutions should be increased. There are government buildings no longer used which might be profitably employed for that purpose, and they certainly can be used for no worthier object. It is in contemplation to establish another Indian school of this kind in some unoccupied public buildings in the neighborhood of Washington, where it would be easily accessible for the inspection of members of Congress, and I hope this plan may soon be carried out.

INDIAN POLICE.

Another civilizing agency largely introduced under the present administration was the organization of a police force consisting of Indians. It has been put in operation at forty agencies and the force consists now of 162 officers and 053 privates. The duties of the policemen, performed uuder the direction of the agent, consist in acting as guards at annuity payments and rendering assistance and preserving order during ration issues and protecting agency buildings and property; in returning truant pupils to school; in searching for and returning lost or stolen property, whether belonging to Indians or white men; in preventing depredations on timber and the introduction of whisky on the reservation; in arresting or driving oft" whisky-sellers, horse and cattle thieves; in making arrests for disorderly conduct', drunkenness, wife-beating, theft, and other offenses; in turning over offenders to the civil authorities; in serving as couriers and messengers; in keeping the agents informed as to births and deaths in the tribe; in notifying him of the arrival on the reservation of strangers—whites or Indians; in accompanying and protecting surveying parties, and, in general, such other duties as in civilized communities are intrusted to an organized police force.

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs states that " special reports as to the character and etticiency of the services rendered by the police have recently been called for from its agents by this bureau, and those reports bear uniform testimony to the value and reliability of the police service, and to the tact that its maintenance, which was at first undertaken as an experiment, is now looked upon as a necessity."

But no less important than the police services rendered is the moral influence which this institution is apt to exercise upon the tribes among which it is active. It impresses the minds of the Indians with the authority of law; it discountenances and discourages their traditional practice of taking personal revenge for injuries received; it imbues them with a sense of duty and individual responsibility; it accustoms a considerable number of young men among them to a moral discipline formerly unknown to them; it inspires them with the pride of good conduct, as only men of exemplary habits are kept in the police force, it being the rule that every one of them who renders himself guilty of any transgression affecting his character is immediately discharged; it strengthens the authority of the government as against that of the chiefs by the active support of the Indians themselves, and thus prepares them for the dissolution of their tribal relations and their incorporation in the great body of the American people. In all these respects the effect of the police service upon the tribes has been very marked. I have repeatedly recommended that the pay of Indian policemen, now fixed at $5 per month for privates and $8 for officers, be increased. It is essential that the best young men of each tribe be obtainable for the police force, but the rate of pay is so low that young Indians can easily earn much higher wages as freighters and laborers, and it is a subject of great dissatisfaction among them that a policeman, who considers himself the soldier of the government, should receive only one third of what an Indian scout in the military service receives for the discharge of duties no more important. The consequence is, that as the different tribes progress in civilization it becomes more difficult to obtain good young men for the police force. At two agencies the force had to be disbanded for this reason. I therefore repeat once more my urgent recommendation that the pay of policemen and their officers be remitted to the discretion of the Indian Office with a maximum to be fixed by law, and as that maximum I would suggest the pay of Indian scouts employed by the Army.

LAND TITLES IN SEVERALTY.

I mentioned befoie that the feeling of uncertainty which prevails among the Indians as to the premanency of their possession of the lands they occupy has proved iu many cases a serious impediment to their improvement and progress. From all quarters we receive expressions of a desire on the part of the Indians to have the land they occupy and cultivate secured to them by the "white man's paper," that is, a patent equal in legal force to that by which white men hold title to their laud. Bills have been submitted to Congress for two sessions providing for the division of farm tracts among the Indians in severalty on their respective reservations; the issuance of patents to them individually and their investment with a fee-simple title to their farms inalienable for a certain number of years until they may be presumed to have overcome the improvident habits in which a large part of the present generation have grown up; and, this being accomplished, for the disposition of the residue of the reservations not occupied and used by the Indians, with their consent and for their benefit, to white settlers. It was hoped that this measure would pass before the adjournment of the last session. Had it become a law a very large number of Indians would have, been so settled by this time. In this expectation the issuance of patents not containing the important clause of temporary inalienability, which is authorized by a few Indian treaties, has been withheld until a general law should insure to all titles of greater security. It is to be hoped that this important measure will now receive the earliest possible consideration and action by Congress. I look upon it as the most essential step in the solution of the Indian problem. It will iuspire the Indians with a feeling of assurauce as to the permanency of their ownership of the lands they occupy and cultivate; it will give them a clear and legal standing as landed proprietors in the courts of law; it will secure to them for the first time fixed homes under the protection of the same law under which white men own theirs; it will eventually opeu to settlement by white men the large tracts of land now belonging to the reservations, but not used by the Indians. It will thus put the relations between the Indians and their white neighbors in the Western country upon a new basis, by gradually doing away with the system of large reservations, which has so frequently provoked those encroachments which in the past have led to so much cruel injustice and so many disastrous collisions. It will also by the sale, with their consent, of reservation lands not used by the Indians, create for the benefit of the Indians a fund, which will gradually relieve the government of those expenditures which have now to be provided for by appropriations. It will be the most effective measure to place Indians and white men upon an equal footing as to the protection and restraints of laws commou to both. I desire also to call attention once more to the bill repeatedly introduced in Congress, extending over Indian reservations the government of the laws of the States or Territories in which such reservations are located, giving the Indians standing in the courts and securing to them the full benefit of the laws. I venture to express the hope that Congress may not adjourn again without having taken action upon