ABSTRACT
We must either fight the Indians, or feedthem, or educate them. To fight them is cruel; to feed them is wasteful; to educate them is humane, economic, and Christian. We have forced upon them-I use the term not in any offensive sense-citizenship, and we are limiting severely the period of preparation. Unless they can be educated
for the proper discharge of their duties and for the enjoyment of their privileges as citizens, they will fail to be properly benefited by the boon that we are conferring upon them. The government of the United States has at large expense provided accommodations for from twenty to twenty-five thousand of their children in schools maintained
wholly or in part by the government. The people will not long continue to expend these two and a quarter million dollars a year for the education of these children if those to whom it is offered are unwilling to accept it. If they refuse to send their children to school, these schools will be closed; and the people who have been made citizens will be thrown upon themselves, and be left to survive or perish, according to their individual inclination. A large body of them to-day are unwilling to send their children to school. The schools are open, they offer to them every facility for learning English, they offer them free board, free tuition, free clothing, free medical care. Everything is freely offered, they are urged to come, but they refuse; and there is growing up, under the shadow of these institutions of learning, a new generation of savages. We are confronted, then, with this simple proposition: Shall we allow the growth of another generation of barbarians, or shall we compel the children to enter these schools to be trained to intelligence and industry? That is practically the question that confronts the Indian Office now.
