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OUT on the bleak prairie of South Dakota, in the valley of a little stream known as Wounded Knee Creek, there is a frame school-house where all the pupils are Indians. In the old days, before they were confined on great bodies of land called reservations, the Indians used to hunt all over the great western country; and while none of them could read and write, yet even the small boys could follow a trail across the prairie many days after it was made, and they could tell, from looking at the pony-tracks, whether the rider was a white man or an Indian. But after the last Indian war had been settled-after the braves had buried the hatchet and the "peace papers" had been signed by all the great Indian chiefs-the government built school-houses in many portions of the reservations, and white teachers were sent to

teach the Indians how to read and to write and to become good citizens.

And the pupils are not all boys and girls, either, but there are some men and women in every school. In this particular school in the Wounded Knee Valley there is one boy about fifteen years old; the boy's father, who is fortyfive years old; and the boy's grandfather, an old man seventy years old, all going to school in the same room and all studying the same books and the same lessons; and the boy learns more easily and rapidly than his father or grandfather does.

When the little Indian boys and girls first come to school, they wear the picturesque clothes which the Indians wear in their halfsavage state. But as soon as they are enrolled the government supplies them with clothing

like that the white people wear. Here is a picture of little Lucy Bull-bear, just as she came to school the first day; but the next day little Lucy was dressed in a common calico dress, and her pretty Indian clothes were laid away. Lucy's father was a great warrior when he was a young man, and he was a great chief when he grew older; but he wants his little girl to learn to read and to write, to sew and to cook, and to keep house as white girls do.

Over at a school in Montana, a little Indian girl one day came to school wearing a purple velvet dress covered with two thousand elk teeth. The dress was made just like a meal-sack, with armholes and a hole for the head; but the elk teeth are worth about two and a half dollars each, so that this little girl's dress could have been sold for five thousand dollars.

The little Indians, when they first come to school, do not know how to do anything at all. They cannot even talk English, and first they have to learn a new language before they can learn to read. Yet they do this very quickly, and in a few weeks they can talk English quite well; but it takes a long time for them to learn to read. And all the time that they are learning to read and write, they are also learning to do the things which any little American boy or girl does naturally. The girls are taught to sew and to cook and to sweep; while the boys learn to

cut wood, to farm, and to take care of horses, pigs, and cows. The larger girls cook lunch for the little girls and the boys, and all the schools are provided with kitchens and diningrooms. There is also a little farm attached to each school, and in it the boys grow all the vegetables eaten in the school.

When recess time comes, the little Indians get out and play just as the white children do. They have bows and arrows, and balls and bats, and everything of that kind, and they make just as much noise as the girls and boys at any American school make.

White people used to think the Indians never smiled and never laughed; but that was because the Indians were shy and backward when white people were around. When the Indians get out by themselves, they laugh and joke and have great fun.

Every year three or four of the brightest pupils at each school are taken down to the agency, where the Indian agent lives, and are there placed in the boarding-school, which is equipped by the government. At this big school there are always several hundred Indian boys and girls, and the government pays all their expenses. Here they learn many things not taught at the day-schools. They have sewing societies for the girls, and a printingoffice and a brass band for the boys. The girls

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PRESIDENT LINCOLN RECEIVING THE NEWS OF THE DEFEAT OF THE

UNION TROOPS AT BULL RUN.

THE BOYS' LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

VII.

LINCOLN AND THE WAR.

BY HELEN NICOLAY.

It is one thing to be elected President of the United States. That means triumph, honor, power. It is quite another thing to perform the duties of President, for that means labor, disappointment, difficulty, even danger. Many a man envied Abraham Lincoln when, in the stately pomp of inauguration and with the plaudits of the spectators ringing about him, he took the oath of office which for four years transforms an American citizen into the ruler of these United States. Such envy would have been changed to deepest sympathy if they could have known what lay before him. After the music and cannon were dumb, after the flags were all furled and the cheering crowds had vanished, the shadows of war fell about the Executive Mansion, and its new occupant remained face to face with his heavy task-a task which, as he had truly said in his speech at Springfield, was greater than that which rested upon Washington.

Then, as never before, he must have realized the peril of the nation, with its credit gone, its laws defied, its flag insulted. The South had carried out its threat, and seven million Americans were in revolt against the idea that "all men are created equal," while twenty million other Americans were bent upon defending that

For the moment both sides had paused to see how the new President would treat this attempt at secession. It must be constantly borne in mind that the rebellion in the Southern States with which Mr. Lincoln had to deal was not a sudden revolution, but a conspiracy of slow growth and long planning. As one of its actors frankly admitted, it was not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election. . . . . It is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years." Its

VOL. XXXIII.— 77.

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main object, it must also be rememberd, was the spread of slavery. Alexander H. Stephens, in a speech made shortly after he became the Confederate Vice President, openly proclaimed slavery to be the "corner-stone" of the new government. For years it had been the dream of southern leaders to make the Ohio River the northern boundary of a great slave empire, with everything lying to the south of that, even the countries of South and Central America, as parts of their system. Though this dream was never to be realized, the Confederacy finally came to number eleven States (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia), and to cover a territory of 733,144 square miles, quite as large as England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany and Switzerland put together, with a coast line 3,500 miles long, and a land frontier of over 7,000 miles.

President Buchanan's timidity and want of spirit had alone made this great rebellion possible, for although it had been " gathering head for thirty years" it was only within the last few months that it had come to acts of open treason and rebellion. President Buchanan had opportunity and ample power to crush it when the conspirators first began to show their hands. Instead he wavered, and delayed, while they grew bold under his lack of decision, imagining that they would have a bloodless victory, and even boasting that they would take Washington for their capital; or, if the new President should thwart them and make them fight, that they would capture Philadelphia and dictate the peace they wanted from Independence Hall.

609

By the time Mr. Lincoln came into office the conspiracy had grown beyond control by any means then in the hands of a President, though men on both sides still vainly hoped that the troubles of the country might be settled without fighting. Mr. Lincoln especially wished to make

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