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Hardware,

Paints, Glass, Etc.

N. PORTER SADDLE AND

Arizona

HARNESS COMPANY

See our make of Saddles and Harness. Satisfaction is Guaranteed. 40 W. Washington Street

Phoenix, Arizona

GEO. F. MERRYMAN,

uneral Directo

Anu r.mbalmer

52

Phone Main 114 West Adams St.

Phoenix, Ariz.

PHOENIX BAKERY & CONFECTIONERY

Edward Eiselle

Agents For Maillard's New York CHOCOLATES and BONBONS

Phone 89

7-9 W. Washington

PHOENIX

Donofrio-Zunkel Cafe

Fine Contectionery,
Fruits, Nuts, Etc.

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The Native American.

Volume 10.

Phoenix, Arizona, January 9, 1909.

From Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

Projected School Improvements. Apropos of this general subject of our schools and the health and welfare of the pupils in them, I am now engaged in studying out some possible improvements in other schools than those remote from the reservations. The boarding schools on the reservations, as long as we are to continue them, demand more or less overhauling as to methods. For one thing, the present practice of keeping all pupils for a ten-months term I consider a mistake, especially in those places where the adult Indians are already well along on the road to civilization and self-support. youngest of the children-say, from 5 to 12 years ought not to be separated for the better part of a year from their homes and parents; it would be wiser, in my judgment, to let them attend. three months in the fall and three months in

The

pring, choosing those seasons in which they would need least coddling and when they could spend all of each day except a few study hours out of doors. The well-grown boys and girls--from 15 to 20 and upward-whose help is really a necessity to their parents on the family farm and in the household, could be taken only for the winter months, when there is least of their kind of work to do at home and when, consequently, they could be spared without inconvenience. The intermediate group, say 13 and 14 years of age, are at a stage in life when their strength is most liable to be overtaxed, and when mind,

Number 1.

body and moral nature are most in danger of receiving an incurable warp; I should therefore take especial care to surround them with a normal and wholesome environment, encouraging them to work on the home gardens in the spring, and in the neighboring orchards-if there are any in the fall, and take such time as was left to do their school work. This is the general arrangement which prevails in rural communities of white persons of modest means not in pursuance of any preconcocted schedule or for the sake of testing any particular theory, but because nature and social circumstances combine to make it the only thoroughly practical plan. Why should not an Indian community, which has already conformed itself in part to our common social order and is moving steadily in the direction of general conformity, try the same thing?

I am duly aware that this will be regarded in some quarters as revolutionary doctrine. It will be loudly condemned by all believers in "institutional" methods, the sort of persons who would like to see the whole world move in gangs instead of on individual initiative, and eat, drink, sleep, do business and make merry in response to certain signal taps on a bell. It will be a target for criticism, also, on economical grounds, for it always costs a little more in trouble, if not in money, to carry out a scheme which pays some attention to personal or class differences; but I believe that every true patriot will agree that the Government in shaping its

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