CVIII    REPORT OF INDIAN SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT. 
Va.) is well established. The Indian pupils at that school are for- 
tunate. They are instructed with great skill, and.are being taught 
lessons which will be useful to them when they shall have returned to 
their friends on the reservations. The St. Ignatius Mission-school is a 
model school of its kind, and should be encouraged to persevere in 
the good work it is now doing with so much success and such extraor- 
dinary skill. 
THE PURPOSE AND THE MACHINERY OF THE INDIAN 
SCHOOL SYSTEM. 
BOOK KNOWLEDGE NOT SUFFICIENT. 
It is an understood fact that in'making large appropriations for Indian 
school purposes, the aim of the Government is the ultimate complete 
civilization of the Indian. When this shall have been accomplished the 
Indian will have ceased to be a beneficiary of the Government, and will 
have attained the ability to take care of himself. Hence national self- 
ishness, as well as a broad philanthrophy, calls for the earliest possible

achievement of the end in view. But anxious and eager as the patriotic 
humanitarian may be on this point, it is conceded on all sides that 
the permanent civilization of the Indian can only come, as civilization 
comes to all peoples, by slow processes, by the processes of education, 
which lead from low to higher, and refine while they elevate. A popu- 
lar American writer says that he has no doubt some of the Sioux are 
very quick and shrewd and sensible "1but," he continues, "that
is not 
saying they are civilized. All civilization comes through literature now,

especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and 
looking, and in-some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who 
live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must bar' 
barize." There is truth in this; and, at last, the Government has begun

to act upon the belief that the Indian cannot be civilized until he has 
received an education that will enable him to catch at least a glimpse 
of the civilized world through books. But the Indian might have all 
the know'ledge of the books, and he would remain a barbarian never- 
theless, if he were not led out of his prejudices into the white man's 
ways, if he were not won from slothfulness into industrious habits, if 
he were not taught to work, and to believe that he, as well as the white

man, is in justice bound by the law that if a man will not work neither 
shall he eat. Appreciating this fact, the Government has slowly, in a 
halting way, organized, a system of Indian schools for the purpose ot 
teaching the Indian child to read and write, the Indian boy to till the 
soil, shove the plane, strike the anvil, and drive the peg, and the indian

girl to do the work of the good and skillful housewife.