1902), Roman Catholics (12 Jesuits and lay brothers and 11 sisters
of St Anne in 1903), Moravians (5 mission stations with 13 workers
and 21 native assistants among the Eskimo in 1903), Episcopalians
(31 workers, white and native, 13 churches, 1 boarding and 7 day
schools in 1903), Presbyterians (a dozen stations and several schools),
Baptists, Methodists (several stations), Swedish Evangelical (several
stations), Friends (several missions), Congregationalists (mission
school) and Lutherans (orphanage), all are labouring.
Before the advent of the whites the children of the North American aborigines “had their own systems of education, through which the young were instructed in their coming labours and obligations, embracing not only the whole round of economic pursuits—hunting, fishing, handicraft, agriculture and household work—but speech, fine art, customs, etiquette, social obligations and tribal lore” (Mason). Parents, grandparents, the elders of the tribe, “priests,” &c., were teachers, boys coming early under the instruction of their male relatives and girls under that of their female relatives. Among some tribes special “teachers” of some of the arts existed and with certain of the more developed peoples, such as some of the Iroquoian and Siouan tribes, both childhood and the period of puberty received special attention. Playthings, toys and children’s games were widespread. Imitation of the arts and industries of their elders began early, and with not a few tribes there were “secret societies,” &c., for children and fraternities of various sorts, which they were allowed to join, thus receiving early initiation into social and religious ideas and responsibility in the tribal unit. Corporal punishment was little in vogue, the Iroquois e.g. condemning it as bad for the soul as well as the body. Appeals to the feelings of pride, shame, self-esteem, &c., were commonly made. As the treatment of the youth at puberty by the Omaha e.g. indicates, there was among some tribes distinct recognition of individuality, and the young Indian acquired his so-called “totem” or “guardian spirit” individually and not tribally. In some tribes, however, the tribal consciousness overpowered altogether children and youth. With the Indian, as with all other young human beings, “unconscious absorption” played its important rôle. Parental affection among some of the peoples north of Mexico reached as high a degree as with the whites, and devices for aiding, improving and amusing infants and children were innumerable. Some of the “beauty makers,” however, amounted to rather serious deformations, though often no worse than those due to the corset, the use of uncouth foot-wear, premature factory labour, &c., in civilized countries.
Interesting details of Indian child-life and education are to be found in books like Eastman’s Indian Boyhood (1902), Jenks’ Childhood of Jishib the Ojibwa (1900), Spencer’s Education of the Pueblo Child (1889), La Flesche’s The Middle Five (1901), Stevenson’s Religious Education of the Zuñi Child (1887), and in the writings of Miss A. C. Fletcher, J. O. Dorsey, J. Mooney, W. M. Beauchamp, &c., besides the accounts of missionaries and travellers of the better sort.
Outside of missions proper there were many efforts made by the colonists to educate the Indians. It is an interesting fact, emphasized by James in his English Institutions and the American Indian (1894), that several institutions still existing, and now of large influence in the educational world of the United States and Canada, had their origin in whole or in part in the desire to Christianize and to educate the aborigines, which object was mentioned in charters (e.g. Virginia in 1606 and again in 1621), &c. Sums of money were also left for the purposes of educating Indian children and youth, many of whom were sent over to England for that purpose, by colonists who adopted them (one such was Sampson Occum, minister and author of the hymn, “Awaked by Sinai’s Awful Sound”). In 1618 Henrico College in Virginia was founded, where Indian youth were taught religion, “civility” and a trade. It was succeeded by the College of William and Mary (founded in 1691 with the aid of a benefaction of Robert Boyle), where Indian youth were boarded and received their education for many years. The great university of Harvard has long outgrown “the Indian college at Cambridge,” whose single graduate Cheeshateaumuck, took his degree in 1665, but died afterwards of consumption. But its original charter provided for all things “that may conduce to the education of the English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godliness.” Since Cheeshateaumuck’s time, doubtless, there have been graduates of Harvard who could boast of Indian blood in their veins (e.g. recently William Jones, the ethnologist), but they have been few and far between. Dartmouth College, at Hanover, New Hampshire, founded in 1754, really grew out of Wheelock’s Indian school at Lebanon, Connecticut—at this period there were several such schools in New England, &c. In the royal charter, granted to Dartmouth in 1769, is the provision “that there be a College erected in our said Province of New Hampshire, by the name of Dartmouth College, for the education and instruction of Youth of the Indian Tribes in this Land, in reading, writing and all parts of Learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and christianizing children of pagans, as well as in all liberal Arts and Sciences, and also of English Youth and any other.” The college of New Jersey long served as one of the institutions for the education of Indian youth. A glimpse of Indians at Princeton is given by Collins (Princeton Univ. Bull., 1902) in his account of the attempt to confer an academic education, at the end of the 18th century, upon Thomas Killbuck and his cousin, George Bright-eyes, son of a Delaware chief, and a descendant of Taimenend, eponym of the political “Tammany.” It would seem that at this period the states and Congress were in the habit of granting moneys for the education of individual Indians at various institutions.
At the present time the most noteworthy institutions for the education of the Indian in the United States are the Chilocco Indian Industrial school, under government auspices, in Kay county, Oklahoma, near Arkansas city, Kansas; the Carlisle school (government) at Carlisle, Pa.; and the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (private, but subsidized by the government), at Hampton, Va.
The Chilocco school is, in many respects, a model institution for Indian youth of both sexes, devoted to “agriculture and attendant industries.” It was opened in 1884 with 186 pupils, and in 1906 the attendance was 685 out of an enrolment of 700. There are 35 buildings, and the corps of instruction, &c., consists of “a superintendent, 51 principal employés and 20 minor Indian assistants.” The Carlisle school, “the first non-reservation school established by the government,” whose origin is due to “the efforts of General R. H. Pratt, when a lieutenant in charge of Indian prisoners of war at St Augustine, Florida, from May 11, 1875, to April 14, 1878,” was opened in November 1879 with 147 Indians, including 11 Florida prisoners; it had in 1906 an enrolment of over 1000 pupils of both sexes, under both white and Indian teachers, and an average attendance of 981. In 1906 there were in attendance members of 67 tribes, representing at least 22 distinct linguistic stocks. According to J. H. Dortch (Handb. of Amer. Inds., 1907, pt. i. p. 207), “since the foundation of the school nearly every tribe in the United States has had representatives on its rolls.” The following statistics, cited by Mr Dortch, indicate both the success of the school in general and of the “outing system” (pupils are allowed to work in temporary homes, but keeping in close touch with the school), which “has come to be a distinctive feature not only of the Carlisle school but of the Indian school service generally”:
| Admitted during 25 years | 5,170 |
| Discharged during 25 years | 4,210 |
| On rolls during fiscal year 1904 | 1,087 |
| Outings, fiscal year 1904 (girls 426, boys 498) | 924 |
| Outings during 21 years (girls 3214, boys 5118) | 8,332 |
| Students’ earnings 1904 | $34,970 |
| Students’ earnings during 15 years | $352,951 |
The staff of the school consists of a superintendent, 75 instructors, clerks, &c. It has graduated “a large number of pupils, many of whom are filling responsible positions in the business world, and especially in the Indian service, in which, during the fiscal year 1903, 101 were employed in various capacities from teachers to labourers, drawing a total of $46,300 in salaries.” The Carlisle football team competes with the chief white colleges and universities.
The Hampton Institute was established in 1868 by General S. C. Armstrong and trains both Negroes and Indians, having admitted the latter since 1878. It is partly supported by the government of Virginia and by the United States government, the latter paying $167 a year for 120 Indian pupils, boys and girls (in 1906 there were in attendance 112, of whom 57 were girls and 55 boys), belonging to 33 different tribes, representing 13 distinct linguistic stocks. The following extract from the report of the principal for 1905–1906 is of interest: “Fifteen catechists among the Sioux still hold their own. There are two field-matrons and seven camp-school teachers, all coming into close touch with the more ignorant of the people. Four are physicians getting their living from their white patients
