This has been conducted entirely by the government, but generally in
such a way as to be a handmaid to religion. On the reservation a
boarding-school has been kept up during the ten years of missionary
labor, as well as many years before, for about ten months in the year.
About half of the time, including the winter, the school has been kept
six hours in the day, and during the rest of the time for three hours;
the scholars being required to work the other half of the day--the boys
in the garden getting wood and the like, and the girls in the house
sewing, cooking, house-keeping, and doing similar things.
The position of the one in charge has been a difficult one to fill, for
it has been necessary that the man be a teacher, disciplinarian, handy
at various kinds of work, a Christian, and, during the last year and a
half after the agent left, he had charge of the reservation; while it
was almost as necessary that his wife be matron, with all the
qualifications of taking care of a family of from twenty to forty. It
has been difficult to find all these qualifications in one man and his
wife, who were willing to take the position for the pay which the
government was willing to give, for during the later years the pay was
cut down to the minimum. It has not been strange that with all the
burdens frequent changes have taken place. There have been seven
teachers in the ten years, but most of them were faithful, some of them
serving until their health failed. Yet the school has been carried on
generally in as Christian a way as if the Missionary Society had had
charge of it. All of the teachers and their wives have been
Christians--not all Congregationalists; for it has been often impossible
to obtain such; in fact, only three have been; but there has been a
plain understanding with the others that they should teach nothing in
regard to religion which conflicted with the teachings from the
pulpit--an understanding which has been faithfully kept, with one
exception. In 1874 the school numbered about twenty-four scholars, but
it gradually increased until it numbered about forty, which was more
than all the children of school age on the reservation, though it did
not include many of the Clallams. They were so far away that it was not
thought wise to compel them to remain so steadily so far away from their
parents year after year.
The school has been a boarding-school, for nearly all the children lived
from one to three miles away, and it has been impossible to secure any
thing like regular attendance if they lived at home, while some have
come from ten to seventy miles distant.
Attendance on school has been compulsory--the proper way among Indians.
While the parents speak well about the school, and say that they wish to
have their children educated, yet, when the children beg hard to stay at
home, parental government is not strong enough to enforce attendance,
especially as long as the parents do not _realize_ the value of
education. The children have not all liked to go to school, and at first
some of them ran away. The agent and his subordinates could tell some
stories of getting runaway children, by pulling them out of their beds,
taking them home in the middle of the night, and the like. In this
respect the government had the advantage of a missionary society, which
could not have compelled the children to attend school.
There was no provision in the treaty for more than one school, and that
on the reservation. But after the Clallams at Jamestown had bought their
land, laid out their village, built their church, and become somewhat
civilized, they plead so hard for a school, offering the use of the
church-building for the purpose, that the government listened to them,
and in 1878 sent them a teacher. This was a day-school, because funds
enough were furnished to pay only a teacher, and nearly all the children
lived in the village within less than a half-mile from the school. A
very few of the children walked daily five or six miles to school, and
some of the better families of the village did nobly in making
sacrifices to board their relations, when the parents would not furnish
even the food for their children. This school has varied in numbers from
fifteen to thirty children, and has been conducted in other respects
mainly on the same principles as the one on the reservation. It has been
of great advantage to the settlement.
A few of the rest of the Clallam children, whose parents were Catholics,
have sent their children to a boarding-school at Tulalip, a Catholic
agency, and others have not gone to school, there being difficulties in
the way which it has been almost or quite impossible to overcome.
The schools have been conducted entirely in English. This is the only
practicable plan, for the tribes connected with the school speak three
different languages, and it is impossible to have books and newspapers
in their languages, while teachers can not be found who are willing to
acquire any one of these languages sufficiently well to teach it. It is
also the only wise plan. If the Indian in time is to become an American
citizen,--and that is the goal to be reached,--he must speak the English
language, and it is best to teach it to him while young. In large tribes
like the Sioux, where the children will speak their native language
almost wholly after they leave school, and where there are enough of
them to make it pay to publish books and papers in their own tongue, it
is probably best to have the schools in their native language, as a
transition from one language to the other. This transition will
necessarily take a long time among so large a number of Indians, and
needs the stepping-stone of native schools and a native literature to
aid it. But where the Indian tribes are small, as is the case on Puget
Sound, and surrounded by whites with whom they mingle almost daily, who
are constantly speaking English to them, this stepping-stone is not
needed. It is possible for the next generation to be mainly
English-speaking in this region; in fact, most of them will understand
it whether they go to school or not, and it is not wise, were it
possible, to retard it by schools in the native language.