ing at home congenial to their new tastes, and instead of setting to work to improve their homes and help their mothers they prefer the attractions of white settlements where they become an easy prey to vicious courses.

What I have therefore to recommend to avert these evils as much as possible is, not to put a brake on the wheels of education, but rather to make the education we offer the Indians work in harmony with nature and revelation. As at present conducted, education is disintegrating the home life of the Indians, and producing a race of vagabonds. Education at home under the eyes of the parents would prove a precursor of social elevation.

In a word, unless parental authority is sustained, and the home life of the Indian purified, any education given them will but accelerate their destruction.

In harmony with the statements of Father Duncan we have the views expressed by many of Alaska's highest and best informed officials, among whom was Gov. J. F. A. Strong, who declared in his official report for the year 1917:

At present many native children are sent to the States to attend the Cushman and Chemawa schools, under the Bureau of Indian Affairs, for advanced training as well as elementary education. This course has proved very disastrous, as the change in climate usually impairs their health to such an extent that tuberculosis is contracted, after which the decline is rapid, and the complete change in environment has a fatal effect upon the pupil's future usefulness. The conditions under which pupils live in the training schools are radically different from their previous environments. The trades they learn are frequently useless when they return to their homes, and the ideas and views of life which are the result of the life at a school where every act is according to a well-ordered program, which thereby displaces individual responsibility, make it difficult for them to readjust themselves to the environment of the native villages when they again reach their home. All this, combined with impaired health, makes such pupils practically failures when they return home. The training schools for these native pupils must be located in Alaska, under conditions similar to their previous environments, where health will not be impaired but rather improved on account of supervision and where only such practical subjects will be taught as will be useful to them in the future.

Hon. M. C. Brown, formerly judge of the United States court at Juneau, stated:

* The experience of Father Duncan upon Metlakahtla Island seems to indicate that the only way of benefiting these Indians is to sever them as much as possible from connection with the white population of the country,

Schools, in my opinion, should be established by the Government and maintained under proper civilians at these native villages, where the children may board in their homes and live with their parents while acquiring some useful knowledge, and I would recommend that in these schools they be educated in useful arts, mechanics, etc. * ** Their education should, in my opinion, therefore, be in lines before indicated-instruction in the simpler arts and industries, whereby they may be enabled to earn a living and to aid in the great work of the world. *

*

*

Perhaps I should have stated that boarding schools, where these children are taken away from their parents and homes, result often in great injury. They acquire habits of living and a desire for food such as they do not get in their own homes, and having once acquired a taste for these, they cannot live without them, and the young women when released from these schools, because of their desire for better clothing and the necessity of living as white men do, become a frequent prey of white men; so frequent as to render their condition in this country most miserable.

These are my honest convictions growing out of my experience among these people. (See Special Inspector Witten's report, mentioned above.)

In line with these statements we have the testimony of Col. James McLaughlin, who was for more than a half century officially connected with our Indian Service as a reservatioin agent among the Sioux, as an inspector at large, as a commissioner in the formation of

treaties and agreements, and otherwise. By speaking to them in their own tongue, and through methods and policies closely akin to those of Father Duncan, he gained an intimate knowledge of the peculiarities, status, and needs of the Indians generally, as is shown by his book, My Friend the Indian, published in 1926.

Disclaiming any attempt at self-laudation, Colonel McLaughlin said very truthfully in that volume, pages 2 and 399:

* In the span of a life whose better years have been spent very close to the scent of the tepee smoke, I have seen the Indian prostrated by the hand he kissed, and biting the hand that fed him; I have held savage passions in check when the Indian stood ready to spring in bloody protest on the white man whose coming he resented and whose beneficent intent he did not understand. I have, even more frequently, stood between the white man and the Indian whose rights he contemplated taking from him by the processes of what we have come to describe as benevolent assimilation. While I enjoyed and still enjoy the friendship of white men who are very dear to me, I have done many things that were dictated rather by a sense of the rights of the red man than by the promptings of racial affiliation, and I hold to nothing more firmly, am proud of nothing so much as of the fact that my red friends of the West have given me the title of friend.

In speaking of Sioux Indians who had recently received annuities and training in Government boarding schools, Colonel McLaughlin declared from knowledge gained by his long experiences among them:

***

They are Indians at heart, with some of the cheap vices of the white man and all of the helplessness of the naturally indigent; they have not advanced intellectually along any line that will do them good; the children and the younger people speak English, but their shyness keeps them to thinking and talking among themselves in Sioux, and they would be better off, so far as the future is concerned, if they stood as blanketed Indians on the virgin prairie. Who can refute this testimony given, as it was, by one of the Government's most trusted and highly esteemed representatives?

Finally, but tardily, other controlling representatives of the Government were forced to acknowledge the failure of their former methods and to make use of the policy of Father Duncan, as is shown by the following statement of a former Secretary of the Interior (Work), in A Review of the Work of the Interior Department, 192326, pages 35-36:

The Bureau [Bureau of Education] has also changed its educational policy with reference to the natives of Alaska. Formerly academic training with a little manual training was all that was offered in the native schools. Alaskan Indians and Eskimos were carried to Chemawa, Oreg., to secure industrial training. The present policy is to give all natives a grasp of the fundamentals in academic subjects, emphasize health and hygiene, and provide vocational and industrial training in the Territory.

*

It is expected that the new policy of the Bureau will solve a number of difficult problems hitherto encountered. Academic training which is not accompanied by vocational education cultivated the taste of the Indian for better living, but left him without the ability to live as well as he had lived as a hunter, trapper, and fisherman. Under the circumstances it often happened that the more education he received the more unfortunate and unhappy he became.

The Alaskan natives who formerly went to Chemawa to receive industrial training often did so at the expense of social or physical welfare. They lost contact with their native environment. Frequently they did not return to Alaska, or if they returned found it impossible to adapt themselves to their former life. Some contracted diseases as a result of climnatic changes. Others who remained in the States found themselves forced into unfortunate social

conditions that sometimes involved immorality and even prostitution. In the future no more natives will be brought from Alaska to Chemawa except as the Secretary of the Interior may deem that unusual conditions justify it.

Further evidence as to the effects of Father Duncan's methods and efforts is found in President Theodore Roosevelt's annual message to Congress on December 5, 1905, in which he referred to the Metlakahtlans as "hard-working, decent-living Indians", and declared "These particular Indians are civilized."

In a cablegram of October 13, 1917, to Father Duncan, President Wilson gave his estimate and appreciation when he spoke of Father Duncan's "admirable work with the Metlakahtlan Indians", and said:

Their advancement in education and in capacity for usefulness in the world should be a matter of great satisfaction to you * *.

*

SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS OF EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS

These considerations and the testimony recited convincingly show that Father Duncan originated and used the best and most practical solutions of the problems of Indian education, which call for:

First. The separation and segregation of the Indians from the whites on reservations of lands set apart for their exclusive use and suitable to the peculiar needs and vocations of each tribe, without the hampering influence of the usual reservation restrictions.

Second. Schools with skilled teachers who speak the language and know their peculiarities and needs, and are in sympathy and accord with the Indians they attempt to teach.

Third. Schools located at or as near as possible to the homes and parents of the pupils, in which the truths of nonsectarian Christian religion and character building are taught, along with instruction in such rudimentary courses of study and vocational training as will qualify them for the particular work and problems which will later come to them, as well as in proper methods of sanitation, hygiene, domestic training, and child care and welfare.

SECTION 92. POLICIES AND METHODS OF FATHER DUNCAN

Characteristics and conditions of the Tsimsheans. Removal of racial antipathies and inspired animosities. Father Duncan's methods of approach. Methods of education. Musical talents developed as a civilizing influence. Policy of segregation. Tribal laws and customs abandoned. Regulation and management of community. Formation of municipal and church governments. Policy for supplying material needs. Industrial and commercial enterprises established. Necessary mercantile enterprises conducted. Father Duncan's Mission largely supported by profits of his industries. Father Duncan opposed hurtful influences of sectarianism. Caution to prevent confusion of native mind regarding religious rites. Conflicting dogmas confuse Indians. Further development of his followers necessary. Funds accumulated and husbanded for future use. Will executed to effectuate policies and methods

No man ever more completely and conscientiously devoted his life to his calling than did Father Duncan, who gave all that was in him to his work with his chosen people.

On the altar of that work he sacrificed the comforts and pleasures of cultured surroundings and home, the companionship of family and friends, and a business career promising great success and large

wealth, to go to a far country to accept a mere pittance as his material compensation, and spend his life in comparative isolation, amid privations and dangers with a savage, degraded, and heathen people whose salvation he came to seek.

To that end he learned and spoke a new language, abandoned the forms of worship in which he had gladly and devoutly taken a part during his boyhood and youth, declined ordination as a minister of the Gospel, pushed away the distinction of bearing the exalted title of bishop, suffered his connection with his sponsors to be severed, and finally renounced his allegiance to the flag of his native land and became a citizen of another country.

It is not strange, then, that unparalleled success crowned his efforts through policies and methods which will be considered here.

CHARACTERISTICS AND CONDITIONS OF THE TSIMSHEANS

In order fully to appreciate the policies and methods so wisely devised and so successfully carried out by Father Duncan for the reclamation of his chosen people, and the magnitude of the task he assumed, it will be necessary to keep in mind the characteristics and conditions of the Tsimshean Indians at the time he came to them. When, at the age of 26 years, he reached the arena in which his life was to be spent in battling for the redemption and regeneration of these people, Father Duncan met with conditions and problems widely different from those of the cultured surroundings of his English home, and foreign to anything he had ever known before.

In the Tsimsheans he found a people who were entirely strange to him and but little known to others, aside from the fact that they were recognized as being among the most depraved, savage, and ferocious of all the Indians on the continent.

They had always lived far removed and isolated from white settlements, and had never been under the control or supervision of Provincial or other agents. The Government had given them no help or encouragement, and had but little heeded their depredations or acts of violence so long as they did not affect its white citizens.

Almost the only intimate contact the Tsimsheans had had with white men was at the Hudson's Bay Co. trading post at Fort Simpson, in British Columbia, around and near to which nine tribes or bands of these Indians lived in their separate villages. At the time of Father Duncan's arrival they were so savage and hostile that— This post was protected by palisades of heavy timbers, massive gates, and was flanked by four bastions, with galleries on which cannon were mounded, and strongly garrisoned with riflemen. Sentinels kept watch night and day. So fearful were the commanding officers of the treachery of the natives, that only two or three were allowed to enter the stockade at a time; and these were admitted only through a narrow angular passage to the great store-room window, where they might pass in their furs in barter for storegoods; also, great care was taken not to display too many fine goods, to excite their cupidity. During a siege it was sometimes necessary to keep the gates constantly closed and barricaded for months at a time. (See The Story of Metlakahtla, by Henry S. Wellcome, first edition, p. 2.)

These Tsimshean Tribes were so notorious on the whole north coast for their cruel and bloodthirsty savagery that the Governor of British Columbia, in the beginning and while Father Duncan was

en route to Fort Simpson, sought to discourage and dissuade him from going amongst them by urging

* * * in the strongest possible terms the folly of his attempting to civilize the murderous hordes of the North Pacific; asserting that it would be a fruitless sacrifice of his life. (See The Story of Metlakahtla, first edition, p. 1-2.)

Notwithstanding this warning by the Governor, Father Duncan pressed forward to the fulfillment of his divine commission; but when he reached Fort Simpson he was compelled by the officers in charge to remain for a considerable time within its guarded walls and was not permitted to go outside and mingle with the barbarous savages to whom he came to bring redemption and Christian civilization-so great was the fear of those officers that he would be at once foully murdered.

The heathenism and degradation of these people were manifested by devil dances, savage feasts, cannibalistic and dog-eating_ceremonies, and other most depraved and degrading practices. Intertribal wars, pillage, human sacrifices, slavery, shamanism, and witchcraft had been common among them time out of mind."

The following true picture of the original bestiality and degradation of these Indians was drawn by Dr. Wellcome in The Story of Metlakahtla, first edition, p. 8:

Shortly after Mr. Duncan's arrival he witnessed, while standing on the gallery of one of the bastions, a most sickening sight: A party of hideously painted and bedecked cannibals, tearing limb from limb the body of a woman who had just been foully murdered by a chief, each struggling for a morsel of the human flesh, which they devoured, accompanying their fiendish orgies with unearthly howls, and weird beat of their medicine-drums. Bespattered with the blood of their victim, maddened with rum, frenzied by their hystericai enthusiasm in these superstitious rites, they wrought themselves into a wild and furious delirium, imitating ravenous wolves in their ferocity.

In speaking of the depravity of these Indians at the time he came to them, Father Duncan, in his address before the conference of the Board of Indian Commissioners, the Missionary Boards, and the Indian Rights Association, in Washington, D. C., on January 6, 1887, aptly said:

They were in the most degraded condition; so degraded that it would be simply impossible for me to tell you in detail the abominable sights I saw. They had gotten down to cannibalism, for I have seen them there, acting under the influence of their medicine men, committing the most horrible outrages upon human bodies. I found them in a most savage condition, so savage it was not safe for a white man to move among them.

Pride, vanity, conceit, and vaingloriousness were the ruling passions of all these people, and did more than anything else to shape and control their actions.

The achievement of a prominent place among them-of leadership or tribal distinction was a consuming desire, and was attained through the accumulation of property and by acts of bravery and heroism, as well as through birth and marriage.

Young men married old women, and young women mated with old and even decrepit men to gain higher rank and standing, as did the 11 wives of a chief who could not walk, polygamy being common among men of higher rank, and also with others who could support more than one spouse.