In order to assist the employees along these lines, the Carlisle School has recently printed, for distribution among the Indian schools, a pamphlet containing extracts from the New York Sun, Tribune, and the Outlook, embracing some of the commissioner's views on Indian matters, and partly outlining the policies he intends to enforce, and which have already been partially put into effect. It is desirable that these articles should be read and studied with care by all the Indian teachers.

MUSIC OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

MISS NATALIE CURTIS, NEW YORK CITY

We all know how difficult it is to instruct those whom we do not understand. All that we have heard at these meetings brings us to the conclusion that it is of inestimable importance for the Indian educator to know the Indian. It is of value for all who are interested in teaching or studying the Indian to have a knowledge of their aboriginal brothers. One great avenue to a better understanding of the Indian is a comprehension of their songs, for songs are to the Indian all that books are to us.

Songs and ceremonies are the unwritten literature of the race, and as in mediæval times the deeds of heroes and the chronicles of peace and war were sung by the bards and minstrels, so today in the festivals of the Indians are the great events of the tribe told in song. Besides its important part as the expression of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual life of the Indian, song often accompanies even the most menial acts of daily toil. Such songs are special songs to fit the task; as, for instance, the songs of the Pueblo Indian women while grinding their corn.

I paused one day at the door of a Pueblo house where a woman was singing a flutelike melody to the rhythm of her grinding. "Tell me," I asked, "what are you singing about?" The woman paused in her work. "Oh," she answered with a smile, "I am singing of the Rainbow Garth who paints the heavens; of the rain that we long for; of our growing corn." Such songs are gems of poetic and melodic beauty that would be valuable indeed in our own American literature and culture. European musicians, on hearing the Indian songs, exclaimed; "And you Americans—you are allowing all this to perish! You are stamping out music unlike any other in all the world— why?" Why indeed, for this music belongs to our own land. Happily the prejudice against the Indian songs, as against all things Indian, is waning. Yet, if we are to retain the peculiar talents of this people, schools must foster in the little ones the gifts inherited. This song of the Rainbow Garth floated out from the Pueblo village dwelling, but beyond from the government school rose the sound of "Marching through Georgia" in shrill chorus. This battle-song of ours has its rightful place in our history and in the memory of

our Civil War; but to the sons of the Painted Desert in far-distant Arizona are our war-songs as appropriate as their own call for rain?

All Pueblo girls can sing corn-grinding songs in chorus. At Hampton the students were encouraged in their own songs. I heard them singing together as they bent to and fro over their washtubs.

It is true, as was said this morning, that the Indian must eat bread in the sweat of his face. So did our fathers. But there is nothing sentimental in affirming that the love of beauty can go hand in hand with toil, and that true art transfigures labor, giving it the dignity of the individual's chosen tasks performed with joy; and without such joy labor sinks into the lethargy of the plodding ox, or worse, is performed as by a machine instead of a living being. Everyone who has been in the South knows that the negroes work with ten times more zest when they sing at their task. Everyone who has been in the West knows that the deserts of Arizona wake into melody when a group of Indians set out to their fields. The Indian will not work less but more for encouragement of the natural song impulse within him. And such encouragement will help to make him what we want him to be that for which our young republic stands-the workman with ideals.

ETHNOLOGICAL STUDY OF OUR INDIANS IN THE
SOUTHWEST

MISS MABELLE BIGGART, NEW YORK CITY

The Navajo and Hopi tribes are probably descendants of the ancient Aztecs. The Navajo reservation extends over two hundred miles one way and one hundred and fifty another. They as a people are in need of schoolsday schools. Reservation schools, as the boarding-schools far away, should come later in life. The little children should be educated first on the reservation. It is the work of the National Indian Association to start missions and turn them into different denominations. It is the work of the government to start schools, and with our commissioner, Hon. Francis E. Leupp, who is interested in this work of day schools, a great alliance and reform is promised. If we can unite for day schools, industrial work and evangelization, we may add some 25,000 Indian people of noble qualities to our American citizenship. I went on the desert last summer from hogan to hogan with. interpreters. I was greatly interested in their customs.

The Hopi homes are emancipated; that is, they build their own houses of stone, sand, and water, and own them. The wife also has the right to discipline her husband. If, for instance, he has been away and has not given a good account of himself, she will put his saddle and belongings outside of her door, and he will not dare to enter. But, unlike some of our people, they

never separate. He will go to her friends and his, and they intercede with the wife, and a reunion takes place.

The Navajo children obey from love, and the Navajos have many delightful characteristics.

TEACHING INDIAN PUPILS TO SPEAK ENGLISH

REUBEN PERRY, SUPERINTENDENT, NAVAJO INDIAN SCHOOL, FORT
DEFIANCE, ARIZONA

The importance of giving Indian pupils a good command of English is the foundation upon which all further training is based. Enough English to enable the child to conduct the affairs of ordinary business life, and to give him some responsibility and independence when placed in the world to shift for himself, is absolutely essential to success. The natural method of giving a child English lies in a presentation of objects and the English names to represent them. This should be done in a manner to command his interest and attention. The material for such lesson should, as much as possible, be new, and the objects should not be left in sight of the child until he has lost interest in them before the lesson begins. Just as he becomes acquainted with the object, he should become acquainted with the English words that represent and describe it; and while he is making his observations and gaining his ideas, he should be led into the oral expression of these ideas. The names of the objects and the simple sentences given by the child should be repeatedly written on the board, until a correct mental picture of the written word or sentence is formed.

Beginning first with the names of things, as "ball," we proceed to short sentences, as, "Roll the ball," "Throw the ball," "Catch the ball," "The ball is round;" illustrating in each case by having the children perform the actions enumerated. When the idea is thoroly grasped, we repeat the words in concert and singly, giving particular attention to clear, distinct enunciation. The rule should be in this work, as well as in all other classroom work with Indian beginners, short lessons and repeat, review, repeat, and review.

The articles used in the industrial departments, farm, garden, etc., furnish excellent materials for the lessons in English. Children should be required to give the names of things in the dining-room, kitchen, etc., such as "table," "chair," "knife," "fork," "spoon," and "plate." As pupils give the names, the teacher writes them on the board, where they are allowed to remain in the sight of the class until the next day's lesson. Then the pupils are encouraged to make simple sentences containing these words, as: "We eat in the dining-room," "We sit at the table," "I sit on a chair," "I eat with a fork," etc. These sentences also may be written by the teacher, and used afterwards by the class as a reading-lesson; also for a copying exercise. I have

found it a great help to make kitchen, dining-room, sewing-room, laundry, farm, and shop charts, as suggested by Superintendent Reel.

The evening hour has been devoted entirely to the acquisition and use of English. For this purpose each teacher's pupils were divided in two schools, making six classes instead of three, and, the children of the kindergarten retiring before the evening hour, the assistant superintendent, disciplinarian, and kindergartner took charge of the additional rooms. During the evening hour conversational work was indulged in, and some familiar subject connected with the child's home life or school life was selected for the exercise. The subject was generally illustrated by the object itself or by a picture. Each child is encouraged to contribute his quota to the general fund of conversation. One child was encouraged to ask questions for the other children to answer. By dividing the schools and having smaller classes, more teachers, and allowing only thirty minutes for the evening hour, the children have rapidly acquired the use of English, and the evening hour has been a very valuable and pleasing part of our schoolroom work.

INDIAN CHARACTERISTICS

MISS MARY C. JUDD, MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.

The general belief expressed by the average American traveler in his own land is that the Indians as a race have no sense of humor, and rarely laugh even when with their intimate friends. But those whose lives have brought them into close touch with the Indian race know that the keen intelligence which can read nature's guide-posts thru trackless forests or over almost limitless plains, which recognizes the work of Manitou or the Sun-Father in the tempest, the torrent, or the flower on land or lake-they know also that the Indian laughs when the time and place permit him to cast aside his mask of stolidity.

American humor depends much upon exaggeration, and so do stories around the wigwam fires. Not very long ago a party of white men were encamped near an Indian village in the North. Mosquitoes made life a misery, and one of the fishermen from the camp asked an Indian woman going by if she had ever seen the pests of such size and strength in any other place. "These big!" she answered. "These are small. Mosquitoes by our tepee so long, they must sit down to bite us, and they so tall when they touch the ground their bills stick in our faces. You think little trouble is big. You folks from town easy 'fraid." This turned the laugh on the fisherman and checked his further complaints.

The woman's wit was much like the tribe stories of Iagoo, the Mark Twain of Indian lore, whose account of killing a mosquito with a war-club and using his wings for boat-sails is equal to any in our literature.

A teacher on a Minnesota reservation thought she would amuse her pupils on a certain rainy day by playing circus in an original manner. Each child was allowed to choose the animal he desired to see, and he was assured that it was hidden in a small room across the hallway. One boy, Jack Spratt by name, wanted to gaze on a monkey. When his teacher opened the door and led him to a mirror, his shout of laughter showed that a full-blood Indian boy could see a joke as well as anyone. He begged to be made doorkeeper for the game, and no children had more sport than those whose vivid imaginations had been trained in the forest.

Blankness of countenance, apparent inability to see or to hear, is, as all know, a part of their home teachings. They learn early that there is a time to laugh and a time to refrain from the quiver of a smile; that gravity increases the dignity of a statesmen, a warrior, or a stranger on a new trail; and that to conceal one's feelings is to show strength of will and purpose. But it is not true that Indian life is devoid of laughter, jollity, and fun.

New England people still relate the old story of colonial days when a certain chief with certain companions entered the house of a settler whose wife had just placed upon a chair her pan of dough covered with a white cloth. One of the unasked visitors made haste toward the great cushion, ignorant of its contents. He sat down on the dough with such good effect that the hearty guffaw of his chief was the first warning that the good wife had of her ruined bread. Her vigorous scoldings of the one who made the blunder added to the laugh, and the chief left the house in order to regain his composure. Whenever thereafter he made a call at the same house, his smiles showed the remembrance of the accident.

You must have often listened to graphic accounts of monstrous muskellunges lost to greedy fishermen who failed to bring them to shore, but the story is still told in tepee and wigwam of the fish so huge that it swallowed both the fisherman and his canoe, and was captured only because there was room inside of him to shoot an arrow from the bow that had been a portion of his dinner. The hero may be named Menabozho instead of Hiawatha, but names matter little sometimes.

Of Iagoo, the old-time story-teller, it is said that he declared that he had seen an ant so large that it could drag a great rabbit to his hole in the ant-hill. The eyes of the ant were like coals of fire, and its horns as sharp and fierce as those of a buffalo. Surely, later American jokers have not been able to enlarge upon details in any better fashion.

These tales must recall to the minds of many in this audience still better stories told by their Indian associates in school, camp, or agency, and which are full of wit and rich humor Conway, the artist, who went to western camps and villages before the era of railroads, and has made his name famous because of his portraits and other well-painted pictures of the now historic faces and places that have vanished with the buffalo, had the good fortune to hear, and the pen to preserve, several peculiarly beautiful legends of the