Hon. VICTOR M. RICE, (D.) INDIAN SCHOOLS. Superintendent of Public Instruction: Sir-The undersigned, superintendent of Indian schools at Cattaraugus and Allegany, submits the following report of the condition, progress and expenses of said schools for the year ending September 30th, 1866: Expenses. For teachers' salaries, Cattaraugus Reservation. -- $1,324 00 793 00 $2,117 00 For books and stationery for all the schools. $287 00 At Allegany all the districts, six in number, are provided with good school houses. At Cattaraugus there are seven school houses, and three districts, Nos. 6, 9 and 10, in which schools are taught, in the summer, in temporary plank houses. The National council has appropriated about $500 to aid in building school houses for these destitute neighborhoods; and, if you can aid them to as much more, the people will furnish building material, and they may all be provided with convenient houses in time for the next summer term. The small repairs, necessary to make the houses comfortable for the winter school, with a few exceptions, will be made by the Indians in the districts respectively. Fuel is generally provided by the people in the several districts. The salary paid by your department to the teacher of the school in district No. 2, Allegany, is less than that paid to others, because a few white families in the vicinity unite in supporting the school, and send their children paying her the balance of her salary. In addition to the two terms of twelve weeks each, above reported, nearly all the schools were taught another month, the services of the teachers being paid by a committee of Friends who came from Philadelphia to these reservations, to look after the welfare of these people, in November, 1865. Learning that the schools were closed more than one-half of the time, they very generously gave about $300 and left it in the hands of the President of the Seneca nation for the above purpose; they also urgently persuaded the Indians to raise funds for the support of schools; in response to which three districts at Allegany, and one at Cattaraugus, subscribed and paid sums sufficient to continue their schools still another month. The national council also appropriated a sum sufficient to pay Miss Joslin for teaching her school at Oldtown an extra month. As none of the above sums came into my hands, I am not able to state the exact amount in either case, but thought it was proper to mention the facts, as matters of interest connected with the efforts of the Indians themselves and of benevolent individuals for the promotion of education among these people. It is evident that the benevolent care and liberal policy extended by the State, to the scattered remnants of this people has been repaid fourfold by the improvement of the Indians in social comforts, mental progress, and industrial development. Before the missionaries commenced their labors, or schools were established among them, there were no comfortable dwellings, little household furniture, no newspapers or books, few domestic animals, no fences to protect their small patches of corn, beans, and squashes, and none but the rudest kind of agricultural impleplements. Now, a stranger passing through the Cattaraugus reservation would see but little in the costume of the people or the general appearance of the country to remind him that he was in an Indian settlement; a good road, some ten miles in length, passes through farms, with good houses, some of which have cultivated flowers in the front yards, cultivated fields and vegetable gardens, and a good supply of all kinds of domestic animals; on this one street there are six good school houses, three excellent meeting houses, a flourishing asylum for orphan and destitute Indian children, court houses and mission stations. At the annual fair of their agricultural society, they make a respectable show of stock, fruit, farm, and garden products, and the women make good display of butter, bread, cakes, dried and canned fruits, pickles, fancy and plain needle work, &c., &c. These improvements are largely the result of the system of schools provided for them by the State, ten years ago, in view of which, I indulge the hope that the Legislature will so enlarge appropriations for these schools as to correspond with the high prices the teachers must pay for board, so that the school terms may be longer the ensuing year. Respectfully your obedient servant, E. M. PETTIT. ONONDAGA RESERVATION. Hon. VICTOR M. RICE, Sup't of Public Instruction: Sir-I respectfully submit the subjoined report of the Indian school on the Onondaga reservation, for the year ending September 30, 1866: There is but one school house on the reservation. Number of Indian children between the ages of five and twenty one years residing on reservation on the 30th day of September, 1866 Number of male children. 92 50 Number of female children 42 Number of white children of same age residing on reservation 17 Whole number of Indian children who attended school during the year 46 Number of white children who attended Indian school.... Number of white children, residing on reservation, who attended contiguous white schools. 4 7 Number of Indian children, residing on reservation, who attended contiguous white schools Number of weeks' school taught during the year Amount paid to superintendent for services and expenses, 32 25 The school house and the teacher's house both need repairs, but I have been unable to induce the Indians to make them. They are not used to helping themselves in matters spiritual or educational, having been, for so long a time, beneficiaries of the State, and of missionary and benevolent societies. The Onondaga Indians are really poor, and their numbers small, while their tribal habits are ruinous to their prosperity. The tribe is divided into three parties, which never act together in sustaining schools, or reforms of any kind. These parties are the Pagans, the old Mission Church party, and the Wesleyan Mission Church party. State aid has started and sustained their school thus far, and the poverty of these Indians, and their clashing sects and interests, render it wholly impossible to keep up the school by depending, in any considerable degree, upon help from them. If they allow their children to attend the school, even though it be tardily and with irregularity, they feel that their part has been fully performed. The encouragement which the friends of education among the Indians receive arises from the fact that these Indian families who can read-who take a newspaper-are more industrious, more self-dependent, and more moral than those who are uneducated. As proof of this I would refer to the fact that, at our town fair this year, the premium for "best white wheat" was awarded to Thomas Skenadoah, an Indian farmer. Thomas, and most of his family, can read—he is the most regular patron of the Indian school-and he and his family do more full days' work than any uneducated family in the tribe. In the minds of those who know this people best, there is no doubt but that, if the long-tried system of treating them like semi-idiotic children, to be nursed and cared for, but never trusted with the rights and duties of citizens, were discarded, and they clothed with the rights and privileges, and made subject to the duties and liabilities of citizens, it would be better for them and for the State. Impartial suffrage, if extended to them, would tend to elevate them, to make them self-reliant and self-dependent, and, in the end, good and useful citizens of the State. If it should fail, as it might in individual cases, such individuals certainly could sink no lower than they do under the present system. While New York sustains the Indian schools, which are slowly, but in a visible degree, raising the "poor Indian" to an understanding of the duties imposed upon manhood, let her go further, and bestow upon all native born Americans the right to vote, and, at the same time, impose upon them the duty of bearing arms and paying taxes. If, from ignorance, many men of the "inferior races 19 are not prepared for the franchise, try the |