The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-06-05
WILD INDIANS RECLAIMED
STRIKING RESULTS PRODUCED AT
 THE SCHOOL 1T PHENIX.
The Children of Apaches Who Were Committing Bnrbarities n Few Years Ago Turned Into Useful Rren and

Ago Turned Into Useful Men and
 Women.
 People who believe that the only good
 Indians are those who are dead should
 visit the Indian school at Phoenix. Here a wonderful work is going for
 ward in making useful men and women
 out of the most intractable savage raw material Uncle Sam has anywhere with in his domain. In some respects the work of civilization at this school has
 no counterpart. The institution is the next largest after the Indian school at
 Carlisle, Pa. It has among it's pupils Apache, Pima and Maricopa boys and girls principally. A large majority sof its pupils are the offspring of the Apaches, who only fifteen or eighteen years ago were massacring white set tiers wherever they found them in southern New Mexico and Arizona, were beating the brains out of white babies, were perpetrating cruelties upon women and youths before despatching them and were giving the troops under Generals Crook and Miles the hardest and fiercest kind of fighting. Two, grandsons of the merciless sub b-Chief Cochise are the su- perintendents of the brickyard at the school and one of them is the crack cornet player in the school band. The school takes red-skinned children, half mi f lious directly from the wickups on the hot sandy plains of Arizona, and in six Z or seven years converts them into as at tractive and bright youths as one com monly meets. Not only that, but the school has been located down here in the region of the Apache, Maricopa and Pima reservations so that the instruc- tion may be adapted to the needs of the Indians on the reservations. The grad s uates from Carlisle have too often come back to their parents wickiups and grassroot shacks with good knowledge of common school studies, an idea of farming under Pennsylvania conditiones and perhaps a training in shoemaking but in the arid regions of the Indian reserva tion where irrigation Is a neces. sity in growing crops, where mining and cattle are the chief industries and where shoemaking is about as useful a trade as diamond polishing, the Carlisle graduates have been of little or no help in alleviating the conditions of them selves or their race. The superinten- dent and other officers at the Pioenix school observe the usefulness, spirit and work of the graduates after they return to their tribal localities, and the course of instruction is always bent so as best to subserve the slowly expanding intel ligence and ambitions of the tribes.
 The Indian who has passed seventeen or eighteen years of his life as his an- cestors did is seldom a good pupil In school. The recipe for converting a red skin into a person of permanent useful ness, industry and morality may be kstated as follows. Catch your Indian ~as early in childhood as possible. Five years is the best age. Then, when the subject has been thoroughly washed and we'll dressed, begin a course of kin X dergarten work. Add an occasional dash of music, especially vocal Sprin- kle with encouraging smiles, and season with mechanical ideas. Then begin long systematic course of daily studies of practical nature and instruction in agricultural pursuits and you will se- cure lasting benefit.
 There are four hundred and thirty-ffve pupils in the Indian school at Phoenix. The last congress appropriated sixty five thousand dollars for two new build ings here and when they are erected the school will have capacity of nearly seven hundred pupils To-day the school, with its fourteen buildings-of- fees, dormitories, officers quarters, rec itation buildings, dining halls, work shops, bath-houses, farm and stock barns and assembly rooms-is more at- tractive than many American colleges. There are great sweeps of lawns of blue grass, winding gravelled driveways fianked by rows of cottonwood shade i trees, stone walks, cypress and laures- tina hedges everywhere, enormous flow CT beds and splashng fountains. Away to the rear of the school building and l the trees, lawns and flowers is the school farm, with its cattle sheds and | tool-houses. Beyond is the brickyard | and the sheep corrals. The area of the school and farms is two hundred and | forty acres.
 A dozen white men are employed as teachers and superintendents in the farmwork, but the labor among the cat tie and trees is done by the Indian boys. An Apache lad whose father is now a prisoner of war for an atrocity in the last campaign in New Mexico is the | sub-superintendent in the alfalfa fields, and so industrious and sagacious a far mer is he that he has received an offer of seventy-five dollars month as over seer over several white laborers on big alfalfa ranch near Tempe Arizona, The school farm yields crops of grapes, alfalfa, peaches, prunes. apricots, mel ons, corn and garden vegetables. The fences are kept up, the wooden irriga- tiou fumes mended and the outbuildings and wagons are repaired by corps of Indian boy carpenters and woodwork CTS the oldest of whom is tWenty-two. The vineyards are already planted, the alfalfa is beautifully green, and over it grazes herd of boOded stock. both horses and cattle, Last year a Pima Indian lad devised a scheme by which the surplus irrigation water from the alfalfa fields could be run to the prune orchard, thus putting to use among the prune trees a quantity of water that had been wasted The id a has been of great practical utility to the farm.
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