Irreclaimable Savages

Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the year 1885

https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AC5UOFLSZHEGOL8A/pages/AXM4UOEM3FPCO38J

Report of Indian School Superintendent and Statistics relating to Indian Schools, John H. Oberly, Indian School Superintendent (p. CXXVII)

“It may be said, unwelcome as it must be to the many people interested in the subject of Indian education, that the day-school education of Indian children has, so far, brought forth but little good fruit. The reason must be apparent to every thoughtful person. The barbarian child of barbarian parents spends possibly six of the twenty-four hours of the day in a school-room. Here he is taught the rudiments of the books, varied, perhaps, by fragmentary lessons in the ‘good manners’ of the superior race to which his teacher belongs. He returns, at the close of his school day, to eat and play and sleep after the save fashion of his race.  In the hours spent in school he has not acquired a distaste for the camp-fire, nor longing for the food, the home-life, or the ordinary avocations of the white man. In a restricted sense the day-school gives to the Indian child useful information, but it does not civilize him, because it does not take him away from barbarons life and put him into the enjoyment of civilized life – does not take him from the tepee into the house, and teach him to appreciate, by experiencing them, the comforts of the white man’s civilization (p. CXI).”