Irreclaimable Savages

Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the year 1885, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435064036098&seq=3

Indian School Superintendent, John H. Oberly, 1885

“But the Indian might have all the knowledge of the books, and he would remain a barbarian nevertheless, if he were not led out of his prejudices into the white man’s ways, if he were not won from slothfulness into industrious habits, if he were not taught to work, and to believe that he, as well as th white man, is in justice bound by the law that if a man will not work neither shall he eat. Appreciating this fact, the Government has slowly, in a halting way, organized a system of Indian schools for the purpose of teaching an Indian child to read and write, the Indian boy to till the soil, shove the plane, strike the anvil, and drive the peg, and the Indian girl to do the work of the good and skillful housewife.” (page CVIII)