Page:LewisMeriam-TheProblemOfIndianAdministration.djvu/129

There they will find many Indians who have been turned loose who are not able to shift for themselves. The problem is too complicated to be solved by any such simple device, because the only sound solution-is the long slow process of real education.

Persons who look for quick results should be mentioned next. They say of the Indian Service, “It has been at this job for a hundred years. It ought to be through. Its officers and employees must be trying to hang onto their jobs. All the Indians ought to be turned loose and the Indian Office closed. Time enough has been spent on the Indian problem.” These people need to visit particularly the Indians of the southwest. A visit to an adult primary class, where big boys and girls in their teens are attending school for the first time, would be helpful. They know no English, they cannot read or write. They are having their first contact with that white man’s civilization in the presence of which they and their children and their children’s children are to live. The fact that they are in school is evidence that at last, after all the centuries since the advent of the white man, his civilization has penetrated to their remote desert homes. Some visitors may shake their heads and say, ‘“ You can’t do much in educating these children; you have started too late.”’ Despite some exceptions, there seems to be some truth in their assertion unless one looks to the future. Many of these children will be back in their desert homes in a year or two and they will doubtless soon forget their scanty knowledge of English and of reading and writing, but they will have had their contact with the white race, they will know what schools are, and they will have seen other Indian children with a more favorable start getting ahead. When they themselves have children they will not be where their parents were. They themselves have passed the first gulf. Their children will as a rule go to school at a far earlier age and stay much longer, advancing much further in studies and in understanding. The third generation has not only the advantage of getting to school early; it has some help in the home in such things as speaking English, reading, and knowing the white man’s ways. The pride which some of the first and second generations take in the achievements of the third shows that Indians are much like white people. The truth seems to be that much cannot be expected on the average in less than three generations, and in some jurisdictions the first generation is just beginning.