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for the women employees of the government on the reservation, or that the missionary thinks dancing is sinful and takes vigorous exception to the superintendent’s permitting the government employees to hold on Friday or Saturday nights, or holidays, what appear to the outsider as innocuous little community dances. On the other hand, the missionary may have a really substantial case which the organization responsible for the presence of the missionary should promptly bring to the attention of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for correction in that jurisdiction. The national boards should recognize this great responsibility and should appreciate the natural reticence of the government officers in lodging complaints against missionaries, especially when the difficulty has its origin in the fact that the missionary is vigorously insisting on a literal and strict observance of a rule of church discipline toward which ministers in larger, more sophisticated communities, often take a more tolerant, more charitable attitude. In these local units of the Indian Service it is of the utmost importance that the missionaries and the government employees should work in the closest harmony, and that there should be united effort of all in the furtherance of a well considered plan—economic, social, and spiritual.

The Indian Service, until the recent establishment of district superintendencies, was highly centralized. Perhaps the most striking single illustration of this fact is the uniform course of study prescribed from Washington for all Indian schools, carried to the extreme of having all important examination papers sent out from Washington. Another is the great mass of uniform rules and regulations prescribing in great detail uniform practice and procedure. Yet what strikes the careful observer in visiting the Indian jurisdictions is not their uniformity, but their diversity, a diversity affecting practically every phase of activity.^[1] One might say that the only common fact is that all deal with Indians but even so the