[16] _The Indians in the United States._—In an interesting paper read at a recent meeting of the Académie des Sciences, M. Paul Passy, who has recently returned from a visit to the North-Western States of America, endeavored to show that the generally accepted theory of the eventual disappearance of the “red man” is erroneous, and that though certain tribes have been exterminated in war and others decimated by disease and “firewater,” the contact of civilisation is not necessarily fatal to the Indians. M. Passy states that there are at present 376,000 Indians in the country, of whom 67,000 have become United States citizens. The Indians in the reserve territories are in part maintained by the Government, many of them, however, earning their living by shooting and fishing, and also by agriculture. The progress which they have made in farming is shown by the fact that they had under cultivation in 1882 more than 205,000 acres of land, as against 157,000 in India. Moreover, the total Indian population, exclusive of the Indians who are citizens of the United States and of those in Alaska, had increased during the same interval by more than 5,000. M. Passy says that the Federal Government, though not doing nearly so much as it should for the education of Indian children, devoted a sum of $365,515 to this purpose in 1882, and in the State of New York the six Iroquois “nations” settled there have excellent schools, which three-fourths of their children regularly attend. The five “nations” in Indian territory are also well cared for in this respect, having 11 schools for boarders, and 198 day schools attended by 6,183 children. In 1827, a Cherokee invented a syllabic alphabet of 85 letters, and this alphabet is now used for the publication of a newspaper in the Cherokee language. In addition to the tribes in cantonments, a great many children (about 8,000) are disseminated among the schools in the different States. There are also three normal and industrial schools in which, apart from elementary subjects, the boys are taught agriculture and different trades, and the girls sewing, cooking, and housekeeping. A journal in the Dakota tongue, called the _Yapi Oaye_, is published at Chicago for the benefit of the pupils in that region, and it is said that the Indians of the territories show themselves very anxious to learn, so much so that the Ometras of Nebraska have sold part of their territory so as to be able to keep up their schools. M. Passy adds that the Americans differ very much in their estimate of the sum required for providing all the young Indians with a sound education, some of them putting it as high as $10,000,000, while the lowest estimate is $3,000,000, or ten times as much as is now being spent. His conclusion is that if the Indians are destined to disappear, it will be because they become fused with the other citizens of the United States.—_Times_, Sept. 8, 1884. [17] See Hawley, _l.c._, p. 31.