“An experience of eleven years with Indian students at Hampton, together with careful study of reservation life, has convinced me that Indians are alive to progressive influences. They are intelligent and clear thinkers, quick at technical work in trades shops, unused to steady application but willing to take hold. They do not learn English easily, and are shy of speaking it, while they have no appreciation of the value of time, and cannot endure prolonged effort; this last being a result of their lack of physical vigor, which I believe to be their chief disadvantage. In my dealings with them I have treated them as men and have found them manly, frank, resentful, but not revengeful; with a keen sense of justice, ready to take punishment for wrong doing, and to speak the truth to their own hurt. “Of 247 sent home from the Hampton school, three-fourths have done from fairly to very well. At least one-third are doing excellently. There must always be a certain percentage of poor material, and there is a curious fickleness in the average Indian; but our students are always surprising us by doing better than we expect, and this is especially the case with the girls, for whom often we hardly dare to hope. Over one-half of our returned Indians have had temporary relapses, but there are few who do not recover themselves. A majority are working for their living as teachers, mechanics, farmers, teamsters, clerks, etc. “The need of the Indian is good agents, teachers, and farm instructors. They are born stock-raisers and their lands are the best cattle ranges in the country. With the right men in charge they could in ten years raise such a proportion of their own beef as to reduce the beef issue by one-half. “In their way stands a short-sighted economy, and a service so organized that it changes with every change of party. The lines of work for the Indian are indicated with sufficient clearness; the one thing now essential is intelligent co-operation of his friends. “The saying that ‘there is no good Indian but a dead one’ is a cruel falsehood and has done great harm. They are a good deal like other people, and with a fair chance do well.” That the Indian will work and that he also will learn was first demonstrated--officially--by Captain Pratt, of the regular army, who now is busily engaged in solving individual Indian problems at his noble school at Carlisle, Pa. The change in the government’s policy toward the redskins is attributed, with good reason, to Captain Pratt’s endeavors. Says Senator Dawes, who labored so hard for the bill enabling Indians to take farms instead of living in barbarous communism on reservations: