There is not a white parent of intelligence in America who would send children to school if in that school there was danger from disease. When Cornell had a small epidemic of typhoid fever, the institution was closed; the same is true of Milton Academy when a few pupils were taken with scarlet fever. Phillips Academy, at Andover, closed its doors some years ago when less than four per cent of the student body became affected with measles. Yet in past years these Indian schools have continued in the even tenor of their way, including among their membership children suffering from some form of tuberculosis or trachoma. I observed that with my own eyes in Minnesota in 1909. You cannot expect the Indian—who is just as human as we are ourselves—to wax enthusiastic over education when such intolerable conditions obtain. All the Indian knows is that the child comes home sick, and he having no facilities for proper treatment, unless the child’s constitution is unusually strong, the child dies or is disabled. Right here I wish to pay a tribute to one of the leading Sioux, Chief White Horse. He said: “I sent my own boy to school first, as an example to the others. I sent my children to a nearby school until they were old enough, and then I was one of the first to send them to Hampton, Virginia, to school. They all came home and died of consumption.”[41] While we all believe in education, yet I affirm that there is neither a man nor a woman in all America who would willingly, and gladly, send one child after another to a school so managed that the children contracted tuberculosis and died. The average white man and woman would refuse to send other children to such a school, after the first one had died; and a system of education productive of consumptives, would be indignantly denounced in unmeasured terms. President Lincoln wrote a beautiful letter to Mrs. Bixby, when she gave to her country five sons who were killed in battle during the Civil War. Mrs. Bixby was a white woman, and of some education. Lincoln’s letter to her is celebrated in the United States. Poor old White Horse was an untutored Indian, and yet his faith in the white man and his ways rose to sublime heights. He deserves a place among the heroes of peace. In return for his simple trust, we murdered his sons and daughters. There has been a wide diversity of opinion among persons as to the wisdom of our general educational policy for Indians. This is not confined to those employed by the Interior Department, who serve as Superintendents and teachers. It is more largely shared by missionaries and other observers.