The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 07, July, 1879 — John Shaqi
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 07, July, 1879Various
History
The American Missionary — Volume 33, No. 07, July, 1879
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
More than the ordinary interest attaches this year to the
anniversary exercises of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural
School, just held. The experiment of negro education has been tried
for the last 16 years, until it is no longer an unsolved problem,
but one of which the once unknown quantities have come to have
an ascertained value. But the question of the educability of the
red man has been one not so conspicuously settled. What has been
accomplished in that direction has been done so far away as not to
have made much impression on the American people. This year, the
institution which has done so much to prove the responsiveness of
the negro to educational training has been engaged in its first
experiment with the Indian. Of its success thus far there can be
no shadow of a doubt. The Indian boys are contented and making
progress, and coming steadily up to a plane on which they can
pursue the regular courses of study. It was said by many at the
outset that the negro and Indian races would not associate with
each other, but the case is as contrary to this as can be. The
Indian boys at first seemed to be somewhat discontented, and Gen.
Armstrong found that they wanted most of all to learn English. “Too
much Indian talk,” they said. He asked them in class one day how
many of them would like to room with the negro boys; every hand
went up. He then went to his senior class and asked them how many
of them would be willing to take in an Indian as a roommate, to
help and teach him. A larger number than was needed of his very
best young men expressed their willingness, and so, instead of
standing aloof, the two races are completely mixed in their rooms
and at table, to their mutual satisfaction. This is a notable
element in the experiment. Some 12 of the Indian boys have joined
the church connected with the Institute.
Is it needful to say a word about the Hampton Institute itself?
Beautiful for situation it certainly is, with its front on the
creek, and only a narrow point of land separating it from the
famed Hampton Roads. Its buildings are simple but effective in
their outline and grouping. Virginia and Academic Halls, and the
new wigwam——the quarters prepared for the 70 Indian students; the
cottages in which the boys live, in families of 30 or more, largely
self-governed; the residences of the Principal and his assistants;
and not least, the great barn, sheltering a fine collection of
blooded stock——and all this on a farm of some 200 acres. It is but
a few years since there were only small and temporary barracks
to accommodate the applicants for admission; now about 200 negro
and 70 Indian students are well provided with dormitories,
recitation-rooms and workshops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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