In compliance with your request I herewith furnish you with a brief history of the Carlisle School, and some account of its industrial features. It originated in the sending to Florida from the Indian Territory of 74 Indian prisoners in the spring of 1875. At the instance of General Sheridan I was selected by the War Department and placed in charge of those prisoners, they having been under my care at Fort Sill. They were from the Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Kiowa and Comanche tribes and were selected for this banishment because of well-known offenses against the peace of the frontier. Some of them were guilty of the most outrageous crimes. Years of army service among the Indians and observation of their treatment had led me to change my views for opinions in favor of giving to the Indian a broader chance and a desire that he might be brought more in contact with the peaceful and industrious side of civilized life, and so before the prisoners were started from Fort Sill I wrote to my superiors urging that they be educated and trained industrially during their imprisonment. Soon after reaching St. Augustine I wrote repeatedly to the War Department urging that some locality with more industrial surroundings be selected and the prisoners be transferred. This was denied, and I then set to work to make the best use of the elements to be found in the sleepy old Spanish town. With no means, I was forced to seek the co-operation of charitable and missionary folks. Miss S. A. Mather, Miss Perit, Mrs. King Gibbs, Mrs. Couper Gibbs, of St. Augustine, and Mrs. Dr. Caruthers of Tarrytown, N.Y., winter resident of St. Augustine, volunteered to teach and did teach the classes of those grown Indian men for two years and a half, giving them about one hour’s instruction daily. Industrially there was little practical opportunity, but numbers were placed for different periods to work on saw mills, at picking oranges, as hostlers, grubbing the land, boating and whatever could be found in connection with their own necessities and comfort in the old fort. Twice we boated pine logs from a distance and constructed log houses within the fort, riving the clap-boards, building stick chimneys, chinking and daubing that they might learn to construct their own homes. Some of them advanced rapidly in acquiring literary, English speaking and industrial knowledge. Others were very stupid. The greatest success in the labor line was in placing five men to grub five acres that had intimidated other laborers both white and black. The undergrowth and roots to be removed were of the most dense and appalling kind, and yet the Indians stuck to it until they had made a complete success of it.