There has been severe and just criticism on the policy of the Indian Commissioner prohibiting the use of the vernacular in the schools among the Indians, not only in those sustained by the Government, but in those supported wholly by private contributions. We wish to give due credit to the Commissioner. He is honest in his purpose, and his general aim is good. He is right in wishing to make the Indian a civilized _man_, and not a civilized Indian. The Indian dross must be taken out and the manhood-gold polished. A man’s language is a part of himself, and the language of the Indian, while it is rich in metaphors relating to natural scenery, comparatively pure in reference to the social virtues, and exalted in its conception of the Great Spirit, yet, in many respects, it holds him to his old life, with its cruelties and superstitions. It is true that as the Roman and Greek languages, conveying originally only human and mythological ideas, came at length to be the vehicle for Christian meanings, so may the Indian’s vernacular. But the process is long and tedious, and the number of Indians who use it is so small and its vocabulary is so meagre, that the effort to make it a permanent vehicle for thought and speech is not worth making, especially as there is a language so much better just at hand. The only question relates to the mode of transition from the one to the other, and how far the Indian tongue can be made a means of more speedily and accurately teaching the English; or, rather, how far the Indian language can be used to help the Indian into a Christian civilization. Here is the Commissioner’s great mistake. No square rule is wise. It depends on persons, locations and surroundings. For example: 1. The Indian pupil at Hampton or Carlisle is surrounded by English-speaking people, and he will learn English perforce, as an Englishman learns French in France, or German in Germany. Yet even here the process is slow. The Indian youth is so bashful that he makes reluctant use of his opportunities, so that it requires three or four years to acquire the English language at Hampton; and withal, an interpreter is an essential helper there. 2. The Indian boy at the Santee Normal School has only the teachers as his English-speaking associates; the rest are Dakotas. He must spend toilsome years in getting a little knowledge through a dense medium, when an occasional Dakota word would at once illuminate the meaning of the English. What the pupil wants is English ideas, rather than English words. Whatever will give this should be used.