This plan keeps up a connection between the young and the old, between the raw interior and the more civilized front. It agrees with the established policy for assimilating people of foreign tongues in our country—that of using both the vernacular and the English in their public worship. It would be a gross usurpation for our country to interdict such peoples from thus using their native language in parish schools for imparting their own religious views of truth and duty. We feel sure that to insist that these new candidates for citizenship, in addition to all the other new things implied in this revolution of their old ways, shall be tied up in all their schools to a new language, will be a disheartenment that will defeat the desired result. Our petition is, that you will secure such a modification of the recent orders as will allow, in private and mission schools, a discretionary use of the native along with the English language, and all this in order, as we think, to a more speedy extinction of the one, and the prevalence of the other, among all the Indian tribes. And so we respectfully appeal. (Signed) J. D. MCCORD, Pres. (Signed) F. D. ROOD, _Sec._ * * * * * OUR INDIAN WORK AT OAHE. AN ILLUSTRATION OF WHAT THE U. S. GOVERNMENT _proposes_ TO KILL. It was my privilege to attend the closing exercises of our Indian school at Oahe, in Dakota, which is under the direction of Rev. T. L. Riggs. About forty children have been in school during the winter, and now in mid-summer they return to their homes to spend two months. Mr. Riggs has sent word to all the out-stations that the parents and relatives of the children were expected to come here for their children at that time. As school closed on Wednesday, those living at a distance of ninety miles started the Saturday previous. Many of them reached Oahe on Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning we watched them coming in in their white covered wagons and on their ponies. Stopping near the river they pitched their tents, and thus had temporary homes. There were here then one hundred and fifty in number who came from all parts of the “Cheyenne River Agency Reservation,” and some from the “Spotted Tail Agency.” The mission house was open to all, and not a few came at once to pay their respects, staying only a few moments. The school exercises were intensely interesting. The delighted parents in their blankets and with feathers in their hair, looking uncouth enough to please the most fantastic taste, themselves satisfied beyond qualification, seated and standing, filled every available space when the exercises began. These were recitations and songs, etc., which made even the phlegmatic red people smile audibly. One little fellow named Mark “spoke his piece” as follows: “I am a little boy Not quite four feet high, I hope when I grow big I’ll not be quite so shy; I can’t be very sure, But I will surely try.”