The progress of education is a still further test of the condition of these people. There are 367 school buildings upon the reservations; and in these are conducted 63 boarding-schools and 281 day-schools, 23 of the school buildings, apparently, being unoccupied. The number of teachers is 437, and of pupils 11,328, of which number 6,028 are males. The amount of money expended for education during the year was $362,496, an average of $32 per pupil. The number of Indians who can read is 25,622, of whom 980 acquired that useful accomplishment during the year. The number of births (exclusive of those in the five civilized tribes in the Indian Territory) was 2,401, and of deaths 2,215. The religious statistics in this table are evidently incorrect in at least one particular. The number of church buildings on the Indian reservations is 177; the number of missionaries “not included under teachers” is 122; and “the amount contributed by religious societies during the year for education and other purposes” was $62,076. These figures we do not call in question, but the “number of Indians who are church members” is put down at only 27,215. It is to be desired that the compiler of the statistics had furnished us with a definition of what he understands by the words “church members.” He sets down for the Pueblo agency, in New Mexico, for example: “Number of Indians, 8,400; number of church buildings, 19; number of church members, _none_!” The truth is that all, or nearly all, of these Pueblo Indians are Roman Catholics, as their fathers were before them for more than three centuries; and that the 19 “church buildings” on their reservation are Catholic churches, in which the Indians are baptized, shriven, married, and receive the Holy Communion; but in the opinion of the honorable commissioner none of the Pueblos are “church members.” So with the Papago Indians in Arizona, who are 5,900 in number, who have a Catholic school, four Catholic teachers, and a Catholic church, but none of whom, in the eyes of the commissioner, are “church members.” In the seven reservations of which the religious control has been assigned to the Catholic Church there is a population of 24,094 souls and 32 churches, but the commissioner’s tables admit only 7,010 “church members” among this population. The truth is, as we shall show, the number of Catholic Indians alone is more than thrice as large as the whole number of “church members” accounted for by the commissioner’s tables. When a human being has received the Catholic rite of baptism he becomes a member of the Catholic Church; and from that moment it is the duty and the privilege of the church to watch over and protect the soul thus regenerated. It is because the church has wished to discharge this duty to her Indian children that certain of the sects have cried out against her, and even the commissioner (Hon. E. P. Smith), in his report for 1875, has not been ashamed to reproach her.