ributaries of the Yukon the only native
schools are conducted by the missions of the Episcopal Church, on the
Koyukuk and Tanana Rivers, and have no connection with the government.

When, somewhat late in the day, the government set its hand to the
education of the natives, mission schools had been conducted for many
years at the five stations of the Episcopal Church above Tanana and at
the various mission stations below that point. The Bureau of Education
professed its earnest purpose of working in harmony with the mission
authorities, and upon this profession it secured deeds of gift for
government school sites within the mission reservations from the Bishop
of Alaska.

It cannot be stated, upon a survey of the last five or six years, that
this profession has been carried out. The administration of the Bureau
of Education has shared too much the common fault of other departments
of the government in a detached and lofty, not to say supercilious,
attitude. Things are not necessarily right because a government bureau
orders them, nor are government officials invested with superior wisdom
merely by reason of their connection with Washington. It is just as
important for a government school as for a mission school to be in
harmony with its environment, to adapt itself to the needs of the people
it designs to serve; and that harmony and adaptation may only be secured
by a single-minded study of the situation and of the habits and
character, the occupations and resources of the people.

To keep a school in session when the population of a village is gone on
its necessary occasions of hunting or trapping, and to have the annual
recess when all the population is returned again, is folly, whoever
orders it, in accord with what time-honoured routine soever, and this
has not infrequently been done. Moreover, it is folly to fail to
recognise that the apprenticeship of an Indian boy to the arts by which
he must make a living, the arts of hunting and trapping, is more
important than schooling, however important the latter may be, and that
any talk--and there has been loud talk--of a compulsory education law
which shall compel such boys to be in school at times when they should
be off in the wilds with their parents, is worse than mere folly, and
would, if carried out, be a fatal blunder. If such boys grow up
incompetent to make a living out of the surrounding wilderness, whence
shall their living come?

The next step would be th