"

The agent, in reply to my questions, said that they gambled a good deal
for money and beads during the week, but he had forbidden it on Sundays;
and he would not allow them to gamble away their clothing, as they
formerly did.

There are about eighty scholars on the school-list, and about fifty attend
school. Was there any compulsion used? I asked, and he said No. Now surely
here, if anywhere, one might begin with a compulsory school-law.

Did he attempt to regulate the conduct of the growing boys and girls? No.

Do the Indians marry on the reservation? No. One chief has two wives; men
leave their wives, or change them as they please.

What if children are born irregularly? Well, the reservation feeds and
supports all who are on it. Nobody suffers.

Are the women often diseased? Yes, nearly all of them.

Have you a hospital, or do you attempt to isolate those who are diseased?
No; the families all take care of their sick. The doctor visits them in
their shanties. (Bear in mind this reservation was established, and has
had Indians on it since 1860.)

Do the Indians have to ask permission to go to the town? No; they go when
they please.

Is there much drunkenness? No; singularly little.

Do you attempt to make them rise at any specified hour in the morning? No.

Have you a list or roster of the Indians who belong on the reservation?
No.

How many Indians own horses? I do not know.

On Sunday there is preaching; the audience varies; and those who do not
come to church--where the preaching is in English--play shinny.

Is not all this deplorable? Here is a company of ignorant and
semi-barbarous people, forcibly gathered together by the United States
Government (with the help of a mob), under the pretense that they are the
"unfortunate wards of the nation;" and the Government does not require the
officers it sets over them to control them in any single direction where
a conscientious guardian would feel bound to control his ward. How can
habits of decency, energy, order, thrift, virtue, grow up--nay, how can
they continue, if in the beginning they existed, with such management?
Captain Jack and his forty-five Modocs were at least brave and energetic
men. Can any one blame them, if they were bored to desperation by such a
life as this, and preferred death to remaining on the reservation?

Nor is this all. Of the two thousand acres of arable land on the
reservation, about five hundred are kept for grazing, an