WHAT BECOMES OF NATIVE CHILDREN AFTER THEY LEAVE SCHOOL?

The question is often asked: "What becomes of the students after they leave school?" It may be answered in a general way as follows: Some after leaving school form habits of dissipation and soon die. The larger number take their places among their own people and, by an example of better living and by their increased intelligence, help lift up a little way the whole of the native community where they reside, while a smaller number become leaders.

An annual report from the Sitka Training School, which is one of the oldest schools in Alaska, gives the names and post-office addresses of recent pupils who are engaged in the following pursuits: Eleven are boot and shoe makers, 3 are engaged in boat building, 2 are carpenters, 3 coopers, 2 clerks in stores, 4 are in canneries, 2 are cooks, 4 are engaged in dressmaking, 2 in steam engineering, 3 in mining, 4 are merchants, 2 are hospital nurses, 1 is a painter and paper hanger, 4 are engaged in sawmilling, 1 is a silversmith, 6 are teachers in public schools, 4 are missionaries, and the names of 28 young women are given who are married and preside over Christian households, while others are still unmarried but are keeping house for their parents.

In arctic and subarctic Alaska 44 Eskimo young men, no longer content to live as barbarians, dependent for daily food on their daily catch of fish or the uncertain proceeds of the chase, have made a good start toward citizenship by becoming owners of small herds of domestic reindeer which have already made them the wealthiest men among their people.

Twelve years ago I brought from Point Barrow, the northernmost settlement on the North American continent, a 6-year-old Eskimo boy and placed him in the Sitka Training School. He was named M. Healy Wolfe. After six years in that school he was brought to the celebrated Indian school at Carlisle, Pa., where he has been graduated with honor and will in 1903 enter the preparatory department of a western college.

In the eighties a little orphan boy sought permission from his uncle to enter the recently established mission school at Sitka, which was denied him, as he was valuable to his uncle for fishing purposes. One day while they were a long way out at sea, fishing, the uncle, angered at the importunities of the boy, picked him up and with an oath threw him out of the canoe and bade him go to school. The little fellow struck out for shore, which he eventually reached, but so weak that when the waves threw him on the sand they washed him out again to sea, tossing him backward and forward until a wave, stronger than the others, threw him up so far on the beach that he was able to clutch in the sand and remain. After a while, gathering strength, he crawled up to the school and was taken in. He was named Frederick Moore. Afterwards he was the first of the pupils to give his heart to the Saviour and accept of Christianity, and through his efforts his heathen uncle and aunt and other relatives were brought into the Kingdom. After a course of training in the Sitka school he was brought East and given a course of training at Moody's School for Boys, at Mount Hermon, Conn. Returning to his people he was made interpreter for the mission and native assistant for the missionary at Juneau, and when he died last fall scores of the natives claimed him as their spiritual father.

Early in the nineties two or three young men, leaving the Sitka school, went to the salmon canneries, saved their wages, and after a while formed a partnership for the running of a steam sawmill. With the money that they had saved from their wages they went to Portland, Oreg., purchased machinery, paying largely cash and giving their note for the balance. They paid the freight on the machinery to Alaska, set up the machinery themselves, not needing a machinist to put their mill together, then commenced sawing out the lumber with which to inclose their mill. With their mill in shape, one of their number became a commercial traveler for the firm,

visiting the various salmon canneries in the vicinity and taking orders for boxes in which the canned salmon is sent to market.

About the same time two other pupils (brothers) formed a partnership, took the money that they had made by working in the canneries and started a store. The owner of the leading community store in the same village tried to induce the young men to place their goods in his store and take stock for the same. Failing to induce them to do this he put down prices so low that he thought they could not compete; but many of the natives patronized them, paying higher prices than they would have been compelled to pay at the community store. Making a few thousand dollars at storekeeping, and encouraged by the success of their comrades at sawmilling, they removed from the village and established a sawmill, which, when I visited it some months ago, was running day and night, unable to fill orders for lumber and for cannery boxes.

Among the pupils sent from the Sitka school, in 1886, to the Indian School, Carlisle, Pa., was Henry Phillips, a Chilkat boy. While at Carlisle, in addition to the ordinary studies of the schoolroom, Henry learned the printer's trade and the management of the steam engine. Showing unusual aptitude in machinery he was given an opportunity of serving in one of the machine shops of Carlisle village, and when he finished his course at the school was given a short course in one of the large locomotive works in Philadelphia, where it was claimed for him, that with the machinery, he could assemble the parts and build a railroad locomotive. Since his return to Alaska he has been employed mainly as an engineer on steamers plying in those waters.

Two of the boys from the public school at Jackson, upon finishing their course, have become merchants; others became boat builders--one of them building for Ben John, a Hydah merchant, a fine steam launch. They have also built eleven schooners, which are owned by native men and used in fishing and freighting in the Alexandrian Archipelago.

Another of the natives that left the school in the nineties went to the Klondike, and afterwards into Alaska, where he has made a moderate fortune in gold mining. When the great rush of 1897 and 1898 to the Klondike was in progress a number of the young men from the school earned fabulous wages in packing supplies for the white miners going over the White Pass to the headwaters of the Yukon River. They manifested the progress they had made toward citizenship by being the most reliable packers that in those days of great excitement could be found.

In 1898 Mr. Portus B. Weare, a Chicago capitalist, returning from the Yukon mines, was attracted by the bright face and intelligence of Parsha, an Aleut girl in the Methodist mission school at Unalaska. Expressing a wish that he could take the girl to Chicago and give her a chance for a good English education, he was informed that he could do so, and the girl was placed under his charge. Arriving in Chicago, she was placed in the Forestville public school, one of the best of the kind in that city. She took her place side by side with the sons and daughters of the best class of the American population in that city. Entering the third grade she passed with her associates step by step through the various grades until, five years later, she graduated with 1,200 of Chicago's best children, at the head of the class, taking the gold medal, for which, among others, it is said, the daughter of the president of Chicago's Board of Education was a competitor. Thus a girl with no heredity of intellectual training came into a Chicago school and took the prize away from 1,200 of its children, many of whom, if not all, had had centuries of hereditary training behind them.

In the eighties Frances Willard, a young Thlinget girl, was taken into the mission school at Wrangell; afterwards was transferred to Sitka, and thence, through the interest of Eastern ladies, was placed in a young ladies' boarding school of much reputation at Elizabeth, N. J. She spent her years in that school, the trusted and

loved companion of her associates, many of them daughters of wealthy New Yorkers. Christmas and Easter vacations were often spent by her, on invitation, in the palatial residences of her companions in New York. She was graduated with honor, the equal of those around her. Since returning to her own people she has been a missionary of more than ordinary success, and has latterly reduced the Thlinget tongue to writing, and produced a lexicon of the same, which will soon be published by the United States Bureau of Education, and which is, I trust, only the first of a series of books that this talented young woman may provide for her own people.

In the latter eighties Edward Marsden, a Tsimpshean, was brought to the Sitka school, where he forged ahead of all his companions in all his studies. From Sitka he was taken to Carlisle, Pa., where he tarried only a short time, passing thence to Marietta College, Ohio, then under the distinguished presidency of the Hon. John Eaton, former United States Commissioner of Education. Passing through the college he went to the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, at Walnut Hill, Cincinnati, and while taking a theological course, in order that he might be more useful to his own people, he studied law. In the same season he was both ordained to the full work of the gospel ministry, and, I believe, admitted to the bar. Returning to his own people under a commission from the board of home missions of the Presbyterian Church, he secured, through the contributions of friends, a small steam launch, of which he is captain, pilot, engineer, and with which he is visiting 18 villages along the coast of Alaska preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

These, it is true, are but isolated instances, but they could be increased hundreds of times if the educational advantages and opportunities to the Alaska aboriginal races were similarly increased. The Alaskans have fine minds, and simply need, by the blessing of God upon intelligent, tactful teachers, such a chance as is given the larger number of the white children in the older sections of the country.

NEW SCHOOLS WANTED.

Applications have been received during the year for the establishment of schools at the following places in Alaska.

Ellamar.-This place is a few miles south of Valdez, on Prince Williams Sound, and claims 18 children of school age, with several others in the vicinity that would attend school; that a copper mine is in active operation at the place, and that the number of men and families is constantly increasing.

Seldoria. This place is on English Bay, on the east coast of Cook Inlet, and the petition for the school is signed by 15 citizens, who claim 60 children of school age in the village.

Kenai. This is one of the oldest Russian settlements on the east coast of Cook Inlet and has had a Russian church for a century past. The village consists of a store, Greek Catholic Church, an experiment station of the United States Department of Agriculture, and 10 houses. The population consists of about 15 whites and 160 natives and creoles. There is no school within 300 miles of the place. Children of school age, from 55 to 60.

Shakan.-This place is at the north end of Prince of Wales Island, 70 miles south of Wrangell, southeast Alaska, and consists of a salmon cannery, sawmill, and small native village. The cannery company promise to provide a building with heat and light, and simply ask that the Government provide a teacher and schoolbooks. Accompanying the letter is a list of the names of 53 school children.

Council City. This place is the second largest mining camp north of Bering Sea, and was founded in 1897. The white population numbers about 400, of whom 80 are women and children. The native residents number about 30, of whom several are children. They claim at present 16 white children of school age. This petition is signed by 222 of the citizens.