EDUCATIONAL ADVANCEMENT OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1521, 5 March 1886, Page 3

EDUCATIONAL ADVANCEMENT OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

The Cherokees are regarded as the most apt and advanced of all the Indians, and they are certainly the most adroit and ambitious. They may be said to be the governing tribe. Their leading men are exceptionally capable, and the people in general are remarkable for their vigour and alertness of intellect. They maintain admirable public schools, two seminaries, and an orphan asylum; and they have a well-conducted weekly newspaper, printed mainly in their own language, after an alphabet invented ky a Cherokee genius named Sequoyah, who became so frightened at the effects of his contrivance, the Indians say, and felt so apprehensive that the " bad medicine " of reading which he had introduced would break up the old native habits and destroy his people, that he lapsed into a settled melancholy, and wandering off to Mexico, died there 0/ a broken heart. The Choctaws and Chickasaws are next m the scale of enlightenment to the Cherokees. Both these tribes support good schools, and the Chickasaws now have more high schools or seminaries, and more students in them, than any other of the five tribes. The Choctaws appear to understand trading and money-making better than any of their brethren, though the Chickasaws are also shrewd business men. The Creeks and Seminoles have not improved as much as the other tribes, and are not considered so bright and energetic ; but they are represented to be gaining every year, and their schools are excellent and well attended, and the Creeks have recently distinguished themselves by subscribing three thousand dollars toward the founding of a seminary for the ex-slaves of the tribes.—Century Magazine.