For many years past the Commissioner of Indian Affairs has been at our meetings, and this year the new Commissioner, Mr. VALENTINE, a man in whom we all have confidence (applause), takes charge of part of the first session. We have also many persons connected with the Indian service. And we have a gentleman who for fourteen years was Chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs in the House of Representatives; a man noted for his faithful, conscientious discharge of his duties as the head of that Committee, who is now Vice-President of the United States. (Applause.) We are very happy indeed that the United States Government is so largely represented here.

But if the Indian question is nearing solution, we have other subjects, the Philippines, Porto Rico and Hawaii - to which we are, I think wisely, giving more and more attention. Fortunately we have with us many men who are familiar with the affairs of these recently acquired possessions, and we shall undoubtedly have an informing discussion of these great subjects.

As Presiding Officer we are to have the gentleman who served us so admirably last year, and who worthily fills the distinguished office of United States Commissioner of Education. It gives me great pleasure to present to you Hon. ELMER ELLSWORTH BROWN. (Applause.)

Dr. BROWN took the chair, and the organization of the Conference was completed.

(For a list of the Officers and Committees, see page 2.) The Chairman then delivered the following opening address:

THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN IN ALASKA

OPENING ADDRESS OF HON. ELMER ELLSWORTH BROWN

One year ago Sheldon Jackson was one of the speakers at this Conference. Within the twelvemonth he has been called to his rest. It is well known to many of you that in his passing there has been taken from us one of the most devoted, adventurous, and indomitable spirits that have ever been concerned with the education of the natives of this American continent.

What I have to offer in opening this twenty-seventh meeting of the Indian Conference is some account of the recent development of the service of the National Government for the welfare of the Alaskan natives. I am to speak of the work of the past two years and a half, as it has gone forward from the point where Sheldon Jackson's first serious disability compelled him to relinquish its active direction.

One of the most significant extensions of this work, which belongs almost wholly to the past year, is a definite campaign for the improvement of health conditions among these natives. For many years an occasional physician has been employed here and there as teacher in the Alaska school service, who has rendered medical aid to the natives in his immediate neighborhood. The employment of such physicians has now become a cardinal feature of the Alaska service, and particularly the employment of traveling physicians whose business it is to serve the needs of large districts which have hitherto been scantily provided in this respect. It has been easy to draw inspiration for such a service from the work of Doctor Grenfell in the Labrador. Six physicians have been employed in this way. At the same time two places have been provided with physicians as local teachers. At four important points contracts have been entered into with local physicians not regularly attached to the Government service, under which they give especial attention to the needs of indigent natives. Contracts have also been entered into with hospitals at two points, under which indigent natives are received at government expense for necessary medical and surgical treatment. Even with these arrangements there are many points which are still entirely without provision for medical service, though some makeshift provision is made for twenty-nine of these points by furnishing the government teacher with an outfit of the more common remedies and elementary text-books which should assist in giving some sort of relief in case of sickness or accident. A further extension of our medical service has been undertaken for the coming year, which should prove one of the most interesting and useful of all of its forms, that is the employment of trained nurses as teachers of practical hygiene and helpers in case of need.

The work of both physicians and nurses is primarily educational. They care for the sick, but still more, they help the natives to take on those ideas and habits which will insure a lessening of sickness and mortality in coming years. It will be an especial care of our trained nurses to show the native mothers how they may care for their babies and so lessen the prevalent infant mortality.

For the year 1908 the Congress added $100,000 to the annual appropriation for the education of Alaskan natives, bringing it up to a total of $200,000 exclusive of the special appropriation for the reindeer industry. This gain in the appropriations has been held since that time. Accordingly, it has been possible to make a steady extension of the work to villages which had not previously been reached. There are still remote regions which

have not been touched, but twenty-nine new school buildings have been erected within this time, nearly doubling the number of schools in the Territory.

This extension of the service has been accompanied with a broadening of the activities which it embraces. The sanitary campaign is a case in point. It is a service not merely for children in the schools, but for the whole community who are equally in need of education. Some of the best suggestions for such an educational program are to be drawn from the work of college settlements and similar agencies in the crowded portions of our great cities. The problems considered are not simply scholastic in the older and narrower sense; they are the problems of community and racial life, or indeed the problems of racial destiny.

Broadly speaking, we look upon these native peoples as passing through a period of temporary dependency. As savage tribes they were full grown and independent before civilization came. In the face of civilization they have become dependent children. Left to themselves they would quickly fade away and be no more. What we must do as best we can is to prepare them for a new full grown and independent life, in advantageous relations with the white man's civilization. The success of this undertaking may be gauged in the long run by the rapidity with which these people shall become able to take care of themselves, in their new world, and dispense with the help which the government now gives them. They are to be helped in such a way and to such a degree, that they will become independent of outside help.

In addition to provision for the promotion of health among them, a leading consideration must be the promotion of industries suited to their new environment. The introduction of the reindeer industry was a brilliant and successful stroke of social invention directed to this end. The number of distributing centers for the reindeer has now been increased. A code of regulations governing the reindeer industry was promulgated by Secretary Garfield. A prospective herder goes through a course of apprenticeship four years in length as regularly as a candidate for the bachelor's degree goes through his four-year college course. But on the successful completion of each year of his training, the young Eskimo or Indian receives a number of deer for his own. At the end of his apprenticeship, when he is graduated as a trained herder, he has already acquired a small herd which is to be the instrument of his industrial life and a means of support for himself and his family. Already complaints have come to us from at least one reindeer center where it has not been possible to take on all applicants as apprentices, that those who have not been given a place with the reindeer herd have lost favor with

the young women of their village, and have accordingly suffered in their prospects of matrimonial alliances.

It may not be possible to introduce another industry at once so new to this people and so exactly suited to their needs as is the reindeer industry, but a constant endeavor is making in other portions of Alaska to put the natives in possession of such industrial skill and apparatus as will meet their present needs. The improvement of their boat building and fishing, the introduction at suitable points of agriculture and gardening, the erection of saw mills, the organization of coöperative buying and selling, are undertakings which are either already under way, or under careful consideration. Sets of wood-working tools have been introduced into many of the schools, a good deal of systematic instruction is given to the girls in cookery and sewing, and other industrial plans have been put upon trial.

Here as everywhere the need of moral training is the first educational need. Moral education through cleanliness, healthful home conditions, and remunerative industry are of incalculable importance. There are, however, portions of Alaska in which the demand for labor is so great that the natives can easily earn enough by day labor to keep them with their families in comfort or even in a low grade of luxury. The problem in such a case is that of keeping them up to such a moral plane that they will not squander their earnings in demoralizing indulgences. There is a work here to be done by churches and missions rather than by public schools, and at many points I believe this work of religious education is well done. But direct instruction in morals is needed, too, such as public schools can give and in some measure are giving. Still further, there is need of legal restraints, particularly as regards the sale of intoxicants. On the side of legal provisions two important acts were passed by the Congress at its session of last winter. One of these makes the sale of alcoholic liquors to the Alaskan natives a felony; the other provides for the appointment of members of the Alaska school service as special peace officers, with power, under the general direction of the Department of Justice, to make arrests in cases of wrongdoing either by natives or against natives. The importance of these two enactments can hardly be exaggerated. Already the Department of Justice is proceeding vigorously against the traffic in strong drink from which the natives have suffered, and only last week word was received of the conviction of ten men who had been engaged in such traffic, all of whom were already on their way to the penitentiary on Puget Sound.

I will not detain this Conference with a more extended account of new undertakings in the Alaskan field. What has been pre

sented is of course only a part of the whole. We believe that even such a fragmentary statement may not be without interest to those engaged elsewhere in similar work. The Alaska service recognizes a responsibility, which is indeed a responsibility of the service for any backward people, of blazing new ways among new difficulties. In so doing it may hope not only to share in bearing the white man's burden among the members of darker race, but also in widening the conception of education everywhere, even the education of highly cultured peoples.

A word as to present needs of the service will close this account. The Congressional action most immediately needed by the Alaska service, in addition to the maintenance of the present scale of annual appropriations is twofold: First, the adoption of an effective school attendance law, and, Second, provision under which the Secretary of the Interior may prescribe sanitary regulations which shall have the force of law, after the manner of the regulations of boards of health in this country. So much of authority, backed by power as peace officers which will be lodged in some of our employees in Alaska, will undoubtedly render a recourse to actual compulsion generally unnecessary, and will enable us to make better progress toward a condition in which the Alaskan natives shall be ready for free and self-directed citizenship. (Applause.)

THE CHAIRMAN: At our meeting last year we were addressed by the Hon. Francis E. Leupp, then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who gave an account of the work of the Indian Bureau, and brought forward a number of speakers, representing the Indian service. In the year that has just passed, Mr. Leupp, after a long, honorable and extremely useful service as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, has retired from that service.

One of the speakers in Mr. Leupp's program of a year ago was Mr. ROBERT G. VALENTINE, who has since succeeded Mr. Leupp as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. It now gives me great pleasure to introduce Hon. ROBERT G. VALENTINE, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who will take charge of the morning's program from this point.

WHAT THE PUBLIC SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THE

INDIAN BUREAU

ADDRESS OF HON. ROBERT G. VALENTINE

The people of the United States ought to know certain things about their Indian Bureau. Throughout the country are groups of people and numerous individuals who know a good deal about