THE CHEMAWA AMERICAN
H. E. WADSWORTH, Superintendent
VOLUME 17
MAY, 1915
NUMBER 8
OUR INDIAN SCHOOLS AS I SEE THEM
BY W. E. TAY LO li, -Assistant Superintendent and Principal o f Salem
Indian Training School
X P U A N A IIO N : Since this is the beginning of a se
ries of articles some explanation may be necessary.
T h e pronoun I is used because no o th er person— d i
rectly or in d irectly — is in any way responsible for the
ideas I may advance. N either do I desire to be u n
necessarily plain in language. I believe thoroughly
in the educational side of the Indian schools, and
w hile much has been excellent, the possibilities are beyond w hat has
been accom plished.
I have other reasons for using the pronoun I; it is m ore definite. On
one occasion w hen I was w orking as a student in the office of I)r. G eorge
Bauer, form erly of Yale U niversity and at the tim e we were w orking con
nected w ith the U niversity of C hicago, and we had put up w hat we
th o u g h t was an excellent m onograph, he had us go th ro u g h it and strik e
out the “ w e’s ” saying “ only the lords and kings are perm itted to use the
second p e rso n .” A nother great m an, hearing the com m ent, said all great
men are egotistical (h e did not say all egotists were g reat) and then re
ferred to a form er president of Princeton U niversity, a man noted then
and now for sound, philosophical w riting, said he was the most egotis
tical “ old c u ss" he ever knew . T hen ex h ib itin g to me one of the for
mer p resid e n t's Ixjoks, pointed to the use of the “ I ” eighteen tim es on
th e first page. T hen as if this were not enough to convince, he turned
over to the noted a u th o r’s statem ent of his well know n doctrine of con
science, w here he had made ab u n d an t use of the first person and then by
star to a foot note in language som ething like this: “ Since w riting this
conclusion I find that A ristotle has anticipated m e .”