SEC. 7. All salaries, expenditures, and other claims for the payment of educational expenses in Alaska must be audited by the Territorial Board of Education, approved by the Commissioner of Education, and, when approved by him, transmitted to the Secretary of the Interior for his approval, and when so approved, will be paid out of the funds appropriated by Congress for the education of the children of the Territory.

SEC. 8. In cases of special emergency the Board of Education may incur expenditures for immediate necessary school purposes in advance of the approval of the Commissioner of Education, but such liabilities shall be only for unforeseen and necessary purposes, and shall in no case exceed $100.

SEC. 9. Whenever such extraordinary expense is incurred the Board shall make an immediate report thereon, in writing, to the Commissioner of Education, setting forth the reasons for incurring said expense, and transmitting properly signed and audited vouchers for the payment thereof.

SEC. 10. In the preparation of estimates, vouchers, and other official forms and papers the blanks approved by the Treasury and Interior Department will be used by the Board of Education.

SEC. 11. For his services each member of the Territorial Board of Education hereby established shall receive the sum of $200 per annum.

SEC. 12. At the close of the school year the Territorial Board shall make a report to the Commissioner of Education, transmitting the hereinafter-mentioned report of the general agent, and containing their opinions and recommendations respecting the subjects thereof, and such other topics as shall be deemed by them proper for the general welfare of education in Alaska.

II.-The General Agent.

SEC. 1. A superintendent of education, to be known as the general agent of education in Alaska, shall be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, and shall hold the position during the pleasure of the Secretary, and until his successor is appointed.

He shall receive from the Government for his services as general agent an annual salary of $1,200.

SEC. 2. The general agent of education shall reside at Sitka, and shall be provided with an office, with the necessary furniture, stationery, fuel, and lights. He shall not leave the Territory without the written permission of the Secretary of the Interior.

SEC. 3. It shall be the duty of the general agent to exercise general supervision and superintendence over the public schools and teachers in the Territory, subject to the approval of the Territorial Board of Education.

SEC. 4. He shall visit each school district and each school in the district of Sitka at least once a year. He may, once a year, in each district hold a teachers' association at such time and place as in his judgment will best promote the interests of the public schools. The schools in the district of Sitka shall be under his immediate supervision. SEC. 5. The general agent shall make a report at the end of the school year to the Territorial Board of Education, which report shall embrace

(a) The number and general condition of the schools in the Territory.

(b) The rules and regulations prescribed by the Board of Education for the government of the schools and the duties of the teachers.

(e) The number of children between the ages of six and twenty-one years in the Territory, the number of children attending the public schools, the number attending other schools, and the number not attending any school.

(d) The names, ages, residence of the teachers and other officers employed in the schools, and the amount of their respective salaries.

(e) The time spent by the general agent in the Territory and the time spent by him in visiting the schools.

(f) And any and all information and suggestions that may be useful for the advancement of education in the Territory, or that may be required by the Commissioner of Education.

SEC. 6. It shall be the duty of the general agent to keep an inventory of school books, school furniture, and other property received by him from the Government, and at the end of his term of office he shall deliver to his successor all of the books and papers of his office, taking a receipt therefor.

III.-School Districts.

The Territory of Alaska is divided into three school districts, which shall conform to the geographical divisions known as Sitka, Kadiak, and Unalashka, as follows: SEC. 1. Sitka, comprising all Southeastern Alaska, with an area of 28,980 square

SEC. 2. Kadiak, comprising the region from Mount Saint Elias westward to Zakharoff Bay, with an area of 70,884 square miles.

SEC. 3. Unalashka, comprising the region from Zakharoff Bay westward to the end of Aleutian Islands, and northward to the Arctic Ocean, with an area of 431,545 square miles.

SEC. 4. In the districts of Kadiak and Unalashka the district superintendent, the United States deputy collector of customs, and the United States commissioner at Kadiak and Unalashka shall constitute and are hereby appointed a school committee. The supervision of the schools in these districts shall be under these committees, and all reports of the progress and condition of the schools, with recommendations for the location of new schools, and for the erection and repair of school buildings, shall be made to the general agent by said committees, and for their services as members of such committees the deputy collectors and commissioners shall be allowed $100 each per annum. SEC. 5. In each of these two last-named districts or divisions the Territorial Board of Education shall appoint one of the teachers to act as district superintendent. These superintendents shall visit the schools of their districts at least once a year, and keep the general agent informed of their condition and wants as to school buildings, the manner in which the teachers perform their duties, and all reports shall be made to the general agent by the superintendents through the committees of their districts. The district superintendent, in addition to his salary as teacher, shall be paid the sum of $200, which shall be in full payment of his services and travelling expenses as such superintendent.

SEC. 6. The children shall be taught in the English language, and the use of school books printed in any foreign language will not be allowed. The purpose of the Government is to make citizens of these people by educating them in our customs, methods, and language. The children are primarily to be taught to speak, read, and write the English language. Vocal music may also be taught in the schools.

SEC. 7. The Sitka training school should teach the primary branches of industrial education. The boys should be taught shoemaking, carpenter and cabinet work, printing, and such other trades as are of use in the Territory, while the girls should be instructed in intelligent housekeeping and household industries.

SEC. 8. A common school should be established in every settlement where there are children in sufficient number, and at least one school in every tribe of Indians or native settlement.

Comfortable school-houses must be provided. These schools must be open to all children without reference to race.

L. Q. C. LAMAR,
Secretary of the Interior.

The organization of the board of education provided for in the above rules and regulations has already been referred to in Chapter I (see p. 32). The board met at Sitka July 14, 1887. Judge Lafayette Dawson was chosen president of the board, and Dr. Sheldon Jackson, general agent of education for Alaska, secretary.

Following is the report of the general agent to the Territorial board of education, together with the letter of the board transmitting the report, with recommendations, to the Commissioner of Education.

LETTER TRANSMITTING REPort of General Agent.

SITKA, ALASKA, November 17, 1887.

SIR: We have the honor to transmit to you the annual report of the educational agent for Alaska, with our approval, except the recommendation, on page 571, of a division of the field.

We consider a division of the district unnecessary-that it would only complicate and retard the educational interests of Alaska.

But we would recommend one superintendent or general agent for the whole district, at a salary of not less than $2,500 per annum, and that he be compelled to remain in the Territory and give his undivided personal attention to the Government schools. Action of the Territorial board of education in Alaska.

SHELDON JACKSON, Secretary.

To HON. N. H. R. DAWSON,

United States Commissioner of Education,

Washington, D. C.

'Page 111 of this Report.

REPORT OF THE GENERAL AGENT.

OFFICE OF THE GENERAL AGENT OF EDUCATION IN ALASKA,
Sitka, Alaska, June 30, 1887.

To the TERRITORIAL BOARD OF EDUCATION:

SIES: In accordance with the recent regulations received from the Hon. N. H. R. Dawson, United States Commissioner of Education, I have the honor to send you my second annual report as general agent of education in Alaska.

This report covers the period from July 1, 1886, to June 30, 1887.

But few of the friends of Alaskan education, outside of her borders, realize that this Territory is without roads, horses, stages, and railroads, and much the larger portion without steamers or other means of regular communication with the outside world.

A monthly line of mail steamers reaches Sitka and a few points in southeastern Alaska, and that is all; and when tourists make the grand excursion to Alaska, they only sail among the islands in one small corner of the country.

The great main-land of Alaska, with its smoking volcanoes, mammoth hot springs, highest mountains, largest glaciers, grandest rivers, wildest scenery, teeming animal life, and strangest natural phenomena, unvisited and unseen, stretches away two thousand miles beyond them.

And not only is Alaska largely cut off from the outside world, but in a certain senso it is cut off from itself; that is, there are no public means of intercommunication between its widely-separated sections. The private steamers of the Alaska Commercial Company, a few whaling vessels, an occasional trading schooner, and the Revenue Marine steamer, on their annual cruise to Behring Sea, are the only vessels seen in its waters, and they only for a few months in summer.

When, therefore, the United States Government was led to undertake the establishment of public schools in Alaska it was met at once with the difficulty of transportation. This proved so serious that the Government was compelled to be content the first year with taking charge of the schools in southeastern Alaska previously established by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions. The only exceptions were the schools at Unalashka and on the Kuskokwim River.

Very unexpectedly a teacher was able to reach the former on a steamer chartered for another purpose. To reach the latter the Moravian Church, which took the contract for conducting the school, chartered a schooner at San Francisco, which conveyed the teacher and his party 4,479 miles to the mouth of the river. The material for the houses, school supplies, and supplies for the household were then transferred to row-boats, which carried them to their destination, 150 miles up the river. The same vessel that conveyed the teacher carried the lumber and hardware for the necessary buildings, the family furni"ture, the school appliances, and provisions for twelve months. They left San Francisco on the 3d of May, 1885, and it was the middle of the following August before all the building material reached its destination, at Bethel. This was the Moravian party of Rev. and Mrs. William H. Weinland, Rev. and Mrs. John H. Killbuck, and Mr. Hans Torgersen.

When, therefore, in 1885 the responsibility of establishing schools in all sections of Alaska was placed upon the Hon. John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, he was greatly embarrassed by his inability to secure reliable and explicit information concerning the educational needs of the villages of civilized Creoles, Aleuts, and Eskimaux in southern and southwestern Alaska.

Application was made to and instructions received from the Honorable the Secretary of the Navy, directing the commanding officer of the United States ship Pinta to take the general agent on a trip of inspection along the coast.

A combination of circumstances prevented the ship from making the trip.

It was then decided that the only practical way of securing the information absolutely necessary for the intelligent action of the Government was to send a special vessel under the control of the general agent.

Nothing could be done, however, until the amount of the appropriation for 1886-87 should be known. The appropriation was not made until the 4th of August, 1886. Immediately upon the passage of the bill I was authorized to charter the schooner Leo, and by September 3 teachers had been summoned from Texas, California, and Washington Territory, the vessel loaded with lumber for school-houses, family furniture, and supplies, and we were on our way to sea. The authority to charter the vessel was given by Hon. John Eaton, by letter dated on the 4th day of August, 1886, as shown by a copy of his letter among the papers. The schooner was chartered from John G. Brady, of Sitka. The cost of the trip was $4,535, which was paid to Brady on the 1st of February, 1887, out of the appropriation, as per voucher on file.

The cruise proved a stormy one, consuming 104 days. Passing through the equinoctial storms, we encountered the early winter gales of that high northern latitude.

Laying our course for Atkha, one of the Aleutian group of islands, the storms finally lauded us, September 21, at Kadiak, 900 miles to the eastward of our destination. Ka

diak Island is the western limit of forests along the southern coast of Alaska. It is also near the eastern limit of the Innuit, or civilized Eskimau population.

The first European or Russian settlement on this island was made by Gregory Shelikoff in 1784; and soon after a school (the first in Alaska) was organized for the children of the Russians. Also the first church building in Alaska was erected on this island For a long time it was the Russian capital and the chief seat of their operations in Amer ica. A tombstone in the Russian cemetery bears the date of 1791.

The village has a pleasant look, and consists of 43 log-houses, 23 rough board houses, and 12 painted ones. It has a Russian Creole population of 303, of whom 143 are children. There are 20 white men in the settlement. The Russian school had been extinct for more than a quarter of a century, and for years the people had been looking for another. It was a great satisfaction to be permitted to give them a good school. Prof. W. E. Roscoe, an experienced teacher from California, with his wife and babe, was stationed at this place, and received from the people a very warm welcome. He had been landed but a few hours when a delegation of adults waited upon him and asked that a night school for instruction in English might be established for the married people.

Mr. Benjamin McIntyre, the efficient general agent of the Alaska Commercial Company, furnished a school-room free of rent and in many ways gave important help to the teacher. Valuable assistance was also received from Mr. Ivan Petroff, deputy collector of customs.

Opposite Kadiak is Wood Island, with 50 bright children. The patriarch of the village gathered them into a room and then made a touching appeal for a school. It was with a heavy heart that I said to them, as subsequently I was compelled to say to many others, "I would be glad to give you a school, but I can not." The meagre appropriation by Congress of $15,000 for the education of the ten or twelve thousand children of Alaska necessarily deprives the majority of them of any school.

To the north of Wood Island is Spruce Island, where a Russian monk, at his own expense, kept up a school for thirty consecutive years. He died and his school was discontinued. To their entreaties for a school we had to turn a deaf ear. They are a wellto-do people, with humble but pleasant homes. They have a number of cows, make butter and cheese, and raise potatoes. The men are mostly hunters of the sea-otter.

Still farther north is Afognak Island, with 146 school children. A school was established among them, with Prof. James A. Wirth in charge. While superintending the unloading of the school supplies through the breakers we were invited by one of the villagers to a lunch of rice, fried chicken, potatoes, eggs, bread, and sweet fresh butter, cake, home-made preserves, and Russian tea served in glass tumblers.

From Afognak we visited Karluk, with its 118 children; Akhiok, 48; Ayakhatalik, 72; and Kaguiak, 45. All of these groups of bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, and healthy children had to be refused schools for want of funds. At some of these villages the ladies of our party were the first white women ever seen.

From the Kadiak group of islands, nine days' battling with the waves brought us to Unalashka, in Behring Sea. This is the commercial port of western Alaska and contains a population of 340, 132 of whom are minors under twenty-one years of age.

Mr. S. Mack, agent of the Alaska Commercial Company; Dr. Call, the company physician; Collecter Barry, and Commissioner Johnston did all in their power to make our visit pleasant. At this village a school of 24 pupils was in operation under the control of the Russo-Greek Church. The teacher, Tsikoores, was born in Greece and partly educated in San Francisco.

The boys attend school in the forenoon and the girls in the afternoon. The instruction is mainly in the Russian language.

The public school maintained in 1885-86 had been discontinued.

The appropriation of Congress was made so late in the summer that there was no opportunity of communicating with the teacher.

He hearing nothing from the Bureau with reference to continuing another year took passage upon the revenue steamer, at the close of her summer cruise, and left the country. The desks and school supplies were removed to Unga.

The Greek Church has 16 general holidays and 200 minor ones during the year, which are celebrated more or less by the Alaskan churches. These numerous holidays prove a serious hinderance in securing regular attendance at school.

American citizens that have never heard a prayer for the President of the United States, or of the Fourth of July, or the name of the capital of the nation, are taught to pray for the Emperor of Russia, celebrate his birthday, and commemorate the victories of ancient Greece. Upon one occasion, trying to inform them that we had come from the seat of government at Washington to open the way for the establishment of schools, we found that the only American city they had ever heard of was San Francisco. After laboring with them, one man was found who had somehow heard of Chicago. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington were unknown regions.

In the mountains back of Unalashka a volcano was in active eruption.

Passing out of the beautiful harbor of Unalashka four days brought us by the magnifi

cent smoking volcanoes of Shishaldin and Pavoloff to Belkofsky, the centre of the seaotter fur trade.

This place, with its white houses crowning a high bluff, presents a very pleasant appearance from the sea. It has a population of 203 Aleuts and Creoles, of whom 91 are ander 21 years of age. The Greek Church keeps a small school with an attendance of 16 at the time of our visit. The teaching is in Russian, with the exception of two afternoons in the week, when a Creole teaches in broken English. We were importuned to establish a good Government school, but the appropriation was too small.

From thence we sailed to Unga, the centre of the cod fisheries of the North Pacific. Unga has the largest American population of any village in Western Alaska, and a greater appreciation of the value of a good school. It has 74 children under 21 years of age. At this point I left Mr. and Mrs. John H. Carr to establish a school. On this trip a complete census was taken of the population from Kadiak westward to Attoo, and in a total population of 3,840 I enumerated 1,649 children. These are children of a civilized people who, by the terms of Article III of the treaty of 1867 between Russia and the United States, are declared to be citizens, and are guaranteed all the "rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States," and yet after nineteen years of total neglect the United States Government only gives them three teachers, and the American churches but one missionary.

At every station visited the agents and employés of the Alaska Commercial Company, without an exception, gave us their hearty co-operation and all the assistance in their power towards the establishment of their schools. At two of the stations they supplied the buildings necessary for the schools free of rent, and at all of them furnished the teachers with their household supplies on the same terms given their own agents. Without these facilities it would have been almost impossible to have established the schools in that section.

From Unga eight days' driving before the storm brought us to Klawak, one of the principal settlements on Prince of Wales Island. It was my purpose to establish a new school at this point, but finding that the salmon cannery and saw-mill had closed for the season and the larger number of the people left for their winter village, Tuxikan, with the full consent of the teacher, Prof. L.W. Currie, I took him and his family to Tuxikan and temporarily established the school at that point. In the spring, when the people returned to Klawak for work, the school was removed to that point, where it now is. Bidding them God speed, four days bring us to Sitka, the capital of the Territory, with its two good day schools and flourishing industrial training school.

At Sitka, taking on board the Governor and his interpreter, we sailed to Killisnoo, where was landed lumber and materials for a new school building.

Calls were made and schools inspected at Hoonah, Juneau, Wrangell, and Tongass. Mr. and Mrs. S. A. Saxman, with their furniture and school supplies, were removed from Loring to Tongass, and finally we dropped anchor at Seattle, Puget Sound, on the 15th of December, and the memorable voyage of the first load of school teachers for Alaska was at an end.

All the objects of the trip were secured.

CONDITION OF THE SCHOOLS.

St. Michael.-In pursuance of the plan of the United States Commissioner of Education to establish schools in at least a few of the leading centres of the Territory (as the amount appropriated was not sufficient to do more), correspondence was had with the Mission Board of the Protestant Episcopal Church with reference to the establishment of a public school in the valley of the Yukon River.

Owing to the impossibility of getting the necessary supplies into that region the first season, it was finally arranged that the school might temporarily be located at St. Michael, on the coast, Consequently on the 1st day of July, 1886, a contract for the establishment of such a school was entered into between the Hon. John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education, and Dr. William S. Langford, Secretary of the Protestant Episcopal Mission Board.

Rev. Octavius Parker, of Oregon, was appointed teacher. From a correspondence between Dr. Langford and the Alaska Commercial Company, the former was led to believe that although houses were very scarce at St. Michael, yet they would be able to provide for the teacher.

Upon Mr. Parker's arrival at his destination he found, to his great disappointment, that although the agent of the company did everything in his power for him, even to sharing his own residence, yet the quarters were so contracted that it was with great discomfort that his own family could get along, and that there was no possible place for holding a school.

To add to his difficulties the priest of the Russo-Greek Church, who had previously been living in the Yukon Valley, removed to St. Michael and opened a school, teaching the natives in the Russian language. This church school, while doing next to nothing