About this time the experiment was being tried for the first time,
by General Armstrong, of education Indians at Hampton. Few people
then had any confidence in the ability of the Indians to receive
education and to profit by it. General Armstrong was anxious to try
the experiment systematically on a large scale. He secured from the
reservations in the Western states over one hundred wild and for the
most part perfectly ignorant Indians, the greater proportion of whom
were young men. The special work which the General desired me to do
was be a sort of "house father" to the Indian young men -- that is, I
was to live in the building with them and have the charge of their
discipline, clothing, rooms, and so on. This was a very tempting
offer, but I had become so much absorbed in my work in West Virginia
that I dreaded to give it up. However, I tore myself away from it. I
did not know how to refuse to perform any service that General
Armstrong desired of me.
On going to Hampton, I took up my residence in a building with
about seventy-five Indian youths. I was the only person in the
building who was not a member of their race. At first I had a good
deal of doubt about my ability to succeed. I knew that the average
Indian felt himself above the white man, and, of course, he felt
himself far above the Negro, largely on account of the fact of the
Negro having submitted to slavery -- a thing which the Indian would
never do.
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