Far West

Last week the University of Oregon (Eugene, Ore.) celebrated its semicentennial. There were the usual speeches and felicitations, all very pleasant; but, far more interesting was an interview some newsgatherer obtained with one William Scott, aged 70, a housepainter, of Creswell, Ore. It had been Mr. Scott who, when the University's registration book was first opened in 1876, had had his name written on the topmost line. The second and third students to register were his sister Mathilda, his brother "Ron." His grandfather, Capt. Levi Scott was the university's first janitor. His father, William J. J. Scott, it was who loaned $2,000 to keep the sheriff from foreclosing a contractor's lien on the institution's one and only building, Deady Hall.

Painter Scott told stories about the institution's first "undergraduate body" of 40 students; how there was no room for them at the college to study, but only to recite; how they went to their classrooms, which were lit by tallow dips, bearing pieces of wood picked up on the way to put in the stoves; how they went "downtown" to beer parlors of an evening, until the University president (of a staff of three), John W. Johnson,* caught them and made a "fine talk" in class.

Indians

"You come long way. I come long way. We come long way. Each to meet and shake hands. We got brains. We want to use urn. Fine school. How?"

It was the gentleman whose face adorns the U. S. Buffalo nickel giving vent to a sudden mood of loquacity which had come over him at the sight of Secretary of the Interior Hubert S. Work. They were met in Lawrence, Kan., last week, where the loquacious Chief Two Guns White Calf had led 26 of his Blackfeet tribesmen from Montana for a polytribal "powwow" at famed Haskell Institute, which had a new football stadium to dedicate./- Secretary Work conversed briefly with Mr. White Calf, then went along to lecture to the students of the University of Kansas, on Mount Oread, overlooking the town.

Squatted in teepees, wagons, automobiles, or lounging through the streets of Lawrence, were many famed chiefs and their followers-- Chief Bacon Rind and his Osages, John Quapaw, and his Quapaws, White Buffalo (with pink ribbons in his albino locks) and his Cheyennes; many a Comanche, Arapahoe, Creek, Sioux, Winnebago, Ute, Pueblo, Navajo--all to the number of 1,500. Despite the intellectual salutation of Mr. White Calf, the assemblage did not have the air of a racial group gathered around their school as around a centre of sweetness and light. Prime upon the program were a buffalo barbecue and dancing in the new stadium (which cost $250,000 and was given entirely by Indians) -- dancing of a nature which moved local ministers to protest that it "tended to cultivate the baser instincts of the Indian."

Haskell Institute is one of many Federal schools maintained to elevate the aborigines. Founded 1884, it now gives academic courses and also business, domestic science, farming, dairying, gardening, masonry, carpentry, painting, blacksmithing, wagon-making, shoemaking, steam-fitting, printing, electricity and many more useful occupations. There are other Federal schools for Indians at Flandreau, S. Dak.; Pipestone, Minn.; Mt. Pleasant, Mich.; Fort Mojave, Ariz.; Carson, Nev.; Tomah, Wis.; Pierre, S. Dak.; and 210 others, including 77 boarding-schools.

*The present president recently elected, is Dr. James W. Hamilton; there are some 3500 students now enrolled.

/-The Haskell football team did its part by smashing a team from Bucknell University, 36-0.