Circular of Information of the Bureau of Education, for (Volume 10, (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE COMMON SCHOOL SYSTEM OP INDIANA. I.?THE OLD CONSTITUTION AND THE COMMON SCHOOLS. "They are the most ignorant people in the world. There is not a fiftieth man that can either read or write." These words were, spoken of the inhabitants of the Wabash Valley and the adjacent country by Governor St. Clair in 1790. What hath a century wrought! Then there lived here a people isolated from civilization, almost untouched by the influences of refinement and culture. They were living in a wilderness among savage beasts and savage men. The English-speaking population, outside of the military posts, consisted almost entirely of refugee adventurers who had come across the mountains, or followed the river courses, to reach the neighborhood of the old French settlements, or for the purpose of forming new settlements of their own. Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Americans, as Governor St. Clair himself records, had all given to Clark's late Indian expedition of 178G all that they could spare, and " often much more than they could spare with any convenience to themselves." Most of these people had always been ignorant; the Indian wars had left all of them poor. P. Gibault, priest, and eighty-seven others are our witnesses to the " statement that the settlers comprised a few unhappy beings who are scarcely able to support their pitiful existence, not knowing where to find a morsel of bread to nourish their families."1 At the time of which St. Clair and Gibault spoke, the French settler and his mode of life had not yet given place entirely to the institutions and spirit of English civilization. Within less than two decades thereafter the Frenchman had disappeared as an element of influence in the institutional life of Indiana Territory, and the fact that his civilization and ...