The Sixth Annual Conference, which closed September 28th, sustained the interest of past years in the importance of the topics discussed, in the divergency of opinion at first, and in the complete harmony at the end.  The points agreed upon in the platform were arranged under five heads.  The first relates to the establishment of Courts of Justice in the Reservations and accessible to the Indians; the second to the important need of education, demanding that the Government shall undertake at once the entire task of providing primary and secular education for all Indian children; the third urges that this education shall be compulsory, under proper limitations; the fourth emphasizes the duty of the churches to furnish religious instruction to the Indians, and the immunity of their work from all governmental interference where sustained wholly by missionary funds; the fifth approves of the co-operation of the Government with the missionary societies in contract schools during the present transitional condition of the Indians.  We append the last two items of the report.

  4.  In view of the great work which the Christian Churches have
     done in the past in inaugurating and maintaining schools
     among the Indians, and of the essential importance of
     religious as distinguished from secular education, for
     their civil, political and moral well-being, an element
     of education which, in the nature of the case, the
     National Government cannot afford, the churches should be
     allowed the largest liberty, not, indeed, to take away
     the responsibility from the Government in its legitimate
     sphere of educational work, but to supplement it to the
     fullest extent in their power, by such schools, whether
     primary, normal or theological, as are at the sole cost
     of the benevolent or missionary societies.  And it is the
     deliberate judgment of this Conference that in the crisis
     of the Indian transitional movement the churches should
     arouse themselves to the magnitude and emergency of the
     duty thus laid upon them in the providence of God.

  5.  Nothing should be done to impair or weaken the agencies
     at present engaged in the work of Indian education.  Every
     such agency should be encouraged and promoted, except as
     other and better agencies are provided for the work.  In
     particular, owing to the anomalous condition of the
     Indians and the fact that the Government is administering
     trust funds that belong to them, what is known as the
     “contract system”—­by which the nation aids by
     appropriations private and missionary societies in the
     work of Indian education—­ought to be maintained by a
     continuance of such aid, until the Government is
     prepared, with adequate buildings and competent
     teachers, to assume the entire work of secular