People's Pilot, Volume 6, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 April 1897 — SCHOOLS IN LOG HUTS. [ARTICLE]

SCHOOLS IN LOG HUTS.

With Stockade* Built to Wife War on the Indian*. Colorado enjoys the proud distinction of having enrolled In her schools 94,686 pupils; at least those are the figures given in the biennial report Issued by Mrs. A. J. Peavey, the superintendent of public instruction of that commonwealth, says the St. Louis Republic. Thirty odd thousand of these pupils do not regularly attend school, and there may possibly be a reason for that, inasmuch as in the same report Mrs. Peavey presents some excellent pictures of most of the public schools of the state. In Colorado probably as much as in any of the western states it is not always handy for young people to go a great distance to attend to their intellectual training, and, owing to certain financial conditions, the schools cannot be maintained where there are only a few taxpayers scattered over a considerable area. It must not be understood that Colorado children have to secure their learning in the open air and under the blue skies of heaven, for in every county of the state there is at least one public schoolhouse, but such buildings as they are might frighten the wits out of the ordinary schoolmarm of the more thickly populated east. In many portions of the state money has been lavishly expended for modern school buildings, but in some of the outlying districts the schools in which the pioneers had their children taught to read and write still hold tho fort. It is expected that in a few years all this will have been changed and that the peculiar dugouts and stockade buildings wil] have been superseded by school buildings with every modern convenience. A few years ago,with the exception of the large cities or towns, where people were more heavily taxed, the school buildings consisted mostly of either dugouts or log huts. Many of the log houses are still scattered ov-

er the state, and there is still standing the first one erected within the borders of what it now the state. This one is in Montezuma county, and in the light of modern arrangements is looked upon as a veritable relic. It consists of a log house with four windows and one door, the window now having panes of glass, something that they did not possess when the house was first erected. But the most curious feature of this old-timer is the stockade which runs entirely around the building. It is made of logs with their ends stuck in the ground, and here and there holes have been cut through the solid logs, leaving a place where the school teacher and pupils could poke the muzzles of their guns and shoot down the Indians, who were then practically in possession of the territory. The stockade served long and well as a protection against the savages.