The Journal of Race Development
October 1912
Vol. 3, No. 2. pp. 135-155.
Accessed via JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/29737949

The American Indian of Today and Tomorrow

Fayette Avery McKenzie

There are at least three fairly distinct views held in this country of the native race. Perhaps for want of better names thay may be called the views of the conqueror, the historian, and the statesman; or those of the biologist, the ethnologist and the sociologist. None of these terms is accurate, but they will serve to start us on our way.

The conqueror is an old-school Darwinian who believes that this world belongs to the strong and that the melting of the primitive races before the arms and business spirit of the "civilized" peoples is a heaven-decreed justification of the whole process of spoliation, exploitation and conquest. Even a friend of the Indian at the Mohonk Conference in 1909, said:

The old problem of a century or three-fourths of a century ago was how to persuade the Indian to step aside for the onward march of civilization; and the savage must always step aside for the onward march of civilization, because it is not only human law but it is God's law that progress, civilization and Christianity shall march on. The United States government has always attempted to guard the interests of the Indians and treat the Indians fairly and honestly and to take their property only after giving full compensation therefor.

Such philosophy as this is the conscious or unconscious comfort of a nation which dispossesses an ancient people and enters into the inheritance of continental wealth. It is the justification felt by a nation which would arbitrarily move a group of natives, now started upon the upward path, in order to make room for an army post. It is the excuse of the white man who would take the Indian's water in Arizona, his lumber in Minnesota and his land in Oklahoma. What the white man wants the Indian should abandon. The rules of civilized war do not hold in contests with primitive peoples. Deception and robbery, some would imply, may be even the chosen instruments of Providence to place the wealth of the world in the hands of the efficient agents of civilization. The fate of the dispossessed is pathetic but inevitable and necessary, if not directly deserved.

And it must be recognized that there are many signs adduced to show that the native is inferior and doomed. Judging the race by its independent achievements, particularly by its commonly reported achievements, and without taking into consideration its special handicaps of circumstance, it is easy to say that the accusation of inferiority is clearly sustained. And his history and fate since the coming of Columbus point in the same direction. For it must also be recognized that many well-intentioned efforts have been made to build out of the Indian race a higher order.

Henry Clay in his memorial to Congress to aid the Cherokee to migrate to Indian Territory, nobly voiced the best sentiment of the nation when he said:

Let us treat with the utmost kindness and the most perfect justice the aborigines whom Providence has committed to our guardianship. Let us confer upon them if we can, the inestimable blessings of Christianity and civilization; and then, if they must sink beneath the progressive wave, we are free from all reproach, and stand acquitted in the sight of God and man.

Whether we have or have not lived up to this program, it is not essential here to decide. Suffice it to say that the Indian step by step has retreated to the wilderness and to the confinement of the government reservation where he has all too frequently degenerated. The necessities of war and the intentions of kindness have combined in the reservation and the reservation system almost to compel degeneracy, and so to give a seeming justification for the character we had already put upon him. Ignorance, laziness, improvidence and vice were added to savagery as the qualities which gave us the proverb, "no good Indian but a dead one."

Even missionary zeal seems to have established no permanent, independent Indian communities. Massachusetts Colony might on its seal represent an Indian uttering the Macedonian call "come over and help us." Eliot might issue his tracts entitled "The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel" and "The Glorious Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians," but who now can point to the communities established in Massachusetts by him? It is not possible here to call attention to the melting away of the mission Indians in New England and the Middle States. The disappointing results are suggested for all in Bliss' comment on Zeisberger (See Diary of David Zeisberger for sixty years a missionary among the Indians, page xxii):

His life is a sad one. It was his fate to labor among a hopeless race. In his last years he could see no lasting monument of his long labor. Even the Indian converts immediately about him were a cause of sorrow to him.

The Indian towns he founded a little over one hundred years ago in Ohio have long since been forgotten.

That these facts may not prove the incapacity of the Indian race or the inefficacy of the Christian religion does not concern us here. They are but isolated illustrations of a multitude of facts which have produced a wide popular belief in the inferiority of the native race. This belief has not, however, stood entirely in the way of Christian missions nor of educational efforts. As a nation we are far from being logical or consistent in our thinking or our policies. This popular estimate of the Indian, nevertheless, has not failed to prevent many forms of effort and, even worse, has not failed to rob many nobly intentioned efforts of their vitality and power.

But the responsibility of this philosophy of pessimism does not end even here. It works to rob the Indian of ambition; there is no salvation for a beaten people. It works to prevent any effective forward policy on the part of even the kindly-intentioned among the white race; it is folly to waste our energies upon a vain idea. Recently an official of high position in one of our western states explained his refusal to help a movement for self-help on the part of the progressive Indians of the country by saying, "I sometimes think they (the Indians) were sent only as a preliminary race on the continent. They have worked out their destiny and soon will become an extinct people."

The government appropriates about $14,000,000 annually for Indian affairs. Is this money squandered merely to salve the conscience of a humane nation? Or is it spent with the hope and expectation of demonstrating the capacity of the native race to share in a real and substantial way in our civilization? Ought we not to accept one philosophy or the other, cut down upon our vain expenditures, or redouble our efforts to give our red brethren an equal share in our common heritage?

The second philosophy which we have suggested is more humane in its tone. It would partially waive the question of superiority and inferiority and would merely say that the Indian is different. Civilizations are natural products and are of slow development. They are the outcome of internal forces and can not be transferred by external means, no matter how benevolent. To the students of history and of ethnology who accept this theory in its entirety, it seems imperative that we should keep our hands off the natural races for two reasons. In the first place, they constitute a museum of great interest and of very great scientific value. Nearer the beginning of the process of social evolution their habits and customs, their traditions and philosophy, their morals and religion have a significance which no student of human progress can afford to overlook, can afford to have annihilated. If we are to hope to gain the keys to the secrets of social forces and social development we must conserve every bit of human data which we can save even momentarily from the overflowing rush of our own civilization. Why then should we suffer any agencies, whether governmental or religious, to uproot the natural institutions of these primitive people and attempt to substitute even the best of artificial culture for them? We lose a world of truth and gain merely the semblance of civilization. In the second place, as has been already intimated, if our belated brethren are to be natural and are to make any genuine progress they must grow from internal forces, and not merely be clothed upon by a costume which, however valuable and handsome in itself, can not be retained because it is not the right shape and size.

Sad to say both the pessimistic biological, and the laissez-faire ethnological theories are not rarely echoed by the Indians. The better educated Indian will attempt to excuse the backwardness of his people by calling attention to the centuries of development which lie between them and the Caucasians. The uneducated Indian pleads to be let alone. Both positions tend to make rapid progress improbable or impossible. So long, however, as we have genuine believers in this philosophy, we shall expect them in all consistency to seek the complete isolation of the race.

The chief objection to any attempt to preserve this particular race free from all outside influence is found in the impossibility of the scheme. The white man would not stay out and the Indian would not stay in the region assigned him. Moreover if the white man's traditions and customs were completely unknown to the body of Indians when isolated, those traditions and customs would penetrate and permeate the group with strange pertinacity and success. The environment of the old Indian ideas has been changed and the Indian customs and traditions therefore no longer have their original vitality. These are the reasons why the let-alone policy generally would fail. Ours is a progressive world. The group that would live must adapt itself to the larger culture that surrounds it. The longer the attempt is postponed the wider the gap that must be bridged.

Without, however, attempting to argue further let us pass on to the third point of view or theory.

Certain anthropologists and sociologists provide the ground upon which an optimistic statesmanship can build a positive and progressive program. We may recognize lack of achievement in the Indian, we may even recognize the natural development of individuals and groups through internal forces, and yet see how progress may be accelerated through outside influences.

The problem leads to the question: Is culture a product of biology and blood, or one of psychology and tradition? The pessimist and the indifferentist work from the former premise, the optimist from the latter. If the mind, individual or social, is built up out of the environment and experience, we have great possibilities of racial mutation. We have only to effect a considerable change in circumstances (material and psychic) to bring about a corresponding change in ideas and culture. This is, of course, a considerable task and if to bring predetermined results must be done with the greatest of thoroughness and precision.

As a nation our policy toward the Indian has been confused. Pessimism, laissez-faire, and optimism have all had their time and place, holding us back and driving us forward as the case might be. But on the whole, optimism has prevailed in state and church. Hope has sprung eternal in the breast of the nation and out of the ashes of apparent failure each new period has found a voice proclaiming a policy which would avoid the mistakes of the past and assure success in the near future. In the long run the optimist has had his way. True he has generally had to wait a decade or two and has been hampered by opposing conditions and doubting administrators. Nevertheless today the United States stands at the close of the first stage of a great sociological endeavor. Perhaps no other nation in the world has ever undertaken so thorough a plan for the salvation of a race through the transfer of culture. No greater glory could come to a nation than to succeed in bringing a primitive people into full participation in the best of its own civilization. It is proverbial that a primitive race always dies in the presence of a higher culture. It is certain that the Indian can not survive except he come completely into the life of the nation.

It is the object of this paper to suggest what has been accomplished, what the present situation is, and to inquire whether as a nation, we will take the sufficient and necessary steps to realize upon the possibilities now so evidently within reach. For it should be borne in mind that the task is so great and yet so delicate that a slight oversight of some one of the factors entering into the problem may render futile an otherwise splendid policy. We are engaged in a contest wherein the verdict must be either success or failure. It is a life and death struggle. It is the story of the swimmer rescuing a comrade from the waves. He may swim a mile and yet lose a precious life unless he actually reaches the land before his strength gives out. Land is in sight. Shall we keep on?

Let us measure the distance.

Common opinion regards the Indian as a vanishing race. The fear of extinction becomes a dream of terror to some of the Indians themselves. "We die! We die!" the cry of an Indian of the southwest, is made the central note of a popular magazine article. But statistics do not seem to justify the belief in any absolute sense. The last three census enumerations have reported 248,253, 257,196 and 265,683 Indians. Disregarding the apparent inaccuracy in 1900, there has been an increase of 17,430 in twenty years, or 7 per cent. This increase is, of course, very slight. By comparison with the native white increase of 15 per cent for ten years and the negro increase of 11.3 per cent it becomes clear that the Indian is relatively falling far behind. In 1890 the Indians formed 39/100 of 1 per cent of the whole population of the country. In 1910 that proportion had fallen to 29/100 of 1 per cent.

Disease is making a desperate attack on the race as it attempts to live under new conditions set for it by the nation, but the government is not indifferent to the situation. The present commissioner of Indian Affairs puts health as one of the three main objects of his administration. His last report tells of the organization and efforts of the Bureau to conserve and improve Indian health. The organization includes a chief medical inspector, 100 regular and 60 contract physicians, 54 nurses and 88 field matrons. Special campaigns are waging against tuberculosis and trachoma. The government maintains four sanatariums for Indian consumptives as well as a trachoma hospital in charge of two experts in diseases of the eye. The volume of effort, inadequate as it is, is suggestive of the magnitude of the health problem facing the Indian administration.

And yet with all the discouraging facts of birth, death and disease rates we must not forget that the army company which ranked highest among all those examined during the Civil War was one made up of Seneca Indians. And recent history has not failed to record an Indian as the world's best all-round athlete. James Thorpe is only one individual but his achievement will stir the ambition of his race. Physically there is no reason why the Indian should not live and compete so long as his blood is distinguishable from the composite race of America. The problem of disease, of course, is a critically serious one and demands much greater attention than it is now receiving. Better conditions and more complete medical attention must be matched by a wider knowledge and greater effort on the part of the Indians themselves. Fundamentally it is an educational problem. Knowledge and courage are the solutions. If it requires $500,000 or $1,000,000 at once to grapple with the situation, it will be the greatest of economies to spend that amount. It will save larger expenditures in the future. Health is cheaper than disease.

A matter of more general, popular interest is that of the legal and political status of the Indian. What are his chances to share in the life of his time? This is a question of increasing significance, for until recent decades it was generally true that an Indian was not a citizen and could not become a citizen. From the beginning the Indian has been "a perpetual inhabitant with diminutive rights." Not until 1870 was it certain that he was even a "person" in the light of the law and so theoretically entitled to the benefit of habeas corpus. The constitutional provision excluding "Indians not taxed" from the enumeration determining Congressional representation, practically excluded all Indians from even the possibility of both taxation and citizenship. Nevertheless custom gradually counted certain Indians among the taxed, especially in the east where they were relatively few in number. How many these were no one can say. Not until 1890 was there any census report of Indians taxed. If we assume the term "civilized Indians" used in the census of 1880 as the substantial equivalent of "Indians taxed" we have a starting point from which to measure the progress of the last thirty years. If we draw a line from Missouri to New Jersey, we shall find that all the states crossed by that line and all the states to the south as well as all the New England States and Texas, twenty-seven altogether, at that time counted their Indians as "civilized" or as we would say, "taxed." Every state in the Union except Oklahoma had at least a few civilized Indians. Altogether there were 66,407 such Indians or 21.7 per cent besides the enumerated and estimated 240,136 Indians not civilized.

Large changes have come since 1880. By the Dawes act of 1887 there were created for the first time two general classes of potential Indian citizens. In the first place, every Indian who should take up his residence separate and apart from any tribe and should adopt the habits of civilized life, became a citizen. The second class was of more importance for it included every Indian receiving an allotment of land in severalty. By subsequent legislation every Indian in the present state of Oklahoma became a citizen.

As a result of this legislation the number of taxed Indians has in the last thirty years largely increased. Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Michigan have been added to the states where all the Indians are taxed. The taxed Indians now total 193,825, or 73 per cent, leaving only 71,872 Indians not taxed. In 1880 there were eleven states where less than 25 per cent were taxed. In 1910 there were only four—Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, and New York. The anomalous backwardness of New York is due to the disputed Ogden claim. The government would have done well long years ago to pay the claim, if it could not have been settled in any other way. It is incredible that an intelligent people should much longer allow $200,000 to bar the path of progress for thousands of Indians.

Although the Burke act of 1906 postponed citizenship for twenty-five years for the grantees of allotments made after that date, except in individual cases, the writer believes other forces at work will bring the very large majority of the Indians outside of the possible states of Arizona and Montana into the class of the taxed by 1920. This situation marks a great change but at the same time it emphasizes the necessity of a greater and more significant change.

It is vitally important that the Indian's status shall be exactly defined and that every one shall know what his privileges and what his duties are.

This leads us to the unfortunate fact that there is no necessary connection between taxation and citizenship. The Indian may swell the population for the Congressional district, he may be counted a taxable, and yet be substantially and apparently legally, debarred from citizenship. No one knows today what the status of the Indian is. Even such facts as we do know present such a diversity of situation in the different states that no general statement can be made for like classes in different parts of the country. But this might be condoned if the status of the Indian in each state was understood either by him or by the general public. Doubtless even Congressional enumeration as "taxed" carries an Indian (if only he knows he is one of the number so classed) far along the road to citizenship; he becomes relatively at least a "potential citizen." As the writer has elsewhere said:

So long, however, as we have taxed Indians and non-taxed Indians, citizen Indians and non-citizen Indians, independent Indians and Indian wards, and so long as we have every sort of combination of these classes, and further, so long as we have neither certainty as to classification nor definiteness as to the status when named, just so long we shall continue to have a condition of confusion in Indian affairs intolerable alike to government and Indian. Indians of like capability and situation are citizens in Oklahoma and non-citizens in New York. Allottees are citizens in Nebraska and non-citizens in Wyoming. In many cases in the same state some of the allottees are citizens while others are not.

All this merely illustrates how the form of privilege may not carry with it the substance. Fortunately, however, the situation is one of such unstable equilibrium and the balance is so surely tending in one direction that we can safely rely upon a considerable forward step in the immediate future. Definition of status and uniformity of rule for the several classes of Indians throughout the country, together with simple and feasible methods for the early admission of individuals and groups of Indians into the full privileges of citizenship, seem to be the most important considerations at the present time. The Carter code bill, now pending in Congress provides for an expert commission to work out the plan.

The indefiniteness of the Indian's position has its good features as well as its bad. As a ward he remains under the protection of the government and can be protected from his own improvidence. Those who oppose citizenship do it upon the basis that the freed Indian will immediately sell his land and squander his money. We should then have an army of paupers upon our hands. Another objection raised to uniformity of rules is that the conditions and stages of development vary so from state to state that injustice would result from like treatment. To the writer it would appear that both of these objections can be met by some plan which is merely hinted at in a suggestion he wishes to make. He called attention some years ago to the fact that protection and privilege may sometimes go hand in hand.

That the granting of citizenship does not operate to prevent the government from reviewing the contracts of Indians is clearly shown by the decision of the Circuit Court, western district of North Carolina, against D. T. Boyd and others, which stated through Judge Simonton that though the eastern Cherokee Indians are citizens of North Carolina, vote and pay taxes, yet the national government has not ceased its guardian care over them, nor released them from cupilage. The federal courts can still, in the name of the United States, adjudicate their rights. Nor is this without precedent. The American seaman, born a citizen of the United States or naturalized as such, has extended over him the guardian care of the government and is a ward of the nation. The statute books abound with acts requiring his contracts to be looked into by officers appointed for that purpose and every precaution is taken to guard him against fraud, oppression and wrong.

A careful examination of the law and the circumstances of the several groups of Indians in the United States, as provided for in the Carter code bill, would enable a commission of competent men to define (1) the status of the Native, and (2) the status of the Indian citizen. Parallel with these grades there might be established varying degrees of wardship; perhaps the advance toward unlimited citizenship might be accompanied by a decreasing paternal control by the government. The commission, after investigation, would know whether and how to make a large series of ranks, or possibly to recommend citizenship for all Indians. The relation of guardianship protection to administrative control will need careful definition. Without thinking that the scheme given below is in itself feasible, it is submitted here with a view to suggesting how some progressive scheme might meet the needs of the situation and at the same time stimulate the Indians to advance from grade to grade:

Since definition of his status is also going to mean increase of assured privileges, the Indian is henceforth to have a spur where he has had a check-rein. Ambition will supplant melancholy and hopelessness. If the Indian is to live it must be through that cordial appreciation and recognition of his genuine qualities which is involved in a defined status and general citizenship. The government will likewise profit immediately through lessened costs of litigation and administration, and ultimately and largely through the rapid elimination of the Indian problem.

Critically important as citizenship is, it is merely a circumstance, merely the open door, which makes possible or effective the working of more fundamental forces. The race itself must respond to the opportunity. It must develop into harmony with the new order. Character, attainment, achievement are the final tests of a race. That the Indian race is responding to larger opportunities for personal development even under existing conditions is most encouraging. The fundamental problem for the race to solve subdivides into the four problems of language, literacy, industry and religion.

Bitter as the truth may seem or sad, the fact remains that in all these matters the Indian must accept the forms set by the Caucasian, just as all the immigrant races coming to this country in the long run accept the prevailing English language. It is merely an expression of the economy of majority rule.

For this reason the school is the fundamental institution in the solution of all these problems, for it provides the common medium of communication and brings with it the atmosphere in which the Indian breathes health industrial, cultural, and spiritual. Because the Indian, like the rest of us, is in large degree the direct product of his intellectual environment, when he is given the same language and the same body of thought he will find adjustment to the new order automatic and easy.

The Indian schools have been a late and relatively slow development. Today, however, speaking extensively, the problem of schools and school attendance is practically solved. The annual appropriation has grown from $20,000 in 1877 to $3,757,909 in 1910. The proportion of expenditures for Indian schools as compared with the general Indian budget has increased from one-half of one per cent to 26.9 per cent. This proportion should continue to increase. Today 50,073, or 56.3 per cent of the 88,794 Indian youth between the ages of six and nineteen years are found in some school. Between the ages of ten and fourteen years the percentage rises to 71.4. The general average is brought down by six of the Rocky Mountain states, especially by

Arizona with only one-third attending school, New Mexico with only one-fourth and Utah with only one-ninth. On the other hand three-fourths of the children in Minnesota, Oregon and Kansas attend school.

It is easily seen that the great majority of Indians are now for the first time receiving some schooling. We may therefore inquire what results have accrued up to the present time. The ability to speak English and the ability to read and write are the first two tests which we must apply, not only because they are the two chief objects sought in the schools, but because they are the fundamental tools of our system of thought and culture. Unfortunately they have been too nearly the sole objects of the "literary" part of Indian education. Not infrequently twelve years have been spent with almost no other result than a formal knowledge of the art of reading and writing in English. Nevertheless even that result once universally achieved puts the next generation in a position for an immeasurable forward stride.

The following table will show the gross figures for the country as a whole. Not quite half of the Indians are illiterate, and only slightly over one-fourth can not speak English to some extent.

These figures may be astonishingly good in the eyes of the average reader but the real encouragement does not appear until we divide the Indians into age groups. Adult illiteracy is 56.1 per cent while the illiteracy of youth is only 22.4 per cent and even that is largely concentrated in four states. Inability to speak English averages 37.8 per cent for adults and 15.8 per cent for youth. Two-thirds of the youthful inability to speak English is found in the three states of New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma.

For the country as a whole it is evident that the backbone of the problem is broken. As the old are replaced by the young, ability to read and write English will become almost the universal rule.

As has already been intimated, these statistics represent formal rather than substantial education. They are vastly important but chiefly because they open the door for a real forward movement. It is evident that three demands press upon the country. In the first place the government should insist upon and secure highly trained teachers. Their task is not less but greater than is laid upon the high school teachers of the country. Standards of employment should be not less rigid. University education, even with special training in race psychology and Indian history and problems, would not be wasted upon the teaching service. Why should we not in our relatively small problem set as high standards as England does for her Indian Civil Service? It is evident that we can not raise our standards, however, unless we first raise our present disgracefully small salaries. The country should support the Indian Office in any efforts to multiply results and to cut down ultimate costs by efficiency secured through adequately paid, highly trained service.

In the second place the schools should be standardized so that as early as possible Indian youth could step into white schools without loss of grade or time. This will involve not only expert teachers but a sufficient number of teachers to give the personal attention which children handicapped by a strange language require. It is a great injustice to throw away one, two or three years of one child's time not to mention doing so for thousands of children. To insure the results here advocated will involve, moreover, adequate systems of records and inspection.

In the third place the scheme of education must involve higher education. Few Indian children get a grammar school education in the government schools; none get a complete high school course. This condition of affairs has been justified in the past. It will not be in the future. It reacts injuriously upon the individual and the race. With the highest set so low, it is not strange that the youth does not see that there is much in education worth his while and attention. Nor does he see that he is permanently handicapped in competition with other men who secure five to ten more years than he. For the exceptional boy who aspires through the college to larger opportunity, lack of college preparatory training brings discouragement and defeat. It is true that there are honorable exceptions to this rule, but they are remarkably few.

It is true, also, that many people would consider it a mistake to advocate, at least to endow, college education for the Indian. This entire paper, however, is written on the assumption that whatever is advisable for white youth is equally advisable for Indians and that until there is a race appreciation of higher education the government will be justified in doing whatever is necessary to encourage and enable Indian youth to enter upon the higher paths. Moreover the race is critically in need of leadership. In the long run their leaders must be able to comprehend all the methods of their white competitors. They must have the widest of wisdom if they are to lead a race wisely to the highest goal. In a journal like this it is not necessary to explain that college education is not the only road to financial or other success. It is not a fetich, but it is safe to say that advanced training is the chief tool of power.

If any scheme could be devised which would carry any considerable number of Indian youth into the white colleges, that would be far better than the creation of a separate Indian institution. But at the present time two conditions seem to stand in the way. In the first place there is a great gap between the Indian school and the white college. College preparation itself involves a transfer to a white preparatory school under conditions of considerable strain to the doubting or diffident youth. In the second place there seems to be a very considerable reluctance on the part even of the older Indians to enter into daily competition or comparison with a large group of whites. Some special stimulus will be necessary if the forward step, now possible, is to be taken by large numbers of Indians.

It is fortunate that the government easily can, if it will, provide just the provisional or intermediary assistance which the situation requires. With the strong desire now existing to raise the standards of the local schools and so to render unnecessary some of the larger non-reservation schools, it would be perfectly feasible to select the boarding school best adapted and turn it frankly into a combination secondary school and junior college, putting it in its teaching force on a par with the best preparatory schools and colleges of the land. This plan would have the following values: (1) It would emphasize or re-define throughout the whole system the value of education. (2) It would provide college preparation. (3) It would give two years of standard college training. (4) It would make it feasible later to encourage attendance two years longer at a white college (if the proposed institution were located in a town of some standard university or college, the transition to the non-Indian college could be made very gradual and easy). (5) It would provide the training for Indians who should later become the teachers of their race all over the country. (6) It might be opened to Indians from the countries to the south and so work to international comity as well as start a movement for the welfare of the millions of natives still surviving on this continent. (7) Above all it would provide for the needs peculiar to the Indian and to those members of the race who aspired to teach and lead their people. Few white colleges pay any attention to Indian history or Indian problems.

Literate and with a language common to the whole nation the Indian will almost unconsciously swing into the industrial and religious life of the country. On neither of these points do we have information so recent or so complete as on those already given.

When the census data on occupations of Indians now collected in Washington, shall be compiled and published, doubtless it will show a most surprising diversity of occupations. The Indian seems to be less rather than better qualified for agriculture than for other lines of industry.

At least he is found doing almost everything from baseball to law and from fishing to preaching. The industrial training in the boarding schools is turning out hundreds of Indians who are successes in the business world. Mr. J. M. Oskison at the First National Conference of Indians held last October said, "I believe the average Indian would rather work his brain than his hands. That has been accounted our misfortune. I think it will be our salvation. There is room for us in the professions, there is a wide market for brains." Superintendent Friedman in the Carlisle Red Man has furnished a gallery of the successful Indian workers, a gallery such as only Carlisle can as yet show. Enough has been done and enough shown to convince the world that the Indian can compete on even terms in many industries with white men, and that he will do so in all lines when equal training is secured for him. The distribution of Indians among the various industries will take care of itself as rapidly as the race is made partaker of the thought of the nation.

No adequate survey has ever been made of the religious situation of the Indians. The writer hopes within a few months to make at least a partial effort in that direction, but at the present time he must have recourse to the figures he collected and published in 1906. At that time, or just prior to it, the Protestant churches claimed 18,000 Indian communicants in their churches, while the Bureau of Catholic Indian missions claimed upward of 100,000 Indian members of the Catholic church; although their enumerated membership was said to be 56,774. It was felt fair at that time to multiply the Protestant membership by three as a means of estimating Protestant adherency. Adding this latter number, 54,000, to the estimated Catholic membership, we find that 150,000 or over one-half of the Indians of the country were under Christian influence and control. Doubtless the situation has grown more favorable during the last decade. The Indian is becoming, in name at least, essentially a Christian race. It remains to be seen whether the results in character are what they ought to be. This is hard to determine. Character is expressed in conduct. But when the modes and conditions of life are essentially different the expression will likewise be different. The moralities of industry, of contract, of punctuality, of sanitation and of a thousand other matters will make little impression upon a people whose history has not suggested them. Only as the Indians come into the life of the nation will their religion or their morality take shape recognizable as such by the dominant forces in the nation. Christianity will appeal to the Indians and will express itself satisfactorily in Indian lives in increasing degree as the industrial and intellectual life of the nation becomes the industrial and intellectual life of the Indian country. The beauty and strength of the Indian faith will then be transformed and combined with the beauty and strength of the Christian faith.

The writer is an optimist. He believes in the Indian and in the great mass of Indians. He holds that perhaps the two most dangerous enemies of the race are first, those who believe that the Indians are inferior and unworthy of the best, and second, those who (more or less unconsciously) assume that the Indians are so superior that they do not need the same quality or degree of training and opportunity as white people. We need a public opinion which will justify and demand a much better quality of service for the Indian open to and reaching the whole body of the race. The capacity for progress is within the race. The stimulation to progress must come from those who have taken the forward step, whether they be Caucasian or Indian. Had we put as much intelligence and thoroughness into our Indian policy thirty years ago as we are employing now we should now be thirty years nearer the solution of our problem. At least it would be difficult to underestimate the amount of time we have lost by our extravagant parsimony of that date. We can see today the advisability and necessity of Indian schools as our public men could not see it a generation ago. The logic of the situation will carry our slow minds within the next thirty years at least as far as we have gone in the past thirty. In fact if our policy is anywhere near right, we ought to anticipate the future and do today what we shall know in 1940 we ought to have done. If we wait we shall lose a generation of Indians and perhaps substantially lose the race. It is the last call to the leaders of both races to reverse the verdict of history and to prove through endeavor sufficient in thoroughness, intelligence and quality, that a primitive race need not perish in contact with modern life. Otherwise we shall have another sad, long-drawn-out and expensive spectacle of a race passing through poverty, pauperism, and disease into the graveyard of fallen peoples.

But we are not going to fail. We are going to ask and demand that the optimist philosophy be put into practical service by optimists for the welfare of the Indian and the credit of the nation. Each race has an important role to play.

The white race through the government must do with completeness and thoroughness what it essays to do at all. In the field of education it must bring a school within the reach of every child and must insist upon teachers who will make the school time count for its maximum possibilities. This means much higher standards (and correspondingly higher pay) for admission to the teaching service. Some plan must be devised which will actually bring advanced training to a considerable body of the race. Had we an Indian welfare college, as has here been suggested, it ought within ten years to insure an enrollment of at least 1000 (1.1 per cent of the school population) either for itself or on the rolls of white colleges all over the country. Such an institution could, as no other college, specifically train the ambitious and altruistic of the race for service and leadership. It should fit into its curricula those subjects needed to broaden the view and intensify the knowledge of Indian problems, while meeting at least the minimum requirements for standard college entrance and teaching. In a word it should revive the spirit of Hampton in a school of more advanced requirements. Not knowledge alone, but inspiration is needed for those who would teach and lead the race.

But why should a nation of nearly 100,000,000 people trouble itself about 265,000 people scattered all over its wide domain and hidden in its deserts and mountains? The answer is plain. We owe something to the people whom we have supplanted. We owe the best of guardianship to our national wards. We owe that which the strong always owe to the weak. In themselves these people are worthy of adequate care. Rightly treated, they will shortly become a national asset instead of a burden; it is economy to invest in them. And beyond the few thousands under the American flag there stand the uncounted millions to the south of us who claim Indian blood. In addition to the natives of Mexico and Central America it has been estimated that there are 30,000,000 of people in South America having at least some aboriginal blood. If we can bring our own Indians into the national life we shall have learned the method and found the people to bring like progress and welfare to the many millions of the race under other flags, many of whom are in no less need of inspiration and help.

The role of the Indian leader is not less evident. He is the one who can appeal to his people without danger of misinterpretation. After the government has granted a just legal and political status, has safeguarded land and property, and has provided the absolutely best of educational opportunities, the great task remains to be done. To arouse a race deadened by subjugation, segregation and partial pauperization, to encourage the old, and to inspire the young to realize and to enjoy the privileges of the new era—this is the task laid upon the members of the Indian race who have seen the vision and who have the courage to sacrifice their time and strength to carry that vision to their brothers who may now be content to stand still. The need is met by the promise. The formation of the Society of American Indians last year was not an artificial happening. It was made possible by the developments of the past thirty years. It calls into its membership those who know the needs and have the devotion to labor and to give of themselves that their race may rise and face the East.