and engineers and ministers of the
gospel, and educated men in all walks of life. We have Indians in
Congress!"

"How many? And how many are lawyers and doctors and engineers and
ministers of the gospel? And how many can truthfully be said to be
'educated men in all walks of life'? A mere handful! Where one
succeeds, a hundred fail! And the others return to their reservation,
dissolute, dissatisfied, to live on the bounty of your government; you,
yourself, will admit that when an Indian does rise into a profession
for which his education has fitted him, he is an object of wonder--a
man to be written about in your newspapers and talked about in your
homes. And then your sentimentalists--your fools--hold him up as a
type! Not your educated Indians are reaping the benefit of your
government's belated attention, but those who are following the calling
for which nature has fitted them--stock-raising and small farming on
their allotted reservations. The educated ones know that the
government will feed and clothe them--why should they exert themselves?

"Here in the North, because the Indians have been dealt with sanely,
and not herded onto restricted reservations, and subjected to the
experiments of departmental fools well-intentioned--and otherwise--they
are infinitely better off. They are free to roam the woods, to hunt
and to trap and to fish, and they are contented. They remain at the
posts only long enough to do their trading, and return again to the
wilds. For the most part they are truthful and sober and honest. They
can obtain sufficient clothing and enough to eat. The lakes and the
rivers teem with fish, and the woods and the barrens abound with game,

"Contrast these with the Indians who have come more intimately into
contact with the whites. You can see them hanging about the depots and
the grogeries and rum shops of the railway towns, degenerate, diseased,
reduced to beggary and petty thievery. And you do not have to go to
the railway towns to see the effect of your civilization upon them.
Follow the great trade rivers! From source to mouth, their banks are
lined with the Indians who have come into contact with your
civilization!

"Go to any mission centre! Do you find that the Indian has taken
kindly to the doctrines it teaches? Do you find them happy,
God-fearing Indians who embraced Christianity and are living in accord
with its precepts? You do not! Except in a very few isolated cases