im, remote past as
ancient as the hills, the record of whose lives and deeds stood
inscribed on the ruined temples and palaces scattered throughout the
land where they once dwelt at a time when her European ancestors roamed
the wilderness half naked and clad in the skins of wild beasts?

White men of eminence had married Indians and their descendants were
proud of their lineage. True, Chiquita was an exception just as she
towered above most women of her race. And who were they, that they
should criticize--vaunt their superiority in the face of the universal
scheme of things? Were they really any better? The same passions,
longings and aspirations that swayed them, swayed the Red man as well.

Their daily lives were different--their aspirations were directed in
different channels, that was all. What was true civilization and
culture, any way? Who had ever succeeded in defining them? The so-called
civilized world might prattle of culture. Its ideas compared with those
of mankind as a whole were purely relative and of a local origin and
color, and could not be gauged by a uniform standard of ethics. What
pleases the one fails to attract the other. The man in power who talks
of culture may be taken seriously by those of his own race who stand by
and applaud his words, but remove him from his home surroundings and
place him on a footing of equality with those of a different race and
environment and his arguments fail to convince.

Did the harangues of Louis the Sixteenth's tormentors convince him of
the ethical standards of universal justice, or John Brown's sacrifice
the representatives of a slave-holding population?

Which is the most convincing--the example set by the early Spartans, or
that of the man who surrounds himself with every luxury and convenience
of modern life; the man who reads books and lives in a house and travels
by train and automobile, or he who dwells in a tent, who is ignorant of
letters, and prefers the slower locomotion of horse and foot? Who is the
arbiter of fashion? The sun shines alike on the just and the unjust, the
great world still continues to laugh and goes on its way in spite of
men's philosophies, but tear up the map, as the French say, and where
are our standards and codes?

Prove it if you can, that the wild flower in the meadow is less
beautiful than the one reared beneath the hand of the gardener. Argue
and theorize as we will, our sophistries count for little when we are
brought