ibes
which have freely mingled with the whites without debasement, and have
acquired the arts of civilized life with no undue proportion of its
evils. To the assertion that the Indian must gradually decline in
numbers and decay in strength, his life fading out before the intenser
life which he encounters, can be offered instances of the steady
increase in population of no small number of tribes and bands in
immediate contact with settlements, and subject to the full force of
white influence.

And yet it is undeniably true that many of the experiments have failed
in a greater or less degree; that in some cases the Indians most
neglected have done better for themselves than those who have received
the care and bounty of the government; that many tribes and bands which
had apparently emerged from their barbarous condition have miserably
fallen back into sloth and vicious habits; that the meat-eaters, who
constitute the bulk of the tribes with which the latest advances of our
settlements and railways have brought us in contact, are exceptionally
wild and fierce; that the experiment of Indian civilization has far more
chances of success when it is tried under conditions that allow of
freedom from excitement, and thorough seclusion from foreign influences;
and, finally, that Indian blood, thus far in the history of the country,
has tended decidedly towards extinction.

The Board of Indian Commissioners, in their Report for 1872, make the
statement that "nearly five-sixths of all the Indians of the United
States and Territories are now either civilized or partially civilized."
(Report, p. 3.) The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his report of the
same date, places the number of reclaimed savages somewhat lower,
dividing the three hundred thousand Indians within the limits of the
United States as follows: civilized, ninety-seven thousand;
semi-civilized, one hundred and twenty-five thousand; wholly barbarous,
seventy-eight thousand. He is, however, careful to explain that the
division is made "according to a standard taken with reasonable
reference to what might fairly be expected of a race with such
antecedents and traditions." Perhaps, on a strict construction of the
word "semi-civilized," the Indian Office might assent to take off twenty
or thirty thousand from the number stated.

We all know what a savage Indian is. What is a civilized Indian?--what a
semi-civilized Indian? To what degree of industry, frugality, and
s