ne
of New Englanders. He wanted to go into the Navy. He even planned to
join an Arctic expedition at the age of twenty and began to collect
material for his outfit. But finally, following his father's lead, he
settled upon the study of medicine.

This led to the Harvard University Medical School and to his
graduation in 1884. There then followed the regular internship of a
young physician and the beginning of practice in Boston.

Then came the change that separated Wood from the usual lot of well
educated, well prepared doctors who come out of a fine medical school
and begin their lifework of following their profession and building up
a practice, a record, a family and the history which is the highest
ideal man can have and the collective result of which is a sound
nation.

Wood wanted action. He wanted to do {21} something. He had a strong
inclination to the out-of-doors. And it is probably this, together
with his inheritance and the chances of the moment, that led him to
enter the army as a surgeon. As there was no immediate vacancy in the
medical corps he took the job of contract surgeon at a salary of $100
a month and was first ordered to duty at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor
where he stayed only a few days. His request for "action" was granted
in June, 1885, and he wais ordered to Arizona to report to General
Crook on the Mexican border near Fort Huachuca.

And here begins the career of Leonard Wood.

{22}

{23}

THE INDIAN FIGHTER

{24}

{25}

II

THE INDIAN FIGHTER

The problem was what turned out to be the last of the Indian fighting,
involving a long-drawn-out campaign. For over a hundred years, as
every one knows, the unequal struggle of two races for this continent
had been in progress and the history of it is the ever tragic story of
the survival of the fittest. No one can read it without regret at the
destruction, the extermination, of a race. No one, however, can for a
moment hesitate in his judgment of the inevitableness of it, since it
is and always will be the truth that the man or the race or the nation
which cannot keep up with the times must go under--and should go
under. Education, brains, genius, organization, ability, imagination,
vision--whatever it may be called or by how many names--will forever
destroy and push out ignorance, incompetence, stupidity.

The Indians were not able--tragic as the truth {26} is--to move
onward, and so they had to move out and give place to the mo