you only ten minutes of informal talk, and that is all I could hope to do. The subject which has engrossed so much of my life is so large, and embraces so much, that it would take weeks to lay it before you in anything like detail.

You have millions of children to educate; I have only some three hundred thousand, but a good many of these are grown up, which makes the task rather difficult. The Indian is an adult child. He has the physical attributes of the adult with the mentality of about our fourteen-year-old boy. One of the great difficulties that we have met in dealing with the problem presented in his case has been the failure of the two races to understand each other. Our race has been misled to a very large extent by the two extreme views that we get on the opposite sides of the continent. The eastern view, usually termed the philanthropic view, is that the Indian is a perfect being, and that it is the business of the white race to keep him alive by giving him everything in sight. At the other extreme stand the group of persons who insist that the Indian is a poor creature, a mere cumberer of the earth; and the white men who hold this view, when they get to the last degree of generosity and benevolence, treat him as they treat a dog to whom they throw a bone to keep him from starving.

And so, between the philanthropist on the one hand and the eminently "practical" citizen on the other, with a little interlarding of the old school geographies, we obtain a very extraordinary view of the Indian. One of the things we are taught in our school books, for instance, is that the Indian has no sense of humor-that he is a grim and morbid soul. My friends, there never was a greater mistake in the world. No people have a keener sense of humor than the Indians. Around their camp-fires at night I have heard them tell funny story after story, and the laughter has kept up as long as there was anyone awake to respond.

A year or two ago I was visiting the Klamath reservation in Oregon and had the Indians at a council. I had only recently appointed a new superintendent there with the duties of an agent, and I said to them:

My friends, while I have seen a great many things here which I like-the way you build your houses, the way you cultivate your fields, the way you care for your cattle, the self-dependent spirit you show-still, there are certain things I should like you to improve in. I have given you a first-rate agent, who takes the greatest interest in your affairs. I selected him because he had done so well everywhere else, and I know that he is doing well for you, too. But since I have been here and living in his house, I have observed that at any and all times, waking or sleeping, he is subject to your demands. When we are at the table at meals, you call him out; when he is just ready to go to bed, you call him down stairs; and all for business which could have been transacted earlier in the same day, or could just as well go over until the morrow. Now, my friends, an agent, like everyone else in this world, must have some time to rest!

Then I paused a little, to let the idea sink in; the corner, who spoke a little English, piped out: the time!"

when an old man over in "The last agent rested all

We also hear that the Indian is dishonest. People tell you that you must

not leave a thing around loose or the Indians will steal it. You may remember the story of the good bishop who was crossing a reservation, and, when night came, began looking around him. "What are you looking for?" inquired his Indian guide. "A place to hide my watch, my purse, and other valuables," he answered. "Oh, never mind that," said the Indian, "there isn't a white man within a hundred miles of here."

A delegation of Osage Indians visited me at Washington about three years ago. After we had had a long council, a subchief put his hand under his blanket and drew forth a scroll, which he handed me, saying: "I wish my father would look at what is in this scroll, and tell me whether it is like what we have been talking about here today." I opened it, and found that it was a parchment writing signed by Thomas Jefferson's secretary of war setting forth the friendly relations between the government and the Indians, and closing substantially as follows: "Attached to this parchment is a chain of pure gold. Until that gold shall tarnish, the friendship between the white man and his red brother shall remain undimmed." I looked in the upper left-hand corner, and there, sure enough, was the chain-a very good one, about eighteen inches long, and heavy. It was intact, just as when in 1804 President Jefferson's secretary of war had fastened it to the parchment. One hundred years had elapsed. In the interval, these Indians had gone thru many vicissitudes of fortune; they had lived in tents, in holes in the ground, in brush houses, in log houses; they had not had a bank or a safety vault in which to deposit this parchment; and yet in all those hundred years, that chain had not found its way to the pawn shop! I think on honesty those Indians could give points to San Francisco!

We hear that the Indian is naturally a dependent creature, and that he enjoys the pauperized condition to which an ill-judged philanthropy has degraded so many of his people. Why, my friends, in 1895, the Navajo Indians had had a particularly hard winter. They had lost multitudes of their sheep, their crops had failed, and they were reduced to eating their ponies, which is about the last thing to which Indians will resort. Someone in Congress introduced a paragraph into the annual Indian appropriation bill, granting $20,000 to furnish rations to the tribe. No sooner had the news found its way to Arizona, than I received letters from two old Navajo head men, imploring me to use all the influence I possessed to prevent Congress from passing that appropriation. Why? "Because we do not want our young men to learn to eat the bread of the government!" If that had happened among white people, you would call it a pretty fine exhibition of character; I do not know why it is not equally fine among red people.

Again, we are told that we can never do anything toward really civilizing the Indian, beacuse he is not "adaptable."

My old friend Quanah Parker, chief of the Comanches, used to do a great many favors for the cattle men who were down in his country, looking after their affairs, seeing that his Indians did not kill their stock, and so on. By

and by the cattle men thought they would give him a present in token of their appreciation. They first gave him money to build a house, as he had said that he would prefer a nice house to anything else. The next year they came around but found no house there, and asked Quanah the reason. "Oh," answered Quanah, "I had some debts to pay and some poor people to feed, and the money is all gone." So the cattle men concluded to build the house themselves. One who was to have contributed to the fund was abroad at the time the hat was passed, and when he returned he said: “Quanah, I didn't get a chance to help build your house, but I would like to give you something to put into it-a nice piece of furniture or something like that. Now, what shall it be?" "Well," responded Quanah, "I would like a roller-top desk, and a chair that goes round like this"-indicating the motion of a revolving chair. "Why, my friend," protested the cattle man, “what would you do with a roller-top desk? You don't know how to write." "Oh," responded Quanah, "I can sit in the chair and put my feet on the desk, and put a big cigar in my mouth, and hold a newspaper up before me, so, and when a white man comes and knocks at my door, I can say: 'Go 'way, I'm busy now.""

Now, of course, these things deal with externals, but with the large part of the white people who criticise, externals count for everything. There is a widespread idea that if you can strip an Indian of his buckskin and his beads, and put him into a broadcloth coat, and give him a high hat and polished boots, you have civilized him. In the annual report of the commissioner of Indian affairs there used to be a column in which was given the number of Indians who had adopted, either wholly or in part, "civilized dress." That column was about the first thing I ran my blue pencil thru when I came into office. I struck it out because I did not believe that it told anybody anything worth telling. What I cared for was the man under the clothing-not the clothing itself. After I had stricken out the table, many good people among the audiences I addressed used to ask me why I had done so. I answered, because it had kept me solving so many puzzles; and then I explained:

For example, one old Indian in the Southwest, who always comes to see me whenever I am in this neighborhood, even if he has to walk fourteen or fifteen miles to shake my hand, feels impelled to dress himself in ceremonial costume when he is about to come into my presence. This costume consists of a nightgown. Now, we all know that a nightgown constitutes a part of civilized costume for the white man, at least through a certain part of the twenty-four hours, and why not for the Indian in the other part? And so I was puzzled and distressed by trying to decide into which column to put my old Indian friend-whether among those who had adopted civilized dress wholly, or those who had adopted it only in part.

That is a fair illustration of the sort of logic which appeals to a great number of people who have undertaken the civilization and education of the Indian.

Their idea seems to be that we should put something on the outside

of him and drive it down into him by force, instead of stirring up something on the inside of him and developing it until it comes out of itself.

One of the very worst mistakes we have made is trying to do everything for him with too much uniformity. There is no race of people, I venture to say, who have more native individuality than the Indians, and I believe most heartily in drawing it out and cultivating it. The poorest thing we can do with the Indians is to put them into a machine at one end and turn a crank and grind them out at the other end, carefully molded citizens, all after one pattern. The Indians have race characteristics which differ from ours, but which are very good of their kind. They have their own art ideals, and you will find in nearly every Indian the instinct of the artist. The old way of handling this matter in the schools was to put before the children designs of our own preparing and telling them to copy these. We have got away from that. If you want to see how far, go up to the Normal Building tomorrow and look at the exhibit a small one and very hastily gathered-which Miss De Cora, our Indian teacher of native art at Carlisle, has brought here to show what her little people are doing. She is drawing out what is already in them, instead of cramming them with something from outside. There, again, is Indian music. Plenty of people will tell you that Indian music consists of only a guttural whine, punctuated with beats on a tom-tom. They have ignored all that is best in Indian music and taken the lowest types of it as types of all. European composers have not been so foolish. They have seen how much in Indian music is worthy of preservation, and have exclaimed at our negligence in letting this resource die out thru our failure to recognize its value. I am trying to bring our service back into the right track in this regard also. I want the children in our Indian schools to be able to sing the songs of their people, just as Germans, tho living among us, sing the songs of their fatherland—you have heard some of these tonight. I want our schools to encourage the children to sing their own songs, and in their own language. At Oraibi, one of our most successful teachers, Miss Stanley, has her children bring the songs sung to them by their mothers in the nursery and sing them in the classroom. When she opens the day with these little songs, the children attack the rest of their work with a spirit and a snap unknown to children who have to start the day in the ordinary

way.

I see, my friends, that I have exhausted my time. I thank you very much for your kind attention and indulgence. I am already due at a gathering of my fellows in the Indian service in another place, but I could not resist the invitation to come here and say these few words of greeting-the greeting of one laborer to other laborers in a similar field; and to remind you that, altho your task seems discouraging at times, it is a great work in which you are engaged, and that one day you will realize that there is more real joy in the heat of struggle than can be found in the fulfilled accomplish

ment.

GREETINGS FROM A SISTER REPUBLIC

M. URIBE Y TRANCOSO, REPRESENTING THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION AND FINE ARTS OF THE REPUBLIC OF MEXICO

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is certainly a glorious event which this Association commemorates today. A life of fifty years so fruitful in useful results, intellectual and moral, is the best proof that the high ideals in which its foundation was laid, germinating in a soil very well adapted to them, after half a century of continued growth, as under one of those gigantic trees of California, have gathered and united under its shade the teachers of all the states of the Union.

For the first time in the history of the Association, the educators of another country have been invited to take part in its labors, and with extreme gallantry it has called on the sister republic, with which this country maintains common ideals and interests. Honored by this eloquent proof of distinction, the secretary of public instruction and fine arts of Mexico appointed a delegation to bring to this Association an expression of gratitude on the part of the government and, at the same time, of the teachers of Mexico for this proof of international fraternity; and charged them with the agreeable task of telling you how profoundly it is devoted to the work of teaching and education, convinced that when education has been founded upon really scientific bases, it constitutes the most secure foundation of greatness and prosperity of the nations.

Certainly, one of the most powerful causes of the enormous development and prosperity of your great country has been the education, philosophically directed and vastly extended to all social classes from the laborer to the professional man; but the result is more especially due to the spreading among the people of the scientific notions in which must be built all work intended to put aside the routine, and enable them to think out the necessities always growing out of modern industrial competition.

The intellectual and physical education has received in the United States for a long time specialized attention, and the results have shown themselves in the form of a well-balanced generation which expresses the old mens sana in corpore sano, and which with a reserve of mental energy, accumulated by a good preparation of both brains and muscles, has permitted to undertake the gigantic works which have transformed the deserts into emporiums of civilization, uniting with the steel nerves of the railroads the most distant regions of this very extensive country and originating at the end a peculiar civilization admired and studied attentively in Europe and America.

It is enough to read the programs of the different sections of this Association to comprehend the very important part which your works have had in the formation and development of national culture. To bring together and to put in contact the teachers of the most distant places; to procure the exchange of ideas in regard to the benefit of the different methods now in use; to unify