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Show 8 REPORTS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR. men, it is fair to assume that the variation of types extends below Lthe surface and is manifested in mental and moral traits as well. The contrast, for instance, between the negro, with his pliant fancy, his cheerfiil spirit under adversity, his emotional demonstrativeness, his natural impulse to obedience, and his imitative tendency, and the Indian, with his intense pride of race, his reserved habit, his cumula-tive sense of wrong, and his scorn for the antipatriarchial ways of the modern world, is as marked as that between shadow and sunshine. r Scarcely less plain is the lin-not the line of civilization and con-vention, but the line of nature-between the Indian and the white man. What good end shall we serve by trying to blot out these dis-tinctions? How is either party to benefit by the obliterations? When we have done our best artificially to turn the Indian into a L white man we have simply made a nondescript of hi. Looking among our own companions in life, whom do we more sincerely respect--the person who has made the most of what nature gave him, or the person who is always trying to be something other than he is? Was there ever a man with a heaven-born genius for mechanics who did his best possible work in the world by trying to practice law or to preach? Howevkr fairly he may have succeeded, by sheer force of will, in compelling courts and congregations to listen to him, could he not have done a greater service to his own generation and to posterity by addressing all his energies to the solution of some great problem in engineering? Was there ever a woman who had the divine gift of home makiig, and whose natural forte was to stimulate a husband and train a family of children to lives of usefulness, yet who contributed a larger share of happiness to mankind by becoming a social agitator? These are everyday illustrations in point. Any-one can call to mind a dozen instances within his own experience, some pitiful and some musing, which tend to the same conclusions. r Now, how are we to apply this philosophy to the case of the Indian? Are we to let him done? By no means. We do not let the soil in our gardens alone because we can not turn clay into sand: we simply sow melon seed in the one and plant plum trees in the other. It does not follow that we must metamorphose whatever we wish to improve. Our aim should be to get out of ~verythingth e best it is capable of producing, and in improving the product it is no part of our duty to Ldestroy the source. What would be thought of a horticulturist who should uproot a tree which offers a first-rate sturdy stock simply bemuse its natural fruit is not of the highest excellence? A graft here and there will correct this shortcoming, while the strength of the parent trunk will make the improved product all the finer, besides insuring a longer period of bearing. We see this analogy well carried out in the case of an aboriginal race which possesses vigorous traits of character at the start. Nothing is gained by trying to undo |