THE CHILDREN'S HERO
Nearly all the early explorers owed much to the natives. Who told the white men of the wonders of the Yellowstone Park and the canyon of the Colorado? Who guided them and served them without expectation of credit or honor? It is a principle among us to serve friend or guest to the utmost, and in the old days it was considered ill-bred to ask for any remuneration. To-day we have a new race, the motive of whose actions is the same as that of a civilized man. Nothing is given unless an equivalent is returned, or even a little more if he can secure it. Yet the inherent racial traits are there: latent, no doubt, but still there. The red man still retains his love of service; his love for his country. Once he has pledged his word to defend the American flag, he stands by it manfully.
In the Civil War many Indians fought on both sides, some of them as officers. General Grant had a full-blood Indian on his staff: Col. Ely Parker, afterward Commissioner of Indian Affairs. At one time in recent years a company of Indians was recruited in the regular army, and individual red men are still rendering good service in both army and navy (thirty-five ex-students of Carlisle alone), as well as in other branches of the Federal service. We have lived to see men of our blood in the councils of the nation, and an Indian Register of the Treasury, who must sign all our currency before it is valid. An Indian head is on the five-dollar bill and the new nickel.
George Guess, or Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, is the only red man admitted to the nation's Hall of Fame in the Capitol at Washington. The Indian languages, more than fifty in number, are better appreciated and more studied to-day than ever before. Half our states have Indian names, and more than that proportion of our principal lakes and rivers. These names are as richly sonorous as they are packed with significance, and our grandchildren will regret it if we suffer the tongues that gave them birth to die out and be forgotten.
Best of all, perhaps, we are beginning to recognize the Indian's good sense and sanity in the way of simple living and the mastery of the great out of doors. Like him, the wisest Americans are living, playing, and sleeping in the open for at least a part of the year, receiving the vital benefits of the pure air and sunlight. His deeds are carved upon the very rocks; the names he loved to speak are fastened upon the landscape; and he still lives in spirit, silently leading the multitude, for the new generation have taken him for their hero and model.
I call upon the parents of America to give their fullest support to those great organizations, the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls. The young people of to-day are learning through this movement much of the wisdom of the first American. In the mad rush for wealth we have too long overlooked the foundations of our national welfare. The contribution of the American Indian, though considerable from any point of view, is not to be measured by material acquirement. Its greatest worth is spiritual and philosophical. He will live, not only in the splendor of his past, the poetry of his legends and his art, not only in the interfusion of his blood with yours, and his faithful adherence to the new ideals of American citizenship, but in, the living thought of the nation.
THE END
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The documents chiefly used in the preparation of this book, aside from the author's own observations and personal knowledge, were the annual reports of the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, of the United States Board of Indian Commissioners, and of the Bureau of American Ethnology, the proceedings of the Mohonk Indian Conferences, and of religious and philanthropic societies engaged in Indian work; also the reports and magazines published by the larger Indian schools, especially Carlisle and Hampton. The following list of books about the North American Indian is not presented as complete in any sense, but merely as a suggestive guide to the reader who wishes to pursue the subject further: