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the only occasion in all the history of North and South America in which Europeans were expelled once they had established a permanent base in Indian country.

I mention these facts not by way of extolling the fighting qualities of our ancestors. No one has ever expressed doubt about those qualities, either in those far off days, or in modern times. I want to talk of peace and good will have been taken to bind all our Indian people together in ties of "perpetual peace and friendship"--to use the old phase of the treaties. Others speak of this, I only allude to it in passing.

People speak of the Indians as a fighting people. Most books about Indians, written by white men to be sure, stress the constant warfare in which Indians engaged. Any one who actually believes that, knows very little about Indian life. He knows it from the point of view of the white settlers who, from the first landings on New World shores, jostleed Indians out of place and set them to contending with other Indians for a chance to survive. I have not said that Indians would not fight when stepped on. But exceodingly few white men over had the opportunity to observe and write about Indian life before that life had been fatefully altered by the agressive drives which characterize the white man. Indians were competitive in their old ways, hence their many games and the infinite variety of ways in which they learned to gamble. The white man made competition a deadly game with his whisky and firearms.

Lets me pause again and correct any impresion that I am here to blacken the character of the white man. Not that at all, but I do earnestly desire to say something about Indian character and about our Indian history, because what I intend to say is vital to our purpose in being here at all.

Indians were not warlike, notwithstanding all the published accounts that would give the contrary notion. Indians had a racial genius, which found expression in various ways, for political and social organization. there was no "forgotten man" in the Indian tribes. There were no "little men", and no dictators for that matter. Women had an honored place, in spite of a good deal of trash that has been written about the degradation of women. Any people who count their heritage through the mother and who make of women the principal property owners is certainly a people which honors its women. Not all tribes, but most tribes, followed such rules.

But I mean more than this when I say the Indians had a genius for political and social organization. Any one who will take the trouble to do a little reading in the field of Indian law, must be struck with this quality of genius. This is a new field of research and I dare say it will be some tiome yet before the many people tho write about Indians will take the trouble to explore what has been written.

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