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People speak of the Indians as a fighting people. Most books, 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, jostled 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 exceedingly few white men ever had the opportunity to observe and write about Indian life before that life had been fatefully altered by the aggressive drives which characterize the white men. 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. 

Let me pause again and correct any impression 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 what I must call 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 principle property owners is certainly a people which honors its women. Not all tribes, but most tribes, followed such rules.