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I can't tell in words what my mother has been to us all. My father can never bear to have her away from his side even for one day, and we four sisters ...have learned by experience...the beauty and nobility of my mother's whole life. ...four daughters educated in the religion and accomplishments of a foreign people, one of whom has just graduated in a school in the east, another who is studying medicine in Philadelphia and who will be a physician, and another married to an American and mother of a lovely family of growing children - all these clinging to the love of one uneducated woman....I believe that everyone on our reserve... values my mother's good opinion above that of everyone else. So you see it puzzles me when people ask me, is your tribe civilized?

Perhaps you will understand a little more about us if I tell you a little about our tribal government before the United States government interfered with us. A tribe is divided into bands. Our tribe has nine bands. Each band is divided into families, and the genealogies are kept so exactly in some bands there are a great many families...Each band has its own chief, then there is a head chief over all. When a council is to be held, the men of a band are summoned together, usually at a feast, and they consult together what the chief is to say in the council. ...Then all the chiefs in a tribe hold a council ...and decide what they shall do or say when the final council with the United States Govern-