in an unscientific way, for my
research was not concerned with physical characteristics--on
the possible chance of the Indian's features consequent upon
his advancing civilization. Indeed, I have often thought,
though imagined may be the better word, that in Indians of
education I have observed a distinct softening of the
traditional type and an approximation to the features of the
European.

The Indian is becoming civilized very rapidly. His
appearance has already undergone great change through his
general disregard of native dress, and after a few
generations of living indoors and under bowler hats, is it
not reasonable to suppose that he will look more like the
Yankee than he does now, and thus justify the
anthropologist's theory by a reversal of the process of
reasoning?

The Indian, indeed, is rapidly being absorbed. On the 4th of last March
tribal government was abolished in the Indian Territory. The so-called
Five Civilized Tribes, numbering, all told, one hundred and two thousand
souls, and claiming to have enjoyed continuous independent civil
government since long before Columbus discovered America, are now just
plain citizens of the United States. The tribal land has been divided
among them, to be owned by individuals in fee simple; the right to vote
has been extended to them; their separate, independent constitutions,
legislatures, and judiciaries have entirely disappeared.

The Rev. W.B. Humphrey, of New York, is president of the National Indian
Association. Speaking of the changed position of the Indians, he said
recently, as quoted by the New York _Tribune_:

The Indian has long been the "ward" of the government. Our
statesmen have found this to be a mistake, for it relieves
him of all responsibility of providing for himself or of
taking care of himself. This policy was found to pauperize
him and to unfit him for the competitions of civilized life.
In fact it left him as much of a heathen as when our
forefathers first discovered him, wandering in the woods or
over prairies, the monarch of all he surveyed.

We have taken his land from him and pushed him beyond our
frontier. But now that the country which was once his has
been so fully settled up, there are no more frontiers over
which we can push him. This being so, our statesmen have
wisely decided to make the Indian an integral part of o