ur
Union. This they are doing by breaking up his tribal
relation, giving him land in severalty as fast as he can be
prevailed upon to accept it, and by giving him the ballot.

The Indian is thus having civilization thrust upon him all
at once, though quite unprepared for its responsibilities.
He is made the victim of the land grabber, the shyster
lawyer, and the saloon keeper--powerful forces which he is
unable to resist in his present condition.

Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a full-blooded Sioux, who has shown in his own
development what the Indian may become with education, is quoted by the
_Tribune_ as saying:

I do not believe in trying to delay the inevitable
absorption of my race into the dominant white race of this
country. The sooner that absorption is accomplished, the
sooner the "Indian question" comes to an end, the better it
will be for all of us--and this desired result will surely
be hastened by letting down the bars in Indian Territory. As
for the liquor question, every individual Indian must solve
that for himself, just as he must solve everything else, as
an independent citizen of this country, not as a "ward," a
condition that brought with it no responsibilities.

There are between two and three hundred thousand Indians in
the United States altogether, but of real Indian customs and
beliefs there is very little left. It is only the showman
class that does the dances and wears feathers and beads, and
all the rest of the masquerading that goes to make up some
Buffalo Bill entertainment. But there is no sincerity in
such manifestations now; the real reason underlying these
things is buried in the past, when the Indian stood alone,
the maker of his own laws and customs, and not a government
ward.

Now the problem for my race is, how best to adapt itself to
the conditions belonging to the white man's civilization, to
make these his own, and, hence, to emancipate itself from
its present degraded position. This will not be accomplished
by insisting on the racial isolation, the government
protection, that we have had heretofore.

It is a difficult problem, though, simply because the Indian
character and tradition are so different from the dominant
type of the white man, and thus so difficult of
assimilation. During all the centuries of our existence as a