ing. Everything is
hard as iron, and the Indians, muffled in their blankets, are
sitting beside their fires glum as owls, waiting the coming of
the sunshine.

"I must tell you something which happened since you went
away--it may correct your views of the Tetongs. It is my policy
to give all hauling and wood contracts to the Indian instead of
the white man, and when I told the white who has been putting
in the wood that I was about to let the contract to the reds he
laughed and said, 'You can't get 'em to do that work!' But I
felt sure I could. I called them together and gave them fifty
axes and told them how much wood I wanted. A few days later I
thought I'd ride over to see how they were getting along. As I
drew near I heard the most astonishing click-clack of
axe-strokes, shouts, laughter, the falling of trees, and when I
came in sight I 'trun up both hands.' They had hundreds of
cords already cut--twice as much, it seemed, as I could use. I
begged them to stop, and finally got them to begin to haul. In
the end I was obliged to take sixty cords more than I needed.

"You cannot understand what a pleasure it is for me to see
ancient lies about these people destroyed by such experiences
as this. It was pathetic to me to find the Two Horns, the
Crawling Elk, and other proud old warriors toiling awkwardly
with their axes, their small hands covered with blisters; but
they laughed and joked about it, and encouraged each other as
if they were New-Englanders at a husking-bee. My days and
nights are full of trouble, because I can do so little for
them. If they were on tillable land I could make them
self-supporting in two years, but this land is arid as a
desert. It is fair to look upon, but it will not yield a living
to any one but a herder.

"Your attitude towards the so-called _savage_ races troubles me
more than I have any right to mention. The older I grow the
less certain I am that any race or people has a monopoly of the
virtues. I do not care to see the 'little peoples' of the world
civilized in the sense in which the word is commonly used. It
will be a sorrowful time to me when all the tribes of the earth
shall have cottonade trousers and derby hats. You, as an
artist, ought to shrink from the dead level of utilitarian
dre