.

In another article I shall consider certain conditions which retard the
development of the future American race type which I have suggested, as
well as certain other tendencies which are likely to promote it.

_Boston Evening Transcript_, August 25, 1900

A COMPLETE RACE-AMALGAMATION LIKELY TO OCCUR

I have endeavored in two former letters to set out the reasons why it
seems likely that the future American ethnic type will be formed by a
fusion of all the various races now peopling this continent, and to show
that this process has been under way, slowly but surely, like all
evolutionary movements, for several hundred years. I wish now to consider
some of the conditions which will retard this fusion, as well as certain
other facts which tend to promote it.

The Indian phase of the problem, so far at least as the United States is
concerned, has been practically disposed of in what has already been
said. The absorption of the Indians will be delayed so long as the
tribal relations continue, and so long as the Indians are treated as
wards of the Government, instead of being given their rights once for
all, and placed upon the footing of other citizens. It is presumed that
this will come about as the wilder Indians are educated and by the
development of the country brought into closer contact with
civilization, which must happen before a very great while. As has been
stated, there is no very strong prejudice against the Indian blood; a
well-stocked farm or a comfortable fortune will secure a white husband
for a comely Indian girl any day, with some latitude, and there is no
evidence of any such strong race instinct or organization as will make
the Indians of the future wish to perpetuate themselves as a small and
insignificant class in a great population, thus emphasizing distinctions
which would be overlooked in the case of the individual.

The Indian will fade into the white population as soon as he chooses,
and in the United States proper the slender Indian strain will ere long
leave no trace discoverable by anyone but the anthropological expert. In
New Mexico and Central America, on the contrary, the chances seem to be
that the Indian will first absorb the non-indigenous elements, unless,
which is not unlikely, European immigration shall increase the white
contingent.

The Negro element remains, then, the only one which seems likely to
present any difficulty of assimilation. The main obstacle that retards
th