disintegration. It is the laughter of his body that he
insists upon, as well as depends upon. A redman deprived of his racial
gesture is unthinkable. You would have him soon the bleached carcass
in the desert out of which death moans, and from which the lizard
crawls. It would be in the nature of direct race suicide. He needs
protection therefore rather than disapproval. It is as if you clipped
the wing of the eagle, and then asked him to soar to the sun, to cut a
curve on the sky with the instrument dislodged; or as if you asked the
deer to roam the wood with its cloven hoofs removed. You can not cut
the main artery of the body and expect it to continue functioning.
Depriving the redman of his one enviable gesture would be cutting the
artery of racial instinct, emptying the beautiful chamber of his soul
of its enduring consciousness. The window would be opened and the bird
flown to a dead sky. It is simply unthinkable. The redman is
essentially a thankful and a religious being. He needs to celebrate
the gifts his heaven pours upon him. Without them he would in short
perish, and perish rapidly, having no breath to breathe, and no
further need for survival. He is already in process of disappearance
from our midst, with the attempts toward assimilation.

Inasmuch as we have the evidence of a fine aristocracy among us still,
it would seem as if it behooved us as a respectable host to let the
redman guest entertain himself as he will, as he sublimely does, since
as guardians of such exceptional charges we can not seem to entertain
them. There is no logical reason why they should accept an inferior
hospitality, other than with the idea of not inflicting themselves
upon a strange host more than is necessary. The redman in the
aggregate is an example of the peaceable and unobtrusive citizen; we
would not presume to interfere with the play of children in the
sunlight. They are among the beautiful children of the world in their
harmlessness. They are among the aristocracy of the world in the
matters of ethics, morals, and etiquette. We forget they are vastly
older, and in symbolic ways infinitely more experienced than
ourselves. They do not share in tailor-made customs. They do not need
imposed culture, which is essentially inferior to their own. Soon we
shall see them written on tablets of stone, along with the Egyptians
and the others among the races that have perished. The esthetics of
the redman have been too particular to