ncerning untutored races.

NO "INFERIOR RACE"

It was declared without qualification by the Universal Races Congress at
London in 1911 that there is no inherently superior race, therefore no
inferior race. From every race some individuals have mastered the same
curriculum and passed the same tests, and in some instances members of
so-called "uncivilized" races have stood higher than the average
"civilized" student; therefore they have the same inherent ability.
Certain peoples have remained undeveloped because of their religion,
philosophy, and form of government; in other words, because of the
racial environment. Change the environment, and the race is transformed.
Certainly the American Indian has clearly demonstrated the truth of this
assertion.

The very mention of the name "Indian" in earlier days would make the
average white man's blood creep with thoughts of the war-whoop and the
scalping-knife. A little later it suggested chiefly feathers and paint
and "Buffalo Bill's Wild West." To-day the association is rather with
the Carlisle school and its famous athletes; but to the thinking mind
the name suggests deeper thoughts and higher possibilities.

It was no less a man than Theodore Roosevelt who said to me once in the
White House that he would give anything to have a drop of Sioux or
Cheyenne blood in his veins. It is a fact that the intelligent and
educated Indian has no social prejudice to contend with. His color is
not counted against him. He is received cordially and upon equal terms
in school, college, and society.

Dr. Booker Washington is in the habit of saying jocosely that the negro
blood is the strongest in the world, for one drop of it makes a "nigger"
of a white man. I would argue that the Indian blood is even stronger,
for a half-blood negro and Indian may pass for an Indian, and so be
admitted to first-class hotels and even to high society. All that an
Indian needs in order to be popular, and indeed to be lionized if he so
desires, is to get an education and hold up his head as a member of the
oldest American aristocracy. Many of our leading men have married into
excellent families and are prominent in cultivated white communities. We
want the best in two races and civilizations in exchange for what we
have lost.

Some of us have entered upon every known professional career, such as
medicine, law, the ministry, education and the sciences, politics and
higher business management, art and lite