ate from tuberculosis is almost
three times that among the whites.

These are grave facts, and cause deep anxiety to the intelligent Indian
and to the friends of the race. Some hold pessimistic views looking to
its early extinction; but these are not warranted by the outlook, for in
spite of the conditions named, the last three census show a slight but
continuous increase in the total number of Indians. Nor is this increase
among mixed-bloods alone; the full-blooded Indians are also increasing
in numbers. This indicates that the race has reached and passed the
lowest point of its decline, and is beginning slowly but surely to
recuperate.

THE CHANGE TO RESERVATION LIFE

The health situation on the reservations was undoubtedly even worse
twenty years ago than it is to-day, but at that period little was heard
and still less done about it. It is well known that the wild Indian had
to undergo tremendous and abrupt changes in his mode of living. He
suffered severely from an indoor and sedentary life, too much artificial
heat, too much clothing, impure air, limited space, indigestible
food--indigestible because he did not know how to prepare it, and in
itself poor food for him. He was compelled often to eat diseased cattle,
mouldy flour, rancid bacon, with which he drank large quantities of
strong coffee. In a word, he lived a squalid life, unclean and apathetic
physically, mentally, and spiritually.

This does not mean all Indians--a few, like the Navajoes, have retained
their native vigor and independence--I refer to the typical "agency
Indian" of the Northwest. He drove ten to sixty miles to the agency for
food; every week-end at some agencies, at others every two weeks, and at
still others once a month. This was all the real business he had to
occupy him--travelling between cabin and agency warehouses for
twenty-five years! All this time he was brooding over the loss of his
freedom, his country rich in game, and all the pleasures and
satisfactions of wild life. Even the arid plains and wretched living
left him he was not sure of, judging from past experience with a
government that makes a solemn treaty guaranteeing him a certain
territory "forever," and taking it away from him the next year if it
appears that some of their own people want it, after all.

Like the Israelites in bondage, our own aborigines have felt the sweet
life-giving air of freedom change to the burning heat of a desert as
dreary as that of Egyp