the severely injured after the
massacre at Wounded Knee. In many cases it was my task to supply my
patients with suitable food and other necessaries, and my wife was
always prepared for a raid on her kitchen and storeroom for bread, soup,
sheets, and bandages.

The old-time "medicine-man" was really better than the average white
doctor in those days, for although his treatment was largely suggestive,
his herbs were harmless and he did allay some distress which the other
aggravated, because he used powerful drugs almost at random and did not
attend to his cases intelligently. The native practitioners were at
first suspicious of me as a dangerous rival, but we soon became good
friends, and they sometimes came frankly to me for advice and even
proposed to borrow some of my remedies.

Of course, even in that early period when the average Government doctor
feared to risk his life by going freely among the people (though there
was no real danger unless he invited it), there were a few who were
sincere and partially successful, especially some military surgeons.

Now that stage of the medical work among the Indians is past, and the
agency doctor has no valid excuse for failing to perform his
professional duty. It is true that he is poorly paid and too often
overworked; but the equipment is better and there is intelligent
supervision. At Pine Ridge, where I labored single-handed, there are
now three physicians, with a hospital to aid them in their work. To-day
there are two hundred physicians, with a head supervisor and a number of
specialists, seventy nurses, and eighty field matrons in the Indian
service.

SOME MISTAKES AND THE REMEDIES

Another serious mistake has been made in the poor sanitary equipment of
Indian schools. Close confinement and long hours of work were for these
children of the forest and plains unnatural and trying at best.
Dormitories especially have been shamefully overcrowded, and undesirable
pupils, both by reason of disease and bad morals, allowed to mingle
freely with the healthy and innocent. Serious mishaps have occurred
which have given some of these schools a bad name; but I really believe
that greater care is being taken at the present time. It was chiefly at
an early period of the Indian's advance toward civilization that both
mismanagement and adverse circumstance, combined with his own
inexperience and ignorance of the new ways, weakened his naturally
splendid powers and paved the way f