fend the American flag, he
stands by it manfully.

In the Civil War many Indians fought on both sides, some of them as
officers. General Grant had a full-blood Indian on his staff: Col. Ely
Parker, afterward Commissioner of Indian Affairs. At one time in recent
years a company of Indians was recruited in the regular army, and
individual red men are still rendering good service in both army and
navy (thirty-five ex-students of Carlisle alone), as well as in other
branches of the Federal service. We have lived to see men of our blood
in the councils of the nation, and an Indian Register of the Treasury,
who must sign all our currency before it is valid. An Indian head is on
the five-dollar bill and the new nickel.

George Guess, or Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, is the
only red man admitted to the nation's Hall of Fame in the Capitol at
Washington. The Indian languages, more than fifty in number, are better
appreciated and more studied to-day than ever before. Half our states
have Indian names, and more than that proportion of our principal lakes
and rivers. These names are as richly sonorous as they are packed with
significance, and our grandchildren will regret it if we suffer the
tongues that gave them birth to die out and be forgotten.

Best of all, perhaps, we are beginning to recognize the Indian's good
sense and sanity in the way of simple living and the mastery of the
great out of doors. Like him, the wisest Americans are living, playing,
and sleeping in the open for at least a part of the year, receiving the
vital benefits of the pure air and sunlight. His deeds are carved upon
the very rocks; the names he loved to speak are fastened upon the
landscape; and he still lives in spirit, silently leading the multitude,
for the new generation have taken him for their hero and model.

I call upon the parents of America to give their fullest support to
those great organizations, the Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls. The
young people of to-day are learning through this movement much of the
wisdom of the first American. In the mad rush for wealth we have too
long overlooked the foundations of our national welfare. The
contribution of the American Indian, though considerable from any point
of view, is not to be measured by material acquirement. Its greatest
worth is spiritual and philosophical. He will live, not only in the
splendor of his past, the poetry of his legends and his art, not only in
the