creatures. Even more
than that, they are deified, therefore are revered and propitiated, since
upon them man must depend for his well-being. To the workaday man of our
own race the life of the Indian is just as incomprehensible as are the
complexities of civilization to the mind of the untutored savage.

While primarily a photographer, I do not see or think photographically;
hence the story of Indian life will not be told in microscopic detail, but
rather will be presented as a broad and luminous picture. And I hope that
while our extended observations among these brown people have given no
shallow insight into their life and thought, neither the pictures nor the
descriptive matter will be found lacking in popular interest.

Though the treatment accorded the Indians by those who lay claim to
civilization and Christianity has in many cases been worse than criminal,
a rehearsal of these wrongs does not properly find a place here. Whenever
it may be necessary to refer to some of the unfortunate relations that
have existed between the Indians and the white race, it will be done in
that unbiased manner becoming the student of history. As a body politic
recognizing no individual ownership of lands, each Indian tribe naturally
resented encroachment by another race, and found it impossible to
relinquish without a struggle that which belonged to their people from
time immemorial. On the other hand, the white man whose very own may have
been killed or captured by a party of hostiles forced to the warpath by
the machinations of some unscrupulous Government employe, can see nothing
that is good in the Indian. There are thus two sides to the story, and in
these volumes such questions must be treated with impartiality.

Nor is it our purpose to theorize on the origin of the Indians--a problem
that has already resulted in the writing of a small library, and still
with no satisfactory solution. The object of the work is to record by word
and picture what the Indian is, not whence he came. Even with this in view
the years of a single life are insufficient for the task of treating in
minute detail all the intricacies of the social structure and the arts and
beliefs of many tribes. Nevertheless, by reaching beneath the surface
through a study of his creation myths, his legends and folklore, more than
a fair impression of the mode of thought of the Indian can be gained. In
each instance all such material has been gathered by the writer and