phrase goes here, is commonly one of the least useful, the
least attractive, the least moral of his kind. We have many such on the
Yukon--young men who work on the steamboats in the summer and do odd
jobs and hang around the stores in winter, and will not condescend to
fish any more or to hunt or trap unless driven by the pinch of hunger.
Show me an Indian who affects the white man in garb, in speech, in
general habits, and external characteristics, and it will be easy to
show an Indian whose death would be little loss to his community or his
race; while the native woman who aspires to dress herself like a white
woman has very commonly the purpose of attracting the attention of the
white men. I think the young Indian man I recall as the best dressed,
most debonair, and most completely "civilised," was living in idleness
upon the bounty of the white trader whom every one knew to be his wife's
paramour, and was impudently careless of the general knowledge.

Of all the photographs that illustrate missionary publications--and I
have contributed enough villainous half-tones to warrant me in a
criticism--the ones I dislike most are of the "Before and After" type.
Here is a group of savages clad in skins, or furs, or feathers, or palm
fibre, or some patient, skilful weave of native wool or grass; in each
case clad congruously with their environment and out of the products it
affords. Set against it is the same or a similar group clad out of the
slop-shop, clad in hickory shirts and blue-jean trousers, clad so that,
if faces could be changed as easily as clothing, they would pass for any
commonplace group of whites anywhere. And, as if such change were in
itself the symbol and guarantee of a change from all that is brutal and
idolatrous to all that is gentle and Christian, there follows the
triumphant "Before and After" inscription. All the fitness has gone, all
the individuality, all the clever adaptation of indigenous material, all
the artistic and human interest; and a self-conscious smirk of
superiority radiates over made-by-the-million factory garments instead.
Whenever I see such contrasting photographs there comes over me a
shamed, perverse recollection of a pair of engravings by Hogarth,
usually suppressed, which a London bookseller once pulled out of a
portfolio in the back room of his shop and showed me. They bore the same
title.

I profess myself a friend of the native tongue because it is the native
tongue--the eas