y whose word carries no more assurance than the
word of any Indian. The Indian is prone to evasion and quibbling rather
than to downright lying, though there are many who are utterly
unreliable and untrustworthy.

[Sidenote: SEXUAL MORALITY]

In the matter of sexual morality the Indian standards are very low,
though certainly not any lower than the standards of the average white
man in the country. One is forced to this constant comparison; the white
man in the country is the only white man the Indian knows anything
about. To the Indian a physical act is merely a physical act; all down
his generations there has been no moral connotation therewith, and it is
hard to change the point of view of ages when it affects personal
indulgence so profoundly. The white man has been taught, down as many
ages, perhaps, that these physical acts have moral connotation and are
illicit when divorced therefrom, yet he is as careless and immoral in
this country as the Indian is careless and _un_moral. And the white
man's careless and immoral conduct is the chief obstacle which those who
would engraft upon the Indian the moral consciousness must contend
against.

The Indian woman is not chaste because the Indian man does not demand
chastity of her, does not set any special value upon her chastity as
such. And the example of the chastity which the white man demands of his
women, though he be not chaste himself, is an example with which the
native of Alaska has not come much into contact. Too often, in the
vicinity of mining camps, the white women who are most in evidence are
of another class.

[Sidenote: GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS]

The Indian is commonly intelligent and teachable, and in most cases
eager to learn and eager that his children may learn. Here it becomes
necessary to deal with a difficult and somewhat contentious matter that
one would rather let alone. The government has undertaken the education
of the Indian, and has set up a bureau charged with the establishment
and conduct of native schools.

There are five such schools on the Yukon between Eagle and Tanana,
including these two points, amongst Indians all of whom belong to the
Episcopal Church, and five more between Tanana and Anvik, amongst
natives divided in allegiance between the Episcopal and the Roman
Catholic Churches. Below Anvik to the river's mouth the natives are
divided between the Roman and the Greek Churches, and they are outside
the scope of this book. On the t