ked itself out in terms of your own
environment.

The Chisera is simply the Genius, one of those singular and powerful
characters whom we are still, with all our learning, unable to
account for without falling back on the primitive conception of gift
as arising from direct communication with the gods. That she becomes
a Medicine Woman is due to the circumstance of being born into a time
which fails to discriminate very clearly as to just which of the
inexplicable things lie within the control of her particular gift.
That she accepts the interpretation of her preeminence which common
opinion provides for her, does not alter the fact that she is no more
or less than just the gifted woman, too much occupied with the use of
her gift to look well after herself, and more or less at the mercy of
the tribe. What chiefly influences their attitude toward her is
worthy of note, being no less than the universal, unreasoned
conviction that great gift belongs, not to the possessor of it, but
to society at large. The whole question then becomes one of how the
tribe shall work the Chisera to their best advantage.

How they did this, with what damage and success is to be read, but if
to be read profitably, with its application in mind to the present
social awakening to the waste, the enormous and stupid waste, of the
gifts of women. To one fresh from the consideration of the roots of
life as they lie close to the surface of primitive society, this
obsession of the recent centuries, that the community can only be
served by a gift for architecture, for administration, for healing,
when it occurs in the person of a male, is only a trifle less
ridiculous than that other social stupidity, namely, that a gift of
mothering must not be exercised except in the event of a particular
man being able, under certain restrictions, to afford the
opportunity. There is perhaps no social movement going on at present
so deep-rooted and dramatic as this struggle of Femininity to
recapture its right to serve, and still to serve with whatever powers
and possessions it finds itself endowed. But a dramatic presentation
of it is hardly possible outside of primitive conditions where no
tradition intervenes to prevent society from accepting the logic of
events.

Whatever more there may be in _The Arrow-Maker_, besides its Indian
color, should lie in the discovery by the Chisera, to which the
author subscribes, that it is also in conjunction with her normal
re