232 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bering 7,683. Yet now the Zunis, made familiar to all by Mr. Cush- 

 ing's recent residence among them, are almost the sole survivors of that 

 ancient race, and they number only about sixteen hundred persons. 

 And, what is especially to the purpose of the present discussion, this 

 tribe was of all the most isolated, and the least contaminated by either 

 Spanish or Anglo-American civilization ; all the other (river) Pueblos, 

 now practically extinct, having been brought more into contact with 

 the influence of the whites.* What civilization the Zuiiis have (if in- 

 deed that term can be used at all where there is no written language), 

 the agriculture, the manufacture of pottery and blankets, are wholly 

 historic in origin, this conservative people never having borrowed any- 

 thing from the Anglo-Saxon or any other race. 



From this brief view of the Indian population we must conclude 

 that, so far from its being on the increase as a whole, as some recent 

 writers have claimed, the gain is entirely confined to those few tribes 

 which deserve in a great degree the epithet commonly applied to them, 

 of the "civilized Indians." Taking the Cherokees as representatives 

 of these tribes, we find that they have been under missionary influ- 

 ence for two hundred and fifty years, and that there were eight thou- 

 sand religious converts among them so long ago as 1700. The traveler 

 Bartram,! writing about 1762, said of them : " They are just, honesty 

 liberal, and hospitable to strangers ; considerate, loving, and affection- 

 ate to their wives and relations ; fond of their children, industrious, 

 frugal, temperate, and persevering, charitable and forbearing." He 

 speaks, moreover, of their wearing woven fabrics, of their police ar- 

 rangements, their domestic economy, and particularly of their marked 

 loyalty to the dictates of conscience. The Cherokees, then, had fairly 

 entered on the path of progress a hundred and twenty years ago. To- 

 day they possess suflicient property, if equally divided, to give each 

 man, woman, and child, a thousand dollars. Their school expense 

 amounts to thirty-five dollars annually per scholar, a sum greater than 

 that similarly expended, even in our great center of philosophy. The 

 proportion of illiteracy is smaller than that throughout the United 

 States. " Their condition is far better than that of the agricultural 

 classes of England." J The five civilized tribes have, on the average, 

 a house for every three or four persons, and one hundred and ninety- 

 five schools and one hundred and thirty-one church edifices for the 

 population of sixty thousand individuals. * 



In view, then, of the time spent and the result reached, we may 

 consider that those tribes which are increasing in numbers have passed 

 through their period of acclimation, and we may still believe that the 



* Vide " The Last of the Pueblos," " Harper's Monthly," June, 1882. 



f Vide note to the journal of Father Charlevoix, " Historical Collections of Louisi- 

 ana," vol. iii, p. 130. 



X " The Indian Question," by Francis A. Walker, p. 57. 



* Vide report of the Indian Commissioner for 1879. 



