342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the bearers of them are of mixed lineage. They all hold positions of 

 honor in their resj^ective nations, and their peers among the Choctaws 

 and Chiekasaws were likewise of twofold origin. " This harmonious 

 blending of the two races, it seems to me," comments Miss Jenness, " is 

 the great solution of the Indian question as regards the five civilized 

 tribes, which with the rising generation will do away with prejudice, 

 and establish peace and good-will between the whites and Indians." 

 That humane hope would be more reasonable if the artificial barriers 

 which keep the races apart could only be removed ; but half-breeds 

 that remain amid Indian surroundings and influences, however cult- 

 ured v they may be, are sadly tempted to relapse into the habits of 

 savage life. It is only when the bride is carried far away from her 

 father's house and people that she and her children form lasting ties 

 of affection with their white kindred. Then, like some of the descend- 

 ants of Pocahontas, they may reflect credit on both sides of their an- 

 cestry. Miss Jenness's narrative indicates, however, in what way and 

 to what extent the blood of both whites and Indians may have been 

 modified in the course of forgotten generations. 



A good deal has recently been written on the negro's destiny in 

 the United States. Slavery is of the past, but it has left its Nemesis 

 behind, and the problem calls urgently for solution. Some of the 

 more philanthropic of the ante-bellum abolitionists did not hesitate to 

 counsel amalgamation as the true key to it. The late Wendell Phil- 

 lips, in one of his outbursts of eloquence, spoke of that " sublime 

 mingling of the races which is God's own method of civilizing and 

 elevating the world." Bishop Haven felt confident that Americans 

 would one day see "Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt." The Rev. 

 George Rawlinson, the historian, is also in favor of race-fusion. But 

 Bishop Dudley, who has had opportunities of looking at the question 

 from a nearer point of view, thinks that, in their actual condition, 

 union with the blacks would be ruinous to the whites. And yet, what 

 he can not accept as a doctrine for the present may, he admits, be re- 

 ceived by generations still unborn as in the natural course of things. 

 " What may come," he writes, " in the far-distant future, when by 

 long contact with the superior race the negro shall have been devel- 

 oped to a higher stage, none can tell. For my own part, believing, as 

 I do, that 'God has made of one blood all the nations of men,' I look 

 for the day when race peculiarities shall be terminated, when the unity 

 of the race shall be manifested. I can find no reason to believe that 

 the great races, into which humanity is divided, shall remain forever 

 distinct, with their race-marks of color and of form. Centuries hence, 

 the red man, the yellow, the white, and the black may all have ceased 

 to exist as such, and in America be found the race combining the 

 bloods of them all ; but it must be centuries hence. Instinct and 

 reason, philosophy, science, and revelation, all alike cry out against 

 the degradation of the race by the free commingling of the tribe 



