AS A TEST OF MENTAL CAPACITY. 91 



traders in the ueiglibourhood. The four thousand matrons of this industrious tribe must 

 be among- the wealthiest women in America. So well-disposed are the people that the 

 agent had no serious offences of any kind to report. In this large territory, filled with a 

 property of a kind most tempting to Indian cupidity, a small band of twenty-five native 

 policemen had been ample for maintaining order. " Heretofore," the agent reports, " it had 

 been the custom to have a white man for chief of police, but I allowed the force to select 

 one of their own number, and the result has been better satisfaction and greater efficiency." 

 " The Indians and the white settlers on the outside of the reservation," we are further 

 told, " are on good terms, and apparently cultivate friendly relations." Their own dis- 

 putes are usually " settled among themselves." Their nominal chiefs have hardly any 

 influence ; their advice is seldom sought, and when offered is rarely accepted. In cases 

 of difficulty, " the matter is generally laid before the agent, whose decision and advice are 

 accepted in good faith." The only troubles which the agent had encountered in this 

 modern Utopia, during his five months' tenure of oihce, had arisen from the inclination 

 of the people for gambling. On this subject he reports that " when a crowd of them met 

 at the agency, it was the custom to spread a blanket anywhere and indulge their favorite 

 proclivity. This," he adds, " led to petty thieving in several cases, which I promptly 

 punished, and broke up the indulgence in this locality." After mentioning some trouble 

 between the Navajos and the neighbouring Moquis, caused by horse-stealing, which was 

 settled in a council of the tribes, and a single case of homicide in self-defence, he remarks : 

 " This is the sum total of sins of commission among 21,000 ignorant and laucivilized 

 American Indians, as reported to me in a little over five months, — -and the NaA'ajos in- 

 variably report the wrong-doings of their neighbours." To this statement this clear- 

 headed and benevolent agent, Mr. Vandever, adds the natural inquiry : " Can any com- 

 munity of like numbers in the civilized world make so good a showing ? " It should be 

 mentioned, as an evidence that the virtues as well as the accomplishments of the Navajos 

 are mainly of home growth, that there had been no missionaries among them, and that 

 only about a hundred of them knew " enough of English for ordinary intercourse." 



Something should be said of that other branch of the southern Tinneh, the Apaches, 

 who have until recently borne such a formidable reputation. In the opinion of careful 

 inquirers, this reputation, if naturally earned, has not been properly deserved. As is well 

 known, the early Spanish settlers brought with them the conquering and grasping mood 

 which then prevailed in their mother country, and which allowed in the native tribes no 

 other choice than that between absolute subjection and perpetual hostility. The 

 Apaches, safe in their fastnesses of desert and mountain, c[uick-witted and resolute, 

 refused to submit, and were compelled to fight. Two centuries of this exasperating war- 

 fare bred in them an embittered temper, not natural to their race. Some years elapsed 

 after the transfer of their country from Mexican to Anglo-American rule before they were 

 made to understand that their new neighbors desired neither to enslave nor to exter- 

 minate them. As this conviction grew, a marked change has appeared in their disposi- 

 tion and conduct. Those who have been gathered on reservations and well treated begin 

 to show the natural qualities of their stock. In 1889, the Apaches on the Mescalero reser- 

 vation in New Mexico numbered 474. The agent, Mr. Bennett, reports of them : — 

 " Their general behaviour and conduct have been most excellent, not a crime having been 

 committed by them during the year either against whites or Indians, and not a case of 



