SHALL INDIAN LORE BE SAVED 137 



told of cases, in two widely separated and unrelated tribes, where young 

 men learning of the arrival of an inquirer, have come together and invented 

 strange and mysterious stories which, for a price, they related as being of 

 the tribal traditions. This is said to have happened only a few years ago, 

 and the stories told were accepted in perfect good faith. 



Some years ago the American Museum of Natural History chose the 

 best possible sort of an investigator when it selected David Duvall, a young 

 Blackfoot Indian deeply interested in the history of his people, and engaged 

 him to collect and sift material concerning them, which was later turned 

 over to an ethnologist. Unfortunately Duvall died in the summer of 1911, 

 but it is quite within the bounds of possibility that on other reservations 

 other men of his type may be found and may be induced to do good and hon- 

 est work such as he did. 



It is greatly to be wished that funds available to push this work be 

 found without delay. So far as the Plains tribes go, I know of nothing more 

 important. 



If the acquisition of real knowledge about our aboriginal population is 

 necessary for the Plains — with which I have long been chiefly concerned — 

 no less is it necessary for the whole of North America. That a vast deal of 

 work remains to be done in the Southwest, and a vast deal in the North and 

 Northwest. The remarkable discoveries reported by Stefansson are 

 suggestive of what we may still hope to learn, provided the right persons 

 take hold of the work in the right way. 



Long as I have been associated with certain tribes of Plains Indians I am 

 continually discovering new facts of interest; facts that shed fresh light on 

 the ways of thought and ancient habits of these people. 



Our knowledge of most tribes still remains only superficial. Almost 

 every article that gets into print, about those Indians that I know best, 

 shows that in many respects they are misunderstood and that statements 

 are being made about them which the facts do not warrant. If this is true 

 of the people that I know about, who can doubt that it is true also of other 

 tribes about which I know nothing? The situation is one of great difficulty. 



One may be pardoned for not accepting with absolute confidence the 

 material brought back by the average young collector of to-day, who how- 

 ever hard he may work and however sincere his interest may be, cannot in 

 the nature of things come — in the course of a few weeks or months or even 

 years — to understand one so different from himself in viewpoint and ex- 

 perience as is the stone-age man with whom he speaks. 



I sometimes wonder what the reader of a hundred years hence will 

 believe about the North American Indians. It is quite certain that while 

 in what has been written about them he will find much that is true, he will 

 also find many false statements together with a vast number of theories 

 and conclusions not justified by facts. 



