THE INDIAN NO PROBLEM. l^ 



by practicing the reality of the brotherhood he preaches. 



As his work is to lift into the higher life the people whom 

 he ser\-es, he must not, under any pretence, give the lie to 

 what he preaches by discouraging any individual Indian from 

 going into higher and better surroundings ; but on the con- 

 trary-, his duty is to encourage and help the Indian to do that. 

 If he fails in thus helping and encouraging the Indian, he 

 is false to his own teaching and stands in the way of progress. 



Investigation proves that no Indians within the limits of 

 the United States have acquired any sort of capacity to meet 

 and cope with the whites in civilized pursuits, who did not 

 gain that ability by going among the whites and out from the 

 tribes, and that many have gained this ability by so going 

 out. Theorizing citizenship ability into a whole body of 

 people segregated away from citizens is a slow operation. 



The Indians can never come to understand or use Ameri- 

 can citizenship theoretically taught to them on Indian reserv- 

 ations. They must get into the sicim of Americcni citizenship, 

 and like ourselves feel the touch of it day after day, until like 

 us they become saturated with the spirit of it, and thus like 

 us become equal to it. 



When, where and why has there ever been any problem 

 about the Indians themselves? 



A number of questions followed the completion of this 

 paper. Mr. John B. Rhodes asked, " Do the graduates and 

 other students, going out from such schools as Carlisle, profit 

 b}' their education, or do the}- degenerate and go back to their 

 original condition ]* ' " General Pratt invited attention to the 

 beginning of his address, giving examples after a test of a 

 quajter of a century, and said that the question was the most 

 common one asked about educated Indians. The doubt such 

 inquiries indicated was caused by the publication of many 



