470 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
the arts, and even a social science—which have been influenced by our 
relations with the Indians at different times and in differing ways. 
Some of these influences have been mediated directly, others indirectly. 
Contacts with the Indian on the frontier have by no means been the 
source of all of them. 
In summing up, we may ask: how deeply have such influences pene- 
trated our culture? To what extent are our relations with the Indians 
one key to our differentiation as Americans, not only culturally but 
psychologically? Constance Rourke once wrote, “The Backswoods- 
man conquered the Indian, but the Indian also conquered him. He 
ravaged the land and was ravaged in turn.” Phillips D. Carleton, 
concluding his comments on the captivity literature, writes: “It em- 
phasizes the fact that it was the line of fluid frontiers receding into the 
West that changed the colonists into a new people; they conquered the 
Indian but he was the hammer that beat out a new race on the anvil 
of the continent.” 7° Carl Jung, who has probably analyzed more per- 
sons of various nationalities than anyone else, thought he could discern 
an Indian component in the character structure of his American 
patients, and D. H. Lawrence asked whether a dead Indian is nought. 
“Not that the Red Indian will ever possess the broadlands of America,” 
he said and then added, “But his ghost will.” | 
In America we faced the Indian on receding frontiers for a long 
period; but outside the frontier there was the shadow of the Indian. 
This shadow is still upon us. We still mouth words and idioms that 
reflect intimate contacts with the aborigines of our land. We still 
make use of plants originally cultivated by them. We wear derivative 
forms of the footgear they wore. We have collected objects made by 
them in our homes and in our museums. Our artists have found in- 
spiration in their artistic modes of expression. We constantly see 
the Indian sweep past our eyes on the movie screen. He persists in 
our historical novels and westerns. In 1954, “The Leatherstocking 
Saga” reappeared, compressed into one handsome volume. We Ameri- 
cans have seen the Indian come and go on the commonest national coins 
we have fingered. The first Bible to be printed in colonial America was 
in the Indian language, John Eliot’s translation of the Old and New 
Testament into an Algonkian tongue. Over the generations thousands 
of American men have belonged to the more-than-a-century-old Im- 
proved Order of Red Men. American anthropologists have labored 
most industriously to provide more and more authentic information 
about aboriginal modes of life and the influence of American culture 
on the Indian. The Indian has never been rejected from the American 
consciousness. Perhaps his shadow upon us is even disappearing—he 
has become a part of us: in the “Dictionary of American Biography” 
2 Phillips D. Carleton, The Indian captivity, Amer. Lit., No. 15, p. 180, 1943. 
