i8o 



L eadlng A rtlcles. 



Revieic of Reviews. l/S/OS. 



HOW UNCLE SAM ABSORBS THE INDIAN. 



The digestive and assimilative powers of Uncle 

 Sam form a record in ethnology-. He is not merely 

 transfonning into genuine American ilesh and blood 

 the heterogeneous ingredients of the various Euro- 

 pean States ; he is slowly and at last incorporating 

 in himself the aborigines whose land he has taken, 

 and who are known to history as Indians. In the 

 American Review of Reviews Mr. Charles Harvey 

 describes the process. The " five civihsed tribes. ' 

 namely, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, 

 and Seminoles, comprise only about a third of the 

 Indians of the L'nited States. For two-thirds of a 

 centur\- they have been go\-erning themselves, with 

 legislatures, executives and courts modelled on those 

 of the United States. They are now admitted as 

 citizens, as part and parcel of the new State of 

 Oklahoma, which includes the old Indian territory. 

 In the United States, apart from Alaska, there are 

 294,000 Indians, 260,000 of whom are west of the 

 Mississippi. 



X HYBRID RACE. 



The five tribes number 91,000, of whom 25.0C0 

 are full-bloods. 20,000 are negroes or of mixed 

 negro blood, and 44,000 are mixed Indian and white. 

 2000 are whites who have been adopted into the 

 tribes through intermarriage. It was once thought 

 that race price would prevent the Anglo-Saxon from 

 mixing his blood with the Indian, as French and 

 Spanish had done. But Anglo-Saxons have from of 

 old taken to themselves Indian wives. '' At all the 

 Indian reservations of any importance the mixed 

 breeds are in the majority." The full-bloods are 

 decreasing, not only proportionately, but absolutely. 

 But, thanks to the hybrid race that is forming, the 

 Indian population, as a whole, is increasing. The 

 Government are bent on transforming them, by edu- 

 cational and other methods, into full-blown .Ameri- 

 can citizens. At present, 



Of the 1S7.000 Iiidi,in8 under the direct supervision of the 

 national Government. 117.000 wear citizens' clothes wholl.v, 

 and 44.000 do so in part: most of these reside in ordinary 

 dwelling-houses instead of in tepees or shacks; 65.000 can 

 read English; 59.000 can talk enough English to make them- 

 selves readily understood; while 40,030 are memhers of 

 some Christian denomination. In every one of these par- 

 ticulars, moreover, striking advances have been made in the 

 past dozen years. 



There are at present only 26.000 blanket Indians 



in the United States. 



THE RICHEST COMMUNITY IN THE WORLD. 

 Thanks to the paternal action of the Government 

 and the wealth of the soil, the richest population per 

 capita in the world consists of Indians. Mr. Harvey 

 says : — 



The richest Indians in the United States, however, are 

 the Osages, in the territory of Oklahoma's north-east 

 corner, south of Kansas and west of the Cberokee nation. 

 They are not onl.v the richest Indians, but they are the 

 richest community v^'' capita on the globe. The interest 

 at 5 per cent., on" the 8,372.000 dols. held in trust for tliem 

 by the United States GoTernment, and the revenue which 

 they obtain froni grazing lands, and their royalties on oil 

 and gas amount to 706 dollars a year for each man. 

 woman, and child of the nineteen hundred members of the 

 tribe, which means two or three times that much per 



family. In addition, many individual members of th& 

 tribe "liave good-sized incomes from homesteads and farms. 

 The full-bloods are in the minority in the Osages. as in 

 nearly all the other tribes, and they are diminishing pro- 

 portionately every year. As would naturally be inferred 

 from their cloth of civilisation, wholly or in part, two- 

 thirds of them can read, almost all speak English. ar.d 

 all live in civilised habitations. . . 



.\11 the Indians who are being transformed into citizens 

 are workers. 



ANTIPATHY TO THE NEGRO. 



.\thletic competitions between white and Indian. 

 schools help to break down the race barrier. In 

 manv callings and man\ States persons of Indian 

 blood are prominent. Amongst others mentioned is- 

 a Tuscarora Indian, J. N. B. Hewitt, who is an 

 authoiky on Indian linguistics, ni\thology and socio- 

 logy, and holds a post in the Bureau of Ethnolog\. 

 An average intelligent Indian has a liking for mili- 

 tary life. It is a strange fact that the mixed breeds 

 are mostly Democrats, and the full-blooded 

 Cherokees are Republicans. But 



in Indian territory, as elsewhere, the colour lice is drawn 

 The average mixedrbrcei Indian has as much racial auti- 

 patliy to the negro as has the average white man of the 

 south. 



It is expected that before long Indian legislators 

 will be sent to Washington. 



PHANTOM FUNERALS. 



In the Ocaili Review for June, a writer, " A.G..-\., 

 in an article entitled " Some Sidelights on Occult- 

 i.^-m," tells the following weird stories of phantom 

 funerals which are prophetic of approaching death. 

 He records two of these spectral dress rehearsals of 

 the genuine funeral : — 



My doctor told me that one day il think rather late), 

 ridiiig home from visiting a patient, he felt himself beset 

 by a multitude of phantom mourners; they pressed in 30 

 closely on every side that it was impossible ti escape. 

 Hia liorse. covered with sweat and foam, trembled and 

 snorted in an agony of fear. The rider and his horse 

 were swept irresistibly along till the wide open gates of a 

 fine country residence were reached; in the twinkling ot 

 an eve the' host swept in at the gates and up the avenue. 

 The horse, the moment it felt itself free, tore homewards 

 like lightning. A very short time afterwards the owner 

 of that fine place died, and a real funeral procession paceil 

 solemnly down the avenue and out of the gates, through 

 which the phantom mourners had so recently pus.sed. 



The second incident was related to me by a friend who 

 lives in a village on the coast in South Wales. She gave 

 permission to a servant to go home for the night, on the 

 understanding that she was to be back at a certain hour 

 on the following day. The next day, .-it the given hour. 

 the servant did not arrive, and my friend, as time went 

 on. felt uneasy. At length the maid arrived, looking very 

 tired Before her mistress could ask for any explanation, 

 she said: "Oh! I am sorrv to be late, but I h;id an aiffut 

 experience last night. Just after I left the village and was 

 walking through the lane, I was overtaken by a Funeral 

 Procession. , 



"I was so frightened, but could not get away; it seemed 

 to fill up tlie wiiole place, and they crowded in and jostled 

 me. and I felt so bruised, and wlieu at last they went 

 on and left me. I was so tired and sore I could hardly get 

 home, .and scarcely closed my eyes all night." My friend 

 told me that the woman was quite solder, and she could 

 rely on her word. These processions are seen l>efore ;\ 

 death. 



The storv' " Married by Degrees," in which the 

 problem of alternating personality is dealt with from 

 a marital point of view, is concluded in this month's 

 Broad Vicivs. 



