SPECIAL CAPACITIES OF AMERICAN INDIANS 



W. CARSON RYAN, JR. 



Director of Education, United States Indian Service 

 I 



Fortunately it is possible to attempt an appreciation of the contributions 

 of American Indians to present-day civilization without having to combat 

 the notion of racial inferiority. 



Indians are not inferior, however. Traditional ideas of the mental su- 

 periority or inferiority of races, which had a considerable revival during the 

 early years of American intelligence measurement, have recently been sub- 

 jected to a more discriminating analysis at the hands of competent psycholo- 

 gists. Garth, whose findings have been used repeatedly by adherents of the 

 theory of mental inferiority of certain races, including Indians, and who 

 himself confesses to an earlier conviction that there was racial inferiority, 

 now says in his 1931 book on Race Psychology: 



The author is convinced, after an examination of the literature, that we have never, 

 with all our searching, found indisputable evidence for belief in mental differences which 

 are essentially racial. Differences as found can usually be shown to be due to one of two 

 causes, modification (nurture) or selection, and often these are complicated by the results 

 of careless measuring. 1 



Speaking of his own Indian measurements, which have been carried on 

 over a period of many years with thousands of Indian children of various 

 tribes, Garth finds that "education tends to reduce to a minimum, or even 

 nothing, the effect of the presence of Indian blood in the educated mixed- 

 blood individual." 



Yoder, reviewing the evidence a year or two prior to Garth's published 

 summary, came to much the same conclusion. He says: 



The consensus of competent scientific thought, contemplating the inability of mental 

 testers to define intelligence, the inadequacy of all attempts to take such factors as edu- 

 cation, social status, and language into consideration, and the deficiencies of testing con- 



1 Garth, Thomas Russell. Race psychology: A study of racial mental differences. 

 With an introduction by R. S. Woodworth. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1931. 



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