636 PROGRESS AND POSITION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 



ably familiar with the valuable publications of that department. An 

 act of Congress twenty years ago appropriated £4,000 a year to the 

 Smithsonian Institution for the continuance of researches in North 

 American anthropology. The control of the Bureau was intrusted to 

 the able hands of Major Powell, who gathered round him a band of 

 skilled workers, many of whom had been previously engaged on ethno- 

 graphic research under the direction of the Geographical and Geological 

 Survey of the Eocky Mountain region. In field work and in office work, 

 to use Major Powell's convenient distinction, ample return has ever 

 since been rendered to the United States Government for the money 

 thus appropriated, which has since been increased to £8,000 a year. 

 Our own bureau of ethnology would have a wider sphere of operations, 

 and be concerned with a greater number of races. It would tend to 

 remove from us the reproach that has in too many cases not been 

 without foundation — that we have been content to govern races by the 

 strong hand without caring to understand them, and have thus been 

 the cause of injustice and oppression from ignorance rather than from 

 malevolence. If that were only a record of the past, we might be con- 

 tent with mere unavailing regret; but the colonial empire is still 

 expanding, and we and our competitors in that field are still absorbing 

 new districts — a practice which will probably continue as long as any 

 spot of ground remains on the face of the globe occupied by an unciv- 

 ilized race. 



Would it not be worth while at this juncture to extend to the peoples 

 of Africa, for instance, the principles and methods of the Ethnographic 

 Survey — to study thoroughly all their physical characters, and at the 

 same time to get an insight into the working of their minds, the senti- 

 ments and ideas that affect them most closely, their convictions of right 

 and wrong, their systems of law, the traditions of the past that they cher- 

 ish, and the rude accomplishments they possess? If for such a service 

 investigators like Dr. Eoth, who began his researches in Queensland 

 by so close a study of the languages and dialects of the people that he 

 thoroughly won their confidence, could be found, the public would soon 

 learn the practical value of anthropological research. If the consider- 

 ations which I have endeavored to urge upon you should lead not only 

 the scientific student but the community at large to look upon that 

 which is strange in the habits and ways of thinking of uncivilized 

 peoples as representing with more or less accuracy a stage in that long 

 continuity of mental progress without which civilized peoples would 

 not be what and where they are, it could not but favorably affect the 

 principles and practice of colonization. Tout comprendre c'est tout 

 pardonner. The more intimate our acquaintance with the races we 

 have to deal with and to subjugate, the more we shall find what it 

 means to stand with them on the same platform of common humanity. 

 If the object of government be, as it ought to be, the good of the gov- 

 erned, it is for the governing race to fit itself for the task by laying to 

 heart the lessons and adopting the processes of practical anthropology. 



