4
THE
CHEM AW A . AM ERICAN
in these respects to educate the white man. We have talked so much
about the education of the Indian, but along certain lines the white man
needs to be educated. I think he is ready for it. I thing the white men
of the country are sincerely ready to be shown the true state of affairs,
and that they will co-operate in working toward a better state, but they
have got to be educated, and it is up to you, the American Indians, to
perform that process of education. It was tried in the first hundred
years of the country’s history, by the medium of warfare, but the Indian
did not educate the white man very successfully in that way. There
are other ways in which it cannot be done any more successfully. In
vective and complaint against minor things will never accomplish it.
It has got to be a purposeful study under competent leadership, such as
is growing up now in this very Society, discarding for the present the
smaller things, working along the lines of the greater things. That is
the policy that is going to accomplish results; and by your actions, by
your character, by your influence in writing and in speech, and through
the influence of this Society, I believe it possible for the North American
Indians to educate the white man in such a way that this wall of mis
understanding will be broken down, and that the two races will work
side by side toward a greater citizenship and more freedom in every
respect.
And so I am rejoicing to-day in the possibilities of this Society. In
the past one great difficulty has been that there has been no adequate
organization in which the Indian and the white man could get together
to work out these benefits. There has to be in every movement some
central body that will crystallize the thought, that will crystallize this
tendency and desire to reform, and put it into action and put it into
reality. Now this Society, under the leadership that it has, and admit
ting as it does, to active and associate membership, the members of both
races, I believe is a power that is going to accomplish great things, and
I hope in succeeding years it will have a growth and development com
mensurate with the importance of its purposes.