24
THE
CHEM AW A
AM ERICAN
limits. But only comparatively recently have either the descendants of
Africans brought to the United States to be slaves, or the decendants
of the tribes that Spanish, French and English explorers found in North
America, come to formal assertion of this opinion. The wisest of the
Afro-Americans now stress race self-respect and independence. The
Society of American Indians includes persons of pure and mixed strains,
who have organized to make the Indian race more assertive of its rights
and more active and eloquent in pressing its cause before legislative
bodies and the court of public opinion. That is to say, the day has
passed when the red Indian will appear by proxy at Washington and
usually be protected by a white “ good friend” sent from an Indian
Rights Association or from the Mohonk conference. He has his own
educated leaders, college and university graduates, who can state his
and their needs, aspirations and criticisms.
Goverment schools on the reservation, institutions in the East like Car
lisle and Hampton Institute, and the colleges and universities, have be-
gun to make race champions and leaders out of both young men and young
women who have been treated as wards with potential powers justifying
such an investment. No wonder then that race interest shows itself in
such fortunate youth, and that they insist that the race be rated as other
than derivative. Since proof to the contrary is not accessible, at least
in a form that closes the door to debate, the goverment is both shrewd
and just now in deciding that so far as it teaches history the red Indian
is a distinct type.—The Christian Science Monitor.