At last, one weary day in the schoolroom, a new idea presented itself to me.  It was a new way of solving the problem of my inner self.  I liked it.  Thus I resigned my position as teacher; and now I am in an Eastern city, following the long course of study I have set for myself.  Now, as I look back upon the recent past, I see it from a distance, as a whole.  I remember how, from morning till evening, many specimens of civilized peoples visited the Indian school.  The city folks with canes and eyeglasses, the countrymen with sunburnt cheeks and clumsy feet, forgot their relative social ranks in an ignorant curiosity.  Both sorts of these Christian palefaces were alike astounded at seeing the children of savage warriors so docile and industrious.

As answers to their shallow inquiries they received the students’ sample work to look upon.  Examining the neatly figured pages, and gazing upon the Indian girls and boys bending over their books, the white visitors walked out of the schoolhouse well satisfied:  they were educating the children of the red man!  They were paying a liberal fee to the government employees in whose able hands lay the small forest of Indian timber.

In this fashion many have passed idly through the Indian schools during the last decade, afterward to boast of their charity to the North American Indian.  But few there are who have paused to question whether real life or long-lasting death lies beneath this semblance of civilization.

THE GREAT SPIRIT

When the spirit swells my breast I love to roam leisurely among the green hills; or sometimes, sitting on the brink of the murmuring Missouri, I marvel at the great blue overhead.  With half-closed eyes I watch the huge cloud shadows in their noiseless play upon the high bluffs opposite me, while into my ear ripple the sweet, soft cadences of the river’s song.  Folded hands lie in my lap, for the time forgot.  My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand.  Drifting clouds and tinkling waters, together with the warmth of a genial summer day, bespeak with eloquence the loving Mystery round about us.  During the idle while I sat upon the sunny river brink, I grew somewhat, though my response be not so clearly manifest as in the green grass fringing the edge of the high bluff back of me.

At length retracing the uncertain footpath scaling the precipitous embankment, I seek the level lands where grow the wild prairie flowers.  And they, the lovely little folk, soothe my soul with their perfumed breath.

Their quaint round faces of varied hue convince the heart which leaps with glad surprise that they, too, are living symbols of omnipotent thought.  With a child’s eager eye I drink in the myriad star shapes wrought in luxuriant color upon the green.  Beautiful is the spiritual essence they embody.