“I’ve heard a graduating class read theses, sing cantatas, and deliver sounding orations; then I’ve seen those same young fellows, three months later, squatting in tepees and eating with their fingers.  It’s a common thing for our ‘sweet girl graduates’ to lay off their white commencement-day dress, their high-heeled shoes and their pretty hats, for the shawl and the moccasin.  We teach them to make sponge-cake and to eat with a fork, but they prefer dog-soup and a horn spoon.  Of course there are exceptions, but most of them forget much faster than they learn.”

“Our Eastern ideas of Mr. Lo are somewhat out of line with the facts,” I acknowledged.  “He’s sort of a hero with us.  I remember several successful plays with romantic Indians in the lead.”

“I know!” My friend laughed shortly.  “I saw some of them.  If you like, however, I’ll tell you how it really happens.  I know a story.”

When we had finished supper the doctor told me the story of Running Elk.  The night was heavy with unusual odors and burdened by weird music; the whisper of a lively multitude came to us, punctuated at intervals by distant shouts or shots or laughter.  On either hand the campfires stretched away like twinkling stars, converging steadily until the horns joined each other away out yonder in the darkness.  It was a suitable setting for an epic tale of the Sioux.

“I’ve grown gray in this service,” the old man began, “and the longer I live the less time I waste in trying to understand the difference between the Indian race and ours.  I’ve about reached the conclusion that it’s due to some subtle chemical ingredient in the blood.  One race is lively and progressive, the other is sluggish and atavistic.  The white man is ever developing, he’s always advancing, always expanding; the red man is marking time or walking backward.  It is only a matter of time until he will vanish utterly.  He’s different from the negro.  The negro enlarges, up to a certain limit, then he stops.  Some people claim, I believe, that his skull is sutured in such a manner as to check his brain development when his bones finally harden and set.  The idea sounds reasonable; if true, there will never be a serious conflict between the blacks and the whites.  But the red man differs from both.  To begin with, his is not a subject race by birth.  Physically he is as perfect as either; Nature has endowed him with an intellect quite as keen as the white man’s, and with an open articulation of the skull which permits the growth of his brain.  Somewhere, nevertheless, she has cunningly concealed a flaw, a flaw which I have labored thirty years to find.

“I have a theory—­you know all old men have theories—­that it is a physical thing, as tangible as that osseous constriction of the cranium which holds the negro in subjection, and that if I could lay my finger on it I could raise the Indian to his ancient mastery and to a dignified place among the nations; I could change them from a vanishing people into a race of rulers, of lawgivers, of creators.  At least that used to be my dream.