“I do not say that this harm is wrought wilfully—­on the contrary, I know it is not.  They are noble and well-meaning men and women who carry the gospel into the North.  Many of them I know and respect and admire—­Father Desplaines, Father Crossett, the good Father O’Reiley, and Duncan Fitzgilbert, of my mother’s faith.  These men are good men; noble men, and the true friends of the Indians; in health and in sickness, in plague, famine, and adversity these men shoulder the red man’s burden, feed, clothe, and doctor him, and nurse him back to health—­or bury him.  With these I have no quarrel, nor with the religion they teach—­in its theory.  It is not bad.  It is good.  These men are my friends.  They visit me, and are welcome whenever they come.

“Each of these has begged me to allow him to establish a mission among my Indians.  And my answer is always the same—­’No!’ And I point to the mission centres already established.  It is then they tell me that the deplorable condition exists, not because of the mission, but despite it.”  He paused with a gesture of impatience. “Because! Despite!  A quibble of words!  If the fact remains, what difference does it make whether it is because or despite?  It must be a great comfort to the unfortunate one who is degraded, diseased, damned, to know that his degradation, disease, and damnation, were wrought not because, but despite.  I think God laughs—­even as he pities.  But, in spite of all they can do, the fact remains.  I do not ask you to believe me.  Go and see it with your own eyes, and then if you dare, come back and establish another plague spot in God’s own wilderness.  The Indian rapidly acquires all the white man’s vices—­and but few of his virtues.

“Stop and think what it means to experiment with the future of a people.  To overthrow their traditions:  to confute their beliefs and superstitions, and to subvert their gods!  And what do you offer them in return?  Other traditions; other beliefs; another God—­and education!  Do you dare to assume the responsibility?  Do you dare to implant in the minds of these people an education—­a culture—­that will render them for ever dissatisfied with their lot, and send many of them to the land of the white man to engage in a feeble and hopeless struggle after that which is, for them, unattainable?”

“But it is not unattainable!  They——­”

“I know your sophisms; your fabrication of theory!” MacNair interrupted her almost fiercely.  “The facts!  I have seen the rum-sodden wrecks, the debauched and soul-warped men and women who hang about your frontier towns, diseased in body and mind, and whose greatest misfortune is that they live.  These, Miss Chloe Elliston, are the real monuments to your education.  Do you dare to drive one hundred to certain degradation that is worse than fiery hell, that you may point with pride to one who shall attain to the white man’s standard of success?”