Our transition from our natural life to the artificial life of civilization has resulted in great spiritual and moral loss.

     In effect, the the European who came among us said, "You are a child. You cannot make or invent anything. We have the only God, and He has given us authority to teach and govern all the peoples of the earth. In proof of this we have His Book, a supernatural guide, every word of which is true and binding. We are a chosen people - a superior race. We have a heaven with golden gates fenced in from all pagans and unbelievers, and a hell where the souls of such are tortured eternally. We are honorable, truthful, refined, religious, peaceful; we hate cruelty and injustice; our business is to educate, Christianize, and protect the rights and property of the weak and the uncivilized."

     Those of us who listened to the preaching of the missionaries came to believe that the white man alone had a real God, and that the things which the Indian had previously held sacred were inventions of the devil. This undermined the very foundations of our philosophy. It very often did so without substituting the Christian philosphy, not because the innate qualities of the Christian philosophy were unworthy, but  because the inconsistent behavior of its advocates made it hard for us to accept or understand.

     A few of us did, in good faith, accept the white man's God. The black-robed preacher was like the Indian himself in seeking no soft things, and as he followed the fortunes of the tribes in the wilderness, the tribesmen learned to trust and to love him.

     Then came other missionaries who had houses to sleep in, and gardens planted, and who hesitated to sleep in the Indian's wigwarm or eat of his wild meat, but for most part held themselves aloof and urged their own dress and ways upon their converts. These, too, had their following in due time.

     But in the main it is true that while the Indian eagerly sought guns and gunpowder, knives and whiskey, a few articles of dress, and, later horses, he did not of himself desire the white man's food, his houses, his books, his government, or his religion.

     The two great "civilizers," after all, were whiskey and gunpowder, and from the hour we accepted these we had in reality sold our birthright, and all unconsciously consented to our own ruin.

     Once we had departed from the broad democracy and pure idealism of our prime, and had undertaken to enter upon the world's game of competition, our rudder was unshipped, our compass lost, and the whirlwind and tempest of materialism and love of conquest tossed us to and fro like leaves in a wind.