Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 8.djvu/381

 RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN AGENT. 373 are causative accompaniments of progress. With us it was lawful evolution ; in truth there was no other way, and yet we require that the Indian shall pass to our social and industrial status by remaining on the outside. How absurd and how unjust to him. Evolution may be rapid or slow, but knowledge and adapta- tion are essential to it, and hence he must be taught ; he must have access to the white man's accumulations. If he live in houses and have artificially prepared food, he must have a knowledge of hygienic laws in order to survive, and it was the first duty of the government when it compelled him to abandon his aboriginal mode of life to induct him by the natural entryway to the higher type of existence. Let us say that the reservation system was in that direction, but it was in practice only a half-hearted experiment, for in carrying out the design, it was entrusted to its enemies. Was it ever known in the United States that the Indian Department in- structed its agents to see that Indians' houses be constructed in conformity with sanitary requirements? Instead, they are the merest dens, unfitted for human habitations; real pest houses in which no race, civilized or savage, could long tarry. Look at the other side a moment. Our libraries are plethoric of books upon physiology, hygiene, housebuilding, domestic sanitation, etc., and yet the people who have access to them employ architects to plan and mechanics to construct their dwellings, and after that, if living in cities, they are unde/ supervision of health boards and compelled to habits of clean- liness promotive of their own and the public welfare. From this cursory and incomplete view of the subject, any one can see with half an eye that the Indian, in the vernacular of the street, "is not in it"; he is not involved with the civil- izing processes and until he is there is no progress for him. To expect more is to be disappointed, for it is an expectation that could not be realized with any race. Booker T. Wash- ington understands the problem and is solving it every day.