Page:The American Indian.djvu/24

2 so large a place in our own culture that it may be doubted if there is anywhere in all the land a normal individual who has not acquired some interest in the Indian's history. On every hand we hear: How came the Indian here? Who were his ancestors? What knowledge and habits did he bring with him? What has he accomplished of his own initiative and how did he achieve it? And it is right and proper that every one of us should be interested in these questions, because we have not only displaced the Indian in this land but we have absorbed a great deal of his culture. For instance, what a void we should create if, by some magical power, we could strike from our history, geography and literature all that pertains to his race! Again, what havoc would be wrought by his withdrawal from painting, sculpture and decorative art! But these losses, incalculably great as they are, would be lost in the overwhelming economic vacuity that would result from the obliteration of maize, cacao, manioc, the potato, the squash, coca, quinine, tobacco and all the other numerous and nameless contributions the Indian has made to our culture. From that eventful day in 1492 when Columbus first laid eyes upon the Indian, down to this very hour, he has been the most studied of peoples. No other race of the world can so stir the imagination of the European. It is thus plain that we have before us one of our greatest cultural assets, the source of the most original traits of our present-day culture and a heritage upon which we may realize more and more. Just the other day a student of Indian life in Dakota conceived the idea of training our farmers to raise maize in the great Northwest, in spite of the short season, by using the methods developed by the Indians of the same locality long before the white man's foot intruded. Again, the fashionable lady who goes shopping tomorrow will select new and striking designs on ribbons and silks that are the advance products of a great revival in American decorative art, the foundation for which was laid by our museum collectors and scientific students of Indian life. It behooves us, therefore, to systematize and extend our knowledge of this vanishing race whose life has been trampled under foot in the ruthless march of culture's evolution, but