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homes which are primitive in the extreme. When they return their parents, or more probably their grandparents, may destroy the white man’s clothing that they wear and hold ceremonials to purge them of their contact with the white man. Even if the work with these Indians is highly efficient, it will take three generations to prepare them for modern life. These Indians are not ready for the schools and other agencies maintained by the states and local governments, nor are the states in which they live ready to receive them. With the most favorable developments it hardly seems probable that the national government can completely work out its Indian problem in less that from thirty to forty years, although its expenditures for this object should materially decline long before that if the work is well done.

The belief is that it is a sound policy of national economy to make generous expenditures in the next few decades with the object of winding up the national administration of Indian affairs. The people of the United States have the opportunity, if they will, to write the closing chapters of the history of the relationship of the national government and the Indians. The early chapters contain little of which the country may be proud. It would be something of a national atonement to the Indians if the closing chapters should disclose the national government supplying the Indians with an Indian Service which would be a model for all governments concerned with the development and advancement of a retarded race.