There is nothing in which I take more pride in my secret moments than the little stories I am going to tell you. The first is about an old Indian woman, wife of a man who stands very high among his people as a healer of diseases. He is a heathen, and his wife is a devout Baptist. She keeps a neat cabin, with a little row of family graves right behind it, and the other little cabins about it. At the time of which I am speaking there was such a demand for pottery that everybody said, "Oh, please send me a curio!" Whether it were a senator's wife or a schoolgirl, they all wanted curios; and the curio time had passed away, I thought, forever. I found that the old Indian woman could make the pottery; she was nearly seventy years of age, and she made fourteen curios which she sold for $450; and she was so happy because there was money to help build the church.

We had among us what was called the Snake uprising. They were just as sincere in rising against the United States authorities as our people were in rising against taxation without representation. I was in a great gathering of the Snakes, hundreds of men and not another woman or a white person there; and they all listened while I told them to go home and send their children to school. They are supposed to be terrible people, and the Government has sent some of them to the penitentiary. I saw one of them when he came back from prison, with his long hair shaven. I went to see him about some chairs he was making for me-dreadful thing, encouraging these Indian industries! He does silver work and woodwork, and his wife makes baskets. And why shouldn't they, these old people on the reservations who can't do anything else?

S. J. BARROWS.-When Colonel Pratt puts on his war paint and gets out his tomahawk and goes after the ethnologist, I want to be pretty close on his trail. We have had a paper here this morning that has received some attention and some approval. That paper was invited by Mr. Maynard, who is the chairman of the Press Committee, because he wanted to show the people of this country in a brief way what had been done for the Indians and what should be done for them. I want to say that the lady who has written that paper is the best ethnologist in the United States. She is the only woman who has a fellowship in Harvard College—a fellowship created for her by which she could pursue her researches. She is a philanthropist and an ethnologist, for it is quite possible to combine the two. I have no respect for the cold-hearted ethnologist who simply goes to delve in the past of the Indian. But this woman, who led the way in allotting the lands of the Indian, who has made the most profound study of Indian music, showing to the world what a contribution the Indian himself has made to musical ideas, is Miss Fletcher.

Let us remember when we speak so easily about the ethnologist, that we must not let the impression go out from this Conference that we have no sympathy with the past of the Indian. Miss

Robertson, who has just spoken, is also an ethnologist, and she can tell you that the Indians have never found it necessary to impose an oath in their legal proceedings.

Gen. C. H. Howard asked to have more time given to the consideration of the wants of the Pima Indians.

The Chairman said that the matter would be referred to the Business Committee.

Mr. SMILEY.-I believe work is the saving of any people, and if we can find steady work for all men and women throughout the world crime will decrease and the world will be lifted. We cannot get every Indian into Carlisle School to go out among the Quakers in Bucks County. That is a splendid work, but you cannot move all the Indians from where they are. An Indian is like a cat; he likes to stay in one place, and cannot be moved; and some of us are in the same position.

We must plan the industries for the people just where they are. An Indian can get $75 for making a basket, and for the bead work that they are making in the Mohonk Lodge a woman gets $108 a year when she would not get ten cents a year if she did not do that work. Some people pay $300 for a first-class basket, and it takes a woman a year to make it. People are storing them up to sell fifty years hence, and they will then get ten times what they are worth now. Farming is good, but this is also good, and so are all sorts of industries that stir up the Indians to work. industries should be encouraged.

I believe such

I want to endorse what has been said about agencies. That is the most important business before us, the condemnation of agencies.

Mrs. PAGE.-I would like to explain to many who were here at the time Mrs. Roe raised the money for Mohonk Lodge that she had not the industrial work in mind; it was simply to tide the Indians over an emergency. But it has grown; there was a need for it. We have taught the Indians that work on their allotments was the first need, but meanwhile we will provide work for the Indian women.

The Conference adjourned at 12.45 P. M.

Fourth Session.

Thursday Evening, October 22, 1903.

The President called the Conference to order at eight o'clock, and announced an address by Dr. Azel Ames on "Conditions in Porto Rico."

CONDITIONS IN PORTO RICO.

BY DR. AZEL AMES.

I count myself fortunate to have the opportunity in this presence and with this touch of elbows to say a word upon a subject which lies very near my heart, which is akin to that which has for so many years chiefly engrossed your thoughts and evoked your grand work.

My father's house was a station on the "underground railway," and I recall to-day with great gratification that many times my sister and myself returning from school were deftly side-tracked by my good mother and hurried off to bed early because, as we would afterwards learn, there was a fugitive slave in the house and we were not to know much about it. I can remember with gratification my good father's windows being purposely blown out by the concussion of a cannon because of his stanch advocacy of the abolition and temperance causes. I feel, then, that in a manner I was born into membership in the Lake Mohonk Conference, and I count it a privilege, a heritage of hope and of service, that I am permitted to work with you for the Indian, and not only for him but any who may be of the oppressed of any name in any land. It is a heritage than which no better could have been left by a noble father to a worshiping son.

We have thus far been considering the Indian, his relations and his needs, as you have been in the habit of discussing them here. I take it that it is under that "general welfare clause" which you seem to have adopted in the work of this Conference, which takes thought for all the oppressed everywhere, that you have taken what have been termed "the dependent peoples" into consideration, and thinking of our new ward, Porto Rico, somewhat in that light, have asked me to speak to you of its people from some acquaintance I have had with them.

I should not be quite just to them or to you if I did not say in the beginning that I fear they would resent in a measure the designation of dependent people," though in a measure they are such.

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My good friend, Larrinaga, one of the best civil engineers of the island, once strenuously objected to my speaking of Porto Rico as one of our new possessions," so I fear he would still more urgently object to my speaking of them as "dependent people." And the little island of Porto Rico never was dependent, as a whole, for anything upon anybody, but has been grandly in the way of working out her own salvation, and without very much fear" or "trembling." As a matter of fact, she has been financially rich in resources always, and a money lender. She paid four million dollars annually to the Spanish government to help out that profligate country, and her own expenses besides. The island as a whole, even under the Spanish flag, and the people of Porto Rico as a whole, have been less a dependent people than any other island in the Antilles. So that I think we may consider them as dependent upon us, since they came under our flag, for government and education only.

It is an interesting point that the Indians whom we have been considering are "wild men," who have never known much of any civilization; in fact, have known nothing, except it may have been in a prehistoric state, which my friend Colonel Pratt neither knows nor cares much about, but which nevertheless probably existed. They knew nothing of civilization except as it was brought to them. On the other hand, the people of Porto Rico have been for many centuries under the rule of a very ancient, if effete, civilization, which has been to them, I regret to say, not an "uplift," but only an oppressor, tax-gatherer, and taskmaster. But it is interesting to observe that the same conditions have come as results along either line. Filth, poverty, disease, and degradation have been the lot of the Indian as a wild nomad; and in a like manner have become the lot of the people of Porto Rico under the unbalanced conditions of a corrupt and degenerate civilization. It has been a class government, like that of De Tocqueville, the education and control of the few, as against the education and the uplifting of the many. And Porto Ricans, too, will get their relief from these illstarred conditions only as Christian Western civilization is brought to them. We hold them in trust for civilization."

It is but fair to say a word in regard to their antecedents. They were a very mixed people, though Porto Rico is the only "white island" in the Antilles. They have taken on almost every nation under the sun. I was much interested to find in the hill country there a few years ago a neighborhood of people with good old Scotch names and sandy hair. And with that interest in history of which I wish we all had more, including my friend Colonel Pratt, inquiring as to their antecedents I found that these people were the relics of the army opposed to Cromwell and defeated by him at the battle of Dunbar, many of whom he had, after their defeat, transported to the Barbadoes as "Redemptioners," and they had found their way after they had gained their liberty to Porto Rico. They were a good "leaven in the lump."

We found no schoolhouse in the island when we went in, and yet we found a keen appreciation of the advance of the mechanic arts as indicated by the little German sewing machine to be seen in almost every poor hillside hut all over the island. And I believe that the oil stove following it there would be a greater blessing than almost any other single thing. It would mean better physical and moral cleanliness, purer food, and purer life.

We found that their moral and religious natures had been very much sent to the rear." I was greatly impressed by the remark of Father Sherman (the son of General Tecumseh Sherman), who lived with me for awhile, made to me one day in disgust at the dinner table: "Major, there are in this island neither morals nor religion, and hardly priests." Such were the conditions we found,—a social life sadly at variance with what we had known, and the marriage relations little regarded. The governing church there has made marriage expensive. The priests have had the right to make their own charges, and their revenues from their people have been a large part of their support. Sixty-five dollars was for a long time the charge for marriage, and so marriage was necessarily waived by many and they lived in conjugal fidelity, but without the sanction of the sacrament. That laches could be forgiven by the church, although civil marriage could not, as casting contumely upon one of its sacraments, so the church, not designedly but practically, puts a premium upon these illicit relations. I hope the distinguished prelate of that church who is with us to-day [Archbishop Ryan] will find a way to help solve this difficulty.

So much in a general way for what we found, and I must pass on to what we did. We took conditions very much as they were, and applying to them, as nearly as possible, the remedies and means that we use at home, endeavored to give them the benefits of such advances as were practicable. We had some grand rulers. General Brooke, more concerned with the early departmental and adininistrative work of different kinds, was unable to give very much attention to detail. He was soon followed by Gen. Guy V. Henry, a man whom the Lord made and loved, and who loved the Lord and his fellow men in return. He did grand work there in every way, nobly illustrating the fact that no man is fit for a ruler among dependent" peoples unless he sincerely loves his work. General Henry truly loved his work and the people. I remember how they by hundreds knelt and wept and waved him adieu as he left the island; General Davis, his successor, standing by, saying to Mrs. Henry, "Madam, if I thought that when I left this island there would be one half as much affection and regard shown toward me as is manifested toward your husband here to-day, I should feel perfectly satisfied.”

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This is an organization where the absolute truth should be told, because it is an organization which reaches out to remedy things. The facts are not, as to the real needs of Porto Rico, in some respects, far to find; in others, it must be the work of years and