Booker Washington's situation was now strangely anomalous. In their own eyes, and even in the eye of United States law, the Red folk were quite above those who happened to be black. In ante-emancipation days the Reds had actually been the owners of a number of Blacks as slaves. We believe that it may be assumed that even in the present day a Red man would be cordially welcomed at many hotels where negroes would be refused accommodation. Thus Booker Washington's large class of some scores of Indians would regard themselves as being socially quite superior to their tutor! A thoroughly well-educated negro had now to seek the improvement of a semi-wild assembly who might be disposed to resent such innovations as white people's civilisation suggested. Why should they have shorter hair? Why should the ancestral blanket be superseded by the conventional dress sanctioned by the United States President and the people he governed? On the whole, however, Booker Washington found these strange pupils to be amenable to reason; they were quite tractable when kindly treated. The American Indians are an interesting nation of aborigines, and in course of an admirable article on their characteristics, habits and present condition, by Dr C. W. Greene, in _Chambers's Encyclopaedia_, it is remarked that "their physical and mental characters are much the same from the Arctic Ocean to Fuegia." The tribes differ somewhat, some being devoted to hunting, according to the ancient, uncivilised way, others take to the tilling of the ground. One tribe may be warlike, another will be more effeminate, while both sexes appear to have a liking for athletic exercises. The following descriptive passage is borrowed from Dr Greene's article:--