Even stronger yet is the temptation to enter upon the analysis and portraiture of the original and native character of the North-American Indian. Voluptuary and stoic; swept by gusts of fury too terrible to be witnessed, yet imperturbable beyond all men, under the ordinary excitements and accidents of life; garrulous, yet impenetrable; curious, yet himself reserved, proud and mean alike beyond compare; superior to torture and the presence of certain death, yet, by the standards of all other peoples, a coward in battle; capable of magnanimous actions which, when uncovered of all romance, are worthy of the best days of Roman virtue, yet more cunning, false, and cruel than the Bengalee,--this copper-colored sphinx, this riddle unread of men, equally fascinates and foils the inquirer. This, however, is the Indian of history. The Indian for whom the government is called to provide subsistence and instruction presents no such psychological difficulties. Curious compound and strange self-contradiction as the red man is in his native character, in his traditional pursuits, and amid the surroundings of his own wild life; yet when broken down by the military power of the whites, thrown out of his familiar relations, his stupendous conceit with its glamour of savage pomp and glory rudely dispelled, his occupation gone, himself a beggar, the red man becomes the most commonplace person imaginable, of very simple nature, limited aspirations, and enormous appetites. The Indian question naturally divides itself into two: What shall be done with the Indian as an obstacle to the national progress? What shall be done with him when, and so far as, he ceases to oppose or obstruct the extension of railways and settlements? It is because these two parts of the question have not been separately regarded that so much confusion has been introduced into the discussion of Indian affairs. Widely diverse, for example, as are the criticisms popularly expressed on what is known as the "Indian policy" of Pres. Grant's administration, the writer can confidently affirm, as the result of hundreds of interviews, formal and informal, stated and casual, friendly and the reverse, with men from every section of the country, of both parties, and of all professions, that he believes there is no political subject mooted to-day on which there are so slight differences of real opinion, or, indeed, such general consent when men will once come to terms with each other, and begin to talk about the same thing. He has never known a man, even from the Territories or the border States, make objection, on a candid statement, to the intentions and purposes of that administration towards the Indians, unless it were some man peculiarly vulgar and brutal,--such a one, for instance, as, if a Southerner, would give his time and breath to indiscriminate abuse of the negroes. Instead of there being two parties on this subject, there is, therefore, if the