Before closing this brief and imperfect attempt to define the primitive and modified status of the Amerind woman it is necessary, that the sketch may have as much completeness as is possible, to cast a hurried glance at the present conditions of the women of the Indian tribes that remain to us. While the first effects of the impinging civilization were most deleterious to the status and nature of the aboriginal woman, there came a time when, under conditions of comparative peace, there was ampler opportunity for the best of that civilization to prove that it really had a message for red men and women as well as white, though its first words had been so marred in the saying. It would not comport with tenderness for the good name of our country to set forth the wrongs suffered by the Indians at the hands of those who assumed a higher place in the scale of race; the story is written large for all those who care to read. Beneath the combined influences of tyranny, treachery, knavery, and every other crime that the whites could commit against them, together with the degrading effects of the existence which was forced on them and the pernicious results of the introduction of drunkenness as a racial vice, the Indians went from bad to worse, until in the majority of cases they became little better than mere savages. In this retrogression the status of the Indian woman participated, until in almost every tribe within the boundaries of our country she was reduced to the state of the merest beast of burden. Her lot became harder and harder, and was not even ameliorated by the consolations of any religious creed that held promise of better things to come. At last, though very slowly and very late in the history of the Amerinds, there dawned a day when equity began to take some place in our dealings with our red brethren, when there began some organized effort to show them that white civilization held some benefits even for them and that Christianity was something more than a theory. Even then, the efforts to improve the condition of the Indians were chiefly directed toward the education of the youths; for the girls and women there was but little consideration shown. At length, however, this field also was entered by some devoted men and women,--especially the latter,--and the Indian woman, with as much wonder as joy, found that she too was regarded as something better than a slave and brute, that she too was held as being worthy of education and the influences of refinement. Even yet, this message has not been borne to the majority of the women of the tribes, at least in effective manner; but the leaven has been placed in the lump. At first, the reclamation of the Indian woman from the degradation into which she had fallen was a disheartening work. By long years of maltreatment and neglect she had been rendered almost incapable of understanding that any other lot was possible for her; in many cases,