In the foregoing chapters I have attempted to present in helpful form ideas that have slowly sifted into my own mind as my contact with the Indian has become less formal and restrained. In my case “familiarity” has not “bred contempt.” I have learned many, and to me most important, lessons. In the hurry and whirl of our money-mad age and our machine-driven civilization, we have scarce time to sit down calmly and contemplate anything, hence my earnest plea for a return to the simple things, to the outdoors, to the quiet contentment of the Indian. Doubtless I have often said things both crudely and harshly, but I can truthfully affirm that I have never intended to be harsh, though I am less careful that my utterances be polished and refined than that they should find lodgment in earnest hearts.

To those who are honest and sincere in their desire to get the good out of what I have said, the flaws in my work will be generously passed by, and kindly disregarded. I have felt too intensely in the writing of some of these chapters to be able to judge what I have written by the cool, critical standard of the rhetorician. I have learned from the Indian that the real thing to be desired in oratory is to get one’s thought into the other man’s mind and heart so that it will influence his action. This has been my aim in writing these pages; so, in conclusion,

I thank thee, dusky brother of the plains, the mountains, the forests, and the canyons, for this lesson and all the other lessons you have taught me. I am grateful for the lessons of the higher civilization. I prize and treasure them, but equally am I under obligation to thee, thou red-skin, for recalling to me some primitive principles which civilization ignores at its peril.