A GREAT poet once tried to look into the future and picture the kind of people who might some day live upon the earth—people wiser and happier than we are because they shall have learned through our mistakes and carried to success our beginnings, and so have come to understand fully many things that we see dimly as through a mist. These people Tennyson calls the "crowning race":

You see he believed that the way to gain command of Earth is through learning to read the open book of Nature. That book is closed to most of us to-day, but we are just beginning to spell out something of its message, and as we begin to understand we feel that it is not a strange speech but our own true mother tongue, which ears, deafened by the noise of the busy world, have almost ceased to hear and understand. There comes a time, however, when we feel "the call of the wild." We long to get away from the hoarse cries of engines, and the grinding roar of turning wheels, to a quiet that is unbroken even by a passing motor horn.

Have you ever found yourself for a happy half-hour alone among the great trees of the friendly woods? You must have felt that in getting near to Nature you were finding yourself. Did not the life of the trees, of the winged creatures of the branches, of the cool mossy ground itself, seem a part of your life?

Have you ever climbed a hill when it seemed that the wind was blowing something of its own strength and freshness into your soul? Did you not feel as if you were mounting higher and higher into the air and lifting the sky with you? Have you ever found yourself at evening in a great clear open place where the tent of the starry heavens over your head seemed nearer than the shadowy earth and all the things of the day? This is the story of a girl who loved to listen to the deep chant of the ocean, to the whisper of the wind in the trees, and to the silence in the heart of the hills. She came to feel that there was a joy and a power in the open—in the big, free, unspoiled haunts of furtive beasts and darting birds—that all the man-made wonders of the world could not give.

"If I am so much happier and more alive," she said to herself, "in the days that I spend under the open sky, what must it be like always to live this freer life? Did not the people who lived as Nature's own children in these very woods that I come to as the guest of an hour or a summer, have a wisdom and a strength that our life to-day cannot win?"

Again and again the thought came knocking at her heart: "The men whom we call savages, whom we have crowded out of the land they once roamed over freely, must have learned very much in all the hundreds of years that they lived close to Nature. They could teach us a great deal that cannot be found in books."

Alice C. Fletcher grew up in a cultured New England home. She had the freedom of a generous library and early learned to feel that great books and wise men were familiar friends. They talked to her kindly and never frightened her by their big words and learned looks. She looked through the veil of words to the living meaning.

She was, too, very fond of music. Playing the piano was more than practising an elegant accomplishment—just as reading her books was more than learning lessons. As the books stirred her mind to thinking and wondering, so the music stirred her heart to feeling and dreaming.

It often seemed, however, that much that her books and music struggled in vain to bring to her within walls was quite clear when she found herself in the large freedom of Nature's house. The sunshine, the blue sky, and the good, wholesome smell of the brown earth seemed to give a taste of the

Once in her reading she came upon the story of the scholar who left Oxford and the paths of learning to follow the ways of the wandering gypsies in order that he might learn the natural wisdom they had won. "Ah," she said to herself, "some day when I am free to live my life in my own way I shall leave my books and go out among the Indians. Our country should know what its first children saw and thought and felt. I shall try to see with their eyes and hear with their ears for a while and I shall discover, in that way, perhaps, a new world—one that will be lost forever when the Red Men are made to adopt all the tricks and manners of civilized life."

The time came when she found herself free to realize this dream.

"You don't mean to say you are really going to live with the Indians?" her friends exclaimed.

"How else can I know them?" she replied quietly.

"But to give up every necessary comfort!"

"There is something perhaps better than just making sure that we are always quite comfortable," said Miss Fletcher. "Of course, I shall miss easy chairs and cozy chats, and all the lectures, concerts, latest books, and daily papers, but I'm glad to find out that all these nice things are not really so necessary that they can keep me from doing a bit of work that is really worth while, and which, perhaps, needs just what I can bring to it."

At this time Miss Fletcher's earnest, thoughtful studies of what books and museums could teach about the early history of America and the interesting time before history, had given her a recognized place among the foremost scholars of archeology—the science that reads the story of the forgotten past through the relics that time has spared.

"Many people can be found to study the things about the Indians which can be collected and put in museums," said Miss Fletcher, "but there is need of a patient, sympathetic study of the people themselves."

In order to make this study, she spent not only months but years among the Dakota and Omaha Indians. From a wigwam made of buffalo skins she watched the play of the children and the life of the people and listened to their songs and stories.

"The Indian is not the stern, unbending wooden Indian that shows neither interest nor feeling of any sort, as many people have come to think of him," said Miss Fletcher. "Those who picture him so have never really known him. They have only seen the side he turns toward strangers. In the home and among their friends the Indians show fun, happy give-and-take, and warm, alert interest in the life about them."

The cultivated New England woman and distinguished scholar won their confidence because of her sincerity, tact, and warm human sympathy. She not only learned their speech and manners but also the language of their hearts. Her love of Nature helped her to a ready understanding of these children of Nature or Wakonda—as they called the spirit of life that breathes through earth and sky, rocks, streams, plants, all living creatures, and the tribes of men. The beautiful ceremony by which, soon after his birth, each Omaha child was presented to the powers of Nature showed this sense of kinship between the people and their world. A priest of the tribe stood outside the wigwam to which the new life had been sent, and with right hand outstretched to the heavens chanted these words in a loud voice:

Next the forces of the air—winds, clouds, mist, and rain—were called upon to receive the young child and smooth the path to the second hill. Then hills, valleys, rivers, lakes, trees, and all growing things were invoked, after which the spirits of birds, animals, and all moving creatures were summoned to make the path smooth to the third and fourth hills. As the priest intoned the noble appeal to all the powers of the earth and air and bending heavens, even those who could not understand the words would know that the four hills meant childhood, youth, manhood, and age, and that a new life was being presented to the forces of the universe of which it was a part. So it was that each child was thought of as belonging to Wakonda—to the spirit of all life—before he belonged to the tribe. For it was not until he was four or five years old that he gave up his "baby name," such as Bright Eyes, Little Bird, or Baby Squirrel, and was given a real name and received into the life of the people.

Miss Fletcher soon became interested in the music of the Indians. Her trained ear told her that here was something new. The haunting bits of melody and strange turns of rhythm were quite different from any old-world tunes.

"At first it was very hard to hear them," said Miss Fletcher. "The Indians never sang to be heard by others. Their singing was a spontaneous expression of their feeling—for the most part, religious feeling. In their religious ceremonies the noise of the dancing and of the drums and rattles often made it very hard to really catch the sound of the voice."

Day after day she strove to hear and write down bits of the music, but it was almost like trying to imprison the sound of the wind in the tree-tops.

"Do you remember," said Miss Fletcher, "how the old Saxon poet tried to explain the mystery of life by saying it was like a bird flying through the windows of a lighted hall out of the darkness to darkness again? An Indian melody is like that. It has no preparations, no beginning. It flashes upon you and is gone, leaving only a teasing memory behind."

While this lover of music was vainly trying to catch these strangely beautiful strains of melody, the unaccustomed hardships of her life brought upon her a long illness. There was compensation, however, for when she could no longer go after the thing she sought it came to her. Her Indian friends who had found out that she was interested in their songs gathered about her couch to sing them for her.

"So my illness was after all like many of our so-called trials, a blessing in disguise," said Miss Fletcher. "I was left with this lameness, but I had the music. The sigh had become a song!"

You have, perhaps, heard of the great interest that many learned people have in the songs and stories of simple folk—the folk-songs and folk-tales of different lands. Did you know that Sir Walter Scott's first work in literature was the gathering of the simple ballads of the Scottish peasants which they had long repeated just as you repeat the words of "ring games" learned from other children?

Did you know that most of the fairy stories and hero tales that you love were told by people who had never held a book in their hands, and were repeated ages and ages ago before the time of books? Just as it is true that broad, flowing rivers have their source in streams that well up out of the ground, so it is true that the literature of every nation has its source in the fancies that have welled up out of the hearts and imaginations of the simple people. The same thing is true of music. Great composers like Brahms and Liszt took the wild airs of the Hungarian gypsies and made them into splendid compositions that all the world applauds. Chopin has done this with the songs of the simple Polish folk. DvorÁk, the great Bohemian composer, has made his "New World Symphony" of negro melodies, and Cadman and others are using the native Indian music in the same way.

Just as the Grimm brothers went about among the German peasants to learn their interesting stories, just as Sir George Dasent worked to get the tales of the Norse, so Alice Cunningham Fletcher worked to preserve the songs and stories of the Indians. Others have come after her and have gone on with the work she began, following the trail she blazed. All musicians agree that this native song with its fascinating and original rhythms may prove the source of inspiration for American composers of genius and give rise to our truest new-world music.

Much of Miss Fletcher's work is preserved in great learned volumes, such as "The Omaha Tribe," published by the National Government, for she wrote as a scientist for those who will carry on the torch of science into the future. But realizing that the music would mean much to many who cannot enter upon the problems with which the wise men concern themselves, she has presented many of the songs in a little book called "Indian Story and Song." We find there, for instance, the "Song of the Laugh" sung when the brave young warrior recounts the story of the way he has slain his enemy with his own club and so helped to fill with fear the foes of his tribe. We find, too, the story of the youth who begins his life as a man by a lonely vigil when by fasting he proves his powers of endurance.

The Omaha tribal prayer is the solemn melody that sounded through the forests of America long before the white man came to this country—a cry of the yearning human spirit to Wakonda, the spirit of all life.

Try to picture Miss Fletcher surrounded by her Indian friends, explaining to them carefully all about the strange machine before which she wants them to sing. For the graphophone was a field worker with her—for a time her chief assistant in catching the elusive Indian songs. Perhaps there could have been no greater proof of their entire confidence in her than their willingness to sing for her again and again, and even to give into the keeping of her queer little black cylinders the strains that voiced their deepest and most sacred feelings. For Indian music is, for the most part, an expression of the bond between the human spirit and the unseen powers of Nature. It must have been that they felt from the first that here was some one who understood them because she, too, loved the Nature they knew and loved.

While Miss Fletcher was thus happily at work she became aware, however, that there was keen distress among these friends to whom she had become warmly attached. Some of their neighbors, the Ponca Indians, had been removed from their lands to the dreaded "hot country"—Indian Territory—and the Omaha people feared that the same thing might happen to them, for it was very easy for unprincipled white men to take advantage of the Indians who held their lands as a tribe, not as individuals.

Always on the frontier of settlement there were bold adventurers who coveted any promising tracts of land that the Indians possessed. They said to themselves, "We could use this country to much better advantage than these savages, therefore it should be ours." They then would encroach more and more on the holdings of the Indians, defying them by every act which said plainly, "A Redskin has no rights!" Sometimes when endurance could go no further the Indians would rise up in active revolt. Then what more easy than to cry out, "An Indian uprising! There will be a massacre! Send troops to protect us from the mad fury of the savages!" The Government would then send a detachment of cavalry to quell the outbreak, after which it would seem wiser to move the Indians a little farther away from contact with the white men, who now had just what they had been working toward from the first—the possession of the good land.

Miss Fletcher realized that the only remedy for this condition was for each Indian to secure from the Government a legal title to a portion of the tribal grant which he might hold as an individual. She left her happy work with the music and went to Washington to explain to the President and to Congress the situation as she knew it. The cause was, at this time, greatly furthered by the appearance of a book by Helen Hunt Jackson, called "A Century of Dishonor," an eloquent presentation of the Indians' wrongs and a burning plea for justice.

There was need, however, of some practical worker, who knew the Indians and Indian affairs intimately, to point to a solution of the problem. The conscience of the people was aroused, but they did not know how it was possible to prevent in the future the same sort of wrongs that had made the past hundred years indeed "a century of dishonor." Then the resolute figure of Miss Alice Fletcher appeared on the scene. She was well known to the government authorities for her valuable scientific work. Here was some one they knew, who really could explain the exact state of affairs and who could also interpret fairly the mind of the Indian. She could be depended on as one who would not be swayed by mere sentimental considerations. She would know the practical course to pursue.

"Let the Indians hold their land as the white men hold theirs," she said. "That is the only way to protect them from wrong and to protect the Government from being a helpless partner to the injustice that is done them."

Now, it is one thing to influence people who are informed and interested and quite another to awaken the interest of those who are vitally concerned with totally different things. Miss Fletcher realized that if anything was to be actually accomplished she must leave no stone unturned to bring the matter to the attention of those who had not heretofore given a thought to the Indian question and the responsibility of the Government. She presented a petition to Congress and worked early and late to drive home to the people the urgent need of legislation in behalf of the Indians. She spoke in clubs, in churches, in private houses, and before committees in Congress. And actually the busy congressmen who always feel that there is not half time enough to consider measures by which their own States and districts will profit, gave right of way to the Indian Land Act, and in 1882 it became a law.

There was the need of the services of some disinterested person to manage the difficult matter of dividing the tribal tracts and allotting to each Indian his own acres, and Miss Fletcher was asked by the President to undertake this work.

"Why do you trust Miss Fletcher above any one else?" asked President Cleveland on one occasion when he was receiving a delegation of Omahas at the White House. "We have seen her in our homes; we have seen her in her home. We find her always the same," was the reply.

The work which Miss Fletcher did in allotting the land to the Omahas was so successfully handled that she was appealed to by the Government to serve in the same capacity for the Winnebago and Nez PercÉ Indians. The law whose passage was secured by her zeal was the forerunner the Severalty Act of 1885 which marked a change in policy of the Government and ushered in a better era for all the Indian tribes.

"What led you to undertake this important work?" Miss Fletcher was asked.

"The most natural desire in the world—the impulse to help my friends where I saw the need," she replied. "I did not set out resolved to have a career—to form and to reform. There is no story in my life. It has always been just one step at a time—one thing which I have tried to do as well as I could and which has led on to something else. It has all been in the day's work."

Miss Fletcher has been much interested in the work of the Boy and Girl Scouts and in the Campfire Societies, because she feels that in this way many children are brought to an appreciation of the great out-of-doors and win health, power, and joy which the life of cities cannot give. For them she has made a collection of Indian games and dances.

"Just as the spirit of Sir Walter Scott guides us through the Scottish lake country and as Dickens leads us about old London, so the spirit of the Indians should make us more at home in the forests of America," said Miss Fletcher. "In sharing the happy fancies of these first children of America we may win a new freedom in our possession of the playground of the great out-of-doors."