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Indian Culture; Pueblos and Navajos

THE LITERATURE on the subject of Indians is so extensive and
ubiquitous that, unless a student of Americana is pursuing it,
he may find it more troublesome to avoid than to get hold of.
The average old-timer has for generations regarded Indian
scares and fights as the most important theme for
reminiscences. County-minded historians have taken the same
point of view. The Bureau of American Ethnology of the
Smithsonian Institution has buried records of Indian beliefs,
ceremonies, mythology, and other folklore in hundreds of
tomes; laborious, literal-minded scholars of other
institutions have been as assiduous. In all this lore and
tabulation of facts, the Indian folk themselves have generally
been dried out.

The Anglo-American's policy toward the Indian was to kill him
and take his land, perhaps make a razor-strop out of his hide.
The Spaniard's policy was to baptize him, take his land,
enslave him, and appropriate his women. Any English-speaking
frontiersman who took up with the Indians was dubbed "squaw
man"--a term of sinister connotations. Despite pride in
descending from Pocahontas and in the vaunted Indian blood of
such individuals as Will Rogers, crossbreeding between Anglo-
Americans and Indians has been restricted, as compared, for