"How came the Spokanes, then, to plant and plough?"
"The Spokanes 'ave planted for twenty years. Raster's men built Spokane House hand made ha little garden. The Hinjuns watched them, tasted their vegetables. When they left the squaws saved the seed hand tried their 'and hat gardens."
"Does n't that prove that all the Indians want is a chance that they are ready to take up civilization?" Dr. Whitman was standing by that historic wagon with his foot on the hub.
Ermatinger knocked the ashes from his ever-burning pipe with an impatient snap.
"Yes, too ready, if anything. We don't want 'em civilized we want 'em to catch skins. That is why the company gets along better with the Injun than you Hamericans do we leave 'im to 'is own ways. You try to change 'im. All along your border states you say, ' 'ere, take a farm and settle down like white folks, or get hout.' That 's no way to get halong with Hinjuns."
"Exactly." Never before had Dr. Whitman grasped so clearly the difference of the two policies. Then began the nervous walk in which he indulged when under the pressure of exciting thought. "It's here in a nutshell, Ermatinger. The fur-hunter meets the Indian half-way, he intermarries, he perpetuates barbarism. The American brings the rifle, the axe, the home. For the beaver-dam and buffalo-range he substitutes the plough, the mill, the school, the railroad, the city."
Ever after Dr. Whitman seemed to hear a voice soughing in the wind like the worried ghost of the great company: "Away! away! You must not civilize our Indians. Away! away! Your mills, your ploughs and schools and shops must not frighten our beaver."
