2 O. B. SPERLIN
linking of "wings" with "very wicked," we now know to be fiction; but fiction no more misleading than when we let our concepts of "siwash," "buck," and "squaw" represent the orig- inal inhabitants of the Northwest. Other fiction more insid- ious has passed in the guise of truth for the last century more insidious because it has passed under the name of "historical" fiction; it has even been labeled, and has thereby libeled, his- tory.
"How would our history read, how would the story of the advance of white men into our country differ, if it had been written by Indians instead of by New England Puritans?" dramatically inquired an Indian neighbor 2 of ours at the organ- ization of the Northwestern Federation of American Indians. Historians have been prone to estimate the Indian by what he became after commerce had brought degradation and while government was bringing slaughter. The study of the native in his native life and character has been notably inadequate. To some, indeed, information for such study has seemed utter- ly inaccessible ; for Indians have left no monuments to per- petuate their history, no names ever to associate with their deeds. By the inexorable force of their sacred custom, when the hero died his name grew silent forever upon the lips of men; name and deed alike were lost in oblivion. Is so little known of the Indian before the white man came that we must depend upon fiction for our reconstruction of that era? Or is there a body of historical records still available but scarcely known through which we may forego fiction and get a glimpse of reality?
The purpose of the present study is to examine every known record of first contact between Indians of the Northwest and explorers and traders, in order to see what light, though ever so checkered, these original journals throw upon the char- acter of the native races: and to investigate in particular the Indian's hospitality, religion, probity, government, industry, and home, or his lack of these, and to review therewith his known
2 Henry Sicade: Tacoma, 1914.
