dians brought with them from Alabama and Mississippi, when they migrated to this territory about the middle of the last century. I was introduced later to one or two other 'natives' who were not Negroes, but neither were they, as far as my observation went, Indians. They were, on the contrary, white men. 'But where,' I asked at length, 'are the Indians?'"

"Oh! the Indians," was the reply, "they have gone"-with a wave of the hand in the direction of the horizon-"they have gone back!"

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"One cannot escape the impression, in traveling through Indian Territory, that the Indians, who own practically all the lands, and until recently had the local government largely in their hands, are to a very large extent regarded by the white settlers, who are rapidly filling up the country, as almost a negligible quantity. To such an extent is this true that the constitution of Oklahoma, as I understand it, takes no account of the Indians in drawing its distinctions among the races. For the constitution there exists only the Negro and the white man. The reason seems to be that the Indians have either receded -"gone back," as the saying in that region ison the advance of the white race, or they have intermarried with and become absorbed with it. Indeed, so rapidly has this intermarriage of the two races gone on, and so great has been the de

mand for Indian wives, that in some of the nations, I was informed, the price of marriage license has gone as high as $1,000."

It will be readily seen by our readers that this rapid amalgamating process between the white and red races is not because of special worth or superior physical beauty, but because of a pecuniary consideration on the white man's part in most cases. Many white men became "squaw men" in Indian Territory years ago, not because she was pretty, civilized, intelligent, or refined, but because she possessed "something substantial worth looking after." While the full-blooded Indian woman is rarely attractive, she has always made a very faithful and dutiful wife and mother to the white man, and her children by him have nearly always possessed superior physical beauty. Some of the best looking women in Oklahoma have Indian blood in their veins, and many men now prefer these to a pure-blooded white woman, and vice versa. But, while we say this, let the reader remember that the woman. of Negro descent, in Oklahoma and elsewhere in the South, in whose veins often flows the blood of both the white and red races, if she be educated, has the most charming and magnetic personality of any woman on the American conti

nent.

If she were placed in the same position as the Indian woman of Oklahoma occupies,

white men in every station in life would take her as a legal wife. And the same is true of the colored men. We have never heard a white woman say that an Indian man possessed any degree of physical beauty, or, in other words, a pleasing physiognomy, while many cultured Negro men are pronounced handsome by the best feminine judges in such matters.

If the Negro did not occupy such an unfavorable political position in this country, and the stigma of his former bondage were removed, there would be little objections by the law-makers to legal intermarriage with the refined and educated class of African blood. And, as we have already said, there is a better class of white men in the South who would fervently welcome a legal union between the races in these states, in spite of all prejudice, and forever remove the degrading conditions as they now are. From these men we shall undoubtedly hear in some future day.

A POLITICAL CHANGE MEANS SOCIAL ELEVATION AND SALVATION. -Right here we want our readers to bear in mind that a political change in the South is a necessity, before social elevation and salvation. is possible in the white as well as the black race. As long as a set of self-centered men can obtain and maintain political life in the South, by pit