cannot stop. There is no going back. When you have read of all there is
in the white man's world, when you have seen, then there is no returning.
You may end it all, if you wish, in the snow, in the river, but there is
no returning. The lodge of a chief--ah, if my father had heard you say
that--!"

The Indian woman shifted heavily in her chair, then shrank away from the
look fixed on her. Once or twice she made as if she would speak, but
sank down in the great chair, helpless and dismayed.

"The lodge of a chief!" the girl continued in a low, bitter voice.
"What is the lodge of a chief? A smoky fire, a pot, a bed of skins, aih-
yi! If the lodges of the Indians were millions, and I could be head of
all, and rule the land, yet would I rather be a white girl in the hut of
her white man, struggling for daily bread among the people who sweep the
buffalo out, but open up the land with the plough, and make a thousand
live where one lived before. It is peace you want, my mother, peace and
solitude, in which the soul goes to sleep. Your days of hope are over,
and you want to drowse by the fire. I want to see the white men's cities
grow, and the armies coming over the hill with the ploughs and the
reapers and the mowers, and the wheels and the belts and engines of the
great factories, and the white woman's life spreading everywhere; for I
am a white man's daughter. I can't be both Indian and white. I will not
be like the sun when the shadow cuts across it and the land grows dark.
I will not be half-breed. I will be white or I will be Indian; and I
will be white, white only. My heart is white, my tongue is white, I
think, I feel, as white people think and feel. What they wish, I wish;
as they live, I live; as white women dress, I dress."

She involuntarily drew up the dark red skirt she wore, showing a white