236 T. W. DAVENPORT. hood of man to the benighted of other lands, it is entirely a personal matter, or else individuality and personal responsi- bility go for naught. Neither can the results be all included in a mathematical expression of dollars and cents, or that of church membership. That was a kindly act of the Good Samaritan going to the relief of the wayfarer who fell among thieves, though in truth a very trifling manifestation of benevolence when compared with the life service of philan- thropists who endure toil, hunger, and innumerable bodily discomforts, in their efforts to rescue the victims of injustice, or the heathen from his thraldom of ignorance and sin. And yet that picture of the Samaritan, bending over the body of the prostrate traveler and pouring oil in his wounds, sheds a holy and undiminished light over the whole earth after the lapse of more than a thousand years. How jarring to human sensibilities would be the question, "Does it pay? Is there any money in it ? " I shall not hazard the assertion that the superintendents named as being contented with a perfunctory discharge of their official duties were unbelievers in the efficacy of moral precepts and good works, but it may not be amiss to say that they regarded them as wasted on the Indian. Western people as a rule had no faith in the governmental experiment as a civilizer, chiefly for the reason that the Indian is not wanted, and superintendents were not appointed for altruistic but for political reasons. Hence we should not expect to find those officers at variance with popular opinion, and when a de- parture did occur the incumbent's official tenure would be short. General Joel Palmer was the first Superintendent of In- dian Affairs for the Oregon Territory, with the title of Com- missioner, and he was especially fitted for the work of gath- ering up the marauding bands scattered over that vast country, then fast settling up by the yearly emigration from the States. Palmer was not at all a doctrinaire or idealist, full of fanciful notionvS as to the perfectibility of any race, or that all the Indian needed to make him an equal with the white man was
