Were their goals and remedies appropriate?
The correction for this false view seems to me to come from the study of the tribe and its actual effects upon the family and upon the manhood of the individual.
The highest right of man is the right to be a man, with all that this in- volves. The tendency of the tribal organization is constantly to interfere with and frustrate the attainment of his highest manhood. The question whether parents have a right to educate their children to regard the tribal organiza- tion as supreme, brings us at once to the consideration of the family.
And here I find the key to the Indian problem. More than any other idea, this consideration of the family and its proper sphere in the civilizing of races and in the development of the individual, serves to unlock the difficul- ties which surround legislation for the Indian.
The family is God’s unit of society. On the integrity of the family depends that of the State. There is no civilization deserving of the name where the family is not the unit of civil government. . . .