734. [page number] 488 [end page number] [page heading] Government and Courts of Law [end page heading] drain on our sympathies and his helpless weight an additional burden to be carried across portages in the tropical heat. Often the shallow water and the fallen tree trunks across the stream made travel so difficult that two miles was a hard day's journey. Our difficulties daily increased, and our store of supplies fell lower. When we pitched camp at the mouth of the Sucubti River, we decided that we must strike across the mountains to the Atlantic Coast and end our travels as soon as possible. We established relations with a native sub-chief, who spoke English. His one anxiety was to get us out of the country. If we had not been so heavily armed, we learned afterward, we should have been rushed and massacred; but the natives knew every detail of our equipment, even to the dynamite we carried, and were afraid to try it. He guaranteed safe conduct to the coast if we would promise to leave. I sent a scouting party of three men, under native escort, to the coast to explore the trail and to telegraph Panama for medical aid and supplies. One of these men deserted at the coast. The others came back and led us over the trail. Dr. Baer died soon after we sighted salt water. The Government ordered the soldiers with me back to the Zone, and I was left at Caledonia Bay with only Charlton and Johnson. Not one White Indian had we seen, and we were regarded with suspicion and hatred by the natives. Except that I had pretty well assured myself that the interior was suitable for rubber plantations, and that Dr. Baer's and Dr. Breeder's researches had been productive, the expedition was a pretty sad wreck. But from this point on, the luck turned. I had learned from the sub-chief of Sucubti that all the tribes of Darien yield allegiance to a head chief whose title, in their language, is Ina Paguina. He is the latest of a long line of hereditary overlords who have ruled the country as feudal chiefs for many centuries. His seat of government is at Sasardi, an island on the San Blas coast. I got word to him that I wanted an audience with him. This was arranged, and accompanied by Charlton and Johnson, I sailed over to his island. [crosshead within text] CONVINCING THE HEAD CHIEF [end crosshead] THROUGH an interpreter, he asked me why I had come to his country. I determined to drop all efforts to be diplomatic and to try the effect of blunt frankness. I told him that I had come to look for rubber lands in the interior and that I had been opposed at every step. I told him I was the friend of his people and would treat them fairly, but that he was mistaken in trying to keep the white men out of his country, because when they got ready to come nothing could stop them. I had learned to admire the high intelligence and character of his people, and if he would cooperate with me in the scientific work I wanted to do, I would do my best at Panama and Washington to have his country set apart as an inviolate home of the Indians, under the protection of America and Panama. He liked my frankness, and explained why I had been opposed. The Panama Government had seized some of his islands nearest the Zone, and had instituted "schools" and local "government," under Negroid police supervision, that were really cloaks to enslave the men and debauch the women. He resented the degradation of his people, and he and they had resolved that all white and black men were evil and to fight their coming to the death. After long negotiations, he became convinced of my good faith, and called a congress of his chieftains to discuss my plan for an Indian sanctuary. The chieftains came from all parts of the Atlantic coast of Darien, and I was astonished to learn of the high level of political organization they have achieved. Not only did they have an hereditary feudal government, but courts of law with a recognized code of precedents. Every tribe also sent at least one young man forth to see the world, and these youths had traveled as sailors to New York, San Francisco, London, and, some of them, around the world. The Ina Paguina even had a secret service in the City of Panama that [page heading] Blond Indians of the Darien Jungle [ end page heading] [page number] 489 [end page number] kept him advised of the intention of the Panamanian Government toward his people. He knew all about the progress of the white men in the arts of war and peace, and had foreseen the approach of the day when his own domain would face exploitation and his people the common fate of the Indian. The congress of chiefs approved my plan to enlist aid for the preservation of their country. Then I asked to see the White Indians. At first they denied their existence, but I proved to them that I knew better. I also explained their scientific importance, and their value in creating American interest in all the Indians, by their demonstration of the reality of the links connecting the Indian to the white man by the ties of blood. This argument won them, and word was sent out to bring them in. [crosshead within text] OUT OF THEIR FASTNESSES [end crosshead] WHITE Indians now appeared, to see us, by the score. They came from the mountains of the San Blas coast, from the interior, and some even from the islands themselves. Within a few weeks I had seen four hundred - men, women, and children. I talked to them through interpreters, photographed them with the motion picture camera, examined them carefully and assured myself that they were neither painted nor dyed, and learned a good deal about their customs, local status, and biological character. Like all the Indians of the San Blas coast, brown as well as white, they proved far superior in intelligence and character to any other Indians I had even encountered, either in North or South America, and not excepting the Pueblos of our own Southwest. Their civilization was far more advanced, and their political practices, ethical standards, and practical arts more perfected. Their treatment of women and children alone would set them apart. I never saw a woman or child among them who did not look happy. They speak of their women as "flowers," and their manner toward them is as gentle and considerate as one would expect from that poetical idea. When I persuaded an old chief to be photographed, he insisted that I wait till his little granddaughter could be brought to stand with him, and the picture of his affectionate pride in her and of her happiness to be beside him would do credit to the heart of any people in the world. The White Indians occupy a peculiar status among their brown kinsmen. They are as proud and as war-like as the San Blas themselves, and they maintain their feudal independence with as savage fearlessness. Both races try hard to maintain the integrity of the racial strains. Where propinquity over-rides the racial barrier and a White Indian marries a Brown Indian, the children are light brown and the grandchildren sometimes are white and sometimes brown - apparently following the Mendelian Law of inheritance in this respect, by which the normal expectations would be that one child in two of such a union would be white, if any occur at all. But at the age of puberty, the white children of these mixed unions are required to go to the tribe of their white parent and are there raised as White Indians, while the brown children are raised with the brown tribe. This practice explains why the White Indians have persisted down the ages as a homogenous white race in the midst of the overwhelming preponderance or reds and yellows and browns that numerically dominated the Western Hemisphere. In the next article I shall deal more at length with the fact that the White Indians have always dominated the other Indians intellectually, and have created all the real civilizations that flourished in prehistoric times in Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Brazil. Incidentally, these Indians speak a language which, I am told, is closely related to the ancient Sanskrit. In appearance, the White Indians duplicate the characteristics of the three I first saw at Yavisa. Their skin is a true white and shows the pink glow of the blood beneath, as no pigmented skin of any colored race does. Their hair is literally the yellow of yellow gold. It would give a wrong impression to describe