But the decay of decency had begun. We were blind to the fact that we were destroying the tribal culture. We were blind to the fact that one way of life cannot absorb another easily unless there are great similarities between them. We were blind to the fact that we could not change great numbers of native behavior patterns, and leave others unchanged and functioning. We were blind to the fact that we had started in the native mind itself a great cultural conflict. Our blindness was largely selfish; it suited us to change some behavior patterns, and to leave others unchanged.
The truth that you cannot absorb what you wish and reject what you wish was not seen by all of us. It was seen by some missionaries and teachers, not intellectually, but by spiritual insight. I doubt if they foresaw the terrible consequences of absorbing an alien society without educational, cultural, and spiritual preparation.
For a great length of time the simple, hardy tribal culture persisted; despite the many adaptations it had to make, its controls and restraints still held. Its homes continued to be sound. But, gradually, new homes were started by those who had begun to forget the tribal traditions; and tribal homes in the towns, robbed of the powerful support of tribal custom, began to experience with bewilderment and shame the shocks of disobedient children, pregnant daughters, and delinquent sons.
This decay of home life was accelerated by overcrowding, the growth of slums, the increase of drinking, the lowness of wages; it decayed in the reserves, too, where men did not come back, and where women went away to look for them and often found someone else.
Those who saw what was happening were gravely disturbed. They said that this process of careless, haphazard absorption could not go on; that the moral capital of the tribes was almost expended; that the safety point (which is the danger point) had been reached, and that white civilization would have to take grave measures to prevent the further disintegration of native society — disintegration that spelled danger for all.
