"Being an Indian . . "

Some oil-rich Indians ride in expensive motors. Some hardy Indians become great footballers (Carlisle's Jim Thorpe). Some decadent ones wear Pullman blankets instead of tribal robes. But all Indians are taciturn. Last summer Henrietta Schmer-ler, 23, Columbia University graduate student in ethnology who had gone West to study red men in situ, was found mangled and dead in a ravine on the White River (Ariz.) Indian Reservation (TIME, Aug. 3). Clad in squaw's dress and beads, she had set out a few days earlier for a dance at Fort Apache. It was known that an Apache buck had accompanied her. It was later learned that an Apache buck had made unwelcome advances to her. Several young tribesmen were held for questioning. All were characteristically mute. None was indicted for the girl's death. No Apache seemed to know anything about the Schmerler case.

October is round-up time for the Indians. As the Apaches drove in their herds from the summer grazing, a white cattle-buyer appeared on the reservation. He sat around small fires with them at night, gossiped with the herdsmen in English, kept an ear tuned for mutterings in the native tongue which he gave no indication of understanding. Having heard all he wanted, last week Federal Agent J. A. Street doffed his disguise, went to one Golney Seymour, 21-year-old tribesman, accused him of the murder. Retaining the traditional calm of his fathers, Apache Seymour confessed that he had started out with Miss Schmerler to the dance, said that when he had offered her affection she had started throwing rocks at him. Then he raped her, stabbed her, choked her, struck her with a stone, left her dead.

"He displayed no signs of emotion.'' said Agent Street, ''not the slightest remorse, which of course, being an Indian, he wouldn't do. ... I talked with the boy's father and mother. They shrugged their shoulders. If they felt any emotion or any concern they certainly did not show it. ... A lot of Indians on that reservation knew who killed that girl, but of course they wouldn't tell."

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