Some thoughts about Mark Twain & Native Americans:

1- If one is truly interested in this topic then I would advise obtaining a
copy of "Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians & Other Unfinished
Stories," published by the Mark Twain Project, ISBN 0-520-05090-8.  The
explanatory notes found there would be of special interest.

2. Twain made hundreds of notes in the margins of "Our Wild Indians", yet
only a few of them have ever been revealed to scholars.  This was Twain's
main sourcebook for writing "Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer Among the Indians," the
direct sequel to "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn".   Twain's notes contain
important Huckleberry Finn related information, written in the summer of
1884, and the fantastic story still has yet to be told.  The marginal notes
in Twain's copy of Our Wild Indians &  the 8.5 chapters of "Huck Finn & Tom
Sawyer Among the Indians" clearly demonstrate why "Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn" ended the way it did.

3.  Suffice it to say Twain's genius didn't just fly out the window when he
stopped writing HFTSA, like DeVoto surmised (& some others blindly
followed).  Twain's marginal notes in Our Wild Indians are brilliant.

4.  If there was ever any turning point in Twain's mind about the American
Indians, current evidence suggests summer of 1884 was the time and "Our Wild
Indians" was the instrument.

5. Coincidentally one of Dan DeQuille's entries in his notebook contains an
account of how DeQuille actually killed an Indian!  DeQuille's manuscript is
probably unpublished, but it is possible that he shared his Indian tale with
Twain when they were roommates in Virginia City.  In this same notebook is
an entry by DeQuille (made circa mid 1885) about the United States Gov't &
Native Americans, "The enslaving of individuals is now looked upon in all
parts of the civilized world as a great wrong, while the holding in bondage
of a whole nation by a nation made powerful seems to be no wrong in the eyes
of many."

6. As the years rolled on Twain realized "civilized" men weren't all that
noble either.   He concluded, "The difference between savage and civilized
man:  The one is painted, the other gilded."  In 1902 or so, Twain even drew
a portrait of a Native American and titled it "Eve."

"Twainiac" Bob Slotta