I have been reading Dixon Wecter's biographical study of Twain's early years, "Sam Clemens of Hannibal" in which he describes some of Twain's ancestors as being Indian fighters, and relates the story of how Twain's great-great grandmother ended a massacre of her family by Indians with some quick thinking. We have to recognize that particularly for those of Twain's ancestors who helped to carve the land away from the natives, conflict was frequent. I believe that Twain's attitudes toward native Americans was initially formed by these family tales, and he never recovered from it and perhaps later events in his own life reaffirmed his early beliefs. It always surprised me that Twain was so outspoken against the abuse of, for example, Chinese people in California or later the Filipinos, but never seemed to identify or empathize with native Americans. Steve Crawford Jyväskylä, Finland