JDD, Native Americans were living on the North American continent when the white European colonists began pushing them from their ancestral homes. African Americans were brought here to serve these white masters in mastering the New World. Twain lived during a time when the clash between whites and Native Americans caused atrocities on both sides. Twain may have been guilty of believing what the press fed the public about the savages in the frontier and their murderous ways, but I don't buy the idea that his uncomfortable attitudes with Comanches makes him a racist. Twain remarked all he needed to know about someone was that he was a member of the Human Race, nothing more could make the person any worse. The charge of racism is unfounded and fostered by a bunch of pinheads and blatherskites who would like to reduce everyone to their own meanspirited level. Twain championed the individual spirit and condemned the group that would war on its own kind. He hated man's inhumanity to man, but he loved the person, black or white, filled with humor and humaness. Twain had little contact with N.A. and it is difficult to understand what you do not know . To judge him by the knowledge and understanding and historical perspective of 1994 is an example of the most mush brained thinking I've ever seen. To even address racial issues at the time he wrote shows a courage and understanding of the American psyche that his detractors will never know in their sorry lifetimes. Sorry if I seem so emotionally invested in this issue. I don't think Twain was a god or without faults. This bone of debate just seems like so much wasted air space and such a non-issue that it galls me it keeps rearing its pointed little head. Alan C. Reese