CHAPTER X.

CONCLUSION.

There are within the limits of the United States between two hundred and

fifty and three hundred thousand Indians, exclusive of those in Alaska.

The names of the different tribes and bands, as entered in the

statistical tables of the Indian Office Reports, number nearly three

hundred. One of the most careful estimates which have been made of their

numbers and localities gives them as follows: "In Minnesota and States

east of the Mississippi, about 32,500; in Nebraska, Kansas, and the

Indian Territory, 70,650; in the Territories of Dakota, Montana,

Wyoming, and Idaho, 65,000; in Nevada and the Territories of Colorado,

New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona, 84,000; and on the Pacific slope,

48,000."

Of these, 130,000 are self-supporting on their own reservations,

"receiving nothing from the Government except interest on their own

moneys, or annuities granted them in consideration of the cession of

their lands to the United States."[31]

Footnote 31:

A Annual Report of Indian Commissioner for 1872.

This fact alone would seem sufficient to dispose forever of the

accusation, so persistently brought against the Indian, that he will not

work.

Of the remainder, 84,000 are partially supported by the Government—the

interest money due them and their annuities, as provided by treaty,

being inadequate to their subsistence on the reservations where they are

confined. In many cases, however, these Indians furnish a large part of

their support—the White River Utes, for instance, who are reported by

the Indian Bureau as getting sixty-six per cent. of their living by

"root-digging, hunting, and fishing;" the Squaxin band, in Washington

Territory, as earning seventy-five per cent., and the Chippewas of Lake

Superior as earning fifty per cent. in the same way. These facts also

would seem to dispose of the accusation that the Indian will not work.

There are about 55,000 who never visit an agency, over whom the

Government does not pretend to have either control or care. These 55,000

"subsist by hunting, fishing, on roots, nuts, berries, etc., and by

begging and stealing;" and this also seems to dispose of the accusation

that the Indian will not "work for a living." There remains a small

portion, about 31,000, that are entirely subsisted by the Government.

There is not among these three hundred bands of Indians one which has

not suffered cruelly at the hands either of the Government or of white

settlers. The poorer, the more insignificant, the more helpless the

band, the more certain the cruelty and outrage to which they have been

subjected. This is especially true of the bands on the Pacific slope.

These Indians found themselves of a sudden surrounded by and caught up

in the great influx of gold-seeking settlers, as helpless creatures on a

shore are caught up in a tidal wave. There was not time for the

Government to make treaties; not even time for communities to make laws.

The tale of the wrongs, the oppressions, the murders of the

Pacific-slope Indians in the last thirty years would be a volume by

itself, and is too monstrous to be believed.

It makes little difference, however, where one opens the record of the

history of the Indians; every page and every year has its dark stain.

The story of one tribe is the story of all, varied only by differences

of time and place; but neither time nor place makes any difference in

the main facts. Colorado is as greedy and unjust in 1880 as was Georgia

in 1830, and Ohio in 1795; and the United States Government breaks

promises now as deftly as then, and with an added ingenuity from long

practice.

One of its strongest supports in so doing is the wide-spread sentiment

among the people of dislike to the Indian, of impatience with his

presence as a "barrier to civilization," and distrust of it as a

possible danger. The old tales of the frontier life, with its horrors of

Indian warfare, have gradually, by two or three generations' telling,

produced in the average mind something like an hereditary instinct of

unquestioning and unreasoning aversion which it is almost impossible to

dislodge or soften.

There are hundreds of pages of unimpeachable testimony on the side of

the Indian; but it goes for nothing, is set down as sentimentalism or

partisanship, tossed aside and forgotten.

President after president has appointed commission after commission to

inquire into and report upon Indian affairs, and to make suggestions as

to the best methods of managing them. The reports are filled with

eloquent statements of wrongs done to the Indians, of perfidies on the

part of the Government; they counsel, as earnestly as words can, a trial

of the simple and unperplexing expedients of telling truth, keeping

promises, making fair bargains, dealing justly in all ways and all

things. These reports are bound up with the Government's Annual Reports,

and that is the end of them. It would probably be no exaggeration to say

that not one American citizen out of ten thousand ever sees them or

knows that they exist, and yet any one of them, circulated throughout

the country, read by the right-thinking, right-feeling men and women of

this land, would be of itself a "campaign document" that would initiate

a revolution which would not subside until the Indians' wrongs were, so

far as is now left possible, righted.

In 1869 President Grant appointed a commission of nine men, representing

the influence and philanthropy of six leading States, to visit the

different Indian reservations, and to "examine all matters appertaining

to Indian affairs."

In the report of this commission are such paragraphs as the following:

"To assert that 'the Indian will not work' is as true as it would be to

say that the white man will not work.

"Why should the Indian be expected to plant corn, fence lands, build

houses, or do anything but get food from day to day, when experience has

taught him that the product of his labor will be seized by the white man

to-morrow? The most industrious white man would become a drone under

similar circumstances. Nevertheless, many of the Indians" (the

commissioners might more forcibly have said 130,000 of the Indians) "are

already at work, and furnish ample refutation of the assertion that 'the

Indian will not work,' There is no escape from the inexorable logic of

facts.

"The history of the Government connections with the Indians is a

shameful record of broken treaties and unfulfilled promises. The history

of the border white man's connection with the Indians is a sickening

record of murder, outrage, robbery, and wrongs committed by the former,

as the rule, and occasional savage outbreaks and unspeakably barbarous

deeds of retaliation by the latter, as the exception.

"Taught by the Government that they had rights entitled to respect, when

those rights have been assailed by the rapacity of the white man, the

arm which should have been raised to protect them has ever been ready to

sustain the aggressor.

"The testimony of some of the highest military officers of the United

States is on record to the effect that, in our Indian wars, almost

without exception, the first aggressions have been made by the white

man; and the assertion is supported by every civilian of reputation who

has studied the subject. In addition to the class of robbers and outlaws

who find impunity in their nefarious pursuits on the frontiers, there is

a large class of professedly reputable men who use every means in their

power to bring on Indian wars for the sake of the profit to be realized

from the presence of troops and the expenditure of Government funds in

their midst. They proclaim death to the Indians at all times in words

and publications, making no distinction between the innocent and the

guilty. They irate the lowest class of men to the perpetration of the

darkest deeds against their victims, and as judges and jurymen shield

them from the justice due to their crimes. Every crime committed by a

white man against an Indian is concealed or palliated. Every offence

committed by an Indian against a white man is borne on the wings of the

post or the telegraph to the remotest corner of the land, clothed with

all the horrors which the reality or imagination can throw around it.

Against such influences as these the people of the United States need to

be warned."

To assume that it would be easy, or by any one sudden stroke of

legislative policy possible, to undo the mischief and hurt of the long

past, set the Indian policy of the country right for the future, and

make the Indians at once safe and happy, is the blunder of a hasty and

uninformed judgment. The notion which seems to be growing more

prevalent, that simply to make all Indians at once citizens of the

United States would be a sovereign and instantaneous panacea for all

their ills and all the Government's perplexities, is a very

inconsiderate one. To administer complete citizenship of a sudden, all

round, to all Indians, barbarous and civilized alike, would be as

grotesque a blunder as to dose them all round with any one medicine,

irrespective of the symptoms and needs of their diseases. It would kill

more than it would cure. Nevertheless, it is true, as was well stated by

one of the superintendents of Indian Affairs in 1857, that, "so long as

they are not citizens of the United States, their rights of property

must remain insecure against invasion. The doors of the federal

tribunals being barred against them while wards and dependents, they can

only partially exercise the rights of free government, or give to those

who make, execute, and construe the few laws they are allowed to enact,

dignity sufficient to make them respectable. While they continue

individually to gather the crumbs that fall from the table of the United

States, idleness, improvidence, and indebtedness will be the rule, and

industry, thrift, and freedom from debt the exception. The utter absence

of individual title to particular lands deprives every one among them of

the chief incentive to labor and exertion—the very mainspring on which

the prosperity of a people depends."

All judicious plans and measures for their safety and salvation must

embody provisions for their becoming citizens as fast as they are fit,

and must protect them till then in every right and particular in which

our laws protect other "persons" who are not citizens.

There is a disposition in a certain class of minds to be impatient with

any protestation against wrong which is unaccompanied or unprepared with

a quick and exact scheme of remedy. This is illogical. When pioneers in

a new country find a tract of poisonous and swampy wilderness to be

reclaimed, they do not withhold their hands from fire and axe till they

see clearly which way roads should run, where good water will spring,

and what crops will best grow on the redeemed land. They first clear the

swamp. So with this poisonous and baffling part of the domain of our

national affairs—let us first "clear the swamp."

However great perplexity and difficulty there may be in the details of

any and every plan possible for doing at this late day anything like

justice to the Indian, however hard it may be for good statesmen and

good men to agree upon the things that ought to be done, there certainly

is, or ought to be, no perplexity whatever, no difficulty whatever, in

agreeing upon certain things that ought not to be done, and which must

cease to be done before the first steps can be taken toward righting the

wrongs, curing the ills, and wiping out the disgrace to us of the

present condition of our Indians.

Cheating, robbing, breaking promises—these three are clearly things

which must cease to be done. One more thing, also, and that is the

refusal of the protection of the law to the Indian's rights of property,

"of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

When these four things have ceased to be done, time, statesmanship,

philanthropy, and Christianity can slowly and surely do the rest. Till

these four things have ceased to be done, statesmanship and philanthropy

alike must work in vain, and even Christianity can reap but small

harvest.

APPENDIX.

I.

THE SAND CREEK MASSACRE.

The following letters were printed in the _New York Tribune_ in the

winter of 1879. They are of interest, not only as giving a minute

account of one of the most atrocious massacres ever perpetrated, but

also as showing the sense of justice which is to be found in the

frontiersman's mind to-day. That men, exasperated by atrocities and

outrages, should have avenged themselves with hot haste and cruelty,

was, perhaps, only human; but that men should be found, fifteen years

later, apologizing for, nay, justifying the cruel deed, is indeed a

matter of marvel.

LETTER I.

In June, 1864, Governor Evans, of Colorado, sent out a circular to the

Indians of the Plains, inviting all friendly Indians to come into the

neighborhood of the forts, and be protected by the United States troops.

Hostilities and depredations had been committed by some bands of

Indians, and the Government was about to make war upon them. This

circular says:

"In some instances they (the Indians) have attacked and killed soldiers,

and murdered peaceable citizens. For this the Great Father is angry, and

will certainly hunt them out and punish them; but he does not want to

injure those who remain friendly to the whites. He desires to protect

and take care of them. For this purpose I direct that all friendly

Indians keep away from those who are at war, and go to places of safety.

Friendly Arapahoes and Cheyennes belonging to the Arkansas River will go

to Major Colby, United States Agent at Fort Lyon, who will give them

provisions and show them a place of safety."

In consequence of this proclamation of the governor, a band of

Cheyennes, several hundred in number, came in and settled down near Fort

Lyon. After a time they were requested to move to Sand Creek, about

forty miles from Fort Lyon, where they were still guaranteed "perfect

safety" and the protection of the Government. Rations of food were

issued to them from time to time. On the 27th of November, Colonel J. M.

Chivington, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Denver, and

Colonel of the First Colorado Cavalry, led his regiment by a forced

march to Fort Lyon, induced some of the United States troops to join

him, and fell upon this camp of friendly Indians at daybreak. The chief,

White Antelope, always known as friendly to the whites, came running

toward the soldiers, holding up his hands and crying "Stop! stop!" in

English. When he saw that there was no mistake, that it was a deliberate

attack, he folded his arms and waited till he was shot down. The United

States flag was floating over the lodge of Black Kettle, the head chief

of the tribe; below it was tied also a small white flag as additional

security—a precaution Black Kettle had been advised by United States

officers to take if he met troops on the Plains. In Major Wynkoop's

testimony, given before the committee appointed by Congress to

investigate this massacre, is the following passage:

"Women and children were killed and scalped, children shot at their

mothers' breasts, and all the bodies mutilated in the most horrible

manner. *** The dead bodies of females profaned in such a manner that

the recital is sickening, Colonel J. M. Chivington all the time inciting

his troops to their diabolical outrages."

Another man testified as to what he saw on the 30th of November, three

days after the battle, as follows:

"I saw a man dismount from his horse and cut the ear from the body of an

Indian, and the scalp from the head of another. I saw a number of

children killed; they had bullet-holes in them; one child had been cut

with some sharp instrument across its side. I saw another that both ears

had been cut off. *** I saw several of the Third Regiment cut off

fingers to get the rings off them. I saw Major Sayre scalp a dead

Indian. The scalp had a long tail of silver hanging to it."

Robert Bent testified:

"I saw one squaw lying on the bank, whose leg had been broken. A soldier

came up to her with a drawn sabre. She raised her arm to protect

herself; he struck, breaking her arm. She rolled over, and raised her

other arm; he struck, breaking that, and then left her without killing

her. I saw one squaw cut open, with an unborn child lying by her side."

Major Anthony testified:

"There was one little child, probably three years old, just big enough

to walk through the sand. The Indians had gone ahead, and this little

child was behind, following after them. The little fellow was perfectly

naked, travelling in the sand. I saw one man get off his horse at a

distance of about seventy-five yards and draw up his rifle and fire. He

missed the child. Another man came up and said, 'Let me try the son of a

b——. I can hit him.' He got down off his horse, kneeled down, and fired

at the little child, but he missed him. A third man came up, and made a

similar remark, and fired, and the little fellow dropped."

The Indians were not able to make much resistance, as only a part of

them were armed, the United States officers having required them to give

up their guns. Luckily they had kept a few.

When this Colorado regiment of demons returned to Denver they were

greeted with an ovation. _The Denver News_ said: "All acquitted

themselves well. Colorado soldiers have again covered themselves with

glory;" and at a theatrical performance given in the city, these scalps

taken from Indians were held up and exhibited to the audience, which

applauded rapturously.

After listening, day after day, to such testimonies as these I have

quoted, and others so much worse that I may not write and _The Tribune_

could not print the words needful to tell them, the committee reported:

"It is difficult to believe that beings in the form of men, and

disgracing the uniform of United States soldiers and officers, could

commit or countenance the commission of such acts of cruelty and

barbarity;" and of Colonel Chivington: "He deliberately planned and

executed a foul and dastardly massacre, which would have disgraced the

veriest savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty."

This was just fifteen years ago, no more. Shall we apply the same rule

of judgment to the white men of Colorado that the Government is now

applying to the Utes? There are 130,000 inhabitants of Colorado;

hundreds of them had a hand in this massacre, and thousands in cool

blood applauded it when it was done. There are 4000 Utes in Colorado.

Twelve of them, desperate, guilty men, have committed murder and rape,

and three or four hundred of them did, in the convenient phrase of our

diplomacy, "go to war against the Government;" _i.e._, they attempted,

by force of arms, to restrain the entrance upon their own lands—lands

bought, owned and paid for—of soldiers that the Government had sent

there, to be ready to make way upon them, in case the agent thought it

best to do so! This is the plain English of it. This is the plain, naked

truth of it.

And now the Secretary of the Interior has stopped the issue of rations

to 1000 of these helpless creatures; rations, be it understood, which

are not, and never were, a charity, but are the Utes' rightful dues, on

account of lands by them sold; dues which the Government promised to pay

"annually forever." Will the American people justify this? There is such

a thing as the conscience of a nation—as a nation's sense of justice.

Can it not be roused to speak now? Shall we sit still, warm and well

fed, in our homes, while five hundred women and little children are

being slowly starved in the bleak, barren wildernesses of Colorado?

Starved, not because storm, or blight, or drouth has visited their

country and cut off their crops; not because pestilence has laid its

hand on them and slain the hunters who brought them meat, but because it

lies within the promise of one man, by one word, to deprive them of

one-half their necessary food for as long a term of years as he may

please; and "the Secretary of the Interior cannot consistently feed a

tribe that has gone to war against the Government."

We read in the statutes of the United States that certain things may be

done by "executive order" of the President. Is it not time for a

President to interfere when hundreds of women and children are being

starved in his Republic by the order of one man? Colonel J. M.

Chivington's method was less inhuman by far. To be shot dead is a mercy,

and a grace for which we would all sue, if to be starved to death were

our only other alternative.

H. H.

New York, Jan 31st, 1880.

* * * * *

This letter drew from the former editor of the _Rocky Mountain News_, a

Denver newspaper, the following reply:

LETTER II.

_To the Editor of the Tribune_:

SIR,—In your edition of yesterday appears an article, under the above

caption, which arraigns the people of Colorado as a community of

barbarous murderers, and finally elevates them above the present

Secretary of the Interior, thereby placing the latter gentleman in a

most unenviable light if the charges averred be true. "The Sand Creek

Massacre" of 1864 is made the text and burden of the article; its

application is to the present condition of the White River band of Utes

in Colorado. Quotations are given from the testimony gathered, and the

report made thereon by a committee of Congress charged with a so-called

investigation of the Sand Creek affair. That investigation was made for

a certain selfish purpose. It was to break down and ruin certain men.

Evidence was taken upon one side only. It was largely false, and

infamously partial. There was no answer for the defence.

The Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians assembled at Sand Creek were not under

the protection of a United States fort. A few of them had been encamped

about Fort Lyon and drawing supplies therefrom, but they had gradually

disappeared and joined the main camp on Dry Sandy, forty miles from the

fort, separated from it by a waterless desert, and entirely beyond the

limit of its control or observation. While some of the occupants were

still, no doubt, occasional visitors at the fort, and applicants for

supplies and ammunition, most of the warriors were engaged in raiding

the great Platte River Road, seventy-five miles farther north, robbing

and burning trains, stealing cattle and horses, robbing and destroying

the United States mails, and killing white people. During the summer and

fall they had murdered over fifty of the citizens of Colorado. They had

stolen and destroyed provisions and merchandise, and driven away stock

worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had interrupted the mails,

and for thirty-two consecutive days none were allowed to pass their

lines. When satiated with murder and arson, and loaded with plunder,

they would retire to their sacred refuge on Sand Creek to rest and

refresh themselves, recruit their wasted supplies of ammunition from

Fort Lyon—begged under the garb of gentle, peaceful savages—and then

return to the road to relieve their tired comrades, and riot again in

carnage and robbery. These are facts; and when the "robbers' roost" was

cleaned out, on that sad but glorious 27th day of November, 1864, they

were sufficiently proven. Scalps of white men not yet dried; letters and

photographs stolen from the mails; bills of lading and invoices of

goods; bales and bolts of the goods themselves, addressed to merchants

in Denver; half-worn clothing of white women and children, and many

other articles of like character, were found in that poetical Indian

camp, and recovered by the Colorado soldiers. They were brought to

Denver, and those were the scalps exhibited in the theatre of that city.

There was also an Indian saddle-blanket entirely fringed around the

edges with white women's scalps, with the long, fair hair attached.

There was an Indian saddle over the pommel of which was stretched skin

stripped from the body of a white woman. Is it any wonder that soldiers

flushed with victory, after one of the hardest campaigns ever endured by

men, should indulge—some of them—in unwarranted atrocities after finding

such evidence of barbarism, and while more than forty of their comrades

were weltering in their own blood upon the field?

If "H. H." had been in Denver in the early part of that summer, when the

bloated, festering bodies of the Hungate family—father, mother, and two

babes—were drawn through the streets naked in an ox-wagon, cut,

mutilated, and scalped—the work of those same red fiends who were so

justly punished at Sand Creek; if, later, "H. H." had seen an upright

and most estimable business man go crazy over the news of his son's

being tortured to death a hundred miles down the Platte, as I did; if

"H. H." had seen one-half the Colorado homes made desolate that fateful

season, and a tithe of the tears that were caused to flow, I think there

would have been one little word of excuse for the people of

Colorado—more than a doubtful comparison with an inefficient and

culpable Indian policy. Bear in mind that Colorado had no railroads

then. Her supplies reached her by only one road—along the Platte—in

wagons drawn by oxen, mules, or horses. That line was in full possession

of the enemy. Starvation stared us in the face. Hardly a party went or

came without some persons being killed. In some instances whole trains

were cut off and destroyed. Sand Creek saved Colorado, and taught the

Indians the most salutary lesson they had ever learned. And now, after

fifteen years, and here in the shadow of the Nation's Capitol, with the

spectre of "H. H.'s" condemnation staring me in the face, I am neither

afraid nor ashamed to repeat the language then used by _The Denver

News_: "All acquitted themselves well. Colorado soldiers have again

covered themselves with glory."

Thus much of history is gone over by "H. H." to present in true dramatic

form the deplorable condition of the White River Utes, 1000 in number,

who are now suffering the pangs of hunger and the discomfort of cold in

the wilds of Western Colorado, without any kind agent to issue rations,

provide blankets, or build fires for them. It is really too bad. A

painful dispensation of Providence has deprived them of their best

friend, and they are desolate and bereaved. He placed his life and its

best efforts, his unbounded enthusiasm for their good, his great

Christian heart—all at their service. But an accident befell him, and he

is no more. The coroner's jury that sat upon his remains found that his

dead body had a barrel stave driven into his mouth, a log-chain around

his neck, by which it had been dragged about like a dead hog, and sundry

bullet-holes through his body. The presumption was that from the effect

of some one of these accidents he died; and, alas! he is no longer to

serve out weekly rations to his flock of gentle Utes. There is no sorrow

over his death or the desolation it wrought, but there is pity, oceans

of pity, for the Indians who are hungry and cold. True, at the time he

died they took the flour, the pork, and salt, and coffee, and sugar, and

tobacco, and blankets, and all the other supplies that he would have

issued to them through all this long winter had he lived. With his care

these would have lasted until spring, and been sufficient for their

wants; but, without it, "H. H." is suspicious that they are all gone,

and yet it is but just past the middle of winter. Can "H. H." tell why

this is thus? It is also true that they drove away the large herd of

cattle from the increase of which that same unfortunate agent and his

predecessors had supplied them with beef for eleven years past, and yet

the consumption did not keep pace with the natural increase. They took

them all, and are presumed to have them now. True, again, they had at

the beginning of winter, or at the period of the melancholy loss of

their best friend, about 4000 horses that were rolling fat, and three

acres of dogs—not bad food in an emergency, or for an Indian

thanksgiving feast—some of which should still remain.

THE WHOLE WHITE RIVER BAND GUILTY.

But "H. H." intimates that there is an alleged excuse for withholding

rations from these poor, persecuted red angels. "Twelve" of them have

been bad, and the tyrant at the head of the Interior Department is

systematically starving all of the 1000 who constitute the band, and

their 4000 horses, and 1800 cattle, and three acres of dogs, and six

months' supplies, because those twelve bad Indians cannot

conscientiously pick themselves out and be offered up as a

burnt-offering and a sacrifice to appease the wrath of an outraged and

partly civilized nation. This is the present indictment, and the

Secretary and the President are commanded to stand up and plead "Guilty

or not guilty, but you know you are guilty, d—n you." Now I challenge

and defy "H. H.," or any other person living, to pick out or name twelve

White River male Utes, over sixteen years of age, who were _not_ guilty,

directly or indirectly, as principals or accomplices before the fact, in

the Thornburgh attack or in the Agency massacre. I know these Indians

well enough to know that these attacks were perfectly understood and

deliberately planned. I cannot be made to believe that a single one of

them, of common-sense and intelligence, was ignorant of what was to take

place, and that knowledge extended far beyond the White River band.

There were plenty of recruits from both the Los Pinos and the Uintah

bands. In withholding supplies from the White River Utes the Secretary

of the Interior is simply obeying the law. He cannot, except upon his

own personal responsibility, issue supplies to a hostile Indian tribe,

and the country will hold him accountable for a departure from his line

of duty. Inferentially the Indians are justified by "H. H." in their

attack upon Thornburgh's command. Their object was to defend "their own

lands—lands bought, owned, and paid for." Bought of whom, pray? Paid for

by whom? To whom was payment made? The soldiers were making no attack;

they contemplated none. The agent had no authority to order an attack.

He could not proclaim war. He could have no control whatever over the

troops. But his life was in danger. The honor of his family was at

stake. He asked for protection. "H. H." says he had no right to it. His

life and the honor of his aged wife and of his virgin daughter are gone,

and "H. H." is the champion of fiends who wrought the ruin.

WM. N. BYERS.

Washington, D. C., Feb. 6th, 1880.

* * * * *

The most fitting reply to the assertions in this extraordinary document

was by still further citations from the sworn testimony given before the

Congressional committees—evidence with which volumes could have been

filled.

LETTER III.

_To the Editor of the Tribune_:

SIR,—In reply to the letter in Sunday's _Tribune_, headed "The Starving

Utes," I would like to place before the readers of _The Tribune_ some

extracts from sworn testimony taken in Colorado on the subject of the

Sand Creek massacre. The writer of this letter says:

"The Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians assembled at Sand Creek were not

under the protection of a United States fort."

The following testimony is that of Lieutenant Craven, Senate Document,

vol. ii., 1866-67, p. 46:

"I had some conversation with Major Downing, Lieutenant Maynard, and

Colonel Chivington. I stated to them my feelings in regard to the

matter—that I believed it to be murder—and stated the obligations that

we of Major Wynkoop's command were under to those Indians.

"To Colonel Chivington I know I stated that Major Wynkoop had pledged

his word as an officer and man to those Indians, and that all officers

under him were indirectly pledged in the same manner that he was, and

that I felt that it was placing us in very embarrassing circumstances to

fight the same Indians that had saved our lives, as we all felt that

they had.

"Colonel Chivington's reply was that he believed it to be right and

honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians that would

kill women and children; and, 'damn any one that was in sympathy with

Indians;' and, 'such men as Major Wynkoop and myself had better get out

of the United States service.'"

This conversation was testified to by other witnesses. Major Wynkoop, it

will be remembered, was the officer in command at Fort Lyon when this

band of Cheyennes and Arapahoes came in there to claim protection, in

consequence of the governor's proclamation, saying that,

"All friendly Arapahoes and Cheyennes, belonging on the Arkansas River,

will go to Major Colby, United States Indian Agent at Fort Lyon, who

will give them provisions and show them a place of safety."

Major Wynkoop was succeeded in the command of Fort Lyon by Major

Anthony, who continued for a time to issue rations to these Indians, as

Major Wynkoop had done; but after a time he called them together and

told them he could not feed them any longer; they would better go where

they could hunt. _He selected the place to which they were to move on

Sandy Creek._ They obeyed, and he gave back to them some of the arms

which had been taken away. They were moved to Sandy Creek, about forty

miles from Fort Lyon, partly "for fear of some conflict between them and

the soldiers or emigrants," Fort Lyon being on a thoroughfare of travel.

One of the chiefs—One Eye—was hired by Major Anthony at $125 a month "to

obtain information for the use of the military authorities. Several

times he brought news to the fort of proposed movements of hostile

Indians." This chief was killed in the massacre.

This is the testimony of Captain Soule, First Colorado Cavalry:

"Did you protest against attacking those Indians?"

"I did."

"Who was your commanding officer?"

"Major Anthony."

"Did you inform Major Anthony of the relations existing with Black

Kettle?"

"I did. He knew the relations. I frequently talked to him about it."

"What answer did Major Anthony make to your protests?"

"He said that we were going to fight the hostile Indians at Smoky Hill.

He also said that he was in for killing all Indians, and that he had

only been acting friendly with them until he could get a force large

enough to go out and kill all of them."

This is the testimony of S. E. Brown:

"Colonel Chivington in a public speech said his policy was to kill and

scalp all, little and big: nits made lice."

Governor Hunt testified as follows: [Governor Hunt was one of the

earliest settlers in Colorado. He was United States Marshal, Delegate to

Congress, and afterward Governor of the Territory.]

"We have always regarded Black Kettle and White Antelope as the special

friends of the white man ever since I have been in this country."

"Do you know of any acts of hostility committed by them or with their

consent?"

"No, sir, I do not."

"Did you ever hear any acts of hostility attributed to them by any one?"

"No, sir." ***

The following extract is:

"The regiment, when they marched into Denver, exhibited Indian scalps."

This is from the official report of Major Wynkoop, major commanding Fort

Lyon.

"In conclusion, allow me to say that, from the time I held the

consultation with the Indian chiefs on the head-waters of Smoky Hill up

to the date of this massacre by Colonel Chivington, not one single

depredation had been committed by the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians. The

settlers of the Arkansas Valley had returned to their ranches, from

which they had fled, had taken in their crops, and had been resting in

perfect security under assurances from myself that they would be in no

danger for the present. Since this last horrible murder by Colonel

Chivington the country presents a scene of desolation. All communication

is cut off with the States, except by sending large bodies of troops,

and already over a hundred whites have fallen victims to the fearful

vengeance of these betrayed Indians."

January 15th, 1865.

* * * * *

The writer of this letter says, in regard to the investigation of the

Sand Creek massacre by the Congressional committee, that "evidence was

taken upon one side only," and "there was no answer for the defence."

A large part of the testimony is sworn evidence, given by the Governor

of Colorado, by Colonel J. M. Chivington himself, who planned and

executed the massacre, and by Major Anthony, who accompanied him with

troops from Fort Lyon. The writer of this article says that "the

investigation was made for a certain selfish purpose, *** to break down

and ruin certain men."

The names of Senator Foster, Senator Doolittle, and "honest Ben Wade

"are the best refutation of this statement. It will be hard to impeach

the trustworthiness of reports signed by these names, and one of these

reports says:

"It is difficult to believe that beings in the form of men, and

disgracing the uniform of United States soldiers and officers, could

commit or countenance the commission of such acts of cruelty and

barbarity."

Of Colonel Chivington, it says:

"He deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre,

which would have disgraced the veriest savage among those who were the

victims of his cruelty."

And of Major Anthony:

"The testimony of Major Anthony, who succeeded an officer disposed to

treat these Indians with justice and humanity, is sufficient of itself

to show how unprovoked and unwarranted was this massacre. He testifies

that he found these Indians camped near Fort Lyon when he assumed

command of that fort; that they professed their friendliness to the

whites, and their willingness to do whatever he demanded of them; that

they delivered their arms up to him; that they went to and encamped on

the place designated by him; that they gave him information from time to

time of acts of hostility which were meditated by other hostile bands,

and in every way conducted themselves properly and peaceably; and yet he

says it was fear and not principle which prevented his killing them

while they were completely in his power; and, when Colonel Chivington

appeared at Fort Lyon on his mission of murder and barbarity, Major

Anthony made haste to accompany him with men and artillery."

The writer of this letter says that the evidence given in this

"so-called investigation" was "largely false and infamously partial." If

this were the case, why did not all persons so "infamously" slandered

see to it that before the year ended their own version of the affair

should reach, if not the general public, at least the Department of the

Interior? Why did they leave it possible for the Secretary of the

Interior to incorporate in his Annual Report for 1865—to be read by all

the American people—these paragraphs?

"No official account has ever reached this office from its own proper

sources of the most disastrous and shameful occurrence, the massacre of

a large number of men, women, and children of the Indians of this agency

(the Upper Arkansas) by the troops under the command of Colonel

Chivington of the United States Volunteer Cavalry of Colorado. ***

"When several hundred of them had come into a place designated by

Governor Evans as a rendezvous for those who would separate themselves

from the hostile parties, these Indians were set upon and butchered in

cold blood by troops in the service of the United States. The few who

escaped to the northward told a story which effectually prevented any

more advances toward peace by such of the bands as were well disposed."

And why did the Government of the United States empower General Sanborn,

in the Council held October 12th, 1865, with the Arapahoes and

Cheyennes, including the remnants of bands that had escaped from the

Sand Creek massacre, to formally and officially repudiate the action of

the United States soldiers in that massacre? General Sanborn said, in

this council:

"We all feel disgraced and ashamed when we see our officers or soldiers

oppressing the weak, or making war on those who are at peace with us.

*** We are willing, as representatives of the President, to restore all

the property lost at Sand Creek, or its value. *** He has sent out his

commissioners to make reparation, as far as we can. *** So heartily do

we repudiate the actions of our soldiers that we are willing to give to

the chiefs in their own right 320 acres of land each, to hold as his own

forever, and to each of the children and squaws who lost husbands or

parents; we are also willing to give 160 acres of land as their own, to

keep as long as they live."

The writer of this letter, quoting the statement from a previous article

in _The Tribune_, that the White River Utes, in their attack on Major

Thornburgh's command, fought "to defend their own lands—lands bought,

owned, and paid for," asks:

"Bought of whom, pray? Paid for by whom? To whom was payment made?"

"Bought" of the United States Government, thereby recognizing the United

States Government's right to "the sovereignty of the soil" as superior

to the Indians' "right of occupancy."

"Paid for" by the Ute Indians, by repeated "relinquishments" of said

"right of occupancy" in large tracts of valuable lands; notably by the

"relinquishment," according to the Brunot Treaty of 1873, of 4,000,000

acres of valuable lands, "unquestionably rich in mineral

deposits."—_Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior for 1873_, p.

464.

"To whom was payment made?"

To the United States Government, which has accepted and ratified such

exchanges of "right of occupancy" for "right of sovereignty," and such

sales of "right of occupancy" for large sums of money by repeated and

reiterated treaties.

The Secretary of the Interior has incorporated in his Annual Report for

1879 (in the report on Indian Affairs, p. 36) the following paragraphs:

"Let it be fully understood that the Ute Indians have a good and

sufficient title to 12,000,000 acres of land in Colorado, and that these

Indians did not thrust themselves in the way of the white people, but

that they were originally and rightfully possessors of the soil, and

that the land they occupy has been acknowledged to be theirs by solemn

treaties made with them by the United States.

"It will not do to say that a treaty with an Indian means nothing. It

means even more than the pledge of the Government to pay a bond. It is

the most solemn declaration that any government of any people ever

enters into. Neither will it do to say that treaties never ought to have

been made with Indians. That question is now not in order, as the

treaties have been made, and must be lived up to whether convenient or

otherwise.

"By beginning at the outset with the full acknowledgment of the absolute

and indefeasible right of these Indians to 12,000,000 acres in Colorado,

we can properly consider what is the best method of extinguishing the

Indian title thereto without injustice to the Indians, and without

violating the plighted faith of the Government of the United States."

The writer of this letter says:

"In withholding supplies from the White River Utes, the Secretary of the

Interior is simply obeying the law. He cannot, except upon his own

personal responsibility, issue supplies to a hostile Indian tribe."

Secretary Schurz has published, in the Annual Report of the Department

of the Interior for 1879, the following paragraph in regard to this case

of the White River Utes:

"The atrocity of the crimes committed should not prevent those

individuals who are innocent from being treated as such, according to

Article 17 of the treaty, viz.: _Provided_, that if any chief of either

of the confederated bands make war against the United States, or in any

manner violate this treaty in any essential part, said chief shall

forfeit his position as chief, and all rights to any of the benefits of

this treaty; but, _provided further_, any Indian of either of these

confederated bands who shall remain at peace, and abide by the terms of

this treaty in all its essentials, shall be entitled to its benefits and

provisions, notwithstanding his particular chief and band have forfeited

their rights thereto."

The writer of this letter says, in allusion to the murders and outrages

committed by some of the White River Utes, that "H. H. is the champion

of the fiends who wrought the ruin." Have the readers of _The Tribune_

so understood my protests against the injustice of punishing the

innocent for the crimes of the guilty?

H. H.

New York, Feb. 22d, 1880.

* * * * *

This letter was followed by a card from Mr. Byers, reiterating some of

his assertions; and by a second short letter, which closed the

discussion.

_To the Editor of the Tribune_:

SIR,—I ask only a little space for reference to the communication of "H.

H." in to-day's _Tribune_. It is asked, "If the investigation of the

Sand Creek affair was so unfair, why did not the people of Colorado

correct the false impression by presenting their own version of the

case?" The answer is that the case was prejudged, and we were denied a

hearing in our defence.

The inference is conveyed in to-day's article that Indian hostilities on

the plains were provoked by and followed after the Sand Creek massacre.

We, who were so unfortunate as to be citizens of Colorado at the time,

know that a very great majority of the savage atrocities of that period

occurred before the battle of Sand Creek. We know that the Sand Creek

Indian camp was the common rendezvous of the hostile bands who were

committing those atrocities. We know that comparatively few occurred

afterward. No amount of special pleading, no reiteration of partial

statements, and withholding of more important truths, will change the

facts so well known to the earlier settlers of Colorado.

I deny that the Utes have either bought or paid for any land. They have

relinquished for a consideration a certain portion of the land they

formerly claimed, and still retain the other portion. I deny, also, that

only twelve of the White River Utes are guilty and the great mass of

them innocent. The contrary is the fact.

WM. N. BYERS.

New York, Feb. 24th, 1880.

_To the Editor of the Tribune_:

SIR,—In reply to the assertion that the perpetrators of the Sand Creek

massacre were "denied a hearing in their defence," I wish to state to

the readers of _The Tribune_ that, in addition to the Congressional

committees from whose reports I have already quoted, there was appointed

a Military Commission to investigate that massacre. This commission sat

seventy-three days, in Denver and at Fort Lyon. Colonel J. M. Chivington

called before it, in his "defence," all the witnesses he chose, and gave

notice on the seventy-third day of the commission's sitting that he did

not "wish to introduce any more witnesses for the defence." He also had

(and used) the privilege of cross-examining every witness called by the

commission. The evidence given before this commission occupies over two

hundred pages of Volume II., Senate Documents for 1866-'67.

In reply to the assertion that "a great majority of the savage

atrocities of that period occurred before" the massacre at Sand Creek,

and that "comparatively few occurred after," I will give to the readers

of _The Tribune_ one extract from the report of the Indian Peace

Commission of 1868. Alluding to the Sand Creek massacre, the report

says:

"It scarcely has its parallel in the records of Indian barbarity.

Fleeing women, holding up their hands and praying for mercy, were shot

down; infants were killed and scalped in derision; men were tortured and

mutilated in a manner that would put to shame the savages of interior

Africa. No one will be astonished that a war ensued which cost the

Government $30,000,000, and carried conflagration and death into the

border settlements. During the spring and summer of 1865 no less than

8000 troops were withdrawn from the effective forces engaged in the

Rebellion to meet this Indian war."

The Commissioners who made this report were N. J. Taylor, President; J.

B. Henderson, John B. Sanborn, William T. Sherman, Lieutenant-general;

William S. Harvey, Brevet Major-general; Alfred H. Terry, Brevet

Major-general; C. C. Augur, Brevet Major-general; S. F. Tappan.

In reply to the assertion that the Utes have not "either bought or paid

for any land," I will ask such of _The Tribune_ readers as are

interested in the subject to read the "Brunot Treaty," made September

13th, 1873, "between Felix R. Brunot, Commissioner for the United

States, and the chiefs, headmen, and men" of the seven confederated

bands of Utes. It is to be found in the report of the Department of the

Interior for 1873, p. 454.

In conclusion of the discussion as to the Sand Creek massacre, I will

relate one more incident of that terrible day. It has not been recorded

in any of the reports. It was told in Colorado, to one of the members of

the Senate Committee at the time of their investigation: One of the

squaws had escaped from the village, and was crouching behind some low

sage brush. A frightened horse came running toward her hiding-place, its

owner in hot pursuit. Seeing that the horse was making directly for her

shelter, and that she would inevitably be seen, and thinking that

possibly if she caught the horse, and gave him back to the owner, she

might thus save her life, she ran after the horse, caught it, and stood

holding it till the soldier came up. Remembering that with her blanket

rolled tight around her she might possibly be taken for a man, as she

put into the soldier's hand the horse's bridle, with the other hand she

threw open her blanket enough to show her bosom, that he might see that

she was a woman. He put the muzzle of his pistol between her breasts and

shot her dead; and afterward was "not ashamed" to boast of the act. It

was by such deeds as this that "the Colorado soldiers acquitted

themselves well, and covered themselves with glory."

H. H.

New York, Feb. 28th, 1880.

II.

THE PONCA CASE.

_Extract from Treaty with the Poncas, giving them Dakota Lands._

"ART. II.—In consideration of the cession or release of that portion of

the reservation above described by the Ponca tribe of Indians to the

Government of the United States, the Government of the United States, by

way of rewarding them for their constant fidelity to the Government

thereof, and with a view of returning to the said tribe of Ponca Indians

their old burying-grounds and cornfields, hereby cede and relinquish to

the tribe of Ponca Indians the following described fractional townships,

to wit, township thirty-one (31), north range, seven (7) west; also

fractional township thirty-two (32), north ranges, six (6), seven (7),

eight (8), nine (9), and ten (10) west; also fractional township

thirty-three (33), north ranges, seven (7) and eight (8) west; and also

all that portion of township thirty-three (33), north ranges, nine (9)

and ten (10) west, lying south of Ponca Creek; and also all the islands

in the Niobrara or Running Water River lying in front of lands or

townships above ceded by the United States to the Ponca tribe of

Indians."

A correspondence which was held with the Secretary of the Interior in

the winter of 1879, in regard to the Poncas, is so excellent an

illustration of the methods and policy of the Interior Department that

it is worth while to give it at length here.

FIRST LETTER.

MRS. JACKSON TO SECRETARY SCHURZ.

New York, Friday, Jan. 9th, 1880.

_To the Secretary of the Interior_:

DEAR SIR,—I have received from a Boston lady a letter which has so

important a bearing on the interests of the Poncas that I take the

liberty of asking you to read and reply to the following extracts. I

send them to you with the writer's permission:

"In Boston most of those who are likely to give most largely and feel

most strongly for the Indians have confidence in Secretary Schurz. They

think that so far he has shown himself their friend, and they feel

unprepared to help any plan with regard to the Indians which he opposes.

The greatest service which could be rendered to the Indian cause at

present would be given, therefore, by some one sufficiently interested

to obtain an answer who would write to Secretary Schurz, and request

him, on the part of the Indians, either to aid them by publicly and

cordially endorsing this effort of the Poncas to secure their legal

rights in the courts, or else to give his reasons against this attempt,

in so clear a form that one could understand them. If there are good

reasons, there can be no ground for keeping them secret, and the public

has a right to know them. If not, no man can call himself a friend of

the Indians who throws cold water on the present interest of the public

in this matter.

"Secretary Schurz has already stated that it was not worth while to sue

for the Ponca lands, as the Poncas are better off where they now are;

but Secretary Schurz cannot deny that it is worth ten times $10,000 to

prove that if the Government seizes land given to the Indians forever by

solemn compact, the latter can by the courts recover it. Secretary

Schurz has also said that a bill to give the Indians land in severalty

is already before Congress. If he wishes that bill to pass he must know

that it is only by help of the people that the ignorance, apathy, and

greed which are accountable for the shameful record of the past can be

overcome; and that, whatever his sentiments toward these particular

Poncas, he cannot afford to throw aside the interest they have excited.

"For a hundred years the Indians have been the victims of fraud and

oppression on the part of the Government. Will anything put an end to it

but to give the Indians the legal right to protect themselves? Promises

and plans will not do it, for who can assure their performance?

Secretary Schurz's position is a strange one, and the public are waiting

and watching to see what it means. Is it possible that he is satisfied

to have 250,000 human beings, with valuable possessions (however

uncivilized), held as absolute slaves, with no rights, and at the mercy

of a government like ours, whose constant changes, to say the least,

render most improbable the wise, equitable, and humane treatment he

recommends in his report—and when the distance of the Indian from the

personal interests of all but those States which have a personal

interest in possessing his lands makes the assistance of Congress in

such treatment still more unlikely? I cannot but believe that he has

allowed himself to be driven into an opposition he does not really feel;

and that he will yet have the magnanimity to forget any criticism on his

own acts, and take the lead with those who would try to give the Indians

a permanent defence against the vicissitudes of party and the greed of

men.

"I will not forget to add that if the three thousand and odd hundreds of

dollars needed to complete the ten thousand required to pay the costs of

the Ponca suits cannot be raised in the great city of New York, I will

myself guarantee to raise it in Boston in twenty-four hours if Secretary

Schurz will openly endorse the plan."

The matter stands, therefore, in this shape: If you can say that you

approve of the Poncas bringing the suits they wish to bring for the

recovery of their lands, all the money for which they ask can be placed

in their hands immediately. The writer of the above letter assured me

that she would herself give the entire sum if there were any difficulty

in raising it. If you do not approve of the Poncas bringing these suits,

or making an effort to bring them, are you willing to give the reasons

of your disapproval? It would be a great satisfaction to those Boston

friends of yours whose action in this matter turns solely on your

decision, if these reasons could be stated in clear and explicit form.

Yours respectfully,

HELEN JACKSON.

SECRETARY SCHURZ TO MRS. JACKSON.

Department of the Interior, Office of the Secretary, Jan. 17th, 1880.

DEAR MADAM,—I should certainly have answered your letter of the 9th

instant more promptly had I not been somewhat overburdened with official

business during the past week. I hope you will kindly pardon the

involuntary delay.

As I understand the matter, money is being collected for the purpose of

engaging counsel to appear for the Poncas in the courts of the United

States, partly to represent them in the case of an appeal from Judge

Dundy's _habeas corpus_ decision, and partly to procure a decision for

the recovery of their old reservation on the Missouri River. I believe

that the collection of money for these purposes is useless. An appeal

from Judge Dundy's _habeas corpus_ decision can proceed only from the

Government, not from the Poncas, for the simple reason that the decision

was in favor of the latter. An appeal was, indeed, entered by the United

States District-attorney at Omaha immediately after the decision had

been announced. Some time ago his brief was submitted to me. On

examining it, I concluded at once to advise the attorney-general of my

opinion that it should be dropped, as I could not approve the principles

upon which the argument was based. The attorney-general consented to

instruct the district-attorney accordingly, and thus Judge Dundy's

decision stands without further question on the part of the Government.

Had an appeal been prosecuted, and had Judge Dundy's decision been

sustained by the court above, the general principles involved in it

would simply have been affirmed without any other practical effect than

that already obtained. This matter is therefore ended.

As to the right of the Poncas to their old reservation on the Missouri,

the Supreme Court has repeatedly decided that an Indian tribe cannot sue

the United States or a State in the federal courts. The decisions are

clear and uniform on this point. Among lawyers with whom I discussed

this matter, I have not found a single one who entertained a different

view; but I did find among them serious doubts as to whether a decision,

even if the Poncas could bring suits, would be in their favor,

considering the facts in the case. But, inasmuch as such a suit cannot

be brought at all, this is not the question. It is evidently idle to

collect money and to fee attorneys for the purpose of doing a thing

which cannot be done. Had the disinterested friends of the Indians who

are engaged in this work first consulted lawyers on the question of

possibility, they would no doubt have come to the same conclusion.

The study I have given to the Indian question in its various aspects,

past and present, has produced in my mind the firm conviction that the

only certain way to secure the Indians in their possessions, and to

prevent them from becoming forever a race of homeless paupers and

vagabonds, is to transform their tribal title into individual title,

inalienable for a certain period; in other words, to settle them in

severalty, and give them by patent an individual fee-simple in their

lands. Then they will hold their lands by the same title by which white

men hold theirs, and they will, as a matter of course, have the same

standing in the courts, and the same legal protection of their property.

As long as they hold large tracts in the shape of reservations, only

small parts of which they can make useful to themselves and to others,

the whole being held by the tribe in common, their tenure will always be

insecure. It will grow more and more so as our population increases, and

the quantity of available land diminishes. We may call this an ugly and

deplorable fact, but it is a fact for all that. Long experience shows

that the protests of good people in the name of justice and humanity

have availed but very little against this tendency, and it is useless to

disguise and unwise to overlook it, if we mean to do a real service to

the Indians.

For this reason I attach much more importance to the passage of

legislation providing for the settlement of the Indians in severalty,

and giving them individual title in fee-simple, the residue of their

lands not occupied by them to be disposed of for their benefit, than to

all the efforts, however well intended, to procure judicial decisions

which, as I have shown, cannot be had. I am glad to say that the

conversations I have had with senators and representatives in Congress

on the policy of settling the Indians in severalty have greatly

encouraged my hope of the success of the "severalty bill" during the

present session.

I need not repeat here what I said in a letter to Mr. Edward Atkinson,

which you may possibly have seen some time ago in the Boston papers,

about the necessity of educating Indian children. You undoubtedly

understand that as well as I do, and I hope you will concur in my

recommendation that the money collected for taking the Ponca case into

the courts, which is impossible of accomplishment, and as much more as

can be added, be devoted to the support and enlargement of our Indian

schools, such as those at Hampton and Carlisle. Thus a movement which

undoubtedly has the hearty sympathy of many good men and women, but

which at present seems in danger of being wasted on the unattainable,

may be directed into a practical channel, and confer a real and lasting

benefit on the Indian race.

Very respectfully yours,

C. SCHURZ.

Mrs. HELEN JACKSON, New York.

MRS. JACKSON'S SECOND LETTER.

Brevoort House, New York, Thursday, Jan. 22d, 1880.

_Hon. Carl Schurz_:

DEAR SIR,—Your letter of the 17th instant is at hand. If I understand

this letter correctly, the position which you take is as follows: That

there is in your opinion, and in the opinion of the lawyers whom you

have consulted on the subject, no way of bringing before the courts the

suits for the prosecution of which money has been and is being

contributed by the friends of the Poncas; that the reason you do not

approve of this movement is that "it is evidently idle to collect money

and to fee attorneys for the purpose of doing a thing which cannot be

done." This is the sole reason which I understand you to give for

discountenancing the collection of money for these suits. Am I correct

in this? And are we to infer that it is on this ground and no other that

you oppose the collection of money for this purpose? Are we to

understand that you would be in favor of the Poncas recovering their

lands by process of law, provided it were practicable?

You say, also, that you hope I will "concur" in your "recommendation

that the money collected for taking the Ponca case into the courts shall

be devoted to the support and enlargement of our Indian schools." May I

ask how it would be, in your opinion, possible to take money given by

thousands of people for one specific purpose and use it for another

different purpose? You say, "Had the friends of the Indians who are

engaged in this work first consulted lawyers on the question of

possibility, they would, no doubt, have come to the same conclusion."

Had the friends of the Indians engaged in this work, and initiated this

movement without having consulted lawyers, it would have been indeed

foolish. But this was not the case. Lawyers of skill and standing were

found ready to undertake the case; and the matter stands therefore

to-day precisely as it stood when I wrote to you on the 17th instant.

All the money which is thought to be needed for carrying the Ponca case

before the courts can be raised in twenty-four hours in Boston, if you

can say that you approve of the suits being brought. If your only

objection to the movement is the one objection which you have stated,

namely, that it would be futile, can you not say that, if lawyers of

standing are ready to undertake the case, you would be glad to see the

attempt made in the courts, and the question settled? If it is, as you

think, a futile effort, it will be shown to be so. If it is, as the

friends and lawyers of the Poncas think, a practicable thing, a great

wrong will be righted.

You say that "to settle them (the Indians) in severalty, and give them

by patent an individual fee-simple in their lands," will enable them to

"hold their lands by the same title by which white men hold theirs," and

that "then they will, as a matter of course, have the same standing in

the courts and the same legal protection of their property." May I ask

you if any bill has been brought before Congress which is so worded as

to secure these ends? My only apology for troubling you again is my deep

interest in the Indians, and in the Ponca case especially.

Yours truly,

HELEN JACKSON.

REPLY OF SECRETARY SCHURZ TO THE SECOND LETTER.

Washington, D.C., Jan. 26th, 1880.

DEAR MADAM,—In reply to your letter of the 22d instant, I beg leave to

say that if an Indian tribe could maintain an action in the courts of

the United States to assert its rights, I should object to it just as

little as I would object to the exercise of the same privilege on the

part of white men. What I do object to is the collection of money from

philanthropic and public-spirited persons, ostensibly for the benefit of

the Indians, but in fact for the benefit of attorneys and others who are

to be paid for again testing a question which has been tested more than

once, and has been decided by the Supreme Court so clearly and

comprehensively that further testing seems utterly futile. You say that

there are lawyers of skill and standing ready to undertake the case. Of

course there are such. You can find lawyers of skill and standing to

undertake for a good fee any case, however hopeless: that is their

business. But I am by no means of your opinion that, whether it be

futile or not, the experiment should be tried once more, and for this

purpose the collection of money should be further encouraged. It cannot

be said in this case that if the attempt will not help it will not hurt.

There seems to be now a genuine and active interest in the Indian

question springing up. Many sincere friends of the Indian are willing to

spend time and money for the promotion of their welfare. Such a movement

can do great good if wisely guided in the direction of attainable

objects; but if it be so conducted that it can result only in putting

money into the pockets of private individuals, without any benefit to

the Indians, the collapse will be as hurtful as it seems to be

inevitable. It will not only be apt to end a movement which, if well

directed, might have become very useful, but it will also deter the

sincere friends of the Indians who contributed their means in the hope

of accomplishing something from further efforts of that kind, so that we

may find it very difficult, for a long time at least, to engage this

active sympathy again. Confidence once abused does not revive very

quickly. This is my view of the case. You ask me "how it would be

possible to take money given by thousands of people for one specific

purpose, and use it for another and different purpose," meaning the

support of Indian schools. It would, in my opinion, be far better to lay

the matter in its true aspect frankly before the contributors, and to

ask them for their consent to the change of purpose, than to throw away

the money for a purpose which cannot be accomplished.

In reply to your inquiry whether any bill has been brought before

Congress providing for the settlement of the Indians in severalty, and

for conferring upon the individual title in fee-simple to the lands

allotted to them, I am glad to say that several bills of this kind have

been introduced in both the Senate and the House, and are now before the

respective committees on Indian affairs for consideration. If such a

bill passes, of which there is great hope, the Indian, having a fee

title by patent to the piece of land which he individually, not as a

member of a tribe, holds as his own, will stand in the eye of the law

just like any other owner of property in his individual right, and, as a

matter of course, will have the same standing in court. This will do

more in securing the Indian in the practical enjoyment of his property

than anything else I can think of, and it has long been my endeavor to

bring about just this result. I trust we shall obtain the desired

legislation during the present session of Congress.

Very respectfully yours,

C. SCHURZ.

Mrs. HELEN JACKSON, New York.

* * * * *

The evasive and inconclusive character of these replies of the Secretary

provoked much comment, and gave rise to a very wide-spread and natural

impression that he was for some reason or other averse to the

restoration to the Poncas of their old homes. The letters were reviewed

by one of the editors of the _New York Times_ in a paper so admirable

that the letters ought not to be printed without it.

CIVIL RIGHTS IN ACRES.

(From the _New York Times_, February 21st, 1880.)

"As most of the readers of the _Times_ already know, friends of the

Ponca Indians are endeavoring to have the tribe restored to their old

reservation in Dakota. Or, more strictly speaking, it is proposed that

their reservation shall be restored to them. The lands occupied by the

Poncas were ceded to them by the United States by solemn treaty. By a

cruel and wicked blunder, which no man has attempted to explain, those

lands were ceded to the Sioux. But the Sioux did not want the lands, and

they have never occupied them unto this day. To this robbery of the

tribe was added the destruction of their houses, movable property, and

farms. A citizen of the United States would have redress in the courts

for such an outrage as this. An Indian has no legal status. He is merely

a live and particularly troublesome animal, in the eye of the law. But,

while the Poncas were trying to get back on their lands, they were

arrested by order of the Secretary of the Interior, on the charge of

running away from the agency to which they had been sent by the

Government when their lands were taken from them. It is not necessary to

add words to intensify this accumulation of criminal folly and wrong.

Certain citizens of Nebraska, hearing of the injustice which was being

perpetrated on the Poncas, raised funds, and had the chiefs brought

before United States District Judge Dundy on a writ of _habeas corpus_,

to inquire why they were thus restrained of their liberty. Judge Dundy

decided that an Indian was 'a person' within the meaning of the _Habeas

Corpus_ Act, and that these persons were unlawfully held in duress.

"It was thought that the United States would appeal from this dictum,

but no appeal was taken, much to the disappointment of the friends of

the Indians, as it was hoped that a decision could be reached to show

whether the Indian was or was not so far clothed with the privilege of a

citizen that he could have a standing in the courts of law. Accordingly,

the public-spirited and philanthropic persons who had espoused the cause

of the Poncas resolved to make up a case, which, carried to the United

States Supreme Court, should determine once and forever this moot point.

To this end money has been raised by subscription, by special gift, and

by contributions taken at public meetings in various parts of the

country. A lady residing in Boston, moved by the pitiful condition of

the Indians, who tried to struggle toward civilization, offered to

supply all the money which was lacking toward the expenses of the suit,

provided Secretary Schurz would give some public assurances that he

favored this manner of determining the case, or would give his reasons

against this attempt. The lady's proposition was sent to Mrs. Helen Hunt

Jackson, whose disinterested and efficient labors in behalf of the

deeply-wronged Poncas had already attracted attention. Mrs. Jackson

forwarded to Secretary Schurz the whole statement. Thereupon an

interesting correspondence ensued. This correspondence has been printed

in the Boston papers, presumably by direction of Secretary Schurz.

"In reply to the request to say whether he approves of the movement to

carry the Ponca case to the Supreme Court, in order that the tribe may

recover their old reservation, the Secretary says that this would be

useless, as the courts have repeatedly decided that an Indian tribe

cannot sue the United States. Unfortunately, Mr. Schurz does not cite

these cases, but we must take it for granted that he knows what he is

talking about. He adds that he has taken the advice of lawyers, who

coincide with him in this opinion. As a suit cannot be brought at all,

according to the Secretary and his legal advisers, it would be idle to

collect money for this purpose; and the Secretary suggests that, if the

disinterested friends of the Indians had consulted lawyers before they

began their work, they would be of his opinion as to the futility of the

attempt. This, of course, leaves the impression that the Secretary

withholds his approval of the movement to secure legal rights for the

Poncas, though he does not say so in express terms. His reason for not

approving the attempt is that it will do no good. His solution to the

Indian problem, as it is vaguely called, is to settle the Indians in

severalty, breaking up their tribal organization, and giving to each

individual his lands in fee-simple. This, the Secretary thinks, will

enable them to hold their lands by the same title as that by which white

men hold theirs, and, 'as a matter of course, they will have the same

standing in the courts' as white men. It is to be regretted that the

Secretary did not pause here long enough to show how the giving to an

Indian of 160 acres of land can clothe him with civil rights which he

does not now possess, and which the Secretary thinks that the courts

cannot give him. For this reason, however, Mr. Schurz is greatly in

favor of legislation providing for the settlement of the Indians in

severalty, various bills to accomplish which, he says, are in

preparation. As for the money raised already, the Secretary suggests

that since, in his opinion, it would be misspent in obtaining judicial

decision, it might be used in the education of Indian children.

"Replying to this, Mrs. Jackson asks if the Secretary would be in favor

of the Poncas recovering their lands by process of law, provided that

could be done. To this direct and very important inquiry we regret to

notice that the Secretary finds himself unable to reply, although, in a

letter immediately following this, he does say that if an Indian tribe

could maintain an action at law in the courts to assert its rights, he

would no more object to it than he would to a white man's doing the same

thing. As to the suggestion that the money collected for the expenses of

legal proceedings be used for educational purposes, Mrs. Jackson asks

the Secretary how it would be possible to take money given for one

specific purpose and use it for another and wholly different purpose.

Mr. Schurz rejoins that the consent of the donors may first be obtained;

but he forgets that it would be impossible to canvass the country to

ascertain the wishes of thousands of unknown givers to this fund.

Referring to the intimation that the friends of the Indians had not

taken legal counsel in this matter, and that the Secretary had, Mrs.

Jackson observes that they did take such counsel, and that an omission

to do so would have been indeed foolish.

"It will be observed that the Secretary's objection to the attempt to

secure civil rights is its futility; and, in answer to Mrs. Jackson's

statement that the friends of the Indians have sought the opinions of

lawyers in this case, he replies that one 'can find lawyers of skill and

standing to undertake, for a good fee, any case, however hopeless.' To

those who might think that this is unjustly severe on the legal

profession, it should be said that Mr. Schurz has been by profession a

lawyer, and should know what he is talking about. And we must presume

that Mr. Schurz's profound knowledge of the law, which is fortified by

the opinions of eminent legal men, induces him to consider the whole

case closed in advance of its submission to the courts. It would be

interesting, however, to know if the Secretary's lawyers of skill and

standing are less easily influenced by the prospect of a 'good fee' than

the lawyers of skill and standing consulted by the friends of the

Poncas. The exceedingly able opinion of Secretary Schurz, we find, is

that it is useless to give the Indian a standing in the courts through

judicial decisions, as he can readily secure this by accepting from the

Government of the United States a deed of 160 acres of land."

CONDITION OF THE PONCAS IN THE SUMMER OF 1880.

Standing Bear and his party, after their release by the decision of

Judge Dundy, settled on an island in the Niobrara River, which was a

part of their old reservation, and had fortunately been overlooked when

the United States Government took forcible possession of the rest of

their land and presented it to the Sioux. Here they were joined by other

fugitives of their tribe till the number reached about one hundred and

thirty. A committee which had been organized in Omaha for their relief

supplied them with farming implements, and they went industriously to

work. This committee published in July, 1880, a report containing the

following paragraphs:

"We consider the treatment of the Ponca Indians as one of the most

heart-sickening chapters in our national record of Indian wrongs, and we

are determined to spare no effort to restore to them their stolen homes

and rights, and to relieve the American people of the stigma of this

terrible wrong.

"The Senate of the United States during the past winter appointed a

select committee 'to ascertain and report the circumstances of the

removal of the Ponca Indians from their reservation, and whether the

said Indians are not entitled to be restored thereto.' This Senate

Committee devoted a long time to a thorough and patient investigation of

this whole Ponca case, and reported that the Poncas had been 'forced,

without authority of law, from their homes to the Indian Territory,' and

reported also a bill for their restoration to their former reservation,

and recommending 'that $50,000 be appropriated for the purpose of taking

the Poncas back, and restoring their now dilapidated homes.'

"This able report of the United States Senate says that 'in dealing with

one of the most peaceable and orderly and well-disposed of all the

tribes of Indians, the Government has violated in the most flagrant

manner their rights of property, and disregarded their appeals to the

honor and justice of the United States, and the dictates of humanity.'"

The report also says that "the committee can find no language

sufficiently strong to condemn the whole proceeding, and trace to it all

the troubles which have come upon the Poncas, and the hardships and

sufferings which have followed them since they were taken from their old

reservation and placed in their present position in the Indian

Territory."

The Omaha Ponca Relief Committee need no better vindication of their

action in behalf of this distressed and outraged people than these

strong and weighty words of a committee of United States Senators,

composed of representative men of both political parties.

The Omaha Committee consisted of Bishop Clarkson, of Nebraska, chairman;

Rev. A. F. Sherrill, Rev. W. I. Harsha, Leavitt Burnham, W. M. Yates,

and P. L. Perine.

At the request of this committee, Mr. T. H. Tibbles in June went to the

Indian Territory to visit the Poncas (of whom only about 400 were left

alive). He was authorized "to assure them of the interest and efforts of

humane people all over the country in their behalf, and to notify them

that the Omaha Committee were ready to assist them in any practical way

to return to their old homes, from which they had been unjustly and

inhumanly ejected."

Mr. Tibbles succeeded in visiting the Poncas, although the Government

agent interfered with him in many ways, and finally arrested him by

authority of an order from Washington to arrest any member of the Omaha

Committee who came upon the reservation. He was insulted by the agent,

taken by force out of the reservation, and threatened with much more

severe treatment if he ever returned.

This high-handed outrage on a free citizen of the United States aroused

indignation throughout the country. The comments of the Press on the

occurrence showed that people were at last waking up to a sense of the

tyrannical injustice of the Indian Department. The _New York Tribune_

said, editorially:

"The Indian Department may as well understand at once that the Ponca

case has passed out of their control. It is a matter of simple justice

which the people are determined to see righted. *** No petty Indian

agent has the legal right to imprison, maltreat, and threaten the life

of any citizen totally guiltless of offence beyond that of working to

give these serfs of the Government the standing of human beings. *** It

is the Government of this great Republic, where all men are free and

equal, that holds these Poncas prisoners on a tract where to remain is

death. They are innocent of any crime except that they have been robbed

of their land, and that they ask to bring suit, as a black man or

convict could do, in the courts for its recovery."

Mr. Tibbles reported the condition of the Poncas in Indian Territory as

"deplorable in the extreme. They live in constant dread and fear, and

are as much imprisoned as if they were in a penitentiary." They seem "to

have lost all hope, are broken-hearted and disconsolate. With one or two

exceptions, they are making no effort to help themselves. Their

so-called farms are miserable little patches, to which they pay very

little attention. One of them said to me, 'If the Government forces me

to stay here, it can feed me. I had a good farm back at our old home,

and if I was back there I would farm again; I have no heart to work

here.' The one hundred and fifteen who are back on the old reservation

have a much larger amount of land under cultivation than the whole four

hundred who are in Indian Territory. They have kept their crops in good

condition, and are full of energy and hope."

The Government Agency for the Poncas having been transferred to the

Indian Territory, the annuities due the tribe were of course paid there,

and that portion of the tribe which had fled back to Dakota received

nothing. Moreover, the Indian Bureau issued an order forbidding any

Ponca who should leave the Indian Territory to take with him any kind of

property whatsoever, under penalty of being arrested for stealing. As

they could not take their families on the long, hard journey to Dakota

without food or means of transportation, this order kept them imprisoned

in Indian Territory as effectually as a military guard could have done.

The Government employés in charge of them reported, meanwhile, that they

had "made up their minds to live and die where they are. *** There

exists a feeling of contentment in the tribe that will make it very

difficult for any one to induce them to leave their present home," says

a general press despatch, presumably dictated by the Indian Bureau, and

sent throughout the country on July 15th.

It seems an insult to people's common-sense to suppose that this

statement would be believed, close on the heels of the general order for

the arrest of all fleeing Poncas who should dare to take with them out

of the Indian Territory one dollar's worth of property. A very

superfluous piece of legislation, surely, for a community so "contented"

that it would be "difficult for any one to induce them to leave their

homes."

THE LEGAL ASPECT OF THE CASE.

The chivalric and disinterested attorneys who had had the charge of the

Ponca case from the outset, were not to be intimidated by the threats

nor outwitted by the expedients of the Indian Bureau. The ingenious

devices practised by the Department of the Interior to hinder the

getting service of summons upon the defendants in the suits necessary to

recover the Poncas' lands, make by themselves a shameful chapter, which

will some day be written out. But on the 13th of July the attorneys were

able to report to the Omaha Committee as follows:

REPORT OF THE ATTORNEYS.

Omaha, July 13th, 1880.

_To Omaha Ponca Indian Committee_:

In response to the inquiry of one of your members as to the condition of

the suits instituted by us to liberate Standing Bear and his associate

from the custody of the military, and to recover possession of the Ponca

reservation, we make the following statement:

On April 8th, 1879, was filed by us the petition in the case of United

States _ex rel._ Ma-chu-nah-zha (Standing Bear) _et al._ _vs._ George

Crook, a Brigadier-general of the Army of the United States and

Commander of the Department of the Platte, in the U.S. District Court

for the District of Nebraska, for a writ of _habeas corpus_ for the

release of Standing Bear and his companions. This cause was tried about

the first of May, 1879, and Standing Bear and his companions were

restored to their liberty. Thereupon the U. S. District-attorney took

the case to the United States Circuit Court for this District by appeal,

and about May 19th, upon hearing before Mr. Justice Miller, Associate

Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was there continued,

and on January 5th, 1880, the appeal was dismissed on the motion of the

U. S. District-attorney.

On April 3d, 1880, was commenced by us the case of Ponca tribe of

Indians _vs._ Makh-pi-ah-lu-ta, or Red Cloud, in his own behalf, and in

behalf of the Sioux nation of Indians, in the U. S. Circuit Court for

the District of Nebraska, and on May 18th, 1880, we commenced in the

same court the case of Ponca tribe of Indians _vs._ Sioux nation of

Indians. These cases were commenced, and are being prosecuted by us, to

recover possession of and establish the title of the Ponca tribe of

Indians to so much of their old reservation as lies within the limits of

Nebraska. Great delay was made necessary in the commencement of these

cases, and the ones subsequently commenced in Dakota, of which we below

make mention, owing to difficulties in getting service of summons upon

the defendants. On May 22d, 1880, service of summons was had on the

defendants in both cases, and some action will be taken therein at the

next term of the court.

About the 20th of May, 1880, there were commenced in Dakota other suits

in the name of the Ponca tribe of Indians, and against the Sioux nation

of Indians, and against certain of their chiefs, to settle and establish

the title of the Ponca tribe of Indians to so much of their old

reservation as lies within the limits of Dakota. Service has been had in

these cases, and the several suits mentioned will be prosecuted by us

with all convenient speed.

We might add that we also have in charge the case of John Elk _vs._

Charles Wilkins, in the U. S. Circuit Court for this District, which is

being prosecuted by us to determine the rights of Indians under the

Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

Respectfully submitted,

A. J. POPPLETON,

JNO. L. WEBSTER.

III.

TESTIMONIES TO INDIAN CHARACTER.

"Early in 1800 the Governor of the North-west Territory, in his

message to the assembly, invited their attention to the condition of

the Indians. He observed that, irrespective of the principles of

religion and justice, it was the interest and should be the policy of

the United States to be at peace with them; but that could not

continue to be the case if the treaties existing between them and the

Government were broken with impunity by the inhabitants of the

Territory. He referred to the well-known fact that while the white men

loudly complained of every injury committed by the Indians, however

trifling, and demanded immediate reparation, they were daily

perpetrating against them injuries and wrongs of the most provoking

and atrocious nature, for which the perpetrators had not been brought

to justice. *** He stated that the number of those unfortunate people

who had been murdered since the peace of Greenville was sufficient to

produce serious alarm for the consequences. He added, further, that a

late attempt to bring to punishment a white man, who was clearly

proved to have killed two adult Indians and wounded two of their

children, had proved abortive."—BURNET'S _Notes on North-west

Territory_.

CHARACTER OF NORTH-WESTERN INDIANS.

"Among other falsehoods it has been asserted confidently, but without a

shadow of argument or fact to sustain the assertion, that they cannot be

brought to a state of civilization, or be induced to form communities

and engage in the pursuits of agriculture and the arts, in consequence

of some physical difference between them and the Anglo-Saxon race. This

hypothesis is contradicted by experience, which has abundantly shown

that the two races, when placed in the same situation, and acted upon by

the same causes, have invariably resorted to the same expedients and

pursued the same policy.

"This averment is sustained by a reference to the white people who have

been taken prisoners in childhood and brought up among the Indians. In

every such case the child of civilization has become the ferocious adult

of the forest, manifesting all the peculiarities, tastes, and

preferences of the native Indian. His manners, habits, propensities, and

pursuits have been the same, so that the most astute philosophical

observer has not been able to discover any difference between them,

except in the color of the skin, and in some instances even this has

been removed by long exposure to the elements, and the free use of oils

and paints."

The many instances which there are on record of cases in which persons

taken captive by the Indians, while young, have utterly refused in later

life to return to their relatives and homes, go to confirm this

statement of Judge Burnet's.

On the other hand, he says: "The attempts that have been made at

different times to improve the minds and cultivate the morals of these

people have always been attended by success.

"On an unprejudiced comparison between the civilized educated white man

and the civilized educated Indian, all this theory of an organic

constitutional difference between the European and the native Indian

vanishes.

"In what respect have Ross, Boudinot, Hicks, Ridge, and others differed

from the educated men of our own race? Inasmuch then as the reclaimed

educated Indian becomes assimilated to the white man, and the European

brought up from infancy among the Indians becomes identified with them,

this alleged difference cannot be real, it must be imaginary.

"The fact is, the difficulty of civilizing the natives of this continent

is neither greater nor less than that which retarded the improvement of

the barbarous nations of Europe two thousand years ago. *** Men

uncivilized have always delighted in the chase, and had a propensity to

roam; both history and experience prove that nothing but necessity,

arising from such an increase of population as destroys the game, has

ever induced men to settle in communities, and rely on the cultivation

of the earth for subsistence. In the progress of civilization the chase

has given way to the pastoral state, and that has yielded to agriculture

as the increase of numbers has rendered it necessary.

"As soon as the Cherokees and the Wyandots were surrounded by a white

population, and their territory was so contracted as to cut off their

dependence on hunting and fishing, they became farmers, and manifested a

strong desire to cultivate the arts; and this would have been the choice

of the whole Indian race if the policy of the Government had permitted

it!

"It is not just to consider the natives of this country as a distinct

and inferior race because they do not generally imitate us, when we not

only remove every consideration that could induce them to do so, but in

fact render it impossible. What motive of ambition was there to

stimulate them to effort, when they were made to feel that they held

their country as tenants at will, liable to be driven off at the

pleasure of their oppressors?

"As soon as they were brought to a situation in which necessity prompted

them to industry, and induced them to begin to adopt our manners and

habits of life, the covetous eye of the white man was fixed on their

incipient improvements, and they received the chilling notice that they

must look elsewhere for permanent homes.

"At the time our settlements were commencing north-west of the Ohio, the

Indians were its acknowledged owners and sovereigns; the Government

claimed no right either of occupancy or soil, except as they obtained it

by purchase."

(On the 31st of July, 1793, the United States Commissioners said to the

assembled chiefs of the North-western tribes, in a council held at the

home of one Captain Elliott, on the Detroit River: "By the express

authority of the President of the United States, we acknowledge the

property, or right of soil to the great country above described, to be

in the Indian nations as long as they desire to occupy it; we claim only

the tracts before particularly mentioned, and the right of pre-emption

granted by the King, as before explained.")

"The entire country from Pennsylvania to the Mississippi was admitted to

be theirs, and a more delightful, fertile valley cannot be found on the

earth. ***

"Unconscious of the ruinous consequences that were to follow their

intimacy with white men, they ceded to the American Government large and

valuable portions of the country at nominal prices. Those lands were

rapidly settled by Americans, in whose purity and friendship the

unsuspecting natives had great confidence; nor did they awake from that

delusion till their habits of sobriety and morality had been undermined,

and the vices engendered by intemperance and idleness had contaminated

every tribe. ***

"Their subsistence became precarious; their health declined; their

self-respect, their dignity of character, and the heroism inherited from

their ancestors were lost. They became in their own estimation a

degraded, dependent race. The Government, availing itself of their

weakness and want of energy, succeeded by bribes and menaces in

obtaining the best portions of their country, and eventually in driving

them from the land of their birth to a distant home in an unknown

region.

"This distressing chapter of aboriginal history began at the treaty of

Greenville, in 1795, and terminated in less than fifty years. The writer

of these notes witnessed its commencement, progress, and

close."—BURNET'S _Notes on North-west Territory_.

NEZ PERCÉS AND FLAT-HEADS IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY.

"They were friendly in their dispositions, and honest to the most

scrupulous degree in their intercourse with the white men. *** Simply to

call these people religious would convey but a faint idea of the deep

hue of piety and devotion which pervades the whole of their conduct.

Their honesty is immaculate; and their purity of purpose and their

observance of the rites of their religion are most uniform and

remarkable. They are certainly more like a nation of saints than a horde

of savages."—CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE'S _Narrative_, _revised by_ W. IRVING.

"I fearlessly assert to the world, and I defy contradiction, that the

North American Indian is everywhere in his native state a highly moral

and religious being, endowed by his Maker with an intuitive knowledge of

some great Author of his being and the universe—in dread of whose

displeasure he constantly lives with the apprehension before him of a

future state, when he expects to be rewarded or punished according to

the merits he has gained or forfeited in this world.

"I never saw any other people who spend so much of their lives in

humbling themselves before and worshipping the Great Spirit as these

tribes do, nor any whom I would not as soon suspect of insincerity and

hypocrisy.

"Self-denial and self-torture, and almost self-immolation, are continual

modes of appealing to the Great Spirit for his countenance and

forgiveness.

"To each other I have found these people kind and honorable, and endowed

with every feeling of parental, filial, and conjugal affection that is

met with in more enlightened communities."—CATLIN'S _North American

Indians_.

Mr. Catlin spent eight years among the Indians more than forty years

ago. He travelled among the wildest of them, lived with them in the

freest intimacy, and this is his verdict as to their native traits, when

uncontaminated by white men and whiskey.

As long ago as 1724, the Jesuit Father Lafitau wrote of the Indians, and

stated that to his own experience he added that of Father Garnier, who

had lived sixty years among them: "They are possessed," says he, "of

sound judgment, lively imagination, ready conception, and wonderful

memory. All the tribes retain at least some trace of an ancient

religion, handed down to them from their ancestors, and a form of

government. They reflect justly upon their affairs, and better than the

mass of the people among ourselves. They prosecute their ends by sure

means; they evince a degree of coolness and composure which would exceed

our patience; they never permit themselves to indulge in passion, but

always, from a sense of honor and greatness of soul, appear masters of

themselves. They are high-minded and proud; possess a courage equal to

every trial, an intrepid valor, the most heroic constancy under

torments, and an equanimity which neither misfortunes nor reverses can

shake. Toward each other they behave with a natural politeness and

attention, entertaining a high respect for the aged, and a consideration

for their equals which appears scarcely reconcilable with that freedom

and independence of which they are so jealous. They make few professions

of kindness, but yet are affable and generous. Toward strangers and the

unfortunate they exercise a degree of hospitality and charity which

might put the inhabitants of Europe to the blush."

Father Lafitau does not disguise the fact that the Indians have great

faults. He says they are "suspicious and vindictive, cruel to their

enemies."

Père Lallemant, a missionary among the Hurons, says: "In point of

intellect they are not at all inferior to the natives of Europe; I could

not have believed that, without instruction, nature could have produced

such ready and vigorous eloquence, or such a sound judgment in their

affairs as that which I have so much admired among the Hurons. I admit

that their habits and customs are barbarous in a thousand ways; but,

after all, in matters which they consider as wrong, and which their

public condemns, we observe among them less criminality than in France,

although here the only punishment of a crime is the shame of having

committed it."

In a history of New France, published in 1618, it is stated of the

Indians that "they are valorous, faithful, generous, and humane; their

hospitality is so great that they extend it to every one who is not

their enemy. They speak with much judgment and reason, and, when they

have any important enterprise to undertake, the chief is attentively

listened to for two or three hours together, and he is answered point to

point, as the subject may require."

In 1656 the Jesuit missionaries among the Iroquois reported: "Among many

faults caused by their blindness and barbarous education, we meet with

virtues enough to cause shame among the most of Christians. Hospitals

for the poor would be useless among them, because there are no beggars;

those who have are so liberal to those who are in want, that everything

is enjoyed in common. The whole village must be in distress before any

individual is left in necessity."

Captain Carver, who travelled in 1766 among the wildest tribes,

describes them as "cruel, barbarous, and revengeful in war, persevering

and inflexible in pursuit of an enemy, sanguinary in their treatment of

prisoners, and sparing neither age nor sex." On the other hand, he found

them temperate in their mode of living, patient of hunger and fatigue,

sociable and humane to all whom they looked on as friends, and ready to

share with them the last morsel of food they possessed, or to expose

their lives in their defence. In their public character he describes

them as "possessing an attachment to their nation unknown to the

inhabitants of any other country, combining as if actuated by one soul

against a common enemy, never swayed in their councils by selfish or

party views, but sacrificing everything to the honor and advantage of

their tribe, in support of which they fear no danger, and are affected

by no sufferings. They are not only affectionately attached, indeed, to

their own offspring, but are extremely fond of children in general. They

instruct them carefully in their own principles, and train them up with

attention in the maxims and habits of their nation. Their system

consists chiefly in the influence of example, and impressing on them the

traditionary histories of their ancestors. When the children act wrong,

their parents remonstrate and reprimand but never chastise

them."—_HALKETT'S Hist. Notes._

The very idea of corporal punishment of little children seems to have

been peculiarly obnoxious to the native North American. In the "Relation

de Nouvelle France," published in 1633, there is a curious story of an

incident which took place at Quebec. A party of Indians, watching a

French drummer-boy beat his drum, pressed more closely around him than

he liked, and he struck one of the Indians in the face with his

drum-stick so sharply that the blow drew blood. The Indians, much

offended, went to the interpreter and demanded apologies and a present,

according to their custom. "No," said the interpreter, "our custom is to

punish the offender; we will punish the boy in your presence." When the

Indians saw the child stripped for the flogging they began immediately

to beg for his pardon; but as the soldiers continued their preparations

for whipping the lad, one of the Indians suddenly stripped himself and

threw his robe over the boy, crying out, "Scourge me, if you choose, but

do not strike the boy!" The good Father Le Jeune, who tells this story,

adds that this unwillingness of the Indians to see any child chastised

"will probably occasion trouble to us in the design we have to instruct

their youth."

As far back as 1587 we find evidence that the Indians were not without

religion. Thomas Hariot, an employé of Sir Walter Raleigh's, writing

from the Virginia colony, says of the Virginia Indians: "Theye beleeve

that there are many gods, which theye call Mantaoc, but of different

sorts and degrees; one onely chief and Great God, which hath been from

all eternitie; who, as theye affirme, when hee proposed to make the

world, made first other gods of a principall order, to bee as means and

instruments to bee used in the creation and government to folow; and

after the sunne, moone, and starres as pettie gods, and the instruments

of the other order more principall."

"In general," says Hunter, "a day seldom passes with an elderly Indian,

or others who are esteemed wise and good, in which a blessing is not

asked, or thanks returned to the Giver of Life, sometimes audibly, but

more generally in the devotional language of the heart."

All the employés of the North-west Fur Company bear the same testimony

to the fidelity and honesty of the Indians.

General H. Sibley once said to Bishop Whipple that for thirty years it

had been the uniform boast of the Sioux in every council that they had

never taken the life of a white man.

IV.

OUTRAGES COMMITTED ON INDIANS BY WHITES.

In Captain Bonneville's narrative of five years spent in the Rocky

Mountains are many instances of cruel outrages committed by whites upon

Indians.

"One morning one of his trappers, discovering that his traps had been

carried off in the night, took a horrid oath that he would kill the

first Indian he should meet, innocent or guilty. As he was returning

with his comrades to camp, he beheld two unfortunate Root Diggers seated

on the bank, fishing; advancing upon them, he levelled his rifle, shot

one on the spot, and flung his bleeding body into the stream.

"A short time afterward, when this party of trappers were about to cross

Ogden's River, a great number of Shoshokies, or Root Diggers, were

posted on the opposite bank, when they imagined they were there with

hostile intent; they advanced upon them, levelled their rifles, and

killed twenty-five of them on the spot. The rest fled to a short

distance, then halted and turned about, howling and whining like wolves,

and uttering most piteous wailings. The trappers chased them in every

direction. The poor wretches made no defence, but fled in terror; nor

does it appear from the accounts of the boasted victors that a weapon

had been wielded by the Indians throughout the affair."

There seemed to be an emulation among these trappers which could inflict

the greatest outrages on the natives. They chased them at full speed,

lassoed them like cattle, and dragged them till they were dead.

At one time, when some horses had been stolen by the Riccarees, this

same party of trappers took two Riccaree Indians prisoners, and declared

that, unless the tribe restored every horse that had been stolen, these

two Indians, who had strayed into the trappers' camp without any

knowledge of the offence committed, should be burnt to death.

"To give force to their threat, a pyre of logs and fagots was heaped up

and kindled into a blaze. The Riccarees released one horse and then

another; but, finding that nothing but the relinquishment of all their

spoils would purchase the lives of the captives, they abandoned them to

their fate, moving off with many parting words and howlings, when the

prisoners were dragged to the blazing pyre and burnt to death in sight

of their retreating comrades.

"Such are the acts that lead to terrible recriminations on the part of

the Indians. Individual cases of the kind dwell in the recollections of

whole tribes, and it is a point of honor and conscience to avenge them.

"The records of the wars between the early settlers of Virginia and New

England and the natives exhibit cruelties on both sides that make one

shudder. *** When the Indian would tear the scalp from the crown of the

scarcely yet dead victim, and mutilate the body, could he be expected to

reform those cruelties when he saw the white man in his turn cut off the

heads of his people, and mutilate and quarter their bodies, as was done

with King Philip's, whose head, after being cut off, was sent to

Plymouth and hung up there on a gibbet, where it remained twenty years,

while one of his hands was sent to Boston as a trophy, his body being

quartered and hung upon four trees?"—_M'FORLEY'S History and Travels._

FROM REPORT OF THE INDIAN BUREAU FOR 1854.

"Port Orford, Oregon Territory, February 5th, 1854.

"I grieve to report to you that a most horrid massacre, or rather an

out-and-out barbarous murder, was perpetrated on a portion of the Nason

tribe, residing at the mouth of the Coquille River, on the morning of

the 28th of January last, by a party of forty miners. Before giving you

the result of my examination and my own conclusions, I will give you the

reasons which that party assign in justification of their acts.

"They avow that, for some time past, the Indians at the mouth of the

Coquille have been insolent; that they have been in the habit of riding

the horses of white men without permission; that of late they have

committed many thefts, such as stealing paddles and many other articles

the property of white men; that one of their number recently discharged

his gun at the ferry-house; and that but a few days prior to the attack

on the Indians, the chief, on leaving the ferry-house, where he had just

been fed, fired his gun at a party of four white men standing near the

door of the house. They further state that, on the 27th of January, they

sent for the chief to come in for a talk; that he not only refused to

come in, but sent back word that he would kill white men if they came to

his home; that he meant to kill all the white men he could; that he was

determined to drive the white men out of his country; that he would kill

the men at the ferry, and burn their houses. Immediately after this

conversation with the chief, the white men at and near the ferry-house

assembled, and deliberated on the necessity of an immediate attack on

the Indians.

"The result of their deliberation, with the full proceedings of their

meeting, is herein enclosed. At the conclusion, a courier was despatched

to the upper mines for assistance. A party of about twenty responded to

the call, and arrived at the ferry-house on the evening preceding the

morning of the massacre. On the arrival of this re-enforcement the

proceedings of the meeting first held were reconsidered, and unanimously

approved.

"At the dawn of day on the morning of the 28th of January the party of

the ferry, joined by about twenty men from the upper mines, organized,

and, in three detachments, marched upon the Indian ranches, and

consummated a most inhuman slaughter. A full account of what they term

'a fight' you will find in the report which their captain, George H.

Abbott, forwarded to me on the day of the massacre.

"The Indians were roused from sleep to meet their death, with but feeble

show of resistance. They were shot down as they were attempting to

escape from their houses; fifteen men and one squaw killed; two squaws

badly wounded. On the part of the white men, not even the slightest

wound was received. The houses of the Indians, with but one exception,

were fired, and entirely destroyed. Thus was committed a massacre too

inhuman to be readily believed. Now for my examination of this horrid

affair.