GOVERNOR. 'At the treaty, I thought you a good man; but since,
you have acted badly, and I am disposed to break you. I _do_ break you.'
Red Iron looked at the Governor for a moment with a look of withering
contempt and scorn, and then burst out in a voice full of derisive
mockery.
RED IRON. '_You break me!_ My people made me a chief. My people
love me. I will still be their chief. I have done nothing wrong.'
GOVERNOR. 'Red Iron, why did you get your braves together, and
march around here for the purpose of intimidating other chiefs, and
prevent their coming to council?'
RED IRON. 'I did not get my braves together; they got
themselves together, to prevent _boys_ going to council to be made
_chiefs_ to sign papers, and to prevent single chiefs going to council
at night, to be _bribed_ to sign papers for _money_ we have never got.'
And then the inexorable fellow continued, without any regard to his
excellency's nerves or conscience: 'We have heard how the M'Dewakantons
were served at Mendota; that by secret councils you got their names on
paper, and took away their money. We don't want to be served so. My
braves wanted to come to council in the _daytime_, when the sun shines;
and we want no councils in the dark. We want all our people to go to
council together, so that we can all know what is done.'
The Governor is nothing abashed at these damaging charges, but returns
once more to the assault.
GOVERNOR. 'Why did you attempt to come to council with your
braves, when I had forbidden your braves coming to council?'
To which Red Iron, with the same masterful, defiant smile upon his 'thin
lips,' answers:
RED IRON. 'You invited the chiefs only, and would not let the
braves come too. This is not the way we have been treated before; this
is not according to our customs; for among Dacotahs, chiefs and braves
go to council together. When you first sent for us there were two or
three chiefs here, and we waited, and we wanted to wait till the rest
would come, that we might all be in council together, and know what was
done, and so that we might all understand the papers, and know what we
were signing. When we signed the treaty, the _traders threw a blanket
over our faces, and darkened our eyes; and made us sign papers which we
did not understand, and which were not explained or read to us_. We want
our Great Father at Washington to know what has been done.'
This last speech--whose words hit like bullets--made the Governor wince,
and he replied, with more sharpness than wit:
GOVERNOR. 'Your Great Father has sent me to represent him; and
what I say, he says. He wants you to pay your old debts, in accordance
with the papers you signed when the treaty was made' ['which we did not
understand; which were never read nor explained to us; which we were
forced to sign,' as Red Iron had just told the Governor!]. 'You must
leave that money in my hands to pay those debts. If you refuse to do
that, I will take the money back.'
The Governor was getting deeper and deeper into the pit which he had dug
for the Indian. This last speech was most unhappy and impolitic for the
side he was advocating. It put dreadful weapons into the hands of Red
Iron, which the crafty 'old man eloquent' did not fail to use against
his antagonist.
He makes this manly answer, not at all abashed in the presence of the
chief magistrate:
RED IRON. 'You can take back your money! We sold our land to
you, and you promised to pay us. If you don't give us the money, I will
be glad, and all our people will be glad; for we will have our land back
if you don't give us the money. That paper was not interpreted or
explained to us. We are told it gives about three hundred boxes
($300,000) of our money to some of the traders! We don't think we owe
them so much. We want to pay all our debts. We want our Great Father to
send three good men here to tell us how much we do owe, and whatever
they say, we will pay; and (pointing to the Indians) that's what all
these braves say. Our chiefs and all our people say this.'
And the Indians responded with the usual 'Ho! ho!' of acquiescence.
But the Governor don't see it. A poor devil of an Indian, according to
his Christian conviction, ought to be content to pay unaudited, untaxed
bills, wherein the margin is broad enough for any scoundrel to do his
robberies by tens of thousands. So his excellency told Red Iron:
GOVERNOR. 'That can't be done!' [Nay, more confounding and
appalling still, he added:] 'You owe more than your money will pay, and
I am ready now to pay your annuity, and no more; and when you are ready
to receive it, the Agent will pay it.'
Red Iron replies in a speech full of pathos:
RED IRON. 'We will receive our annuity, but we will sign no
papers for anything else.' [You've swindled us enough, lied to us deep
enough already, and we have no belief in your words or agreements.] 'The
snow is on the ground, and we have been waiting a long time to get our
money. We are poor; you have plenty. Your fires are warm; your _tepees_
(wigwams, tents) keep out the cold. We have nothing to eat. We have been
waiting a long time for our moneys. Our hunting season is past. A great
many of our people are sick for being hungry. We must die because you
won't pay us. We may die! but if we do' [hold on, reader! no curses on
the white men are coming next, as one might naturally expect, either
from Christian or heathen orator, under the circumstances!]--'but if we
do,' he continues, 'we will leave our bones on the ground, that our
Great Father may see where his Dacotah children died!' [He has seen many
such shambles, O thou eloquent Indian! eloquent to ears of flint and
hearts of granite! and I never heard that the 'Great Father' ever shed a
single tear over them.] He goes on: 'We are very poor. We have sold our
hunting grounds, and with them the graves of our fathers. We have sold
our own graves.' [Out of all those hundreds of thousands of acres, not
six feet of earth, which they could call their own, left for any one of
them!] 'We have no place to bury our dead, and you will not pay us the
money for our lands.'
I give this interview, and what transpired there, as a sample of the
treatment which the Indians were in the habit of receiving at the hands
both of the General Government and the State authorities. Not the wisest
kind of treatment, one would think, this which Red Iron received, taking
all the circumstances into account. The reader will be surprised,
however, that Governor Ramsey, not content with 'breaking' the chief, as
he called it--the greatest dishonor which he could inflict upon an
Indian of rank--sent him, when the council broke up, to the guard house,
under an escort of soldiers! This impolitic official ought to have
remembered that the fire was even then ready for the kindling, which
finally burst out in such fearful devastation over his devoted State;
that it was enough to have cheated the Indians, without thus inflaming
their already excited passions, by heaping so great an indignity upon
the person of their chief. But he was regardless of everything except
the display of his own power and authority. No doubt he thought he was
acting for the best, and that the dirty redskins needed to be held with
a high hand. But it was bad thinking and doing, nevertheless; a most
shortsighted and foolish policy, which came wellnigh, as it was, to an
Indian outbreak.
The braves of Red Iron retired under the leadership of Lean Bear, a
crafty fellow, eloquent in his way, and now irreconcilably mad against
the whites; and when he had led them about a quarter of a mile from the
council house, they set up a simultaneous yell, the gathering signal of
the Dacotah. Ere the echoes died away, Indians were hurrying from their
_tepees_ toward them, prepared for battle. They proceeded to an eminence
near the camp, where mouldered the bones of many warriors. It was the
memorable battle ground where their ancestors had fought, in a Waterloo
conflict, the warlike Sacs and Foxes, thereby preserving their lands and
nationality.
A more favorable occasion, a more fitting locality for the display of
eloquence which should kindle the blood of the Indian into raging fire,
and persuade him to any the most monstrous and inhuman deeds, could not
have been chosen even by Indian sagacity. An old battle ground, where
the Sioux had been victorious over their enemies; the whitened bones of
the ghastly skeletons of their ancestors who fought the battle,
bleaching on the turf, or calling to them from their graves below to
take God's vengeance in their own hands; the memory of the old and new
wrongs inflicted upon them by the whites; the infuriating insult just
offered to their favorite chief--all conspired with the orator's cunning
to give edge to his eloquence and obedience to his commands.
Governor Ramsey has a good deal to thank God for, that, stimulated by
Lean Bear's rhetoric, the Sioux did not that night attack the whites,
and make an indiscriminate slaughter of the population, as they would
have done, if it had not been for the friendly Indians and half breeds.
Perhaps he thought he was strong enough, for the hour, to defeat them in
any attempt at an outbreak. But it is not strength so much as strategy
which is needed in Indian warfare. To whip the Indians, we must become
Indians in our plan and conduct of battle. The civilization and
mathematics of war, as practised by cultivated people, are useless in
the wilderness, and all our proud and boasted tactics are mere foolish
toying and trifling--a waste of time, strength, and opportunity. No one
doubts that if our troops could meet the Indians in open field, they
would slaughter them like rats; but they know better than to be caught
on the open field, except they are pretty sure of an advantage. They
steal upon you like thieves, shod with moccasons which have no sound;
they think it equally brave to shoot a man from behind a tree as to
sabre him in a hand-to-hand encounter.
It is dreadful to contemplate what an incarnate fiend we have roused in
this cheated, wronged, and despised Indian. I tremble to think of it. I
tremble when I remember also what Bishop Whipple says in the 'Plea,'
from which I have already quoted; they are words which ought to be
thundered continually into the ears of the 'Great Father,' until he
compels a total revolution in our Indian affairs--words which all
settlers in those regions should keep forever present in their minds;
and, with the Minnesota massacres still fresh in their memory, they
should be taught by them never for a moment to trust an Indian, and
never knowingly to give him just cause for complaint; to go always
armed; to organize, in towns, districts, and counties, the yeomen of the
soil, who must be ready at any moment, by night or day, to meet the
treacherous, ubiquitous enemy. These last will be found of more value
than the 'thundering' suggestion contained in the first of these
precautionary propositions. For it is upon themselves that they must
chiefly rely for defence, these hapless settlers! and upon no
Government, and no soldiers.
Think of it, our 'Great Father' at Washington! and you, his unruly
children, you Senators and Congressmen! One of your most loyal citizens
in the State of Minnesota, a Christian bishop, well acquainted with all
the facts, the dodges, lies, frauds, and all the ins and outs of your
Indian administration, declares, with the fullest solemnity which his
office and functions can give to words, and with the voice, not of
prophecy, but of logical deduction, that the same causes which brought
about the Sioux massacre, 'ARE TO-DAY, SLOWLY BUT SURELY, PREPARING
THE WAY FOR A CHIPPEWA WAR!' What a Chippewa war means, those who
did not know in 1861, found out through the Sioux in 1862 and 1863, to
their perpetual sorrow. Like the Bourbons, however, our Government
either cannot or will not learn lessons from experience. If they were
compelled to bear the penalties of their neglect and wanton
maladministration of affairs in the Indian districts, the loss would be
small and the retribution just. But they sit at ease, far away from the
scene of carnage, and 'get' nothing but the 'news,' which they read as
they would any other record of human passion and depravity. It is the
innocent settlers who pay the penalty for the guilt and transgressions
of their rulers.
It is time somebody, or some vast numbers, banded as one man, began to
think upon this threatening question, and to act upon it. It concerns
the faith and honor of this great republic before all the world, that
the wrongs alluded to should be speedily righted. We are not, in
reality, what our Indian legislation would almost seem to accuse and
convict us of, a nation of man-catchers, baiting our trap with fine
farms, and free government, and happy homes, and abundant prosperity of
all sorts, that so we may inveigle the simple minded, and then hand them
over to the tender mercies of the Indians! God forbid that such crimes
should be ours! But there is a coloring of truth about the whole
programme. We invite settlers to populate our vast and wellnigh
boundless wilderness, promising them protection from enemies abroad and
a happy peace at home; and in the same breath we cheat the savages, and
stir them up to hatred and violence against every white man, woman, and
child in the country. This is like preaching security and peace while
your lighted match is applied to the powder barrel. It is a logic which
confutes itself, and needs no _sillygism_ to prove its lying.
Why should we not bravely and manfully, with all the wisdom we possess,
confront and reform the evils and iniquities of this system? It is a
part and parcel of the work committed to our charge, that we shall
wisely deal with this people, until God, by His own mysterious means and
agencies, removes them finally from the continent and the planet. There
is no room for the red man where the white man comes. He _must_ give
way. It is destiny, and there is no help for it. He knows this as well
as we do; and he gnaws the grim fact with the teeth of the hopeless
damned. But why imbitter him needlessly against us, against the
Government, against the people among whom he resides, and over whose
dear lives and properties he holds suspended the scalping knife and the
flaming pine brand? We are unworthy of the sovereign possessions
reserved for us from before the foundations of the world--making the
title deeds, therefore, unusually sound and wellnigh unquestionable--if
we cannot deal like rational men with the hordes of savages, whose lands
we have robbed them of, whom we have reduced to mere pensioners upon
our caprice--not bounty--and so satisfy them and their claims that the
business of human life may be carried on safely in their vicinity and
actual presence. 'Who art thou that saith 'there is a lion in the way'?
Rise, sluggard, and slay the lion! The road has to be travelled.'
We are certainly not afraid of any lion, whether he be red or black;
and, until lately, _both_ these monstrous red and black animals lay in
the direct path of the nation, on which it must travel or perish. We
have pretty well mauled and knuckled the black animal, and wellnigh
settled with his keepers, one and all! but this red lion is of a
different sort, and requires altogether another kind of treatment. We
shall yet save the bruised and bleeding black to the service of
civilization and humanity. He never was half a bad fellow at the bottom
of his leonine bowels, and he already takes to white civility and
customs, like an educated, intelligent, and trusty dog of the 'poor dog
Tray' sort! And I, for one, have more than a sneaking affection for his
old black mug, and a world of hope in his future behavior, if we don't
spoil him for the field and for watch and guard at home, by our infernal
'culture,' as the thing is called.
Is this red lion a more terrible devil to combat, or harder to trick
into civility, or more impervious to the injunctions of the Ten
Commandments? I suppose it will be said that he is; that the black
fellow bolted the whole code at a gobble, and wagged his tail, as if the
feat must surely please his new masters; that he had long had the
benefit of civilized cooking, and knew a gentleman by his toggery; that,
moreover, he was of a teachable, plastic nature, and was meant to lie
down in due time upon the hearth rug before the fire, in any gentleman's
sitting room in the land. It may be true. I believe all this myself, and
a good deal more, about him; and I take renewed hope also for this great
republic--which is the hope of the world!--that it has thus, at last,
tamed him, and fitted him for exhibition upon a nobler theatre than that
of Barnum.
But the red lion, you say, is untamable--cannot be dealt with
successfully by the wit of white men; and that it is best, therefore, to
rob him of the golden apples which he guards, and which are his only
food, and so starve him out. But you can't deal that way with the Indian
lion, my friend, without feeling the taste of his claws. You have tried
it long enough. Bishop Whipple says, 'for fifty years'! And I ask you
how much nearer are you to the taming of him now, than you were those
'fifty years' ago? Echo answers: 'That's an impudent question!' and I
reply, so be it! but you can't shuffle it off in that way. I have tried
my hand at suggesting how imminent dangers, calamities, and horrors may
even yet be averted from the Western settlements; and if those who urge
that justice shall be done to them, equal to that which we here render,
or try or pretend to render to each other--if those who urge this are
not listened to now, their plea will be remembered when it is all too
late, and thousands of innocent people are again murdered, and their
homes laid waste and desolate.
I again say, let no one think by these statements that I am making a
special pleading for the Indians, or that I sanction their butcheries.
God knows how far all this is from my thought or feeling! I am a white
man right through all the inmost fibres of my being: too white, I often
fear; for I find my love of race, and pride of blood and ancestry, often
encroach too far upon the proper regions of my humanity, and threaten to
blear my eyesight to the fair claims of the inferior races.
But I have to do with a thoughtful, reflective, and, at the bottom, just
and humane people; and knowing this, I felt safe, or nearly so, against
all misconstruction, in this my attempt to show that the late Indian
massacres were not instigated merely and solely by the passion of the
Indian for blood, but that they had deeper, broader, more tangible
causes than this, some of which I have briefly hinted at. Woe to them by
whom these butcheries came! Woe also to them who, knowing what must
inevitably result from their foul dealings, continued to deal foully
with the Indian--until the doomsday came!
I have not put in a single tithe of the evidence which I might adduce to
prove my case. It is of no use appealing to the higher powers for
redress. 'I am sick at heart,' says the good Bishop Whipple; 'I fear the
words of one of our statesmen to me were true: 'Bishop, every word you
say of this Indian system is true; the nation knows it. It is useless;
you will not be heard. Your faith is only like that of the man that
stood on the bank of the river, waiting for the water to run by, that he
might cross over dryshod!'' And then he continues, with solemn emphasis
and pity: 'All I have to say is this, that if a nation, trembling on the
brink of anarchy and ruin, is so dead that it will not hear a plea to
redress wrongs which the whole people admit call for reform, God in
mercy pity us and our children!'