16 THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE BY LAND. 



panied as it was by all the brutalities of savage 

 warfare, was certainly accounted for, if not excused, 

 or even justified, by the great provocation they had 

 received. The carelessness and injustice of the 

 American Grovemment, and the atrocities committed 

 by the troops sent out for the protection of the 

 frontier, exasperated the native tribes beyond control. 

 Several thousand Indians — men, women, and children 

 — assembled at Torts Snelling and Abercrombie, at 

 a time appointed by the Grovemment themselves, to 

 receive the yearly subsidy guaranteed to them in 

 payment for lands ceded to the United States. Year 

 after year, either through the neglect of the ofiicials 

 at Washington, or the carelessness or dishonesty of 

 their agents, the Indians were detained there for 

 weeks, waiting to receive what was due to them. 

 Able to bring but scanty provision with them — ■ 

 enough only for a few days — and far removed from 

 the buffalo, their only means of subsistence, they 

 w^ere kept there in 1862 for nearly six weeks in 

 fruitless expectation. Can it be a matter of sur- 

 prise that, having been treated year by year in 

 the same contemptuous manner, starving and desti- 

 tute, the Sioux should have risen to avenge them- 

 selves on a race hated by all the Indians of the 

 West ? 



Unconscious of the dangers gathering round, and 

 little suspecting the dreadful scenes so shortly to be 

 enacted in this region, we drove merrily along in 

 the stage. As we went farther west, the prairies 

 became more extensive, timber more scarce, and 



