xM INTRODUCTION. 



' My friends, when you go back to the Great Father I 

 want you to tell him to send us goods ; send us yokes and 

 oxen and give us waggons, so we can earn money by 

 hauling goods from the railroad. This seems to me to be 

 a very hard day ; half of our country is at war, and we 

 have come upon very difficult times. This war did not 

 spring up here in our land : it was brought upon us by 

 the children of the Great Father, who came to take our 

 land from us without price, and who do a great many 

 evil things. The Great Father and his children are to 

 blame for this trouble. It has been our wish to live here 

 peaceably ; but the Great Father has filled it with soldiers, 

 who think only of our death.' 



The treaty was subsequently concluded, but in signing 

 4 Two Strike,' one of the leading chiefs, representing one 

 of the sub-bands of the tribe, said : ' The reason we are 

 afraid to touch the pen and are silent before you is, be- 

 cause we have been deceived so many times before. If 

 we knew the words you tell us were true, we should be 

 willing to sign every day.' 



The frauds of the Indian Agents. These are so 

 notorious that it is scarcely necessary to revert to them. 

 The most significant fact, however, is that an Indian 

 agent, with a salary of only $1,500 or $2,000 a year, 

 ordinarily retires in the course of a few years with a 

 large fortune. 



Congress honestly grants the appropriations due to 

 the Indians, but as a rule not more than from five to twenty 

 per cent, of the actual amount due ever reaches these un- 

 fortunate wards of the Government. Usually the actual 

 amount received by the Indians approximates more closely 

 to the smaller than the larger per centage I have named. 



Encroachments by the Whites. These gradual occu- 

 pations of the lands of the Eed Men by the whites within 

 the last thirty or forty years are apparent to any one who 



