What a parody is this on our national history! We boast of a father of his country who always told the truth. The Indian knows our Government by the name of “Washington,” and the Indian says “Washington always lies.” Gen. Stanley has said: “When I think of the way we have broken faith, I am ashamed to look an Indian in the face.” Gen. Harney said to the Sioux in 1868: “If my Government does not keep this agreement, I will come back and ask the first Indian I meet to shoot me.” (Bishop Whipple in _Faribault Democrat_, Jan. 5, 1877.) Gen. Harney does not revisit the Sioux.
We have _stolen_ from the Indians; we are stealing from them all the time. I do not speak of the lordly robbery, in which the strong possesses himself of the lands, and if occasion serve, of the home of the weak, and justifies it by the right of the stronger. I speak of the petty stealing of the thief. Three years ago there came past my home a long procession of Indian ponies. Where did they come from? They were the property of the Sioux on the reservations west of us. In the face of the ordinance of 1789, which expressly declares that their lands and property shall never be taken, nor their liberties invaded, except in lawful wars authorized by Congress, in violation of the terms of their treaties, and in disregard of the express declaration of the President in response to the telegram of the agent, “Tell the friendly Indians that they shall be protected in their persons and property,” their ponies were gathered and driven off by officers of the army acting under orders. The Indians were left without their only means of transportation for fuel or food, and no redress has ever been secured. No inventory of individual personal property was kept, and the stolen ponies were scattered through Minnesota, and what were left sold for a song in St. Paul.
Gen. Crook has recently said that the Sioux of the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail bands have been robbed during the past winter and spring of over a thousand ponies, which robbery the army, under the new _posse comitatus_ act, is powerless to prevent. (Letter of June 19, 1879, in _New York Tribune_.)
What I am saying must not be understood as an arraignment of the officers of the army, or indeed of the chief officials of the Government. The army officers have been almost without an exception the firm friends of the Indian, and none have borne more emphatic testimony to their bad treatment than such generals as Sherman, Harney, Stanley, Augur, Howard, Pope and Crook. The latter said the other day, in response to the remark that it was hard to be called to sacrifice life in settling quarrels brought about by thieving contractors, “I will tell you a harder thing. It is to be forced to fight and kill Indians when I know they are clearly in the right.” The responsibility is with the representatives of the people, with Congress.