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Show THE INDIAIT POLICY. Editors Herald: In your issue of Friday I find the following: There should be no boy's play in this matter. The peace commissioner will have to go to the rear. Congress should at once turn over the Indian bureau to the war diprtmeDt and give B herns her-ns an carte blanche to clean out the Black Hills country. I am aware that it is fashionable to be down on the poor Indian, and to i regard him as a brute without any rigate that white men are bound to respect; but I must say that I am surprised to see sveh sentiments in a paper professing the least degree of humanity for tbe oppressed, ah the. Herald generally does. Now to reduce this matter into a nuUhell. If I understand the matter correctly it is thus: The Black Hills country was acknowledged to belong to the Indians. Tbe United States met with them and offered to purchase their rights. The Indians did not wish to sell on the conditions offered. Now it generally takes two to make a bargain among white men; but it does not seem to be so with In dians. It just amounts to this: We want your land at our own price, or d n you we will take it anyway, and We will make no child's play in the matter. No, we will turn you over to the war department no more peace , makers; they must go to the rear; we want your country; you have no rights. That all men were "born equal" is a great mistake, and weraust clean you out to make room for civilization. civil-ization. Civilisation I Heaven save 1 the in ark I Brutalization would be a Iftetter word. No one can lament more than I do tho sacrifice of the lives of between two hundred and throe hundred bravt men. They gave their livei in obedience to orders, but who is responsible re-sponsible in this matter? Who were tbe aggressors I would ask, the white-man white-man or the Indian? I make bold to answer the white man. The government govern-ment ia responsible in this and in ninety-nine ease out of every hundred. hund-red. I am sucb a fool as to say tho Indians have rights and that they ought to b protected in them. II they make a treaty and break it, puniah tam in the some way we would puuiahwhiu men, but not by Driving thern Irom their homes and niurd.nng men, women and children, chil-dren, as bu often been tho case und the policy pursued by the ItTtrmntnt, W. D. General Sheridan says that the pre- 1 sent campaign is for the purpose of j returning the Sioux warriors to the reservations, from which they are wandering, for the purpose, we suppose, sup-pose, of making war upon the settlements, settle-ments, or upon tho miners, as they have been doing. There has been no doubt of the warlike disposition ol these Indians for a year past, and a fight hag been imminent since the commission of last summer broke up, j barely escaping a general massacre : of its members. The insolent attitude atti-tude of Sitting Bull and other prominent promi-nent chiefs at that meeting indicated clearly a determination to resort to the war-path, which they have fulfilled ful-filled by attacks upon and massacre of large numbers of miners and the destruction of trains. The warriors whom Crook and Custer encountered have been gathered from Wyoming, Dakota and Montana, and as we understand it, are now trespassers, off their reservations. Whether the miners in any numbers are upon the Indian reservations we are not aware, though they have undoubtedly invaded in-vaded the Indian territory in moving into the Black Hills, which is contrary con-trary to treaty stipulations. The government has constantly warned . emigrants to keep off the reservations, and in disobeying this order individ uals alone are responsible. The history of the Sioux Indians since the settlement of Minnesota in 1854 and their horrible massacres of whites, presents an almost uninterrupted uninter-rupted scene of war and bloodshed. The early settlers of Colorado encountered encoun-tered the savages in many a desperate fight, and at one time were cut ofi from their eastern communications by them. The people of Idaho and Montana have felt their bloody hand, and many of our gallant soldiers fell victims to their vengeance. They have everywhere and alwayB resisted re-sisted the western tide of emigration emigra-tion and settlement, finally succumbing succumb-ing before the superior race. They have undoubtedly suffered wrorjg and injustice from the whites, but this has been the case from the very first contact con-tact between the Europeans and the Aborigines upon this continent. Poetic right and justice are seldom consulted in a contest between hostile races. The peace policy has been fully tried by General Grant for the last seven years, but it bos gained no friends among the Sioux, who, unlike the Utes and other peaceably peace-ably inclined Indian tribes, Beem to regard such a policy as cowardice cow-ardice on the part of the whites. Though tho Indian problem is a difficult one at the best, it has been complicated by the politicians and the thieving contractors; and the utter failure of the agents and the religious commissioners to preserve peace and keep the Indians on their reservations has led to tbe demand for the transfer of the Indians to the war department in order to take thorn mir M (Vio rnnlro of nnlitipal ifl- fluences, which means to keep the wild Indians under firm control, deal tairly by them and nip their war tendencies in the bud. This, as we understand it, is regarded by practi cal men as the best method of settling the Indian question temporarily, and perhaps it is the only peace policy which the hostile Sioux can now, understand. In the meantime they should be driven to their reservations and kept there until they buow a disposition to come to terms with the government. |