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Show Great White Father Makes Tardv Payment for Indians' Ponies "When Sitting Bull's outlaw Sioux massacred Gen. George A. Custer and five troops of the Seventh cavalry caval-ry on the Little Big Horn, the U. S. rumbled with indignation. Amid all the furore the Army brass was struck by a wonderful idea since it was almost impossible to catch mounted Sioux, why not take away their horses? "This scheme had obvious defects, the chief of which was that Sitting Bull and most of his followers had already ridden off to Canada. But I the army put it into operation with I vast enthusiasm. In the fall and winter of 1S76 cavalrymen seized 8.567 ponies from baffled, friendly Indians, at Camp Robinson, Neb., and Dakota Indian ajencies. "Sioux and their friends were quick to cramor for payment: by 1S92 the U. S. government had paid a quarter of a million dollars in damages. But even this left 2,293 horses still unpaid for. . "By 1928, when an investigation of Indian claims was authorized, time had not simplified the problem. But this spring. 69 years after Little Big Horn, Congress voted to pay off the last of the Sioux claims. Last week the President solemnly signed a bill granting them 3101,630 (S91.920 for ponies, S9.710 for property lost in the scuffle). Nobody suggested restoring re-storing the Sioux to mobility by replacing re-placing the horses with second-hnd jeeps." Time Magazine. |