The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

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The Indian was subjected to all sorts of frauds, little and big--the
smaller thieves thinking that they also must live, no matter at whose
expense, although I demur to the proposition. Why should they stop at
stealing a thousand or two, more or less, while that four hundred
thousand swindle leered at them so wickedly over the left shoulder,
mocking at all law and justice, and scot free from all punishment? These
'traders' could charge what sums they liked against the Indian, and get
them too; for there was no one to defeat or check their rapacity. Mr.
Heard tells us that no less a sum than fifty-five thousand dollars was
claimed by one Hugh Tyler, as due to him by the Indians, when the great
swindle just alluded to was committed; and that he was paid out of the
accruing funds. This man was a stranger in the country, an adventurer,
who went out into the wilderness 'for to seek his fortune;' and it is
curious to read the items of which his little bill, fifty-five thousand,
is composed. Here they are: For getting the treaties through the Senate;
for '_necessary disbursements_' in securing the assent of the chiefs.
Very curious and instructive items they are, to all who consider them.
To say nothing of the corruption of the Senate which the first item
signifies, if it has any meaning at all, there is the guilty record of
the 'necessary disbursements,' or, in other words, _bribes_, paid to
chiefs for betraying their country and their race. This was a part of
the regular machinery of the Agencies. All their plans were cut and
dried, and they had men to carry them out. They could not stir a peg
without the assent of the chiefs; and when they found a man too noble to
be a traitor, they got the Governor to break him as a chief, and invest
a more pliable, accommodating redskin with his rank and title. Through
the influence of bad men, and by the forging of lying documents, which
the Indians could not read, and which were never interpreted to them
except to cheat them as to their contents and meaning, they have always
managed to get their treaties signed; after which the newly made chiefs
could not so much as take the liberty to beg a pipe of tobacco of them.

As a sample of their infamous dealings, we take the following excerpt
from Mr. Heard's book, page 41:

'In 1857, a trader, pretending that he was getting them to sign a
power of attorney to get back the money which had gone to the
traders under the treaty of 1851 and 1852, obtained their
signatures to vouchers, by which he swindled them out of $12,000.
Shortly after, this trader secured the payment of $4,500 for goods
which he claimed (falsely, it is said) to have been stolen. About
the same time a man in Sioux City was allowed a claim of $5,000 for
horses, which he also alleged to have been stolen.

'In 1858, the chiefs were taken to Washington, and agreed to
treaties for the cession of all their reservations north of the
Minnesota, for which, as ratified by the Senate, they were to have
$166,000; but of this amount they never received a penny until four
years afterward, when $15,000, in goods, were sent to the Lower
Sioux, and these were deducted out of what was due them under
former treaties. The Indians, discovering the fraud, refused to
receive them for several weeks, and only consented to take them
after the Government had agreed to rectify the matter. _Most of the
large amount due under these treaties, went into the pockets of
traders, Government officials, and swindlers generally._

'The Indians were grievously disappointed with their bargains, and
from that time the control of affairs passed from the chiefs--who,
it was believed, had been bribed--to the young men. They had now
nearly disposed of all their lands, and received scarcely anything
for them. They were six thousand two hundred in number, and their
annuities, when paid in full, were hardly fifteen dollars apiece.

'Their sufferings,' continues Mr. Heard, 'were often severe,
especially during the winter and spring previous to the massacres.'

Their crops failed them; a heavy fall of snow, late in the season, came
to increase their miseries, and delayed the spring hunts. The Sissetons,
of Lac Traverse, had to eat their horses and dogs--and at least fifteen
hundred of the old men, women, and children had to be supported by the
Government at an extra expense; and this was so inadequately done that
some died of starvation.

The history of these iniquities is no new thing in Indian affairs. It
is, from first to last, a record of the most shameless lying and fraud.
The Agency seems to have been established there as a sort of Jonathan
Wild's shop, for the purpose of carrying on the trade of thieving. What
did these storekeepers--who credited the Indians for tobacco and rum,
for bread and beef, for clothing, and such other luxuries as they had
come to regard as necessaries--care for the winter prospects of the
wretched Indians, after they had lined their pockets with that four
hundred thousand dollars? Not a dime! And when subsequently it was found
that only half the regular Government payment would be handed over to
the Indians during the next year, these storekeepers--on the 'Wild'
plan--not only refused to give them credit for articles indispensable to
life in the wilderness, but insulted them to boot; and this so
exasperated the proud, revengeful nature of the Indian, that he
remembered it afterward in many a bloody murder which he committed, and
the innocent suffered for the guilty!

Mr. Heard acquits the Agency, and all connected with it, of being in
any way the causes of this outbreak. But his own statements of their
dealing with the Indians hardly bear him out in his judgment. I do not
mean to say that the people of the Lower Agency were a whit worse in
such dealings than those of the Upper, or any other similar Agency. It
is an understood thing, and mercilessly practised, that the Indian shall
be fleeced whenever the white man has a chance to fleece him. It is the
law and the gospel of these Agencies; and we must not allow ourselves to
be hoodwinked in this matter by the mistaken humanity of Mr. Heard.

And yet, if we think of it, there could not have been devised a more
evil scheme, either against the natives or the settlers, than these
wellnigh irresponsible Agencies. From all parts of the Union, from every
country of the Old World, emigrants had come to settle in the beautiful
Minnesota State; they had built themselves good, substantial houses,
ploughed, fenced, and planted their rich and prosperous farms, conquered
the savage wilderness into blooming cornfields, orchards, and
gardens--and here was their true El Dorado! where they hoped to live in
peace, plenty, and security. They were not afraid of the savages, but
their wont was to make friends of them, and to be their friends,
entertaining them at their homes when they visited the settlements, and
doing all they could--with some exceptions--to perpetuate among them a
good feeling and an intelligent understanding.

To a certain extent, and in some cases, they succeeded in this
straight-forward diplomacy. But the predisposition of the reds to
enmity with the whites was still there, slumbering only, not eradicated;
nor could all the kindness and generosity of the whole Caucasian heart,
heaped upon them in the most lavish profusion, ever root it out. Nature
put it there--I wish she hadn't--for reasons of her own, just as she put
murder into the cruel heart and brain of the tiger in the jungle.

There was this 'original sin,' therefore, to contend against always,
without reference to any tangible causes or provocations. All knew this.
All knew, from the youngest to the oldest, that the true policy of the
whites was to conciliate the Indians. They knew his inextinguishable
memory of wrongs, his dreadful vengeance, his power, and his constant
opportunity to do irreparable mischief. And, as I said, the settlers
were, for the most part, anxious to smoke the pipe of peace and
friendship with him.

But what was the good of all this? What, think you, did it avail in the
councils of the savages, when they sat over their fires discussing their
wrongs and prospects? What the good-hearted settlers did in the way of
reconciliation and good will was undone a thousandfold at the Agency. It
is true that the Agency had become necessary to the subsistence of the
Indian, and that this fact made him bear much which, under other
circumstances, he would instantly have resented and punished. But they
well knew how they were robbed; and when did a wrong of that, or any
sort, pass muster upon the Indian's roll of vengeance? Every fraud
against an Indian, every lie told him, every broken promise, every
worthless article sold to him at the Agency, was more than a set-off to
any act of kindness shown to him by the settlers. Add to these local
crimes, the great error of the Government in unduly withholding the
Indian payment for their lands--and you have the Indian's _casus belli_,
the grounds, or some of them, on which he justified himself to his own
bloody and remorseless conscience, for his inhuman deeds! For the Indian
beeps a conscience, such as it is; but of a truth, better no conscience
than an Indian's conscience! It is like an appeal to hell, one's appeal
to this! all the accursed passions imprisoned there coming up from their
limbos, their eyes glaring with the malice of ineradicable hate, and
bloodshot with murder, to support the conscience, and strengthen its
resolution for an unspeakable vengeance.

But, after all, this poor devil is really to be pitied for his ignorance
and brutality, and as really to be killed without mercy. He is in the
way of civilization, and must go to the wall. I find that Nature herself
is utterly pitiless; that she cares neither for white nor red, nor for
any other color or person, but, like a horrible, crashing car of
Juggernaut, she rolls steadily forward, astride the inevitable
machinery, crushing all who oppose her.

But this digression is no apology, in the matter of its argument, for
the Indian Agents, who must have been aware, long before the outbreak
took place, that their frauds were fast culminating in the Indian mind,
and that every fresh wrong they did to them was only bringing nearer by
a step the indiscriminate massacre of the settlers.

There were other causes, however, besides these, to enrage and madden
them, which must not be lost sight of. Our Government had prohibited
their sanguinary wars upon the Chippewas, and they regarded this as an
act of wanton tyranny. They were bred in the faith that war is the true
condition of an Indian man, and that peace was made for women and
children. War was the only outlet for their power, the only field in
which they could distinguish themselves and win immortal renown. All the
great kingdoms of knowledge and literature were shut against them as
with walls of brass. They could not read or write, and their leisure was
passed in idle gossip, or in deliberations on infernal schemes against
the white man to revenge themselves for their wrongs.

It was not a wise thing to do, I think; although, no doubt, it was
humane enough, as we understand humanity. Did not the 'dragons of the
prime tear other in their slime,' and so thin out the horrible race,
until Nature herself put the final claws of annihilation upon them? Why,
in mercy, then, do we try to prevent the inevitable? War is a great
clearer of the atmosphere; and one of our poets, Coleridge, I believe,
says that 'Carnage is God's daughter'! a bold figure of rhetoric, not
without its apparently sufficient apologies. Why not let the Sioux and
Chippewas, or any other of the wild, irreclaimable brood, fight their
bloodiest, and do their prettiest to help Nature, who seems bent on the
extermination of all inferior races? They have got to die, any
way!--that is a great consolation!--and if the philanthropists at
Washington had only left them to themselves, they would have died by
mutual slaughter--great numbers of them--long ago, and saved said
philanthropists from the crime of killing them, which they are now
doing, by inches!--a far more cruel way of dying.

I was much pleased, when last summer they were upbraided for doing a
little war against the Chips, in spite of Washington, with the sarcastic
reply of a chief, who said: 'Our Great Father, we know, has always told
us it was wrong to make war; yet now he himself is making war, and
killing a great many. Will you explain this to us? We do not understand
it!' This was a hit, a palpable hit, let who will reconcile it.

Mr. Heard gives us the following brief statement of the manner in which
treaties are made with the Indians; and I earnestly call the attention
of the Government and all just citizens to its statements. He says:

'The traders, knowing for years before, that the whites will
purchase lands, sell the Indians goods on credit, expecting to
realize their pay from the consideration to be paid by the
Government. They thus become interested instruments to obtain the
consent of the Indians to the treaty. And by reason of their
familiarity with the language, and the associations of half-breed
relatives, are possessed of great facilities to accomplish their
object. The persons deputed by the Government to effect a treaty
are compelled to procure their cooperation, and this they do by
providing that their debts shall be paid. The traders obtain the
concurrence of the Indians by refusing to give them further credit,
and by representing to them that they will receive an immense
amount of money if they sell their lands, and thenceforth will live
at ease, with plenty to eat, and plenty to wear, and plenty of
powder and lead, and of whatever else they may request. After the
treaty is agreed to, the amount of ready money is absorbed by the
_exorbitant demands of the traders_, and _the expenses of the
removal of the Indians to their reservations_!

'After that the trader no longer looks to the Indian for his pay;
he gets it from their annuities. He, therefore, does not use the
same means to conciliate their good will that he did when he was
dependent upon their honesty. Claims for depredations upon white
settlers are also deducted out of their moneys before they leave
Washington, on _insufficient testimony_; and these are always, when
based on fact, _double the actual loss_; for the Indian Department
is notoriously corrupt, and the hand manipulating the machinery
_must be crossed with gold_! The 'expenses' of obtaining a claim
enter into the amount demanded and allowed. The demand is not only
generally unjust, but, instead of its being deducted from the
moneys of the wrong doer, _it is taken from the annuities of all_!
This course punishes the innocent and rewards the guilty, because
the property taken by the depredator is of more value than the
slight percentage he loses.

'Many of the stipulations as to establishing schools and furnishing
them with farming utensils, are never carried out. Building and
supply contracts are entered into without investigation at
outrageous prices, and goods belonging to the Indians are put into
the traders' stores, and _sold to their owners_, and the moneys
realized _shared by the trader and the Agent_!'

Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, in his appeal for the red man, confirms
this statement beyond doubt or question:

'There is not a man in America,' he says,'who ever gave an hour's
calm reflection to this subject, who does not know that our Indian
system is an organized system of robbery, and has been for years a
disgrace to the nation. It has left savage men without Governmental
control; it has looked on unconcerned at every crime against the
laws of God and man; it has fostered savage life by wasting
thousands of dollars in the purchase of paint, beads, scalping
knives, and tomahawks; it has fostered a system of trade which
robbed the thrifty and virtuous to pay the debts of the indolent
and vicious; it has squandered the funds for civilization and
schools; it has connived at theft; it has winked at murder; and at
last, after dragging the savage down to a brutishness unknown to
his fathers, it has brought a harvest of blood to our door!'

The Bishop continues:

'It was under this Indian system that the fierce, warlike Sioux
were fitted and trained to be the actors in this bloody drama, _and
the same causes are to-day, slowly but surely, preparing the way
for a Chippewa war_. There is not, to-day, an old citizen of
Minnesota who will not shrug his shoulders as he speaks of the
dishonesty which accompanied the purchase of the lands of the
Sioux. It left in savage minds a deep sense of injustice. Then,
followed ten years of savage life, unchecked by law, uninfluenced
by good example. They were taught by white men that lying was no
disgrace, adultery no sin, and theft no crime. Their hunting
grounds were gone; the onward march of civilization crowded them on
every side. Their only possible hope of being saved from starvation
was the fidelity with which a great nation fulfilled its plighted
faith, which before God and man it had pledged to its heathen
wards. _The people here, on the border, and the rulers at
Washington, know how that faith has been broken._

'The constant irritations of such a system would, in time, have
secured an Indian massacre. It was hastened and precipitated by the
sale of nearly eight hundred thousand acres of land, for _which
they never received one farthing_; for it was all absorbed in
claims! Then came the story (and it was true) that half of their
annuity money had also been taken for claims. They waited two
months, mad, exasperated, hungry--the Agent utterly powerless to
undo the wrong committed at Washington--and they resolved on savage
vengeance. For every dollar of which they have been defrauded we
shall pay ten dollars in the cost of the war. It has been so for
fifty years; it will be so again. _God's retributive justice always
has compelled a people to reap exactly what they have permitted to
be sown!_'

These extracts from the Bishop's Plea confirm what I have stated in the
preceding paragraphs; and the last sentence--which I have marked in
italics--is well worth the while of every reader to ponder well.

Mr. Heard dates the commencement of the massacre to the breaking of a
stray nest of hen's eggs on the prairie, and what came of the
transaction; but the date lies farther back than that, so far as the
resolution to seize the first favorable opportunity for slaughtering the
whites is concerned--and belongs to the era of the great crimes of our
Government against them, as shown in the forcible seizure of their lands
without their receiving any payment, even 'a farthing' for them; the
hucksters, under the connivance of the Government agents, getting the
whole of it, and, in the instance alluded to a while ago, keeping back
from them, as payment for old debts, about three hundred boxes of the
money upon which they had depended to keep themselves alive during the
winter and the following year.

Such enormous crimes were sure to reap a bloody harvest. The Indian is
no fool, although he can't do addition and subtraction. He knows when he
is _about_ fairly dealt with, and he knows when he is mightily plucked.
In this case of the 'old debt payment' he knew that he was robbed
wholesale, and through the mouth of Red Iron he proclaimed the fact to
Governor Ramsey, in council assembled. Alluding to this robbery, he
said:

'We don't think we owe them so much. We want to pay all our debts. We
want our Great Father to send three good men here, to tell us how much
we do owe; and whatever they say, we will pay; and (pointing to the
Indians) that's what all these braves say; our chiefs and all our people
say this!'

At which all the Indians present responded:

'Ho! ho!'

This Red Iron was the principal chief of the Sissetons, and his
indignation at the wrongs done to his race made him so 'boisterous' that
Governor Ramsey was imprudent enough to break him of his chieftainship.
The scene and its results were by no means creditable to the Governor.
This latter personage had summoned Red Iron to meet him at a council,
held December, 1852, and he did not turn up as expected. So, I suppose,
he was sent for, and brought in by the soldiers. He is described by one
who was present, as about forty years old, tall and athletic; six feet
high in his moccasons, with a large, well-developed head, aquiline nose,
thin, compressed lips, and physiognomy beaming with intelligence and
resolution. He was clad in the half military, half Indian costume of the
Dacotah chiefs, as he sat in the council room; and no one greeted or
noticed him. A very poor piece of revenge! In a few minutes the
Governor, turning to the chief in the midst of a breathless silence, by
the aid of an interpreter, opened council. The Governor asked the chief
what excuse he had for not coming to the council when he sent for him.

Whereupon Red Iron rose to his feet, 'with native grace and dignity,'
says Mr. Heard, his blanket falling from his shoulders, and, purposely
dropping the pipe of peace, he stood erect before the Governor, with his
arms folded and his right hand pressed upon the sheath of his scalping
knife. With the utmost coolness and self-possession, a defiant smile
playing upon his thin lips, and his eyes sternly fixed upon his
excellency, the Indian, with a firm voice, replied:

'I started to come, but your braves drove me back.'

GOVERNOR. 'What excuse have you for not coming the second time
when I sent for you?'

RED IRON. 'No other excuse than I have given you.'

GOVERNOR. 'At the treaty, I thought you a good man; but since,
you have acted badly, and I am disposed to break you. I _do_ break you.'

Red Iron looked at the Governor for a moment with a look of withering
contempt and scorn, and then burst out in a voice full of derisive
mockery.

RED IRON. '_You break me!_ My people made me a chief. My people
love me. I will still be their chief. I have done nothing wrong.'

GOVERNOR. 'Red Iron, why did you get your braves together, and
march around here for the purpose of intimidating other chiefs, and
prevent their coming to council?'

RED IRON. 'I did not get my braves together; they got
themselves together, to prevent _boys_ going to council to be made
_chiefs_ to sign papers, and to prevent single chiefs going to council
at night, to be _bribed_ to sign papers for _money_ we have never got.'
And then the inexorable fellow continued, without any regard to his
excellency's nerves or conscience: 'We have heard how the M'Dewakantons
were served at Mendota; that by secret councils you got their names on
paper, and took away their money. We don't want to be served so. My
braves wanted to come to council in the _daytime_, when the sun shines;
and we want no councils in the dark. We want all our people to go to
council together, so that we can all know what is done.'

The Governor is nothing abashed at these damaging charges, but returns
once more to the assault.

GOVERNOR. 'Why did you attempt to come to council with your
braves, when I had forbidden your braves coming to council?'

To which Red Iron, with the same masterful, defiant smile upon his 'thin
lips,' answers:

RED IRON. 'You invited the chiefs only, and would not let the
braves come too. This is not the way we have been treated before; this
is not according to our customs; for among Dacotahs, chiefs and braves
go to council together. When you first sent for us there were two or
three chiefs here, and we waited, and we wanted to wait till the rest
would come, that we might all be in council together, and know what was
done, and so that we might all understand the papers, and know what we
were signing. When we signed the treaty, the _traders threw a blanket
over our faces, and darkened our eyes; and made us sign papers which we
did not understand, and which were not explained or read to us_. We want
our Great Father at Washington to know what has been done.'

This last speech--whose words hit like bullets--made the Governor wince,
and he replied, with more sharpness than wit:

GOVERNOR. 'Your Great Father has sent me to represent him; and
what I say, he says. He wants you to pay your old debts, in accordance
with the papers you signed when the treaty was made' ['which we did not
understand; which were never read nor explained to us; which we were
forced to sign,' as Red Iron had just told the Governor!]. 'You must
leave that money in my hands to pay those debts. If you refuse to do
that, I will take the money back.'

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