A Century of Dishonor/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
THE CHEYENNES.
Our first treaty with the Cheyennes was made in 1825, at the mouth of the Teton River. It was merely a treaty of amity and friendship, and acknowledgment on the part of the Cheyennes of the “supremacy” of the United States. Two years before this, President Monroe reported the “Chayenes” to be “a tribe of three thousand two hundred and fifty souls, dwelling and hunting on a river of the same name, a western tributary of the Missouri, a little above the Great Bend.” Ten years later, Catlin, the famous painter of Indians, met a “Shienne” chief and squaw among the Sioux, and painted their portraits. He says, “The Shiennes are a small tribe of about three thousand in number, living neighbors to the Sioux on the west of them, between the Black Hills and the Rocky Mountains. There is no finer race of men than these in North America, and none superior in stature, except the Osages: scarcely a man in the tribe fall grown who is less than six feet in height.” They are “the richest in horses of any tribe on the continent; living where the greatest herds of wild horses are grazing on the prairies, which they catch in great numbers, and sell to the Sioux, Mandans, and other tribes, as well as to the fur-traders.
“These people are the most desperate set of warriors and horsemen, having carried on almost unceasing wars with the Pawnees and Blackfeet. The chief was clothed in a handsome dress of deer-skins, very neatly garnished with broad bands of porcupine-quill work down the sleeves of his shirt and leggings. The woman was comely, and beautifully dressed. Her dress of the mountain-sheepskin tastefully ornamented with quills and beads, and her hair plaited in large braids that hung down on her breast.”
In 1837 the agent for the “Sioux, Cheyennes, and Poncas” reports that “all these Indians live exclusively by the chase;” and that seems to be the sum and substance of his information about them. He adds, also, that these remote wandering tribes have a great fear of the border tribes, and wish to avoid them. In 1838 the Cheyennes are reported as carrying on trade at a post on the Arkansas River near the Santa Fe road, but still depending on the chase.
Tn 1842 they are spoken of as a “wandering tribe on the Platte;” and in the same year, Mr. D, D, Mitchell, Supt. of Indian Affairs, with bis head-quarters at St. Louis, writes: “Generations will pass away before this territory” [the territory in which the wild tribes of the Upper Mississippi were then wandering] “becomes much more circumscribed; for if we draw a line running north and south, so as to cross the Missouri about the mouth of the Vermilion River, we shall designate the limits beyond which civilized men are never likely to settle. At this point the Creator seems to have said to the tides of emigration that are annually rolling toward the West, ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.’ At all events, if they go beyond this, they will never stop on the east side of the Rocky Mountains. The utter destitution of timber, the sterility of sandy soil, together with the coldness and dryness of the climate, furnish obstacles which not even Yankee enterprise is likely to overcome. A beneficent Creator seems to have intended this dreary region as an asylum for the Indians, when the force of circumstances shall have driven them from the last acre of the fertile soil which they once possessed. Here no inducements are offered to the ever-restless Saxon breed to erect their huts. * * * The time may arrive when the whole of the Western Indians will be forced to seek a resting-place in this Great American Desert; and this, in all probability, will form a new era in the history of this singular and ill-fated race. They will remain a wandering, half civilized, though happy people. ‘Their flocks and herds will cover a thousand hills,’ and will furnish beef and mutton for a portion of the dense population of whites that will swarm in the more fertile sections of the great valley of the Mississippi.”
This line, recommended by Mr. Mitchell, runs just east of Dakota, through the extreme eastern portion of Nebraska, a little to the cast of the middle of Kansas, through the middle of Indian Territory and Texas, to the Gulf of Mexico, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and New Mexico, all lie west of it.
The records of the War Department for 1846 contain an interesting account of a visit made to all the wild tribes of the Upper Missouri Agency—the Yankton Sioux, the Arrikarees, Mandans, Assinaboines, Arapahoes, Cheyennes, and others. In reply to the agent’s remonstrances with one of the Sioux chiefs in regard to their perpetual warring with each other, the chief “was very laconic and decided, remarking ‘that if their great-grandfather desired them to cease to war with their enemies, why did he not send each of them a petticoat, and make squaws of them at once?’ ” This same chief refused to allow the boys of his tribe to go to the Choctaw schools, saying, “They would return, as the few did who went to St. Louis, drunkards, or die on the way.”
The Cheyennes and other Indians living on the Platte complained bitterly of the passage of the emigrants through their country. They said they ought to be compensated for the right of way, and that the emigrants should be restricted by law and the presence of a military force from burning the grass, and from unnecessary destruction of game. They were systematically plundered and demoralized by traders. Whiskey was to be had without difficulty; sugar and coffee were sold at one dollar a pound; ten-cent calico at one dollar a yard; corn at seventy-tive cents a gallon, and higher.
In 1847 a law was passed by Congress forbidding the introduction of whiskey into the Indian country, and even the partial enforcement of this law had a most happy effect. Foremost among those to acknowledge the benefits of it were the traders themselves, who said that the Indians’ demand for substantial articles of trade was augmented two hundred per cent.: “They enjoy much better health, look much better, and are better people. * * * You now rarely ever hear of a murder committed, whereas when whiskey was plenty in that country murder was a daily occurrence.” These Indians themselves were said to be “opposed to the introduction of ardent spirits into their country; * * * but, like almost all other Indians, will use it if you give it to them, and when under its influence are dangerous and troublesome.” There were at this time nearly forty-six thousand of these Upper Missouri Indians. Five bands of them—“the Sioux, Cheyennes, Gros Ventres, Mandans, and Poncas”—were “excellent Indians, devotedly attached to the white man,” living “in peace and friendship with our Government,” and “entitled to the special favor and good opinion of the Department for their uniform good conduct and pacific relations.”
In 1848 it was estimated from the returns made by traders that the trade of this agency amounted to $400,000. Among the items were 25,000 buffalo tongues. In consequence of this prosperity on the part of the Indians, there was a partial cessation of hostilities on the whites; but it was still a perilous journey to cross the plains, and in 1849 the necessity for making some sort of treaty stipulations with all these wild tribes begins to be foreed emphatically upon the attention of the United States Government. A safe highway across the continent must be opened. It is a noticeable thing, however, that, even as late as this in the history of our diplomatic relations with the Indian, his right to a certain control as well as occupancy of the soil was instinctively recognized. The Secretary of the Interior, in his report for 1849, says: “The wild tribes of Indians who have their hunting-grounds in the great prairie through which our emigrants to California pass, have, during the year, been more than usually pacific. They have suffered our people to pass through their country with little interruption, though they travelled in great numbers, and consumed on their route much grass and game. For these the Indians expect compensation, and their claim is just.”
The Secretary, therefore, concurs in the recommendation of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that treaties be negotiated with these tribes, stipulating for the right-of way through their country, and the use of grass and game, paying them therefor small annuities in useful articles of merchandise, and agricultural implements, and instruction. “The right of way”—“through their country.” A great deal is conceded, covered, and conveyed by such phrases as these. If they mean anything, they mean all that the Indians ever claimed.
The Indians were supposed to be influenced to this peaceableness and good-will more by a hope of rewards and gifts than by a wholesome fear of the power of the Government; and it was proposed to take a delegation of chiefs to Washington, “in order that they may acquire some knowledge of our greatness and strength, which will make a salutary impression on them, and through them on their brethren,” and “will tend to influence them to continue peaceful relations.”
It begins to dawn upon the Government's perception that peace is cheaper as well as kinder than war. “We never can whip them into friendship,” says one of the superintendents of the Upper Missouri Agency. A treaty “can do no harm, and the expense would be less than that of a six months’ war. * * * Justice as well as policy requires that we should make some remuneration for the damages these Indians sustain in consequence of the destruction of their game, timber, etc., by the whites passing through their country.”
“Their game, timber,” “their country,” again. The perpetual recurrence of this possessive pronoun, and of such phrases as these in all that the Government has said about the Indians, and in all that it has said to them, is very significant.
In 1850 the Indian Commission writes that “it is much to be regretted that no appropriation was made at the last session of Congress for negotiating treaties with the wild tribes of the plains. These Indians have long held undisputed possession of this extensive region; and, regarding it as their own, they consider themselves entitled to compensation not only for the right of way through their territory, but for the great and injurious destruction of game, grass, and timber committed by our troops and emigrants.”
The bill providing for the negotiation of these treaties was passed unanimously by the Senate, but “the unhappy difficulties existing on the subject of slavery” delayed it in the House until it was too late to be carried into effect.
All the tribes had been informed of this pending bill, and were looking forward to it with great interest and anxiety. In 1849 they had all expressed themselves as “very anxious to be instructed in agriculture and the civilized arts.” Already the buffalo herds were thinning and disappearing. From time immemorial the buffalo had furnished them food, clothing, and shelter; with its disappearance, starvation stared them in the face, and they knew it. There can be no doubt that at this time all the wild tribes of the Upper Missouri region—the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes—were ready and anxious to establish friendly relations with the United States Government, and to enter into some arrangement by which some means of future subsistence, and some certainty of lands enough to live on, could be secured to them. Meantime they hunted with greater diligence than ever; and in this one year alone had sold to the fur-traders within the limits of one agency $330,000 worth of buffalo-robes, and “furs, peltries, and miscellaneous goods to the amount of $60,000. What they thus receive for their furs, robes, etc., would be ample for their support,” says Hatton, “were it not that they have to give such exorbitant prices for what they purchase from the whites.”
In the winter and spring of 1850 all these tribes were visited by an agent of the Government. He reported them as “friendly disposed,” but very impatient to come to some understanding about the right of way. “This is what the Indians want, and what they are anxious about; having been told long since, and so often repeated by travellers passing (who care little about the consequences of promises so they slip through safely and unmolested themselves), that their ‘Great Father’ would soon reward them liberally for the right of way, the destruction of timber, game, etc., as well as for any kindness shown Americans passing through their country.”
In the summer of 1851 this much desired treaty was made, Seven of the prairie and mountain tribes gathered in great force at Fort Laramie, The report of this council contains some interesting and noticeable points.
“We were eighteen days encamped together, during which time the Indians conducted themselves in a manner that excited the admiration and surprise of every one. The different tribes, although hereditary enemies, interchanged daily visits, both in their individual and national capacities; smoked and feasted together; exchanged presents; adopted each other's children, according to their own customs; and did all that was held sacred or solemn in the eyes of these Indians to prove the sincerity of their peaceful and friendly intentions, both among themselves and with the citizens of the United States lawfully residing among them or passing through the country.”
By this treaty the Indians formally conceded to the United States the right to establish roads, military or otherwise, throughout the Indian country, “so far as they claim or exercise ownership over it.”
They agreed “to maintain peaceful relations among themselves, and to abstain from all depredations upon whites passing through their country, and to make restitution for any damages or loss that a white man shall sustain by the acts of their people.”
For all the damages which they had suffered up to that time in consequence of the passing of the whites through their country, they accepted the presents then received as payment in full.
An annuity of $50,000 a year for fifty years to come was promised to them. This was the price of the “right of way.”
“Fifty thousand dollars for a limited period of years is a small amount to be distributed among at least fifty thousand Indians, especially when we consider that we have taken away, or are rapidly taking away from them all means of support,” says one of the makers of this treaty. There would probably be no dissent from this opinion. A dollar a year, even assured to one for fifty years, seems hardly an adequate compensation for the surrender of all other “means of support.”
The report continues: “Viewing the treaty in all its provisions, I am clearly of opinion that it is the best that could have been made for both parties. I am, moreover, of the opinion that it will be observed and carried out in as good faith on the part of the Indians as it will on the part of the United States and the white people thereof. There was an earnest solemnity and a deep conviction of the necessity of adopting some such measures evident in the conduct and manners of the Indians throughout the whole council. On leaving for their respective homes, and bidding each other adieu, they gave the strongest possible evidence of their friendly intentions for the future, and the mutual confidence and good faith which they had in each other. Invitations were freely given and as freely accepted by each of the tribes to interchange visits, talk, and smoke together like brothers, upon ground where they had never before met except for the purpose of scalping each other. This, to my mind, was conclusive evidence of the sincerity of the Indians, and nothing but bad management or some untoward misfortune ever can break it.”
The Secretary of the Interior, in his report for this year, speaks with satisfaction of the treaties negotiated with Indians during the year, and says: “It cannot be denied that most of the depredations committed by the Indians on our frontiers are the offspring of dire necessity. The advance of our population compels them to relinquish their fertile lands, and seek refuge in sterile regions which furnish neither corn nor game: impelled by hunger, they seize the horses, mules, and cattle of the pioneers, to relieve their wants and satisfy the cravings of nature. They are immediately pursued, and, when overtaken, severely punished, This creates a feeling of revenge on their part, which seeks its gratification in outrages on the persons and property of peaceable inhabitants. The whole country then becomes excited, and a desolating war, attended with a vast sacrifice of blood and treasure, ensues. This, it is believed, is a true history of the origin of most of our Indian hostilities.
“All history admonishes us of the difficulty of civilizing a wandering race who live mainly upon game. To tame a savage you must tie him down to the soil. You must make him understand the value of property, and the benefits of its separate ownership. You must appeal to those selfish principles implanted by Divine Providence in the nature of man for the wisest purposes, and make them minister to civilization and refinement. You must encourage the appropriation of lands by individuals; attach them to their homes by the ties of interest; teach them the uses of agriculture and the arts of peace; * * * and they should be taught to look forward to the day when they may be elevated to the dignity of American citizenship.
“By means like these we shall soon reap our reward in the suppression of Indian depredations; in the diminution of the expenses of the Department of War; in a valuable addition to our productive population; in the increase of our agriculture and commerce; and in the proud consciousness that we have removed from our national escutcheon the stain left on it by our acknowledged injustice to the Indian race.”
We find the Cheyennes, therefore, in 1851, pledged to peace and good-will toward their Indian neighbors, and to the white emigrants pouring through their country. For this conceded right of way they are to have a dollar a year apiece, in “goods and animals;” and it is supposed that they will be able to eke out this support by hunting buffaloes, which are still not extinct.
In 1852 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs writes: “Notwithstanding the mountain and prairie Indians continue to suffer from the vast number of emigrants who pass through their country, destroying their means of support, and scattering disease and death among them, yet those who were parties to the treaty concluded at Fort Laramie, in the fall of 1851, have been true to their obligations, and have remained at peace among themselves and with the whites.”
And the superintendent writes: “Congress made a very liberal appropriation of $100,000 to make a treaty with the prairie and mountain tribes. A very satisfactory treaty was made with them last fall at Fort Laramie, the conditions of which, on their part, have been faithfully observed—no depredations having been committed during the past season by any of the tribes parties to the Fort Laramie treaty. The Senate amended the treaty, substituting fifteen instead of fifty years as the period for which they were to have received an annual supply of goods, animals, etc., at the discretion of the President. This modification of the treaty I think very proper, as the condition of these wandering hordes will be entirely changed during the next fifteen years. The treaty, however, should have been sent back to the Indians for the purpose of obtaining their sanction to the modification, as was done in the case of the Sioux treaty negotiated by Commissioners Ramsey and Lea. It is hoped this oversight will be corrected as early as practicable next spring, otherwise the large amounts already expended will have been uselessly wasted, and the Indians far more dissatisfied than ever.”
To comment on the bad faith of this action on the part of Congress would be a waste of words; but its impolicy is so glaring that one’s astonishment cannot keep silent—its impolicy and also its incredible niggardliness. A dollar apiece a year, “in goods, animals,” etc., those Indians had been promised that they should have for fifty years. It must have been patent to the meanest intellect that this was little to pay each year to any one man from whom we were taking away, as the commissioner said, “his means of support.” But, unluckily for the Indians, there were fifty thousand of them. It entered into some thrifty Congressman’s head to multiply fifty by fifty, and the aggregate terrified everybody. This was much more likely to have been the cause of the amendment than the cause assigned by the superintendent, viz., the probable change of localities of all the “wandering hordes” in the next fifteen years. No doubt it would be troublesome to the last degree to distribute fifty thousand dollars, “in goods, animals,” etc., to fifty thousand Indians wandering over the entire Upper Missouri region; but no more troublesome, surely, in the sixteenth year than in the fifteenth. The sophistry is too transparent; it does not in the least gloss over the fact that, within the first year after the making of our first treaty of any moment with these tribes—while they to a man, the whole fifty thousand of them, kept their faith with us—we broke ours with them in the meanest of ways—robbing them of more than two-thirds of the money we had promised to pay.
All the tribes “promptly” assented to this amendment, however; so says the Annual Report of the Indian Commissioner for 1853; and adds that, with a single exception, they have maintained friendly relations among themselves, and “manifested an increasing confidence in and kindness toward the whites.”
Some of them have begun to raise corn, beans, pumpkins, etc., but depend chiefly on the hunt for their support. But the agent who was sent to distribute to them their annuities, and to secure their assent to the amendment to the treaty, reports: “The Cheyennes and the Arapahoes, and many of the Sioux, are actually in a starving state. They are in abject want of food half the year, and their reliance for that scanty supply, in the rapid decrease of the buffalo, is fast disappearing. The travel upon the roads drives them off, or else confines them to a narrow path during the period of emigration, and the different tribes are forced to contend with hostile nations in seeking support for their villages. Their women are pinched with want, and their children constantly crying with hunger. Their arms, moreover, are unfitted to the pursuit of smaller game,and thus the lapse of a few years presents only the prospect of a gradual famine.” And in spite of such suffering, these Indians commit no depredations, and show increasing confidence in and kindness toward the whites.
This agent, who has passed many years among the Indians, speaks with great feeling of the sad prospect staring them in the face. He says: “But one course remains which promises any permanent relief to them, or any lasting benefit to the country in which they dwell; that is, simply to make such modifications in the ‘intercourse’ laws as will invite the residence of traders among them, and open the whole Indian Territory for settlement. Trade is the only civilizer of the Indian. It has been the precursor of all civilization heretofore, and it will be of all hereafter. It teaches the Indian the value of other things besides the spoils of the chase, and offers to him other pursuits and excitements than those of war. All obstructions to its freedom, therefore, only operate injuriously. * * * The Indians would soon lose their nomadic character, and forget the relations of tribes. * * * And this, while it would avoid the cruel necessity of our present policy—to wit, extinction—would make them an element in the population, and sharer in the prosperity of the country.” He says of the “system of removals, and congregating tribes in small parcels of territory,” that it has “eventuated injuriously on those who have been subjected to it. It is the legalized murder of a whole nation. It is expensive, vicious, and inhuman, and producing these consequences, and these alone. The custom, being judged by its fruits, should not be persisted in.”
It is in the face of such statements, such protests as these, that the United States Government has gone steadily on with its policy, so called, in regard to the treatment of the Indian.
In 1854 the report from the Upper Missouri region is still of peace and fidelity on the part of all the Indians who joined in the Fort Laramie treaty. “Not a single instance of murder, robbery, or other depredation has been committed by them, either on the neighboring tribes parties to the treaty or on whites. This is the more remarkable, as before the treaty they were foremost in the van of thieves and robbers—always at war, pillaging whoever they met, and annoying their own traders in their own forts.”
In the summer of this year the Cheyennes began to be dissatisfied and impertinent. At a gathering of the northern band at Fort Laramie, one of the chiefs demanded that the travel over the Platte road should be stopped. He also, if the interpreter was to be relied on, said that next year the Government must send them out one thousand white women for wives. The Southern Cheyennes had given up to their agent some Mexican prisoners whom they had taken in the spring, and this act, it was supposed, had seemed to the northern band a needless interference on the part of the United States. Moreover, it was a matter constantly open to the observation of all friendly Indians that the hostiles, who were continually plundering and attacking emigrant trains, made, on the whole, more profit out of war than they made out of peace. On the North Platte road during this year the Pawnees alone had stolen several thousands of dollars’ worth of goods; and, in addition to this, there was the pressure of public sentiment—a thing which is as powerful among Indians as among whites. It was popular to be on the war-path: the whites were invaders; it was brave and creditable to slay them. Taking all these things into account, it was only to be wondered at that these Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Sioux kept to the provisions of their treaty at all. Nevertheless, the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and some bands of the Sioux continued peaceable and friendly; and in 1855 they begged to be supplied with a farmer to teach them how to farm; also with a blacksmith. Their agent strongly recommends that this be done, saying that there is not “in the whole Indian country a more favorable location for a farm for grazing stock and game than the South Platte. In a very short period of time the Arapahoes and Cheyennes would become fixed and settled, and a part of each tribe—the old women and men—would become agriculturists; rude, it is true, yet sufficiently skilful to raise corn, potatoes, and beans, and dwell in cabins or fixed habitations.”
In the summer of 1856 the Cheyennes were, by a disastrous accident, forced into the position of hostiles. A small war-band went out to attack the Pawnees; they were in camp near the North Platte road: as the mail-wagon was passing, two of the Cheyennes ran toward it to beg tobacco. The mail-carrier, terrified, fired on them, and the Indians fired back, wounding him; the chiefs rushed out, stopped the firing, explained the matter, and then severely flogged the Indians who had returned the mail-carrier’s fire. But the mischief had been done. The mail-carrier reported his having been fired at by a Cheyenne Indian, and the next day troops from Fort Kearny attacked the Indians and killed six of the war-party. The rest refused to fight, and ran away, leaving their camp and all it contained. The war-party, thoroughly exasperated, attacked an emigrant train, killed two men and a child, and took one woman captive. The next day they killed her, because she could not ride on horseback and keep up with them. Within a short time two more small war-parties had left the band, attacked trains, and killed two men, two women, and a child. The chiefs at first could not restrain them, but in September they sent a delegation to the agency to ask their agent’s assistance and advice. They said that the war-party was now completely under their control, and they wished to know what they could do. They implored the Great Father not to be angry with them, “for they could not control the war-party when they saw their friends killed by soldiers after they had thrown down their bows and arrows and begged for life.”
In October the agent reported that the Cheyennes were “perfectly quiet and peaceable, and entirely within control, and obedient to authority.” The chiefs had organized a sort of police, whose duty was to kill any war-parties that might attempt to leave the camp.
Through the winter the Cheyennes remained in the south and south-eastern parts of the agency, and strictly observed the conditions which their agent had imposed upon them. In the following August, however, a military force under General Sumner was sent out “to demand from the tribe the perpetrators of their late outrages on the whites, and ample security for their good conduct.” The Cheyennes were reported by General Sumner as showing no disposition to yield to these demands; he therefore attacked them, burnt their village to the ground, and destroyed their winter supplies—some fifteen or twenty thousand pounds of buffalo meat.
Of how they lived, and where, during the winter following this fight, there is little record. In the next year’s reports the Cheyennes are said to be very anxious for a new treaty, which will assign to them a country in which they can dwell safely. “They said they had learned a lesson last summer in their fight with General Sumner—that it was useless to contend with the white man, who would soon with his villages occupy the whole prairie. They wanted peace; and as the buffalo—their principal dependence for food and clothing (which even now they were compelled to seek many miles from home, where their natural enemies, the Pawnee and Osage, roamed), would soon disappear entirely, they hoped their Great Father, the white chief at Washington, would listen to them, and give them a home where they might be provided for and protected against the encroachments of their white brothers, until at least they had been taught to cultivate the soil and other arts of civilized life. They have often desired ploughs and hoes, and to be taught their use.”
The next year's records show the Government itself aware that some measures must be taken to provide for these, troublesome wild tribes of the prairie: almost more perplexing in time of peace than in time of war is the problem of the disposition to be made of them. Agents and superintendents alike are pressing on the Government's attention the facts and the bearing of the rapid settling of the Indian lands by the whites; the precariousness of peaceful relations; the dangers of Indian wars. The Indians themselves are deeply anxious and disturbed.
“They have heard that all of the Indian tribes to the eastward of them have ceded their lands to the United States, except small reservations; and hence, by an Indian’s reasoning, in a few years these tribes will emigrate farther west, and, as a matter of necessity, occupy the hunting-grounds of the wild tribes.”
When the agent of the Upper Platte Agency tried to reason on this subject with one of the Sioux chiefs, the chief said: “When I was a young man, and I am not yet fifty, I travelled with my people through the country of the Sac and Fox tribe, to the great water Minne Toukah (Mississippi), where I saw corn growing, but no white people; continuing eastward, we came to the Rock River valley, and saw the Winnebagoes, but no white people. We then came to the Fox River valley, and thence to the Great Lake (Lake Michigan), where we found a few white people in the Pottawattomie country. Thence we returned to the Sioux country at the Great Falls of Irara (St. Anthony), and had a feast of green corn with our relations, who resided there. Afterward we visited the pipe-clay quarry in the country of the Yankton Sioux, and made a feast to the ‘Great Medicine,’ and danced the ‘sun dance,’ and then returned to our hunting-grounds on the prairie. And now our Father tells us the white man will never settle on our lands, and kill our game; but see! the whites cover all of those lands I have just deseribed, and also the lands of the Poncas, Omahas, and Pawnees. On the South Platte the white people are finding gold, and the Cheyennes and Arapahoes have no longer any hunting-grounds. Our country has become very small, and before our children are grown up we shall have no game.”
In the autumn of this year (1859) an agent was sent to hold a council with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, and tell them of the wish of the Government that they should “assume a fixed residence, and occupy themselves in agriculture. This they at once received with favor, and declared with great unanimity to be acceptable to them. They expected and asked that the Department shall supply them with what is necessary to establish themselves permanently. * * * Both these tribes had scrupulously maintained peaceful relations with the whites, and with other Indian tribes, notwithstanding the many causes of irritation growing out of the occupation of the gold region, and the emigration to it through their hunting-grounds, which are no longer reliable as a certain source of food to them.”
It was estimated that during the summer of 1859 over sixty thousand emigrants crossed these plains in their central belt. The trains of vehicles and cattle were frequent and valuable in proportion; and post lines and private expresses were in constant motion.
In 1860 a commissioner was sent out to hold a council with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes at Bent’s Fort, on the Upper Arkansas, and make a treaty with them. The Arapahoes were fully represented; but there were present only two prominent chiefs of the Cheyennes—Black Kettle and White Antelope. (White Antelope was one of the chiefs brutally murdered five years later in the Chivington massacre in Colorado.) As it was impossible for the rest of the Cheyennes to reach the Fort in less than twenty days, and the commissioner could not wait so long, Black Kettle and White Antelope wished it to be distinctly understood that they pledged only themselves and their own bands.
The commissioner says: “I informed them as to the object of my visit, and gave them to understand that their Great Father had heard with delight of their peaceful disposition, although they were almost in the midst of the hostile tribes. They expressed great pleasure on learning that their Great Father had heard of their good conduct, and requested me to say, in return, that they intended in every respect to conform to the wishes of the Government. I then presented to them a diagram of the country assigned them, by their treaty of 1851, as their hunting-grounds, which they seemed to understand perfectly, and were enabled without difficulty to give each initial point. In fact, they exhibited a degree of intelligence seldom to be found among tribes where no effort has been made to civilize them. I stated to them that it was the intention of their Great Father to reduce the area of their present reservation, and that they should settle down and betake themselves to agriculture, and eventually abandon the chase as a means of support. They informed me that such was their wish; and that they had been aware for some time that they would be compelled to do so: that game was growing more scarce every year, and that they had also noticed the approach of whites, and felt that they must soon, in a great measure, conform to their habits. * * * It has not fallen to my lot to visit any Indians who seem more disposed to yield to the wishes of the Government than the Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Notwithstanding they are fully aware of the rich mines discovered in their country, they are disposed to yield up their claims without any reluctance. They certainly deserve the fostering hand of the Government, and should be liberally encouraged in their new sphere of life.”
This treaty was concluded in February of the next year, at Fort Wise. The chiefs of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes there “ceded and relinquished” all the lands to which they had any claim, “wherever situated,” except a certain tract whose boundaries were defined. The land relinquished included lands in Kansas and Nebraska, and all of that part of Colorado which is north of the Arkansas, and cast of the Rocky Mountains.
The Cheyennes and Arapahoes, in “consideration of their kind treatment by the citizens of Denver and the adjoining towns,” “respectfully requested,” in the eleventh Article of this treaty, that the United States would permit the proprietors of these towns to enter their lands at the minimum price of one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre. This Article was struck out by the Senate, and the Indians consented to the amendment; but the proof of their good-will and gratitude remained on record, nevertheless.
The desire of the Government to make farmers of these Indians was reiterated in this treaty, and evidenced by pledges of purchase of stock, agricultural implements, etc.; mills, also, and mechanic shops they were to have, and an annuity of $30,000 a year for fifteen years. There was this clause, however, in an article of the treaty, “Their annuities may, at the discretion of the President of the United States, be discontinued entirely should said Indians fail to make reasonable and satisfactory efforts to improve and advance their condition; in which case such other provision shall be made for them as the President and Congress may judge to be suitable or proper.” Could there be a more complete signing away than this of all benefits provided for by the treaty?
Lands were to be assigned to them “in severalty,” and certificates were to be issued by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, specifying the names of individuals; and that the “said tracts were set apart for the exclusive use and benefit of the assignees and their heirs.” Each Indian was to haye forty acres of land, “to include in every case, as far as practicable, a reasonable portion of timber and water.”
The tenth Article of the treaty provided that the annuities now paid to the Arapahoes and Cheyennes should be continued to them until the stipulations of such treaties or articles of agreement should be fulfilled; and the seventh Article provided that the President, with the assent of Congress, should have power to modify or change any “of the provisions of former treaties” “in such manner and to whatever extent” he might judge it to be necessary and expedient for their best interests.
Could a community of people be delivered up more completely bound and at the mercy of a government? Some of the bands of the Cheyennes who were not represented at this council were much dissatisfied with the treaty, as evidently they had great reason to be. And as time went on, all the bands became dissatisfied. Two years later we find that, instead of their being settled on those farms “in severalty,” the survey of their lands has been just completed, and that “a contract will soon be made for the construction of a ditch for the purpose of irrigating their arable land.” “It is to be hoped,” the Superintendent of the Colorado Agency writes, that “when suitable preparations for their subsistence by agriculture and grazing are made, these tribes will gradually cease their roaming, and become permanently settled.” It would seem highly probable that under those conditions the half-starved creatures would be only too glad to cease to roam. It is now ten years since they were reported to be in a condition of miserable starvation every winter, trying to raise a little corn here and there, and begging to have a farmer and a blacksmith sent out to them. They are now divided and subdivided into small bands, hunting the buffalo wherever they can find him, and going in small parties because there are no longer large herds of buffaloes to be found anywhere. The Governor of Colorado says, in his report for 1863, that “these extensive subdivisions of the tribes caused great difficulty in ascertaining the really guilty parties in the commission of offences.” Depredations and hostilities are being frequently committed, but it is manifestly unjust to hold the whole tribe responsible for the acts of a few.
Things grew rapidly worse in Colorado. Those “preparations for their subsistence by agriculture and grazing”—which it took so much room to tell in the treaty—not having been made; the farmer, and the blacksmith, and the grist-mill not having arrived; the contract not having been even let for the irrigating-ditch, without which no man can raise any crops in Colorado, not even on arable lands—many of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes took to a system of pilfering reprisals from emigrant trains, and in the fights resulting from this effort to steal they committed many terrible murders. All the tribes on the plains were more or less engaged in these outrages; and it was evident, before midsummer of 1864, that the Government must interfere with a strong hand to protect the emigrants and Western settlers—to protect them from the consequences of its own bad faith with the Indians. The Governor of Colorado called for military aid, and for authority to make a campaign against the Indians, which was given him. But as there was no doubt that many of the Indians were still peaceable and loyal, and he desired to avoid every possibility of their sharing in the punishment of the guilty, he issued a proclamation in June, requesting all who were friendly to come to places which he designated, where they were to be assured of safety and protection. This proclamation was sent to all the Indians of the plains. In consequence of it, several bands of friendly Arapahoes and Cheyennes came to Fort Lyon, and were there received by the officer in charge, rationed, and assured of safety. Here there occurred, on the 29th of November, one of the foulest massacres which the world has seen. This camp of friendly Indians was surprised at daybreak, and men, women, and children were butchered in cold blood. Most of those who escaped fled to the north, and, joining other bands of the tribe, proceeded at once to take most fearful, and, it must be said, natural revenge. A terrible war followed. Some of them confederated with the Sioux, and waged relentless war on all the emigrant routes across the plains. These hostilities were bitter in proportion to the bitterness of resentment felt by the refugees from this massacre. “It will be long before faith in the honor and humanity of the whites can be re-established in the minds of these barbarians,” says an official report, “and the last Indian who escaped from the brutal scene at Sand Creek will probably have died before its effects will have disappeared.”[1]
In October of the next year some of the bands, having first had their safety assured by an old and tried friend, I. H. Leavenworth, Indian Agent for the Upper Arkansas, gathered to-
- gether to hold a council with United States Commissioners on
the Little Arkansas. The commissioners were empowered by the President to restore to the survivors of the Sand Creek massacre full value for all the property then destroyed; “to make reparation,” so far as possible. To each woman who had lost a husband there they gave one hundred and sixty acres of land; to each child who had lost a parent, the same. Probably even an Indian woman would consider one hundred and sixty acres of land a poor equivalent for a murdered husband; but the offers were accepted in good part by the tribe, and there is nothing in all the history of this patient race more pathetic than the calm and reasonable language employed by some of these Cheyenne and Arapahoe chiefs at this council. Said Black Kettle, the chief over whose lodge the American flag, with a white flag tied below, was floating at the time of the massacre, “I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man; but since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses, and everything else, it is hard for me to believe white men any more. * * * All my friends, the Indians that are holding back, they are afraid to come in; are afraid that they will be betrayed as I have been. I an not afraid of white men, but come and take you by the hand.” Elsewhere, Black Kettle spoke of Colonel Chivington's troops as “that fool-band of soldiers that cleared out our lodges, and killed our women and children. This is hard on us.” With a magnanimity and common-sense which white men would have done well to imitate in their judgments of the Indians, he recognized that it would be absurd, as well as unjust, to hold all white men in distrust on account of the acts of that “fool-band of soldiers.”[2]
By the terms of this treaty, a new reservation was to be set apart for the Cheyennes and Arapahoes; hostile acts on either side were to be settled by arbitration; no whites were to be allowed on the reservation; a large tract of country was to be “relinquished” by the Indians, but they were “expressly permitted to reside upon and range at pleasure throughout the unsettled portions of that part of the country they claim as originally theirs” The United States reserved the right to build roads and establish forts in the reservation, and pledged itself to pay “annually, for the period of forty years,” certain sums of money to each person in the tribe: twenty dollars a head till they were settled on their reservation; after that, forty dollars a head. To this end an accurate annual census of the Indians was promised at the time of the annuity payment in the spring.
The Indians went away from this council full of hope and satisfaction. Their oldest friends, Colonel Bent and Kit Carson, were among the commissioners, and they felt that at last they had a treaty they could trust. Their old reservation in Colorado (to which they probably could never have been induced to return) was restored to the public domain of that territory, and they hoped in their new home for greater safety and peace. The Apaches, who had heretofore been allied with the Kiowas and Comanches, were now allied with them, and to have the benefits of the new treaty. A small portion of the tribe—chiefly young men of a turbulent nature—still held aloof, and refused to come under the treaty provisions. One riotous band, called the Dog Soldiers, were especially refractory; but, before the end of the next year, they also decided to go southward and join the rest of the tribe on the new reservation. Occasional hostilities took place in the course of the winter, one of which it is worth while to relate, the incident is so typical a one.
On the 21st of February a son of one Mr. Boggs was killed and scalped by a party of four Cheyenne Indians about six miles cast of Fort Dodge, on the Arkansas River. On investigation, it appeared that Mr. Boggs had gone to the Indian camp without any authority, and had there traded off eleven one-dollar bills for ten-dollar bills. The Indian on whom this trick had been played found Mr, Boggs out, went to him, and demanded reparation; and, in the altercation and fight which ensued, Mr. Boggs’s son was killed. This story is given in the official report of Lientenant-colonel Gordun, U.S.A., and Colonel Gordon adds, “I think this case needs no further comment.”
The Cheyennes did not long remain at peace; in the summer the Senate had added to this last treaty an amendment requiring their new reservation to be entirely “outside the State of Kansas, and not within any Indian territory, except on consent of the tribes interested.” As the reservation had been partly in Kansas, and partly on the lands of the Cherokees, this amendment left them literally without any home whatever. Under these circumstances, the young men of the tribe soon began to join again with other hostile Indians in committing depredations and hostilities along the great mail-routes on the plains. Again they were visited with summary and apparently deserved vengeance by the United States troops, and in the summer of 1867 a Cheyenne village numbering three hundred lodges was burnt by United States soldiers under General Hancock. Fortunately the women and children had all fled on the first news of the approach of the army. Soon after this another council was held with them, and once more the precarions peace was confirmed by treaty; but was almost immediately broken again in consequence of the failure of the Government to comply with the treaty provisions. That some members of these tribes had also failed to keep to the treaty provisions is undoubtedly true, but by far the greater part of them were loyal and peaceable. “The substantial cause of this war,” however, was acknowledged by the Indian Bureau itself to be “the fact that the Department, for want of appropriations, was compelled to stop their supplies, and to permit them to recur to the chase for subsistence.”
In 1868 “the country bounded east by the State of Arkansas, south by Texas, north by Kansas, and west by the hundredth meridian of longitude, was set apart for the exclusive use of the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Comanches, and such other bands as might be located there by proper authority;” and the whole was declared to constitute “a military district,” under command of Major-general Hazen, U.S.A. In October of the same year Major Wynkoop, who had been the faithful friend of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes ever since the days of Sand Creek, published his last protest in their behalf, in a letter to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He says that the failure of the Government to fulfil treaty provisions in the matter of supplies forced them to resort to hunting again; and then the refusal of the Government to give them the arms and ammunition promised in the treaty, left them without any means of securing the game; hence the depredations. The chiefs had promised to deliver up the guilty ones to Major Wynkoop, “but before sufficient time had elapsed for them to fulfil their promises the troops were in the field, and the Indians in flight. * * * Even after the majority of the Cheyennes had been forced to take the war-path, in consequence of the bad acts of some of their nation, several bands of the Cheyennes, and the whole Arapahoe tribe, could have been kept at peace had proper action been taken at the time; but now all the Indians of the Upper Arkansas are engaged in the struggle.”[3]
In 1869 many Arapaboes and Cheyennes had made their way to Montana, and were living with the Gros Ventres; most of those who remained at the south were quiet, and seemed to be disposed to observe the provisions of the treaty, but were earnestly imploring to be moved farther to the north, where they might hunt buffalo.
In 1870, under the care of an agent of the Society of Friends, the improvement of the Southern Cheyennes was remarkable. Buildings were put up, land was broken and planted, and the agent reports that, “with proper care on the part of the Government,” there will not be any “serious trouble” with the tribe, although there are still some “restless spirits” among them.
In 1872 the Cheyennes and Arapahoes are reported as “allied to the Government in the maintenance of peace on the border. Very strong inducements have been made by the raiding bands of Kiowas, at critical times in the past two years, to join them in hostile alliance in raids against the whites; but all such appeals have been rejected, and, as a tribe, they have remained loyal and peaceful.”
Thirty lodges of the Northern Cheyennes returned this year and joined their tribe, but many of them were still roaming among the Northern Sioux. In 1874 there were said to be over three thousand of these Northern Cheyennes and Arapahoes at the Red Cloud Agency. The Government refused any longer to permit them to stay there; and, after repeated protests, and expressions of unwillingness to move, they at last consented to go to the Indian Territory. But their removal was deferred, on account of the unsettled state of the Southern Cheyennes. Early in the spring troubles had broken out among them, in consequence of a raid of horse-thieves on their reservation. The chief, Little Robe, lost forty-three head of valuable ponies. These ponies were offered for sale in Dodge City, Kansas, where Little Robe’s son, with a small band of young men, made an unsuccessful effort to reclaim them. Failing in this, the band, on their way back, stole the first stock they came to; were pursued by the Kansas farmers, the stock recaptured, and Little Robe's son badly wounded. This was sufficient to bring on a general war against white men in the whole region; and the history of the next few months was a history of murders and outrages by Cheyennes, Kiowas, Osages, and Comanches. Sixty lodges of the Cheyennes took refuge under the protection of the United States troops at the agency, and the old problem returned again, how to punish the guilty without harming the innocent. A vigorous military campaign was carried on under General Miles against the hostiles until, in the spring of 1875, the main body surrendered. Wretched, half starved, more than half naked, without lodges, ponies—a more pitiable sight was never seen than this band of Indians. It was inconceivable how they had so long held out; nothing but a well-nigh indomitable pride and inextinguishable hatred of the whites and sense of wrongs could have supported them. It was decided that thirty-three of the most desperate ones should be sent as prisoners to St. Augustine, Florida; but before the selection was completed a general stampede among the surrendered braves took place, resulting in the final escape of some four hundred. They held their ground from two P.M. until dark against three companies of cavalry and two Gatlin guns, and, “under cover of an extremely dark and stormy night, escaped, leaving only three dead on the field.” It is impossible not to admire such bravery as this. The Report of the Indian Bureau for 1875 says of the condition of affairs at this agency at this time: “The friendly Cheyennes have had their loyalty put to the severest test by comparing their own condition with that of the full-fed and warmly-housed captives of the War Department. Notwithstanding all privations, they have been unswerving in their friendship, and ever ready to assist the agent in maintaining order, and compelling the Northern Cheyennes who have visited the agency to submit to a count.” In consequence of the hostilities, they were obliged to remain close to the agency in camp—a hardship that could hardly be endured, and resulted in serious suffering. Their rations were not enough to subsist them, and yet, being cut off from hunting, they were entirely dependent on them. And even these inadequate rations did not arrive when they were due. Their agent writes, in 1875: “On last year’s flour contract not a single pound was received until the fourteenth day of First Month, 1875, when six months of cold weather and many privations had passed, notwithstanding the many protestations and urgent appeals from the agent.”
The now thoroughly subjugated Cheyennes went to work with a will, In one short year they are reported as so anxious to cultivate the ground that, when they could not secure the use of a plough or hoe, they used “axes, sticks of wood, and their hands, in preparing the ground, planting and cultivating their garden spots.”
The Northern Cheyennes are still on the Red Cloud Agency, and are reported as restless and troublesome.
In 1877 they were all removed to the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Agency, in Indian Territory. The Reports of the Department say that they asked to be taken there. The winter of 1866 and the summer of 1867 were seasons of great activity and interest at this agency. In the autumn they went off on a grand buffalo hunt, accompanied by a small detail of troops from Fort Reno. Early in the winter white horse-thieves began to make raids on their ponies, and stole so many that many of the Indians were obliged to depend on their friends’ ponies to help them return home. Two hundred and sixty in all were stolen—carried, as usual, to Dodge City and sold. A few were recovered; but the loss to the Indians was estimated at two thousand nine hundred dollars. “Such losses are very discouraging to the Indians,” writes their agent, and are “but a repetition of the old story that brought on the war of 1874.”
In midsummer of this year the “Cheyenne and Arapahoe Transportation Company” was formed: forty wagons were sent out, with harness, by the Government; the Indians furnished the horses; and on the 19th of July the Indians set out in their new rôle of “freighters” of their own supplies. They went to Wichita, Kansas—one hundred and sixty-five miles—in six days, with their ponies; loaded sixty-five thousand pounds of supplies into the wagons, and made the return trip in two weeks, all things being delivered in good condition.
This experiment was thoroughly tested; and its results are notable among the many unheeded refutations of the constantly repeated assertion that Indians will not work. The agent of the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes, testifying before a Senate Committee in 1879, says: “We have run a wagon train, driven by Indians, to Wichita, for three years and over, and have never had a drunken Indian yet.”
“Do they waste their money, or bring it home?”
“They almost invariably spend it for saddles or clothing, or something of use to them that is not furnished by the Government, * * * They have never stolen an ounce of sugar, coffee, or anything else: they have been careful not to injure or waste anything, and have delivered everything in good faith.”
The agent reports not a single case of drunkenness during the year. The manual labor and boarding-school has one hundred and thirteen scholars in it, “all it can accommodate.” The children earned four hundred dollars in the year by work of one sort and another, and have “expended the money as judiciously as would white children of their ages.” They bought calico, cotton cloth, shoes, hats, several head of cattle, and one horse, They also “bought many delicacies for their friends in camp who were sick and in need.”
“One Cheyenne woman tanned robes, traded them for twenty-five two-year-old heifers, and gave them to her daughter in the school. * * * The boys have one hundred and twenty acres of corn under cultivation, ten acres of potatoes, broom-corn, sugar-cane, peanuts, melons, and a good variety of vegetables. They are entitled to one-half the crop for cultivating it.”
This is a marvellous report of the change wrought in a people in only two years’ time. It proves that the misdemeanors, the hostilities of 1874 and 1875, had been largely forced on them by circumstances.
The winter of 1877 and summer of 1878 were terrible seasons for the Cheyennes. Their fall hunt had proved unsuccessful. Indians from other reservations had hunted the ground over before them, and driven the buffalo off; and the Cheyennes made their way home again in straggling parties, destitute and hungry. Their agent reports that the result of this hunt has clearly proved that “in the future the Indian must rely on tilling the ground as the principal means of support; and if this conviction can be firmly established, the greatest obstacle to advancement in agriculture will be overcome. With the buffalo gone, and their pony herds being constantly decimated by the inroads of horse-thieves, they must soon adopt, in all its varieties, the way of the white man. * * * The usual amount of horse-stealing has prevailed, and the few cases of successful pursuit have only increased the boldness of the thieves and the number of the thefts. Until some other system of law is introduced we cannot hope for a cessation of this grievance.”
The ration allowed to these Indians is reported as being “reduced and insufficient,” and the small sums they have been able to earn by selling buffalo-hides are said to have been “of material assistance” to them in “supplementing” this ration. But in this year there have been sold only $657 worth of skins by the Cheyennes and Arapahoes together. In 1876 they sold $17,600 worth. Here is a falling off enough to cause very great suffering in a little community of five thousand people. But this was only the beginning of their troubles. The summer proved one of unusual heat. Extreme heat, chills and fever, and “a reduced and insufficient ration,” all combined, resulted in an amount of sickness heart-rending to read of. “It is no exaggerated estimate,” says the agent, “to place the number of sick people on the reservation at two thousand. Many deaths occurred which might have been obviated had there been a proper supply of anti-malarial remedies at hand. * * * Hundreds applying for treatment have been refused medicine.”
The Northern Cheyennes grew more and more restless and unhappy. “In council and elsewhere they profess an intense desire to be sent North, where they say they will settle down as the others have done,” says the report; adding, with an obtuseness which is inexplicable, that “no difference has been made in the treatment of the Indians,” but that the “compliance” of these Northern Cheyennes has been “of an entirely different nature from that of the other Indians,” and that it may be “necessary in the future to compel what so far we have been unable to effect by kindness and appeal to their better natures.”
If it is “an appeal to men’s better natures” to remove them by force from a healthful Northern climate, which they love and thrive in, to a malarial Southern one, where they are struck down by chills and fever—refuse them medicine which can combat chills and fever, and finally starve them—then, indeed, might be said to have been most forcible appeals made to the “better natures” of these Northern Cheyennes. What might have been predicted followed.
Early in the autumn, after this terrible summer, a band of some three hundred of these Northern Cheyennes took the desperate step of running off and attempting to make their way back to Dakota. They were pursued, fought desperately, but were finally overpowered, and surrendered. They surrendered, however, only on the condition that they should be taken to Dakota. They were unanimous in declaring that they would rather die than go back to the Indian Territory. This was nothing more, in fact, than saying that they would rather die by bullets than of chills and fever and starvation.
These Indians were taken to Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Here they were confined as prisoners of war, and held subject to the orders of the Department of the Interior. The department was informed of the Indians’ determination never to be taken back alive to Indian Territory. The army officers in charge reiterated these statements, and implored the department to permit them to remain at the North; but it was of no avail. Orders came—explicit, repeated, finally stern—insisting on the return of these Indians to their agency. The commanding officer at Fort Robinson has been censured severely for the course he pursued in his effort to carry out those orders. It is difficult to see what else he could have done, except to have resigned his post. He could not take three hundred Indians by sheer brute force and carry them hundreds of miles, especially when they were so desperate that they had broken up the iron stoves in their quarters, and wrought and twisted them into weapons with which to resist. He thought perhaps he could starve them into submission. He stopped the issue of food; he also stopped the issue of fuel to them. It was midwinter; the mercury froze in that month at Fort Robinson. At the end of two days he asked the Indians to let their women and children come out that he might feed them. Not a woman would come out. On the night of the fourth day—or, according to some accounts, the sixth—these starving, freezing Indians broke prison, overpowered the guards, and fled, carrying their women and children with them. They held the pursuing troops at bay for several days; finally made a last stand in a deep ravine, and were shot down—men, women, and children together. Out of the whole band there were left alive some fifty women and children and seven men, who, having been confined in another part of the fort, had not had the good fortune to share in this outbreak and meet their death in the ravine. These, with their wives and children, were sent to Fort Leavenworth, to be put in prison; the men to be tried for murders committed in their skirmishes in Kansas on their way to the north. Red Cloud, a Sioux chief, came to Fort Robinson immediately after this massacre, and entreated to be allowed to take the Cheyenne widows and orphans into his tribe to be cared for. The Government, therefore, kindly permitted twenty-two Cheyenne widows and thirty-two Cheyenne children—many of them orphans—to be received into the band of the Ogallalla Sioux,
An attempt was made by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, in his Report for 1879, to show by tables and figures that these Indians were not starving at the time of their flight from Indian Territory. The attempt only redounded to his own disgrace; it being proved, by the testimony given by a former clerk of the Indian Bureau before the Senate committee appointed to investigate the case of the Northern Cheyennes, that the commissioner had been guilty of absolute dishonesty in his estimates, and that the quantity of beef actually issued to the Cheyenne Agency was hundreds of pounds less than he had reported it, and that the Indians were actually, as they had claimed, “starving.”
The testimony given before this committee by some of the Cheyenne prisoners themselves is heart-rending. One must have a callous heart who can read it unmoved.
When asked by Senator Morgan, “Did you ever really suffer from hunger?” one of the chiefs replied, “We were always hungry; we never had enough. When they that were sick once in awhile felt as though they could eat something, we had nothing to give them.”
“Did you not go out on the plains sometimes and hunt buffalo, with the consent of the agent?”
“We went out on a buffalo-hunt, and nearly starved while out; we could not find any buffalo hardly; we could hardly get back with our ponies; we had to kill a good many of our ponies to cat, to save ourselves from starving.”
“How many children got sick and died?”
“Between the fall of 1877 and 1878 we lost fifty children. A great many of our finest young men died, as well as many women.”
“Old Crow,” a chief who served faithfully as Indian scout and ally under General Crook for years, said: “I did not feel like doing anything for awhile, because I had no heart. I did not want to be in this country. I was all the time wanting to get back to the better country where I was born, and where my children are buried, and where my mother and sister yet live. So I have laid in my lodge most of the time with nothing to think about but that, and the affair up north at Fort Robinson, and my relatives and friends who were killed there. But now I feel as though, if I had a wagon and a horse or two, and some land, I would try to work. If I had something, so that I could do something, I might not think so much about these other things. As it is now, I feel as though I would just as soon be asleep with the rest.”
The wife of one of the chiefs confined at Fort Leavenworth testified before the committee as follows: “The main thing I complained of was that we didn't get enough to eat; my children nearly starved to death; then sickness came, and there was nothing good for them to eat; for a long time the most they had to eat was corn-meal and salt. Three or four children died every day for awhile, and that frightened us.”
(This testimony was taken at Fort Reno, in Indian Territory.)
When asked if there were anything she would like to say to the committee, the poor woman replied: “I wish you would do what you can to get my husband released. I am very poor here, and do not know what is to become of me. If he were released he would come down here, and we would live together quietly, and do no harm to anybody, and make no trouble. But I should never get over my desire to get back north; I should always want to get back where my children were born, and died, and were buried. That country is better than this in every respect. * * * There is plenty of good, cool water there—pure water—while here the water is not good. It is not hot there, nor so sickly. Are you going where my husband is? Can you tell when he is likely to be released?”
The Senators were obliged to reply to her that they were not going where her husband was, and they could not tell when he would be released.
In view of the accounts of the sickness and suffering of these Indians in 1877 and 1878, the reports made in 1879 of the industry and progress at the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Agency are almost incredible. The school children have, by their earnings, bought one hundred head of cattle; 451,000 pounds of freight have been transported by the Indians during the year; they have also worked at making brick, chopping wood, making hay, hauling wood, and splitting and hauling rails; and have earned thereby $7121 25. Two of the girls of the school have been promoted to the position of assistant teachers; and the United States mail contractor between this agency and Port Elliott, in Texas—a distance of one hundred and sixty-five miles—has operated almost exclusively with full-blooded Indians: “there has been no report of breach of trust on the part of any Indians connected with this trust, and the contractor expresses his entire approval of their conduct.”
It is stated also that there was not sufficient clothing to furnish each Indian with a warm suit of clothing, “as promised by the treaty,” and that, “by reference to official correspondence, the fact is established that the Cheyennes and Arapahoes are judged as having no legal rights to any lands, having forfeited their treaty reservation by a failure to settle thereon,” and their “present reservation not having been, as yet, confirmed by Congress. Inasmuch as the Indians fully understood, and were assured that this reservation was given to them in lieu of their treaty reservation, and have commenced farming in the belief that there was no uncertainty about the matter, it is but common justice that definite action be had at an early day, securing to them what is their right.”
It would seem that there could be found nowhere in the melancholy record of the experiences of our Indians a more glaring instance of confused multiplication of injustices than this. The Cheyennes were pursued and slain for venturing to leave this very reservation, which, it appears, is not their reservation at all, and they have no legal right to it. Are there any words to fitly characterize such treatment as this from a great, powerful, rich nation, to a handful of helpless people?
- ↑ See Appendix, Arts. I. and XI.
- ↑ Gen. Harney, on being asked by Bishop Whipple if Black Kettle were a hostile Indian, replied, laying his hand on his heart, “I have worn this uniform fifty-five years. He was as true a friend of the white man as I am.”
- ↑ On October 27th of this year Black Kettle and his entire band were killed by Gen. Custer’s command at Antelope Hills, on the Wichita River.