As to his pledges, I have no
doubt that he fully intended to live up to them. He carried in his
head all the treaties that had been made between his people and the
white men, and could recite their minutest details, together with the
dates of their making and the names of the men who had signed for both
sides.
But he was a stickler for the rights of his race, and he devoted far
more thought to the trend of events than did most of his red brothers.
Here was his case, as he often presented it to me:
"The White Man has taken most of our land. He has paid us nothing for
it. He has destroyed or driven away the game that was our meat. In 1868
he arranged to build through the Indians' land a road on which ran iron
horses that ate wood and breathed fire and smoke. We agreed. This road
was only as wide as a man could stretch his arms. But the White Man had
taken from the Indians the land for twenty miles on both sides of it.
This land he had sold for money to people in the East. It was taken
from the Indians. But the Indians got nothing for it.
"The iron horse brought from the East men and women and children, who
took the land from the Indians and drove out the game. They built
fires, and the fires spread and burned the prairie grass on which the
buffalo fed. Also it destroyed the pasturage for the ponies of the
Indians. Soon the friends of the first White Men came and took more
land.
Pages:
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302