Go with me into their country and witness the sad results of a misguided people, and note how there was a division in their camp. The hot young bloods, ever ready for adventure and bloody adventure at that, had dragged their nation into an unnecessary war and the older men and conservative men with sorrowful hearts counselled together how best to extricate themselves and protect the lives of those who were prisoners among them. The campaign of 1862 is on.
SOME OF THE CAUSES OF THE WAR.
Lo! the poor Indian, has absorbed much of the people’s attention and vast sums of Uncle Sam’s money; and being a participant in the great Sioux war of 1862, what I write deals with facts and not fiction, as we progress from Fort Snelling, Minnesota, to “Camp Release,” where we found and released over four hundred white captives. But I will digress for a time and look into the causes leading up to this cruel Sioux war that cost so many lives and so much treasure. There is a great diversity of opinion on this question, and while not particularly in love with the Indian, I have not the temerity to criticise the Almighty because he puts his impress white upon some, and red upon others; neither shall I sit in judgment and say there are no good Indians—except dead ones. The Indian question proper is of too great a magnitude to analyze and treat with intelligence in this little book; but in the abstract, and before we enter upon the active campaign against them, let us look at it and see if the blame does not to a great extent rest more with the government than it does with these people. The Indians came from we know not where—legends have been written and tradition mentions them as among the earliest known possessors of this great western world. The biologist speculates, and it is a matter of grave doubt as to their origin. Certain it is, that as far back as the time of Columbus they were found here, and we read nothing in the early history of the voyages of this wonderful navigator to convince us that the Indians were treacherous;—indeed we would rather incline to the opposite opinion. The racial war began with the conquest of the Spaniards. In their primitive condition, the Indians were possessed of a harmless superstition—they knew no one but of their kind; knew nothing of another world; knew nothing of any other continent in this world. When they discovered the white men and the ships with their sails spread, they looked upon the former as supernatural beings and the ships as great monsters with wings. Civilization and the Indian nature are incompatible and evidences of this were soon apparent. The ways of the Europeans were of course unknown to them. They were innocent of the white man’s avaricious propensities and the practice of “give and take” (and generally more take than give) was early inaugurated by the sailors of Columbus and the nefarious practice has been played by a certain class of Americans ever since. Soon their suspicions were aroused and friendly intercourse gave place to wars of extermination. The Indian began to look upon the white man as his natural enemy; fighting ensued; tribes became extinct; territory was ceded, and abandoned. Soon after American Independence had been declared, the Indians became the wards of the nation. The government, instead of treating them as wards and children, has uniformly allowed them to settle their own disputes in their own peculiar and savage way, and has looked upon the bloody feuds among the different tribes much as Plug Uglies and Thugs do a disreputable slugging match or dog-fight. A writer says:
“If they are wards of the nation, why not take them under the strong arm of the law and deal with them as with others who break the law? Make an effort to civilize, and if civilization exterminates them it will be an honorable death,—to the nation at least. Send missionaries among them instead of thieving traders; implements of peace, rather than weapons of war; Bibles instead of scalping knives; religious tracts instead of war paint; make an effort to Christianize instead of encouraging them in their savagery and laziness; such a course would receive the commendation and acquiescence of the Christian world.”
There is not a sensible, unprejudiced man in America to-day, who gives the matter thought, but knows that the broken treaties and dishonest dealing with the Indians are a disgrace to this nation; and the impress of injustice is deeply and justly engraven upon the savage mind. The lesson taught by observation was that lying was no disgrace, adultery no sin, and theft no crime. This they learned from educated white men who had been sent to them as the representatives of the government; and these educated gentlemen (?) looked upon the Indian as common property, and to filch him of his money by dishonest practices, a pleasant pastime. The Indian woman did not escape his lecherous eye and if his base proposals were rejected, he had other means to resort to to enable him to accomplish his base desire. These wards were only Indians and why respect their feelings? “Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” The whirlwind came and oh, the sad results!
The Indians were circumscribed in their hunting grounds by the onward march of civilization which crowded them on every side and their only possible hope from starvation, was in the fidelity with which a great nation kept its pledges. ’Tis true, money was appropriated by the government for this purpose, but it is equally true that gamblers and thieving traders set up fictitious claims and the Indians came out in debt and their poor families were left to starve. Hungry, exasperated and utterly powerless to help themselves, they resolved on savage vengeance when the propitious time arrived.
“The villainy you teach me I will execute,” became a living, bloody issue. This did not apply alone to the Sioux nation, but to the Chippewas as well. These people have always been friends of the whites, and have uniformly counselled peace; but broken pledges and impositions filled the friendly ones with sorrow, and the others with anger. The commissioners, no doubt, rectified the wrong as soon as it was brought to their notice, but the Indians were plucked all the same and had sense enough to know it. Our country is cursed with politicians—the statesmen seem to have disappeared; but, the politician grows like rank weeds and the desire for “boodle” permeates our municipal, state and national affairs. Our Indian system has presented a fat field so long as these wards of the nation submitted to being fleeced by unprincipled agents and their gambling friends, but at last, the poor Indian is aroused to the enormity of the imposition and the innocent whites had to suffer. In some instances the vengeance of God followed the unscrupulous agent and the scalping knife in the hand of the injured Indian was made the instrument whereby this retribution came.