The President told Red Cloud he would see him in a day or two on business.
The Indians all expressed themselves to the interpreter as having "big hearts," "heap good eat," "like much Great Father," and "much good white squaws."
Mrs. Grant's beautiful gold fan quite took the eyes of the squaws, and they showed much delight, saying they would get some pretty fans for themselves. Soon (as there is an end to all things) the party broke up; the white guests to dream perhaps of some strange play at a theatre, and the Indians to imagine themselves transplanted to the happy hunting-grounds they feel sure they are to enter hereafter, when they have done with hunting the antelope, the deer, and the buffalo, on the plains.
Important Interview.
The Secretary of the Interior, Commissioner Parker, General J. E. Smith, Messrs. Collyer, F. C. Brunot, and the other Indian delegates, met in a grand council at the Patent Office building. All the Indians were dressed in full costume, and seemed to be impressed with the importance of the occasion. Secretary Cox made a long address to the Indians on behalf of the President, assuring them that if they would go to their reservations, and keep the peace, all the rations and goods promised them by the government would be sent to them, and agents also, to see that they reached them safely.
In regard to giving them arms and ammunition, he said they would not be given them at present, but after they have kept themselves peaceable on reservations for a time, these would be furnished.
Red Cloud then shook hands with all, and said:
"I came from where the sun sets. You were raised on the chairs. I want to sit where the Indian warrior sat."
Sitting down on the floor, Indian fashion, he went on:
"The Great Spirit has raised me this way. He raised me naked. I make no opposition to the Great Father who sits in the White House. I don't want to fight. I have offered my prayer to the Great Father so that I might come here safe and well. What I have to say to you and to these men, and to my Great Father, is this: Look at me! I was raised where the sun rises, and I came from where he sets. Whose voice was the first heard in this land? The red people's. Who raised the bow? The Great Father may be good and kind, but I can't see it. I am good and kind to white people, and have given my lands, and have now come from where the sun sets to see you. The Great Father has sent his people out there, and left me nothing but an island. Our nation is melting away like the snow on the side of the hills where the sun is warm, while your people are like the blades of grass in the spring when summer is coming. I don't want to see the white people making roads in our country. Now that I have come into my Great Father's land, see if I have any blood when I return home. The white people have sprinkled blood on the blades of grass about the line of Fort Fetterman. Tell the Great Father to remove that fort, and then we will be peaceful, and there will be no more troubles.