Finally, the commissioner says: "Every means that human ingenuity can devise, legal or illegal, has been resorted to for the purpose of obtaining possession of Indian lands." Of this there would seem to be left no doubt in the mind of any intelligent person, after reading the above quotations.
It is not to be wondered that when the news of such schemes as these reaches the Indians on their reservations great alarm and discontent are the result. We find in the reports from the Nebraska agencies for this year unmistakable indications of disheartenment and anxiety. The Winnebagoes are reported to be very anxious to be made citizens. A majority are in favor of it, "provided the Government will adopt certain measures which they consider necessary for the care and protection of their property."
They have had a striking illustration of the disadvantage of not being citizens, in an instance of the unpunished murder of one of their number by a white man. The story is related by the agent tersely and well, and is one of the notable incidents in the history of the relation between the United States Government and its wards.
"Henry Harris, a Winnebago in good standing, an industrious man and a successful farmer, was employed by Joseph Smith, a white man, to cut wood on his land in Dakota County, a short distance north of the reservation. While alone and thus engaged, on the 29th of last January, Harris was shot through the heart with a rifle-ball. I had his dead body taken before the coroner of the county, and at the inquest held before that officer it was shown, to the satisfaction of the jury that rendered a verdict in accordance therewith, that the Indian came to his death at the hands of one D. Balinska, who had been for many years leading a hermit's life on a tract of land that he owned adjoining the reservation, and who had threatened Harris's life a few months before, when they quarrelled about damages for corn destroyed by Balinska's horse. There being snow on the ground at the time of the murder, Balinska was tracked from his home to the place where, under cover, he did the shooting; and his shot-pouch, containing a moulded ball of the same weight as the one cut from the body of the Indian, was found near by and identified. Notwithstanding this direct evidence, which was laid before the Grand-jury of Dakota County, that honorable body was unwilling to find a 'true bill;' for the reason, as I understand, that it was only an Indian that was killed, and it would not be popular to incur the expense of bringing the case to trial. This is but another illustration of the difficulty of punishing a white man for a wrong committed against an Indian. I need hardly say that the Indians, when comparing this murder with that of a white man, committed eight years ago by five of their young men—who, upon less direct evidence, were sentenced to imprisonment in the State Penitentiary for life—are struck with the wonderful difference in the application of the same law to whites and Indians."
The report from the Winnebago Agency for 1879 tells the story of the sequel to this unpunished murder of Henry Harris. The agent says: "In my last report I referred to the murder of one of our best Indian farmers by a white man, who was afterward arrested and discharged without trial, though there was no question as to his guilt. As a sequel to this, one white man is known to have been killed last May by Holly Scott, a nephew of the murdered Indian; and another white man is supposed to have been killed by Eddy Priest and Thomas Walker, two young Indians who have left for Wisconsin. The murdered white men had temporarily stopped with the Indians. Their antecedents are unknown, and they are supposed to have belonged to the fraternity of tramps. Holly Scott was arrested by the Indian police, and turned over to the authorities of Dakota County for trial, the State Legislature having at its last session extended the jurisdiction of that county over this reservation, by what authority I am unable to say.
"The effect of these murders was to unsettle the Indians, nearly all industry being suspended for several weeks. They feared that the white people would do as they did in Minnesota in 1862, after the Sioux massacre, when the Winnebagoes were driven from their homes in Minnesota. *** A number of our most quiet and industrious men became alarmed, and moved their families to Wisconsin, encouraged in so doing by the hope of receiving from the Government a share of the funds which have been set apart from the annual appropriations during the past four years for the benefit of the Wisconsin Winnebagoes, and which they suppose aggregate a large amount which will soon be paid in cash."
This brings the story of the Winnebagoes down to the present time. What its next chapter may be is saddening to think. It is said by those familiar with the Nebraska Indians that, civilized though they be, they will all make war to the knife if the attempt is made by the Government to rob them of their present lands on the plea again of offering them a "permanent home." That specious pretence has done its last duty in the United States service. No Indian is left now so imbecile as to believe it once more.
Whether the Winnebagoes' "patents" in Nebraska would, in such a case, prove any stronger than did their "certificates" in Minnesota, and whether the Winnebagoes themselves, peaceable and civilized though they be, would side with the United States Government, or with their wronged and desperate brethren, in such an uprising, it would be hard to predict.