Very early I found a physician to examine and dress the wounds of our battered witness, and I telegraphed the Leupp Indian Agent for instructions as to the one prisoner from his Bidahoche province. He replied that he would come for the man. We went on to court with the liquor cases.[1] There One-eyed Dan and his partner pleaded guilty, and were sentenced to a rest of several months in [[311]]jail; whence, having recuperated and made new plans, they returned to the back-country game with renewed spirits.
My colleague of the Leupp Agency managed things differently. The complainant and prisoner were taken to his headquarters, where he heard the case as Nahtahni, and sentenced the guilty to break rock for a considerable period. However, this was not nearly so impressive to the Indian as action in a foreign court, removed from the Indian country; but it is a pity that the circumstance of capture and the possibility of crime weigh so little when the Indian culprit is arraigned before those not conversant with his daily life. [[312]]
[1] Sections 2140 and 2141 of the United States Revised Statutes, together with later laws and amendments, empower Indian Agents and their properly commissioned deputies to search for, confiscate, and destroy intoxicating beverages within Indian country, to seize the means of transportation, to destroy stills, and to prosecute in the Federal Courts those persons who violate these statutes. Indian Agents and their “special deputies” are clothed by law with the authorities of United States Marshals and their deputies in the prosecution of this work. The possession of intoxicating liquors in the Indian country is prima facie evidence of unlawful introduction.
While the provisions of the National Prohibition Act limited these authorities for a period, the United States Supreme Court has held that the earlier laws enacted for the control of Indian country are not inconsistent with and were not repealed by the National Prohibition Act. To-day, an Indian Agent has practically all the original power with which to curb the liquor traffic within his jurisdiction. [↑]
XXIV
HELD FOR RANSOM
It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say: