'My lord,' said the prisoner, 'it's a bad job; but I was predestined to do it!'
Whereupon his lordship replied: 'Ay! ay! my cannie laddie! an' I was predestined to hang ye for't.'
So while I set forth the necessary, evil nature of the Indian, and the consequent necessity of his bloody deeds, I also insist upon the necessity of hanging him for it.
I plead not for the Indian of Minnesota, after these most shocking, most appalling butcheries. I love my own race; and not a man, woman, or child, who was sacrificed by these monsters, but their wounds were my wounds, and their agonies tore my heart to the very core. Henceforth I shall never see an Indian but I shall feel the 'goose flesh' of loathing and horror steal over my Adam's buff! But you, my beloved friends of Minnesota! you who have suffered so much in your families and homes during the massacre, are you sure that you did all you could do as citizens and rulers in this land to see even-handed justice dealt out between the corrupt Government agencies and storekeepers, and the helpless Indians? Had these last no just and reasonable ground of complaint? complaint of the General Government, complaint of the delays in their payment, complaint of the swindling of the storekeepers and traders?
They had sold their lands, and gone away to their reservations. But the money for their lands—promised so faithfully at such a time—where was that money? Non est! The Indians depended on it, trusted to the certainty of its coming as the saint trusts in the promises. They came for it—often, in their history, in the depth of winter, for hundred of miles, through an inhospitable forest; their wives, children, and braves starving—many of them left behind in the wilderness to die; their only weapon made of coarse nails, lashed with wire, and this they called a gun barrel, and with this they killed what game was killed by the way.
This did not happen in Minnesota, it is true; but events as horrible and sickening as this did happen, and brought with them consequences more horrible still, which will never be forgotten while the State exists or the language lasts. Scenes were enacted at that 'Lower Agency' which were disgraceful to human nature, and the victims were invariably the redskins. Once when Red Iron came there, at the summons, or rather after the repeated summons of Governor Ramsay, it turned out that nearly four hundred thousand dollars of the cash payment due to the Sioux, under the treaties of 1851-'2, were paid to the traders on old indebtedness! How much of this enormous sum was really due to the traders it is bootless now to inquire; although it is pretty certain, from what we know of similar transactions, that not a twentieth part of it was due to them. Mr. Isaac V. D. Heard, who has written a 'History of the Sioux War and Massacres of 1862 and 1863,' who is an old resident of Minnesota of twelve years' standing, acted with General Sibley in his expedition against the savages in 1862, and was recorder of the military commission which tried some four hundred of the participants in the outbreak—has not been deterred by the just hatred which the Minnesota people nurture against the Indians, and which they will keep hot until their rifles have exterminated the whole brood of them, from saying a brave word respecting the iniquities perpetrated by rascal peddlers and official prigs against the Indians which were the immediate causes of the massacre and the subsequent wars.
The Indian was subjected to all sorts of frauds, little and big—the smaller thieves thinking that they also must live, no matter at whose expense, although I demur to the proposition. Why should they stop at stealing a thousand or two, more or less, while that four hundred thousand swindle leered at them so wickedly over the left shoulder, mocking at all law and justice, and scot free from all punishment? These 'traders' could charge what sums they liked against the Indian, and get them too; for there was no one to defeat or check their rapacity. Mr. Heard tells us that no less a sum than fifty-five thousand dollars was claimed by one Hugh Tyler, as due to him by the Indians, when the great swindle just alluded to was committed; and that he was paid out of the accruing funds. This man was a stranger in the country, an adventurer, who went out into the wilderness 'for to seek his fortune;' and it is curious to read the items of which his little bill, fifty-five thousand, is composed. Here they are: For getting the treaties through the Senate; for 'necessary disbursements' in securing the assent of the chiefs. Very curious and instructive items they are, to all who consider them. To say nothing of the corruption of the Senate which the first item signifies, if it has any meaning at all, there is the guilty record of the 'necessary disbursements,' or, in other words, bribes, paid to chiefs for betraying their country and their race. This was a part of the regular machinery of the Agencies. All their plans were cut and dried, and they had men to carry them out. They could not stir a peg without the assent of the chiefs; and when they found a man too noble to be a traitor, they got the Governor to break him as a chief, and invest a more pliable, accommodating redskin with his rank and title. Through the influence of bad men, and by the forging of lying documents, which the Indians could not read, and which were never interpreted to them except to cheat them as to their contents and meaning, they have always managed to get their treaties signed; after which the newly made chiefs could not so much as take the liberty to beg a pipe of tobacco of them.
As a sample of their infamous dealings, we take the following excerpt from Mr. Heard's book, page 41:
'In 1857, a trader, pretending that he was getting them to sign a power of attorney to get back the money which had gone to the traders under the treaty of 1851 and 1852, obtained their signatures to vouchers, by which he swindled them out of $12,000. Shortly after, this trader secured the payment of $4,500 for goods which he claimed (falsely, it is said) to have been stolen. About the same time a man in Sioux City was allowed a claim of $5,000 for horses, which he also alleged to have been stolen.
'In 1858, the chiefs were taken to Washington, and agreed to treaties for the cession of all their reservations north of the Minnesota, for which, as ratified by the Senate, they were to have $166,000; but of this amount they never received a penny until four years afterward, when $15,000, in goods, were sent to the Lower Sioux, and these were deducted out of what was due them under former treaties. The Indians, discovering the fraud, refused to receive them for several weeks, and only consented to take them after the Government had agreed to rectify the matter. Most of the large amount due under these treaties, went into the pockets of traders, Government officials, and swindlers generally.