'There is not a man in America,' he says,'who ever gave an hour's calm reflection to this subject, who does not know that our Indian system is an organized system of robbery, and has been for years a disgrace to the nation. It has left savage men without Governmental control; it has looked on unconcerned at every crime against the laws of God and man; it has fostered savage life by wasting thousands of dollars in the purchase of paint, beads, scalping knives, and tomahawks; it has fostered a system of trade which robbed the thrifty and virtuous to pay the debts of the indolent and vicious; it has squandered the funds for civilization and schools; it has connived at theft; it has winked at murder; and at last, after dragging the savage down to a brutishness unknown to his fathers, it has brought a harvest of blood to our door!'
The Bishop continues:
'It was under this Indian system that the fierce, warlike Sioux were fitted and trained to be the actors in this bloody drama, and the same causes are to-day, slowly but surely, preparing the way for a Chippewa war. There is not, to-day, an old citizen of Minnesota who will not shrug his shoulders as he speaks of the dishonesty which accompanied the purchase of the lands of the Sioux. It left in savage minds a deep sense of injustice. Then, followed ten years of savage life, unchecked by law, uninfluenced by good example. They were taught by white men that lying was no disgrace, adultery no sin, and theft no crime. Their hunting grounds were gone; the onward march of civilization crowded them on every side. Their only possible hope of being saved from starvation was the fidelity with which a great nation fulfilled its plighted faith, which before God and man it had pledged to its heathen wards. The people here, on the border, and the rulers at Washington, know how that faith has been broken.
'The constant irritations of such a system would, in time, have secured an Indian massacre. It was hastened and precipitated by the sale of nearly eight hundred thousand acres of land, for which they never received one farthing; for it was all absorbed in claims! Then came the story (and it was true) that half of their annuity money had also been taken for claims. They waited two months, mad, exasperated, hungry—the Agent utterly powerless to undo the wrong committed at Washington—and they resolved on savage vengeance. For every dollar of which they have been defrauded we shall pay ten dollars in the cost of the war. It has been so for fifty years; it will be so again. God's retributive justice always has compelled a people to reap exactly what they have permitted to be sown!'
These extracts from the Bishop's Plea confirm what I have stated in the preceding paragraphs; and the last sentence—which I have marked in italics—is well worth the while of every reader to ponder well.
Mr. Heard dates the commencement of the massacre to the breaking of a stray nest of hen's eggs on the prairie, and what came of the transaction; but the date lies farther back than that, so far as the resolution to seize the first favorable opportunity for slaughtering the whites is concerned—and belongs to the era of the great crimes of our Government against them, as shown in the forcible seizure of their lands without their receiving any payment, even 'a farthing' for them; the hucksters, under the connivance of the Government agents, getting the whole of it, and, in the instance alluded to a while ago, keeping back from them, as payment for old debts, about three hundred boxes of the money upon which they had depended to keep themselves alive during the winter and the following year.
Such enormous crimes were sure to reap a bloody harvest. The Indian is no fool, although he can't do addition and subtraction. He knows when he is about fairly dealt with, and he knows when he is mightily plucked. In this case of the 'old debt payment' he knew that he was robbed wholesale, and through the mouth of Red Iron he proclaimed the fact to Governor Ramsey, in council assembled. Alluding to this robbery, he said:
'We don't think we owe them so much. We want to pay all our debts. We want our Great Father to send three good men here, to tell us how much we do owe; and whatever they say, we will pay; and (pointing to the Indians) that's what all these braves say; our chiefs and all our people say this!'
At which all the Indians present responded:
'Ho! ho!'