The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

To a certain extent, and in some cases, they succeeded in this straight-forward diplomacy. But the predisposition of the reds to enmity with the whites was still there, slumbering only, not eradicated; nor could all the kindness and generosity of the whole Caucasian heart, heaped upon them in the most lavish profusion, ever root it out. Nature put it there—I wish she hadn't—for reasons of her own, just as she put murder into the cruel heart and brain of the tiger in the jungle.

There was this 'original sin,' therefore, to contend against always, without reference to any tangible causes or provocations. All knew this. All knew, from the youngest to the oldest, that the true policy of the whites was to conciliate the Indians. They knew his inextinguishable memory of wrongs, his dreadful vengeance, his power, and his constant opportunity to do irreparable mischief. And, as I said, the settlers were, for the most part, anxious to smoke the pipe of peace and friendship with him.

But what was the good of all this? What, think you, did it avail in the councils of the savages, when they sat over their fires discussing their wrongs and prospects? What the good-hearted settlers did in the way of reconciliation and good will was undone a thousandfold at the Agency. It is true that the Agency had become necessary to the subsistence of the Indian, and that this fact made him bear much which, under other circumstances, he would instantly have resented and punished. But they well knew how they were robbed; and when did a wrong of that, or any sort, pass muster upon the Indian's roll of vengeance? Every fraud against an Indian, every lie told him, every broken promise, every worthless article sold to him at the Agency, was more than a set-off to any act of kindness shown to him by the settlers. Add to these local crimes, the great error of the Government in unduly withholding the Indian payment for their lands—and you have the Indian's casus belli, the grounds, or some of them, on which he justified himself to his own bloody and remorseless conscience, for his inhuman deeds! For the Indian beeps a conscience, such as it is; but of a truth, better no conscience than an Indian's conscience! It is like an appeal to hell, one's appeal to this! all the accursed passions imprisoned there coming up from their limbos, their eyes glaring with the malice of ineradicable hate, and bloodshot with murder, to support the conscience, and strengthen its resolution for an unspeakable vengeance.

But, after all, this poor devil is really to be pitied for his ignorance and brutality, and as really to be killed without mercy. He is in the way of civilization, and must go to the wall. I find that Nature herself is utterly pitiless; that she cares neither for white nor red, nor for any other color or person, but, like a horrible, crashing car of Juggernaut, she rolls steadily forward, astride the inevitable machinery, crushing all who oppose her.

But this digression is no apology, in the matter of its argument, for the Indian Agents, who must have been aware, long before the outbreak took place, that their frauds were fast culminating in the Indian mind, and that every fresh wrong they did to them was only bringing nearer by a step the indiscriminate massacre of the settlers.

There were other causes, however, besides these, to enrage and madden them, which must not be lost sight of. Our Government had prohibited their sanguinary wars upon the Chippewas, and they regarded this as an act of wanton tyranny. They were bred in the faith that war is the true condition of an Indian man, and that peace was made for women and children. War was the only outlet for their power, the only field in which they could distinguish themselves and win immortal renown. All the great kingdoms of knowledge and literature were shut against them as with walls of brass. They could not read or write, and their leisure was passed in idle gossip, or in deliberations on infernal schemes against the white man to revenge themselves for their wrongs.

It was not a wise thing to do, I think; although, no doubt, it was humane enough, as we understand humanity. Did not the 'dragons of the prime tear other in their slime,' and so thin out the horrible race, until Nature herself put the final claws of annihilation upon them? Why, in mercy, then, do we try to prevent the inevitable? War is a great clearer of the atmosphere; and one of our poets, Coleridge, I believe, says that 'Carnage is God's daughter'! a bold figure of rhetoric, not without its apparently sufficient apologies. Why not let the Sioux and Chippewas, or any other of the wild, irreclaimable brood, fight their bloodiest, and do their prettiest to help Nature, who seems bent on the extermination of all inferior races? They have got to die, any way!—that is a great consolation!—and if the philanthropists at Washington had only left them to themselves, they would have died by mutual slaughter—great numbers of them—long ago, and saved said philanthropists from the crime of killing them, which they are now doing, by inches!—a far more cruel way of dying.

I was much pleased, when last summer they were upbraided for doing a little war against the Chips, in spite of Washington, with the sarcastic reply of a chief, who said: 'Our Great Father, we know, has always told us it was wrong to make war; yet now he himself is making war, and killing a great many. Will you explain this to us? We do not understand it!' This was a hit, a palpable hit, let who will reconcile it.

Mr. Heard gives us the following brief statement of the manner in which treaties are made with the Indians; and I earnestly call the attention of the Government and all just citizens to its statements. He says:

'The traders, knowing for years before, that the whites will purchase lands, sell the Indians goods on credit, expecting to realize their pay from the consideration to be paid by the Government. They thus become interested instruments to obtain the consent of the Indians to the treaty. And by reason of their familiarity with the language, and the associations of half-breed relatives, are possessed of great facilities to accomplish their object. The persons deputed by the Government to effect a treaty are compelled to procure their cooperation, and this they do by providing that their debts shall be paid. The traders obtain the concurrence of the Indians by refusing to give them further credit, and by representing to them that they will receive an immense amount of money if they sell their lands, and thenceforth will live at ease, with plenty to eat, and plenty to wear, and plenty of powder and lead, and of whatever else they may request. After the treaty is agreed to, the amount of ready money is absorbed by the exorbitant demands of the traders, and the expenses of the removal of the Indians to their reservations!

'After that the trader no longer looks to the Indian for his pay; he gets it from their annuities. He, therefore, does not use the same means to conciliate their good will that he did when he was dependent upon their honesty. Claims for depredations upon white settlers are also deducted out of their moneys before they leave Washington, on insufficient testimony; and these are always, when based on fact, double the actual loss; for the Indian Department is notoriously corrupt, and the hand manipulating the machinery must be crossed with gold! The 'expenses' of obtaining a claim enter into the amount demanded and allowed. The demand is not only generally unjust, but, instead of its being deducted from the moneys of the wrong doer, it is taken from the annuities of all! This course punishes the innocent and rewards the guilty, because the property taken by the depredator is of more value than the slight percentage he loses.

'Many of the stipulations as to establishing schools and furnishing them with farming utensils, are never carried out. Building and supply contracts are entered into without investigation at outrageous prices, and goods belonging to the Indians are put into the traders' stores, and sold to their owners, and the moneys realized shared by the trader and the Agent!'

Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, in his appeal for the red man, confirms this statement beyond doubt or question:

'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!'

This Red Iron was the principal chief of the Sissetons, and his indignation at the wrongs done to his race made him so 'boisterous' that Governor Ramsey was imprudent enough to break him of his chieftainship. The scene and its results were by no means creditable to the Governor. This latter personage had summoned Red Iron to meet him at a council, held December, 1852, and he did not turn up as expected. So, I suppose, he was sent for, and brought in by the soldiers. He is described by one who was present, as about forty years old, tall and athletic; six feet high in his moccasons, with a large, well-developed head, aquiline nose, thin, compressed lips, and physiognomy beaming with intelligence and resolution. He was clad in the half military, half Indian costume of the Dacotah chiefs, as he sat in the council room; and no one greeted or noticed him. A very poor piece of revenge! In a few minutes the Governor, turning to the chief in the midst of a breathless silence, by the aid of an interpreter, opened council. The Governor asked the chief what excuse he had for not coming to the council when he sent for him.

Whereupon Red Iron rose to his feet, 'with native grace and dignity,' says Mr. Heard, his blanket falling from his shoulders, and, purposely dropping the pipe of peace, he stood erect before the Governor, with his arms folded and his right hand pressed upon the sheath of his scalping knife. With the utmost coolness and self-possession, a defiant smile playing upon his thin lips, and his eyes sternly fixed upon his excellency, the Indian, with a firm voice, replied:

'I started to come, but your braves drove me back.'

Governor. 'What excuse have you for not coming the second time when I sent for you?'

Red Iron. 'No other excuse than I have given you.'

Governor. 'At the treaty, I thought you a good man; but since, you have acted badly, and I am disposed to break you. I do break you.'

Red Iron looked at the Governor for a moment with a look of withering contempt and scorn, and then burst out in a voice full of derisive mockery.

Red Iron. 'You break me! My people made me a chief. My people love me. I will still be their chief. I have done nothing wrong.'

Governor. 'Red Iron, why did you get your braves together, and march around here for the purpose of intimidating other chiefs, and prevent their coming to council?'

Red Iron. 'I did not get my braves together; they got themselves together, to prevent boys going to council to be made chiefs to sign papers, and to prevent single chiefs going to council at night, to be bribed to sign papers for money we have never got.' And then the inexorable fellow continued, without any regard to his excellency's nerves or conscience: 'We have heard how the M'Dewakantons were served at Mendota; that by secret councils you got their names on paper, and took away their money. We don't want to be served so. My braves wanted to come to council in the daytime, when the sun shines; and we want no councils in the dark. We want all our people to go to council together, so that we can all know what is done.'

The Governor is nothing abashed at these damaging charges, but returns once more to the assault.

Governor. 'Why did you attempt to come to council with your braves, when I had forbidden your braves coming to council?'

To which Red Iron, with the same masterful, defiant smile upon his 'thin lips,' answers:

Red Iron. 'You invited the chiefs only, and would not let the braves come too. This is not the way we have been treated before; this is not according to our customs; for among Dacotahs, chiefs and braves go to council together. When you first sent for us there were two or three chiefs here, and we waited, and we wanted to wait till the rest would come, that we might all be in council together, and know what was done, and so that we might all understand the papers, and know what we were signing. When we signed the treaty, the traders threw a blanket over our faces, and darkened our eyes; and made us sign papers which we did not understand, and which were not explained or read to us. We want our Great Father at Washington to know what has been done.'

This last speech—whose words hit like bullets—made the Governor wince, and he replied, with more sharpness than wit:

Governor. 'Your Great Father has sent me to represent him; and what I say, he says. He wants you to pay your old debts, in accordance with the papers you signed when the treaty was made' ['which we did not understand; which were never read nor explained to us; which we were forced to sign,' as Red Iron had just told the Governor!]. 'You must leave that money in my hands to pay those debts. If you refuse to do that, I will take the money back.'

The Governor was getting deeper and deeper into the pit which he had dug for the Indian. This last speech was most unhappy and impolitic for the side he was advocating. It put dreadful weapons into the hands of Red Iron, which the crafty 'old man eloquent' did not fail to use against his antagonist.

He makes this manly answer, not at all abashed in the presence of the chief magistrate:

Red Iron. 'You can take back your money! We sold our land to you, and you promised to pay us. If you don't give us the money, I will be glad, and all our people will be glad; for we will have our land back if you don't give us the money. That paper was not interpreted or explained to us. We are told it gives about three hundred boxes ($300,000) of our money to some of the traders! 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.'

And the Indians responded with the usual 'Ho! ho!' of acquiescence.

But the Governor don't see it. A poor devil of an Indian, according to his Christian conviction, ought to be content to pay unaudited, untaxed bills, wherein the margin is broad enough for any scoundrel to do his robberies by tens of thousands. So his excellency told Red Iron:

Governor. 'That can't be done!' [Nay, more confounding and appalling still, he added:] 'You owe more than your money will pay, and I am ready now to pay your annuity, and no more; and when you are ready to receive it, the Agent will pay it.'

Red Iron replies in a speech full of pathos:

Red Iron. 'We will receive our annuity, but we will sign no papers for anything else.' [You've swindled us enough, lied to us deep enough already, and we have no belief in your words or agreements.] 'The snow is on the ground, and we have been waiting a long time to get our money. We are poor; you have plenty. Your fires are warm; your tepees (wigwams, tents) keep out the cold. We have nothing to eat. We have been waiting a long time for our moneys. Our hunting season is past. A great many of our people are sick for being hungry. We must die because you won't pay us. We may die! but if we do' [hold on, reader! no curses on the white men are coming next, as one might naturally expect, either from Christian or heathen orator, under the circumstances!]—'but if we do,' he continues, 'we will leave our bones on the ground, that our Great Father may see where his Dacotah children died!' [He has seen many such shambles, O thou eloquent Indian! eloquent to ears of flint and hearts of granite! and I never heard that the 'Great Father' ever shed a single tear over them.] He goes on: 'We are very poor. We have sold our hunting grounds, and with them the graves of our fathers. We have sold our own graves.' [Out of all those hundreds of thousands of acres, not six feet of earth, which they could call their own, left for any one of them!] 'We have no place to bury our dead, and you will not pay us the money for our lands.'

I give this interview, and what transpired there, as a sample of the treatment which the Indians were in the habit of receiving at the hands both of the General Government and the State authorities. Not the wisest kind of treatment, one would think, this which Red Iron received, taking all the circumstances into account. The reader will be surprised, however, that Governor Ramsey, not content with 'breaking' the chief, as he called it—the greatest dishonor which he could inflict upon an Indian of rank—sent him, when the council broke up, to the guard house, under an escort of soldiers! This impolitic official ought to have remembered that the fire was even then ready for the kindling, which finally burst out in such fearful devastation over his devoted State; that it was enough to have cheated the Indians, without thus inflaming their already excited passions, by heaping so great an indignity upon the person of their chief. But he was regardless of everything except the display of his own power and authority. No doubt he thought he was acting for the best, and that the dirty redskins needed to be held with a high hand. But it was bad thinking and doing, nevertheless; a most shortsighted and foolish policy, which came wellnigh, as it was, to an Indian outbreak.

The braves of Red Iron retired under the leadership of Lean Bear, a crafty fellow, eloquent in his way, and now irreconcilably mad against the whites; and when he had led them about a quarter of a mile from the council house, they set up a simultaneous yell, the gathering signal of the Dacotah. Ere the echoes died away, Indians were hurrying from their tepees toward them, prepared for battle. They proceeded to an eminence near the camp, where mouldered the bones of many warriors. It was the memorable battle ground where their ancestors had fought, in a Waterloo conflict, the warlike Sacs and Foxes, thereby preserving their lands and nationality.

A more favorable occasion, a more fitting locality for the display of eloquence which should kindle the blood of the Indian into raging fire, and persuade him to any the most monstrous and inhuman deeds, could not have been chosen even by Indian sagacity. An old battle ground, where the Sioux had been victorious over their enemies; the whitened bones of the ghastly skeletons of their ancestors who fought the battle, bleaching on the turf, or calling to them from their graves below to take God's vengeance in their own hands; the memory of the old and new wrongs inflicted upon them by the whites; the infuriating insult just offered to their favorite chief—all conspired with the orator's cunning to give edge to his eloquence and obedience to his commands.