With vast foundations seamed and knit,
And wrought and bound by golden bars,
Sierra’s peaks serenely sit
And challenge heaven’s sentry-stars.

Why this book? Because last year, in the heart of the Sierras, I saw women and children chained together and marched down from their cool, healthy homes to degradation and death on the Reservation. At the side of this long, chained line, urged on and kept in order by bayonets, rode a young officer, splendid in gold and brass, and newly burnished, from that now famous charity-school on the Hudson. These women and children were guilty of no crime; they were not even accused of wrong. But their fathers and brothers lay dead in battle-harness, on the mountain heights and in the lava beds; and these few silent survivors, like Israel of old, were being led into captivity but, unlike the chosen children, never to return to the beloved heart of their mountains.

Do you doubt these statements about the treatment of the Indians? Then read this, from the man the fiend in the form of man who for years, and until recently, had charge of all the Indians in the United States:

“From reports and testimony before me, I find that Indians removed to the Reservation or Indian Territory, die off so rapidly that the race must soon become extinct if they are so removed. In this connection, I recommend the early removal of all the Indians to the Indian Territory.”

The above coarse attempt at second-hand wit is quoted from memory. But if the exact words are not given, the substance is there; and, indeed, the idea and expression is not at all new.

I know if you contemplate the Indian from the railroad platform, as you cross the plains, you will almost conclude, from the dreadful specimens there seen, that the Indian Commissioner was not so widely out of the way in that brutal desire. But the real Indian is not there. The Special Correspondent will not find him, though he travel ten thousand miles. He is in the mountains, a free man yet; not a beggar, not a thief, but the brightest, bravest, truest man alive. Every few years, the soldiers find him; and they do not despise him when found. Think of Captain Jack, with his sixty braves, holding the whole army at bay for half a year! Think of Chief Joseph, to whose valor and virtues the brave and brilliant soldiers sent to fight him bear immortal testimony. Seamed with scars of battle, and bloody from the fight of the deadly day and the night preceding; his wife dying from a bullet; his boy lying dead at his feet; his command decimated; bullets flying thick as hail; this Indian walked right into the camp of his enemy, gun in hand, and then not like a beaten man, not like a captive, but like a king demanded to know the terms upon which his few remaining people could be allowed to live. When a brave man beats a brave man in battle, he likes to treat him well as witness Grant and Lee; and so Generals Howard and Miles made fair terms with the conquered chief. The action of the Government which followed makes one sick at heart. Let us in charity call it imbecility. But before whose door shall we lay the dead? Months after the surrender, this brave but now heart-broken chief, cried out:

“Give my people water, or they will die. This is mud and slime that we have to drink here on this Reservation. More than half are dead already. Give us the water of our mountains. And will you not give us back just one mountain too? There are not many of us left now. We will not want much now. Give us back just one mountain, so that these women and children may live. Take all the valleys. But you cannot plow the mountains. Give us back just one little mountain, with cool, clear water, and then these children can live.”

And think of Standing Bear and his people, taken by fraud and force from their lands to the Indian Territory Reservation, and after the usual hardships and wrongs incident to such removals, with no hope from a Government which neither kept its promises nor listened to their appeals, setting out to try to get back to Omaha. Think of these men, stealing away in the night, leaving their little children, their wives and parents, prostrate, dying, destitute! They were told that they could not leave that they must stay there; that they would be followed and shot if they attempted to go away. They had no money; they had no food. They were sick and faint. They were on foot, and but poorly clad. Yet they struggled on through the snow day after day, week after week, leaving a bloody trail where they passed; leaving their dead in the snow where they passed. And this awful journey lasted for more than fifty days! And what happened to these poor Indians after that fearful journey? They did not go to the white man for help. They did not go back to their old homes. They troubled no one. They went to a neighboring friendly tribe. This tribe gave them a little land, and they instantly went to work to make homes and prepare a place for the few of their number still alive whom they had left behind. Then came the order from Washington, and the Chief was arrested while plowing in the field. In a speech made by him after the arrest, and when he was about to be taken back, the Chief said:

“I wanted to go back to my old place north. I wanted to save myself and my tribe. I built a good stable. I raised cattle and hogs and all kinds of stock. I broke land. All these things I lost by some bad man. Any one knows to take a man from a cold climate and put him in the hot sun, down in the south, it would kill him. We refused to go down there. We afterwards went down to see our friends, and see how they liked it. Brothers, I come home now. I took my brothers and friends and came back here. We went to work. I had hold of the handles of my plow. Eight days ago I was at work on my farm, which the Omahas gave me. I had sowed some spring wheat, and wished to sow some more. I was living peaceably with all men. I have never committed any crime. I was arrested and brought back as a prisoner. Does your law do that? I have been told, since the great war all men were free men, and that no man can be made a prisoner unless he does wrong. I have done no wrong, and yet I am here a prisoner. Have you a law for white men, and a different law for those who are not white?

“I have been going around for three years. I have lost all my property. My constant thought is, ‘What man has done this?’ Of course I know I cannot say ‘no.’ Whatever they say I must do, I must do it. I know you have an order to send me to the Indian Territory, and we must obey it.”

Afterwards, speaking of the terrible days at the Reservation, this Indian said to an officer:

“We counted our dead for awhile, but when all my children and half the tribe were dead, we did not take any notice of anything much. When my son was dying, he begged me to take his bones back to the old home, if ever I got away. In that little box are the bones of my son; I have tried to take them back to be buried with our fathers.”

I may here add, that in the meantime the brother of this Indian, who was left in charge of the tribe, was accused of trying to get away also. He protested his innocence, but the agent had him arrested and brought before him. Then he ordered him to be ironed. The proud, free savage begged not to be put in irons, but the brutal agent persisted. The Indian resisted, and was shot dead on the spot.

Think of the Cheyennes last year. They, too, had tried to escape from the Reservation, and reach their homes through the deep snow. This was their only offense. No man had ever accused them of any other crime than this love of their native haunts, this longing for home. They were dying there on the Reservation; more than half had already died. And now, when taken, they refused to go back. The officer attempted to starve them into submission. They were shut up in a pen without food, naked, starving, the snow whistling through the pen, children freezing to death in their mother’s arms! But they would not submit. Knowing now that they must die, they determined to die in action rather than freeze and starve, like beasts in a pen. At a concerted signal, they attempted to break through the soldiers and reach the open plain. An old man was carried on the back of his tottering son; a mounted soldier pursued them, and hacked father and son to pieces with the same sabre-cuts. A mother was seen flying over the snow with two children clinging about her neck. The wretched savages separated and ran in all directions. But the mounted men cut them down in the snow. No one asked, or even would accept, quarter. They fought with sticks, stones, fists, their teeth, like wild beasts. They wanted to die. One little group escaped to a ravine. There they were found killing each other with a sort of knife made from an old piece of hoop.

And yet you believe man-hunting is over in America!

It is impossible to write with composure or evenness on this subject.
One wants to rise up and crush things.

I have mentioned two tribes near at hand, whose histories are not unfamiliar to the public ear. But what if I should recite the wrongs of tribes far away far beyond the Rocky Mountains where the Indian Agent has to answer to no one? You would not believe one-tenth part told you. The terrible stories of the Cheyennes and the Poncas are very mild chapters in the history of our Indian policy.

Under the stars and stripes, these scenes are repeated year after year; and they will be continued until they are made impossible by the civilization and sense of justice which righted that other though far less terrible wrong.

As that greatest man has said, “We are making history in America.” This is a conspicuous fact, that no one who would be remembered in this century should forget. We are making dreadful history, dreadfully fast. How terrible it will all read when the writer and reader of these lines are long since forgotten! Ages may roll by. We may build a city over every dead tribe’s bones. We may bury the last Indian deep as the eternal gulf. But these records will remain, and will rise up in testimony against us to the last day of our race.

J. M.