The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-14

are carefully kept in the dark as to what
those treaties really contain?
We are quite aware that there is O class in
the country which simply settles all such
questions by saying, 'Any treatment is good
enough for the Indians. They are vermin,
and must be extermnated'.' We trust how
ever, that this savage theory is not accepted
by the great body of the people. We ought
to be desirous of keeping our engagements
with the Indians, even if they do belong to
an inferior race. The determination" prin-
ciple has had its admirers and some military
men, as our readers will easily remember,
have done their best to carry it out. But we
might almost challenge any one to read Red
Clouds speeches, and then decide whether
the Indian is entitled to receive ordinary fair
play or not Red Cloud is evidently a man
of considerable natural abilities No
amount of education could have enabled
him to present his case with greater effect
than he has lately done, drawing all his
images and illustrations from nature,
and breaking out now and then into involun-
tary scorn of our mode of perpetually discuss
ing questions without settling them 81
have become tired of speaking" he said on
Saturday. And again he begged not to be
forced to visit New York. 1.-The whites are
the same everywhere. l see them every day.
Some of his remarks are even more charac-
teristic of the red Indian than any of the
speeches invented for the ''Last of the Mohi-
cans" by Fennimore Cooper. ''You promised
us many things he said on Saturday, "but
you never performed them. You take away
everything. Even if you live forty or fifty
years in this world, and then die, you cannot
take all your goods with you. The Great Spirit
will not make me suffer because ana ignorant.
He will put me in a place where shall be
better off than in this world" Again. is
there no truth in the following sayings? ''My
Father (the President) has great many chill
dren out West with no ears, brains, or heart.
The words of my Great Father never reach
me, and mine never reach him. There are too
mdny streams betWeen uS"-as fine an image
as ever poet conceived. Listen, too, to these
words of Brave Bear:-'I am seventy-fve
years of age. am old. When the Great
Father created us, the white and the red men
were all brethren, and we lived so; but now
we are not We are melting away; and the
whites, who are increasing so fast and are
great, are trying to crush us and leave us no
hope. The Great Spirit is looking upon
them, and will make them give an account of
their misdeeds. ''The whites" said Red
Cloud, 'who are educated and civilized,
swindle me, and [ am not hard to swindle,
because do not know how to read and write. "
Are these groundless complaints? We all
know that they are not. If the Indians do
not always keep faith with u.s. we have GER
tainly not gone out of our way to set them a
better example. Their lands have been taken
from them, and when compensation has been
promised, the money has seldom been paid.
Some of the ''streams" which run between
the Indian and his Great Father at the White
House intercept and carry off the appropria-
tions. There seems to the Indian to be no
chance of getting justice. He is entrapped
into making all sorts of treaties which he
cannot understand and which are misrepre-
sented to him by those who induce him to
sign them. We trust that Secretary Cox will
do all in his power to see that more honora-
BILE policy is pursued in future. 1t may be
the destiny of the red man to be stamped
out, but while he does remain upon the earth
it is scarcely worthy of us as people to make
him the victim of superior cunning.