Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1891-01-23
the government had poked its finger into the
tribal ME and had xixen fh< M s,lsrs

the government had poked its finger into the
tribal pie and had given the chieftAinship plums
to those whom it thought most worthy Of rec
ognition. That was one of the things which
Little Wound complained Of and there can be
no reasonable doubt that many Of the old chiefs
counseled strife because through it they hoped
to regain at least portion Of their old pres
tige. do not think, though. that the Indians
intended TO get into such q snarl. The thing
grew on them, and even those who led in the
the seoss e iseI ...s.d sSss the
matter might have been settled with
out bloodshed had there been no other
Indians to deal with but those who belonged
to this agency. but the bad elements that came
here from other reservations stirred things up
to such an extent that peaceablc settlement
seemed impossible II was very unfortunate
that Pine Ridge should have been the theater
OF the war. but that was unavoidable. The an
nouncement had gone forth that the Messiah
that which brought the Brules down from
Rosebud. Those Brules are 0 vicious lot Of
savages. Before they left Rosebud they de-
stroyed all of their own property. Then they
marauded and burned whatever they could
delight in destroying the belongings
OF the friendly Ogallalas, whose homes
were along Porcupine, Medicine Root
and Wounded Knee creeks. Following the
Brules came the Cheyenne river and Standing
bloody fight at Wounded Knee. The whole
story is a chain of unfortuitous circumstances,
the links Of which seem to have welded them
selves together without design on the part of
any one. The Indian. when he started in with
the ghost dance, had no idea of fighting The
Chief Porcupine told me that il was not the in
tention of his people to 90 to war. The dance,
however, was at the bottom of the trouble, for
when the dancing was over the old warriors re-
hearsed their early day experiences and fired
I'M AAd Ar1th A 80 a. H.
deeds which were possible when our civiliza-
uon was less vigorous than it is now.
THE BRULEs SHOULD 90 HOME.
''What steps should be taken now? The
Brules should Immediately be returned to their
reservation. If they are allowed to remain
here there must be continuous trouble-fric-
ton between them and the friendly Indians,
whose homes they ruthlessly destroyed. Some
thing looking to this migration Of the Brules
must be done at once and their feelings should
not be consulted for a moment. 1t is not en-
couraging good behavior to allow these Brules
to have their own way; TO give them more con-
sideration than Is given the friendlies, whose
homes have been ruined by the invaders.
Then the supply Of rations should be up to
treaty stipulations By giving an Indian enough
to eat you avoid war, with its attendant hOr-
rors and expense. An Indian with full stom-
ach never talks fight. Short rations cause more
trouble at Indian agencies than any other
grievance. Inc lnulans Delleve the agent Is TO
blame when the food supply is diminished and
no orator on earth can convince TENN that any
one but he is responsible.
THE INDIAN BUREAU
'Some folks will say that the Indian bureau
is responsible in part for this disturbance.
That is not true. Congress did not give the
bureau any appropriation until long after the
time when the supplies should have been at the
agencies, and when the appropriation was avail
able 1t was nothing like large enough.
There is another evil, which did not think
OF when We were discussing causes, and that is
the over-reporting Of crops. Agency farmers
who are DESTROYS Of making paper records re-
port to the agent that so many thousand bushels
OF grain we're raised and SO many tons Of hay
put up. In the majority Of cases these reports
are wild exaggerations, and they do the In
dams HARM because when it IL shown, on paper
that tribe is doing SO much for itself Congress
very naturally concludes that that tribe dOesn't
need as much assistance as it did the year pre-
vious.
What did you say about dishonest agents?
There may be a few such, but they have no OPP
portunity to do wrong. There is no more
rlgidly comprehensive system of book keeping
than that in use in the Indian bureau. You
cannot pervert it. Noagent, even If he were so
inclined, could steal anything worth stealing
out Of his stores and keep it up for three
months. He would be caught just as surely as
he tried it on" G.H.H.