Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1891-01-09
The Dakota Indians.
Baltimore Sun.

army officers, from General Miles down TO
his subordinates in the field and of such
devoted missionaries as Father Craft,
Dean Ashley and ,Bishsp Hare that the
Indians have been i'll fed and i'll cared for.
Lieutenant Hare, OF the seventh cavalry,
who had been sent from Pine Ridge to
Fort LeavenwoIth on military business,
stated, as be passed through Kansas City,
that Gin all his sixteen years of service in
Dakota he never found the Sioux as badly
off as at present. Want and hunger were
depicted on their faces, and he was sur
prised that the outbreak was delayed so
long as it was. If their stomachs were
filled the messiah craze would soon sub
side" The commissioner of Indian af-
fairs at Washington, on being told that,
according to reports from Pine Ridge,
General Miles had recommended the re-
moral of the agents there aud at other
places, and that the Indians were slowly
starving to death, said that, $50 far as
the agents were concerned, there was no
evidence that there had been any dis
honesty on their part in distributing sup
plies" and that be was preparing a state
meut to show that the supplies voted by
Congress were distributed to the Indians.
How be can do this except upon the re-
ports of the agents themselves it is diff
ficult to conceive. There are but three
ways in which the deplorable condition
of the Dakota Indians can be explained.
First, that the appropriations made by
Congress were inadequate; second, that
the Indians, as has been charged, sold
their supplies for arms and ammunition,
and third, that they have been made the
victims of the rascality of the agents.
The first explanation receives some sup
port from the testimony of Dean Ashley,
who has lived for years among the In
dams, speaks their language, and has
preached and founded mission schools
among them. lie Gays that the supplies
we're graded down to force the Indians to
become self-supportng that those who
had taken to farming, as on the Cheyenne
reservation, received the fewest supplies,
and that Congress had taken no account
of the loss of their crops two years in
succession while the agents were con-
stantly insisting on removing them from
tie farms they had opened and the houses
they had built, although both Generals
Crook aud Morgan had assured them they
should not be disturbed. The second eX-
PLANTATION, that the Sioux were starving
because they had sold their supplies for
arms and ammunition, is the one that has
invariably been given whenever an in
ouiry has been instituted and the charge
made that the supplies to be distributed
fell far short of what they ought to have
received. But while there may have been
some young bucks who exchanged their
rations and blankets for arms, it Is an
outrage to common sense to suppose that
the great bulk of the Indians, numbering
in all thirty thousand On The Dakota
reservations, and nearly all peaceably in
clined, would starve Themselves, their
wives and families, TO prepare for a war
in which they had shown 10 disposition
to join. That there was danger of an
outbreak among some of the bands of dis
appointed Indians, rendered crazy to
fanticism by the messiah myth and the
ghost dances, and that it justified the as
sembling of troops arouud the Pine Ridge
Agency, where Sitting Bull had Lis camp,
Bishop Hare himself has declared. But
the object Of gathering the troops there
was to overawe the hostiles and protect
the good Indians, and not to fight except
lmpelled to do so by the necessity of the
case is well understood. The premature
seizure of Sitting Ball before the troops
were massed about the agency brought on
the fight which resulted III his death, the
killing of seven of the Indian police, the
breaking up of the Indians into bands and
the deplorable condition Of affairs that
has since occurred. The whole Indian
system has been one Of mismanagement
from beginning to end, At the opening
of every new administration the Old
aoan4s ara dismissed and new ones an
pointed as the reward of their political
They know nothing of the In
dian and they care less, and they are sur
rounded by a new set of post-tradeTs and
contractors eager to fleece the Indians
and to become rich by the opportunities
that their party friends have opened to
them. Nearly all these people look upon
the Indians as so much spoils that have
fallen into their hands, and on these
frontier reservations they can do with
i'm punity what they would not dare to do
in settled and civilized communities. The
manner of treating the Indian is scandal
to the nation, and will continue to be so
until the system is radically reOrganized.
Candidates for Governor.
The Richmond correspondent of the
Iader-1ppeal, under date of
Jan. 3rd, says;
"a gentleman who is a careful observer
Il. -. - 4 Il. Il