The Columbus journal., 1891-05-27
,..e Abor,s,n., Justice.

Once in few years an episode comes
to light which shows that the concep.
tion of the Indian, at his best. which
has been made familiar by Cooper. was
not an extravagant one and which tends
10 bring the blood to the cheek Of the
white man who prides himself upon his
intellectual and moral superiority.
Then too, but more rarely. comes evi-
dences that not all western men look
upon the Indian as . wild beast, to be
butchered at the pleasure of any man
into whose power he may fall. Evi-
dence in both of these directions Is fur
nished in connection with . recent oc-
currence in South Dakota. We have
the denunciation of frontier paper to
prove that such wanten butchery of the
Indians IS was once deemed proper is
now regarded as criminal, and the calm
and dignified proposal Of Sioux chief
to q government that is too lax in its
obligations, as to the punishment of Of
tenders against the lives of the white
and the red alike. The editorial from
the Pioneer. of Deadwood, S. D., is
worthy of reproduction, Is it expresses
the opinion of the vicinage and shows
that there is truth in the claims that
Che Indian il abused because he is IN
Indian, while the wrongs of the white
man are righted because he is white:
Whittier . higher civilization sharpens
q peoples ideas of justice, may be ques-
toned. The italian assassins ut New
Orleans passed unscathed the ordeal of
trial according to the forms and strict
rules of high civilization, only to meet
with q merited punishment at the hands
Of men who for the time being willfully
trampled upon all the most cherished
teachings of our boasted land ruled by
law. Few Tails, kindly y-hearted and
peaceable old man, while travelling
peaceably along public highway,
whose only offense was that his skin
WAS ccppered-hued. instead of white.
was shot to death, riddled, in fact. by
bullets, by . band of concealed assas-
sins. scarcely less bloodthirsty and
merciless than the Italian banditti; his
poor old wife, wounded and bleeding,
driven, in the very midst of winter, into
the inhospitable, igloony and almost
impenetrable Bad Lands, where for
days she wandered, tortured by the
ever present agony of the never-healing
wounds, starvation guawing at her
vitals, her throat parched and lips
swollen and cracked by the fierce thirst.
until through the mercy of the Red
God, blind, fainting. and delirious, she
staggered into the camp of the Sixth
Cavalry, seventy miles from the scene
of the assassination; and as yet no step
has been taken by the authorities to
bring the perpetrators to justice. There
was . grim and savage, if not q pict-
uresque and pathetic justice in the Of
fer of that gallant and brainy Indian,
Young -Man-of- Whose Horses They-Are-
Afraid, who, when Gen. Miles de-
manded of him the surrender of Many
Horse and Leaves His Woman, tthe
former charged with the killing of
Lieut.. Casey, and the latter with the
killing of Herder Miller, replied, NO,
I will not surrender them; but if you
will bring the white men who killed
Few Tails, will bring the Indians who
killed the white soldier and the herder;
and right out here in front of your tepee.
I will have my young men shoot the In
dams, and you have your soldiers shoot
the white men, and then we will be done
with the whole business; they were all
bad men," In this instance, again, the
savage idea of justice went straight to
the mark.-FTee Press.