Nevada County picayune., 1891-01-29
THE RACE PROBLEM.

VI llbS lOul dflUltlOIidi DOuICS oI the victims of the Wounded Knee massacre found Monday of this week, three were children and one was an old woman. They were in the bed of creek nearly three miles from the place where the 100 war riors of Big Foot's band fell togeth- CT in defending themselves and, ac- cording to the Associated Press re- ports, ''one of the girls had half of her head blown off as if the gun had been placed against her head" The accumulating evidence, showing tha, the women and children were hunted several miles and killed after the 100 men of the tribe had all fallen in front of Big Foot's tent, naturally cxcltes the Sioux to extreme distrust of the Administration Race Policy, and this is accentuatcd by the brutal murder of the relatives of Young ManAfraid-of-His-lIorse, the chief who did most to keep the Indians from fighting while they were en- trenched in the Bad Lands, where they were driven by the murder of Sitting Bull and the massacre on the Wounded Knee. The relatives of Young Man Afraid-of His Horse were unarmed, travelling in wagon with General Miles passport when they were ambushed and shot, the women with the men. as always hap pens when this Race Policy is set to work
 It is natural enough, while Mr. Secretary Noble is denouncing tine survivors of it as "boastful, arrogant and dictorial," that they should ask themselves what mercy they have to expect for entire helplessness in view of such precedents for treating helplessness. General Miles de- plores the assassination of unarmed old men and women travelling under his safeguard; he is shocked be- cause children have been hunted down and have had half their heads blown off, but the survivors reason that this neither gives them safety nor brings the dead back to life.
 And it is logically reasoned. We have hunted the Indians across the continent like wolves, until only handful of them are left. Now, in a country where every highwayman is loaded down with the latest inn proved firearms, MT. Harrison is try ing to take their guns from the sur vivors of the Race Policy. These survivors are not belligerents, nor have they been. They have simply fallen back from attack, defending themselves as they fell back. As soon as they received what must have seemed very slight assur- ances that they were not to be mas sacred, they returned to the agency. Their guns are their own private property, and if Messrs. Noble and Harrison take them away, it will be as much in disregard of property rights as if so many residents of the District of Columbia or of Massachu- setts were deprived of property rights of equal value.
 The only settlement that remains now of all Indian questions" ex- cept the settlement reached on the Wounded Knee, is to pay these h. dians every cent of the money that Is due them; to give it to them in actual cash; to give them each a homestead and to leave them to adapt themselves to their environ ment as best they can. Unsatisfac- tory as this is, it is better than pet ting them one day, massacring them the next and robbing them all the year round in carrying out the present District of Columbia Race policv-GSt. I,Ouis Renublic.