Carl Schurz

“ But that very friendship does not permit me to overlook the dangers and the interests of the many when a wrong done to a few is to be righted, and can be substantially righted without putting the rights of others in peril. ”

“ My people have quieted down, but somebody has told, them that when Congress adjourns they will be told whether they can go back to their old reservation or not. I do not do as I want to at all times, but I do as you advise me to do; but one-half of the tribe would remain here with me if I advise it, should the others leave. I can prove by anyone that the half-breeds are the worst about trying to get back to Dakota; some white men have been fooling with us for nearly two years, and preventing us from doing anything. It is not our fault that the Poncas are unsettled. ”

“ I know very well that no reparation can be perfectly complete, for the loss they have suffered by death, which I deplore as much as you do, cannot be repaired by this settlement, nor can it be by their return to Dakota. But we have to take care of the living, and this can be done by the solution here set forth, which appears to me the best for the Poncas as well as the safest with regard to the maintenance of peace and the protection of the rights and interests of tribes in the Indian Territory much more numerous than they. ”

“ Every person who carries or delivers any talk, message, speech, or letter intended to produce a contravention or infraction of any treaty or law of the United States, or to disturb the peace or tranquility of the United States, knowing the contents thereof, to or from any Indian nation, tribe, chief or individual, from or to any person or persons whatever, residing within the United States, or from or to any subject, citizen, or agent of any foreign power or state, is liable to a penalty of one thousand dollars. ”

“ Our young men are unsettled and hard to control, while they think we have a right to our land in Dakota, and our tribe will not be finally settled until we have a title to our present reservation, and we have relinquished all right to our Dakota land. And we earnestly request that the chiefs of the Ponca tribe of Indians be permitted to visit Washington the coming winter for the purpose, of signing away our right to all land in Dakota, and to obtain a title to our present reservation, and we also wish to settle our Sioux troubles at the same time. ”

“ Unscrupulous white men, agents of the invader, would be quickly on hand to foment this tendency. An evacuation by the Indians, and possibly an extensive one, of the very region which is held by the Government against the intruders on the very ground that it is reserved for Indian settlement, would be the consequence, and that just at the moment when the Government has the struggle for the integrity of the Indian Territory on its hands, and it requires the greatest watchfulness and energy to defeat the invasion. ”

“ When a man enters an Indian reservation and mischievously tries by false promises which he cannot perform, as in this case, or in any other way, to induce the Indians to run away, breaking up their settlements, an Indian agent will consider it his duty to enforce, the above provisions of law. ”

“ The Commissioner of Indian Affairs is authorized and required, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, to remove from any tribal reservation any person being therein without authority of law, or whose presence within the limits of the reservation may in the judgment of the Commissioner, be detrimental to the peace and welfare of the Indians; and may employ for the purpose such force as may be necessary to enable the agent to effect the removal of such person. ”

“ Needless disagreements, preventing the cooperation for a good end of those who ought to work together, I should especially deplore in a community whose enlightened public spirit and active philanthropy have served so many noble causes, and whose good opinion I therefore particularly value. ”

“ Having been a man of military training, he may have been rather inclined to summary methods; moreover it is probable that as the Ponca reserve had been ceded to the Sioux by the treaty of 1868, and as Congress had provided also that the Sioux should be removed to the Missouri River, and the Sioux were the same year to occupy that part of the country, the removal of the Poncas may have appeared to Mr. Kemble a necessity, in order to prevent a collision between them and the Sioux which would have been highly detrimental to both. ”

“ And, indeed, considering that the quality of the land on which they now are is much better than that of their land in Dakota, and the circumstance that after much suffering they appear at last to have now become acclimated like other settlers in that region, does it not seem that in time they may become prosperous and contented? ”

“ With regard to this difficulty I expressed, in my last report, the opinion that the success of this invasion, introducing into the heart of the Indian Territory a reckless, lawless, grasping element of adventurers, sure to grow and spread rapidly after once having gained a foothold, would bring upon the Indian population of that Territory in its present condition the most serious dangers. ”

“ The thought of gross in justice to the Indians is as revolting to me as it is to you, and probably much more so, for my impressions are not owing to a sudden excitement produced by a single case. I have seen large numbers of Indians here in Washington, where they came to express their complaints and their wishes. ”

“ But if that petition does express their real sentiments and they are willing to stay where they are, and to improve their condition, and to accept indemnity for the lands they lost in Dakota, would not that be, in view of all the difficulties surrounding the case, a satisfactory solution of the problem? If the point of right and principle in question be fully and clearly established by act of Congress; if the ceding away of the Ponca lands to the Sioux be thus fully recognized as a wrong ”

“ The details of the case did not come clearly to my knowledge until the Ponca chiefs arrived in Washington and told their story. I concluded that they had suffered great hardship in losing the reservation originally conferred upon them by treaty, after a so-called consent which appeared not to have been a free expression of their will. They had also endured many disasters on their way to the Indian Territory, and after their arrival there were greatly afflicted by disease and lost a large number of their people by death. ”

“ But permission was granted them to select for themselves, among the lands at the disposal of the Government in the Indian Territory, a tract at least equal in size to their old reservation, and they also received the assurance that they would be fully compensated in kind for the log-houses, furniture, agricultural implements, which, in obedience to the behests of the Government, they had left behind on the Missouri.
The case of the Poncas seems entitled to especial consideration at the hands of Congress. They have always been friendly to the whites. ”

“ It was said that the advocates of fiat money deplored the reviving prosperity of the country because it destroyed their arguments. Can it be that any sincere friend of the Indians would regret the success of a solution apt to avoid serious risks and difficulties because it stopped their agitation? ”

“ Moreover, if the petition does not express the real sentiments of the Poncas, and has been extorted from them by illegitimate means, the men so extorting it have made a great mistake in advising that they be permitted to go to Washington where they would be at perfect liberty to express their true sentiments not only before me but before others. ”

“ The first of them denounces the wrong done to the Poncas and demands reparation. The second is in two parts: first, “that it is unbecoming in a free Government to allow its agents to slander, prosecute and imprison those whose only offense lies in befriending the victims of that Government's oppression.” This undoubtedly refers to the arrest of Mr. Tibbles last summer, on the Ponca reservation, by the Indian agent there. ”

“ The unscrupulous leaders of that lawless movement, although repeatedly baffled, appear determined not to give up. Any measure looking to an evacuation by the Indians would, therefore, now be especially unsafe. ”