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Show 164 but in Colorado-not in the new Reservation, but in the old one. Of course this was not a piece of legerdemain to defraud the Indians, but they believed it was. In fact from their standpoint, and with their benighted vision, they could see it in no other light, and no proof or argument could convince them to the contrary- To them it was a hard materialization, and on a large scale, of the fabled proposition of the white man to the Indian at the close of a day's hunt: "I'll take the turkey, and you take the buzzard; or you take the buzzard, and I'll take the turkey." They said: "When we lived in Colorado the white man told us that strip of country did not belong to us-was not in our Reservation. He used to show us the line and forbid us to cross over. Then he asked us to 'swap' countries, and told us that when we came over here those running waters and grassy valleys would be ours. We came, and the white man took possession of our old Reservation. Then, the first thing we knew, the white man snatched those streams and valleys away from us-took them out of our new Reservation, where they had always been, and put them in the old, where they had never been before-and say, 'white man mistaken; they do not belong to Indian, but to him!' All time belong to white man!" I asked Mr. MeKewen who they accused of this. He replied: "Me sir! Washington. Everybody. The first time you hold a pow-wow with them they will charge you with it."y J. F. Gardner sent two reports from the Agency before he was replaced for poor administration by the Indian Service. In his second annual report, the following is inpluded: 9 Eugene E. White, Experiences of a Special Indian Agent (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p. xi. |
