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Show REPORT OF THE COMbfISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 99 indeed, shollld they hare thought otherwise P Most of them had at one time or another, seen as many as five thousand, some as mally its ten. thousai~do f their people camped together, one-third fighting men. Of the whites what had they seen? A few ranches miles apart, a few .hunters and trappers, a fen soldiers. The stories that had been brougl~t to their ears of a country where the whites were like the sand on the sea-shore, where houses were piled on topof houses,* and where houses stood side by side with houses for miles in every directioti,,were re-ceived by them as the merest fables invented to amuse or dece~veth em. Even when the first delegations that visited the East, though composed of their own bn1ste.d chiefs aud braves, returned and reported what they had seen, they vere not believed; but it was said among their tribes that the white men had put L' bad medicine" npon their eyes tn make them see things that did not exist. It has only been the concnrrent testimony of many chiefs and braves, out of many bands ant1 tribes, that bas dissipated this happy conceit qf tlie Indian of the plains, and made him to appreciate, as he is beginning to do, the power and re-sonroes of the whites. As it is at once cheaper and more humane to bring the savages to a realking sense of their weakuess and the impos-sibility of long contending with the Government, by giving a few cbiefs and braves free rides on our railroads and Broadway omnibuses, than by surprising their camps on winter nights and shooting domn men, momeu. and children together in the snow, it will be well to continue this system, in moderation as to amount of expenditures, and with dis-cretion as to the subjects of it, until the. occasion for thus impressing the minds of the Indians shall have -p assed away. I . e., ho~~seofa s eraral stories. |