OCR Text |
Show REPORT OF THE COMMISSIORER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. XV By the provisions of the above bill it will be seen that everything has been done for the Poncas, so far as this department can act. Their lands were ceded to the Sioux by act of Congress, and proper reparation can only be made by the same authority. I CHIEF MOSES AND HIS PEOPLE. During the summer of 1878 the settlers in Washington Territory were painfully excited by t,he restless condition of the Indians in their midst, owing to the outbreak of the Snakes and Bannacks in the adjoining Territory of Idaho, and organized measures for self-protection against roving bands were considered necessary. Chief Moses and his band, who at that time were not on any reservation, were suspected by the settlers of being in sympathy with the hostile Indians, and also of hav-ing been ~compl iceisn the murder of a man and his wife, namedperkins, who had been killed by a roving band of Columbia River Indians, under the influence of the notorious -' dreamern Smohallie. Inthe fall of 1878, Agent Wilbur was directed to use his best endeavors to induce Moses and his band to go upon the Yakama Reservation. He accordingly sent for Moses, who, on the plea that a separate reservation was to be assigned him, declined to go to Yakama until the decision of the gov-ernment in the matter could be had. He denied all personal knowledge of the Perkins murder, and offered to furnish guides to assist in the arrest of the guilty parties, who were then located about 40 milea distant from his camp. A party of fifteen agency Indians and thirty white volunteers from Yakama City was formed, and it was arranged that Moses and his men shoiild have one day's start of the party in order to make arrangemeuta for crossing the Columbia River. On arriving with his men at the ap-pointed place he found that the volunteers had proceeded to a point twelve miles below. This fact, coupled with reportswhich had reached him in the mean time that the whites had planned to waylay and kill him on the way home, and that the police and volunteers iuknded to arrest him and confine him in jail at Yakama, raronsed his suspicions, and he failed to furnish the guides as agreed, and confronted the volnn-teer party in an apparently hostile attitude with about sixty armed men. After a parley, which resulted in both sides withdrawing without col-lision, Moses returned to his camp, but three days later started with nine of his men (as he states) to join the party in the capture of tbe mur-derers. Before reaching them he encamped for the night, and the vol-unteers who were in that vioiuity, mistaking their oamp fires for those of the murderers, surrounded the oamp and took Moses and his nine men prisoners. All were disarmed; five went after the murderers and arrested one, the other having killed himself to avoid arrest, and Mums and the remaining four men were taken to Yakama City and eonfined in jail without any formal examination. A week later Agent Wilbur persuaded the citizens to allow him to take them in charge, and, under |