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Show %SPORT OV TQE COMMISSIONER 03' INDIAN ARFAIRE. 11 I These extracts could be multiplied, but those given are su5cient to show the trend of sentiment of those having an experimental knowl-edge of the situation. But it may be said that these are in the service and their reports are colored from interested motives. Let us therefore see how it looks to outsidera. Here is a graphic article taken from the New York Sun of last summer: b SIOU*g. EAVE LEARNED IW WORK. Rosebud Indian Agency, S. Dak., June %-On July 1 the order of the Interior Department requiring the Sioux to go to work becomes effective on this reservation. But the Sioux, he who forty years ago inspired terror in the Northwest with tama-hawk and rifie, has already gone to work. In this faet is found the most important step toward civilization in the history of the Sioux. Not only has the Department succeeded in making the fiercest Indian tribe self-dependent, hut a sacred tradition of the Sioux has been given up. With it will go the blanket, the feathers, the long hair. The spectacle of the ( Indian in hlouse and overalls plowing and harvesting side by side with the white i in blouse and overalls-which might have seemed a dream a quarter of a century ' ago-may be witnessed to-day by any visitor at the Rosebud Reservation. When Commissioner Jones announced that the Indianmust give up his locks, and, more, must go out into the field8 and toil, predictions of trouble came out of the agencies. 80r the Sioux grunted disapproval. "Pde face, he make treaty," said the grizzled chieftains. "He make treaty and give us meat and clothe us and now pale face won't do it. The Great White Father said it, and now pale face make us work." The wrinkled tribesmen were right and they resented this apparent bad Mth. The Sioux nation was the most powerful in the Northwest. It cost thousands of lives to mhdue it and the Government was elad to make a liberal treaty. The 1868 treaty provided that the lradians should confine I~~CI I IP(1.0~ ~FvCr tSl i nte rritorial limits and in return shoul 1 1.r wppliml srirlr icrLad and rfliment atad stock i.ar thirty yrar. In 1876 gold was found in the Black Hills. There was a white inv&ion. The whites wanted the cessionof the hills from theIndians. The Sioux wanted $7,000,000. The cammissioners laughed at the demand and the Indians left the council furious. Red Cloud interceded, and the Indians agreed to give up the hills if the Government would agree to keep them in food and clothing for an indefinite period after the thirty ye& stipulated in the 1868 treaty until they should become self-supporting, The 1868 treaty cost the Government many millions. -When it expired in 1898 the Interior ~ e ~ & t m ewnats not disposed to prolong the paternal sys& and deter-mined to put the redskins at work. The Sioux remembered the treaty and grumbled, and agents sent word to Wash-ington that the order could never he enforced. Then the Sioux ran out of money. Provisions were running low under the curtailed orders. Agricultural tools had been sent from the Department that the Indians might go to work on July 1. It became noised about the reservation that all who would work would he paid at the rate of $1.25 a day. The Indians thought long over their pipes. "To labor," grumbled White Crow, "is demeaning." , ''To work," added Red Feather, "may also mean things to eat and stutf to drin-k ." "Let's go and ask the white hhss to give us work then, and give us money," eon-eluded Big Moon. The thrw Indians went to the apnt with their request. The agent had told the |
