Harper's Weekly Editorials on Carl Schurz/A Letter from H. H.

To the Editor:

your remarks upon “Secretary Schurz and the Poncas” in your issue of January 1, 1881, are three serious misstatements of fact, which I would like to correct.

I. The writer says:

“Secretary inherited a very grave difficulty. The old policy of careless wrong toward the Indians had ceded the Ponca Reserve to the Sioux in 1868. The Poncas had been removed.”

The Poncas had not been removed when Secretary took charge of the Interior Department. They were not removed until two months and a half after that time. They were removed by and in consequence of Secretary express and reiterated orders, and these orders were given by him in the face of and in spite of remonstrances from various sources &mdash; from eight of the Ponca chiefs; from the missionaries of the Yankton and Santee agencies; from a Mr. , a lawyer of good standing in Niobrara, who went to Washington, and presented the evidence in person; and from Mr., a Western merchant of high standing, who both wrote and telegraphed to Secretary setting forth the great wrong and cruelty of the proceeding.

The facts, letters, dispatches, statements, contracts, in regard to this removal of these Indians, are all to be read in the report of the Senate committee that investigated the case last winter. There is not a shadow of discrepancy between them. The Poncas were removed under Secretary orders, and in spite of the protests both of the Indians themselves and of white men who were their friends.

II. The writer says that the removal took place “after an alleged consent on their part.”

The testimony before the Senate committee proved not only that this “alleged consent” was known by the government authorities not to be genuine or complete, but that it was deemed necessary to send troops to enforce the order for the removal.

III. The writer says that one reason for not allowing the Poncas to return to their old reservation was that it would necessitate the “dispossession of the Sioux,” and “open the possibility of a Sioux war.”

The fact is that the Sioux utterly refused to occupy the reservation, saying that it belonged to the Poncas, and they would not have it. The and bands did most reluctantly consent to go there for a few months in the first winter; but only after being told that their supplies had already been sent out, to be delivered to them there, and it was too late to change. On a written pledge that they should be returned to White Clay Creek in the spring, they consented to go; and the record of their return is entered in the official reports of the Indian Bureau as follows:

“The Indians were found to be quite determined to move westward, and the promise of the government in that respect was faithfully kept.”

From that day to this the Sioux have not occupied the old Ponca Reserve, and say they never will. They are now friendly to the Poncas; and the Sioux chief most gladly consented to do all in his power to assist the attorneys for the Poncas in bringing suits for the recovery of their lands, which had been so unjustly ceded to his tribe.

H. H.

[We quote elsewhere Secretary own statement of his views.]


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