Page:A Century of Dishonor.pdf/172

154 and dwelling-houses erected. They were to have now a chance to own “that domestic country called home, with all the living sympathies and all the future hopes and projects which people it.” From this time “a new era was to be dated in the history of the Dakotas: an era full of brilliant promise.” The tract of territory relinquished by them was “larger than the State of New York, fertile and beautiful beyond description,” far the best part of Minnesota. It is “so far diversified in natural advantages that its productive powers may be considered almost inexhaustible. * * * Probably no tract on the surface of the globe is equally well watered. * * * A large part is rich arable land; portions are of unsurpassed fertility, and eminently adapted to the production in incalculable quantities of the cereal grains. The boundless plains present inexhaustible fields of pasturage, and the river bottoms are richer than the banks of the Nile. In the bowels of the earth there is every indication of extensive mineral fields.”

It would seem that the assertion made only a few lines before this glowing paragraph—“to the Indians themselves the broad regions which have been ceded are of inconsiderable value”—could not be true. It would seem that for eight thousand people, who, according to this same writer, “have outlived in a great degree the means of subsistence of the hunter state,” and must very soon “resort to the pursuits of agriculture,” nothing could have been more fortunate than to have owned and occupied thirty-five millions of acres of just such land as this.

They appear to be giving already some evidence of a disposition to turn this land to account. The reports from the different farms and schools show progress in farming industry and also in study. The farming is carried on with difficulty, because there are only a few carts and ploughs, which must be used in turn by the different farmers, and therefore must come to some quite too late to be of use, and there is much quarrel-