Page:A Century of Dishonor.pdf/229

Rh What a night must these helpless creatures have passed before this “consent” was given! Seven hundred people, more than half of them women and children; a farming people, not armed with rifles, as the Ogallalla Sioux were, when, one year later, on this same ground, the Chief Spotted Tail told Commissioner Hayt that, if he did not give an order to have his tribe on the way back to White Clay Creek in ten days, his young men would go on the war-path at once; and the much-terrified commissioner wrote the order then and there, and the Sioux were allowed to go where they had chosen to go. Behold the difference between the way our Government treats the powerful and treats the weak! What could these Ponca farmers do? They must, “ without delay,” give their “final answer whether they would go peaceably or by force.” What did “by force” mean? It was “by force” that the Government undertook to compel the Cheyennes to go to Indian Territory; and in that Cheyenne massacre the Cheyenne men, women, children, and babies were all shot down together!

What could these Ponca farmers do? What would any father, brother, husband have done under the circumstances? He would have “consented” to go.

The agent, as was wise, took them at their word, quickly, and that very day, “at five o’clock, had the entire tribe, with their effects, across the river, off the reservation, and in camp in Nebraska.”

The agent should have said, “with part of their effects,” for it was only a part, and a very small part, that this helpless consenting party were allowed to take with them. All their agricultural implements and most of their furniture were left behind.

“It was a hard day's work,” the getting the tribe and their “effects” across the river, the agent says; “the river being about forty rods wide, and the current so swift that it was found impossible to move the goods across in any other way