Page:Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier.djvu/501

Rh about Indian nature knows that the legitimate result of that cowardly policy of peace at any price, was to defer only the evil day which has now come upon us. Since that time the Sioux have been constantly depredating on the frontiers of Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana, and more men have fallen there in the peaceful vocations of civil life, without a murmur being heard, than fell under the gallant Custer. The friendly Crows have been raided with every full moon; so with the Shoshones; and at last these outrages have become so great and so long continued that even the peaceable Indian Department could not stand them any longer, and called on the military arm of the Government to punish these men."

President Grant, in his message of December, 1876, uses the following language:—"A policy has been adopted towards the Indian tribes inhabiting a large portion of the territory of the United States, which has been humane, and has substantially ended Indian hostilities in the whole land, except in a portion of Nebraska, and Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana territories, the Black Hills region, and approaches thereto. Hostilities there have grown out of the avarice of the white man, who has violated our treaty stipulations in his search for gold. The question might be asked, why the Government had not enforced obedience to the terms of the treaty prohibiting the occupation of the Black Hills region by whites? The answer is simple. The first immigrants to the Black Hills were removed by troops, but rumors of rich discoveries of gold took into that region increased numbers. Gold has actually been found in paying quantity, and an effort to remove the miners would only result in the desertion of the bulk of the troops that might be sent there to remove them."

The causes and objects of the military operations against the Sioux in 1876, as stated by the Secretary of War in a letter to the President dated July 8th, 1876, were in part as follows:—

"The present military operations are not against the Sioux nation at all, but against certain hostile parts of it which defy the Government, and are undertaken at the special request of the bureau of the Government charged with their supervision, and wholly to make the civilization of the remainder possible.