Page:Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier.djvu/637

146 north of us, and I answer yes to that question. I give them up. You are here also to ask me to take a journey to look at a country, and I also answer yes to that question. I consent for my young men to go down there and see that country; but they must look at it in silence, and come back in silence. When they have seen the country I will consider it. If it is good I will consider it so; if bad I will consider that it is bad. Do you understand, my friends, what I last said to you? We do not agree to go there to live before we have seen the country.

—My father shook hands with the Dakotas peacefully on the Platte River. I have been brought up here from a boy until I got to be a chief. The soldiers have no business in this country at all. I wish to tell you plainly that I have been very much ashamed ever since the soldiers came here. This is my country, and I have remained here with my women and children eating such things as the Great Father has sent us. I am going to ask the Great Father for a great many things, things that will make me rich. I am going to ask for so much that I am afraid the Great Father will not consent to give it to me. I want you to tell the Great Father that I, and all the men like me, and the children, are going to ask him for a great many things, and we expect to have food, and blankets to wear as long as we live.

—This place here is a place of peace, where we and our people have lived together happily, and behaved ourselves, and we do not understand why so many soldiers have come here among us. We have never had any trouble and have behaved ourselves, and wish to have the soldiers sent away as soon as possible, and leave us in peace. The people that live here have both minds and hearts and good sense, but it seems as if the Great Father all at once thought differently, and speaks of us as people that are very bad.

—The commissioners have both brains and hearts. The Great Father has sent you here to visit me and my people, and I want that you should help us. We see a great many soldiers here in our country. We do not like to see them here. I want you to have pity upon us, and have them all taken away. I understand all the ways of the whites. I know that everything that has been said has been written down, and I should like to have a fair copy of that made and given to me.