Page:Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier.djvu/638

Rh —I always considered that when the Great Father borrowed the country for the overland road that he made an arrangement with us that was to last fifty years as payment for that privilege, and yesterday another arrangement was mentioned concerning the Black Hills, and the words that I heard from the Great Father and from the commissioners from the Great Council made me cry. The country upon which I am standing is the country upon which I was born, and upon which I heard that it was the wish of the Great Father and of the Great Council that I should be like a man without a country. I shed tears. I wish that the chief men among you that have come here to see me would help me, and would change those things that do not suit me.

Spotted Tail Agency.—My friends that have come here to see me; you have brought to us words from the Great Father at Washington, and I have considered them now for seven days, and have made up my mind. This is the fifth time that you have come. At the time of the first treaty that was made on Horse Creek—the one we call the "great treaty"—there was provision made to borrow the overland road of the Indians, and promises made at the time of the treaty, though I was a boy at the time; they told me it was to last fifty years. These promises have not been kept. All the words have proved to be false. The next conference was the one held with Gen. Manydear, when there were no promises made in particular, nor for any amount to be given to us, but we had a conference with him and made friends and shook hands. Then after that there was a treaty made by Gen. Sherman. He told us we should have annuities and goods from that treaty for thirty-five years. He said this, but yet he didn't tell the truth. He told me the country was mine, and that I should select any place I wished for my reservation and live in it. My friends, I will show you well his words to-day. * * * I see that my friends before me are men of age and dignity. I think that each of you have selected somewhere a good piece of land for himself, with the intention of living on it, that he may there raise up his children. My people, that you see here before you, are not different; they also live upon the earth and upon the things that come to them from above.

My friends, this seems to me to be a very hard day, and we have come upon very difficult times. This war did not spring up