Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/222

 ington. He did so, and when we were ready we started for Washington with him. It took us one week to get to Washington. We stopped at the Fremont House. As soon as we got into the house a doctor was sent to vaccinate us, for fear we would take small-pox. We were told not to go out anywhere without the man who brought us. The next day, at about ten o’clock, we were taken to the office of the Secretary of the Interior. As soon as we entered, the man there looked at me and said,—

“So you are on the lecturing tour, are you?” I said, “Yes, sir.”

“So you think you can make a great deal of money by it, do you?”

“No, sir; I do not wish to lecture for that.”

“What, then?”

“I have come to plead for my poor people, who are dying off with broken hearts, because they are separated from their children and husbands and wives and sons.”

“But they are bad people; they have killed and scalped many innocent people.”

“Not so; my people who are over there at Yakima did not do so any more than you have scalped people. There are only a few who went with the Bannocks who did wrong. I have given up those who were bad; the soldiers have them prisoners at Vancouver Barracks, Washington Territory. I have not come to plead for the bad ones. I have done my work faithfully. I told the officers if they would surrender I would give up all the bad ones, which I did, and I ask you only to return to their home all that have helped the white people. Yes, sir; the very man who killed Buffalo Horn was sent to the Yakima Reservation.”

The tears were running down my face while I was talk-