Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/134

100 in private”? I have made inquiry of this subject and I have been informed that there is no man in the Interior Department to-day who can remember you ever to have spoken to him upon this matter except in questions asked in the proceedings of the Committee of investigation. And as to myself—and I wish you to understand me clearly—whatever speeches you may have made elsewhere, you never approached me, personally, upon this subject either by way of entreaty or otherwise.

You know, and the country knows, that I was the first man, in 1877, frankly and without disguise, to lay the hardships suffered by the Poncas before Congress and the public. You know that in 1878 I submitted to Congress and the public the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, repeating the story of their wrongs. You know that in 1879 again I recurred to it in strong language in my official report, and that a bill for indemnifying the Poncas was submitted to Congress, during the preceding session. During all these years you sat in the Senate of the United States, and not a word from you was heard in response to the entreaties, not which you made to me, but which I officially made to you as a member of the highest legislative body of the Republic.

The recommendations I made to remedy the wrong done, and which now are asked for by the Poncas in the Indian Territory themselves, might not then have met your approval; but they should at least have attracted your attention and reminded you of your power as a legislator, as well as your duty, to change them so as, in your opinion, to meet the requirements of right and justice. Not a word was heard from you. I may in charity go so far as to say that these reports and recommendations may have escaped your notice as they escaped the notice of many others who did not take special interest in the subject, and that only when your constituents in Massachusetts began