Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/135

Rh to hold meetings upon this matter you thought it worth your while to take an interest in the grievances of the Poncas which ever since have so violently agitated you. But might it not be supposed that a man so profoundly in earnest as you are, would at least then have spared no trouble and lost no opportunity to make his views heard by those immediately in charge of this business? You know that the Interior Department was open to you and you did not fail to avail yourself of your opportunities. Indeed you were seen in the Interior Department during the time that this agitation was going on and while you were taking in it an active and conspicuous part. It is also remembered, not only by myself, but by others in this Department, if you made any entreaties at all, what the subject of those entreaties was. While you desire the country in general, and I suppose your constituents in particular, to understand that your heart was overflowing with philanthropic emotions concerning the downtrodden Indian, and that the wrongs of the Poncas uncontrollably disturbed your night s sleep, the subject of all your entreaties in the Interior Department is recorded in a dozen or two of applications for office urged by you and filed with your name during that period of your new-born anguish about the red man.

I do not mean to blame you here for soliciting places and favors in this Department or elsewhere; but when you have come for that only, then you must not tell me and the public that you came with implorations for the poor Poncas and that I coldly received your appeals.

Permit me now to say that your exposition of the murder of Big Snake and the connection of the Interior Department with it, as made in your prepared speech; your burst of eloquence on the naturalization of the methods of imperial government; your reiterated charge that I for ten months forgot to answer an inquiry con-