Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/138

104 In December last the Ponca chiefs came here. They repeated the expression of the desire of their people to remain where they were located, in unequivocal and earnest language. Then it was said that their friends, who wanted to ascertain their true sentiments, were arbitrarily denied access to them, and that when in council the Ponca chiefs manifested their adherence to the desire expressed in their letter, they were doing so quailing under the “hard look” of an Indian agent and the overawing presence of the Interior Department.

At last a commission named by the President, one-half of its members designated by the Ponca relief committee of Boston, went to the Indian Territory and saw the Poncas in their new homes. The Indians assembled in council. All white men except the commissioners were rigidly excluded from the meeting. The hard-looking eye of the agent was absent. The overawing influence of the Interior Department was far away and carefully shut out. The commission had even called to their aid a missionary known to the Poncas as an old friend, and as a strenuous opponent of their removal from their lands in Dakota. Nothing was left undone that the sharpest critic of the Interior Department and the most watchful friends of the Poncas could desire. They were plied with questions addressing themselves to every impulse of dissatisfaction and greed, questions which might be looked upon as direct appeals to induce them to express a desire to return to Dakota. After the first day of the council the Indians were told to take another day and then to answer again. And what was the result? There had been more misapprehension of the facts assiduously fostered, more downright falsehood persistently reiterated with regard to this case than upon any similar subject that I can remember. The truth at last appeared coming from the lips of the Indians themselves.