Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/93

Rh the Poncas were now taken from those lands and returned to Dakota, this very fact would undoubtedly make other northern Indians, who have been taken to the Indian Territory, restless to follow their example, such as the northern Cheyennes, the Nez Percés and possibly even the Pawnees. Unscrupulous white men, agents of the invaders, would be quickly on hand to foment this tendency. An evacuation by the Indians, and possibly an extensive one, of the very region which is held by the Government against the intruders on the very ground that it is reserved for Indian settlement, would be the consequence, and that just at the moment when the Government has the struggle for the integrity of the Indian Territory on its hands, and it requires the greatest watchfulness and energy to defeat the invasion. At this moment, while I am writing this letter, intelligence arrives that a new attempt is made by bands of intruders to gain possession of those lands. The unscrupulous leaders of that lawless movement, although repeatedly baffled, appear determined not to give up. Any measure looking to an evacuation by the Indians would, therefore, now be especially unsafe. An attempt to right the wrongs of the Poncas in that way now, might involve consequences disastrous to an Indian population a hundred times as numerous as they are. Those who look only at the wrongs of the Poncas may not appreciate this consideration. But it is the duty of Government officers responsible for the management of Indian affairs at large to foresee such consequences, and to guard against the danger of choosing that method of undoing a wrong to some, which will be apt to bring greater disaster upon a hundred times larger number.

Does it not appear, in view of this complication of difficulties, that the Poncas, after the great fundamental mistake of ceding their lands to the Sioux in 1868, were