Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/98

64 except to appropriate money for the support of the Poncas.

Had Congress directed this Department to do this or that, there would have been no hesitation in executing the law. But now I read in your speech that all that was required to right the wrongs of the Poncas was “a heart and a stroke of the pen” on the part of the principal officer of the Government managing Indian affairs. Three years ago, by my declarations in the annual report, I showed that I had a heart for the Poncas long before the speakers at your meeting. But when you said that it required merely a stroke of the pen on my part to return the Poncas to Dakota, you had certainly forgotten that the powers of the Executive branch of the Government are limited; that such a removal and the resettlement of the Poncas in Dakota would have required much more money than their support where they were; and that this Department had no authority of law to spend a dollar of money that was not appropriated. You go even so far as to say that this Department had no legal authority to keep them in the Indian Territory, and to spend any money for them there; you forget that this Department reported the matter to Congress in 1877, without any concealment as to the wrong done, and that Congress by law made appropriations for the support of the Poncas in the Indian Territory year after year with that full knowledge. It is said that had I recommended to Congress an appropriation for their return to Dakota, it would have been granted. But an appropriation was recommended by this Department for the purpose of indemnifying them in another way, and Congress, with a full knowledge of the facts spread by me before them, might have amended that bill, had it been so minded; yet the matter received no notice at all.

The reasons why I recommended that the Poncas be