Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/207

 the chroniclers in the public records admit the wretched business, and as many times deny restitution. The Commissioner of Indian Affairs says:

"By a blunder in making the Sioux Treaty of 1868, the 96,000 acres belonging to the Poncas were ceded to the Sioux. The negotiators had no right whatever to make the cession. . . ."

Here is one of the most ludicrous defences in the records:

"By a treaty made by the Government with the Sioux in 1868, the Ponca lands were ceded to them by mistake, so that both tribes claimed the land; the Poncas had the oldest and best title, but the Sioux being so much stronger, and regarding and treating the Poncas as trespassers, were fast sending them to the 'happy hunting-grounds,' and thus the question presented itself to the Government, the duty of protecting the weak against the strong, of saving human lives; this was paramount to the question of title, because, conceding as it did the Ponca title to be good, the Government was unable to protect them in the peaceable enjoyment of it, and the only just and humane thing it could do was to move them out of the reach of their oppressors. The Government could pay for the spoliation, but it could not restore the dead to life."

This is really too silly to deserve comment. In all the pilfering Sioux raids, not a dozen Poncas were actually killed; yet one hundred and