Page:The Indian Dispossessed.pdf/291

Uncle Sam, Trustee to let the Government, as trustee, open the lands for white settlement at the same flat price of two dollars and a half, pay the Indians the money only as collected from the settlers, and guarantee neither the sale of all of the tract, nor the payments.

Here was a tract of land representing extremes of value; rich agricultural land, worth five dollars, ten, and some even twenty-five dollars per acre, on the one hand; on the other, grazing land hardly salable at two dollars. The Indians failed to see why they should let the choice of their land go at the average price for the whole, and be left with the poorest on their hands. The reasonableness of their position is apparent; a merchant having a stock of cloths, part silks, the rest cottons, might fairly name a flat price per yard for the entire stock of both silks and cottons; but were he, in a fit of mental aberration, to open his store to the retail trade at that same flat price per yard, first come first served, the public would end the day with rare bargains in silks, and the merchant—with a stock of cottons.

Moreover, the Indians refused to renew the former agreement to sell the entire tract at the two dollars and a half rate; a syndicate of capitalists had recently offered the Commissioner of Indian Affairs five dollars per acre for the same tract, and to this figure they persistently clung.

Thus the scheme failed. The Indians had the temerity to demand from the Government the same 269