Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/566

546 by an injunction on the Indian annuity funds, are enormous in amount; and the adjustment of them, whether they are honest or fraudulent, is a matter of bitter quarrel and controversy. In some cases these claims, if allowed, would exhaust all the funds, and poverty and the sense of wrong would set the Indians on further raids.

Of the feelings with which some of the most intelligent of the chiefs were made parties to the cession of their lands, a graphic illustration is offered in the following extract.

Major-General George A. McCall, in his “Letters from the Frontiers” (1868), thus describes a scene at Fort Armstrong in General Gaines's negotiation with Keokuk and Black Hawk, in 1831: —

“The artful negotiator Keokuk called on the General, in all the finery of official dress, conspicuous in which was a necklace of the formidable claws of the grizzly bear, — which, by the by, it is whispered he procured with the silver bullet [purchased], — and in grandiloquent speech reported the success of his mission; and that Black Hawk would come in the next day and renew the treaty, relinquishing the territory latterly in dispute.

“At the appointed time Black Hawk appeared. There were in attendance about fifty chiefs and distinguished warriors; but all on this occasion were unarmed. All being seated in due form, the treaty, which in the interval I had been ordered to draw up, I read sentence by sentence [interpreted]. I called up Black Hawk to affix, in his official character, his sign manual to the paper. He arose slowly, and with great dignity, while in the expression of his fine face there was a deep-seated grief and humiliation that no one could witness unmoved. The sound of his heel upon the floor, as he strode majestically forward, was measured and distinct. When he reached the table where I sat I handed him a pen, and pointed to the place where he was to affix the mark that would sunder the tie he held most dear on earth. He took the pen; made a large, bold cross with a force which rendered that pen forever unfit for further use; then, returning it politely, he turned short upon his heel, and resumed his seat in the manner he had left it. It was an