die for the sake merely of being called by the name of one power rather than by that of another, we find it heroic, and give them our sympathies; but when the North American Indian is ready to die rather than wear the clothes and follow the ways of the white man, we feel for him only unqualified contempt, and see in his instinct nothing more than a barbarian’s incapacity to appreciate civilization. Is this just?
Tn 1861 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, visiting these Sioux, reports: “I was much surprised to find so many of the Sioux Indians wearing the garb of civilization, many of them living in frame or brick houses,some of them with stables or out-houses, and their fields indicating considerable knowledge of agriculture.” Their condition, he says, affords “abundant evidence of what may be accomplished among the Sioux Indians by steadily adhering to a uniform, undeviating policy.
“The number that live by agricultural pursuits is yet small compared with the whole; but their condition is so much better than that of the wild Indian, that they, too, are becoming convinced that it is the better way to live; and many are coming in, asking to have their hair cut, and for a suit of clothes, and to be located on a piece of land where they can build a house and fence in their fields.”
Many more of them would have entered on the agricultural life had the Government provided ways and means for them to do so. In this same report is a mention of one settlement of two thousand Indians at Big Stone Lake, who “have been hitherto almost entirely neglected. These people complain that they have lived upon promises for the last ten years, and are really of opinion that white men never perform what they promise. Many of them would go to work if they had any reasonable encouragement.”
The annuities are still in arrears. Every branch of the industries and improvements attempted suffers for want of the promised funds, and from delays in payments expected. The worst
