true that a few of the Winnebagoes were engaged in the atrocities of the Sioux, the tribe, as such, is no more justly responsible for their acts than our Government would be for a pirate who happened to have been born on our territory. Notwithstanding this, the exasperation of the people of Minnesota appears to be nearly as great toward the Winnebagoes as toward the Sioux. They demand that the Winnebagoes as well as the Sioux shall be removed from the limits of the State. The Winnebagoes are unwilling to move. Yet the Minnesota people are so excited that not a Winnebago can leave his reservation without risk of being shot; and as they have never received their promised implements of agriculture, and the game on their reservation is exhausted, and their arms have been taken from them, they are starving.”
Their agent writes: “These Indians have been remaining here in a continuous state of suspense, waiting for the Government to cause the stipulations of the treaty of 1859 to be carried into operation: such has been their condition for three years and a half, and they do not understand why it is so. * * * The fact that a very few of the Winnebagoes were present and witnessed, if they did not take part in, the massacre at the Lower Sioux Agency, has caused the Winnebagoes themselves to be universally suspected of disloyalty. * * * The hostile feelings of the white people are so intense, that I am necessitated to use extra efforts to keep the Indians upon their own lands. I have been notified by the whites that the Indians will be massacred if they go out of their own country; and it is but a few days since an Indian was killed while crossing the Mississippi River, for no other reason than that he was an Indian, and such is the state of public opinion that the murderer goes unpunished.”
As to the loyalty of the tribe, the agent says: “There is no tribe of Indians more so.” There is “no doubt of their loyalty as a tribe. * * * In consequence of a threat made by the
