“Their game, timber,” “their country,” again. The perpetual recurrence of this possessive pronoun, and of such phrases as these in all that the Government has said about the Indians, and in all that it has said to them, is very significant.
In 1850 the Indian Commission writes that “it is much to be regretted that no appropriation was made at the last session of Congress for negotiating treaties with the wild tribes of the plains. These Indians have long held undisputed possession of this extensive region; and, regarding it as their own, they consider themselves entitled to compensation not only for the right of way through their territory, but for the great and injurious destruction of game, grass, and timber committed by our troops and emigrants.”
The bill providing for the negotiation of these treaties was passed unanimously by the Senate, but “the unhappy difficulties existing on the subject of slavery” delayed it in the House until it was too late to be carried into effect.
All the tribes had been informed of this pending bill, and were looking forward to it with great interest and anxiety. In 1849 they had all expressed themselves as “very anxious to be instructed in agriculture and the civilized arts.” Already the buffalo herds were thinning and disappearing. From time immemorial the buffalo had furnished them food, clothing, and shelter; with its disappearance, starvation stared them in the face, and they knew it. There can be no doubt that at this time all the wild tribes of the Upper Missouri region—the Sioux, Cheyennes, Arapahoes—were ready and anxious to establish friendly relations with the United States Government, and to enter into some arrangement by which some means of future subsistence, and some certainty of lands enough to live on, could be secured to them. Meantime they hunted with greater diligence than ever; and in this one year alone had sold to the fur-traders within the limits of one agency $330,000 worth of buffalo-robes, and “furs, peltries, and miscellaneous
