Page:Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier.djvu/629

CHAPTER XX.

THE SIOUX TREATY OF 1876—INDIAN ORATORS.

In 1875, the Black Hills country had acquired a white population and an importance which rendered its possession and control by the Government desirable and necessary; and an attempt was made to treat with the Indians for its purchase, but without success.

In 1876, Congress expressed its determination to appropriate nothing more for the subsistence of the Sioux Indians unless they made certain concessions, including the surrender of the Black Hills, and entered into some agreement calculated to enable them to become self-supporting. Geo. W. Manypenny, H. C. Bullis, Newton Edmunds, Rt. Rev. H.B. Whipple, A.G. Boone, A.S. Gaylord, J.W. Daniels, and Gen. H.H. Sibley, were appointed commissioners to negotiate for the concessions demanded. The following is an extract from their instructions under which they acted:—

"The President is strongly impressed with the belief that the agreement which shall be best calculated to enable the Indians to become self-supporting is one which shall provide for their removal, at as early a day as possible, to the Indian Territory. For the past three years they have been kept from starvation by large appropriations for their subsistence. These appropriations have been a matter not of obligation but of charity, and the Indians should be made to understand distinctly that they can hope for continued appropriations only by full submission to the