tell us, can we hope we shall see our husbands, our children, our daughters?”
I got up and held up the paper over my head, and said,—
“My dear children, may the Great Father in the Spirit-land, will it so that you may see your husbands, and your children, and your daughters. I have said everything I could in your behalf, so did father and brother. I have suffered everything but death to come here with this paper. I don’t know whether it speaks truth or not. You can say what you like about me. You have a right to say I have sold you. It looks so. I have told you many things which are not my own words, but the words of the agents and the soldiers. I know I have told you more lies than I have hair on my head. I tell you, my dear children, I have never told you my own words; they were the words of the white people, not mine. Of course, you don’t know, and I don’t blame you for thinking as you do. You will never know until you go to the Spirit-land. This which I hold in my hand is our only hope. It came right from the Big Father you hear so much of. We will see what his words are if what the people say about him is truth. If it is truth we will see our people in fifty days. It is not my own making up; it came right from him, and I will read it just as it is, so that you can all judge for yourselves.”
After I had read it through, they all forgot they were grown people. They jumped about and cried, “Oh, we shall be happy again.” The little girls said, “We shall sing, we shall play in our own play-ground.” Men and women were all like children running to me with outstretched hands, saying, “Mother, forgive us for thinking bad of you.”
Leggins said, “Now, you have heard what our mother has told us, we will get ready to go at once, and all that
