The Indian Dispossessed
in parting I will venture one word of advice. If I lived near this reservation with the idea of ever living on it I would abandon it at once. I would hitch up my team Monday and I would go to where the Pacific railroad will probably come, or I would settle on some other good place."
Mr. Brunot's report to Washington does not seem to allow the Government much choice of action:
"In view of the maladministration of agents and the misapplication of funds, the failure of the Government to perform the promises of the treaty, and the fact that the Indians have been constantly agitated by assertions that the Government intended their removal, and that their removal was urged for several years in succession in the reports of a former agent (thus taking away from them all incentives to improve their lands), it must be admitted that the progress these Indians have made in ten years has been wonderful. Had they, as the result of the late negotiations, given their consent to removal, I should have felt bound to remonstrate earnestly against any action of the Government to take advantage of so injudicious a decision of their incompetent wards. Happily, the unanimous refusal of the Indians to sell or remove from the remnant of land which the United States has solemnly guaranteed to them, leaves no room for any question of that kind. The arguments used in favor of their removal will apply with equal force to any other
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