A DISGRACEFUL POLICY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 21, 20 February 1891, Page 18

A DISGRACEFUL POLICY.

(Bpecial correspondence of the New York Freeman's Journal.') Thk murder of Sitting Bull by a renegade of his own tribe, under cover of the United States flag, forms one of the darkest threads in the woof of our history. The mauaer ia which the great Sioux chief met bis death was as cowardly as the ciuse that prompted it was unprovoked. Here was a leader among men, a man who scorned to bend the " pregnant hinges of the knee " at the dictates of any Mandarin or Joss, and in whom were personified the highest virtues and noblest types of a Savage race, starving for want of food, and the hunger of his wife and children talking to you out of every feature of their woe-begone faces. They were sJeeoiog the sleep of the just in the midst of cold and peri), when along came a company of Indian police — hybrid Indians — all of whom were the irreconcilable foes of Sitting Bull, backed by a company of United States cavalry, and tore away the Sioux leader from the bosom of his family. He waa then prisoner or the United States Government, and entitled to the protection of our laws, but no sooner had the poor redskin submitted to airest and turned his back to his family than an Indian policeman turned around and shot him and his twelve-year-old son to death. The correspondent of the Pioneer Press, who witnessed the arrest of Sitting Bull, thus describes his death :— " Bull Head, with forty policemen, went into Sitting Bull's camp, raised him from his bed and led him out. Catch-the-Bear came out of his lodge, and instantly the whole band nocked about the policemen. Catcn-the-Bear fired and struck Bull Head in the leg, whereupon the latter turned and put a bullet into Sitting Bull's head." If that is not c ear murder lamat a loss to know what is. And what prompted it? For weeks all the cruel and unjust proverbs about the Indian have been revived with a malice and fiendisbness well calculated to shock any weak-minded philanthropist. Sitting Bull was well aware of the plot that was being hatched for his destrujtion, and not long before his death he thus gave vent to his feelings : " What law have I broken ? Is it wrong for me to love my own ? Is it wicked in me because nap skin is red ; because I am a Sioux ; because I was born where my fathers lived ; because I would die for my people and my country ?" ' And again : " They tell you I murdered Ouster, It is a lie. lam not a war chief. I was not in the battle that day. His eyes were blinded that he could not see. He was a tool, and he rode to his death. He made the fight, not I. Whoever tells you I killed the Yellow Hair is a liar." The New York Examiner, in an editorial a few weeks ago furnishes an example of the causes which culminated in the murder of Sitting Bull. Commenting upon the situation, the Sunday School organ said : " The power behind the whole movement is Sitting Bnll. He is a great chief, blessed with a ' heap ' of cunning. He has a fondness for engineering any enterprise against the whites. In additioa to the natural antipathy he has a grudge against our Government for pressing the cession of eleven millions of acres of the Sioux reservation. Sitting Bull signed the agreement of transfer only when undue pressure wag brought to bear. He appended his signature under protest and with muttered threats of revenge." And no wonder. If the Bame scheme was tried on the writer of the above quotation I venture to say, from my knowledge of the fellow, that there is no other man in America who would feel so discontented with the situation as be, nor no other who would so speedily embrace a Messiah or a religion which would guarantee him a full stomach for ever. Is it any wonder that Sitting Bull should regard white men with contempt and ill-dieguised hatred? Follow me through a few of the Congressional files and see for yourselves. On August 10th, 1886, a treaty between the United States and the Indians of the (Jhoctaw and Chickasaw tribes, providing for the cession of a large tract of land, for which the Government was to pay the Indians the sum of 6,211,745 dols. 65 cents., was ratified and proclaimed. The Indians no longer possess the land nor its equivalent in cash. Uncle Sam broke his word just as he did in 1866 with the Creek Indies, when he failed to pay them 400,000 dols. The treaty of 1886, by which a tract of the Fort Berthold Reservation, iv North Dakota, was ceded to the United States for | 800,000 dols. was faithfully kept by the Indians, who are still waiting for the purchase money, Tuese are but a few of the many iastances in which the Indians have been robbed, ruined, and persecuted by the Government and its agents, who have driven them from the lands which they occupied long before any white man set foot in this country. Is it strange that the Indian, robbed at every turn for generations, driven from post to pillow at the beck of every Tom, Dick, and Harry of a settler, feels that the pale face has treated him scurvily, and that the milder graces of Chrntiau character are of tardy growth under such treatment? But listen to what Sitting Bull said on the subject quite | recently :—: — " What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one. What treaty that the whites ever made with us red men have they kept ? Not one. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set inthuir lands. They sent 10,000 horss- | men to battle. Where are the warriors to-day ? Who slew them ? Wnere are our lauue 1 Wfco owns them ? What- whitp man o.an say I ev2r stole his lands or a penny of his money ? Yet they say lam a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever, when a captive insulted by me ? Yet they say lam a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk ? Who bas ever come to me hungry and gone unfed ? Who has ever seen me bent my wives or abuse rJH children." And yet we are told that the Indian is a fierce and HccUhiisty B&vage in answer to everything that may be said in his behalf. Wuen Capain Carver made hia journeys among the North American Indiana in 1766, he was most hospitably entertained by the Sioux, who 1 accompanied him for a distance of his journey and took leave of him . with expressions oi friendship and good will. Seventy years later,

Catlin, the artist and explorer, thus speaka of the forefathers of the present Sioux : "I have travelled several years already among these people, and I have not had my scalp taken, nor a blow struck me, neither has my property been stolen, nor had I ever occasion to raise my hand against 'an Indian." The Tndian is exactly what we have made him, and the cause of this trouble, as I have pointed out in a previous letter, is due to the unscrupulous greed and dishonesty of the Indian agents and frontier settlers to get possession of the Indian lands. Bat what impression have all these solemn but cheering facts made upon the public mind as compared with the " a'rocities committed by the Indians," their Messiah dances and other harmless antics which have occupied column after column of the newspaoers for the past month ? Alas, wickedness presents more vivid contrasts than virtue does, its history is more picturesque and has more of the eminent of the expected. But the murder of Sitting Bull was entirely unexpected. It was p savage, brutal killing — a tragedy which loudly calls for an investigation and one which eh ill severely punish the conspirators who have grimly besplashed the Stars and Stripes with the blood of an untried, unconvicted man, covered the whole Indian race with shame, brought scorn upon their essays in civilisation, and robbed them of their hard earned possessions.