Lift your heads, Indians of Grand Round! you are no longer slaves; you are free.
This agency, with the people who are there now, and who have been there as Government officers and employés, would furnish material for volumes of real live romance; racy stories, sad tales, great privations, disease, death and suffering make up the history of such places. No character required to make a thrilling drama, a bloody tragedy, or comic personality, would be wanting. Better live only in tradition, or fireside story, than in printed page. The latter would embarrass men who have passed through some of the chairs of office, and poor fellows, too, who have sponged a living off of “Uncle Sam,” and cheated the people of thousands of dollars, and months of labor, that they were paid for doing. Let the history die untold, since it could not restore justice to either Government or people. Some of those who have administered on Grand Round Agency have left the Indians in much better condition than they found them, and will live forever in the memory of those they served so faithfully.
Before leaving this agency I would state one feature of Indian life that exists everywhere, but it is less prominent on this than other agencies.
I refer to the _poor_ and the _old_. Perhaps the last Christian virtue that finds lodgment in Indian hearts is regard or reverence for age, especially old women. They are drudges everywhere, and when too old to labor are sometimes neglected.
Poor, miserable-looking old women, blind, lame, and halt, charity would shed more tears at your death than your children would. While this deplorable indifference for them exists to a fearful extent, there are notable exceptions, particularly among the Grand Round Indians. In every council they were found standing up and pleading for something to be done for the old and poor. These old creatures nearly always hobble to the meetings, and although they seem fair specimens of the Darwinian theory, they, nevertheless, have feelings and gratitude even for small favors. A grasp of the hand seems to impart a ray of sunshine to their benighted faces.
A few years more, and all the old ones will be gone, and their successors will take the vacant places with prospects of more humane treatment than they have hitherto received.