Soon after troops appeared upon the horizon. Black Kettle and his two brothers went out with a white flag to meet them. They fired on the flag and the two brothers fell dead. Black Kettle returned to his camp. Three men in the United States uniform were in his tepee. He said; “I believe you are spies; it shall never be said that a man ate Black Kettle’s bread and came to harm in his tent. Go to your people before the fight begins.” He gathered his men and they fought for their lives. A few escaped; but men, women and children were massacred in a butchery too horrible to relate, Women were ripped open and babes were scalped; and the Sand Creek massacre has gone upon record, by testimony that cannot be impeached, as a “butchery that would have disgraced the tribes of Central Africa.” (Bishop Whipple’s letter to _Evening Post_, January, 1879; and the report of the Doolittle Commission.)
But we fought the Cheyennes again in 1867. What occasioned that war? Gen. Hancock, “without any known provocation,” as says the report to Congress of the Indian Bureau, in July, 1867, surrounded a village of Cheyennes who had been at peace since the signing of the treaty of 1865, and were quietly occupying the grounds assigned to them by the treaty, burned down the homes of three hundred lodges, destroyed all their provisions, clothing, utensils and property of every description, to the value of $100,000. This led to a war that extended over three years, and cost us $40,000,000 and three hundred men. (President Seeley’s speech.)
We have just fought the Bannocks and Shoshones. In November, 1878, Gen. Crook wrote to the Government: “With the Bannocks and Shoshones our Indian policy has resolved itself into a question of war-path or starvation; and being human, many of them will choose the former, in which death shall at least be glorious.” Is it necessary to say anything more of that war? Why pursue the story? The late Congressman (now President) Seeley, of Amherst College, says: “There has not been an Indian war for the past fifty years in which the whites have not been the aggressors.”
What, then, is to be done? I press upon you the importance of these resolutions. Standing in the courts, the recognition of the Indian as a person with rights, inalienable as yours and mine, to life, to justice, to property, this is the first, the absolute essential. As long ago as 1807, Governor (afterwards President) Harrison said: “The utmost efforts to induce the Indians to take up arms would be unavailing if _one only of the many persons who have committed murder upon their people could be brought to punishment_.” Generals Harney and Pope have testified of late that this is as true now as then.
