hters stolen from them by these
agents that are fat and warm, and gettin' rich on the food and clothing
that should be theirs, and receivin' nothing but insults and threats if
they ask for justice, and finally a bullet, if their demands for justice
are too loud--

"What wonder is it that they lift their empty hands for vengeance--that
they leave their bare, icy huts, and warm their frozen veins with
ghost-dances, haply practisin' them before they go to be ghosts in
reality? What wonder that they sharpen up their ancestral tomahawk, and
lift it against their oppressors? What wonder that the smothered fires
do break out into sudden fiery tempests of destruction that appall the
world?

"You say you would do the same, after your generations of culture and
Christian teaching, and so would I, and every other man. We would if we
could destroy the destroyers who ravage and plunder our homes, deprive
us of the earnings of a lifetime, turn us out of our inheritance, and
make of our wives and daughters worse than slaves.

"We meet every year to honor the memory of the old heroes who rebelled
and fought for liberty--shed rivers of blood to escape from far less
intolerable oppression and wrongs than the Injuns have endured for
years.

"And then we expect them, with no culture and no Christianity, to
practise Christian virtues, and endure buffetings that no Christian
would endure.

"The whole Injun question is a satire on true Goverment, a lie in the
name of liberty and equality, a shame on our civilization."

"What would you do about it?" said the kinder good-lookin' man.

Sez Krit, "If I called the Injuns wards, adopted children of the
Goverment, I would try not to use them in a way that would disgrace any
drunken old stepmother.

"I would have dignity enough, if I did not stand for decency, to not
half starve and freeze them, and lie to them, and cheat them till the
very word 'Goverment' means to them all they can picture of meanness and
brutality. I would either grant them independence, or a few of the
comforts I had stolen from them.

"If I drove them out of their rich lands and well-stocked
hunting-grounds they had so long considered their own--if I drove them
out in my cupidity and love of conquest, I would in return grant them
enough of the fruits of their old homes to keep up life in their unhappy
bodies.

"If I made them suffer the pains of exile, I would not let them endure
also the gnawings of starvation.