to human nature, and the victims were invariably the
redskins. Once when Red Iron came there, at the summons, or rather after
the repeated summons of Governor Ramsay, it turned out that nearly four
hundred thousand dollars of the cash payment due to the Sioux, under the
treaties of 1851-'2, were paid to the traders on old indebtedness! How
much of this enormous sum was really due to the traders it is bootless
now to inquire; although it is pretty certain, from what we know of
similar transactions, that not a twentieth part of it was due to them.
Mr. Isaac V. D. Heard, who has written a 'History of the Sioux War and
Massacres of 1862 and 1863,' who is an old resident of Minnesota of
twelve years' standing, acted with General Sibley in his expedition
against the savages in 1862, and was recorder of the military commission
which tried some four hundred of the participants in the outbreak--has
not been deterred by the just hatred which the Minnesota people nurture
against the Indians, and which they will keep hot until their rifles
have exterminated the whole brood of them, from saying a brave word
respecting the iniquities perpetrated by rascal peddlers and official
prigs against the Indians which were the immediate causes of the
massacre and the subsequent wars.

The Indian was subjected to all sorts of frauds, little and big--the
smaller thieves thinking that they also must live, no matter at whose
expense, although I demur to the proposition. Why should they stop at
stealing a thousand or two, more or less, while that four hundred
thousand swindle leered at them so wickedly over the left shoulder,
mocking at all law and justice, and scot free from all punishment? These
'traders' could charge what sums they liked against the Indian, and get
them too; for there was no one to defeat or check their rapacity. Mr.
Heard tells us that no less a sum than fifty-five thousand dollars was
claimed by one Hugh Tyler, as due to him by the Indians, when the great
swindle just alluded to was committed; and that he was paid out of the
accruing funds. This man was a stranger in the country, an adventurer,
who went out into the wilderness 'for to seek his fortune;' and it is
curious to read the items of which his little bill, fifty-five thousand,
is composed. Here they are: For getting the treaties through the Senate;
for '_necessary disbursements_' in securing the assent of the chiefs.
Very curious and instructive items they are, to all w