eft savage men without Governmental
control; it has looked on unconcerned at every crime against the
laws of God and man; it has fostered savage life by wasting
thousands of dollars in the purchase of paint, beads, scalping
knives, and tomahawks; it has fostered a system of trade which
robbed the thrifty and virtuous to pay the debts of the indolent
and vicious; it has squandered the funds for civilization and
schools; it has connived at theft; it has winked at murder; and at
last, after dragging the savage down to a brutishness unknown to
his fathers, it has brought a harvest of blood to our door!'

The Bishop continues:

'It was under this Indian system that the fierce, warlike Sioux
were fitted and trained to be the actors in this bloody drama, _and
the same causes are to-day, slowly but surely, preparing the way
for a Chippewa war_. There is not, to-day, an old citizen of
Minnesota who will not shrug his shoulders as he speaks of the
dishonesty which accompanied the purchase of the lands of the
Sioux. It left in savage minds a deep sense of injustice. Then,
followed ten years of savage life, unchecked by law, uninfluenced
by good example. They were taught by white men that lying was no
disgrace, adultery no sin, and theft no crime. Their hunting
grounds were gone; the onward march of civilization crowded them on
every side. Their only possible hope of being saved from starvation
was the fidelity with which a great nation fulfilled its plighted
faith, which before God and man it had pledged to its heathen
wards. _The people here, on the border, and the rulers at
Washington, know how that faith has been broken._

'The constant irritations of such a system would, in time, have
secured an Indian massacre. It was hastened and precipitated by the
sale of nearly eight hundred thousand acres of land, for _which
they never received one farthing_; for it was all absorbed in
claims! Then came the story (and it was true) that half of their
annuity money had also been taken for claims. They waited two
months, mad, exasperated, hungry--the Agent utterly powerless to
undo the wrong committed at Washington--and they resolved on savage
vengeance. For every dollar of which they have been defrauded we
shall pay ten dollars in the cost of the war. It has been so