he Government at that time and had a perfect right to give away
some of their land. It was a barefaced, open steal from the Indians. Yet
the tribes were obliged to employ white attorneys at a liberal per cent.
of the amount they hoped to recover. They had to pay high for simple
justice. Meanwhile they lived on their own labor for two or three
generations, and contributed to the upbuilding of Wisconsin. To-day some
of them are doing better than their white neighbors.

This is only one illustration of a not uncommon happening; for, while
some of these claims are doubtless unreasonable, I personally know of
many in which the ethics of the case are as clear as in this which I
have cited. It is often the fact that differences among attorneys and
party politics in Congress delay justice for many years or deprive the
Indians of their rights altogether. A bill has recently been introduced,
at the instance of the Society of American Indians, which is framed to
permit Indian tribes to sue in the Court of Claims, without first
obtaining the consent of Congress in each case. This bill ought to be at
once made law, as it would do away within a few years with many
long-drawn-out disputes and much waste and worse than waste of time and
money.

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW INDIAN POLICY

I have tried to state plainly some of the difficulties found so
harassing in adjusting the relations of the native and white races in
America. While there have been terrible and most un-Christian mistakes
in dealing with the Indian (who has always been fully able to appreciate
fair play and to resent the lack of it), it is equally true that there
has been of late years a serious effort to bring him within the bounds
of modern progress, so that he may eventually adapt himself to the
general life of the nation. Until recently he himself preferred to
remain just outside the borders of civilization, and was commonly
assumed to be incapable of advance or change.

The birth of the new era really dates from Abraham Lincoln's refusal to
order the execution of three hundred Sioux braves, whom a military court
had, in less than two days, convicted of murder and condemned to be
hung, in order to satisfy the clamor of the citizens of Minnesota. They
demanded to be avenged for the loss of friends, relatives, and property
in the outbreak of 1862, and they forgot that these Sioux had been
defrauded of the finest country in the world, their home, their living,
an