ed and fifty years of injustice, oppression, and wrong, heaped
upon them by _our_ race, with cold, calculating, and relentless
perseverance, have filled them with the passion of revenge and made
them desperate. If you and I, boys, were Indians, we would do just as
Indians do. _Their tender mercies are cruel, but there is a reason why
it is so._

The former Indian agents, on a salary of eighteen hundred dollars a
year, got very rich in a short time. How could they do so but by
swindling the poor Indians, who have no idea of the relative value of
money, or the cost of goods?

Not long since a tribe just above us was paid off their annuities in
shoddy blankets; they were bought back again with whisky, and another
tribe was paid with the same blankets; and one agent took out several
thousand "elastics" (girls know what I mean) to pay the Indians (among
other things), and yet no wild Indian ever wore a stocking!

Again, as the Indian is crowded back beyond the tide of emigration, and
hanging like the froth of the billows upon the very edge is generally a
host of law-defying whites, who introduce among the Indians every form
of demoralization and disease with which depraved humanity in its most
degraded form is afflicted. These the Indian see more of than anybody
else (except the military, whom they look upon mostly as protectors),
as good people come along, the Indian must _push on_, still farther
toward the setting sun!

A GOOD JOKE BY LITTLE RAVEN.

Little Raven, an Arapahoe chief, laughed heartily when we told him
something about heaven and hell; remarking, "All good men--white and
red men--would go to heaven; all bad men, white or red, would go to
hell." Inquiring the cause of his merriment when he had recovered his
breath, he said, "I was much pleased with what you say of those two
places, and the kind of people that will go to each when they come to
die. It is a good notion,--heap good,--for if all the whites are like
the ones I know, when Indian gets to heaven but few whites will trouble
him there; pretty much all go to t'other place!"

HOW THE INDIAN IS CHEATED.

It is true, as General Harney remarked, "Better to board and lodge them
at the Fifth Avenue Hotel than to fight them, as a matter of economy."
Besides depleting the Indian appropriation fund, voted annually by
Congress, of millions of dollars, but which was used to carry on
elections, and the Indian got what was left; which may be com