than by packing them on the shoulders of the men, the quicksand bottom rendering it unsafe to trust them on the backs of animals; even the wagons having to be drawn across by hand.”
Let us dwell for a moment on this picture. Seven hundred helpless, heart-broken people beginning their sad journey by having to ford this icy stream with quicksands at bottom. The infirm, the sick, the old, the infants, all carried “by packing them on the shoulders of the men!” What a scene! The Honorable Secretary of the Interior said, in one of the letters in his newspaper controversy with the inspector in regard to the accounts of this removal, that “the highly-colored stories which are told about the brutal military force employed in compelling their [the Poncas'] removal from Dakota to the Indian Territory are sensational fabrications; at least, the official record, which is very full, and goes into minute details, does not in the least bear them out.”
There was never any accusation brought against the “military force” of “brutality” in this removal. The brutality was on the part of the Government. The simple presence of the “military force” was brutal. It meant but one thing. The Indians understood it, and the Government intended that they should understand it; and when the agent of the Government said to these Indians that they must give him their “final answer whether they would go peaceably or by force,” he intended that they should understand it. Has anybody any doubt what were the orders under which that “military force” was there? any doubt what it would have been the military duty of Major Walker to have done in case the Poneas had refused to “consent” to go?
And now let us return to the “Official Record,” which is, indeed, as the Honorable Secretary of the Interior says, “very full,” and “goes into minute details,” and let us see in how much it will bear us out; and when we have done with this
