stating the difficulties in the case: “Firstly, what disposition is to be made of weapons taken forcibly from these Indians? Secondly, many of these Indians are intelligent, only using weapons when any well-disposed white person would have done so; and if one class is disarmed, all must be;” on which the commissioner so modified his order as to say that “peaceably disposed Indians” might keep the usual weapons used by them in hunting; but whenever they visited agencies or towns they must deliver up all weapons to the agent, who would receipt for them, and return them “at proper times.” This order is to be enforced, if possible, by an “appeal to their better judgment.”
There are no records of the practical working of this order. . Very possibly it fell at once, by its own weight, into the already large category of dead-letter laws in regard to Indians. It is impossible to imagine an Indian who had served four years as an officer in the army (for the Delawares officered their own companies) submitting to be disarmed by an agent on any day when he might need to go to Atchison on business, Probably even that “appeal to his better judgment” which the commissioner recommends, would only draw from him a very forcible statement to the effect that any man who went about in Kansas at that time unarmed was a fool.
In 1866 the Indian Commissioner reports that “the State of Kansas is fast being filled by an energetic population who appreciate good land; and as the Indian reservations were selected as being the best in the State, but one result can be expected to follow.
“Most of the Indians are anxious to move to the Indian country south of Kansas, where white settlers cannot interfere with them.
“Intermingled as the Kansas reservations are with the public lands, and surrounded in most cases by white settlers who too often act on the principle that an Indian has no rights
