4
for their removal to the Indian Territory. The removal, itself, in pursuance of the law quoted, was effected a very short time after I took charge of my present position, when, I will frankly admit, I was still compelled to give my whole attention to the formidable task of acquainting myself with the vast and complicated machinery of the Interior Department. If at some future day you, Governor, should be made Secretary of the Interior, you will find what that means; and although you may accomplish it in a shorter time than I did, yet you will have to pass through some strange experiences during the first six months. During that period I had to confess myself as little conversant with Indian affairs as many of those seem to be who are now writing and speaking upon that subject. Under such circumstances I had to leave the practical management of the several bureaus, as to the business come over from the former administration, for a short time, without much interference on my part, to the bureau chiefs whom I had found in office. I believed them, and justly so, to possess what I had not the advantage of, experience in the current business. On the Ponca affair I thought it best to accept the laws recently passed as the expressed will of Congress and to take the judgment of the then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Hon. J. Q. Smith, which I have no doubt was conscientiously formed, as he was a man of just and benevolent impulses. His opinions, as I subsequently found, were largely based upon the reports made to the Office by Inspector Kemble. As to the measures taken by Mr. Kemble to obtain what he represented as the consent of the Poncas to the relinquishment of their lands and their removal to the Indian Territory, it may be said that he followed a course which unfortunately had been frequently taken before him on many occasions. Having been a man of military training, he may have been rather inclined to summary methods; moreover it is probable that as the Ponca reserve had been ceded to the Sioux by the treaty of 1868, and as Congress had provided also that the Sioux should be removed to the Missouri River, and the Sioux were the same year to occupy that part of the country, the removal of the Poncas may have appeared to Mr. Kemble a necessity, in order to prevent a collision between them and the Sioux which would have been highly detrimental to both. Besides he stood not alone. In this opinion that the removal of the Poncas was necessary, he had the concurrence of Bishop Hare of the Episcopal church, as expressed in dispatches to the Indian Office. Had I then understood this matter and Indian affairs generally as well as I do now, I should have overcome the natural hesitancy of a man new in office to take personal responsibilities.
The details of the case did not come clearly to my knowledge until the Ponca chiefs arrived in Washington and told their story. I concluded that they had suffered great hardship in losing the reservation originally conferred upon them by treaty, after a so-called consent
