The Indian Dispossessed
land reserved for their future homes, and their persons and property thereon," this band of hapless Indian farmers still served well as a buffer between the hostile Indian and the white settler. At this time the "peace policy"—or, rather, its "inverted" substitute—was in full force; and under the acknowledged interpretation of it, "that the expenditures of the Government should be proportioned not to the good but to the ill desert of the several tribes," the Government was purchasing an uncertain immunity from attack from these same hostiles by the liberal distribution of rations, while they followed their murderous pastimes in the Ponca country. But the attacks of the Sioux became much less frequent during the next two years, and with eighty children in school, a church of two hundred members, and one hundred and fifty comfortable houses, the Poncas were much like any white community of peaceful farmers. Then in 1876 came this cheering news from the agency of the Lower Brule Sioux,—the half-wild Indians who had so long harassed the Poncas:
"During the year the chiefs and head-men of the tribe asked for and obtained permission to visit the Ponca agency, for the purpose of making a treaty with the Poncas, with whom they have been on unfriendly terms for years. This treaty was effected and entered into in the best of faith."
With this only serious difficulty so satisfactorily
150
