I was first interested in this subject about ten years ago in the city of Boston, where Bright Eyes, Mr. Tibbles, and old Standing Bear came to tell of the wrongs of the Poncas.  They were to hold a public meeting.  Wendell Phillips was to speak.  I went to that meeting more with a desire to hear Phillips than from any interest in the Indian.  At that time all I knew about him was what I had learned from the current literature and romance, and my idea was very far from correct.  At that meeting a state of affairs was shown to exist that seemed astounding and impossible.  A committee was appointed to investigate these statements.  They found that the half had not been told.  That committee started measures that rectified these wrongs done to the Poncas.  It commenced suit under the Fourteenth Amendment to see whether the Indians were citizens.  The Judges of the Supreme Court decided that the Indian was not a person under the law.  Then it tried other channels; to get legislation that would help the Indian.  Senator Dawes soon became interested in this question, and from that time to the present he has been interested; and how much the Indian owes to the legislation which has been started and carried forward by Senator Dawes, but very few people know; but it must be followed by other legislation before the Indian is safe.

In Boston, Mrs. H.H.  Jackson listened to the statement of Bright Eyes in regard to the wrongs suffered by her people.  She came to her and said, “It is not possible that these things can be true.”  Bright Eyes showed her the official documents; she convinced her that it was true.  From that hour that woman’s whole soul was in the work.  She afterwards wrote “A Century of Dishonor,” and “Ramona,” which has preached for the Indians, and will continue to do so.  She gave her life finally for the Indians, the sickness that caused her death being brought on while engaged in work for them.  This work gets hold of a man, if he has any blood in his veins and sympathy in his heart, and makes him feel, if he would stand without condemnation before God in the last day, that he must do something to redeem his country from dishonor, and deliver this people from worse than slavery.

Suppose we do not do it.  Suppose we allow the Government to care for them.  The Dawes Bill gives them citizenship, but what does the Indian get?  One hundred and sixty acres of land—­and he as naked as a babe on that land.  He has had no training in education and systematic work of any kind; he has no tools—­and if he had he would not know how to use them.  He is in the midst of white enemies, who want his land.  He has turned his back upon all the traditions of his ancestors.  He has turned his face toward the whites, and his friends of the past are now his enemies.  He is in the midst of his reservation.  His homestead is his own, yet no American citizen has a right there.  If you and I go to teach him, we can be ordered off by the agent; and if we do not go he can put us in prison.