First, because he is in the greatest need.  There are no people in want whose cry does not at once reach the heart of the American people.  When Chicago was burned, when there was an earthquake in Charleston, when there was a famine in Ireland, public sympathy was immediately awakened, and all that was needed was sent.  The only people who seem to be in need and do not receive help are the aborigines of our soil—­the people whom we have dispossessed; whom we have crowded from their homes; whom we have shut into reservations until they are nothing but prisoners of war; whom we have placed under the control of a despot called an Indian agent, who is not controlled by law, who on that agency governs by his own will, with no courts to protect those who are wronged.  These Indians are shut in on these reservations, kept from all civilizing and Christianizing influences, kept from trade and commerce.  A trader is appointed over them, from whom they must buy everything they need, paying whatever he may ask, to whom they must sell everything that they would sell, taking what he may choose to give.

We have, it is true, a cumbrous system of machinery which is supposed to educate and civilize the Indian, called the Indian Bureau.  Some men have studied it for years, and they fail yet to comprehend it.  I believe it is incomprehensible.  I believe it was never intended to be understood.  Some men ask what it does.  It does little, and largely shows how not to do; and any effort to Christianize and elevate the Indians, so long as the present system remains, will be a failure.  Now, when our philanthropists are endeavoring to lift them up, when our legislators are taking favorable action, this Indian Bureau, through its Assistant Commissioner, issues an order which says that the English language must be the only language taught or spoken in the mission-schools.  The only language the Indian knows is forbidden.  Suppose we were to try to learn a foreign language in that way?  Suppose a Frenchman should come to teach us French, and neither of us spoke a word of English—­how rapid would our progress be?

Thirty barrels of whiskey and one thousand scalping knives were issued not many years ago as civilizing agencies by this department.  An instance given us last night by our friend from across the water, shows that the English circumlocution office is a greyhound compared with our Indian office.  I remember a similar story that Bright Eyes told in Boston some years ago.

She was then a teacher in an Indian school.  She had little children in her school that came some seven, eight, or ten miles barefooted, and winter was coming on, and her heart sympathized with these poor children who came so far to be taught.  They happened to have a good agent, and he said, “Send an order for shoes for these children;” and she sent an order, with a request that they send the shoes, as they were really needed, on account of the frost and