An Indian knows nothing about days of grace, protests, insolvency, expansions, and the other technical terms with which Wall Street is familiar.  He can take no explanation of broken promises, especially when those promises are made by individuals who claim to represent the Great Father at Washington.  In this case the Sioux lost all confidence in the agents, who had broken their word from day to day.  Added to the mental annoyance, there was great physical suffering.  The traders at the post would sell nothing without cash payment, and, without money, the Indians were unable to procure what the stores contained in abundance.

The annuities were not paid, and the traders refused to sell on credit.  Some of the Indians were actually starving, and one day they forced their way into a store to obtain food.  Taking possession, they supplied themselves with what they desired.  Among other things, they found whisky, of the worst and most fiery quality.  Once intoxicated, all the bad passions of the savages were let loose.  In their drunken frenzy, the Indians killed one of the traders.  The sight of blood made them furious.  Other white men at the Agency were killed, and thus the contagion spread.

From the Agency the murderers spread through the valley of the St. Peter’s, proclaiming war against the whites.  They made no distinction of age or sex.  The atrocities they committed are among the most fiendish ever recorded.

The outbreak of these troubles was due to the conduct of the agents who were dealing with the Indians.  Knowing, as they should have known, the character of the red man everywhere, and aware that the Sioux were at that time discontented, it was the duty of those agents to treat them with the utmost kindness and generosity.  I do not believe the Indians, when they plundered the store at the Agency, had any design beyond satisfying their hunger.  But with one murder committed, there was no restraint upon their passions.

Many of our transactions with the Indians, in the past twenty years, have not been characterized by the most scrupulous honesty.  The Department of the Interior has an interior history that would not bear investigation.  It is well known that the furnishing of supplies to the Indians often enriches the agents and their political friends.  There is hardly a tribe along our whole frontier that has not been defrauded.  Dishonesty in our Indian Department was notorious during Buchanan’s Administration.  The retirement of Buchanan and his cabinet did not entirely bring this dishonesty to an end.

An officer of the Hudson Bay Company told me, in St. Paul, that it was the strict order of the British Government, enforced in letter and spirit by the Company, to keep full faith with the Indians.  Every stipulation is most scrupulously carried out.  The slightest infringement by a white man upon the rights of the Indians is punished with great severity.  They are furnished with the best qualities of goods, and the quantity never falls below the stipulations.  Consequently the Indian has no cause of complaint, and is kept on the most friendly terms.  This officer said, “A white man can travel from one end to the other of our territory, with no fear of molestation.  It is forty years since any trouble occurred between us and the Indians, while on your side of the line you have frequent difficulties.”