Mandan' told about how in former days they had fought the Chippewas clear up to the Lakes in the east, and now they were being crowded away from the Missouri River; that they owned the land, and they owned the buffalo, and the antelope, and the deer, and the wild ducks, and the geese; and how the white man was pushing them all the time, and killing their cattle, and their birds, and catching their fish, and making it harder all the time for them to get a living. It was the old, old story. During his speech the Indians all sat and looked mutely at the ground. All at once at a passage of the speech they brightened up, and grunted an applause. I said to the interpreter, 'What is that sentence?' He said, 'The Indian coined a new word.' It appears that it is one of the characteristics of the Indian language to run words together; to take a vowel from one and a consonant from another, forming a combination of thought, and boiling it down into a word. And it was the part of an orator to make new words which his hearers could immediately comprehend the meaning of, and it was on this occasion that the Big Mandan had met the dramatic situation by the coining of a new word for the Sioux vocabulary. General Mitchell made a speech, a brief reply sitting in his chair, intending to assuage the sentiment that Big Mandan had raised. Major O'Brien wanted to make a talk but General Mitchell would not allow anybody talk but himself, fearing the matter might break up into something which would resemble a town row. Then another of the Indians got up and went over the story again; how they were a hungry people; how the white brother had everything, and they had nothing; how the white brother had flour and bacon and sugar and everything else in vast quantities more than they wanted, while the Indian had a continual struggle with poverty, and had nothing to eat but dried pumpkin, and buffalo-berries, and jerked meat. General Mitchell replied to this speech by saying that the Government gave them blankets enough and clothing enough, to clothe them for all seasons of the year; that the Government gave them flour, bacon and supplies, which if prudently used would always enable them to have plenty to eat; that the Government desired them to live in houses, and had offered them carpenters and blacksmiths, and to teach them how to build houses; and how to become civilized and live like the whites, but they would not do it, and that their troubles arose from their perversity and want of thought.
Then another of the Indian orators got up, and began to talk about the white people sending whisky into their villages, and cheating them out of their beaver-skins, and the mink and otter and muskrats, and buffalo-robes, and how the Indians were getting fewer and poorer all the time from the 'drunk-water' which the white man sent out. To this General Mitchell replied that there were bad white men as well as bad Indians; that the white man put chains on those who sold whisky to Indians, and kept them in confinement, when they could be caught; that such white men were bad white men; that the Indians ought to kill them on sight when they brought whisky into their village; that the difficulty with the Indians was they wanted the white man to bring the whisky in, and would not punish him; that they wanted the whisky, and therefore they were complaining of themselves, and not of the white men.
And so it went speech after speech, General Mitchell always replying to every speech. He had thought it all up, and I must say he beat the Indian in their controversy. He told the Indians that they had no right to claim all of the land. He told them that the good Manitou, who put us all on earth, intended that each one should have his share of the earth, and the Indians had no right to take ten times as much land per head as they allowed the white people. And he pointed out that the white people had to live all penned up and in discomfort, so that the Indian could have ten times the amount of land that he ought to have, and kill the buffalo which belonged to everybody on the earth alike, but which the Indians claimed the entire ownership of. And that the Indian had kept the white man back and the latter was so crowded that if the lands which the white man had were divided, each white man would have only a small piece, so small that an Indian could shoot an arrow across it while the Indian had land he could not see over.
The manner of discussion was that the Indian would speak a sentence, and then the interpreter would interpret it. Then the Indian would speak another sentence, and that would be interpreted. When the General spoke, his speech was put into the Sioux language, and the man behind the General was there as overseer to see that 'Snell' translated it correctly, and several times the overseer interfered to have the translation explained, the great object being to have the true idea which each one brought forth, presented to the other. The debate ran on, and the pipe was relit and passed around several times during the silences which ensued. Silences of five to ten minutes ensued after each of General Mitchell's speeches, Then the pipe would go around with the same formality. Spotted Tail, sitting quietly, said: 'Why are we here? Why has the white brother asked us to come?' Then General Mitchell said: 'The object of this meeting is to have an understanding, and make a treaty, so each will know what he ought to do. We want you Sioux to stay off from the Platte Valley. You can come down hills on the edge of the valley while you are hunting but you must not come down into the valley, for it scares the women and children that are living in the houses in the valley. If you wish to cross the road, and go north or south of the river, you must send in word during the daytime to one of the posts, and then you will be escorted across the valley from the hills on one side to the hills on the other, and then you can go where you will. But you mustn't come down in the valley or allow spies, beggars, or bad Indians to come down into the valley. You must restrain your bad men; we will hold you responsible; this is an ultimatum. This we insist upon your doing. If it takes more to feed you, if it takes more bacon or blankets and corn, we will give you more, but you must stay out of the Platte Valley.'
This speech of General Mitchell's seemed to nettle them all. Shan-tag-a-lisk was their greatest warrior, but he was not much of a talker. Their principal orator was the Big Mandan, but Shan-tag-a-lisk got up with his blanket on, and his arms folded across his breast, and began talking in a low, hesitating tone. He said: 'The Sioux nation is a great people, and we do not wish to be dictated to by the whites or anybody else. We do not care particularly about the Platte valley, because there is no game in it. Your young men and your freighters have driven all the game out or killed it, so we find nothing in the Platte valley. But we want to come and trade in the Platte valley wherever we please. We want places where we can sell our beaver-skins and our buffalo-robes. The Platte valley is ours, and we do not intend to give it away. We have let the white man have it so that he could pass, but he has gone over it so often now that he claims it and thinks he owns it. But it is still ours, and always has been ours. It belonged to our forefathers, and their graves are along the hills overlooking the valley from the Missouri river to the mountains, and we do not expect to give it up. We are not afraid of the white man, nor are we afraid to fight him. We have not had in late years any very serious difficulties with the white men. Trouble has been brought about by 'drunk-water.' Bad whites have given it to bad Indians, and they have got both of us into trouble. The donations which the white men have been giving us are not sufficient; they are not adequate for the concessions which we have made. The goods that were brought us at Woc-co-pom'-any agency were neither as good as had been promised us, nor were they in amount as had been promised us. The Great Father through his army officers makes us great promises, but the agents, who are not army officers, cheat us, and do not carry out the treaty obligations. Last fall at the Woc-co- pom'-any agency, when the agent asked us to sign for our goods, we would not sign, because they were not what they should be in value or amount, and one of the army officers who was there told us not to sign, and he swore at the agent, and told him he was a thief, and was cheating us. The army officers treat us well enough, but those who are not officers cheat us when they can, and we do not want to deal with any but the army officers. Besides this, we will not give up the Platte valley to you until we have a regular treaty, and until we have all agreed to it, and have been paid for it. It will soon be that you will want other roads to the west. If we give you this you will want another, and if we give you that you will want a third. Before we will agree to anything you must stop the surveyors that are going west at this very time on the river Niobrara. All of these things must be considered before we will make a treaty.'
Then General Mitchell asked if anyone present knew about the Niobrara, and some one of the party spoke and said that a surveying party was going west up the Niobrara with an escort. The Niobrara river was a river running west from the Missouri river parallel with the Platte, and about a hundred miles north of where we then were. Spotted Tail said that the Niobrara river went through their good country, and that they would resist the white man putting a road through, and that unless the work was stopped they were going to drive off or kill the expedition. And he also said that he wanted the road out on the Smoky Hill closed up, because it went through their best buffalo country. And he further said that they would not for the present carry out the wishes of General Mitchell until their demands were agreed to. The speech of Shan-tag-a-lisk wound up with a regular bluff, and it made General Mitchell a little angry; he got up, and told the Indians that he was not there to coax them, but was there to tell them what to do. That he would stop the survey up on the Niobrara river until there was another conference; that the Smoky Hill route was a route, much used, and was necessary for the white man, and it would not be closed. And he wound up by saying that if the Sioux did not keep away from the Platte river he would station a soldier to every blade of grass from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains. This counter 'bluff' on the part of General Mitchell brought Spotted Tail immediately to his feet. He got up and said that the Sioux nation was not afraid of the white people;
