Lo! the poor Indian, has absorbed much of the people's attention and vast sums of Uncle Sam's money; and being a participant in the great Sioux war of 1862, what I write deals with facts and not fiction, as we progress from Fort Snelling, Minnesota, to "Camp Release," where we found and released over four hundred white captives. But I will digress for a time and look into the causes leading up to this cruel Sioux war that cost so many lives and so much treasure. There is a great diversity of opinion on this question, and while not particularly in love with the Indian, I have not the temerity to criticise the Almighty because he puts his impress white upon some, and red upon others; neither shall I sit in judgment and say there are no good Indians--except dead ones. The Indian question proper is of too great a magnitude to analyze and treat with intelligence in this little book; but in the abstract, and before we enter upon the active campaign against them, let us look at it and see if the blame does not to a great extent rest more with the government than it does with these people. The Indians came from we know not where--legends have been written and tradition mentions them as among the earliest known possessors of this great western world. The biologist speculates, and it is a matter of grave doubt as to their origin. Certain it is, that as far back as the time of Columbus they were found here, and we read nothing in the early history of the voyages of this wonderful navigator to convince us that the Indians were treacherous;--indeed we would rather incline to the opposite opinion. The racial war began with the conquest of the Spaniards. In their primitive condition, the Indians were possessed of a harmless superstition--they knew no one but of their kind; knew nothing of another world; knew nothing of any other continent in this world. When they discovered the white men and the ships with their sails spread, they looked upon the former as supernatural beings and the ships as great monsters with wings. Civilization and the Indian nature are incompatible and evidences of this were soon apparent. The ways of the Europeans were of course unknown to them. They were innocent of the white man's avaricious propensities and the practice of "give and take" (and generally more take than give) was early inaugurated by the sailors of Columbus and the nefarious practice has been played by a certain class of Americans ever since. Soon their suspicions were aroused and friendly intercourse gave place to wars of extermination. The Indian began to look upon the white man as his natural enemy; fighting ensued; tribes became extinct; territory was ceded, and abandoned. Soon after American Independence had been declared, the Indians became the wards of the nation. The government, instead of treating them as wards and children, has uniformly allowed them to settle their own disputes in their own peculiar and savage way, and has looked upon the bloody feuds among