"The iron horse brought from the East men and women and children, who took the land from the Indians and drove out the game. They built fires, and the fires spread and burned the prairie grass on which the buffalo fed. Also it destroyed the pasturage for the ponies of the Indians. Soon the friends of the first White Men came and took more land. Then cities arose and always the White Man's lands were extended and the Indians pushed farther and farther away from the country that the Great Father had given them and that had always been theirs. "When treaties were broken and the Indians trespassed on the rights of the White Man, my chiefs and I were always here to adjust the White Man's wrongs. "When treaties were broken and the Indians' rights were infringed, no one could find the white chiefs. They were somewhere back toward the rising sun. There was no one to give us justice. New chiefs of the White Men came to supplant the old chiefs. They knew nothing of our wrongs and laughed at us. "When the Sioux left Minnesota and went beyond the Big Muddy the white chiefs promised them they would never again be disturbed. Then they followed us across the river, and when we asked for lands they gave us each a prairie chicken's flight four ways (a hundred and sixty acres); this they gave us, who once had all the land there was, and whose habit is to roam as far as a horse can carry us and then continue our journey till we have had our fill of wandering. "We are not as many as the White Man. But we know that this land is our land. And while we live and can fight, we will fight for it. If the White Man does not want us to fight, why does he take our land? If we come and build our lodges on the White Man's land, the White Man drives us away or kills us. Have we not the same right as the White Man?" The forfeiture of the Black Hills and unwise reduction of rations kept alive the Indian discontent. When, in 1889, Congress passed a law dividing the Sioux reservation into many smaller ones so as to isolate the different tribes of the Dakota nation a treaty was offered them. This provided payment for the ponies captured or destroyed in the war of 1876 and certain other concessions, in return for which the Indians were to cede about half their land, or eleven million acres, which was to be opened up for settlement. The treaty was submitted to the Indians for a vote. They came in from the woods and the plains to vote on it, and it was carried by a very narrow majority, many of the Indians insisting that they had been coerced by their necessities into casting favorable ballots. Congress delayed and postponed the fulfillment of the promised conditions, and the Indian unrest increased as the months went by. Even after the land had been taken over and settled up, Congress did not pass the appropriation that was necessary before the Indians could get their money.