As if to add insult to injury, about this time a commission consisting of Brig.-Gen. A. H. Terry, Hon. A. G. Lawrence and Colonel (now General) Corbin, secretary, was sent to Canada to treat with Sitting Bull, and the malcontents then at Fort Walsh. General Terry recapitulated to them the advantages of being at peace with the United States, the kindly (?) treatment that all surrendered prisoners had received, and said: "The President invites you to come to the boundary of his and your country, and there give up your arms and ammunition, and thence go to the agencies to which he will assign you, and there give up your horses, excepting those which are required for peace purposes. Your arms and horses will then be sold, and with all the money obtained for them cows will be bought and sent to you." The reference to the kindly treatment received by the surrendered prisoners would have been amusing if it had not been pitiful. At that moment there were Indians in the council who had left our reservations solely to escape starvation, and the Indian chiefs knew all about this. The Indians must have been totally without sense of humor if they could have listened to the commissioners without laughing. Sitting Bull's reply, which we can only quote in part, is worthy of being put on record among the notable protests of Indian chiefs against the oppressions of their race. Said he "For sixty-four years you have kept me and my people and treated us bad. What have we done that you should want us to stop? We have done nothing. It is all the people on your side that have started us to do all these depredations. We could not go anywhere else and we took refuge in this country. . . . I would like to know why you came here? In the first place I did not give you the country; but you followed me from one place to another, so I had to leave and come over to this country. . . . You have got ears to hear, and eyes to see, and you see how I live with these people. You see me. Here I am. If you think I am a fool, you are a bigger fool than I am. This house is a medicine-house. You come here to tell us lies, but we don't want to hear them. I don't wish any such language used to me that is to tell me lies in my Great Mother's (Queen Victoria's) house. This country is mine, and I intend to stay here and to raise this country full of grown people. See these people here. We were raised with them [shaking hands with the British officers]. That is enough, so no more. . . . The part of the country you gave me you ran me out of. . . . I wish you to go back and take it easy going back."