After several others had spoken, and the Indians seemed about to leave the room, the interpreter was directed to ask the following questions: "Shall I say to the President that you refuse the offers that he has made to you? Are we to understand that you refuse those offers?" Sitting Bull answered: "I could tell you more, but that is all I have to tell. If we told you more, you would not pay any attention to it. This part of the country does not belong to your people. You belong to the other side, this side belongs to us." Thus the conference closed. The Indians positively refused to give up all their weapons, to exchange their horses for cows and the priceless privilege of being shut up upon reservations, off which they could not go without being pursued, arrested and brought back by troops. Sitting Bull did not believe the cows would materialize if his people gave up their horses. He had long since lost faith in the Government which, as he expressed it, "had made fifty-two treaties with the Sioux and kept none of them." It was also in this connection that the great Indian leader made his famous reply: "Tell them at Washington if they have one man who speaks the truth to send him to me, and I will listen to what he has to say." The country originally owned and occupied by the Sioux extended many miles beyond the Canadian boundary line. Hence they had claims to territory in both countries, but their lot at this period was indeed sad. Those bands on our side were for the most part confined to reservations where, by reason of crop failure and the other causes already given, they were threatened with starvation. Those malcontent Indians under Sitting Bull, on the Canadian side, enjoyed liberty, but they had little else. The Canadian Government would give them protection but no supplies. And now the buffalo, on which they depended mainly for subsistence, was being gradually exterminated or driven off. Besides the commission appointed by the Government at least two enterprising Chicago papers sent reporters all the way to Canada to interview the Indian sphinx of the Northwest. These interviews took place at Fort Walsh, in the presence of Major Walsh, who seems to have been a prime favorite with Sitting Bull and all his followers. In the first one, it is stated: