“I call on the sun to witness that I will talk straight,” said Satanta. “My tongue is not forked. It cannot tell lies. I understand that you were coming down to see us. My heart is glad and I shall hide nothing from you. I have moved away from those Indians who want war, and I have come also to see you and speak with you. The Kiowas and the Comanches are not those who have been fighting. The Cheyennes are the ones who fight. They fight in the day, and not in the night. If I had been fighting, I would have fought by day, too. Two years ago I made peace with your chiefs, Harney, Sanborn and Leavenworth, at the mouth of the Little Arkansas. This peace I have never broken. I have not done anything and I am not afraid. I am ready to listen to good words. We have been waiting a long time to see you, and we were getting tired. All the land south of the Arkansas belongs to the Kiowas and Comanches, and I don’t want to give any of it away. I love the land and the buffalo, and will not part with it. When your soldiers come through the land, they kill many buffalo and let them lie. Is the white man a child, that he should recklessly kill and not eat? When the red men kill game, they do so that they may live and not starve. I want you to understand well what I say. Put it on paper. Let the Great Father at Washington see it, and let me know what he says. I hear a great deal of good talk from the teachers that the Great Father sends to us, but they never do what they say they will do. I don’t want any of the medicine lodges (schools and churches) in my country. I want my children raised as I was. We thank you for your presents. We know you are doing the best you can. I and my head men also will do the best we can. You are all big chiefs. When you are in the country we go to sleep happy and are not afraid. I have heard that you intend to settle us on a reservation. I don’t want to settle,” and Satanta’s voice was high. “I love to roam the prairies. There I feel free and happy, but when we settle down we grow pale and die. I have laid aside my lance and shield and bow, because I feel safe in your presence. I have told you the truth. I have no little lies hid about me, but I don’t know how it is with you. Are you as clear as I am? A long time ago all this land belonged to our fathers. Now when I go beside the river I see camps of soldiers on its banks. These soldiers cut down my timber; they kill my buffalo; and when I see that, my heart feels like bursting. As I came here to-day, upon the trail I picked up a little switch that had been torn up and thrown away. It hurt me to see this. I thought, if this little twig had been allowed to grow, it would have made a mighty tree, to shelter my people and supply them with shade and wood. The white men destroyed it.” Satanta here made a wide gesture. “But as I look around over the prairie I see that it is large and good, and I do not want it stained with the blood of the whites. If the treaty brings to