You have read more than one account in the previous pages of great uprisings and conspiracies on the part of the Indians of our country. Some of them threatened large sections, and at times many cities and towns were imperilled by these plottings and border wars. It seems hard, therefore, to believe that the closing years of the nineteenth century saw the gravest danger of that nature through which we have ever passed. Yet such is the fact. An uprising might have been started by the discharge of a single gun, or the rash act of one private soldier, and once kindled, it would have swept like a cyclone from Canada to Mexico, causing the deaths of thousands and the loss of millions of dollars worth of property. It need not be repeated that the cause of this fearful state of affairs was the injustice of white men and the shameless treatment of the Indians by our government. It is not necessary to give particulars, but I will illustrate the fact by a single incident, which is a type of scores of others. [Illustration: BUFFALO BILL] It once became certain that an agent at one of the Sioux agencies had swindled the Indians and our government to the extent of eighty thousand dollars. The offence was so flagrant that a committee was sent from Washington to look into the matter. A friend of the agent notified him of his danger. He bribed one of his interpreters to meet the committee at a point where they had to take a stage to ride to the agency. This cunning fellow did so without a hint of his purpose. It did not take him long to make friends with the visitors. They were pleased to learn that he was familiar with Indian affairs, and still more pleased to find that he could speak the Sioux tongue. They proposed that he should act as interpreter. He agreed, and the bargain was closed by the payment to him of fifty dollars. The man carried out his contract with his dishonest employer. The Indians poured their grievance into his ears and he listened gravely, nodding his head as if in sympathy. Then turning to the waiting members of the committee, he changed those complaints into praise of the faithful labors of the thieving agent. He took care that his face did not betray the truth to either party. The committee, little dreaming of the trick, went back to Washington, wondering how the unjust reports had been spread concerning the model employé of the government.