But to return to the indictment. We have _forced the Indians to break the law_ by placing them under conditions in which it was not possible for them to obey the law and live. This can be proven by the records of many of the Indian reservations when we have attempted to shut them in on lands where starvation was inevitable. Of my own knowledge I can speak of a reservation on which some 1,700 Indians were commanded to remain where there was barely food for a grasshopper, and where in the month of September the little children begged the passer for food, and the dogs were the picture of famine. We have debauched their women. Remember that an Indian has no standing in our courts, and it is easy to see what contact with the whites means to him and his family. He has no redress when his home is violated; and the knowledge of his helplessness makes him the prey of every libertine, until on the distant plains the proximity of a Government post is a sign of his misery. (General Carrington construed this remark to apply to army officers, and corrected it publicly. That was not its intent. The officers of the army are gentlemen. The fort brings into the neighborhood of the Indians and offers more or less of shelter to many men of a very different stamp.) We have not stopped short of _murder_. The record is a long and bloody one. The details of the Custer massacre are still fresh in your minds. The nation stood still and lifted up its hands in horror at the disaster which in a moment had annihilated every man of a large detachment of U.S. troops, not sparing their noble and brilliant leader. But where was the real “Custer massacre”? Go back to 1868, to where, under the shadow of Fort Cobb, on land assigned to them by the United States, stood a small Indian village. Its chief was Black Kettle, a man whose name was a by-word among his fellows for cowardice, because he could not be induced to fight the whites—a man of whom Gen. Harney said, “I have worn the uniform of the United States for fifty-five years; I knew Black Kettle well; he was as good a friend of the white man as I am.” He had been to the commandant of the post seeking protection for himself and his people, because troops were in the neighborhood. Four days afterwards Gen. Custer surrounded that village, and although the Indians fought with desperation, not a man, woman or child escaped alive. Gen. Custer doubtless believed he had fallen upon a hostile camp. Was the mistake any the less terrible? Was the butchery any the less shocking? The blood of innocent Indians on the Wischita cried unto God, and the answer came in the deluge of blood on the Rosebud. * * * * But you ask, has this been the history of our other Indian wars?