Then the reservations have been such only in name. The Black Hills territory belonged to the Dakotas only a few years ago. You remember the story. Reports of mineral wealth reached the outside world. Emigration commenced. But that country had been set apart by treaty to the Dakotas. “Yet,” say Felix R. Brunot, “every step from the moment of making that peace with the Indians, has been in the direction of depriving them of the very land which the Peace Commission gave them.” Though there were wealth in the Black Hills, our nation should have said, and stood by the declaration—“Gentlemen, that Black Hills country belongs to the Indians. If those mountains were built of solid gold, and those river beds were paved with diamonds, not one of you should be allowed there, unless in honorable trade you had purchased the right.” But adventurers crowded in, and, because they had white skins, the sacred covenants of the nation were broken. What wonder that when the land was assigned them they eagerly asked, “How long will it be that the President will keep his promise?” Why should they be loyal to the Government? The Rev. Mr. Sherrill, of Omaha, writing in the _Advance_, says, “The commonly accepted report is, that when Commissioner Hayt visited Spotted Tail on the Upper Missouri, and attempted to misinterpret his promise to the tribe, Spot shook the written document with Mr. Hayt’s name at the foot of it in the Commissioner’s face, called him a ‘bald-headed liar,’ and walked out of the tent indignantly refusing to have anything more to do with such a forked tongue.” The reservation system has not secured to the Indians permanent homes; it has not preserved them from molestation; it has not improved them either morally or physically; it has not relieved the Government of care or expense; from beginning to end, it has been a stupendous fraud and failure.