The Government in 1868 made a new treaty with the Sioux, and settled them upon reservations in Dakota, which included 96,000 acres of land belonging to the Poncas, one of the most peaceable of all the Indian tribes, who had held and had been dwelling upon this land ever since they were known as a tribe—held it, too, as an absolute grant from the United States, under a guaranty of peaceable possession during good behavior. Without their knowledge or consent, as also without a shadow of complaint against them as a tribe, their reservation was set apart and given into possession of the Sioux. Failing to gain their consent to a removal, the Government forced them, without compensation, for their homes and fields, or other losses, to abandon their own and settle upon a reservation in the Indian Territory, where the climate was to them inhospitable. As a result of this, their numbers have been greatly diminished, they have become discouraged and disheartened, and are making no progress toward self-support. This alienation of their lands was an acknowledged blunder, due to ignorance of boundaries on the part of Congress; but their arbitrary and cruel ejectment from their homes, without charge of crime, and in violation of most solemn pledges, is more than a blunder; it is an act of high-handed injustice and robbery. The bill reported by Senator Dawes, of the Senate Select Committee, to investigate their removal, requires the Secretary of the Interior to return the Poncas without delay to their Dakota reservation, and provides that their title to the same shall be deemed valid, anything in the Sioux treaty to the contrary notwithstanding. It also requires the Secretary of the Interior to restore to the Poncas “use and enjoyment in the same condition, as nearly as may be, when left by them, all houses and other improvements and personal property belonging to the tribe when removed from Dakota, and for all the foregoing purposes provides an appropriation of $50,000.” The minority report proposed simply to compensate them for losses sustained by removal, but hints at no remedy for the wrongs they have suffered in this removal. And now Congress has adjourned without action of any kind for their relief, and they are left to brood over their wrongs, and mature such plans of revenge as suggest themselves to savage minds.