And these words are from the official report of the chief of a great bureau in the most important department of our government! Did we know what we were about when we made these treaties? If “no,” we were fools; if “yes,” then we are knaves now to violate them without the consent of the other, the helpless party. “The Indians claim,” says the commissioner, “that they hold their lands by sanctions so solemn that it would be a gross breach of faith on the part of the government to take away any portion of it without their consent, and that consent they propose to withhold.” Still, let us do it, cries the commissioner; “public necessity must ultimately become supreme law.” “Public necessity”—which in this case means private rapacity—“public necessity,” and not truth, good faith, and justice, must rule. Many tribes are living peaceably and doing well, on lands solemnly promised to them for ever, in various parts of the West; the civilized and semi-civilized tribes in the Indian Territory are living peaceably and doing well on lands solemnly promised to them for their own exclusive use for ever, and in some cases bought with their own money. But it would be more convenient for us to have them all together; so let us tear up the treaties, and drive all the Indians into the one territory. From the same report we take this paragraph, which is only one of very many like it: “The Alsea agency, in Oregon, has been abolished, but inadequate appropriations have worked hardship and injustice to the Indians. They are required to leave their homes and cultivated fields” (for no other reason than that white men covet them) “and remove to Siletz, but no means are furnished to defray expense of such removal or to assist in their establishment in their new home.” The Board of Indian Commissioners, in their third annual report (1871), in view of the continued violation of treaties by the government in compelling tribes to remove from the reservations assigned to them, found themselves constrained to say: “The removal of partially civilized tribes already making fair progress and attached to their homes on existing reservations is earnestly deprecated. Where such reservations are thought to be unreasonably large, their owners will themselves see the propriety of selling off the surplus for educational purposes. The government meanwhile owes them the protection of their rights to which it is solemnly pledged by treaty, and which it cannot fail to give without dishonor.” But it _has_ failed to give this protection in numberless instances, and it seems to rest very easily under the stigma of dishonor thus incurred—as, for instance, in the case of the Osages, of whom their agent, in a report dated Oct. 1, 1870, thus speaks: