“This tribe of Indians are richly endowed by nature, physically and morally. A finer-looking body of men, with more grace and dignity, or better intellectual development, could hardly be found on this globe. They were once the most numerous and warlike nation on this continent, with a domain extending from the Gulf to the Missouri River and from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains; but they have been shorn of their territory piece by piece, until at last they have not a settled and undisputed claim to a single foot of earth. It is strictly true that one great cause of their decline has been fidelity to their pledges. More than sixty years ago they pledged themselves by treaty to perpetuate peace with the white man. That promise has been nobly kept—kept in spite of great and continual provocation. White men have committed upon them almost every form of outrage and wrong, unchecked by the government and unpunished. Every aggressive movement of the whites tending to the absorption of their territory has ultimately been legalized.” These Osages are nearly all Catholics, and the agent who thus writes of them is Mr. Isaac T. Gibson, a Quaker, or an “Orthodox Friend.” Would it be believed that three years afterwards the kind and sympathizing Friend Gibson was busily engaged in inflicting upon the people for whose wrongs he was so indignant an injury greater than any they had yet suffered? “Enterprising scoundrels” of whom he wrote in his report had robbed the Osages of everything save their faith; and good Friend Gibson tried to rob them of that. How he set about the task, and how he fared in it, will be told later. If this be not enough, look at the picture of a model Indian reservation drawn by a lawyer of California, and addressed to J. V. Farwell, one of the members of the Board of Indian Commissioners. He is describing the Hoopa Valley reservation: