'In 1858, the chiefs were taken to Washington, and agreed to treaties for the cession of all their reservations north of the Minnesota, for which, as ratified by the Senate, they were to have $166,000; but of this amount they never received a penny until four years afterward, when $15,000, in goods, were sent to the Lower Sioux, and these were deducted out of what was due them under former treaties. The Indians, discovering the fraud, refused to receive them for several weeks, and only consented to take them after the Government had agreed to rectify the matter. _Most of the large amount due under these treaties, went into the pockets of traders, Government officials, and swindlers generally._ 'The Indians were grievously disappointed with their bargains, and from that time the control of affairs passed from the chiefs--who, it was believed, had been bribed--to the young men. They had now nearly disposed of all their lands, and received scarcely anything for them. They were six thousand two hundred in number, and their annuities, when paid in full, were hardly fifteen dollars apiece. 'Their sufferings,' continues Mr. Heard, 'were often severe, especially during the winter and spring previous to the massacres.' Their crops failed them; a heavy fall of snow, late in the season, came to increase their miseries, and delayed the spring hunts. The Sissetons, of Lac Traverse, had to eat their horses and dogs--and at least fifteen hundred of the old men, women, and children had to be supported by the Government at an extra expense; and this was so inadequately done that some died of starvation. The history of these iniquities is no new thing in Indian affairs. It is, from first to last, a record of the most shameless lying and fraud. The Agency seems to have been established there as a sort of Jonathan Wild's shop, for the purpose of carrying on the trade of thieving. What did these storekeepers--who credited the Indians for tobacco and rum, for bread and beef, for clothing, and such other luxuries as they had come to regard as necessaries--care for the winter prospects of the wretched Indians, after they had lined their pockets with that four hundred thousand dollars? Not a dime! And when subsequently it was found that only half the regular Government payment would be handed over to the Indians during the next year, these storekeepers--on the 'Wild' plan--not only refused to give them credit for articles indispensable to life in the wilderness, but insulted them to boot; and this so exasperated the proud, revengeful nature of the Indian, that he remembered it afterward in many a bloody murder which he committed, and the innocent suffered for the guilty!