squaw men, a crowd among whom all sorts of sinister influences and brute force were at work. Commissioners with such a business in hand have the devil to fight, and can fight him, so it often seems, only with fire, and many friends of the Indians think that in this case the commission, convinced that the acceptance of the bill was essential, carried persuasion to the verge of intimidation. I do not blame them if they sometimes did. The wit and patience of an angel would fail often in such a task. But the requisite number, three-fourths of the Indians, signed the bill, and expectation of rich and prompt rewards ran high. The Indians understand little of the complex forms and delays of our government. Six months passed, and nothing came. Three months more, and nothing came. A bill was drawn up in the Senate under General Crook’s eye and passed, providing for the fulfillment of the promises of the commission, but it was pigeon-holed in the House. But in the midst of the winter’s pinching cold the Indians learned that the transaction had been declared complete and half of their land proclaimed as thrown open to the whites. Surveys were not promptly made; perhaps they could not be, and no one knew what land was theirs and what was not. The very earth seemed sliding from beneath their feet. Other misfortunes seemed to be crowding on them. On some reserves their rations were being reduced, and lasted, even when carefully husbanded, but one-half the period for which they were issued. (The amount of beef _bought_ for the Indians is not a fair criterion of the amount he _receives_. A steer will lose 200 pounds or more of its flesh during the course of the winter.) In the summer of 1889 all the people on the Pine Ridge reserve, men, women, and children, were called in from their farms to the agency to treat with the commissioners and were kept there a whole month, and, on returning to their homes, found that their cattle had broken into their fields and trampled down or eaten up all their crops. This was true in a degree elsewhere. In 1890 the crops, which promised splendidly early in July, failed entirely later, because of a severe drought. The people were often hungry, and, the physicians in many cases said, died when taken sick, not so much from disease as for want of food. (This is doubtless true of all the poor—the poor in our cities and the poor settlers in the west.)