I wonder not that they should reluctantly yield to inexorable fate, which compelled them to leave their beautiful valley of the Iowa. “_The white man wanted it_,” and they must retreat before the onward march of empire, notwithstanding their nationality and their ownership of the country had been acknowledged by the Government, when it went into treaty-council with them for the lands they held. This was not on the plea of “eminent domain,” but on account of the clamor for more room for the expanding energies of a growing population. “The white man wanted it,” tells the story, as it has been repeated, time after time, since the founding of the Colonies in America. I do not know that, in this instance, any advantage was taken of these Indians, except that advantage which the powerful always have over the weak. But I do know that if they had been allowed a choice, they never would have consented to leave the graves of their fathers. ’Twas easy to say, “It was a fair transaction of selling and buying.” So is it a business transaction when a man buys the lots adjoining your own, and builds high walls on three sides, erects powder magazines and glycerine manufactories, corrupts city councils, and, by means of extra privileges and excessive taxation, compels you to sell your valuable property for a mere song, by saying, “Take my price for your property, or run the risk of being blown up.” Is it a fair “business transaction,” after he has thus forced the trade? What though he does faithfully pay the contract-price? Does it atone for the first moral wrong, in legally forcing the sale? And how much more aggravated the injury becomes, when, through his agents, or his sons, he “legitimately,” under various pretences, permits the unfortunate seller to be robbed, by paying him off in “chips and whetstones,” that he does not desire nor need, so that in the end he is practically defrauded out of his property, and finds himself at the last payment, homeless and penniless. All done, however, under the sanction of law, and in the shade of church-steeples, and with sanctimonious semblance of honesty and justice. The picture is not overdrawn. The illustration is fair, or, if deficient at all, it has bean in excess of advantage to the principal, not the victim. The latter has accepted the situation and suffered the consequences.