journey to come to us; his presence among us makes me very glad, and with all my heart I wish him welcome to my country. I can understand all the words that the Blackrobe has just said to us; they are good and filled with truth. I shall lay them up in my memory. Still, our hearts are sore, they have received deep wounds. These wounds have yet to be healed. A cruel war has desolated and impoverished our country; the desolating torch of war was not kindled by us; it was the Sioux east of us and the Cheyennes south of us who raised the war first, to revenge themselves for the white man's cruelties and injustice. We have been forced to take part, for we too have been victims of their rapacity and wrongdoing. To-day, when we ride over our plains, we find them spotted here and there with blood; these are not the blood-stains of buffalo and deer killed in the chase, but those of our own comrades or of white men, sacrificed to vengeance. The buffalo, the elk, the antelope, the bighorn and the deer have quitted our immense plains; we hardly find them any more, except at intervals, and always less numerous. May it not be the odor of human blood that puts them to flight? I will say further -against our will, the whites are interlacing our country with their highways of transportation and emigration; they build forts at various points and mount thunders upon them. They
kill our animals, and more than they need. They are cruel to our people, maltreat and massacre them without reason, or for the slightest cause, even when they are searching for food, for animals and roots to nourish their wives and chil dren. They cut down our forests in spite of us, and without paying us their value. They are ruining our land. We are opposed to having these big roads which drive the buffalo away from our country. This soil is ours, and we are determined not to yield an inch of it. Here our fathers were born and are buried. We desire, like them, to live here, and to be buried in this same soil. We have been forced to hate the whites; let them treat us like brothers and the war will cease. Let them stay at home; we will