of the State of Ohio; and any one who is at all acquainted with the Indian question, is aware that no peace with the Indians can be worth anything if it does not comprehend the Sioux, who are the most numerous of all the tribes with which we have had to treat down to this day, and the most warlike as well, and the one that has had the most to complain of on the part of the whites. The treaty signed by all the principal chiefs now needs only the sanction of the Senate to become a law.
I am persuaded that it is the most complete and the wisest of all the treaties thus far concluded with the Indians of this country. Without going into details, by the provisions of this treaty the Indians are to be abundantly provided with victuals, clothing and agricultural and mechanical implements. No money payments have been stipulated, as unfortunately money excites the covetousness of more than one and often converts commissioners, governors of territories, superintendents, agents and traders into a band of thieves. Without doubt the fulfillment of the provisions of this treaty will assure peace with the Sioux. The importance of this result will be understood, if it is considered that a distinguished general [Sherman] stated, last fall, that a war undertaken with the object of exterminating the Indians of the plains (and he thought it would have to come to that extremity) would cost the country $500,000,000. I will say in passing that this method of pacification seems to me altogether too much like violence. The same general, at the time of the Rebellion, said that not less than 2oo,ooo men would be required to bring Kentucky and Tennessee back to their duty; his words seemed at the time to be wild, but later events showed the contrary.
But it is time to close this long letter. Whatever may be the result of the treaty which the commission has just concluded with the Sioux, we can never forget nor shall we ever cease to admire, the disinterested devotion of the Reverend Father De Smet, who, at the age of sixty-eight years, did not hesitate, in the midst of the heat of summer,