The Americans are expecting another and a serious Indian War.
The Indian Department, or rather its agents, have for years past treated the Indians infamously, driving them into reservations too small for hunting tribes, allowing white men to annex farms in those reservations, and permitting con- tractors to embezzle the blankets, guns, and even food promised to the Indians under various treaties of submission. The exasperated savages listen, therefore, readily to preachers who tell them to resist, and are now full of the idea that a messenger specially commissioned from on high is about to appear in North Dakota, and lead them to a general massacre of the whites, which will be followed by the restoration of their own former sovereignty in America. One tribe of the region has in consequence formally renounced Christianity, many have given up cultivation, and all are believed to be ready for a sanguinary war. As the Sioux alone, who are the centre of the movement, number 33,000, and the total number of Indians in the Union exceeds 300,000, the insurrection may be attended with much bloodshed, though there is, of course, no prospect of the Indians even temporarily asserting their independence. They will be hemmed in by the troops and converging masses of volunteers, defeated, dis- armed, and left on narrowed reservations to starve or work, like Americans, at their own discretion. The white men, in truth, do not wish them to continue in existence.
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