When the Dutch had succeeded in cheating the natives out of Manhattan Island for about $24 worth of fish hooks and beads, and were busy cheating and robbing them of their furs by getting them drunk, a young red man from whom they had stolen his beautiful beaver-skin robe, retaliated. In the struggle the white man got the worst of it. Then the little officious governor who then had charge, decided to inflict a reprimand upon the poor red people who sometimes offered protest at being constantly cheated, abused and enslaved for the benefit of a few selfish arrogant Dutchmen. We have the testimony of white witnesses,--one of which is quoted here:
"About midnight I heard a great shrieking where I was staying at the governor's house. I ran to the ramparts of the fort and looked toward Pavonia. I saw nothing but firing and heard the shrieks of the Indians being murdered in their sleep. I returned again to the house by the fire. There came an Indian with his squaw whom I knew well; he told me they had fled in a small skiff, and had come to seek safety for the Indians of Fort Orange had attacked them. I told them to go away immediately--that it was not the Indians that attacked them, but it was the Dutch. When daylight came the soldiers returned to the fort. They had massacred 80 Indians in their sleep.

Infants were torn from their mother's breasts and hacked to pieces in the presence of their parents. Other sucklings were tied to small boards and then struck and cut, and pierced in a manner to move a heart of stone. Some came by our lands in the country with their hands and some with their feet cut off,--and some holding their entrails in the arms, and some with such horrible cuts and gashes, that worse could not happen."

Governor Keift took each soldier by the hand and thanked them for the great work they had done.

Thus began the settlements along the seaboard that aroused hostility from the original owners and possessors of the great country we call America. It was the beginning of a series of similar massacres on one side or the other that lasted for nearly three hundred years,--the last one being that of Wounded Knee in 1890 when our soldiers shot down two hundred and twenty-five harmless and helpless men, women and little children with machine guns. On the third day after, when the piles of dead bodies were being collected for burial, two babes were found nestling at their dead mothers' breasts. One died shortly from the extreme cold and exposure of the two days and nights of below-zero weather the bodies had lain out. The other is still alive so far as we know now.

The story is a sorrowful one indeed, when we follow the records down through the centuries. It is a tale of selfishness and greed, trickery and deceit, rum and ruin, constantly practiced by the whites,--and there is no violence attributed to the red men that was not first chargeable to the whites.

And graft, corruption and cruelty exists today as it has existed through the centuries,--more secret and subtle of course but none the less cruel in results. In the U.S. Court of Claims is the biggest law suit ever filed. It is for seven hundred millions of dollars due from the United States to the Sioux Tribes. It represents only the actual money and interest due for lands purchased and not paid for; and supplies and food stores and equipment promised and not furnished, and similar items agreed by solemn treaty to be delivered to them and through indifference or intent, allowed to lapse or repudiated.

The last of the old time chiefs, Flying Hawk, of that great nation visited at the Wigwam a few days ago. Although a rich Indian in fact,--because of failure to receive his proper rights and simple justice, he came wearing a cast-off coat and hat that our common laborer would despise to don,--and he was sick from trying to make a living,--and from lack of proper rest and food.

The doctor ordered him to the hospital,--but remembering that his old friend and brother, Chief Iron Tail died under exactly similar conditions, he refused. He preferred to die among his own people, and I put him on the trail that leads to the Happy Hunting Ground in the Black Hills where he was born 76 years ago.

During the evening as he sat on the broad veranda, where he could have fresh air that he so much wanted and needed,--the old man told the story of his life, as chief and leader of his warriors before the days of the wars with the white man's soldiers. Born in the full moon of March 1852 in the valley not far from Deadwood, he was one of thirteen sons and daughters of Black Fox and Iron Cedar Woman (and her sister.--2 wives). The famous Kicking Bear was his brother and his mother's sister was the wife of Sitting Bull. Crazy Horse was his cousin, who being the leader in the Custer fight, the old chief was willing to talk about, and as together they were in the lead throughout that historic battle, about which little authentic data is known, a full and complete account was secured from him which was later transcribed, approved and signed with his thumb print to make it official.

From it in plain English we get this:
It was to him a simple fight,--similar to many he had experienced before with the armies of the United States--it was merely swift retribution for continued persecution and an unfair and cowardly attack upon innocent women and children,--their wives and little ones. He said it was their country, and they only wanted to be let alone. In this they were right,--it was their hunting ground, and they had been encroached upon by Whites who broke every solemn treaty ever made with them. And so they assembled on the Little Big Horn where there was yet game for subsistence and pasture for their ponies. There they hoped to live in peace away from their tormentors. Here they had made their villages and were contented and happy.