Note 65 — Chapter XXX · THE INDIANS OF THE MISSOURI VALLEY.

Gruff old General Harney had his own views upon this treaty business. When Commissioner Cummings came down the river from the council with the Blackfeet, and, having lost his mules at Fort Pierre, besought the General to give him some others to complete his journey with, the General replied: “Yes, Colonel, I have plenty of mules, but you can’t have one; and I only regret that when the Indians got your mules they didn’t get your scalp also. Here all summer I and my men have suffered and boiled to chastise these wretches, while you have been patching up another of your sham treaties to be broken to-morrow and give us more work.”

“It is beyond question that such a system of treaty-making is, of all others, the most unpolitic, whether negotiated with savage or civilized peoples, and ... aside from its effect in encouraging and stimulating breaches of treaties of peace, is always attended with fraud upon the government and upon the Indian.”—General John Pope, Report of August 3, 1864.