Shakespeare will not eclipse in the realm of thought for all time. Incredulous as to modern invention and discovery, he was enthusiastic over the lost arts and charmed with ancient literature and doubtful legends. The world generally was awry; society retrogressive, with exceptional persons reflecting man in the morning of creation for whom he yet avowed nobility.

Thousands will remember him for matchless description of the race fresh from the hands of the Creator. We listened to a genius and preacher who had found a theme worthy of his great powers. You saw all the elements in nature under law upheld for man; the ark floating; the tragedy on Calvary; the stars going out and the sun turned to darkness only when the last born of the benighted had entered on an endless career of fruition. He ejaculated with deep emotion, "Poor man, look up; proud rebel, kneel; scorning infidel, hush, or be damned!" His personal appearance of uncleanliness was a real case of hydrophobia in a figure without the violent spasms. An apology that clothes did not make the man did. not meet the demand of society for comeliness. A brain that bulged with combativeness gave little control to a tongue when set on fire, endangering in turn his friends and everyone whom he encountered. Personal following he had little, and could be quoted for brilliancy rather than for safe counsel. Without a great purpose, he was floating without pilot or rudder to an uncertain harbor.

The theme of immortality in a sermon thirty years agone by Dean left impressions yet vivid, and moves to pity that education was denied in discipline to such noble elementary forces. It excites wonder that an Ishmaelite career should develop the rarest fruits of generous culture, an historian of ability, a gifted orator, most pathetic in appeal and sublime in imagery, ranking him the peer of rhetoricians and a master of assemblies. Apart from his accomplishments so well known in Iowa, I do not close without noting those redeeming virtues not to be obscured by political offenses. His verbal promise carried the value of a bond.

Concluding these words on Iowa personages and friends, I have a presentiment; it is that no more of faint praise or warm admiration will fall from my pen. For the fallen by the way I could only offer a laurel sprig prepared by affection, and for the living few actors and thousands more humble, but not less worthy patriots, soldiers with stars and scars, Christians valiant, a sigh.

Xerxes at the head of his army, crossing the Hellespont into Greece, was seen to shed tears in thought that in one hundred years not one of the braves would be alive. Far less is my limit of allotted years, and that of comrades, but my grief will be assuaged in hope that we are all not to be forgotten by the children sporting on the grass, which may be green over the mounds where our ashes repose. If there be no inscription to tell where we fell, may be a record of deeds to ally us with a heroic age, counsels and blood which will long survive our departure.

there

CHAPTER XVII.

Indians- The Sacs and Foxes in Iowa- The Friend of the Indians, John L. Davenport - Indians and the Cattle Husbandry - The True Policy of the Nation toward its Wards.

SINCE my entrance into public life, I have been interested in the peculiar phases of the Indian problem. I find that our American policy has wanted advocates bold to suggest and rigorous to perform. The national cost for protection on the frontier has been so great that it would have been economy for the government to have maintained the various tribes at academic halls and first-class hotels, rather than to incur the expense of wasted annuities and of soldiers in sufficient numbers to protect against the "braves" on the war path. Meantime frontiersmen have maintained that "the only good Indian was a dead one", and Eastern philanthropy has asserted that fraudulent treaties and bad faith were sins "crying to heaven." With an eastern birth and education and a western residence, I cannot coincide with either party, believing that a radical policy of government will remove the scandals of the past, and elevate the living remnants of barbarism in the scale of humanity, to become aids to a higher civilization. It is within the memory of residents of Iowa that all its soil was claimed by some twenty or more ambitious tribes. These are reduced by extinction and emigration to the remnants of one tribe, the Sacs and Foxes.

THE SACS AND FOX INDIANS.

At Grinnell, from the college telescope tower, you can see the smoke from the wigwams of these Indians twenty miles north-east, by the Iowa River. They number about four hundred, and are truly an object lesson near home, cognate to history, which confers slight honor on their neighbors, the pale faces. I do not judge the whites harshly. The Indians have been held the wards of the

nation, to whom they entrusted under treaty stipulations their money, which draws five per cent. interest and aggregates from $13,000 to $15,000 annually.

I knew them only by roving hunting bands up to 1856, when I was a senatorial condidate, and it was rumored that he who would shelter black runaway slaves would favor the Indians, petitioning the state to remain here on their old hunting grounds. To this charge I made no answer, and on investigation became their friend. By an interpreter it was learned that after their removal to a reservation west of the Missouri River, a tribal war broke out which threatened the extermination of the weaker party. Their only way of escape was to old haunts on the Iowa River, near which are ancient mounds marking the burial place of ancestors. One of their good friends, during the session of the legislature at Iowa City, brought me a petition from many of their neighbors, my constituents, asking permission for them to remain in the state while peaceful. This was endorsed by Governor Grimes as humane. Then followed the passage of a law which allowed them to remain in Iowa while peaceful, and to become owners in fee of lands which they have since owned, above one thousand acres. From my interest in their welfare, as they passed, painted and forlorn, not in compliment they were called "Grinnell's Indians", and their intrusion by calls for food at my house was varied by a fire set in the street and whoops and war dances for my home entertainment. These professions of regard I improved by calling out "shame", when I met the braves riding ponies and the squaws on foot. Then they were made to know that a condition of my friendship and an effort to secure the payment of annuities in Iowa, was that they would send their children to school; only responded to by scowls and a deep ugh! ugh! I called on them one pleasant afternoon autumn feast-day, and on the mention of school, the bucks hied away one by one in the bushes, leaving my entertainment to the squaws. The children I could no more fondle than their wild game; yet they were in line, objects of maternal solicitude, first by hasty washing, followed by head-clearing devices-a most disgusting episode in a show of celerity in destruction of vermin, most commendable, yet cutting short as fruitless my educational call on the dusky tribe.

They were poor, morose, frequent beggars, and became intoxicated whenever a white whiskey dealer was sordid and base

enough to dare sell the fire-water. Their annuities were withheld to compel their return to Nebraska, which I deemed great injustice, and while in Congress made futile attempts for a remedy. Success came at last by a plan which, however devoid of the marks of high statesmanship, was useful in an emergency where precedent becomes tyranny and red tape the sign of a man lapsed into an official machine. There is an Indian appropriation bill before each Congress with the sanction of commissioner and Indian affairs committee, which is considered in committee of the whole. That was my place for hearing by amendment under a five-minute rule, and trial was vain while Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the house and chairman of the committee, was in opposition.

To him I made an appeal in behalf of my Indians. "The case," he said, "I know is strong, but we have a unanimous report, and are pledged to the bill." I replied, "Suppose you are not present when my amendment is offered." "That is another view. Duties don't clash, and I wish without dereliction I might serve poor people, or encourage in good faith what has been so often here voted down." "I will take care of that if you will allow me"; which remark met with a friendly response.

The right person I found, to send at a proper time his card to Mr. Stevens, asking for a few minutes, and in his absence, on reading the "Sacs and Fox's appropriation" item, I offered this amendment

"Provided, that the portion of the tribe now residing in Tama county, Iowa, shall, during their good behavior and residence in Iowa, with the consent of that state, be paid at their present homes annuity pro rata."

It was opposed as an innovation, yet the call for Mr. Stevens was futile, and amidst shouts, "It's just! who cares if the Indians get it?" etc., the amendment was adopted without tellers or division. Thus after the lapse of near twenty-five years, I am not aware that this disbursement of money in Iowa, nor the ethics of my device in capturing the head of the committee, have been called in question.

What now of the Indians? They were proprietors of the soil, with money, school-house, teachers and agents furnished, taking liberties denied white men; building grove camp fires, hunting and fishing at all seasons; beyond contact with savage tribes, in the sound of church bells, enjoying the example and comities