ho consider them.
To say nothing of the corruption of the Senate which the first item
signifies, if it has any meaning at all, there is the guilty record of
the 'necessary disbursements,' or, in other words, _bribes_, paid to
chiefs for betraying their country and their race. This was a part of
the regular machinery of the Agencies. All their plans were cut and
dried, and they had men to carry them out. They could not stir a peg
without the assent of the chiefs; and when they found a man too noble to
be a traitor, they got the Governor to break him as a chief, and invest
a more pliable, accommodating redskin with his rank and title. Through
the influence of bad men, and by the forging of lying documents, which
the Indians could not read, and which were never interpreted to them
except to cheat them as to their contents and meaning, they have always
managed to get their treaties signed; after which the newly made chiefs
could not so much as take the liberty to beg a pipe of tobacco of them.

As a sample of their infamous dealings, we take the following excerpt
from Mr. Heard's book, page 41:

'In 1857, a trader, pretending that he was getting them to sign a
power of attorney to get back the money which had gone to the
traders under the treaty of 1851 and 1852, obtained their
signatures to vouchers, by which he swindled them out of $12,000.
Shortly after, this trader secured the payment of $4,500 for goods
which he claimed (falsely, it is said) to have been stolen. About
the same time a man in Sioux City was allowed a claim of $5,000 for
horses, which he also alleged to have been stolen.

'In 1858, the chiefs were taken to Washington, and agreed to
treaties for the cession of all their reservations north of the
Minnesota, for which, as ratified by the Senate, they were to have
$166,000; but of this amount they never received a penny until four
years afterward, when $15,000, in goods, were sent to the Lower
Sioux, and these were deducted out of what was due them under
former treaties. The Indians, discovering the fraud, refused to
receive them for several weeks, and only consented to take them
after the Government had agreed to rectify the matter. _Most of the
large amount due under these treaties, went into the pockets of
traders, Government officials, and swindlers generally._

'The Indians were grievously disappointed