e will not want much now. Give us back just one
mountain, so that these women and children may live. Take all
the valleys. But you cannot plow the mountains. Give us back
just one little mountain, with cool, clear water, and then these
children can live."

And think of Standing Bear and his people, taken by fraud and force from
their lands to the Indian Territory Reservation, and after the usual
hardships and wrongs incident to such removals, with no hope from a
Government which neither kept its promises nor listened to their
appeals, setting out to try to get back to Omaha. Think of these men,
stealing away in the night, leaving their little children, their wives
and parents, prostrate, dying, destitute! They were told that they could
not leave--that they must stay there; that they would be followed and
shot if they attempted to go away. They had no money; they had no food.
They were sick and faint. They were on foot, and but poorly clad. Yet
they struggled on through the snow day after day, week after week,
leaving a bloody trail where they passed; leaving their dead in the snow
where they passed. And this awful journey lasted for more than fifty
days! And what happened to these poor Indians after that fearful
journey? They did not go to the white man for help. They did not go back
to their old homes. They troubled no one. They went to a neighboring
friendly tribe. This tribe gave them a little land, and they instantly
went to work to make homes and prepare a place for the few of their
number still alive whom they had left behind. Then came the order from
Washington, and the Chief was arrested while plowing in the field. In a
speech made by him after the arrest, and when he was about to be taken
back, the Chief said:

"I wanted to go back to my old place north. I wanted to save
myself and my tribe. I built a good stable. I raised cattle and
hogs and all kinds of stock. I broke land. All these things I
lost by some bad man. Any one knows to take a man from a cold
climate and put him in the hot sun, down in the south, it would
kill him. We refused to go down there. We afterwards went down
to see our friends, and see how they liked it. Brothers, I come
home now. I took my brothers and friends and came back here. We
went to work. I had hold of the handles of my plow. Eight days
ago I was at work on my farm, which the Omahas gave me. I had
sowed some spring whea