Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/208

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204
Life Among the Piutes.

Bannocks that are with them. Oh, Major! if you knew what I have promised my people, you would leave nothing undone but what you would try not to have them sent away. Oh, Major! my people will never believe me again.”

“Well, Sarah, I will do all I can. I will write to the President and see what he thinks about it. I will tell him all you have said about your people.”

I was crying. He told me to keep up a good heart, and he would do all he could for me.

I went home and told Mattie all, and she said, “Well, sister, we cannot help it if the white people won’t keep their word. We can’t help it. We have to work for them and if they get our people not to love us, by telling what is not true to them, what can we do? It is they, not us.”

I said, “Our people won’t think so because they will never know that it was they who told the lie. Oh! I know all our people will say we are working against them and are getting money for all this.”

In the evening Mattie and I took a walk down to their camp. There they were so happy; singing here, singing there and everywhere. I thought to myself, “My poor, poor people, you will be happy to-day; to-morrow or next week your happiness will be turned to weeping.” Oh, how sad I was for them! I could not sleep at night, for the sad thing that had come.

At last one evening I was sent for by the commanding officer. Oh! how can I tell it? My poor heart stood still. I said to Mattie, “Mattie, I wish this was my last day in this cruel world.”

I came to myself and I said, “No, Mattie, I don’t mean the world. I mean the cruel,—yes, the cruel, wicked, white people, who are going to drive us to some foreign country, away from our own. Mattie, I feel so badly I