then; but I would as soon as I got some, for I had a little money coming to me from the military government.
The military authority is the only authority that ever paid me well for my interpreting. Their pay to interpreters is from sixty-five dollars to seventy-five dollars, and the lowest is sixty dollars per month. For this pay one could live. All the agents pay to interpreters is from thirty dollars to forty dollars. One has to live out of this money, and there is nothing left.
I always had to pay sixty dollars a month for my board (or fifteen dollars a week) when I was working for an agent. When I was working for the government they gave me my rations, the same as they did to the soldiers. My last appointment was given me at Washington in 1879. It was to be very small pay. I wrote to the Secretary of the interior (Mr. Schurz), telling him I could not pay my board with that; but he never answered my letter, and so it stands that way to this day, and I never got a cent of it. But their pet, Reinhard, without an Indian on the reservation, could be paid three or four years. I have worked all the time among my people, and never been paid for my work. At last my military money came. I told Father Wilbur I wanted to go back to see my people. At first he said I could not go; he stood a minute, and then said,—
“Well, Sarah, I can’t keep you if you want to go. Who is to talk for your people?”
I said, “Brother Lee can talk well enough.”
Then he said, “You can go after the camp-meeting is over.”
Now commenced our meetings every day. I went and got all the little children and came with them myself, and sat down, and then went into the pulpit and interpreted the sermon to my people. Right here, my dear reader, you
