army report[1] issued before he was retired from the service in California, and which he sent to me after I arrived in Boston, wrote an urgent appeal to the government to do justice to these my suffering people, who had been snatched from their homes against their wills.
Among the letters from the officers, in the Army Report, are two or three from Father Wilbur. He says he should be much relieved if the Piutes were not on his reservation. They have been the cause of much labor and anxiety to him. Yet he does all he can to prevent their going away. What can be the meaning of this? Is it not plain that they are a source of riches to him? He starves them and sells their supplies. He does not say much against me, but he does say that if my influence was removed my people would be contented there. This is as untrue as it was in Reinhard to say they would not stay on the Malheur Reservation. While I was in Vancouver, President Hayes and his wife came there, and I went to see them. I spoke to him as I had done in Washington to the Secretary, and said to him, "You are a husband and father, and you know how you would suffer to be separated from your wife and children by force, as my people still are, husbands from wives, parents from children, notwithstanding Secretary Schurz's order." Mrs. Hayes cried all the time I was talking, and he said, "I will see about it." But nothing was ever done that I ever heard of.
Finding it impossible to do any thing for my people I did not return to Yakima, but after I left Vancouver Barracks I went to my sister in Montana. After my marriage to Mr. Hopkins I visited my people once more at Pyramid Lake Reservation, and they urged me again to come to the East and talk for them, and so I have come.
- ↑ Oct. 14, 1882. See Appendix.
