A horse was stolen from my father last spring. He knows who stole the horse, and he knows the white man who has the horse now. He asked the agent to help him get it back. The agent was as powerless as he was, and told me that the best way to do would be for my father to steal it back. Two Crows, one of the most intelligent men I ever knew whether white or red, and who has been the lifetime friend of our family, has had stolen from him during the last three years, fourteen working horses. He said that as fast as he could collect money enough together to buy new ones to work his farm with they were stolen from him. (Why don't the Indian become civilized when he has such a safe inclosure [sic] provided for him?) I once said to him and several others when they woke up and found several of their horses gone, "Why don't you pursue them, fight them, and get your horses back? That is the way the white people do." He said: "Because we have made a treaty of peace with the United States, and if we did that they would construe it into a declaration of war, and treat us accordingly. Because they do wrong is no reason why we should." The Sioux tribe, the wildest and most war-like of the Indians, have had above a thousand horses stolen from them the past year. When they, instead of going to war, had recourse to the courts, they were refused the protection of the law. When General Crook stood by and saw the white men selling the ponies which they had stolen from the Indians he could do nothing to stop it, although he tried. As to our lives being protected, a white man can kill an Indian any time and they are powerless to redress the wrong. If they retaliate and kill a white man in revenge for the deed, the troops are sent and war made on the tribe.

Bright Eyes 1881

Women Writers Resource Project
Beck Center
Emory University