No. 222.
Mr. Evarts
to Sir Edward Thornton.
Washington, May 27, 1879.
Sir: Referring to the correspondence which has been exchanged between us in relation to the movements of the lately hostile Indians under the lead of Sitting Bull, I have now the honor to bring to your attention the substance of recent information received through the responsible agents of the Department of the Interior, and to invite earnest consideration of the important points thereby suggested.
This government has been informed that companies of hostile Indians from Sitting Bull’s camp have been and are scattered about, in groups of lodges of varying numbers, throughout the entire northern part of the Indian reservation having Fort Peck, on the Poplar River, in Montana Territory, for its headquarters and agency. The peaceable resident Indians of the reservation have daily come into the agency with bitter complaints of the encroachments of Sitting Ball’s men on their special hunting grounds. They say that they find Uncapapas from Sitting Bull’s camp everywhere, driving and scattering the buffalo and other game, and stealing their horses and running them over the boundary line, thus in every way diminishing the ability and opportunity of the agency Indians to maintain themselves. There is every reason to believe that Sitting Bull himself was, so late as the 19th ultimo, within the territory of the United States, and had been camped south of the boundary line since February last, and that practically all his Indians had crossed to the southward of our northern boundary, there being, as they claimed, no game for their subsistence on the Canadian side. This state of things naturally gives rise to disquietude, notwithstanding the later information communicated to me by you in a recent conference, that Sitting Bull and his chief lodges of warriors were at last advices again on British territory.
It is true that these wandering movements of an irreconcilable and declaredly unfriendly Indian force from one side to the other of the frontier, do not indicate any determinate purpose, or any disposition even, on their part to abandon a residence under British protection, or to renew the state of warfare with the Government of the United States, whose active hostilities were only arrested by the refuge sought and afforded on the soil of a neighboring state. Yet the situation now existing on both sides of the border cannot but be regarded as one requiring the most urgent and careful attention of both governments, lest by uncertainty as to the precise scope and definition of their obligations towards each other, and indecision in their treatment of the Indians domiciled within their jurisdiction, undue and unnecessary difficulties may grow out of the present attitude of these tribes which have, in the most formal manner possible to their savage state, renounced their rights in the one country and rejected terms of security, subsistence, and peace to seek and receive asylum and residence in the other.
Should these erratic movements continue, this government may at any moment be brought face to face with the necessity of suppressing the marauding operations of the hostile Indians under Sitting Bull’s lead, or even of resorting to active military operations to repel open attacks upon the lives and property of its own people.
It has, as it conceives, a perfect right to regard as a menace to domestic peace and tranquility the presence within its borders of a warlike [Page 497] body of disaffected Indians, who have explicitly defied its jurisdiction and by their own act embraced the protection of another power. It may be that, in the interest of the security and well being of both friendly Indians and white natives in the border-land, this government may feel constrained to enforce submission upon those who, after openly denying its laws and power, and withdrawing themselves therefrom, may return within its jurisdiction, with or without apparent hostile intent. Should this government decide to compel a submission of any of these Indians appearing on the southern side of the frontier line, it would look upon a new recourse for asylum across the line as calling for prompt and efficient action by the British Government to repulse them, or to disarm, disable, and sequestrate them under a due responsibility for them as a component part of the territorial population of the British-American dominion.
The importance of a distinct understanding on this point is apparent. It is impossible to give countenance to any line of argument or assumption by which these savages may quit and resume allegiance and protection at will, by the mere circumstance of passing to the one side or the other of a conventional line traced through the wilderness. Before the era of hostilities began they were undoubtedly subject to the jurisdiction of the United States as much as the land they then occupied, and even though their migrations in peaceable search of food might, at times, carry them temporarily across the frontier, they were, therefore, none the less a part of the population of the United States, and alien to British rule. But when hostilities began, and the armed force of the United States was summoned to enforce their submission, they sought and received asylum and protection across the border. The significance of their acts of submission to British protection, as they themselves understood and intended them, admits of no doubt as to the extent of their intention to assume the character of inhabitants of British domain, and their belief that they had done so; and no act of Her Majesty’s authorities in the North American possessions of Great Britain has looked toward denial of this rudely asserted right to British protection, and still less toward enforcement upon them of submission to the authority of the United States, or of subjecting them to the treatment usually observed toward revolted aliens on the territory of a friendly power.
In this aspect of their relations to the British Government, this government conceives that it is bound now to regard the Indians of Sitting Bull’s command as British Indians. Should they therefore make incursions of a hostile character, and should their movements threaten the property, the domain, or the means of subsistence of the friendly Indian tribes of the United States, dwelling peaceably on their assigned reservations, or should active military operations on the part of the United States against them become for any cause inevitable, I beg to call the attention of Her Majesty’s Government to the gravity of the situation which may thus be produced, and to express a confident hope that Her Majesty’s Government will recognize the importance of being prepared on the frontier with a sufficient force either to compel their surrender to our forces as prisoners of war, or to disarm and disable them from further hostilities, and subject them to such constraints of surveillance and subjection as will preclude any farther disturbance of the peace on the frontier.
I have, &c.,