"This meeting is to come to an understanding and make a treaty so that each of us will know what to do. The government will give the Indians blankets, flour, bacon and other supplies so that they will have plenty. That they should live in houses and the government will furnish them with carpenters and blacksmiths, and they should live like white people. But they must stay out of the valley of the Platte because it scares the women and children who are travelling over the trail. If the Indians wished to cross the trail they should ask permission of the white people, and they would furnish an escort from the hills on one side of the valley, to the hills on the other side. And that they must keep out spies, and beggars and bad Indians. If it takes more blankets and corn and bacon, these things would be furnished, but the Indians must be kept out of the Platte valley."

This did not appear to please the Indians, and Spotted Tail spoke at some length.

"The Sioux is a great people, but we do not want to be dictated to by the whites. We do not care about the Platte valley, there is no

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HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

game there, our young men, and your people have scared it all away. But we want to come to the Platte valley to trade and we will not give it away. We have let the white man pass over it, and he has gone over it so often that he now thinks he owns it. But it is ours, and it always has been ours. It belonged to our fathers and their graves are along the hills overlooking the valley from the Missouri river to the Rocky mountains, and we will not give it up.