All the quotations in this book, where the name of the authority is not cited, are from Official Reports of the War Department or the Department of the Interior.
The book gives, as its title indicates, only a sketch, and not a history.
To write in full the history of any one of these Indian communities, of its forced migrations, wars, and miseries, would fill a volume by itself.
The history of the missionary labors of the different churches among the Indians would make another volume. It is the one bright spot on the dark record.
All this I have been forced to leave untouched, in strict adherence to my object, which has been simply to show our causes for national shame in the matter of our treatment of the Indians. It is a shame which the American nation ought not to lie under, for the American people, as a people, are not at heart unjust.
If there be one thing which they believe in more than any other, and mean that every man on this continent shall have, it is "fair play." And as soon as they fairly understand how cruelly it has been denied to the Indian, they will rise up and demand it for him.