we are also willing to give 160 acres of land as their own, to keep as long as they live."

The writer of this letter, quoting the statement from a previous article in The Tribune, that the White River Utes, in thcir attack on Major Thornburgh's coummand, fought "to defend their own landslauds bought, owned, and paid for," asks:

Bought of whom, pray ? Paid for by whom? To whom was payment made?"

Bought" of the United States Government, thereby recogniz- ing the United States Government's right to e the sovereignty of the soil" as superior to the Indians' "right of occupancy,"

"Paid for by the Ute Indians, by repeated relinquishments" of said "right of accupancy" in large tracts of valuable lands; notably by the "relinquishment," according to the Brunot Trcaty of 1873, of 4,000,000 acres of valuable lands, " unquestionably ricl in mineral dcposits."-Annual Report of the Seeretary of the Inte- rior for 1873, p. 464

To whom was payment made?"

To the United States Government, which has accepted and rat ified such exchanges of right of occupancy" for "right of sov ereignty," and such sales of right of occupancy" for large sums of money by repeated and reiterated treatics.

The Secretary of the Interior has incorporated in his Annual Report for 1879 (in the report on Indian Afairs, p. 86) the following paragraphs

Let it be fully understood that the Ute Indians haye a good and suflicicnt title to 13,000,000 acres of land in Colorado, and that these Indians did not thrust themselves iu the way of the white people, but that they were originally and rightfully pos sessors of the soil, and tliat the land they occupy has been ac knowledged to be theirs by solemn treatics made with them by the United States

"It will not do to say that a treaty with an Indian means nothing. It means even more than the pledge of the Govern to pay bond It is the most solemn declaration that en any government of any pcople ever enters into. Ncither will it do to say that treaties never ought to have been made with Indians. That question is now not in order, as the treaties bave been made, and nust be lived up to whether eonvenient or other- wise.

"By beginning at the ontset with the full acknowledgment of the absolute and indefcasible right of these Indiaus to 12,000,000