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    The greatest, the most powerful, and the most free nation on the Earth ought to be the most lenient; and at all events towards a race whose naked limbs are exposed to our murderous weapons, and all of whose lands and hunting grounds and mines of gold we are possessing.
    Historians of the old world, who are watching these disgraceful scenes, whilst they are admitting the glory of our growing intelligence and institutions, are putting down in indelible ink, these blots in the pages of our Countrie's history. They have a perfect right to say--"that this band of Government forces, with a Col. Baker at their head, in coldblood, and without the fear of God before their eys, deliberately and wickedly designed to destroy and pillage an Indian village (of a tribe with which the Government was not at war) in the coldest regions of the Rocky Mountains, by stealthily marching upon it in the middle of winter, when its inmates were hemmed in by snowdrifts, and with their wives and children were living on the scanty food laid in for their winter's subsistence; and that then and there in the darkness of night, with sabres and revolvers, they massacred the entire population---destroyed their houses and provisions, and stole 300 horses, of the value of 20,000 dollars.    And they will not forget, nor allow the world to forget, the names of Chivington and Baker; and they will have a right to say, that the murders by Cain, by Pizzarro, and by Traupmann, were not half so bad as theirs---and that the time has come when Fame should change ends with his trumpet, and blow shame! Shame!! through the land, and even to the steps and doors of the Capitol.

My Dear Sir, I wish that my comments could end here; but to your second inquiry, as to the probable extermination of the Indian tribes, there are yet due a few words, and which the perusal? unclear of General Sheridans letter of the 18th Mar. which you have just handed me, enables me more promptly and confidently to add, than I could have done at an earlier period. From his justification in this, of the Piegan butchery, and his dictations foreshadowing other butcheries yet to be made, nothing else than the certainty of contemplated extermination can possible be deducted from it.

    This extraordinary letter, in which the writer says that he has command over more than five thousand miles of frontier and consequently, (as exemplified in the Piegan massacre) the lives of more than 200,000 human beings at his mercy, demands the whole force and application of public scrutiny; and no other man living can so well appreciate and explain its fallacies and its errors, as myself, having been over and through the whole of those frontiers, and been treated with honour and kindness in every tribe of Indians