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            Telegram
   [[circled]] 99 [[/circled]]
        To the President of 
         the United States
Was it by your authority that the men you sent to take us down to the Indian Territory, to select a home, left us there without money or interpreter, or pass to find our way back as best we could; and did you tell him to say to us "if you don't select a home here, you shall be driven from your present home at the point of the bayonet."?  Please answer, as we are in trouble.
We have been thirty days in getting back as far as the Otoes, tired hungry, shoeless, and footsore, and with hearts and spirits broken and sad.
Chiefs of the Ponca Indians 
       (over