Rocky Mountains. As you go west of this line, you are in a more rough and broken country, ribbed with mountains and interspersed with valleys and mesas or plateaux.

Question. The troops are not much used in Idaho, Arizona, and Utah ?

Answer. They have been actively used in Arizona; cannot say as to Idaho and Utah.

Question. The bulk of the troublesome Indians are the Sioux, and those fellows in Texas?

Answer. They have got certain agencies established where they feed more or less of the Sioux, Kiowas, Comanches, and Apaches, all considered hostile.

Question. You would prefer infantry to cavalry?

Answer. We must have both; but if it is a question of reduction and expense, as stated, I would say cut off two regiments of cavalry; but, as I said, I think our Army is none too large for the duties imposed upon it, and for the interests of the country in either arm of the service. Question. If it is to be decreased, would it not be more economical to cut down organizations than merely to dispense with a certain number of men?

Answer. If you reduce the number of organizations you cut off the officers and men, and you cut off certain expenses. By cutting off organizations you reduce the expenses probably more than if you cut off the same number of officers and men by taking them out of their regiments.

Question. In other words, you say that to muster out officers and men together is more economical than to muster out the men alone?

Answer. I say that by stopping recruiting and diminishing the number of men, you save less than by cutting off the same number by whole organizations.

Question. Have you made any estimate, or can you make any estimate, showing what would be effected by cutting off, say one-fifth, one-fourth, or one-third of the officers and men together, staff and line, and rank and file?

Answer. The estimate would involve the pay of the troops, rations, quarters, clothing, camp-equipage, and many incidental expenses of the service; that is something so circumstantial or incidental that I cannot state an estimate. You can probably get from the records in the bureaus in Washington the average cost, for a number of years, of an enlisted man in the service, and of an officer of a certain grade, but the data are so variable that there is no fixed quantity as to the saving.

Question. State whether any portion of the staff of the Army can be decreased; and, if so, what?

Answer. So far as I know, I do not think that it cau, with propriety or for the interests of the service. If you require certain duties to be done, you must have certain officers to do them. We have now a large number of line-officers on staff-duty, because we have not got staff-officers enough to do the duty. In the medical department there are a good many hired physicians, because we have not got surgeons and assistant surgeons sufficient. In the pay department we have not enough of officers, because their labors are increased by the wide distribution of the troops, and it is hard service. The officers of the pay department are traveling much of the time in order to discharge their duties, and in some sections of the country, and in some periods of the year, the position is no sinecure. The danger and the hardships of travel are very

great. The inspectors and paymasters do more traveling than any other class of officers in the service, I believe.

Question. Have you ever inspected the expenditures made about the headquarters of divisions and departments?

Answer. Generally we were not ordered to inspect there.

Question. Have you ever done it?

Answer. No, sir; while attached to such headquarters.

Question. Can you state what changes or modifications can be made in the management of the quarters for Army officers, or in the headquarters of Army officers, that may save money to the Government?

Answer. I do not see how you can fix it any more definitely than you have it now. The law, or regulations, prescribes exactly what each room shall cost, where the Government has no quarters, and prescribes the number of rooms the officers of each grade are entitled to as quarters, and for officers.

Question. Do you understand a fair construction of that law to be that an officer can occupy one room and get pay for three or four, if he is entitled to so many?

Answer. Officers generally cannot get along with one room.

Question. I am supposing a case. Suppose that an officer occupies only one room, and he is entitled to be paid for two or three rooms more?

Answer. If it is a special case, where an officer can have, for a limited time, but one room, the question is whether you should have special legislation for that case.

Question. Suppose that an officer who is entitled by the rules to three rooms occupies but one room; is he allowed pay for the three? Answer. He may hire a room that will cost more than three rooms; for instance, two good rooms in New York they ask $35 to $50 a week

for.

Question. How many rooms, for instance, are you entitled to?
Answer. Five, including kitchen.

Question. At what rent?

Answer. Eighteen dollars a month for each room; that makes $90 a month.

Question. Can you, under any fair construction of the law, use only two rooms and draw rent for five? In other words, does the Government propose to furnish officers with quarters in kind and not in money?

Answer. I think in kind. When the law was passed changing the pay of the Army, it contained a proviso that existing laws and regulations with reference to allowances for quarters in kind should be continued. Those existing rules and regulations allowed an officer a certain number of rooms, according to his grade. The price of these rooms was fixed according to the location, being supposed to be regulated by the prices of living. Officers generally prefer to have quarters furnished to them, because it is less expensive for them. If the Government hired quarters, it would cost more, probably, than the price now allowed.

Question. If any officer who is entitled to five rooms hires but one room, he gets $90 a month-the same as if he had five rooms hired?

Answer. He is entitled to so much quarters. Some officers live in hotels, and I do not know how you can say what number of rooms they have. They use exclusively and partially several rooms.

Question. The simple point I want to arrive at is whether an officer who is entitled to five rooms, and occupies only one, gets $90 a month ?

Answer. He gets whatever he is entitled to, whether one room, two rooms, or more.

Question. Now suppose that he lives in a Sibley tent?

Answer. He gets no rooms when in camp.

Question. Would he be entitled to rent for rooms if he occupied his own house?

Answer. He would be entitled to his rooms, certainly. I presume that there are officers in this city owning their houses. Question. The question is, what the practice is?

Answer. The officer selects his own apartments, and the quartermas ter hires the rooms and pays for them. He pays the party who owns or claims to own them, or who is the agent for them. He does not pay

the officer himself.

Question. The practice is to pay to these persons the equivalent of so many rooms as the officer is entitled to under the law and orders? Answer. Certainly, sir; that is, what is hired for him.

Question. You have had occasion to inspect accounts of that kind and know that to be the practice of the Army?

Answer. That is the practice so far as I know; the officers selecting their quarters and the quartermaster paying the rent authorized.

By Mr. THORNBURGH :

Question. Suppose an officer is entitled to $90 a month for quarters, and only actually expends $45 a month, or any other sum under $90; is he entitled to receive the full amount for all the rooms that he is entitled to have under the regulations? Is that the construction given to the law?

Answer. I suppose he can draw the full amount for quarters hired. The rule is that he is entitled to a room and he gets it. He selects his rooms, or he has his own house, and he gets his allowance of rooms in kind.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Question. To whom is the money paid if the officer occupies his own house?

Answer. He will probably have an agent.

Question. Why not have the money paid to himself directly?

Answer. Because there is a regulation or law to the effect that it is not to be paid to the officer.

Question. But whoever pays to a man's agent pays to himself? Answer. Certainly; it is as long as it is broad. But if money shall not be paid to the officer by law, but to his agent, it conforms to the regulations and to the law.

Question. Then the practice of the Army is that if a man has a house of his own and lives in it he is entitled to have paid to his agent the equivalent for the number of rooms which he is authorized to occupy under the law?

Answer. Yes, sir; I understand so. Of course, what he gets from the Government does not always cover the expense of the house. Question. You inspect accounts of this kind?

Answer. I inspect accounts, but I do not in such cases know who the agent is. Here, for instance, are the accounts for a number of officers. The quartermaster has the vouchers for rent of rooms in the name of Smith and Jones and others. I do not know them. If the voucher is in due form I have no reason to suspect that anything is wrong. I have no knowledge who this Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones is. In some cases I may know who he is; in most cases I do not know. This rent is a part of

the officer's compensation for quarters. Here, for instance, is an officer in a hotel paying his $10 a day; he probably has a parlor and a bedroom; he has the use of other rooms-dining-room, kitchen, &c. The question is, how many rooms does he occupy ?

By Mr. THORNBURGH :

Question. When an officer has a house of his own, his agent is entitled to be paid for all the rooms that he is entitled to have under the law?

Answer. He draws rent only for the number of rooms that he is entitled to have, according to his rank, I suppose.

By Mr. ALBRIGHT:

Question. What is the character of the troops at the posts you inspected? Have they or not a demoralizing influence on the Indians?

Answer. My experience as to the influence of the troops upon the Indians generally is that it has been the reverse of demoralizing. The Indians have more respect for, and they trust further in the troops, than in any other people they have anything to do with. They have repeatedly asked, and have almost demanded, that they shall have officers of the Army for their agents. They say, (of the soldiers:) "You punish us when you are ordered to, but when you are not fighting us you are our friends; and you never cheat us, but give us what the Government sends us." That has been the case for years and years— for over twenty years of more or less experience among the Indians. As to any demoralizing influence exercised by the troops upon the Indians, if there is any charge or accusation of the kind, I think there is no truth in it, except that you may find an exceptional case, where something has been done that you may call demoralizing or improper. If such be the case a little investigation will perhaps show more bad results from other sources.

By Mr. MACDOUGALL:

Question. In your judgment, could the War Department manage Indian affairs with more economy than the Interior Department does? Answer. I should say decidedly yes. That is one of the principal places where you can effect a reduction of expenses with not only equal but greater success in the protection of the Indians, of the whites, and of the country.

Question. State your reasons for that opinion.

Auswer. In the first place, you would save the expense of a great many agents, superintendents, or inspectors who are now paid. In managing Indians you must have a physical force; not that you want to exercise it always, but its presence has a moral effect. You want to have responsibility fixed, not divided. Place the management of the Indians in one department and there is no division of responsibility. Where now you employ a great many civilians to discharge certain duties connected with the Indians, you can dispense with some of them, and those duties can be performed by officers and men of the Army without adding much expense to the Government. I will assert, that by the transfer of the Indians to the War Department, the Indians will be better satisfied; they will get what the Government sends them, and they will get it at much less expense. With regard to schools, religious education, &c., I also assert that, under the War Department, the Indians will, or can, have as much assistance and as much instruction as they have under the present system. There is no disposition that I know of among Army officers to prevent that. It is a mistake to sup

pose that the officers of the Army want to keep the Indians in a barbarous condition and to fight them. It is the most disagreeable duty that they have to perform, and they are as anxious as any class of the people that the Indians should be made self-supporting and peaceable. When the Indians have been deceived, and swindled, and goaded into violence, then the troops are called on to settle the difficulties. They are abused if they do not prevent murders and robberies, and they are abused if, when called upon, they punish and repress them.

By Mr. GUNCKEL :

Question. Would this be practicable if your recommendation was carried out, posts abandoned, and the troops concentrated?

Answer. Yes, sir. My idea is that you should have one large post in the district, or near the district, where these Indians live, and that all the trading should be done at or near this post, under the control of the military authorities; that whatever the Government sends to the Indians should be faithfully delivered to them; that the Indians should be under military control; that they should be furnished with everything promised them, and that, if they did what they are forbidden to do, they should be brought to punishment. You can make the Indians themselves in a short time aid in that. The Navajoes have now a hundred men (uniformed) as a police force, of their own tribe, for the purpose of suppressing depredations and arresting thieves.

Question. One object of the Indian Bureau is to teach the Indians industrious habits, farming, mechanics, &c. Do you think that the Army can carry out that policy?

General DAVIS. Do you know how this industry is taught and prac ticed?

Mr. GUNCKEL. I should be glad to have you tell us.

Answer. It is oftentimes theoretical, very little practical. Where it is practical it is done by hired persons, the Indians doing very little, sometimes doing a little and sometimes doing nothing at all, excepting what the squaws may do. If the Government wishes to furnish the Indians with some farmers and mechanics, it will cost the Government no more when the system is changed, and the Indians are under the War Department, than it does now. And with regard to the instruction of the Indians, I have been informed by men who have lived at Indian agencies that the schools which are reported as being in a very successful condition really amount to little or nothing. They will at times have a feast and get a large number of children to come in, and then they report a large attendance, whereas the usual attendance is very small. The children are irregular, coming at odd times, so that they really learn little or nothing. Take an Indian child, and he may be taught more by example than by precept; he may be taught the ways of the whites, to dress, and live, and work a little; and you may bring Indian children up so as to be industrious and self-supporting. But the most you can expect of the older Indians is to control them, to prevent them doing damage, and to protect them in their rights. I had an Indian boy whom I took in California when he was quite young, probably four years old. I taught him his letters in a short time; brought him East and put him to school. He learned to read and write, and was an excellent boy, quite a bright boy, but unfortunately he died, during the war, of pneumonia. That boy, however, had unusual advantages; he was at school in Boston and other places. These Indian children must be under a certain control in order to teach them anything. A boy who comes to school, stays for a day or two, and then