would overrun the reservation in a short time, for they have already overrun two-thirds of it, and have gotten legislation for it.

Mr. ALBRIGHT. Take things as they are there, what do you believe would be the effect on those Indians if the troops were withdrawn? Mr. SHANKS. The result to the Indians would be bad, because it would let these white men in on them. There are bad men there. Mr. ALBRIGHT. The Indians would be ousted?

Mr. SHANKS. Yes. They have been already overrun by these men so far as to have the stock driven close to the agency. The stock cannot be pastured at any distance from the agency even on the public lands. Mr. ALBRIGHT. Your idea is, then, that the military is necessary to protect the Indians from the depredations of the whites?

Mr. SHANKS. Yes; the most good that military power has done that I know of is to prevent encroachment on the reservations. The demand of the white persons is that the Indians should go on reservations, and then, when they are there, their demand is that the reservations may be given up and go to the white people. This is particularly applicable at Colville and Camp Wright and Lapway. At Colville the military force is not on the reservation now and the Indians are not on the reservation. The military itself is of no account there. It is demoralized. Except a young lieutenant named Hoag there is not a military officer there who should be on duty.

Mr. MACDOUGALL. Was a report of that state of things made to the Government?

Mr. SHANKS. There was an inspecting officer there a few days before I was, and I have learned since that Dr. Higgins has been removed. I suppose that was for the benefit of the service there.

Mr. GUNCKEL. What are your views as to the expediency of transferring the Indian Bureau from the Interior Department to the War Department?

Mr. SHANKS. I think it would be bad.

Mr. GUNCKEL. Will you give your reasons?

Mr. SHANKS. I intimated my reasons a little while ago. The time is past when Indians in this country can make their living by hunting. There is but one other way for them to make it, and that is by labor. The military authorities will never teach them to labor in any systematic mode of farming, or to economize their time and their means. If we hope at any time to train these people to make their own living, we will have to do it in one or two ways, either by raising stock, or else by farming, or by both, which would be so much the better. There are none of these employments which the military can teach them. The military organization is not in that way, not for that purpose. Then, again, young men are sent out to these posts. It seems to be necessary that they should be, and that older and more experienced men should not be placed at these distant posts. The posts are put in the hands of young men, who are inexperienced, not in their own affairs, but at least inexperienced in all that goes to make up the welfare of a people just coming out of the savage state. It is not part of their training, and while they are clever gentlemen in their own places, yet they are not the persons to take care of these Indians and to teach them to make their living by labor. If the Indians are left in the hands of the military they will be paupers as long as time. That is what I think about it. It is not because of the fault of the military, but because of the fault of the system-the incompatibility of the two businesses. As to the saving to the Government by the transfer, I do not think there will be anything saved by it. I think that the expense of the Indiaus, when the military had charge of them,

was quite as heavy and the results quite as bad as when they are under the Indian Bureau.

The CHAIRMAN. State whether or not it is your opinion that hostilities would be less likely to break out if the military power was present among the Indians, or whether the fact that it was there would give opportunities for violent men to bring about hostilities.

Mr. SHANKS. With some military men it would; that that would be true of the majority of them I do not know; I would not like to say that. But the fact that the Indians would be directed by the soldiers, and the soldiers continually associated with the Indians, would work badly. It would continue that aimless life that now so much injures their progress. It would be especially bad among their women. Some of the strongest appeals I ever heard I heard from these Indians, in regard to the way in which white men treated their women. I never heard more urgent appeals in my life-appeals like those that come from children. I think that this matter, in a brief time, will assume a different shape. I believe that the Indian policy, in a few years, will be selfsustaining. I know that if it can be managed as an individual manages his own business, it can be made self-sustaining in less than three years. But it is utterly impossible to do that when you have to employ men at such a distance from the employer and when the employer's eye cannot watch over them.

The CHAIRMAN. How can it be done?

Mr. SHANKS. These Indians will work on reservations if they are employed and paid. At the reservation at Round Valley the work is done by Indians, with the single exceptions of the gardener and the farmer. Outside of these the Indians were doing the work. I saw as many as twenty or thirty in the fields plowing corn, hauling in hay, gathering up cattle in the morning, yoking them up, and working just as white men. But that the Indian Department, or any other Department, can manage that thing in a brief time is utterly impossible, because it cannot keep its eyes upon its employés. The Indians complain very much, in every place I went, that they were not taught. My understanding had been before that the Indians were not willing to lean; but that is not what they say. They say they want to learn. At Nez Percés and some other places the Indians claimed that the employés of the Indian Department did not want to teach them, because if they did the employés would have nothing to do themselves. The agents at some agencies informed me that there was an indisposition on the part of some of the employés to work at any other employment than that particular one for which they were especially hired by the terms of the contract; and the agents all agree that they have trouble in getting white men on reservations such as they want, because a white man can do better in business in the country than he can at the wages which the Government pays. Consequently the agents have to take an inferior set of hands. But that by putting Indians on reservations, they can be made self-sustaining is reasonable, I am perfectly satisfied. The Indians are growing better every day, because the game is growing scarcer every day and necessity is pressing them, and, as Mr. Smith has said truthfully, so long as the Government feeds them without regard to anything else, they will continue to be paupers.

Mr. NESMITH. What is the condition of these agricultural reservations?

Mr. SHANKS. At Colville they are raising some very fine wheat. I should think the Nez Percés are raising enough for their own subsistance, and others are joining in the production of grain very well.

Mr. MACDOUGALL. You spoke of the complaints of the Indians about their women; is that in relation to soldiers and officers?

Mr. SHANKS. No; I would not want to say that. It is a class of bad white men, nearly always drinking men-worthless to society.

Mr. MACDOUGALL. You heard no complaints as to soldiers and officers?

Mr. SHANKS. I heard some as to officers and soldiers; and at Colville there were complaints by white citizens condemning the associations of Captain Myers; that he kept near him a man named Sherwood, who lived with a squaw, and others whom the Indians condemned, and sentries were placed before his house as if to prevent people noticing what was taking place. The Indian mode of marriage is just an association, a voluntary cohabitation. They do not have the idea of matrimony and its results as we have. So, when a white man proposes to live with an Indian woman, she understands that she is married, but he does not understand that he is married at all, and consequently he leaves her at his pleasure, and it is this thing which the Indians complain of.

Mr. YOUNG. The Army is not to blame for that.

Mr. SHANKS. Not at all. But I say that to throw the soldiers among them, and to leave them the direction of the Indians, would produce that result, and then they would be more so than now.

Mr. YOUNG. Did you ever hear of the Indians being swindled in their trade by the agents?

The

Mr. SHANKS. I did not at the places where I was last summer. agents whom I saw were Mr. Burchard in California, Mr. Monteith at Nez Percés, Mr. Mills at Colville, and Mr. Reed at Fort Hall, and some others. The Indians express their increased confidence in the new policy.

Mr. YOUNG. How do you explain the fact of all these Indians getting armed with the best arms?

Mr. SHANKS. I cannot answer that question. I was not among the hostile Indians. The Indians with whom I was had small arms, which they used in hunting, but they are an inferior set of arms. I saw a great many of those Hudson Bay muskets there. Except among the Sioux, I do not know any place where the Indians can make anything by hunting. Between the time that they cease to make a living by hunting and the time that they begin to make a living by labor is a very serious time with them and a very expensive time for us.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you make arrangements with them as to their going to work?

Mr. SHANKS. I did with the Shoshones and Bannacks. They agreed not to roam at all, but to go to work; and I agreed that, when they do commence farming, they shall have a small house built and a cow furnished for every head of a family. There was a good deal of talk at the Nez Percés reservation about some fraudulent transaction by which money was taken from them some years ago; and so it was with other Indians whom I was among the summer before last. But these things are getting in better shape now. There is a proposition to collect the Indians from about 434,000 square miles of territory that now furnishes nine agencies. They can be reduced to four. It will take a little means to take care of them after getting them together. It will not take much to get them together. One of these agencies is at Fort Hall, one at Uinta, one in Southeastern Nevada, and one other in the Northwest. The CHAIRMAN. State what facts you know or have heard in regard

to the number of those Indians who are furnished with food, &c., by the Government.

Mr. SHANKS. I do not think that the number of Indians in the country which I was in comes within one-third of what they are estimated at. Major Powell has made a very careful investigation of this matter by going personally among the Indians, and he reduces a fraction over 28,000 to a fraction over 10,000. He was in the country I have been talking about, Utah, Nevada, part of Colorado, and all the way to New Mexico.

The CHAIRMAN. What is your judgment as to the number?

Mr. SHANKS. It is impossible for me to say, only as I passed around and learned from observation and inquiry. I would be told that there would be so many Indians in a place, but on further inquiry I did not think there were near so many as public rumor had proclaimed it. I think there should be a perfect census of the tribes.

Washington, D. C., January 22, 1874.

Examination of Mr. J. W. DANIELS.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Question. Are you officially connected with the Government in the management of Indian affairs?

Answer. Yes; I am one of the Indian inspectors, and have been since July last.

Question. What is the extent of your acquaintance with Indian tribes?

I

Answer. I have been acquainted with the Sioux ever since 1855. was a physician among them in the employment of the Government for seven or eight years.

Question. What part of the Territories have you inspected? Answer. I went to Bismark, and from there up the river through Montana.

Question. What tribes did you visit?

Answer. The Téton Sioux, the Santees, the Yanctonais, and the Assinaboines. I counted the lodges. At the time I was there there were 989 lodges, and on my way from there I met 103 lodges going in for their clothing.

Question. What post did they belong to?

Answer. A trading-post called Fort Peck. From there I went to Belknap, near the British Possessions. The Indians there are the Gros Ventres and the Assinaboines, and farther on the Blackfeet and Piegans. The Piegans are the only parties along there who were in. They number 1,100. I counted them personally.

Question. State the condition of all these Indians as to hostilities. Answer. These Indians are well disposed. A portion of the Tétons have come into the agency within the last year, who were in hostilities a year ago with the expedition that went down the Yellowstone. They express themselves now friendly and well disposed. At the present time it is perfectly safe for a man to travel from Fort Peck to Fort Beuton-a distance of two hundred and eighty miles-which was almost impossible a year ago. Fort Peck is near the mouth of the Milk River. Question. State what opportunity you had of conversing with their leading men.

Answer. I had opportunity of conversing with them through the interpreters, and speaking to them myself, and hearing conversations; and I have been led to believe that the disposition of the Sioux, especially those that were hostile last year, has entirely changed, so that they have become peaceable and well-disposed.

Question. Can you converse in their language?

Answer. To a certain extent, but not so well as through interpreters. Question. Is it your opinion that the present policy is advantageous to the Indians, and likely to secure peace?

Answer. In my experience the present policy is the only policy to secure the peace of the Sioux Nation.

Question. How many warriors do you suppose the Sioux tribe can furnish?

Answer. The number is variously estimated. It has been stated by a commanding officer at Fort Buford that Sitting Ball could command a thousand warriors at any time, and that he had about five hundred lodges. The average is two warriors to each lodge.

Question. Do you think that these Indians will soon be gathered on their allotted reservations?

Answer. I think that to-day there are not over fifty lodges of Sioux that are not drawing rations at their agencies.

Question. Have you any apprehension of serious difficulties in the future?

Answer. Not at all, unless some great change takes place.

Question. Do you think that the military force in that neighborhood is sufficient to prevent Indian hostilities?

Answer. Yes; ample.

Question. Do the people there want any more military force?
Answer. I did not hear any such request.

Question. Do the Indian agents there require any more force, so far as you know?

I sup

Answer. I have heard that they wanted some on the Platte. pose the troops are wanted there to protect that frontier. The Red Cloud Sioux and the Ogalalla Sioux are there, and they are the least disposed to comply with the requirements of the agents.

WASHINGTON, D. C., January 22, 1874.

Examination of J. C. O'Connor.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Question. State what official connection you have had with the management of Indians?

Answer. I was appointed last June as United States Indian inspector. Question. Where were you on duty last year?

Answer. On what is termed the eastern district, including New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the interior of Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas.

I

Question. What tribes did you visit in Minnesota and Dakota? Answer. The Chippewas in Minnesota and the Sioux in Dakota. was at six agencies in Nebraska-the Santee Sioux, the Winnebagoes, the Omahas, the Otoes, and the great Nemaha agency. Question. Did you converse with the principal men of those tribes? Answer. Yes, sir.