river, with the other agency buildings, and remodeled by a new floor, weather-boards, and ceiling, so as to make a very comfortable and commodious school-house, while a slaughter-house and corral have been constructed of logs on the bank of Poplar River, half a mile distant. An eave-trough and conductor has also been put on the agent's house, and a cistern of brick and cement, of 200 barrels' capacity, constructed, which will add greatly to the conveniences of the agency, as without it water for household purposes is hauled by wagons from the river. This

INDIAN RESERVATION,

as I stated last year, has within its boundaries a large portion of very excellent farming and grazing land, the best of which is found between Fort Buford and the mouth of Milk River. The location of the agency at Fort Peck was unfortunate, from the fact that no available farm-land is found within ten or twelve miles of that locality, and consequently no effort at farming was ever attempted there. At Wolf Point some land was broken up some three or four years ago, and the Assinaboine Indians taken there. This year near a hundred acres are planted there, and about 30 acres of new broken land at Poplar River, both in corn and potatoes, which promise very satisfactory returns, resulting from thorough cultivation and the abundant summer rains which have fallen here during June and July.

Poplar River, the future seat of the agency, has a beautiful location on an elevated plateau, some 30 feet above the general level of the bottom-land, and is surrounded by a splendid body of fertile land. Here I have had nearly a thousand acres of farm-laud inclosed by a post and board fence, 23 miles in length, with the aid of Poplar River and the Missouri, which are used as boundaries of the farm on two sides. On this tract near 200 acres of land have been broken up in May and June for cultivation next year. The reservation has been changed since last year by running a line north and south on the one hundred and ninth meridian. This line crosses the Missouri River above Carroll, leaving all the best part of Milk River Valley within its boundaries. The experience of the last year at Wolf Point and Poplar River proves that nearly all the land between Milk River and Fort Buford is susceptible of cultivation. Even the upland at Poplar River, under the influence of the abundant rains of June and July, has proven to be very fertile and productive.

INDIAN FARMING AND INDIAN SUPPORT.

If the experiences of the last three years can be relied on in the future, we have within the boundaries of his Indian reservation a very fertile and productive soil, where potatoes may be grown in great abundance and in their highest perfection. They prove, also, that what is known here as the Ree corn will grow and mature a very satisfactory crop for the support of the Indians, and that the natural grasses of the country will support immense herds of cattle winter and summer. This last statement will be better understood when I say that 400 beef-cattle were driven 500 miles over this reservation in January last, with no feed but what they obtained from the dry grass over which they passed on their way, and arrived here better beef than when they started from Sun River, in Montana, about Christmas. But then the question comes up, with all these possibilities, can the Indians ever be induced to become a settled, permanent community, live in permanent homes, and avail themselves of their rich land and pasturage? A few may; but while the buffalo remain abundant as now, roaming over the reservation, I fear little can be hoped for from many of these Indians where any labor is required of them. They have been so long accustomed to this idle, lazy, and nomadic life that nothing short of dire necessity will impel them to a life of labor and toil. It is not certain that white men, under the same circumstances, would do better.

At Wolf Point the most progress has been made by the Indians in farm work. A few have worked there at plowing and other farm work. Long Fox has, with the assistance of the agency employés, built a very comfortable double log house, has planted a crop of corn and potatoes, has cut wood for the steamboats, and altogether made a very decided, satisfactory, and intelligent start toward independence, One or two others, under the stimulus of his example, are making preparation to follow in his course, and there will be, without doubt, a number of the Assinaboines who will this fall and winter build houses and take up and plow land for crops next spring.

At Poplar River a number of Indians talk about farming and building houses, but so far little farm work or any other kind of work has been done by the Indians, except that done by the Indian women. I have made efforts to employ the men by offering regular pay in money, but with very barren success so far; with hardly an exception, more work can be got from the Indians here, either men or women, by paying a liberal allowance of sugar at night than the offer of any reasonable pay in money.

PERMANENT INDIAN HOMES.

I have before stated, and now repeat, that I can see no hope for any permanent good to these Indians but to in some way induce them to live in houses where they will

have a permanent home for the family. My plan would be to procure for them lumber for floors, and roofs, and windows, and doors for their houses, and then offer these, with assistance to erect their houses, if they will get out and haul the logs. I know a great many would avail themselves of this offer, and everything in their future, both in farming and the support of the schools, depends upon their occupancy of permanent houses and homes.

AMMUNITION AND INDIAN HOSTILITY.

Last fall I made an application for a permit by which the agency Indians could legally be supplied with a limited amount of ammunition for hunting purposes. This request was granted by the Secretary of War, and consequently the Indians were much pleased; but in less than a month this permission was withdrawn for some reason, and the Indians have never ceased complaining of the hardship of their situation. They cannot understand it. They say they are loyal and law-abiding; that they have agreed to be and are friends to the whites, and yet hostile Indians on their northern border are roaming over their reservation with all the ammunition they need, and they, friendly agency Indians, are deprived the poor privilege of even buying powder and ball with which to kill their game. Of course there are many things connected with this question of ammunition and Indian hostility that the Indians cannot understand, and yet it does seem that there is something about this question of ammunition that is inconsistent. I am entirely confident that these agency Indians at Wolf Point and Poplar River intend to be true to the government and the Great Father. They have not the most remote idea of being otherwise.

In April last I found the supplies at the agency for the support of the Indians nearly exhausted, with no prospect of any arriving for at least three months. I not only permitted but advised the Indians to go out to the buffalo country (within the reservation, however). They had not been out a week until thirty or forty families returned with the report that their horses had been stolen. This stealing was at first attributed by our Indians to the Crow Indians, their hereditary enemies, but was afterward found to have been perpetrated by White Dog, an Assinaboine, with a small band with him, and this ultimately led to the hostile encounter between some Yanktonais and Gros Ventres and Assinaboires near Fort Belknap in June last. This affair, as I know very well, grew out of a difficulty that originated last fall in the murder of an Assinaboine boy about twelve years old. The father, White Shell, and his kinsman, White Dog, charged the murder on the Yanktonais without a particle of evidence that I could ever ascertain, and I investigated the matter very thoroughly at the time. Several chiefs of the Yanktons made a present of a horse or two and blankets to White Shell, and the matter was supposed to be settled; but White Shell, the father of the murdered boy, is a weak, vacillating Indian, and under the influence of White Dog, who is one of those dreamers-medicine Indians-who are always pretending spiritual guidance, kept threatening retaliation on the Yanktons all winter until they got tired of it, and several of them told me if White Shell did not stop his threats of retaliation there would be a big fight yet. This spring White Shell with White Dog and some other Indians went up to Belknap from Wolf Point, and there they were the instigators of the fight that occurred, as I have good reason to know from several Indians who were present. They say the Gros Ventres and Assinboines came out to the vicinity of the Yanktonai hunting camp, and that several of the leading Yanktonai chiefs, like Black Catfish, Black Tiger, and Thundering Bull, harangued the camp and told them that only trouble could come to them from any hostile encounter, but they were overruled by a few hot-beaded chiefs and the attack was made by the Yanktonais, which they admit, but not being sustained by the bulk of their band, and the other party being much the best armed and supplied with ammunition, they soon got the worst of it and speedily drew off with three killed and four wounded, with four or five horses killed. I have since learned that White Dog desired to get more ammunition to attack the Yanktons again, but was of course refused. Any attempt to induce the building of a military post as a protection against hostile attacks from any of the Fort Peck Agency Indians would be a loss of time and material, for I verily believe there are no more quiet and law-abiding Indians on the frontier than those at this agency, and require as little military force to keep them in order. The question of

INDIAN CHIEFS

is one not easily managed. Among the Assinaboines at Wolf Point, Eoshon or RedStone is the recognized chief; all the Indians there concede to him the right of chieftainship in their tribe. But among the Indians making up the agency Indians now at Poplar River no chief is recognized as head. Medicine Bear was at one time regarded as the highest in authority, but he is getting old and of no influence in the tribe. In the camp, at present made up of near 600 lodges or families, there are over 50 chiefs, and no one is claiming over about 20 lodges: from this number down to half a dozen. At present the biggest chief seems to be the one who can secure the largest amount of annuity goods or rations, and new chiefs I find are made by obtaining a

few adherent lodges from other chiefs, by purchase or otherwise, and straightway the Indian is a chief; or, some Indian will get hold of some old letter of recommendation from a military officer or Indian agent, and he sets up for a chief on the authority of his chief papers as he calls them. The credulity and ignorance of these Indians are past belief. It is no wonder that they are continually made the dupes of traders and other white men who come among them.

AGENCY SCHOOLS.

I assumed charge of this agency with strong convictions of the importance of properly organized schools for the Indians, and have availed myself of every means and opportunity accessible to me to promote them and their efficiency, but with all, the results have not been satisfactory, to myself certainly. I found a school-room at Wolf Point in the end of a log building, about 24 feet square, in which were a few dilapidated benches and a pine-board table, but with few appliances or books, except some first spellers, readers, and arithmetics, that had undergone the inundation at Fort Peck in the spring of 1877. A school was opened in the room at Wolf Point on the 1st of October by P. O. Matthews, who has been faithful in his endeavors to promote the success of the school, but owing to the unsettled condition of the Indian camp, living, as nearly all do, in cloth and skin tepees, and moving camp every three or four weeks when not out in the buffalo range, the attendance is very irregular. Add to this the general indifference of most of the parents. I find it is almost impossible to get an attendance at the school of more than half a dozen three days in succession without some inducement in the way of a lunch or something for the children to eat at noon. The recent instructions of the honorable Commissioner of Indian Affairs come very opportune, to my opinion, to meet this difficulty. With a place to furnish the rations to the children, and a teacher who will take the proper interest in it, much good will result in promoting the efficiency of the schools by adopting his plan for issuing rations to school children. The Indian children with hardly an exception learn to sing very readily, and it is really pleasing to be at Wolf Point and hear the Indian children, as one can any evening around the camp, sing "Hold the Fort," "Climbing Zion's Hill," and other Sunday. school songs the children have learned at school.

At Poplar River no room for a school could be obtained until I reconstructed, as already stated, the slaughter-house there, and made of it a very pleasant school-house. Here a school was opened on the 4th of July by Miss Mary Ogle, of Indiana. The hot weather and mosquitoes of July and August have sadly interfered with our school. But a small portion of the Yanktonai camp has been at Poplar River through the summer, but enough of the children constantly there to form a large school, of which I have good hopes of effecting something satisfactory this coming fall and winter.

SANITARY.

The health of the Indians for the year has generally been good. No epidemic has prevailed. In the winter coughs were somewhat prevalent at times, but less so, I think, than in an ordinary community of white people. In an experience of nearly forty years I have never seen a community of people among whom the pursuit of anything like a regular systematic course of medical practice was so difficult. Ordinarily, unless a single dose produces some salutary or satisfactory results, a second dose is not taken. A bottle of cough sirup, when not too bitter, is usually taken up in a very few doses, and a bottle of liniment, to be applied externally, will be assiduously applied until all is used up. But no course of practice can be pursued with the Indians for the same reason that schools will be inefficient, viz, want of permanent homes or houses where the habits and customs of a settled community are adopted.

WILD GAME.

Deer, antelope, and elk still continue in considerable abundance to roam over this Indian reservation, and the number of buffalo have seemed to increase; certainly they have not been so numerous before within the near vicinity of the agency at both Wolf Point and Poplar River as they have this summer. Five buffalo were killed within three miles of the agency building at Poplar River on the 15th of August, and thousands of them are now roaming in the valley of Poplar River, within 40 miles. It is difficult to ascertain in what direction they are generally tending. For the present they furnish a convenient source of supply for agency beef. Without the supply of buffalo beef obtained during the year the rations furnished by government would have been sadly deficient and the deficiency felt.

UNITED STATES INDIAN POLICE SERVICE.

The rules and regulations for the United States Indian police service, recently issued by the honorable Commissioner of Indian Affairs, if carried out fairly, seem to me well adapted to the wants of the Fort Peck Indian Agency. A company of teu Indians, with one captain and two sergeants, with P. O. Matthews as chief of police, have been formed, and their names forwarded to the department for their commissions. I have

faith that this Indian police force can be made an efficient agent in keeping peace and order on the reservation.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

The COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

W. BIRD,

United States Indian Agent.

GREAT NEMAHA AGENCY, Nohart, Nebraska, August 24, 1878.

SIR: In accordance with instructions, the following is submitted as the annual report for the Iowa and Sac and Fox of the Missouri tribes of Indians. These are two small tribes located upon contiguous reservations situated in Richardson County, Nebraska, and Brown and Doniphan Counties, Kansas.

IOWAS.

Whole number, 213; births, 11; deaths, 11. They live in houses furnished with the conveniences usually found in the homes of the ordinary white settlers. Three of the Iowa families have their floors carpeted, the rags therefor having been prepared by their own hands. Five families have sewing-machines. One widow woman does considerable sewing for whites residing near.

Every family who has the means of cultivating it has a fenced field or farm, which they attend in a creditable manner. Five Indians have farms containing from 50 to 160 acres each, the most of which they have under cultivation. About 200 acres have been fenced the present season. They have planted 1,160 fruit-trees and 260 grape-vines. A previous year 440 trees and 40 grape-vines were planted. A few trees were planted several years since from which some are now gathering fruit. One Indian will realize 12 bushels peaches, having already sold the product of one tree, 3 bushels. These trees were purchased from profits of the trading-post, which is under the supervision of members of the religious society having charge of the agency, and donated to the Indians. A little orchard, nicely fenced and cared for, may be seen surrounding many of the residences at this time.

Four wells have been bored for as many Indian families, at a total cost of $160.40, the Indian having the well paying three-fourths of the cost, the other one fourth being paid in the same manner the trees were purchased.

Five houses, three log and two frame, have been built. For the log-houses the Indians prepared the logs and raised the houses to the "square." For the frame-houses the Indians furnished in cash, one $25, the other $40, besides doing all the hauling and assisting mechanics in construction. These are comfortable story-and-a-half houses, with one good room on the second floor, all well plastered. Three other houses previously erected were also plastered the present year. There may be noticed an apparent discrepancy in the accompanying statistics in reference to the number of houses occupied by Indians when compared with last year's report. This can be explained by stating that three houses that had become untenantable were torn down and new ones erected instead.

Evidences of gradual improvement are discernible each year among these people, and it needs only a continuation of the present policy of making labor a necessity, to make the Iowas wholly self-supporting in a few years. Their annuities are of a permanent character, and should be used for purposes of education and general improvement instead of making large payments in cash. Most undoubtedly the true policy is to furnish Indians means wherewith to till the soil, purchased from the funds of the tribe if they are adequate, and give them to understand that they must be used if they expect to obtain the comforts or even the necessaries of life, for certainly they have not a sufficient claim upon the generosity of the government to be supported in idleness by the regular issue of rations. No rations are issued to the Indians at this agency, which is the better plan where they have reached this advanced condition.

One industrial or manual-labor school is conducted for the Iowas, and is well patronized. Of 52 children of school-going ages 51 have attended school. The largest monthly average was 40; average for the whole year, 32. Eighty acres of land, fenced and under cultivation, is attached to the school and cultivated as the school-farm, producing all the wheat, corn, vegetables, pork, &c., needed for the subsistence of the children. A large part of the beef required is also produced. The Indians assist in the cultivation of this farm when required in addition to the labor performed by the school-boys. The girls are taught the various household industries, such as cooking, baking, washing, cutting and making garments for themselves and the boys, &c. In addition to the ordinary school exercises, a juvenile lyceum is conducted during the winter evenings for the instruction and entertainment of the school-children; exercises consist of read

ing, singing, recitations, dialogues, charades, tableaux, &c. Some of the Indian parents attend and participate. One Indian boy has been sent to a neighboring university to be educated from a charity fund.

SACS AND FOXES OF THE MISSOURI.

Whole number, 107; births, 9; deaths, 8. The condition of this tribe is very different from that of the Iowas, but little in the way of improvement having been done until three years ago. Previous to that time their funds were paid to them wholly in cash, making a per capita payment of almost $100 annually. The first step from this stereotyped practice was made by obtaining the consent of the tribe for the diversion of $2,000 for beneficial purposes. Subsequently its consent for the use of $2,000 annually for education and general beneficial purposes was obtained. There seemed formerly to be an idea that the funds of this tribe could only be used with its consent, but this is erroneous as regards a large part of their trust-fund interest, it being like the Iowas' funds, subject to the discretion of the President.

Six families only live in houses, except rude ones of their own construction. Three of the five houses were built from material purchased by the individuals. Considerable improvement in the way of agriculture has also been made, and a great improvement the present year over last. Timber for fencing being about exhausted, about 2,000 rods barbed fence-wire was purchased for them, nearly all of which has been nsed. Several Indians who never before did any work have fenced and cultivated small fields One hundred and thirty acres are being cultivated in grain by Indians, and 323 acres by a white man married into and a member of the tribe.

A comfortable log and frame house, nearly new, belonging to an Indian, was recently completely destroyed by a cyclone or hurricane.

One boarding-school is in successful operation, and has been patronized rather better than heretofore, thirteen of sixteen children of school-going ages being in regular attendance.

The members of this tribe have a restless and unsettled disposition, frequently insisting upon removal to the Indian Territory, their requests receiving no notice from the department; hence they remain in suspense, still in the hope of hearing something to their interest, while matters remain in statu quo, to the great annoyance of all parties. If it is the policy of the department to discontinue the removal of Indians to the Indian Territory, it would certainly be the better plan to state so to these applicants in plain and decided terms.

CONCLUSION.

It is the policy of the present agent to impress upon the Indians the fact that their subsistence must soon be wholly the product of their own labor, and to disabuse their minds of the idea that the government owes them a living so long as they may see fit to ask it.

The Iowas especially are sufficiently advanced to have their lands allotted to them in severalty, granting them a title therefor inalienable for a number of years. This would be a new incentive to exertion, as they would then have some assurance that what improvement they make would be their individual gain.

Recommendations of last year are repeated: 1st. Prohibition of tribal visiting. 2d. Enactment of laws protecting Indians in their individual rights with respect to person and property. 3d. Laws for the effectual expulsion of all persons being illegally upon the reservation. 4th. The discontinuance of general legislation for Indian tribes. The regulations required for wild tribes which have made but little advancement from their primitive condition are detrimental to the interests of the semi-civilized.

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In closing this my fourth and last annual report, I believe it proper to refer to the new rule of grading salaries of Indian agents according to the number of Indians in charge as a great error in judgment, and as working much injustice to those engaged in this service. The care, oversight, and responsibility of a small tribe having made considerable improvement, is greater than that of a large tribe in their primitive condition, where but little attention except the regular issue of rations is required. Where two or more tribes, though small, are attached to one agency, the labor is increased in proportion to the number of tribes, as they are usually located considerable distance from each other and from the agency. Under the present policy, it seems to be expected that an Indian agent with large financial and moral accountability can give up all the advantages of society, as it were, isolate his family and himself from the social world, be prohibited from having the association of his relatives in the service, as well as being compelled to forego many of the real comforts of life, and receive as a compensation but little more than half the amount paid to many mere clerks in the office at Washington. A free and unbiased consideration of this policy cannot fail to show its injustice.

Very respectfully,

The COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

M. B. KENT, United States Indian Agent.