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Show ............ REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. XVII Aores. i napa ass. ............................................................................................................................. .. Unknown. Ottc+wa 5,000 ................................................................. I Miamie 8,640 1 Nez Pere6ss ............................................................ 45,000' 1 poncas .................................................................. 50,000 Pawnees ................................................................ 150,000 Otaes Bnd Missourins. ................................................... 65.000 Sac aud Fox ............................................................. Z00,OOO Iowas ................................................................. .Unkoo~n. To these map be added, ,a heviug since conle to the knowledge of this office- Kiowa, Comanohe, and Apache* .......................................... 309,440 It appeared that ou;bide of the In4im Territory there had been leased by- ~ h pkrs irie bard of Pottawatomies in Kansan" ........................... 20,000 The Cron.; iu Mautanz (sea Senate Executive Daoument No.22, Fortv- aig1:llth Cougress, peeoud session, page 36) ............................... 1,500,000 It does'not appear that any of these leases were ever authoritatively approved by the Department. On the contrary, your immediate prede-cessor, in his communication of January 3,1885, to the Senate, expressly . ' stated that he declined to appro\-e them as leases, but did treat them as amounting to licenses t~ bo, revoked by the'lndians at will. In his letter transmitting the papers above mentiooed the then Commissioner of Indian AEairs stated that the a c t io~of~ t his office,i n conrlection with the general subject of leasing Indian lands, had been governed by the views of the Department as expressedin ~ e ~ a r t m elentte r to B. Fenlon, of April 25, 1883 (Senate Ex. Doc. LUO. 54, Forty-eighth Congress, first sessiou, page 99), anbsequeutly elaborated in Department letter of Jan-uary 3, 1885, above referred to. From .the very inception of the Che.yenne and Arapaho leases in 1883, a spirit of discontent appears to have ma.nifested itself amongst the Cheye~neIn dians, a portion of whom; numbering some 1,200 souls, under Stone Calf aud other chiefs, were violently opposed to the leases, and refu~ed to sign them or participate in the rental moneys. In April, 1884, a change of agents took place, but the eEorts of the new inoumbeut to induce the Oheyenues to go to work at farming and im-prove their condition were ineEectua1. The dog-soldiers interfered to prevent those disposed to labor, and defied the agent and the military at Fort Reno. Shprtly after the new agent's arrival an unfortunate circumstance occurred in the killing of Running Buffalo, a Cheyenne Indian, by a white man named Horton, en route to Galdwell, Eans., with a herd of horses. It apparently needed but little to intensify the dissatisfaction which prevailed, and from this period out the agent ap. p&rs to have been deprived of his ability to peacefully control the : Indians. *Estimated. 5067 IND-11 I |