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Show I COMMISSIOI?ER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 23 weaker, he is eminently entitled to the kind consideration of the stronger race. The wonderful emigration to our newly acquired States and Terri-tories, and its effect upon the wild tribes inhabiting them and the plains and prairies, is well calculated at the present period to attract special attention. Not only are our settlements rapidly advancing westward from the Mississippi river towards the Pacific ocean, and from the shores of the Pacific eastward towards the Mississippi river, but large settlements have been made in Utah and New Mexico between the two. Already the settlements of Texas are extending up to El Paso and spreading into the Gadsden Purchase, andthose of California have reached into the great valley of the Colorado, whilst the settlers of Minnesota are building cities at the very head of Lake Superior, and villages in the remote valley of the Red river of the North, on their way to Puget Sound. Railroads built and building, from the Atlantic and Gulf cities, not only reach the Mississippi river at about twenty different points, but are extending west across Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa. Roads of that character have alsobeen commenced in Texas, looking to El Paso, and in Iowa,looking for the great bend of the Minnesota river for a present, and for Pembina for a future termi-nus. The railroad companies of Missouri and Iowa are even now seek-ing aid from Congress to enable them to extend their roads to New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, and Utah, and thence to California, Ore-gon, and Washington. California has actually commenced the con-struction of a railroad leading up the Sacramento valley toward Utah. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that in a few years, in a very few, the railroads of the east, from New Orleans to the extreme west end of Lake Superior, will be extended westwardly up towards the Rocky mountains, at least as far as good lands can be found, and that roads from the Pacific coast will be built as far east as good lands extend ; and that in both cases an active population will keep up with the advance of the railroads-a population that will open farms, erect workshops, and build villages and cities. When that time arrives, and it is at our very doors-ten years, if onr country is favored with peace and prosperity, will witness the most of it--where will be the habitation and what the condition of the rapidly wasting Indian tribes of the plains, the prairies, and of our new States and Territories ? As sure as these great physical changes are impending, so sure will these poor denizens of the forest be blotted out of existence, and their dust be trampled under the foot of rapidly advancing civilization, unless our great nation shall generously determine that the necessary propision shall at once be made, and appropriate steps be taken to designate suitable tracts or reservations of land, in proper localities, for permanent homes for, and provide the means to colonize, them thereon. Such reservations should be selected with great care, and when determined upon and designated, the assurances by which they are guarantied to the Indians should be irrevocable, and of such a charac-ter as to effectually protect them from encroachments of every kind. Before bringing this annual report to a conclusion, I desire to repeat the statement made in the first one which I had the honor to submit, that : " There is no absolute necessity for the employment by Indian |