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Show o5ce as to thenumber of introders and their desper&te charscter, sircb assistance appeared to be necessary. Consequeutly, Aprill5,189L, the Department was requested to call upon the Secretary of War to cause troops to be furr~isheda, nd on the same day this officed irected Agent Bennett to notify the intruders of this action, aud to advise them that the authority given by the Secretary of the Interior would be carried into exec~ition at the earliest practicable moment. The War Department replied April 29,1891, that troops would be faruished, and Agent Ber~nettw as directed to proceed to make the re-movals. He appointed June 17, 1891, as t,he day up& which he would begin the work, bnt on account of unavoidable delays, which prevented the troops from reaching the point where r~movalsw ere to begiu, they were not ar.tually comll~enoed nntilsve days later. On the2dth of June, 1801, he '&$graphed that after six days1 vigorous work, with 100 Chjckasitw s co~~t4s0,0 square miles had been gone over-a section of country in which the Chickasaw authorities had said that there were 300 families of intruders-with the result that only 9 intrud. ers had been found; that many of thellameson the lists'submitted by the nation were fictitious; many others were names of parties who bad held permits for gears, of Mexican war veterans, of whom no permit had ever been demanded, of vidows and ~ g e d me11 who had never been asked to pay permits, of f&thers and mothers who were visiting their intermarried childrep, and of ministers of the gospel of whom no per-mits had ever been required; thAt Chickasaw permit collectors had issued huodreds of permits which had not been reported, and which were paid for in good faith and were held by non-citizens listed as in-truders, who also held permits for eacbprevious year of their residenoe iu t l ~ eO hickasaw Nation; and that parties reported by Chickasaw au-thorities as intruders were, witti rare exceptions, law-abiding men, who were in the Nation under permits 'issued by legally qualified officers. He therefore recommended s suspensiorl of the work. Upon receipt of this telegram I wrote, Jnne 29, 1891, to General Halbert E. Paine, attorney for the Chickasaw Nationiu thin city, and, quotiug the telegram, asked him to advise me in the premises. On the folloaiug day I telegraphed Agent Bennett to " prosecute the work of removing intruders under existing instructions." I wrote the governor of the nation, asking him to communicate to me what further steps he deemed advisable to effect the removal of the several thousand intrud-ers reported, advising him that- It is the purpose and intention of the Department, now and at otloe, to prosecute the work notil it shall have faithfully fulfilled the obligations of the Government. But in order to do so it must have your co6peration and aid inpointingout where the intrnders are and who they are, end if yon do not, or if by reason of any eoonivaliee ou the part of the Chickasaws themselves, or persons acting for them, or through failure on the part of the constituted authorities of the nation, to ehov who and where the intruders are, the undertnking shollld prove unsuocessful, the respon-sibility will not be with the Government of the United States but willrest entirely with the Chieka~aiwtsb emsel~e%. 10288 I A--6 i |