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Show 164 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN APFAIRS. When I was at the Rosebud Reservation in April, 1905, I held a general council with the Indians, besides conversing with a number of them individually and in private on this same subject. I was imprest, from what I heard from them and from a number of white persons on and off the reservation who had apparently no material interest whatever in having this money paid out, with the fact that there is a considerable contingent of the Rosebud Indians whom we could afford to trust with the money of their children on the assumption that, as they lead sober, orderly, and industrious lives and have shown themselves responsible in pecuniary matters, they would not waste or make a bad use of their children's money if given to them. Such .Indians claim that their only desire' for the use of the children's money is to improve the homes in which the children will have to spend a part of their lives, or to improve the children's :tllotments, or to pay certain other expenses which might properly be charged to the children's accounts. I therefore took measures to obtain a carefully prepared and e authenticated roster of the Indians in whose behalf it seems that the rule against paying the children's land money to their elders may very well be modified, and recommended to the Department that the money due to the children of these Indians be paid to the heads of their respective families. My recommendation being approved, I indicated to the Indian Agent at Rosebud Agency that my purpose in this matter goes further than a mere desire to meet the reason-able requests of the Indians themselves. I wish, if possible, tosput before the whole tribe the respect in which these Indians are held for their ~ o o dch aracters and their efforts at thrift. I should like to have the tribe realize from this object lesson that, even throwing all moral considerations aside and looking at the mat-ter from a purely business point of view, it is actually a paying investment to he sober, industrious, and prudent, but with the dis-tinct understanding that the new privilege is liable to revocation in any case where we find it abused. The agent has been directed to have an announcement of the names ' in this "roll of honor" made at the next payment, with an explana-tion of the distinction drawn in favor of the Indians named set forth in writing, in both the English and the Dakota languages, by way of heading off any attempt by mischief-makers to distort the real pur-poses of this Office and the Department in making such exceptions to the rules. SIOUX PONY CLAIXS. Under legislation in the curregt Indian appropriation act (34 Stat. L., 374) the Office has referred to the Auditor of the Treasury, for payment, the claims of 15 Sioux Indians of the Pine Ridge Agency, S. Dak., to $6,300 for property taken from them in 1876 by the mili- |
