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Show 101 1870. He arrived at Salt Lake City on December 3, and after a futile search for the agent, George W. Graffam, he traced him to Fort Bridger, Wyoming Territory. Critchlow went there to get the records and funds of the Agency. Graffam was not prepared to turn over the records, and did not do so until some time after Critchlow had assumed control of the Agency. J. E. Tourtellotte had also resigned and had returned to the East. After letters had been exchanged describing conditions, and after receiving instructions from the Commissioner, the new agent left Fort Bridger and traveled south across the Uintah Mountains in the last part of January, arriving at Uintah Agency on February 3. In a genuine understatement he called the journey "severe and tedious." The first report on the Uintah Agency is a masterpiece of complaint. He states tartly to the Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs H. R. Clum: V September 22, 1871 My first impressions of the agency were anything but favorable, and I am free to state that, had I had an adequate conception of its position and condition, I should not have accepted it; but, having accepted and being here, I immediately commenced a survey, in order to ascertain, if possible, what was best to be done. I found the employes-some of them utterly depraved and worthless-and Indians completely discouraged, having almost come to the conclusion that the agency was about to be abandoned, the latter roaming about discontented and hungry, having access to every place ICritchlow to Clum, September 22, 1871, in RCIA, 1871, p. 960 |