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Show 130 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OB'INDIAN AFFAIRS. After the Indians had gone peaceably to Fort Meade, S. Dak., sev-eral misinformed friends of the Indians wrote the O5ce protesting against the action taken and intimating that the Indians were starv-ing, half clad, and ill sheltered. To one typical correspondent of that sort I wrote, under date of November 7, pointing out a few of his more glaring errors of fact, and adding: Someone has misled you also, evidently, on the subject of the lands in the Uintah Reservation. The very best in the entire reservation were set apart tor the Indians, as well as a large grazing common and a good area of coal and timber lands for purposes of a fuel supply. The soil of the allotted land 'has been examined by experts and pronounced to be highly fertile if properly irrigated. The Department has taken pains to lay out a very complete and elaborate scheme of irrigation, and in the face of serious difficulties obtained from Congress an appropriation for beginnlng the execution of the plan, with as much of a promise as the Congress can hold out as to the action of others, that the appropriation would be continued up to $6M),000, the estimated gross mst of the entire undertaking. Owing to the hurried way in which the allbt-ments had to be made in order to comply with the law, it was of the first importance that the Indiilns who had received allotments should be on the spot to take possession of them as fast as they could he staked or fenced or otller-wise distinguished, and that they should begin the work of their improvement, so as to get all the advantage possible of the laws of the State of Utah affecting water rights. The other bands on the reservation with the White Rivers have behaved very well in that regard, trusting to the Government to provide for them as well as was practicable. The White Rivers from the first have been very sullen and ugly, and have simply demanded that no white civilization should come anywhere near them. A delegation visited this city about eighteen months ago, and I took them, at their request, to see the President and the Secretary of the Interior after they had heard what I had to say to them ; and both the President and the Secretary, without any previous consultation with me, told them almost in the same words what I had told them as to the future of their people. The White Rivers alone of all the Utes on the reservation have kept alive the agitation agalnst white civilization. Their exodus this summer had been prepared for by a process of accumulation of money and other material for a year or morethe sort of accumulation which, if it had been directed into a more sensible channel, would have done a great deal for their welfare and put them beyond the probability, almost the possibility, of serious need. The agent followed them into Wyoming, explaining to them the impracticability of their plan of wing ' ' oE to live among the Sioux, as the Sioux .awned their own country, and it would be as far out of the question for the to take away the Sioux lauds to live on as it would be for the Sioux to come to Utah and t&e away the Ute lands. What these Indians demand is a big hunting ground-not farming country. They do not wish to farm and do not rare to have settled homes; but their appeal to the President last spring, and to the soldlers since, has been for a game country which they could inhabit and where the white man would leave them alone. TO my mind, the action of the military authorities has been humane to the last degree. I do not know when I have ever seen a more creditable exhibition of American intelligence and genuine kindness of heart than on the part Of the offleers who haacharge of the expedition against these Indians and of the au-thorities at the War Department who directed the movements in geueral. It |
