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Show 108 REPORT OF THE BOARD OF INDIAN COMMISSIONERS. nection with their duties on the purchasing committee until some time in June, and subse-quently, other pressing engagements detained the first- named gentleman until he deemed the time left of the season insufficient to warrant so long a journey. Letters from the Secretary of the Interior were received, urging that some member of the board should visit Red Cloud and the Ogallalla Sioux without delay. I accordingly set out on the Jst day of June, taking with me Thomas K. Cree as clerk. We arrived at Fort Laramie on the 10th, and on the 12th and subsequent days held a council and several private interviews with Red Cloud and the other Sioux chiefs, an ac-count of which was duly forwarded to the Secretary of the Interior. A copy of the report and minutes of the council is attached, to which you are respectfully referred. It is to be greatly regretted that the design of the Indian Department and of the board, to procure the location of the Red Cloud agency at some point within the limits of the Sioux reservation sufficiently remote from the whites, has been thwarted for the present by the injudicious location of the agency on the bank of the North Platte, about thirty miles from Fort Laramie. CALIFORNIA. On my arrival at San Francisco, after consultation with Hon. B. C. Whiting, superin-tendent, I found that I could not visit the Indians in that State and reach Umatilla by the time named for the council. I therefore determined to proceed at once to Oregon, leaving my colleague, Hon. John V. Farwell, to perform the California duties. OREGON AND WASHINGTON. At Portland, I met Hon. A. B. Meacham, superintendent of Indian affairs, and learned from him that the Umatilla council had been postponed until the 7th day of August. Decid-ing to occupy the interval in visiting the Nez Perces, the Warm Spring, and the Yakama reservations, I set out for the former. Owing to the sinking of the steamer on Snake River, and the consequent delay, I was obliged to abandon the proposed visit to the Nez Perces ; and returning to the Dalles of the Columbia, went to the Warm Spring reservation, seventy-five miles south of that place, in Eastern Oregon, where I arrived on Saturday, July 22. WARM SPRING RESERVATION is about forty miles square, and as miserable a country as can be found in Oregon. Mount-ainous, rocky, or sandy, it is covered with sage- brush, and much of it produces no grass. The tillable portion occupied by the Indians consists of about 500 acres, stretched along two small streams, which unite where the agency buildings have been erected, for a length ot four or five miles on each. The roads are bad ; but little more than pony trails in some places, and hardly passable for wagons. The crops seem to fail from drought or to be de-stroyed by grasshoppers three years out of five. A party of United States surveyors, in running lines on the reservation, have called attention to another spot called the " Sinne-marsh," about fifteen* miles from the agency, which is supposed to be fit for cultivation. It is perhaps large enough to make small farms for about fifty families. I visited and exam-ined this land, and have some doubt as to its availability, except for grazing. It appears to be 1,000 or 1,500 feet higher than the land now cultivated, and is probably subjected to deep snows, and late and early frosts ; nevertheless the experiment should be tried. The frequent failure of crops has compelled the Indians to resort to their old methods of subsist-ence, by fishing, hunting, and gathering roots and berries, and greatly retards their advance-ment in civilization. Their chief fishery is at the Dalles of the Columbia, seventy- five miles distant, where they are subjected to many demoralizing influences from the whites, and live for several months, in their mat- houses, in the utmost filth and seeming degradation. The reservation was established by the treaty of June 25, 1865, when the tribes, parties to the treaty, were confederated. According to a census reported in 1870, they numbered as follows : Males. Females. Wascos 1J7 Teninos 45 Warm Spring 112 Deschutes 28 Other tribes 16 Total . . 654 A census taken in 18G2 stated the number to be 1,066. The difference is partly attribut-able to absenteeism. A considerable number who belong to the treaty have never been settled upon the reservation, and others who have been on it have been induced to leave by evil advice from white men. There are about sixty Indian houses built with lumber and labor fur- |