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Show 140 REPORT OF THE BOARD OF INDIAN COMMISSIONERS. why I came. The President is interested in all classes of all his people, and wants to knovr how all of tliem are getting along. He hears many things about you, and he sent me to hear what you have to say, and to carry your words back to him. I am glad to find here, not Indians with paint and blankets, but men like white men, living in houses, with fields of grain about them, and working like white men. If I had not heard to the contrary from others I would think that in everything you were like white men. Some things I hoar make me sorry. Among some of the Indians there is much whisky- drinking. When I see that I know they are poor and miserable, and their children must either starve or beg. Some places the Indians are gamblers. Where whites or Indians are gamblers they can never amount to anything. There is one thing I want you to take into your hearts. The white man thinks unless land is cultivated it is a waste of the soil. They think if the Indians don't cultivate it the whites ought to have the land. The way to get rid of them is to cul-tivate it yourselves. Mr. Meacham is arranging to give each man his own place. You are getting the saw- mill so that you will have plenty of lumber to build houses, and I hope every one of you will get a good house before the treaty runs out. When I go to Wash-ington I will tell the white people what kind of Indians I saw. I will tell them of your fields and houses, and of your roads, that are better than the white man's roads. I will tell that I saw Indians running a threshing- machine, and I will tell them that in three years from now the Indians will have given up the habits that are keeping them back. They will send their children to school. That you have learned that temaminus is bad, and that you are going to quit it. That you are going to do steady work as the white man does. That you will quit gambling and drinking. That you will take the white man's laws in-stead of the Indian laws, and then you can vote, and some day some of your children will be sent to Washington to make laws. You have had many agents here. I don't know any of them. Some may have been bad, but it is not the President's fault, lie means to send good men, and I think you will have a good man. I do not know who it will be, but whoever it is I want you to try him and do your part. You must listen to his advice. I might talk till the sun goes down and tell you something good, but I want to hear your words and carry them to Washington. Mr. MF. ACIIAM. You have heard me often. You know my heart. I told Mr. Brandt yoo were not Indians, but men. I want you to talk like men. PKTER CONNOYKR. I have not much to say. For four or five years I have wanted my lands surveyed. It is now being done, and I want to settle down on it and live and die on it. Our saw- mill is almost done. Now we want a grist- mill. We need it, and we ought to have pei haps $ 10,000 to build it. I want Mr. Brunot to know when he sees us dressed up that we bought the clothes ourselves. WT e get no blankets. We ought to have some, for the Indians who are poor. We need harness and we need teams. It takes money to buy them. I hope my people will all take lands. They get from forty to one hundred acres each family. The treaty was to give each man twenty- five acres. We need cradles, scythes, and forks, and it will take money to buy all these. It will take $ 30,000 to buy all of them. Gambling I don't know what the Indians will say about it. I don't gamble myself, and don't believe in it. About religion I am a Catholic ; so are all my family. ^ All the chil-dren are Catholics. We want the sisters to come and teach the girls. The boys, I don't care whether the Catholics or Protestants have them. The priest lives here. He does not get any pay. He teaches us to pray night and morning. We must teach the little girls. I am getting old, but I am easily led astiay ; I may go to a race, bet a little, but 1 don't want my children to learn it. It is bad. I ought not to do it myself. We get off the side of the road, where no good men see us, and we gamble, but when a good man comes along we are ashamed of it. So it is with the white man when he does what he knows is wrong. We go to a temaiiimus doctor, and do many things that we ought not, but we do not teach our children these things. Our lands we want to get as soon as possible. We need a carpenter, blacksmith, arid miller, so that our children can learn. ( Peter spoke in English, though a full- blooded Indian.) JOE HuTCHiitGS. ( Speaks English fluently, but talked in Chinook.) I am glad to see Mr. Brunot. We are not wild Indians ; we are like white people. We cultivate our own farms; we work like white people. The treaty is gone. I think I am a good man. ] V! eacharn is a good man. He told us Mr. Brunot would come. I have my land. In a short time I will be like a white man. My childien will be like white men. The Indians made a treaty before they came here. Then there were no half- breeds among us. When I was wild like an Indian they said they would make a good white man of me, and I made tip my mind to be like a white man. Five years ago many were Indians; now they are white men. They promised to show me how to plow, but the agents came and did not teach me. When Meacham came we looked for him to do right. Mr. Meacham promised a school- hou. se for our children to go to school. I have seen the agents here for sixteen years; they have taught us nothing. You see our houses; we worked outside and made money and bought them. When the treaty was made many things were promised us. We never got any of them. That is wrong. The superintendent here now knows what is needed. I won't ask for a horse or cow, or anything ; he knows what is needed. Suppose one town had only one set of harness, how would they get along? Our people go outside and get horses, and they get harness, and plow with them. There were oxen and cows here |