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Show REPORT OF THE BOARD OF INDIAN COMMISSIONERS. 165 said, in finding a man suitable to fill the position of agent, and I feel the need of a satis-factory man, especially in this Nevada agency. I spared no pains to obtain one, and by personal efforts, and encouragement of adilitional support from onr society, if neces-sary, I secured George W. Dodge. We have applied to many men in whom \ ve have confidence, but, as my brother has stated, the salary was not sufficient to encourage them to come. They were men who would not steal and speculate, and consequently would not accept the position. We have assistant, associates with, the agencies; wo have nine, of them in the Indian Territory to whom we are pay ing some three thousand dollars per annum, more or less. We have instructed these agents that they were officers of the Government, that their first duty was to the Government, and that they were ia every possible way to sustain it, and commend it to the Indians. METHODIST MISSIONS. Mr. BRUNOT. Dr. Harris, who represents the Methodist Church here, will be good enough to make a statement to the meeting. Dr. HAKUIS. Mr. Chairman, I represent a society here, to- day, that began its work among the Indians in 1814, commencing among the Wyandotte Indians, at Sandusky, in the State of Ohio. From that day to this there has been no time that the Methodist Church has not had men among the Indians, and we have met with great success in transacting our missionary work. We have always taken a very deep interest in tho Christianization of the Indians. We have now some nine or ten missionaries, and we had at the last report about twelve hundred communicants among the, Indians. In re-gard to these agencies, it so turned out in the allotment of agencies that there was no agency allotted to us in which we had a missionary at all, and our society hesitated for a while to enter into this plan, feeling that they were not prepared to take upon themselves any more missionary work, at present, of that class. In our intercourse with the Department of the Interior, and the Indian Bureau, we did not understand that the relation we were to sustain to the Government, in this matter, involved the placing or establishment of schools, & c. We understood that we became responsible to the Government in the nomination of agents for the agencies assigned to us, and we endeavored to nominate good men to take charge of them, who would be true to the Government and true to the Indians, and who would not live by stealing. Whether we have succeeded in this 1 am not informed. We. had two agencies. We had in the first place four agencies, three of which were in Oregon, but one of them, by mutual arrangement between the- Interior Department and our society, has been surrendered and transferred to the Roman Catholic Church for the reason that they had a mission and we had not. I speak of the Grande Ronde agency. We have the Siletz Warm Springs and the Klamath agencies, the latter having been recently assigned to us. The agency at Fort Hall wras assigned to us, and we nominated an agent, but from certain representations made to us we surrendered it, with the under-standing that it should be transferred to another denomination. Ic has been ascer-tained, however, that the parties were mistaken in the representations that they made ; that the facts were not as they supposed them to be, and the Department of tin? Inte-rior has restored the agency to us, and our agent, who was there, will go back. We have an agency at Yakama which, I understood, was visited by the president of this meeting ( lining last year. We have a very earnest and faithful man there, as we believe, who is a good friend to the Indians at heart, and who spends a great deal of his time working for them. He has acquired their language so as to speak it fluently. In the Slate of Michigan an agency has been assigned to our church. Mr. , who had been for a long time among the Indians, and spoke their language and en-joyed their confidence, was appointed agent, but he died before entering upon the du-ties of his position. We then nominated Mr. Smith, who had been in the Indian office in Detroit for several administrations, and was very familiar with the Indians in the State. He was lost in a steamboat accident upon Lake Huron. We have recently recommended for appointment a gentleman by the name of George W. Butts, who was at onetime a missionary for our church among the Indians in the upper peninsula of Michigan. He is not connected with the ministry. We have fiveseparate missions in tho State of Michigan, and three or four of them are served by Indian pastors. 1 shall b very glad to furnish the commission the information asked for just as soon as I can secure, it by correspondence. The information of the details of this school and mission-ary work in these various agencies is not in our office in New York, because they are directed by the local authorities of the church there. CONGREGATIONAL MISSIONS. Mr. BRUNOT. 1 would be pleased to hear from the Rev. Mr. Whipple, of the Ameri-can Missionary Association. Mr. WHIPPLE. There were assigned to tho American Missionary Association four agencies in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Washington Territory. The three agencies |