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Show 92 Crop failures, in large part due to grasshoppers, plagued the reservation during its early years. D. W. Rhodes, after one frustrating year, was replaced by Pardon Dodds. The new U. S. Indian Agent had the same problem as before. Dodds comments: As soon as the weather permitted in the spring, labor was commenced, and about 50 acres more of land were ploughed, and with that already in order put into crops. About 50 acres were sowed to wheat, 6 acres to oats, 30 acres were planted to corn, and 4 acres to potatoes and vegetables. All the crops put in were of excellent promise until about the 1st of July, at which time the wheat and oats were headed out, and the corn about two feet high. At this time an innumerable army of grasshoppers made their appearance, and within a single week the wheat and oat crops were utterly destroyed, the ground in some places being left as bare as before the grain was sowed. They also destroyed about three-fourths of the corn crop, and all the vegetables, except the potatoes, which were not especially injured. I at once procured a quantity of turnip seed, and sowed therewith a considerable portion of the wheat grounds devastated by the grasshoppers. Two or three weeks after the young turnips appeared above the surface of the ground we were again visited by the grasshoppers, who utterly destroyed them, not a single turnip, as far as I have observed, having escaped their ravages. I had also planted several thousand peach stones, with the view of putting out an extensive orchard; but the grasshoppers ate the leaves, and in many instances, also, the bark from the young trees, and thus killed all except two or three hundred. The snows upon the mountain during the last winter were much heavier than usual, and did not melt so as to permit the passage of wagons until the first of July. Since that time, |