OCR Text |
Show 16 REPORT OF TRE by the Indian population, it gives promise of disposing of the latter in a manner to admit of its being held under proper control, and gradually improved and civilized. One reservation has been estab-lished at the Tejon Psss, to which about Beven hundred Indians* have been removed, and a considerable quantity of land put in cultivation. There are numbers of other Indians ready and anxious to take up their residence upon this reservation, who will be removed there as soon as arrangements can be properly and economically made for their support and employment. The result thus far encourages the belief that the Indians of California can be made a peaceful and self-sustain-ing people, and, it is hoped, eventually a useful population. They are easily controlled, manifest much interest in the system and arrangements for colonizing and giving them employment, and have with readiness devoted themselves to the agricultural and other occu-pations assigned them. The superintendent reports that the system has been so successfully organized and developed on the Tejon reser-vation, that there will be no necessity for any material expenditures there, after the present year. A second reservation has been selected some six hundred miles further north, for the Indians in that region, and to which they will be removed with all practicable despatch. These two reserves will, it is expected, accommodate and dispose of all the lndians in and about the present mining and agricultural dis-tricts, so that time and care can be taken in the establishment of the third and last reservation. On the 17th of Augnat last, a train of Mormon emigrants passed an encampment of certain bands of the Sioux Indians, who were await-ing, near Fort Laramie, for their annuity goods. One of the cattle belonging to the train made its way into the Sioux villages, and was killed and consumed by the Indians. The Mormons complained to the commandant of the fort, who despatched Lieut. Grattan, with twenty-nine men and an interpreter, to demand the person of the In-dian who killed the animal. He was not delivered up ; and upon the refusal or failure to do so, a fight ensued, in which the lieutenant, his entire command, and the interpreter, were killed. The particulars of this melancholy and heart-rending occurrence will be found in the report of Agent Whitfield, and the documents accompanying it. The Sioux belong to bauds in amity with the United Statex-bands which have annuities due them under treaty stipulations ; and the Bdormons should, under the provisions of the "intercourse act," have applied to the agent, who was in the vicinity, for redress, and he could, under the law, have paid, out of the annuities, for the property taken ; but no officer of the plilitary department was, in my opinion, authoriaed to arrest or try the Indian for the offence charged against him. Immediately after the perpetration of the massacre, the Indians ~epaired to the warehouses of the trading company, near by, in which their annuity goods had been stored by the contractors for their trans-portation, and, withod awaiting the arrival of the agent to make a 'Late Soperiotendent Beale Wwrtea the number at the Tejon, in February last, at about 2,600. |