OCR Text |
Show 12 REPORT OF THE and encourage them to maintain a friendly disposition towards our citizens, and to treat kindly and assist, if necessary, emigrants and other peaceful citizens passing through their country. The agents were enjoined to reside among the tribes, to make the personal ac-quaintance of the chiefs, and to inform them fully respecting the power of the United States, the readiness of the President to treat them with kindness and magnanimity when they do right, and his ability and purpose to punish them when they do wrong. They were directed to exert their personal influence to persuade the Indians to abandon their marauding excursions and hostile expeditions against neighboring tribes, to forsake their wandering habits and savage cus-toms and settle in permanent homes and obtain their subsistence by agricultural and other pursuits of civilized life. They were instructed also to procure the delivery, for trial, of all individuals charged with high crimes, and to take all needful measures to obtain the release of citizens of the United States or of friendly powers that might be held in captivity by any of the tribes of their charge; and they were ad-monished of the necessity of co-operation and concert of action with the officers in command of the military ex edition which was organiz-ing for operations on the plains during t! e s eason. They were also directed to forward, from time to time, as they had opportunity, such information as would exhibit to the government here the actual condi-tion of affairs within their agencies. Copies of such papers as have been received from them will be found among the accompanying docu-ments. From the appropriations, made at the session of Congress of 1853-'54, to defray the expenses of negotiating treaties with Indian tribes in Oregon and Washington Territories, remittances were made early after the close of the session, and goods were procured and shipped immediately, from New York, for presents to the tribes. Instructions, in the month of August, 1854, were given to Joel Palmer, superintendent in Oregon, and Isaac I. Stevens, governor of Washington, to enter at once upon the negotiations, commencing with those tribes in the vicinity of the settlements of the whites, and having for a principal aim the extinguishment of the Indian claims to the lands, and the concentration of all the tribes and fragments of tribes on a few reserves of limited extent, naturally suited to the requirements of the Indians, and located, as far as practicable, so as not to interfere with the settlement of the Territories respectively. They were admonished of the importance, also, of adopting but few stipulations to he fulfilled on each behalf, which should be simple and well understood by the Indians, and of providing that the moneys to be paid might, at the discretion of the President, be applied for the establishment of farms, the purchase of implements of agricul-ture, or any other objects of benefit to the Indians, and which their peculiar condition and circumstances may from time to time render proper and advantageous. Under these instractions the officers charged with the negotiations concluded four treaties, which were transmitted in time to receive the sanction of the Senate at the last session of Congress; and several others have subsequently been signed and transmitted here. |