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Show COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 15 expeditions to the plains to hunt the buffalo, which this year have brought them into hostile collision with some of the wilder bands of the Sloux, Cheyennes, and Arapahoes, resulting in the loss of a num-ber of their people, slain by those Indians. Another unfortunate result, was the shortness and insufficiency of their crops, from want of the necessary cultivation. It is to be hoped that this bitter and fatal experience will immediately tend to convince them of the folly of their old habits, and of the necessity and advantages of a differ& mode of I life and occupation. The situation of the border tribes in Ransas and Nebraska continues to require and to occupy the anxious attention of the department. - Most of them were removed there from the States east of the Mississippi river, under assurances that it should be their permanent home, while, to some, specific pledges were given that they should never be disturbed in their new possessioos, nor be included within the limits, or brought under the jurisdiction of any future Territory orlState. The country was set apart and dedicated to their special and exclusive use. Thus isolated, it was hoped that they could be shielded from the vices at-tendant upon civilization, until they could be gradually taught its advantages and blessings, and so be prepared to meet successfully the uncertain contingencies of the future. Various causes operated to render such hoyes futile. Amongst the most mischievous and fatal of which were them possession of too great an extent of country, held in common, and the right to large money annuities ; the one giving them ample scope for indulgence in their unsettled and vagrant habits, and preventing their acquiring a lrnowledge of individuality in property, and the advantages of settled homes ; the other fostering idleness and want of thrift, and giving them the means of gratifyin their depraved tastes and appetites. And though located separate an f apart by them-selves, they were yet in contact, or within easy communication with a border population, and so constantly exposed to the examples of the very vices from which it was intended to shield them. Then came the acquisition of our new possessions west of them, and the conse-quent, inevitable, and continued sweep of emigration thereto, throu.gh every portion of their conntry. Thus was the barrier of Beparat~ou swept away, and they became subject to constant contact, and to all the evils of an indiscriminate and lawless intercourse with all classes of our population. Their best interests, if not their very existence, rendered an entire change of policy towards them necessary, viz : their concentration on small reservations, to be divided among them in severalty, where they could be protected, and be compelled to remain and adopt habits of industry, with such control by the department over their annuities as would enable it, in the exercise of a wise dis-cretion, to apply portions, or the whole thereof, to such objects and purposes as would tend to promote their welfare and improvement. The acquisition of their surplus lands would, of course, throw open the country to settlement, leading, in time, to their being surrounded by a settled and stable pppulation, from which it was hoped they would soon learn the advantages of industry and the arts of civilized life. It was under the condition of things thus briefly and imperfectly stated, that the act of 1853 wm passed, authorizing negotiations L'with |
