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Show REPORT OF TECE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 43 There can be no doubt that, as a community, they are well qualified to take charge of and successfully manage their own domestic and financial concerns, and that, aside from our treaty stipulations, no good reason exists why the gov-ernment may not now surrender to them the trusts it has SO long held and exer-cised in their behalf. With a view to such action, I respectfully recommend to and urge upon your consideration the propriety of requesting from Congress authority to make the necessary negotiations and settlements. With the exceptionof the Tonawanda band of Senecas, these Iudians have very considerable unadjnsted claims against the United States, arising under the provisions and stipulations of the Buffdo Creek treaty of January 15, 1838. Under the provisions of this treaty it was contemplated that the entire body of theseIndians would emiirate to the then Indian territory west of the State of Missouri, where a tract of land equal to one million eight hundred and twenty-four thousand acres, or three hundred and twenty acres for each individual, was set apart for their use in consideration nf a cession to the United States of their ' claims.to five hundred thou~and acres of land in the then Territory of Wis-consin. By .far the l&er portion of the Indiana remained in the State of New York. That such Indians have a just claim against the United States on account of the cession of Wisconsin lands has been expressly re,wgnized by a settle-ment and adjustment made with a portion of their number, viz : the Tonawanda band of Senecas, under a treaty made with said band in 1857. Many of the Indians removed to the then territory west of Missouri, as eon-templated by the treaty of 1838, and some of them have received the lands to which, under said treaty, they were entitled, but it is alleged that many of those who so removed failed to receive their dues under the treaty, and are suffering extreme poverty, being compelled to subsist mainly by the charities of the tribes there residing. Very many complaints have been received at this office upon this subject,, and it is believed that in some instances they are founded in justice. I respectfully suggest legislative action, on the part of Congress, upon this subject, .with a view to a final adjustment of all the claims of the New York Indians, and trust that such legislation will include not only the claims of those still residing in New York, but also the claims of those who emigrated to Kansas under the treaty of 1838. In my last annual report I recommended that measures be adopted by Con-grem to insure to the Indians thevalue of the bonds abstracted from the custody of the late Secretary of the Interior, as shown in a report of the select com-mittee of the House of Representatives, (No. 78, thirty-sixth Congress, second session,) and, further, that a law be enacted granting power to the Secretary of the Interior to dispose of dl the Statestocks then held in trust by the govern-ment, and thatthe amount expended in ,their purchase be reimbursed to the Indians by an investment in stocks of the united States for their benefit. |