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Show ricious habits and inspiring high motives and aiding feeble beginners. in a better life. Men of this character are not to be found in. the ordi-nary way of political appointment. Their selectiou must be made on no other ground than that of fitness for their peculiar duties. A mis-take here i s fatal to the whole effort. For this reason the mode adopted for the last fewyears, of precuring nominations of agents through the several religious bodies of the country, has worked .most admirably. Not that the best men have alwa.ys.beenselected by those bodies, tut that the proport,iou of true, devoted,, capable agents furnished in this may has been far greater than it would have been by any other method of appointment. When these agents. thus elected have reached their distant fields of duty, they find, in the relations which they bear to the Christian people whom they.represeut, a constaut ingpiration to fidelity. Any ma11 fit t,o receive such an ap-pointment must constantly recngnize t.he duty upon him to be trne, not only to the Governmeut, hot to his owu religious convictions, and to those in whose name he has been sent to engage in the work of lifting men out of barbarism. And it is exactly this element of ent,husiasm which comes from living for an idea, from the purpose and cousciousness of' living for others, which is most essential to the effort of civilizatio~l among Indians. For this reason I most devoutly trust that the GOT-ernmcnt will still be inclined to call upon the religions boclies of the country to name the proper men for Indian ngeuts. With these three essential conditious, suitable country, reasonable a,ppropriations and proper agents, supplied and continued for a. reason-able leugth of time, there is uot a shade of doubt, in my mind, that the Indians of this country can be reclaimed from barbarism and fitted for citizenship, and that every year, from the tirue of its adoption till its. consummation, will give increased demonstration of the wisdom and ulti-mate success of the plan. But it must be borne in mind that a11 these conditions, namely, men, country, and funds, relatively important in the order named, are absolutely essential. If one of them is lacking, the highest excelle~~cofe the other two cannot r e ~ a i trh e loss. You canllot cihize the Sioux on the alkali plains of DakoL with any amount of funds. and the be8t of agents. You cannot civilize the Otoes on the best soil in Nebraska. wit.htheir large per capita annuity, without an agent capa-ble of ilia high trust. You cannot civiliee the Lac Court Oreille Chippewas in Wisconsin, on their fine reservation, aud with all the encouragements which a competent sub agent can give, without the means necessary to provide for their first steps in civilized labor. It surely is not too much to expect that a worli of such magnitude, involving, as it does, the welfare of so manS poor who in all their history have stood in such peculiar relations to the American people, and who are now attracting the increasing interest of philanthropists and schol-ars and the commiseration of all classes, shall obtain such recognition bv the Ooneress of the United States as will remove the difficolties u"11ich base-l~rretofnrrb teu cxprri~:ucedi n proc~~rinthge euactiuellt of laws and the necesiary al~l,rol~rintiolor~r their t ~ a i l ~ ii~l ll cgiv ili~:itinn. The folloiriue tohlr sl~owsr b r ; ~ l ~ u u naln uronriatio~~ai.~ ~cludil~lcl efi-ciency and special appropriations, of eiEh ;ear sink 1870, agd the disbursements for the corresponding years, toget,her with the funds. derived from interest on Indian stocks and sales of bondsaud lands and turned over to the Indians or expended for their benefit. This table shows the largest. amount to have been expended in 1873, which was the uncertain period as to the num ber of the Sioux and the Sear in which the |
