OCR Text |
Show I 2 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. It will be seen that the increase lies almost wholly in the two items, ''Fulfilling treaty stipulations" and "Support of schools." The previous annual report showed that after deducting several items which did not properly belong to the regular expenses of the Indian service, there remained for the current expenses of the year ended June 30, 1897, $7,042,538.17. The appropriation bill for the carrent fiscal year also contains some special items which ought not to be considered aspart of the regular expenses of running the department. Thase items are such as for the commission to negotiate with the Five Civilized Tribes, commissions to negotiate with other tribes, surveying partion-lar reservations, payment of private claims, etc., and they aggregate $89,812.80. Deducting this aggregate from the total amount appropri-ated, there remains $7,342,808.09, which may be considered as represent-ing the amount appropriated for conducting the ordinary operations of the department. Comparing the two year8 we have- Current expenses for 1898. .............................. $7,342,808.09 Current expenses for 1897. .............................. 7,189,496.79 Excess of 1898 over 1897.. ......................... 153,411.30 There are three items of appropriation contained in the Indian appro. priation act for 1898 which have been left out of the foregoing calcula tions. These are- Pay of alsrk to superintendent of schoola. .................. $1, WO. 00 Survey of lends in Indim Territozy ........................ 100, WO. 00 Resurvey of the land8 of the Chickasaw Nation ............ 141,500.00 Total ................................................ 242,600.00 I' The former item has been added to the civil list by the Treasury Department, and the latter two have been placed to the credit of the Geological Survey, that Bureau being charged with the supervision of the surveys described. As this Bureau is not responsible in any way for the expenditure of these three items they have not been considered as p a t of the ordinary current expenses of the Department. The estimates for the fiscal year 1898 presented to Congress by this office aggregated $7,279,525.87. The total amount appropriated was $7,431,620.89, or $152,095.02 more than the estimates. It should be understood that the $2,631,771.35 set down in the fore-going table as being for the support of schools, represents only the amounts appropriated gratuitously by Oongress for that purpose. A very large portion of the sum appropriated to carry but treaty provi-sions as well as of the interest derived from funds to the credit of various tribes in the Treasury, is used for soh001 purposes-probably in the neighborhood of $600,000; so that it may be said that an amount exceeding $3,200,000 is devoted to the cause of Indian education. |