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Show 46 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFIPAIRB. within the boundaries of the reservation, where the Indians could have the advantage of employment both in the cutting and in the rnanufm-ture of their timber. On the 5th of ~ e b r u atrhe~ D epartment wasasked to grant authority to call for bids for the purchase of the timber from the Indian allottees and the erection of a mill for its manufacture on the Bed Cliff Reserva-tion.. This plan contemplated the granting of authority to the Indians to sell all their timber to an authorized contractor at not less than the accepted minimum prices, said prices to be fixed on the receipt of the bidders' propositions. March 11,1897, the office again called attention to this matter, since the. acting agent had reported that the sale of the burnt timber by itself, separate from the rest of the timber, would prevent the Indians j from receiving the fullest benefit from their logging. In only partial compliance with this recommendation the Department, March 24,1897, asked the President to grant authority for the sale of the dead timber that had been banked, which request was approved by him March 29, and with certain Department instructions was communicated to the acting agent March 31,1897. Captain Scott advertised this dead timber to be sold on sealed pro-posals, to be opened April 29,1897; but before that date the Depart-ment had decided that the plan of disposing of only the timber thathad been banked was not for the best interests of the Indians, aud accord-ingly, under Department instructions of April 26, the agent of La Pointe Agency was directed, April 27, to postpone the sale of the dead timber nntil further instructions. ! June 19,1897, the Department transmitted to this office the authority of the President for the Red Cliff allottees- '! to dispose of sll their timber, after due public advsrtiaement, to the highest bidder or bidders, for the several kinds of timber on the reservation-the green or standing as well as the burnt and fallen-under terms and oonditions similsr to those in force on the Bad River Reservation, and sooh others rss may be found neoessmy andadvis-able, to be prescribed by the Department, providing that snlea shall be made &MU-ally, limiting the amount to be sold in any one yew to not exceeding ZO,WM,OM)fest, until the whole shall be disposed of; and providing further, that the first sale shall inolude the burnt and fsllen timber already banked. A draft of regnlations for the disposition of the timber under this authority was submitted to the Department June 24,1897, and inasmuch as the proviso limiting the sales and requiring them to be made annually was a departure from the plan under which the timber belonging tootl~er allottees ill the La Pointe Agency had been disposed of, it was reoom-mended that Inspector Wright and the acting agent go carefully over those regulations and suggest any modifications that would enlarge the benefits to be derived by the Indians from their logging. Inspector Wright reported Jnly 12,1897, that he and Captain Scottagreed that it would be impracticable to sell the timber each year and limit the sales as proposed, and at the same time require the purchaser to erect a mill |