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Show 60 REPORT Ol? THE COMMlSSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. I EXHIBITION OF INDIANS. Most of the applications received during the past year for authority to take Indians for exhibition purposes have been refused for the rea-son that the experience of this office has been that when persons other than those known to be thoroughly reliable have been allowed to take Indians for such purposes they have usually broken their contracts with the Indians and left them stranded far from their homes, so that the Government has been obliged to return them to their reservations at its own expense. The authorities granted by the Departrdent are as follows: January 2,1897, to Messrs. Cody (L'Buffalo Bill") and Salisbury, to take 100 Indians from reservations in North and South Dakota for gen-eral show and exhibition purposes. A bond in.the sum of $10,000 was given by tliis firm. January 29,1897, to Mr. J. C. Henderson, of Chickasha, Ind. T., to take 25 Indians from the Kiowa and Comanche Reservation, Okla., for the purpose of giving exhibitions-playing baseball-mainly in the Southern States. In this ease all arrangements of bond, contraets with the individual Indians, etc., were made by the acting Indian agent of the Kiowa Agency, with whom, before taking the Indians from their homes, Mr. Henderson deposited a sufficient sum of money to pay the railroad and other necessary traveling expenses of the entire party to their agency from the most distant point to which they might be taken. The bond given in this case wlls for $5,000. June 28,1897, to Mr. 0. K. Swayze, secretary of the "Committee of Fifteen in charge of the Fall Festival and Soldiers' Reunion," to he held at Topeka, Eans., in September, 1897, to take 50 or 60 Indians from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency, Okla., and a few from the Osage and the Pottawatomie and Great Nemaha agencies for exhibi tion purposes. In this case no bond was exacted, aa the festival is to he under municipal control, and promise was made by Mr. Swayze. that the said committee would defray all the necessary traveling and incidental expenses of the Indians, and return them to their homes without any expense whatever to the Government, and would also hold themselves responsible for the proper care and protection of the Indians. In two instances authority was granted for Indians to attend indus-trial exhibitions or local celebrations. This was done at the urgent request of responsible parties and in the belief that the visits would have an educative intlueuce upon the Indians themielves. The office, ' however, in granting the permission, exacted such conditions and restrictions as would secure to the Indians good treatment and protec-tion from bad company. As stated in previous reports, whenever engagements with Iudians for exhibition purposes are made, their employers are required to enter |