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Show 62 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. In 18992 the Pima agent suggested that many of the wandering Pap% goes could be induced to cease their nomadic ways and make this reservation their home if they could be assured that it would not be taken from them. The President, on December 6,1894, granted authority for allotting on this reservation 10 acres of land each to the Papago Indians entitled thereto. Allotments were made by Special Agent Clande N. Bennett, who submitted, July 16,1896, a schedule of 679 allotments, all of which, as he informally states, comprise irrigable land. June 29,1896, this office submitted to the Department the proposi-tion of Henry E. Eemp, vice-president and general manager of the East Riverside Canal Company,to sell the Government in trust for the dlottees on the Gila Bend Reservation, for $10 per acre, water-right deeds for one-half miner's inch per acre, each water right to convey a perpetual right to the grantee thereof to purchase water from said ctompany at the rate of $1.26 per acre per annum. The quantity of land which conld be covered by this canal was estimated at Rome 6,500 acres. The office recommended making a contract for the purchase of water rights for 500 acres dnring the last fiscal year, the intention being to purchase rights covering additional areas during succeeding years until ell the land should be irrigated. No action thereon by the Departme~~t has been comm~nica~tteod t his office. I have recently learned that there are one or two other canal companies who might furnish water for a portion of the allotted lands. These lands without water are wholly worthless, bnt will be valuable when irrigated. Unless some means of placing water on them can be devised I see no use in epproving'the auotments or trying to induce the Indians to settle there. If water can be supplied the lands will furnish homes for nearly 700 Indians now roaming the deserts of Arizona, and they will be able to support them-selves comfortably, the Government being required only to purchase the water rights and pay the maintenance charge for one or two years. At an early date I shall instruct the new agent in charge of the Pimaagency to make a full investigation of this subject, and will snb-mit the result to the Department. ASSAULTS t'0R WITCHCRAFT, Z m I PUEBLO, ARIZONA. In March last the acting agent of the Pueblo Agency reported that a certain society of Indians in the Zuiii pueblo, known as the "Priests of the Bow," had murderously assaulted an old woman of the pueblo whom they charged with being a witch. The case was reported to the agent as follows: They threw her off the house, took her to a, corral, where they tied her wrists behind her back snd pnllwd her up to e. beam, with her feet from the ground. They kept her hanging nearly all day, and while she wss hanging they tortured her in every way. I hear four or five Zn6ie were implicated in the torture, snd there were many apeatetors. It is only the poor ones, who heye not enough friends to proteot them, that are eoouaed and tried. The woman is the fourth an0 sinoe last summer; tbe othm they didn't tie on account of friends interfering. |