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Show REPORT' OF THE COMMISSIONEB OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 13 Like examples might be multiplied showing the quantity and spirit of the demands which I hope yet to fill by establishing the employ-ment- bureau machinery where it can. work broadly thru the North. WQILgINCi ON THE ZUNI DAX. I have already referred to the difference between Indians and whites in their approach toward a labor proposition, a difference growing out of a racial habit of centuries. Next to what we are doingin persuading Indians to leave their reservations and engage in manual labor in competition with whites, I consider our most im-portant experiment that which we are making on the Zuni dam at Blackrock, N. Mex. Here we have Indians employed on an Indiw. enterprise in an Indian reservation-conditions less desirable than those of outside employment, but much better than those obtaining, for example, inside of the Sioux reservations, where it has been neces- ' ~ a r tyo -contrive ast3cially new lines of work for the sake of keeping the Indians busy. The Zuni dam is an undertaking conducted on legitimate engineer-ing lines and aimed at a ,peat ancomplishment in irrigation if made successful. The labor element in the work is therefore only inci-. dental, and Indians have been employed because they are at hand and it has been deemed desirable to utilize their muscular energy while teaching them habits of regular industry. This enterprise is under the management of John B. Harper, one of our superintendents of irrigation. Here again we are compelled to consider certain racial characteristics of Indians which differentiate their labor from that of white men. In M;. Dagenett's enterprise we were met by the irregular and uncertain habits of the Indians, growing out of their former mode of life; at the Zuni dam we have to reckon with the peculiar physique of most of the Indians employed. Naturally, the bulk of the Indian labor drawn to this point comes from the Zuni tribe; after all the ' . Zunis have been employed who wish work and who can be profitably kept at it, the Navahos, Rio Grande Pueblos and Hopis are given a chance. The Zunis are small men with indifferent muscular develop-ment: This condition is doubtless largely the result of centuries of insufficient nourishment caused by attempting to live by agriculture. in an arid region with a poor water supply. The fact that they have supported themselves entirely by the crude tillage of their fields will account for their lack of sturdy physical equipnient, for they have never had to perfbrm any heavy labor continuously. The only former attempt at their regular employment, so far as this Office knows, was when 21 of them went out to work on a railroad a few years ago, but after about a fortnight's a h l c e came trailing back. Their work suffers also from their general irregularity of habit, but the - irregularity itself proceeds not so much from a desire to lie by and |