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Show REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 55 Missions, for a contract for each of the schools named in the applica-tion, payable out of these funds, and forwarded to the seve,ral agents, who were directed to place it. in the agency office and immediately to notify in writing the authorities of the mission school that the petition was there, accompanying the notice. with a copy thereof. Each agent was warned to give abundant notice to the Indians under his care, and afford all who wisht to sign an opportunity to do so. He was told that the advertisementmust be made with the utmost publicity; and in cases where inclement weather rendered it imprac-ticable for any of the Indians, by reason of sickness or otherwise, to appear in the agency office to sign the petition, he was to send it to convenient places, and have it presented under the same restrictions that would be observed in his office. He was especially cautioned to <'be extremely careful not to give anyone ground for complaint that a surprise of any sort was sprung upon him," and also that every-thing in connection with the matter "must be done candidly and in the open, without favor or prejudice." As a further safegnard this instruction was added: When an Indian intending to sign the petition appears for that purpose, you mill yourself, and also thru the interpreter, explain the terms of the petition to him so thoroly that both yourself and the interpreter may be able to sign the certificate to be appended to the petition. In every case you must be careful to see that the proposed petitioner thoroly understands what he is doing before you permit him to sign. These orders were reenforced in another letter of January 20,1906, to the several agents explaining the petition and former letter of instructions and saying: I would further impress upon you the importance of dealing with a trouble-some matter like the business of handling petitions in the broadest and most charitable spirit. Some question, for example, has been raised as to the extent to which the signer of the petition is liable to reduce by his own act the amount of money coming to him and his family during the fiscal year. The truth is that the Government guarantees to every Indian child a chance to get a common school education somewhere, and that it maintains a large and expensive educa-tional establishment, only part of which is supported from the tribal fund$ the rest bein-g a burden on a -g eneral educational av.D. ro-v riation bv Con.cre ss exemvt, by statutow prohibition, from drafts for sectarian school purposes. Hence any diversion of tribal money to the support of mission schoois is bound to reduce to some extent the total balance which would eventually be divided per capita in some form among the tribe. It may be a very small percentage of reduction if the tribal fund is large, and a large one if the tribal fund is small; but it will be a reduction of some sort, and under the President's Latest order will be suffered more or Less by all the members of the tribe. These petitions were returned at various times from the several Sioux agencies, and will be taken up seriatim. Contracts based on the shares represented by the petitioners were executed, as will be shown specifically in a later paragraph. |