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Show REPQBT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 6 reservation and made an excellent showing. Many of the tools they were required to use were entirely new to them, but they gave aur-prising evidence of their ability to adapt themselves to the new con-ditions. For the season 1908 the number of men employed rose from 16 in July to 86 in October, and their earnings were $17,455.17. An unexpected development growing out of the desertion of their reservation in Utah by a band of the Utes and their going to South Dakota was that, after they left the tract of land on which they wen3 temporarily located in South Dakota, they were induced by Mr. Dagenett to go to work on the Burlington Railroad in South Dakota. Contrary to expectations, they proved to be very satisfactory laborers, quiet, tractable, and for some time well satisfied with the work. They earned a considerable sum of money and the training they received had a very salutary effect. The employment of Indians about Rocky Ford, Colo., continued during the year. A large part of these were boys from the Indian schools of the Southwest. They were placed in the homes of farmers, treated as members of the family, and given a smd compensation, averaging about $4 per month for work in the beet fields. They gave so good an account of themselves that many were reemployed at the end of the contract period at from $12 to $14 per month. Many other Indianswith their families were also brought to Rocky Ford, as the employers prefer them to Mexicans and pay them more money than would be paid to hfexioans for the same class of service. During the thinning season in the beet fields, last spring, beginning on May 20, there were 230 Indian beet thinners, representing the Apaches, Pueblos, Navajos, hloquis, Zunis, Pimas, Papagoes, and Cheyennes, in addition to 59 Indian apprentice bop. Over 40 Indians were em-ployed on the Jocko irrigation project on the Flathead Reservation during June. Superintendent Lorenzo D. Creel, of the Nevada Training School, in charge of the Pyramid Lake Reservation, Nev., was reported by Supervisor Hamood Hall as having every able-bodied man at work on his land. The -4tchison, Topeka and S a n t ~ F eR ailway i s em-ploying a large number of Indians on track work and in the shops and round houses at division terminals. About 80 Indians are employed as skilled laborers in the shops of this oompany at from $3 to $3.90 per day. The company prefers them to hlexicans and pays Indians for track work $1.25 per day and Mexicans $1. On the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin the number of Indi-ans employed in logging and mill operations was 109 in July, 1908, which number rose to 339 in March, 1909, since which time there was a smd decrease in number, as follows: April, 251; May, 242: and June, 264, which decrease is probably due to a per capita payment made in May. |