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Show BEPOBT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFF- 37. Agreements have, been concluded with the Oneidas of Wisconsin, the Sacs and Foxes of the Mississippi, and the Pottawatomies; and negotiations are pending with the Pawnees. These agreements will be submitted to Congress for its considera-tion, in accordance with the provision of law above quoted, at the beginning of the next regular session; and if the agreements are rati-fied and the necessary appropriations made, no further steps will be necessary to clear the old accounts of the tribes mentioned off the books of the office. In addition to the above there are two other tribes still receiving perpetual annuities with whom no negotiations have yet been com-menced, viz, the Choctaws of Oklahoma and the Senecas of Nm York. Strong efforts will be made during the current fiscal year to complete agreements with these tribes. This is work of great importance, as not until these annuities are commuted and the actual cash deposited in the Treasury of the United States can the process of segregating these funds to the credit of individual Indians begin. Perpetual annuities form a strong tribal bond and a bar to individual progress. They keep the eyes of the Indians turned toward the Treasury of the United States instead of on the allotment of land, on day labor, or on a trade. To clean up this branch of the work will mean the appropriation by Congress of approximately $1,202,758; but when this is done Congress will have substantially closed its account with treaty fiscal obligations. WORK OF THE ALLOTMENT SECTION. ALLOTMENTS. At Pala, in Southern California, the office is adopting a new method of allotment, which it believes should be extended as far as prac-ticable to all reservations. When the subject of allotting the Pals Indians was fist taken up, the dsual procedure was proposed of dividing their reservation into a certain number of areas, giving each Indian one of these plots. The Indians were living in a village with small gardens around each house and larger gardens in close proximity in the valley of the creek, and they shared the grazing lands out on the hillsides. The allotment plan was changed to preserve this normal way of living. On the Umatilla Reservation, when the allotments were made, no attention was paid to the places where the Indians were living, which was mostly in their wicEups along the bottoms of the Umatilla River. On allotments so made the Indians were expected to scatter out. Naturally, as a rule they did not. In the' Sioux country the situation is similar. There, as far as can still be done, |