OCR Text |
Show Com. -5- ., .-, .- ,.--, see to it that-all,urgent cases of distress are met. The field men know the Indians and where they live. All traders and Indians have been publicly and frequently impressed with the f acto'-.that . there was going to be no cash annuity payment thi3 -. "winter-,., but that the money was coming, to be used for industrial purposed. There i3 an exceedingly gratifying numbor of the Indian..men who notwithstanding the hub-bub the traders are raising, are planning to go out upon their land and begin to farm this season. We have Individual Indian money derived from land sales, sufficient to "stake" a goodly number of them, and several of them are impatient fcr the snow to leave. I want to plunge inio the crop season this spring with our share of that hundred thousand dollars in our pocket <£nd with authority to buy anything from a single-tree to a side of bacon provided it 7/111 further our farming operations for the coming crop-year. These Indians need that money. They need it worse than the traders do. But please do not allow any or all kinds of reports 7rtiich may reach you to influence you. to order me to pay through these Indians' fingers thev money which they mu3t have to sustain thera while they make a 1914 crop. I beg pardon for speaking so directly on the matter but I do it in anticipation of the receipt by you of" the most wire-scorching distorted reports of abject poverty and starvation among, these Indians which reports are being made-up by those who neither know nor-care for the Indians. I am doing my best, not only to prevent suffering |