disposition toward the whites and a strong determination to keep aloof from the hostile bands. We kept a strict list of all the complaints made by the Indians, which has been transmitted to the Department of the Interior. I am firmly convinced that if the just claims of the Indians are attended to; if their annuities are paid them at the proper time and place; if the agents and other employees of the Government treat them with honesty and justice; if they are supplied with the necessary tools for carpentry and agriculture, the Indian tribes of the Upper Missouri, of whom I have spoken above, would maintain peace with the whites; and the warlike bands who to-day infest the plains of the Far West and the valley of the Platte, where there is so much destruction of property and loss of life, would promptly cease their depredations and would not be long in joining the stay-athome tribes. " If the savages sin against the whites, it is because the whites have greatly sinned against them." There is much talk just at present of placing all the Indian tribes on one or two large reservations. It is not possible to change the nature of any race of men in a moment. The Indians told us " that they were born to be hunters and to range the country in pursuit of animals." It will take patience to transform them into cultivators; the thing will necessarily require some years. The Indians whom we visited were disposed to choose reservations, suitable for agriculture, on their own lands. In every band a good number of families showed a favorable disposition to go to work without delay and urged us to have them furnished with plows and oxen. If they succeed for the first three years in their noble efforts, the example of that industrious portion would soon be followed by the mass in every tribe: and if once the great advantages of agriculture, of raising domestic animals and poultry, were understood, especially after once living in abundance as the result of their own labor, they could afterward easily be led to one or two large reservations like those of the Delawares, Cherokees and Choctaws.