Pacific Coast, I was able to make a comparative study of the condition and needs of the Indians in widely separated and different regions. I received the greatest courtesy, kindness and assistance from all officers of the Government, from officers of the army, missionaries, teachers, journalists, business men and leading citizens everywhere, and was highly fortunate in opportunities for observation and investigation, and in all the conditions and course of circumstances vitally affecting my work.

The first part of the book consists of descriptive notes on the various reservations visited. The second part is made up of opinions and reflections suggested to my mind by what I had observed.

PART FIRST.

NOTES ON THE RESERVATIONS.

ROSEBUD, DAKOTA.

Rosebud Agency is about eight hundred miles west from Chicago. I visited this reservation. early in June. Hon. James G. Wright, of Illinois, was then the agent, but his term expired soon afterward, and he was not reappointed. He had about seven thousand Sioux Indians under his charge. When he was appointed four years before, he found his people huddled closely around the agency, wholly dependent upon the rations issued by the Government for their subsistence. They had settled themselves in places where wood and water could be easily obtained, but where there was no soil, nor any possibility of agriculture. In the spring of 1883, Mr. Wright began operations under his plan of scattering the Indians as widely as possible over the reservation. Without any resort to force or threats of it, by the use of influences and resources natural to a real leader of men, he steadily pursued this object, and was at last completely successful.

During the first afternoon after my arrival at the agency I walked all about the neighborhood, and saw fewer Indians than I have sometimes seen at a Massachusetts railway station when a group of students from Lincoln, or Carlisle, or Hampton, came along on their way to the New England country towns for their summer vacation. The Rosebud Indians are living in thirty scattered camps or separate neighborhoods, in different directions from the agency, and at distances varying from twelve to one hundred and thirty miles. Some of the camps are twenty, twenty-five, thirty-five, fifty and seventy miles away.

Four years ago there were only about twentyfive acres of land cultivated. At the time of my visit there were more than four thousand acres under cultivation by Indians connected with this agency. I visited more than one hundred of their farms, and saw corn, oats, potatoes, pumpkins, squashes, melons, onions and all kind of roots and vegetables suited to the latitude and climate. The country is rather high and cold for corn, but it sometimes ripens, and much of it is used green. Each Indian's plough land is a long narrow strip, when circumstances permit, for convenience in ploughing, and is surrounded by a good fence of barbed wire built by the Indians themselves. In travelling about the reservation it was a common thing to see a man and his wife constructing a

fence. The woman strained the wire to its place with a pole, and the man fastened it with staples to each post. The agent issued seeds, ploughs, wagons and all necessary farming utensils, fencing-wire, etc., to those who would work, but "the tools to those who will use them," was the rule, and help was given only to those who showed a disposition to help themselves. Many Indians are always eager to obtain as much as possible of everything, and they often clamor for utensils which they have no intention of using. They want whatever they have seen issued to other Indians, and would take half a dozen ploughs or wagons apiece if they could get them, though they lived on bare rocks or desert sand. But I observed that Mr. Wright gave them wire for a fence only after they had set up all the posts, and that it was his unvarying policy to require the co-operation of the Indians themselves in all that was done by him for their benefit. He had devised a system of records by which the entire industrial or economic history of each Indian who is at work in improving or civilizing ways is tabulated and preserved so as to be seen at a glance. This system is so convenient and valuable, and so much of an advance upon methods previously used, that the Government has adopted it, and now prints a blank record book of this kind for all Indian agencies. I found the Rosebud volume very interesting reading. For

instance, Iron Wing, of the North Band on Big White River, had a house, 16 by 20 feet, and two windows were issued to him in 1883; a door with locks and hinges, a heating stove and a yoke of oxen in 1884; crockery in 1883 and 1885, and a wagon and harness, a cow and a lamp in 1885. This is a real history of a developing life and character. Mr. Talk had nothing at all, as is often the case among white people. Some of the entries are almost too quaint and personal for publication. Quick Bear's camp, thirty miles from the agency, had forty-seven houses and farms. The day of tents and tepees, except for forlorn old .women, who have no men to build houses for them, is passing away on this part of the great Sioux Reservation. Hundreds of well-built, warm and comfortable log houses are taking their places. A great many Indian families have sewing machines. The Government employs farmers to instruct these Indians in agriculture.

Four years before the time of my visit there was not a school-house or a school in the territory belonging to Rosebud Agency, and the former agent advised Mr. Wright not to undertake any work for the education of the Indians, as it would involve him in trouble without end, and could produce no valuable results. But I found seventeen school-houses, eleven of them built by the Government, and there were thirteen Government