MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS.

AGENCY EMPLOYÉS.

The number of positions held by white persons and Indians regularly employed upon the various Indian reservations, exclusive of Indian agents and the employés of the schools, was, during the past year, 831, classified as follows:

TABLE 14—Agency employés authorized for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1888.

*"Other employés" include persons employed in various capacities, such as wagon-masters, trainmasters, transportation agents, janitors, messengers, watchmen, hostlers, stablemen, general me. chanics, etc.

Many Indians and some white persons are also employed temporarily and irregularly in various lines of work, most of them as ordinary day laborers.

INDIAN POLICE.

To appoint an Indian on the police force is to ask him to sacrifice personal ease, face hardship and danger, lose popularity, submit to

abuse from his own people, and in return to offer him the thanks of the Government to the extent of $8 per month if he is a private, and of $10 per month if he has the added responsibility of being an officer. Nevertheless, at many agencies, Indians have been found who meet these requirements with remarkable skill and fidelity, and who accept these positions from a genuine sense of loyalty to the Government and a desire for the progress of their people in civilized ways. The appointment has a reflex effect on the appointee. The uniform, the commission, the trust reposed in him, the fact that he is a representative of the United States Government, develops esprit du corps, and the Indian policeman becomes brave, efficient, and loyal even to the extent of hazarding his life in the discharge of his duties. This spirit was strikingly manifested by several leading Sioux policemen who, as members of the Sioux delega tion, recently visited this city. In a conference with them held in the Indian Commissioner's room, Captain Sword said:

We have a good deal of trouble among our people to get them to do what the Government wishes them to do. I am in the service of the Government. No matter what comes before me I am willing to go ahead and do whatever the Government desires me to do.

Fire Thunder added:

What Sword has said is very true. I have forced myself into being powerful for the Government and have worked very hard. Of course, when I have this uniform on my life is nothing, if I have anything to do that the Government orders me to do. Anything I am told to do, I walk right into it.

The same sentiments were expressed by the other policemen present, and all protested that the Government pay allowed them was altogether insufficient. In this protest the Indian agents and members of the Sioux Commission present heartily joined.

It may also be stated that Captain Pratt, Superintendent of the Carlisle School, whose experience in both civil and military life specially qualifies him to judge of the actual and relative importance and value of the work done by the Indian police, writing upon this subject, gives the following opinion:

One of the things for which agents and Indians would feel most grateful just now would be a better recognition of the value of the Indian police. Their pay is wretchedly small. Knowing my connection with their branch of the Government service they everywhere speak to me about it. The police ought to have army pay at least. I would say, $15 a month for privates, $17 for corporals, and $20 for sergeants, with full rations and clothing in each case. The captain should have $50 a month, the first lieutenant $40, and the second lieutenant $30.

I have repeatedly witnessed their loyalty to the Government in the performance of the most arduous and dangerous services. Especially has it been before me during our present conferences with the Sioux. Policemen or soldiers of any other race could not have performed the services that the native policemen have performed without endangering outbreak. Two policemen were sent by the agent 40 miles away and arrested and brought back to the agency Chief John Grass. A full company of soldiers would not have been sufficient for the same service, and in attempting it a miniature war might have resulted.

Another argument in favor of this increased salary is that the United States Gov ernment, throughout the whole military service in the West, has at almost every post

Indians enlisted as scouts. To these scouts the Government pays $15 a month and gives full soldier ration and clothing allowances and then adds $25 a month for the use of horse and equipment, which the Indian provides for himself. The Indian policeman, serving his agent, performing a much greater share of the same kind of duty, receives nothing for the use of his horse and equipment, although he provides it just the same as the Indian scout who serves the military. It seems to me that these men have a claim which can not be presented too strongly, which if presented must receive recognition, and you may use my name in connection there with if you choose.

As settlements close around and encroach upon Indian reservations the need for the services of Indian police becomes greater, and the duties of the force, which are not infrequently dangerous, become more arduous and complicated. In the reports of the Indian agents, which are attached hereto, it will be seen that the agents coincide, as hitherto, in acknowledging their dependence upon the police for the preservation of order upon the reserves, and that at the same time they point out the difficulty which they experience in securing as policemen the best qualified members of the tribe, when the pay allowed is so small that it offers no inducement to accept the position, especially after the novelty has worn off. They reiterate, with even greater urgency than ever, their previous requests that the police should receive larger salaries.

No argument is needed to show that $10 a month for officers and $8 a month for privates is meager compensation to offer men who, beside giving their own services, must furnish horses, forage, and equipments, and I desire to add my plea to that made by Indians, Indian agents, and my predecessors in office, that Congress so increase the appropriation for Indian police that just compensation may be given for the services. required.

COURTS OF INDIAN OFFENSES.

On December 2, 1882, the Secretary called the attention of the Commissioner to what he regarded as a great hinderance to the civilization of the Indians, viz: (1) "The continuance of the old heathenish dances, such as the sun dance," etc.; (2) marriages during pleasure, and plural marriages; (3) the influence of the medicine men, who are always found with the anti-progressive party; (4) the custom of destroying or distrib uting property on the death of an Indian. In concluding his communication the Secretary said: "I suggest whether it is not practicable to formulate certain rules for the government of the Indians on the reservations that shall restrict, and ultimately abolish, the practices I have mentioned."

Acting upon this suggestion the Commissioner prepared certain rules. for the guidance and direction of Indian agents, and they were approved by the Secretary on April 10, 1883. By these rules authority was given for the establishment at each Indian agency, except at that of the Five Civilized Tribes in the Indian Territory, of a tribunal, consisting of three Indians, to be known as "The court of Indian offenses." The first rule provides that "if they are fit and competent persons to perform the duties," the first three officers in rank on the police force

at each agency shall serve as judges of said court (the term of office being one year), the police officer highest in rank to be the presiding judge. It also provides, probably because it was expected that the members of the court would be paid as police officers, that the judges shall receive no money consideration on account of their services in connection with said court. But the provisions of this rule, that police officers shall serve as judges and that the judges shall not be compensated for their services, have both become obsolete. It is now held that a police officer should not be a member of the court; that the policeman who makes a charge should not be permitted to act as judge and himself determine it upon the trial of the alleged offender.

By the Indian appropriation act for the current fiscal year, $5,000 is appropriated "for compensation of judges of Indian courts, at such rate as may be fixed from time to time by the Secretary of the Interior" but this amount is not sufficient.

On July 18 last the several Indian agents were directed to report upon the efficiency of these courts, and to submit estimates of the amounts required in payment of the compensation of the judges. Replies have been received from most of the agents, twenty-one of whom report that the courts at their several agencies are accomplishing much good. The aggregate amount of the estimates which have been received is $10,400, most of these estimates being for $10 or $12 per month for each judge. I am therefore of the opinion that the appropriation for the compensation of Indian judges should be considerably increased.

It is also suggested that the jurisdiction of these courts should be defined by law. The offenses now triable by them are offenses declared by the rules of April 10, 1883. By rules 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 the sun-dance, the scalp-dance, the war-dance (and all other so-called feasts assimilating thereto); plural marriages; the practice of the medicine man; the destruction or theft of property; the payment of or offer to pay money or other valuable thing to the friends or relatives of any Indian girl or woman, are declared to be Indian offenses, punishable by withholding of rations, fine, imprisonment, hard work, and in the case of a white man, removal from the reservation. In addition to these offenses these courts are, by rule 9, given jurisdiction in the following matters: Misdemeanors committed by Indians; civil suits when Indians are parties thereto; cases of intoxication; and violations of the liquor regulations. Their civil jurisdiction is declared to be the same as that of Justices of the peace of the States or Territories in which they are located.

If these rules, amended in several essential particulars, were enacted into law, the usefulness of the courts of Indian offenses would thereby be greatly increased, and under the authority exercised by these courts the Indian would be compelled either to obey the law or suffer its penalties, and would be thus compelled or punished by a tribunal composed of men of his own race.

THE INDIAN CRIMES ACT.

Legislation of this kind would supplement that contained in section. 9 of the Indian appropriation act of March 3, 1885, known as "the Indian crimes act," which defines what the Supreme Court describes as two conditions under which Indians may be punished for the crimes of murder, manslaughter, rape, assault with intent to kill, arson, burglary, and larceny. The first of these conditions is where the offense is committed within the limits of a Territorial government, whether on or off an Indian reservation. The second condition is where the offense is committed by one Indian against the person or property of another, within the limits of a State of the Union, but on an Indian reservation. In this case, of which the State and its tribunals would have jurisdiction if the offense were committed by a white man outside an Indian reservation, the courts of the United States are to exercise jurisdiction as if the offense had been committed at some place within the exclusive jurisdic tion of the United States.

In the case of the United States v. Kagama and Another, Indians, the Supreme Court has decided that section 9, in both its branches, is valid and constitutional; that while the Government of the United States has heretofore recognized in the Indian tribes a state of semi-independence and pupilage, it has the right and authority, instead of controlling them by treaties, to govern them by acts of Congress; that the States have no power over them, so long as they maintain their tribal relations; and that the Indians owe no allegiance to a State within which their reservation may be established, and the State gives them no protection.. Under this section, several Indians have been tried and convicted. by Territorial courts of the crime of murder committed within the Territories on Indian reservations; and the question of the right of Territorial courts to try such cases has been raised. In the case of two Papago Indians, named Ferina and Quijatoca, of the Pima Agency, Arizona, and in that of an Indian named Keskuda (or Zacate) of the Mescalero Agency, New Mexico, tried and convicted of, murder in Territorial courts, and sentenced to be hanged, respites have been obtained, so that this question may be taken to the Supreme Court for its decision. The point made in these cases is that no jurisdiction has been conferred by section 9 upon courts established by the laws of the Territories; that if a murder be committed by a white man on an Indian reservation, situated within the limits of a Territory, the United States court and not the Territorial court has jurisdiction over the offense; that since the act provides that an Indian committing, within a Territory and on an Indiau reservation, any of the crimes named in section 9, "shall be tried therefor in the same courts and in the same manner and shall be subject to the same penalties as are other persons charged with the commission of said crimes, respectively," and as the crime in question was.