law for offenses against the Indians same as against whites. After the execution of this law Indians will be more cantions in their acts and speech, claiming, as they have done, that any offense, however heinous, amongst themselves is subject to their own customs and settlement only. It would appear that definite instructions as to the execution of this law should be promulgated on the reservations among the Indians.

THE SUN DANCE.

I had every reason to feel assured that the assent given last year to yielding up by the Indians to them the time-honored annual festival of the sun dance, though given reluctantly, was understood by all its abandonment for all time. In this I was mistaken, and when the usual time for preparation came this year it was again agitated, first by the elders. By a firm persuasion these gracefully yielded. Later, the younger element took it up, and were discovered traveling the camps, "presenting the pipe," committing all to a participation in this barbarous ceremony. It required prompt and decisive action to prevent its consummation. Finally a very r luctant abandonment was secured. Since then the agent is held responsbile for all ills and misfortunes that bave occurred or have visited this people. Sickness, death, hail or other storms would have been averted if the sun dance had not been prevented. His removal is consequently demanded. I am satisfied renewed efforts will be made each successive year for this demoralizing custom, and will require a firm and decisive stand to prevent.

WATER SUPPLY,

It would be difficult to find any person or association owning but a portion of the value in buildings and other property represented by the Government at this agency who would take the risk of loss by fire with absolutely no protection, as is here the case, when the expenditure of what it costs in three years to supply his family and employés with water for ordinary purposes would give ample supply and protection. Such is the case at this agency. The yearly expense of supplying the agency and employment with water equals about one third the expense of permanent water-works, whereby an abundant supply for all purposes would be bad. My duty impels me to again call attention to this subject and ask for security against accident.

LANDS IN SEVERALTY.

Last year there were 12 certificates of land issued to Indians and Indian families. Since January last 33 additional have been delivered to applicants. I have recently forwarded to the Department for approval 37 more, making a total of certificates of land in severalty issued to and applied for to the present 2. The applications of others are being prepared to be forwarded later. While many Indians are desirous to take lands in severalty, locate on and improve the same, many are deterred from so doing by the persuasions and threats of others. No explanation app ars to satisfy those who object to taking them themselves and who insist that others shall not have them. I have encouraged the settlement of the Indians on the lands and taking these certificates (as complying with treaty agreement), to overcome as far as possible their disposition to wander from place to place and abandonment of their labor and improvements year after year. The old fogies," or "chiefs," who look to their supremacy and control over the people, fearful of losing it, discourage and advise the people to continue in the old rut It is a contest between the old stagers and the young and progressive, with the prospect of disregarding the "chiefs," and the young men assuming the responsibility of their own acts.

TELEGRAPH.

At the risk of being considered importunate, I venture to again call attention to the fact that this agency is still without telegraphic communication with the outside world. Many circumstances during the past and of present frequent occurrence, serve to impress upon us the importance of this intercourse, not only with the military, but with the established lines of the country. The expense to be incurred in furnishing poles and labor for a line 35 miles long (the wire and other material being on hand) would be more than compensated for by its importance and usefulness.

IN CONCLUSION,

I would respectfully recommend the Rosebud Indians to the attention of the Office of Indian Affairs as deserving consideration, feeling satisfied that efforts in their behalf

with judicious management will bring forth good results. My thanks are due and tendered to the employés of this agency who have aided in lightening the burdens and annoyances of iny position. For the generous support and courtesies received from the Office of Indian Affairs I respectfully return my acknowledgments.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

The COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS.

JAS. G. WRIGHT, United States Indian Agent.

ROSEBUD AGENCY, DAKOTA, August 27, 1885. DEAR SIR: The fiscal year just closed has surpassed all previous years in its fullness of good results among this people. The inauguration, through your efforts chiefly, of a general awakening among all classes to the necessity for them and their children making more positive and continued efforts to help themselves is the inauguration of a new age; especially is this true as to agriculture, home building, and education. With regard to these and other like interests, the temper and conduct of these Indians has been full of encouragement for all those engaged in the effort to lift them out of their low estate-a degradation which does not belong to them solely on account of their being barbarians, but in a great measure superinduced and practically forced upon them by an unnatural, and hence wrong. position, into which they are thrown by unfortunate treaty relations with ourselves.

The disposition to scatter out and form small settlemen's, with a view to farming and stock-raising, in desirable locations, at long distances from the agency, instead of clustering about the agency in large old-fashioned camps solely for the purpose of drawing rations conveniently, still goes on. Such settlements are constantly forming and should be encouraged in every way possible; their minds and strength being diverted from the ration drawing nuisance by issuing to those who live at a distance for long periods of time. School and mission work cannot be satisfactorily carried on at such settlements unless this is done.

During the past year I have maintained, through resident catechists and by monthly visits myself, regular religious services at all camps where suitable buildings afforded the opportunity, viz, seven. These with the church at the agency make 8 mission stations now under my charge on the Rosebud reserve. The attendance at all of these has generally filled the buildings where services were held, and the interest manifested has been such as to justify all the efforts and expenditure we have been able to make on behalf of these people. We have also been urged by frequent entreaties from other settlements recently formed, or in prospect, to establish schools and missions among them. So far as was within our power we have heretofore complied with such entreaties, and last winter erected three buildings at such points, viz: A frame church at Oak Creek, at a cost of $1,000, and frame buildings, with chapel or school-room and dwelling, under same roof, at Ring Thunder's camp, ou Estes's Creek, and at Little Oak Creek, costing about $750 each.

With commendable zeal the Indians have assisted as they felt able at all these points, but especially at Good Voice's camp, on Oak Creek, where they hauled all the building materials from the railroad.(a distance of 45 or 50 miles) without pay. We have a building similar to hat at Little Oak Creek now being constructed at Lip's Camp, on Pass Creek, which will cost about $500. For this also the Indians have bauled all the material free of expense to us from the agency (a distance of 50 miles). In addition to the above, we shall by September I have completed on Turtle or Antelope Creek, about 12 miles from the agency, a boarding-school to accommodate 50 or 60 boys and girls, at a cost of probably $12,000. It is a frame building, with stone basement-story, and is constructed in the most substantial and thorough manner yet devised for frame buildings, with double floors, back plastered, and plastered throughout. It will be opened for pupils this fall.

There have been during the past year three day-schools, in separate camps, maintained by the Protestant Episcopal Church, with an average attendance of about 30 each. Two of these have been closed, that the mission funds might be expended to better advantage elsewhere, since the Government, in fulfillmen of its treaty obligations, with our hearty approval and much to our relief, established schools of a higher grade in the same camps, and it did not seem necessary that there should be two in the same neighborhood. The third is still kept up.

The six day schools which you have established in as many outlying camps, also mark the past year as one to be remembered with gladness by all who love to see light shed abroad in dark places. If they shall be vigorously worked as they have been thus far, an especially if others can be opened in like camps, aud the great but long-withheld though oft-promised central illuminator, an agency boarding and industrial school, can be put in operation, the Government will have fulfilled its

long-neglected treaty obligation in this matter, and the day need not be far distant when the Dakota youth or maiden who has received no education be the exception. The people are ready and the better portion are earnestly asking for this; but up to the past year the Government does not seem to have been willing, though under solemn obligation to provide it without waiting even for the consent of the people. It is perfectly manifest now, howe ver, that the majority are ready and even anxious. They are ready and anxious for schools as defined above. They are not ready for any other scheme, such, for instance, as sending their children for long terms of years to distant schools among a strange people. When the schools on the reservation have done their primary, and by no means least important, work of enlightening the public mind as to what education and civilization are like, and what they are for, then, but not until then, it is reasonable to suppose that the more distant schools will grow in favor and be sought by pupils who are desirous of further training than home schools can give, and parents who, from having come to see the uses of learning and culture, wish to have their children reap the greater benefits of more advanced institutions and be developed in the atmosphere of a higher civilization. The main educational work to-day must be for the whole people, as one body, and must be carried on in their mist. To advocate the sending of children away to Eastern schools as the best solution of the problem in its present stage, besides being ridiculous in other respects, is to say to a man who cannot get upon his feet, "Come here and I will pick you up." It does pick up the few who get there, perhaps, but it fails utterly in that it does not provide them with strength sufficient to stand alone afterwards.

The camp day school may be a small affair considered only with regard to the actual drill of pupils in the school-room. It may, by superficial observers, be pronounced a failure; but that part of its work is but one of a hundred items which should go into the account in computing its real value. Its influence as a center of something higher than the old life which monopolized that camp before its coming; its imperative demands upon parents as well as children of regularity and cleanliness; its crowding out from the minds and lives of the people many evil and degrading practices; its forcing upon them, in place of these, useful and refining employment for mind and body; its ever present example, through its occupants, of neatness, order, and industry; its constant protest against the degrading character of the Indians' present amusements, lack of useful occupation, and the customs and sentiments which prevail around it, with its equally constant witness to the nobler life which a higher order of like things carry with them; these and many similar considerations may each one be fairly rated as paramount in importance for these people in their present condition to the simple schoolroom drill of the younger children. Agency boarding-schools exert on a higher scale the same good influences upon the whole people which the camp day-schools do upon their respective camps; but, in them, the drill of the pupils should be deemed of chief importance.

Until, by schools carried on in their midst, together with the influence of wise efforts in all other lines for the same end, an intelligent public sentiment shall have been created at home, it will be idle to spend money and effort in the hope that children, taken fresh from the camps and polished off by contact with our civilization in entire separation from the surroundings in which they must endeavor to retain that polish when returned, will act as leaven to elevate the masses. The Indian has but little moral courage, and in order to his facing unflinchingly the ridicule and opposition which bis new standing will subject him to, it is far better that he be educated out of heathen ideas and practices right here in their midst. I am sure you will agree with me that almost invariably where returned pupils of distant schools have not been taken in hand and carefully kept up by yourself or others taking a personal and much forbearing intest in them, they have fallen back, in a short time, perhaps below the level from which they were taken. White children would do the same. The attraction of gravitation, the tendency earthwards, is in us all. Cultivated public sentiment, the restraints of civilization, and the demands of refined society at our hands in childhood have much to do with our being unlike the Indians. They start us in life on a higher plane and prevent us from falling below it. Had such support been wanting in us at any time during our younger and more impulsive days, we could now understand better why it is asking too much of Indian youth, after but five or so years at the East, to retain the standing inculcated in them there. The fascinations of a wild, indolent life would ruin a large portion of all the college graduates of our land if the opportunity were given them in the same form it is the returned graduates of Carlisle, Genoa, &c., with rations and clothing sufficient provided, without effort on their part, for or dinary needs. Examples are not wanting to prove this; but what is expected of the Indian is more than what such examples prove our own youth to be capable of. They cannot long maintain themselves in a self-imposed position of isola ion in the midst of their own kin, where the tendency of nearly all their surroundings is to pull them down and the supports which kept them up while among Eastern friends are no longer at hand. I repeat the assertion that by vigorous prosecution of educational work in all

its phases, among both old and young, a more enlightened and better public sentiment must be first secured at the agencies before the work of our Eastern schools, which at present consumes so much of the interest and money which would be better expended in less showy work out here, will be of much avail for permanent result. At least unless, in the mean time, some nuclei of civilization, like the camp day-schools, are being developed, near which they may be when they return, and regular employment with fair wages, can be furnished all such graduates, it is simply cruel to take them away at all.

I spoke above of an unfortunate treaty relation between these people and ourselves. What I referred to is the fact that we bound ourselves to furnish, and they bound themselves to receive, a living instead of some honorable way to make a living. The difference is simply vast. Unfortunate everywhere is the individual who has a living furnished to him off hand. How much more mischief is done when a whole people are so treated! This is the fundamental mistake at the bottom of all our difficulty in getting the Indian to do anything for himself. The decree, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," is set aside, and we have really caused the Indian to think that the Divine decree, for him at least, is, "If you sweat you shall starve." Ten times the money now spent in feeding, if expended in providing work and opportunity to earn food, would be money well invested, and be the cheapest policy in the end. Then we should be gradually making a шñan and a producer of the Indian, while now we compel him to be a pauper, and encourage him to remain a consumer only.

The only wise course left us is to undo, as far as possible, our mistake, by throwing around him every preventive to idleness and incentive to industry we can devise. Apropos to this I can think of nothing which would so effectually stimulate industry, at this time, as the carrying into practice of the provision in article 5 of ra ification of Sioux treaty in 1876, which says: "The Government will aid said Indians as far as possible in finding a market for their surplus productions, and will purchase as far as may be required," &c. The Indians are eager for money, and will work for it as other men do. Let them see that the produce of their fields has a cash value and there will be not much longer a question as to whether Indians can learn to farm. They are not yet competent to compete with the settlers, and hence this provision of the treaty is a wise one. Let it be a live one.

Very respectfully, yours,

Hon. JAMES G. WRIGHT,

United States Indian Agent.

W. J. CLEVELAND,
Missionary in Charge.

SISSETON AGENCY, DAKOTA,

August 20, 1885.

SIR: I have the honor to submit my annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1885.

The Sisseton and Wahpeton bands of Dakota or Sioux Indians, for whom this agency exists, occupy a very fertile and valuable reservation of 918,780 acres in Eastern Dakota, touching the Minnesota line along Lake Traverse. The year just closed has been one of progress in every department, and the people are fairly entitled by their record to be acknowledged as a civilized tribe, if not to be admitted to Territorial and United States citizenship.

AGRICULTURE.

The farming interests of this people have shown a steady increase: (1) In the ability and disposition of the majority of the people to carry on their farming successfully without "head farmers" or any direct supervision. (2) In the very commendable amount of new land broken. (3) In the increase in acreage, quantity, and quality of their grain crops, and greater attention to garden vegetables. (4) In the improved care of animals and attention to same.

Harvest is now just over and the crops as a rule have turned out well. There has been very little damage from hail or insects. The farmers are fairly supplied with farm machinery of all kinds. There are twelve twine-binding harvesters and two thrashing-machines owned by members of the tribe. It is a matter of regret that the chief and some of the older headmen cultivate very small patches of ground, and do not take a leading position as farmers.

The sheep issued last year have not generally been a success. A few farmers have fine flocks and have given them the care required to make them profitable, while many have allowed their sheep to die or stray, and some doubtless have eaten or sold them.

The people are slow to appreciate the value of cows, not being fond of milk. The education of the children at the boarding-school in milking, and the use of milk for food, will do much to change this in the future.

There have been 237 acres of new ground broken during the year, and the old ground has ge erally been cultivated. The banner district is La Belle, in which 26 farmers have 615 acres of wheat, 201 acres of oats, and 20 acres of barley, besides potatoes and corn for family use. One farmer, Peter La Belle, has 139 acres of crops. Another, Solomon Marlow, has broken 61 acres of prairie this year.

One district which contributes the majority of the dancers has not an acre of new land broken and very meager crops.

CENSUS.

The census will show that the births, 53, exceed the deaths, 46, which with other changes will increase the total population to 1,470.

LANDS, ALLOTMENTS, AND PATENTS.

The work of rectifying the location and allotments of the Indians has been continued during the past year. Twenty-five new allotments and 8 patents have been issued in the time. The survey lines have been retraced and restaked over more than one-half of the inhabited portions of the reservation by a competent surveyor, which greatly facilitates the work of defining the homesteads allotted. A greater interest and understanding of their land tenure exists among the people than ever before, and most of young men are now endeavoring to get their 50 acres under cultivation in order to comply with their treaty and get parents for their land. I would respectfully snggest for your consideration, whether an Indian who remains for five years on one quarter section of land, builds a comfortable house with only the assistance of a part of the lumber bought with his own tribal funds, puts 50 acres under cultivation, and becomes a self-supporting farmer, is not worthy to have United States citizenship conferred with his patent. If it could be so, this people could now furnish at least 25 worthy candidates who have complied with all the conditions, and the desire for patents among the rest would be greatly stimulated.

SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION.

The school attendance for the past year has been over 30 per cent. greater than any previous year, and no compulsion was used in gath ring the scholars. The school population from six to sixteen years is 344. Deducting chronic invalids, blind, and mute children and girls married under sixteen, we have about 300 scholars on the reservation. There were 215 scholars in the boarding-schools of the reservation, 9 at Santee normal training-school, and 6 residing in white families off the reserve. The manual labor boarding school began its session September 15, 1-84, and closed June 19, 1885, making one month more of school than on the previous year. The number of scholars was small at first, which reduced the average for the year, but the school was soon filled up and the results of the year's work were very satisfactory. The total attendance was 137 scholars, 74 males and 63 females. The largest monthly average was 110, and the average for the entire session 91.

The plan was adopted of giving the forenoon-8.30 a. m. to 12.30 p. m.—to schoolroom work, all the pupils participating, and the afternoon to industrial pursuits from 1.30 to 4.30 p. m. The house-work for the girls, and farm-work and chores for the boys occupied a part of the scholars each day a greater number of hours. Study hour, singing, and other exercises filled up the evenings of the week. The trades taught were harness-making, shoe-making, and tailoring, in which shops 18 boys were einployed. The harness-shop produced a large amount of very useful and valuable work for the people of the tribe in the line of repairs and new harness. In estimating the cost of the school, some credit should be given for this property. The girls were taught sewing and use of sewing-machine, knitting, darning, mending, co king, housework, laundry work, and baking, under competent instructors. In cleanliness of person and rooms, educational progress in school room and in speaking the English language, the results obtained were a long step in advance of anything known hitherto in this school. The employés (with one or two exceptions known to your honor) were distinguished for their good character, zeal, and faithfulness in their work, and deserve an honorable mention.

The scholars attended church services in their own language each Sabbath morning at the mission churches, according to the preferences of their parents. A Sabbathschool in English was held in the school-room Sunday afternoons.

Good will mission school, under the auspices of the Presbyterian Board of Home Mis