Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/463

 would have been a major-general, surrounded by a high-priced staff, dividing the work and relieving him of nearly all care; he would have had three aides-de-camp, too frequently his own relations, each getting from the Government a better salary than the agent of this great concourse of savages was receiving. MacGillicuddy was expected and required to keep his wards at peace, feed and clothe them in health, see that they received proper medical attendance while sick, encourage them in habits of industry, especially farming and cattle-raising, prepare all kinds of accounts for the information of his bureau, and in his moments of leisure instruct the aborigines in the Catechism and Testament. In this matter of Indian agents, as in all that pertains to Indian affairs, the great trouble is that the American people have so little common sense. Let the salaries paid to agents be raised to such a standard that the position will be an inducement for first-class men to consider, and there will not be so much trouble in getting an honest administration, if there should be coupled a good-conduct tenure, subject to the approval of some such organization as the Indian Rights Association. Civil Service Reform may well be introduced in the Indian service.

Of the other services rendered by General Crook while in command of the Department of the Platte there is no room to speak. Much of the highest importance and greatest interest happened under his administration, and it is needless to say that all which devolved upon him to do was done well, done quietly, done without flourish of trumpets, and without the outside world learning much about it. In the line of military operations, there was the trouble with the Cheyennes who broke out from the Indian Territory during the summer of 1878, and fought their way across three military departments to the Tongue River, where they surrendered to their old commanding officer, Lieutenant William P. Clarke, Second Cavalry. There was the nipping in the bud of the outbreak among the Shoshones and Bannocks, principally the latter, led by "Tindoy" and "Buffalo Horn," both of whom were personally well known to Crook, who used his influence with them to such advantage that they remained at peace until the aggressions of the whites became too great and drove them out upon the war-path. These Indians did not, properly speaking, belong to General Crook's department, but lived on the extreme northwestern corner of it in a chain of almost inaccessible