Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/496

 through between Wilcox and Globe. Their corn crop is large; I think, after reserving what will be needed for their own consumption and seed for next year, they will have some for sale. The only market they have for their produce is from freighters, the trader, and the Q. M. Department here. They are being encouraged to store their corn away and use it for meal; for this purpose there should be a grist-mill here and one at Fort Apache. They have cut and turned in during the year to the Q. M. Department and at the agency about four hundred tons of hay cut with knives and three hundred cords of wood, for which they have been paid a liberal price." Attached to the same report was the following: "Statement showing the amount of produce raised by the Apache Indians on the White Mountain Indian Reservation during the year 1883: 2,625,000 lbs. of corn, 180,000 lbs. of beans, 135,000 lbs. of potatoes, 12,600 lbs. of wheat, 200,000 lbs. of barley, 100,000 pumpkins, 20,000 watermelons, 10,000 muskmelons, 10,000 cantelopes. Small patches of cabbage, onions, cucumbers, and lettuce have been raised. (Signed), Captain Third Cavalry, Commanding."

I have seen Indian bucks carrying on their backs great bundles of hay cut with knives, which they sold in the town of Globe to the stable owners and keepers of horses.

During that winter General Crook wrote the following letter, which expresses his views on the subject of giving the franchise to Indians; it was dated January 5, 1885, and was addressed to Mr. Herbert Welsh, Secretary of the Indian Rights Association, Philadelphia:

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"The law prohibiting the sale of liquor to Indians is practically a dead letter. Indians who so desire can to-day obtain from unprincipled whites and others all the vile whiskey for which they can pay cash, which is no more and no less than the Indian as a citizen could purchase. The proposition I make on behalf of the Indian is, that he is at this moment capable, with very little instruction, of exercising every manly right; he doesn't need to have so much guardianship as so many people would have us believe; what he does need is protection under the law; the privilege of suing in the courts, which privilege must be founded upon the franchise to be of the slightest value.

"If with the new prerogatives, individual Indians continue to use alcoholic stimulants, we must expect to see them rise or fall socially as do white men under similar circumstances. For my own part, I question very much