Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1873.djvu/10

690 of acres. Their present treaty appropriation, amounting to $130,000 per annum, expires with the present year, and by the terms of the negotiations under which they release the 4,000,000 acres of land above referred to, the Government will be required to pay them $50,000 per annum, a reduction of $80,000 per annum. In the negotiations with the Utes they relinquish between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 acres of land, at an annual compensation of $25,000. Their present treaty appropriation, amounting to $20,000 per annum, expires with the present year. The net gains under the two negotiations in the annual expenditure of supporting these tribes amounts to 875,000, as compared with the expenditures of former years. The terms of these negotiations provide for the payment of the respective amounts named in such articles as the President may direct, which is in conformity with a suggestion made in a previous portion of this report, that further payments of annuities in money, to Indians, should cease. These negotiations will be submitted to Congress for action. The result, if ratified by Congress, will be to release a large area of valuable agricultural and mineral land, thereby enabling our white settlements to advance and occupy a desirable portion of the public domain. In this work the Department is greatly indebted to Bon. Felix R. Brunot, president of the Board of Indian Commissioners.

While there have been no extensive Indian depredations during the year there may have been an apparent increase in the number of petty raids and depredations. These have, without doubt, been magnified and attributed to a supposed failure of the policy, or its want of adaptation to the management of all the tribes. If there really be an increase of these occurrences it is clearly attributable to other causes, and is not unexpected. Our relative position towards the Indians is materially changed within the last few years.

The progress of population, through the instrumentality of railroads and other facilities for travel, has brought the Indians and our frontier population into close proximity over an immense area of country hitherto uninhabited by civilized man, and entirely occupied by the Indian and the buffalo. Where difficulties arise between Indians and whites in our frontier settlements we can no longer, as heretofore, mitigate or avoid the trouble by removing the Indians into a country remote from civilization. We are now compelled to solve the question of preserving order and security between the Indians and whites through a vast region of country, not less than four thousand miles in length by twenty-five hundred in width, extending from the extreme northern and northwestern limits of Washington Territory to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the line which separates the United States from the British possessions in the North to the line which separates the United States from the territory of Mexico in the extreme southwest. Everywhere and in all places throughout this extensive region we are in constant danger of