Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1881.djvu/10

VIII present year the Apaches have committed many outrages in New Mexico and Arizona. A number of those thus engaged are now in confinement. Are they prisoners of war or criminals? Should not the liability of Indians thus engaged be clearly defined? Should not all crimes committed on reservations be clearly defined, the punishment thereof fixed, and the trial therefor provided in the United States courts? We know that polygamy prevails among most if not all the Indian tribes, and all history shows the degrading influence of that system wherever it prevails. We are endeavoring to civilize the Indians; should we not take measures to remove this obstacle to their civilization?

STOCK RAISING.

I am satisfied that some of the reservations now occupied by Indians are not well adapted to farming purposes, for the reason that the rainfall is not sufficient to make the raising of good crops reasonably certain. This is the case, in my opinion, in that portion of the Indian Territory occupied by the Cheyennes and Arapahoes near Fort Reno, and by the Kiowas and Comanches near Fort Sill. The soil is fertile but cannot be farmed profitably, as I am informed, without irrigation, the necessary works for which the Indians have neither the knowledge nor the means to establish.

It would, I think, be much better to teach the Indians on such reservations to become herdsmen, than to endeavor to teach them farming. If the government would, at each of the Agencies named, provide a herd of cattle to be cared for and managed by Indians, under the supervision of the agent, to be added to by annual purchases and natural increase, and not to be diminished for the use of the Indians until it should have attained such size as to be sufficient for all their wants, and then, under proper restrictions, turned over to them, with the distinct understanding that they must depend upon it and not upon the government, we would, in my judgment, make them self-sustaining much sooner than by attempting to make farmers of them on lands not adapted to that purpose.

THE INDIAN TRUST FUND.

This fund, amounting to $2,186,050, of which the Treasurer of the United States is custodian and the Secretary of the Interior is trustee, was invested in United States 5 per cent. bonds issued under acts of July 14, 1870, and January 20, 1871. On the l6th of May last, I was notified by the Treasury Department that interest would cease on these and other like bonds August 12, 1881, and the bonds be paid, but that if desired the bonds could be continued at three and a half per cent. Believing that such continuance would be to the profit of the fund, request to that end was duly made, and on the 28th of June, 1881, notice of such continuance was communicated to this department by the