in every direction across the great plains and drive off or destroy the game. No part of that great region, however inaccessible, escapes the prying eye of the gold seeker, and no route which promises discoveries of value or in any manner shortens his routes of travel is neglected. Of course, heighten the movements nor the conduct of these parties can be controlled. No man except themselves can say what wrongs they do to the Indians by robbing, by violence, or by dispossessing them of districts, yet the United States Government is held responsible if any danger is incurred by them or any loss of life or property sustained anywhere in the west and remote region they are traversing. What the white man does to the Indian is never known. It is only what the Indian does to the white man (nine times out of ten in the way of retaliation) which reaches the public.

The Indian, in truth, has no longer a country. His lands are everywhere pervaded by white men; his men as of subsistence destroyed and the homes of his tribe violently taken from him; himself and his family reduced to starvation, or to the necessity of warring to the death upon the white man, whose inevitable and destructive progress threatens the total extermination of his race. Such is to-day the condition of affairs on the great plains and in the ranges of the Rocky Mountains. The Indians, driven to desperation and threatened with starvation, have everywhere commenced hostilities against the whites, and are carrying them on with a fury and courage unknown to their history hitherto. There is not a tribe of Indians on the great plains or in the mountain regions east of Nevada and Idaho of any consideration which is not now warring on the whites. Until lately the U. S. troops, small in number and utterly incapable on that account of affording security to the whites or protection to the Indians, have been strictly on the defensive. Lately large re-enforcements have been sent to the plains, and several expeditions have been organized which are now moving against the Indians in the hope to restore peace, but in my judgment with little prospect of doing so, except by violent extermination of the Indians, unless a totally different policy toward them is adopted. The commanding officers of these expeditions, as also the commanders of military posts on the frontier, have orders to make peace with the Indians if possible, and at the earliest moment that any peace which even promises to be lasting can be made. The difficulty lies in the fact that we can promise the Indian under our present system nothing that he will ask with any hope that we can fulfill our promise. The first demand of the Indian is that the white man shall not come into his country, shall not kill or dive off the game upon which his subsistence depends, and shall not dispossess him of his lands. How can we promise this, with any purpose of fulfilling the obligation, unless we prohibit emigration and settlement west or south of the Missouri River? So far from being prepared to make such engagements with the Indian, the Government is every day stimulating emigration and its resulting wrong to the Indian, giving escorts to all parties of emigrants or travelers who desire to cross the plains, making appropriations for wagon roads in many directions through the Indian country, and sending out engineers to explore the country and bands of laborers to construct the roads, guarded by bodies of soldiers. Where under such circumstances is the Indian to go, and what is to become of him? What hope of peace have we when by these proceedings we constantly are forcing the Indian to war? I do not know of any district of country west of the Mississippi where the Indian can be located and protected by the Government,