here on Tuesday morning next along with Mr. Hale, superintendent of Indian affairs, and I will try and get to Walla Walla if I find you are still in the far-off eastern part of our Territory, for I feel very deeply and very severely the imperative necessity of having everything done that can be done to have full satisfaction and compensation for all their past offenses and crimes and full indemnity and perfect security for the future.

W. P.

Talk of Brigadier General Benjamin Alvord to the chiefs of the New Perce Indians, assembled at the Lapwait Agency, Wash. Ter., on the 24th of October, 1862.

I left Fort Vancouver to visit you before I had heard of the murders in your country. The report of them met me at the Des Chutes on my way up the Columbia. I have come to see you in order to assure you that the Government desires to do all in its power to protect you. Hereafter, as heretofore, every officer under me wll be directed to spare no exertion to afford all possible protection to you. Oftentimes this duty must necessarily be performed imperfectly, and your will, as heretofore, often find our intentions and wishes more satisfactory than our performances. You are entitled to this protection by the treaty. You are also doubly entiteld to this carte and friendship from your long and unwavering fidelity to our people and to our flag. You received with kindness Lewis and Clark sixty years ago, when they crossed the Rocky Mountains and wintered on the Clearwater. You were kind to Colonel Bonneville in 1835, and to Fremont in 1843. In 1847 you indignantly rejected the proposition of the Cayuse, after the murder of Doctor Whitman, to join in a war. In the spring of 1853 I was in command at The Dalles, and I learned that you again scornfully rejected the messages of the Cayuse asking you to join in a grand combination for a war against the whites. That war did not finally break out until two years later, when you refused to join them and aided Governor Stevens in safely reaching Walla Walla from the Blackfeet country. In 1858, under General Wright, in the Palouse and Coeur d'Alene country, some of you fought on our side, and we promised accordingly to fight for you against your enemies. You will never have a worse enemy than the whisky sellers and the bad whites who intrude upon your and commit outrages upn you and on your families.

Major Rinearson has been making war upon them as Captain Smith did a year or two ago. Lh, he is a warm friend to the Nez Perces. Major Rinearson shall continue to discharge this duty. He will remain here permanently, and will build a military post, and will no doubt continue hereafter, as heretofore, faithfully to discharge the task confided to him. It will be his duty to make all good Indians his friends by doing all he can to protect you when requested by the Indian agent to prevent the whites from settling upon your farming and grazing lands, to aid in the arrest of whites who commit crimes against the Indians, and to punish those who sell or give whisky to your people. When I first met Lawyer with Mr. Craig in 1853 at The Dalles you were then fortunately remote from the emigrant road, and I had hoped that thus you would have an opportunity of developing and cultivating those elements of Christianity and civilization which had by the aid of missionaris been planted among you. As one woshiping the same God and Savior, I must admit that I took a deep interest in the experiment.

When encamped near The Dalles in May, 1853, your men were seen to kneel on the ground and say their prayers and worship in truth and