sincerity the great God of Heaven. You won in that way my respect and regard. Could I have had my will, I would have raised a wall as high as the heavens around you to keep out intruders. It is very sad to find that the discovery of gold and the consequent rush of miners to this country should have brought such a mass of the very worst white men in contact with you, and thus impeded your improvement. Better if all the gold found there were sunk in the oean than that such injustice should be done you. In this unfortunate and unlooked-for state of affairs the best the Government can do for you is to provide, as it has, for the making of a new treaty, so as to compensate you so far as possible for the unauthorized occupation of the gold mines by our people. It is true that no amount of money can compensate you for your injured feelings. But the making of this treaty is not given to me. It is in other hands.

It will be my duty after a new treaty is made to aid the Indian agent in enforcing it. Some vexatious delays have occurred in executing the old treaty. A portion of the annuities were at Wallula as I passed there. The new superintendent, Mr. Hale, is an honorable gentleman, who I am sure wishes to do you justice. He had to send his bonds to Washington before he could get money for you. But that delay will soon be at an end. When the Pacific railroad is built, which the present Congress has provided for commencing, we can communicate so quickly with Washington that such delays will be at an end. Some of you and some of your sons will yet visit the Great Father at Washington on that railroad. Believe not the deceitful words of the cunning and slanderous men who say that this great Government has lost its power. The very reverse is true. Never was the Government so mighty and terrible in its power. Never did it have so many rifles or so many soldiers. It has a million of brave and gallant warriors in the field. In the very midst of such a war it makes a beginning, as I have already said, of a Pacific railroad. Owing to the delays interposed by the Southern States, that measure was never before started. The Northern people have all the country from here to Texas, including California, Utah, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Kansas--nearly all to the Mississippi River. You are under a great, a proud, a rich, and a generous Government, and never did we have more noble, patient, and faithful allies than the Nez Perces. It takes fire to temper steel. Temptation is the test and trial of virtue. If a Nez Perce's lodge will stand rain and storm and hail and burricane, it is then well pitched; it is then firmly secured to the earth. The sun may shine, but fair weather and sunshine are no test for it. It required al this severe and harassing treatment by the gold diggers to show how true and honest and straightforward a Nez Perce can be. Such fidelity shall always have my praise. We wish in return for it not only to be fair, not only to be just, but to be also as kind and as generous as possible toward you.

BENJ. ALVORD,

Brigadier-General, Commanding District.

(Copy for Major J. S. Rinearson, First Oregon Cavalry.)

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE PACIFIC,
San Francisco, October 25, 1862.

Brigadier General L. THOMAS,

Adjutant-General U. S. Army, Washington, D. C.:

GENERAL: A few days since I had an interview with His Excellency J. W. Nye, Governor of Nevada Territory. It is well known that many

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