on the subject. It is therefore ordered that no citizen trader will here-after be allowed to pass any military post or picket along the eastern frontier of New Mexico for the purpose of trafficking with the Kiowas and Comanches, unless it shall have been announced in orders by the military authorities that we are no longer at war with these Indians, or unless his passport be vised and countersigned at these headquarters; and all commanders of posts, pickets, and bodies of troops are hereby ordered to arrest and hold as prisoners any person or persons without such passport who may be found trafficking with Kiowas and Comanches, or found proceeding to the country of those Indians for the purpose of such traffic, until notice be duly given that we are at peace with those tribes, as above stated. The general commanding the department is charged with the protection of the lives and property of the people from hostile Indians, and he regrets to be compelled, for the reasons given, to pursue the course here indicated. He had a right to suppose, on general principles, that no such passports would either be asked for or given, and that no such illicit commerce would be carried on with our enemies. Such a course, it will readily be seen, tends not only to embarrass the military, but to paralyze their efforts to punish these savages for their repeated crimes. By the fifty-seventh article of the act of Congress entitled "An act for establishing rules and articles for the government of the Armies of the United States," approved April 10, 1806, holding correspondence with or giving intelligence to the enemy, either directly or indirectly, is made punishable by death, or such other punishment as shall be ordered by the sentence of a court-martial.

By command of General Carleton:

BEN. C. CUTLER,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

FORT BERTHOLD, DAK. TER., January 31, 1865.

Brigadier General ALFRED SULLY:

GENERAL: As we send a mail below to-day, I have the honor to report further upon the situation of affairs at this post. Medicine Bear's band of Yanktonnais are still encamped on the River below this post. Strike the Ree's [band] are at Painted Woods. There are 600 lodges of Santees also on the River between this place and Fort Rice. There are also some bands of Uncpapas, Blackfeet, and Misseconjous on the River below here. I have also heard that there were 200 lodges of Cheyennes encamped near Medicine Bear's camp and that other bands of the Platte River Indians are coming in there. About the 1st of this month ten sleigh loads of goods (mostly ammunition) were brought into the Sioux camps below here by agents from the Selkirk settlement, bearing the English flag. These agents gave the Sioux five kegs of powder and a quantity of balls, and traded them a large quantity of ammunition and other supplies, at the same time advising and urging them to fight the whites, and to commence by attacking this place, as it was the weakest and more easily taken. They also promised them to be back again the last of January, when they would bring them another large supply of ammunition and 1,500 lodges of Santees to assist them in their attack upon this post. It is evident that the Indians are collecting in large force upon the River between this post and Fort Rice, and that, instigated, encouraged, and supplied by these British subjects (whites, half-breeds, and mongrels from Red River), they meditate an attack at an early day upon this post. The sons of