white settlements. Of course the Indian of the first class was no longer able to maintain himself by hinting in the circumscribed area allotted him, and, with his unconquerable dislike to manual labor, grew rapidly to be an idle vagabond, dependent entirely upon the Government for support. The money and goods annually furnished him under the treaty, through the Indian agent, necessarily attracted all thte gamblers, whisky sellers, Indian traders, and other unprincipled characters who infest the frontier, whilst the purchase and transportation of large quantities of goods brought also into the Indian system a horde of contractors.

The Indian was thus provided with the worst possible associations and surrounded by the most corrupt influences, and became a gambler, a drunkard, and a vagabond, plundered and wronged on all sides. His reserved lands rapidly became valuable by the growth of settlements around them, and land speculators besieged Congress with every sort of influence to make another treaty involving another removal of the Indians and the expenditure of more money and more goods, whilst the coveted lands fell to the lot of the fortunate or skillful speculator. This process was repeated at no long intervals, the Indian tribe diminishing rapidly with each removal and becoming thoroughly debased, until, transferred to a region where they could not derive any support from the soil and emasculated of their manhood, they soon fell a prey to hostile Indians or perished with disease and want.

The Indians on these reservations, surrounded by such influences and forced into association with so depraved a class of white men, were completely fortified against any efforts to educate or Christianize them. Even in their wild state they were not so entirely withdrawn from any hope of civilization. To the Indians of the second class, viz, those who have sold portions of their lands bordering on white settlements, though they still retain their roving habits, much the same remarks, though in a more limited degree, are applicable. The yearly or semi-yearly payment of money and goods requires their presence at stated periods on the frontier of the white settlements. Indian traders, whisky sellers, and gamblers assemble there to meet and plunder them, and these payments become scenes of wild debauch, until the Indian has parted both with his money and his goods, when he is forced again to resort to the prairies to support life. Gradually, also, the white settlements encroach more and more upon his lands. He again sells, until, corrupted by gambling and drinking and by contact with depraved whites, he gradually parts with his whole country and is allowed a small reservation, upon which, with the assistance of his annuities, he supports himself as he can, becomes one of the clas of "reserve" Indians, and goes to his end through the same course.

There do not and have not lacked occasions, time and again, when the Indian, goaded by swindling and wrong and maddened by drink, has broken out against the whites indiscriminately, and committed those bearable outrages at which the country has stood aghast. I think it will be found, almost without exception, that Indian ward of late years have broken out with the second class of annuity Indians, and can be directly traced to the conduct of the white men, who have swindled them out of their money and their goods. By our system of reservations, also, we have gradually transplanted the Indian tribes to the West, and have located them from north to south along our Western frontier, building up by this means a con-