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United States. Office of Indian Affairs / Annual report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, for the year 1855
([1855])
[Miscellaneous], pp. 206-256
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Page 207
COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 207 articles in your judgment deemed proper for presents to the Indians at Santa F6, and make your arrangements for entering immediately on the discharge of the duties of your mission. Your first attention will be directed to those bands with whom diffi- culties exist, or are apprehended, but with which a state of actual war does not now exist; and it might be well, before starting upon your mission, to have such understanding with the officer commanding the United States troops in New Mexico, that in the event of your success in concluding articles of peace and friendship with any tribes or bands, the same might not be subjected to danger of attack or to any inci- dental injury arising out of a. state of actual hostilities with other bands or tribes. On the faith of the appropriation of $10,000, made also by the act of July 31, 1854, you are authorized to procure, or cause to be pro- cured, some agricultural implements and farming utensils, to an amount not exceeding $5,000, to be presented immediately to the Pueblo Indians, so as to be of service to them during the coming season. Your drafts for the amounts of any purchases, or for funds to make them, will be accepted as heretofore. You will observe that the appropriation for treaties with the Apaches, Navajoes and Utahs, is designed to cover all expenditures for transportation, for provisions for necessary attendants, travelling expenses, &c., &c., in any way arising out of, or connected with the negotiations, and you will make your arrangements accordingly; aiming, on the one hand, to conclude treaties with all the Indians named, (including both the northern and southern Apaches,) and on the other not to exceed by disbursements or liabilities the amount appropriated. Of course, the question of time is left to your discretion, and you will not incur any considerable outlays without reasonable prospects of success. You will not exhaust the appropriation on negotiations with a part of the tribes named therein, but only expend a proportion thereof, reasonable in view of numbers, relations, and positions of the tribes with whom you may treat; reserving, in case it may be wise at present to enter upon negotiations with sonme of the tribes, such a por- tion of the appropriation as in your judgment may hereafter, at a more seasonable time, be sufficient to enable you to conclude treaties also with them. In regard to the appropriation for presents to the Pueblos, it is deemed advisable to expend at present only a part thereof, and the $5,000 above mentioned is designed to cover transportation and inci- dental charges on the implements that may be procured at this time. You will make such arrangements as will provide for the Indians, within the country in which they may respectively reside and the pos- session of which they claim, a suitable tract or tracts, limited in ex- tent, for their future permanent home; and will guai-antee to them the possession and enjoyment of the reserves assigned them, with pro- vision that hereafter the President may cause the land reserved Lo be sre and to assign to each single person over twenty-one years of age,? head of a family, a farm containing from, say, twenty to
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