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COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 
initiated, if not established, in regard to such cases. Other cases, 
however, occur, where trusts arise upon cash deposited in the treasury 
for the payment of matured stock, the avails of land sales, and by 
accumulations of interest on stocks now held, which are not imme- 
diately necessary in the performance of treaty stipulations. These 
accumulations are now considerable; and after the sales of the Dela- 
ware and other trust lands in Kansas Trritory, they will be very 
largely increased; in view of which, it is suggested that the law of 
1841 ought to be repealed, and a general enactment obtained from 
Congress, authorizing all sums of money arising from trusts, and held 
by the Secretary of the Interior, to be passed into the treasury at the 
end of each fiscal half year, by transfer warrants, and pledging the 
United States thereafter to pay five per centum per annum for the 
benefit of the Indian tribe entitled thereto. Such a measure would 
simplify the business of this department and that of the treasury, re- 
duce gradually the stocks on hand as they mature, and be an act of 
justice to the Indians denied to them under existing laws. 
Owing to the imperfection of records, the different modes in 
which their names are written, the difficulty of properly identifying 
applicants, and other causes, the progress in making and deciding the 
aplications for bounty-land warrants for Indians has been slow. 
nder the regulations adopted, there have been three thousand two 
hundred and seventy-three Indian applications for bounty land: of 
which three have been decided adversely at the Pension Office ; two 
thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight are in course of examina- 
tion or suspended, and four hundred and forty-three warrants have 
been granted and sent to this office for delivery to the proper parties.
Among the accompanying documents will be found the forms pre- 
scribed for the sale and transfer of these warrants, by the Indian 
holders, which, it is hoped, will amply protect them from imposition 
or fraud. 
Twenty-six quarter sections of Choctaw orphan land, in Mississippi, 
which had reverted for non-payment, have been re-valued and sold ; 
and thirty-four sections of Creek reserves, in Alabama, have also been 
re-valued and sold, and the prices obtained in both cases are believed 
to be the fair cash value of the lands. 
The construction of the road from Fort Ridgely, in Minnesota, to 
the South Pass of the Rocky mountains, in Nebraska Territory, for 
which an appropriation of $50,000 was made on the 22d of July 
last, having been assigned by you to this bureau, instructions were 
issued on the 18th day of September last to Win. H. Noble, esq., 
who was appointed superintendent. He is now in the field in the 
discharge of his duties. His instructions forbid him to anticipate any 
further appropriations for this road, and require that he proceed to 
lay out and construct such an emigrant wagon road between the 
points referred to as a judicious and economical expenditure of the 
money will authorize. 
A map of the Indian territories within the United States, provided 
for by the act of August 18,1856, is in the course of construction, and 
will be completed without any unnecessary delay. 
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