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THE SIOUX.
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devoted to paying the just debts of the tribe; $8230 to be expended annually for twenty years in stock, implements, on physicians, farmers, blacksmiths, etc.; $10,000 worth of tools, cattle, etc., to be given to them immediately, “to enable them to break up and improve their lands;” $5300 to be expended annually for twenty years in food for them, “to be delivered at the expense of the United States;” $6000 worth of goods to be given to them on their arrival at St. Louis.

In 1838 the Indian Bureau reports that all the stipulations of this treaty have been complied with, “except those which appropriate $8230 to be expended annually in the purchase of medicines, agricultural implements, and stock; and for the support of a physician, farmers, and blacksmiths,” and “bind the United States to supply these Sioux as soon as practicable with agricultural implements, tools, cattle, and such other articles as may be useful to them, to an amount not exceeding $10,000, to enable them to break up and improve their lands.” The fulfilment or non-fulfilment of these stipulations has been left to the discretion of the agent; and the agent writes that it “must be obvious to any one that a general personal intercourse” on his part “is impracticable,” and that “his interviews with many of the tribes must result from casualty and accident.” This was undoubtedly true; but it did not, in all probability, occur to the Indians that it was a good and sufficient reason for their not receiving the $18,000 worth of goods promised.

Five thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine dollars were expended the next year under this provision of the treaty, and a few Indians, who “all labored with the hoe,” raised their own crops without assistance. Six thousand bushels of corn in all were housed for the winter; but the experiment of turning hunters into farmers in one year was thought not to be, on the whole, an encouraging one. The “peculiar habits of indolence, and total disregard and want of knowledge of the value and uses of time and property,” the agent says, “almost forbid