church regularly. They have broken one hundred and seventy-seven acres of new prairie. Twenty new houses have been built. * * * They have cut and hauled two hundred cords of wood, hauling some of it forty miles to market. * * * They have done considerable freighting with their teams, going sometimes a hundred miles away. They have earned thirty-five hundred dollars, catching small furs. * * * One Indian has the contract for carrying the mail through Flandreau, for which he receives one thousand dollars a year. * * * It is but a few miles from Flandreau to the far-famed pipe-stone quarry, and these Indians make many little sums by selling pipes, rings, ink-glasses, etc., made of this beautiful red stone. * * * They are anxious to be taught how to make baskets, mats, cloth; and the young men ask to be taught the blacksmith and carpenter trades.”
This is a community that only five years before had pushed out into an unbroken wilderness without a dollar of money, without a plough, to open farms. “Without ploughs, they had to dig the sod with their hoes, and at the same time make their living by hunting. They suffered severe hardships, and a number of their best men perished in snow-storms. Believing they were carrying out the wishes of the Great Father, as expressed in the treaty of 1868, to which they were parties, they were disappointed when for three years no notice was taken of them.” There is something pathetic in the gratitude they are said now to feel for the niggardly gift of a few oxen, wagons, and ploughs. They have apparently given over all hope of ever obtaining any of the money due them on account of their lands sold in Minnesota. No further allusion is made to it by Dr. Williamson.
From the Yankton Sioux this year comes a remarkable report: “We have no jail, no law except the treaty and the agent's word, yet we have no quarrels, no fighting, and, with one or two exceptions, not a single case of drunkenness during the year. This I consider remarkable, when we take into con-
