all of the $1,100,000, only sufficient to carry on our improvements. This money we ask for we request only as a loan; and when our treaty is ratified, we want it replaced. We want to buy cattle, horses, ploughs, and wagons; and this money can be replaced when our lands are sold. We hope you will get this money: we want good farms and good houses. Many have already put on white man’s clothes, and more of us will when our treaty is ratified.
“Father, we do not want to make you tired of talk, but hope you will make a strong paper, and urgent request of our Great Father in respect to our wishes.”
In 1860 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs writes: “The Winnebagoes continue steadily on the march of improvement. * * * The progress of the Winnebagoes in agricultural growths is particularly marked with success. There have been raised by individuals as high as sixty acres of wheat on a single farm. * * * The agent’s efforts have been directed to giving to each Indian his own allotment of land. * * * Wigwams are becoming as scarce as houses were two years ago. * * * All Indians who had horses ploughed and farmed their own lands. * * * The Indians were promised that new and comfortable houses should be built for them. The treaty not yet being ratified, I have no funds in my hands that could be made applicable to this purpose. * * * The greater part of the Indians have entreated me to carry out the meaning of the commissioner on his visit here, and the reasons for my not doing so do not seem comprehensible to them. * * * The school is in a flourishing condition.”
In 1861 the commissioner writes that the allotment of lands in severalty to the Winnebagoes has been “substantially accomplished;” but that the sales of the remaining lands have not yet been made, owing to the unsettled condition of the country, and therefore the funds on which the Indians were depending for the improvements of their farms have not been
