furniture of their houses—dress in civilized costume, raise crops—and several hundred Winnebago men assisted the farmers in adjoining counties during the late harvest in gathering their grain crop, and proved themselves efficient and satisfactory workmen.”
In the winter of 1874 the Wisconsin “strays” were moved down to the Nebraska Reservation. They were discontented, fomented dissatisfaction in the tribe, and in less than a year more than half of them had wandered back to Wisconsin again; a striking instance of the differences in the Government’s methods of handling different bands of Indians. The thirty Poncas who ran away from Indian Territory were pursued and arrested, as if they had been thieves escaping with stolen property; but more than five hundred Winnebagoes, in less than one year, stroll away from their reserve, make their way back to Wisconsin, and nothing is done about it.
In 1875 there are only two hundred and four of the Wisconsin “strays” left on the Nebraska Reservation. All the others are “back in their old haunts, where a few seem to be making a sincere effort to take care of themselves by taking land under the Homestead Act.”
The Nebraska Winnebagoes are reported as being “nearly civilized;” all are engaged in civilized pursuits, “the men working with their own hands, and digging out of the ground three-fourths of their subsistence.” They have raised in this year 20,000 bushels of corn, 5800 bushels of wheat, and 6000 bushels of oats and vegetables. They have broken 800 acres of new land, and have built 3000 rods of fencing. Nearly one-sixth of the entire tribe is in attendance at schools. The system of electing chiefs annually works well; the chiefs, in their turn, select twelve Indians to serve for the year as policemen, and they prove efficient in maintaining order.
What an advance in six years! Six years ago there were but twenty-three homes and only 300 acres of land under cultiva-
