from it. The Indian Department is now divided into six superintendencies, viz., Northern, Central, Southern, Utah, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon Territories, who report to the Indian Office or Bureau of the Commissioners of Indian Affairs at Washington, under the charge of the Department of the Interior. The bond varies from $50,000 to $75,000, and the salary from $2000 to $2500 per annum. The northern superintendency contains four agencies, the central fourteen, the southern five, the Utah three, New Mexico six, and the miscellaneous, including Washington, eight. The grand total of agents, including two specials for Indians in Texas, is forty-two. Their bond is between $5000 and $75,000, and the salary between $1000 and $1550. There are also various sub-agencies, with pay of $1000 each, and giving in bonds $2000. There ought to be no perquisites; an unscrupulous man, however, finds many opportunities of making free with the presents; and the reflection that his office tenure shall expire after the fourth year must make him but the more reckless. As fifty or sixty appointments = 50 or 60 votes, x 20 in President electioneering, fitness for the task often becomes quite a subordinate consideration; the result is, necessarily, peculation producing discontent among the Indians, and the finale, death to the whites. To become a good Indian agent, a man requires the variety of qualifications which would fit him for the guardianship of children, experience and ability, benevolence and philanthropy: it would be difficult to secure such phoenix for $200 per annum, and it is found easier not to look for it. The remedy of these evils is not far from the surface—the restoration of the office into the hands of the responsible military servant of the state, who would keep it quamdiu se benè gesserit, and become better capable of serving his masters, the American people, by the importance which the office would give him in the eyes of his protégés. This is the system of the French Bureau Arabe, which, with its faults, I love still. But the political mind would doubtless determine the cure to be worse than the disease. After venting his grievances, Little Thunder arose, and, accompanied by his braves, remounted and rode off toward the east.
While delayed by the mules and their masters, we may amuse ourselves and divert our thoughts from the battle, and, perhaps, murder and sudden death, which may happen this evening, by studying the geography of the Black Hills. The range forms nearly a right angle, the larger limb—ninety miles—running east to west with a little southing along the Platte, the shorter leg—sixty miles—trending from north to south with a few degrees of easting and westing. Forming the easternmost part of the great trans-Mississippian mountain region, in the 44th parallel and between the 103d and 105th meridians, these masses cover an area of 6000 square miles. They are supposed to have received their last violent upheaval at the close of the cretaceous period; their
