rations, makes a written requisition upon the contractor for an issue to a specified number of Indians, at a place named, for a specified number of days. The contractor is bound to issue, in kind, according to the requisition; and a Government agent is required to supervise the issue, and to certify on the back of the requisition that he actually "witnessed" the number of rations issued according to the requisition. The requisition then passes into the hands of the contractor, and furnishes the ground of his claim for payment. When requisitions are presented for payment, an abstract of them is made, and a receipt taken for the amount paid by the disbursing agent, who sends them to the Department with his accounts, accompanied with a certified copy of the muster roll.

If the contractor is punctual in furnishing the supplies, and the Government agent faithful in the discharge of his duty, the terms of the contract must be properly complied with, the obligations of the Government are discharged, and the Indians are generally perfectly satisfied. After the issues are thus duly made, the Indians may sell their rations, as they have been known to do, for whiskey, or clothing, or money, or whatever is offered, which they may choose to receive in exchange for them. In this case, neither the contractor nor the Government agent is chargeable with neglect or dereliction of duty.

There are several forms in which abuses may enter this system, exhibiting every shade of wrong, from mere informality to actual corruption; but it is manifest, that, if the contract has been properly made, and its performance placed under Government control by a proper bond, its non-fulfilment is principally chargeable to the Government officers and agents. By the very mode of issue pointed out by the regulations, the contractor is very much, if not entirely, relieved from legal responsibility. His integrity in the business is not relied upon; but the regulations, on the contrary, assume to guard against his want of it.

Under a system apparently so carefully guarding the rights of the Indians, one is at first surprised to hear of complaints, and disposed to ask, doubtingly, how so perfect a system can be abused. But in this, as in every thing else, considerable results flow from small beginnings. The contractor, perhaps, may intend very fairly to execute his contract; the Government agent is equally conscientious. The latter issues his requisition in due form; the contractor commences his issue, and finds, to his surprise, that his beef or his corn, or both, do not hold out. The issue is not complete, but the deficiency is accidental-unintentional. All parties regret it; the Indians are but partially supplied-are waiting for their rations; and what is to be done? The requisition is, perhaps, already certified, in the hands of the Government agent, in the expectation of a full compliance with it. The contractor, or the agent, or both, hit upon a plan, which, indeed, deviates from the course pointed out by the regulations, but it is hoped in the end all will be right. The contractor calls up the Indians who have not received their rations, and gives them due bills, or the agent himself gives the due bills, assuring them that at the next issue, or before it, they shall have full justice done them. The Indians take the due bills-they have no alternative; the contractor takes the certified requisition, and the issue day passes over.

Before the next issue day comes around, it may occur to the contractor, or his agent, (for he generally has an agent,) that, if the due bills are never presented, it will be to his advantage. He knows the cost of the

provisions, and, of course, the value of the due bills. He sees no great objection to a bargain with the Indians by which they may seem to be satisfied. But perhaps, at first, the contractor or his agent does not like to appear prominent in the purchase of the due bills, and hints to some of his friends or dependents the amount he is willing to give for them. The Indians, on their part, knowing but little of the value of the small papers they hold, are generally quite willing to exchange them for almost any thing for immediate use. Their hunger sometimes forms a strong argument for a sale. The shrewd around them soon find how the due bills are going, and ascertain where and at what price they are convertible into The Indian sells his due bill for food, drink, clothing, or money, money. and the claim upon the contractor is cancelled. This is one form of abuse. The Indian knows nothing of the cost or value of the provision due him; and, as the intermediate purchasers between the contractor and the Indians expect to realize something for their risk and trouble, though the contractor may be disposed to pay with some show of liberality, the process exposes the Indian to all the effects of a consummate fraud. He sometimes selis his whole ration for 5, 3, or 2 cents, or even less, when the contractor receives 12 and up to 16 cents.

It is not long, perhaps, before the Government agent observes that the due bills are not presented for satisfaction, and he soon finds that they are sold. He very properly objects to the system, and positively interdicts it. But the contractor, or his agent, puts the best face upon the transactionassures the Government agent that it makes no difference to him; that he would just as soon issue the provisions in kind; and that really, as the Indians must be supposed in a hungry condition, and have exchanged their due bills probably for provision, and as they do it voluntarily, and are quite satisfied, it is just as well to let them do as they please, and sell them.

As the Goverment agent has himself committed an error at the commencement, he is the more readily convinced that the evil is greater in theory than in practice. He thinks the contractor's agent means to do what is right. They are companions together; they sometimes play whist or other games together, and possibly drink together, and it is unpleasant to have a quarrel about the matter. The business goes on, and the Government agent himself is exposed to temptation. He perceives that the Indians are selling their due bills in a very open manner, and receiving but a small part of their value, while the contractor's agent redeems them for a tolerably fair price in comparison, as high, perhaps, as three cents for a meat ration, and as much more for the corn ration. It occurs to him, perhaps, that, since the Indians will sell their rations-improvident. fellows and will not take care of themselves, he might as well derive some advantage out of it himself. The next moment, possibly, he meets an Indian with a due bill, and conscientiously gives him more for it than he is sure the Indian would receive from the very next man he might

meet.

The Government agent has now sold himself. He is obliged to have some understanding with the contractor, and what was begun with hesitation is practised almost without an attempt at concealment. The respective agents, both, perhaps, acting in subordinate capacities, come to some understanding with each other; the form of giving due bills is dispensed

the ground of his claim upon the disbursing agent-that is, the requisition he has all that he chiefly cares about, and he is quite willing that others shall profit by the transaction; and, finally, from long practice and familiarity with the short-hand mode of issue, the Indians, especially at remote points, receive a small amount of money for a claim for several months' rations.

That something like this has been the process in the Southwest, there is, as I consider, ample evidence to show. That all of the Government agents have been parties to these transactions, is by no means apparent; but that some of them have been, it is impossible not to believe.

It will be manifest, from the statements of men who were witnesses to the transactions they describe, and who were abundantly capable of knowing the truth of what they have stated, that the Indians were defrauded of their just dues, by the manner of delivering corn in the ear or in the shuck, measured by a barrel at an over-estimate of its contents; but more particularly by the mode of delivering beef on the hoof at an estimated weight far above its real weight; and, finally, by an open purchase of their clains, for months together, for a mere trifle in money. Some allowance might be made for a few and slight errors, but nothing but design could have furnished the materials for the statements showing the numerous and great errors committed in these issues. It will be observed, that, in many instances, the Government agent only superintended the issues when some of these errors occurred. The deep interest of the contractors in their business, together with their pertinacious regard to it, as shown by Colonel Guy and others, forbid the supposition of there being no understanding between the parties in these cases. When a Government agent pays money for due bills which can only be refunded to him through the contractor, the connexion of the two is manifest; but it is scarcely less so when the contractor is willing to commit his interests to the keeping of the Government agent in the delivery of the rations; the statements will show that this was frequently done.

But it must be remarked, that nearly the whole business seems to have been committed to subordinate agents by the principal contractors and principal Government officers; and those subordinates, thus having the whole game in their hands, in deluding the Indians, have also, it is quite probable, deceived their principals. It appears, from Mr. Green Erwin's statement, (No. 63,) that Mr. Harrison, one of the contractors, expressly told him to do justice to the Indians; and the amount which it would appear by the same statement Mr. Harrison was willing to pay in commutation, Mr. Erwin defines by a reference to the allowance made by the Government in money to "competent" Indians in place of rations. This was wrong, undoubtedly, on the part of Mr. Harrison; but there is something like fairness in it, when compared to the actual amount paid, in most instances, to Indians who sold their claims-as a multitude of the statements, including that of Mr. Erwin, will show.

The single expression above alluded to, of the order from Mr. Harrison to Green Erwin, would go very far to relieve the contractors from the suspicion of a disposition to countenance direct injustice upon the Indians, and would leave the burden of inflicting their wrongs upon the subordinate agents. The implied charge upon some one, whom Mr. Erwin declined to name, of providing false scales at Webber's depot, could not be laid to the door of the contractors, for a subordinate might have provided them.

But the letter from Major Raines to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, of the 13th of February, 1810, purporting to furnish a copy of a letter to him from Mr. Harrison-together with the statement of Mr. Alexander, (No. 73;) as also that of Mr. McClure, (No. 79,) and of Mr. Humphrey, (No. 81;) and, finally, the admission of Mr. Arnold Harris, as stated by Major Lear, of the army, (No. 98,) of his agency in inducing Major Raines to suppress his complaints against the contractors-make it difficult to reconcile the circumstances detailed with the order given by Mr. Harrison to Green Erwin, "to do justice to the Indians." In the instructions of the 6th of September, cited in this report, the copy of the imputed letter from Mr. Harrison to Major Raines is presented as "a point" in the inquiry directed to be made.. It is my duty to state that I did not exhibit the letter of instructions to Mr. Alexander until after his statement was concluded and signed; neither did I make the least allusion to the point referred to, nor did I put to him any leading or other question touching that matter, but received his statement-he being quite unconscious that I had any intimations from any quarter of any peculiar circumstances which his statement might throw light upon.

With this remark in view, it will certainly appear singular that the statement of Mr. Alexander should, in so remarkable a manner, tally with the tenor of the imputed letter. The date of the transaction described by Mr. Alexander corresponds with that of the imputed letter; that orders for corn were given is set forth in both the letter and the statement; and the result, as stated by Alexander, would seem to show that Major Raines very exactly obeyed the imputed instructions of his principal. Notwithstanding all this, from the character of Raines, from his agency in the alleged fraud, from his sudden withdrawal of his complaints-(only nine days intervening between one of his most violent letters of accusation and that in which he withdraws all charges against the contractors, Nos. 92 and 94)-all these considerations would make him a witness of very doubtful veracity; and, were he now living, his assertion under oath that he ever had such a letter as the one imputed by him to Mr. Harrison, without producing it, would not weigh, as I believe, in a court of justice, against Mr. Harrison.

There is nothing in the corroborative part of Mr. Alexander's statement, as touching the imputed letter, which would not equally tally with it, had all of the facts been as stated, and had Major Raines, on those facts, fabricated the letter to answer his private purposes of pique or revenge and this, upon the statement of Mr. Alexander, might have been the conclusion, were it not for another part of this remarkable statement, which distinctly charges that Mr. Harrison personally furnished Mr. Alexander with certain square boxes, to be used as measures by which to issue, and which Mr. Alexander expressly states were not correct. This part of the statement, together with the statements of McClure and of Humphreys (Nos. 79 and 81) at the depot on Boggy, gives more color of truth to the Harrison letter to Raines than, as I conceive, the testimony of Raines alone could do, were he alive to swear to it, without producing the original.

The depot on Boggy, below Wall's, referred to by Mr. McClure, was not a depot for issues, but was the head of boat navigation on the Boggy, where Harrison & Glasgow landed supplies intended for issue higher up

which McClure says did not contain a half bushel by seven measures of a tin pint cup. Mr. Hughes, it was stated to me, was killed by some Choctaws in revenge for the death of a Choctaw, killed by him under circumstances needless to relate in this report.

His fate is worthy of notice, however, in connexion with that of some other agents, as stated by Mr. Benjamin F. Thompson. Of all the agents employed under the contracts, I could hear of but a few remaining in the country. One of them was considerably out of my route: another has found it convenient to pass under different names; a third I did not hear of until I had left the country; two others were called "by business" from their place of residence the evening before my arrival there. I heard of some in Missouri, some in Alabama, and some in Texas. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the fact that the inquiries were made in an Indian country, where but few white men reside. Of the white men whom I found in the country, I have taken the statements of all I had access to who admitted they had any information they were willing to communicate. Some preferred saying nothing on the subject, alleging delicacy in some instances, and one in particular having accounts unsettled with the

contractor.

Some of the Indian chiefs admitted they were well supplied for themselves and families with rations—a circumstance I did not think it necessary to put into the form of statements.

I ought, perhaps, to notice particularly what seems to have been a misconception at the time the instructions of the 6th of September were prepared, stating that the provision purchased by orders from the Indian bureau was charged to the Cherokee fund. One portion appears to have been charged to the Chickasaw fund, and another to a general appropriation for removal and subsistence of Indians. No charge was made upon the Cherokee fund on account of that provision.

I have not attempted to make calculations founded upon errors, assumed as proved, in the "letting" of contracts, or upon losses in the purchase or the disposition of the provisions sent to Fort Coffee from the Chickasaws, or that sent to Fort Gibson as a general depot. If it should be considered, on the facts set forth, that contracts have been "let," or provisions purchased at rates too high, it would be necessary, for ascertaining the amount, to determine the difference between the proper and the allowed cost of the ration as one element; the other element being, of course, the amount paid upon the particular contract or purchase to which exception may be taken.

Upon the same facts, it is common for different men to make different conclusions. Different conclusions from the facts submitted with this report would, of course, furnish different results, reduced to calculations of "loss."

I have not thought it necessary to call upon the Second Auditor of the Treasury Department for a statement of the amount paid on the several contracts, or in the purchase of provision in the open market.

The gross amount paid in the western superintendency for Indian rations, between the years 1837 and 1840, inclusive, must have been very large. Estimating the emigrant Cherokees at 12,000, the Creeks at 15,000, the Chickasaws at 5,500, and the Seminoles at 3,000, making 35,500 persons, would require 14,012,500 rations in a year-adding in the seven months additional rations to the Chickasaws.