&c. Proper attention has been given to discipline, and it is reported as excellent.

Among the irregularities that have been reported has been the frequent and, in most cases, the unavoidable infraction of Section 1232, Revised Statutes, forbidding the use of enlisted men as officers' servants. I have invited attention to this subject repeatedly in my former annual reports, showing the absolute impossibility of hiring citizen servants at many of our frontier posts, and the consequent necessity of officers employing soldiers as, servants or doing their own work, grooming their own horses, washing their own clothing, &c., which on a campaign would leave them no time to attend to their military duties. The only way to remedy this evil, as I have set forth fully in previous reports, is to repeal the law and place the matter where it formerly was, when no evil was ever known to result from permitting soldiers of their own accord to act as servants for company officers.

In the Navy, servants, under the designation of stewards and cooks, are enlisted for officers and paid by the government. Then why should not officers of the Army be allowed to use enlisted men as servants, especially when they remunerate the government for all expense of maintaining these men, as they were required by law to do before the passage of the prohibitory act above mentioned? It certainly is much more difficult to hire a servant at many of our frontier posts than it would be to hire one for a ship in our seaport towns.

As a measure of economy, if every company officer in the Army were permitted to take a soldier as waiter from the line, and required to reimburse the government for his pay, rations, clothing, &c., this would result in a saving to the United States of over $350,000 per annum.

Upton, in his work on "Armies of Europe and Asia," says: "In the Russian, Austrian, and Italian armies a servant is allowed to every officer from the military organizations." (See pages 102, 103, 150, and 163.)

The military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, established under the act of May 21, 1874, is now in successful operation. The officers assigned to duty with it are competent and faithful in the discharge of their duties, and the convicts are properly governed and employed, while, at the same time, they are treated with humanity and kindness. On the 25th ultimo there were 373 military convicts confined in this prison.

All the shoes required for issue to the troops are now fabricated by the convicts at the prison, and are of excellent quality; indeed, it is said by many officers that we have never before had as good an article in our Army, and as soon as the additional shops now in process of erection are completed many other articles now purchased from citizens can, in my judgment, be manufactured to better advantage there. At the same time, a large number of men would be instructed in useful mechan ical occupations that would tend to make them better qualified for selfsupport and better citizens when they are discharged.

The national cemeteries have all been inspected during the year by officers of the Inspector-General's Department, and found in excellent order. The superintendents, with very few exceptions, have evinced effi ciency, diligence, and pride in the proper discharge of the duties devolving upon them, and it is believed these cemeteries will bear favorable comparison with any of the civilian cemeteries of the country. Respectfully submitted.

The ADJUTANT-GENERAL,

R. B. MARCY,
Inspector-General.

United States Army.

1.-REPORT OF LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SHERIDAN.

HEADQUARTERS MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSOURI,

Chicago, Illinois, October 25, 1878.

GENERAL: I have the honor to submit herewith, for the information of the General of the Army, the following report of operations in this military division since October 20, 1877, the date of my last annual report.

There has been no change in the organization of the division during the past year. It consists of the following departments, viz: The Department of Dakota, embracing within its limits the State of Minnesota, and Territories of Montana and Dakota, with twenty-three permanent posts and three encampments of observation, commanded by Bvt. Maj. Gen. John Gibbon, in the temporary absence of Brig. Gen. Alfred H. Terry; the Department of the Platte, embracing the States of Iowa and Nebraska, the Territories of Wyoming and Utah, and a portion of Idaho, with seventeen permanent posts and two camps of observation, commanded by Brig. Gen. George Crook; the Department of the Missouri, embracing the States of Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado, the Territory of New Mexico and the Indian Territory, and the posts of Fort Bliss and Fort Elliott, in Texas, with twenty permanent posts, commanded by Brig. Gen. John Pope; and the Department of Texas, embracing the State of Texas with thirteen permanent posts and numerous camps of observation, commanded by Brig. Gen. E. O. C. Ord.

To garrison these seventy-three permanent posts and the camps of observation, and cover the country from British America on the north to the Rio Grande on the south, we have only four companies of artillery averaging 53 men each, eight regiments of cavalry averaging 765 men each, and eighteen regiments of infantry averaging 452 men each, which, as will be seen by the reports of Generals Ord and Gibbon, gives us only one man to every 120 square miles in the Department of Texas, and one to every 75 square miles in the Department of Dakota, and about the same ratio in the Departments of the Platte and the Missouri. When it is borne in mind that this immense section of country has to be constantly under surveillance against Indians, and raiding parties from the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, the work that has to be performed by that portion of our Army located within this military division will be appreciated by all military men, and by those who have ever lived upon our frontier.

No other army in the world has such a difficult line to keep in order, and no army in modern times has had such an amount of work put upon the same number of men. In all other countries, it is the custom to establish garrisons of not less than a regiment or a brigade, while we have for the performance of similar duties only one or two companies; with us, regiments are rarely if ever together, the posts are generally garrisoned by one, two, or four companies, who are expected to hold and guard, against one of the most acute and wary foes in the world, a space of country that in any other land would be held by a brigade. To do this requires sleepless watchfulness, great activity, and tireless energy, and I am gratified to know that as a general thing our officers possess these soldierly qualities.

The reports of the several commanders that accompany this will fully advise the General of the Army of the operations of the troops in detail during the past year. The frontier has been greatly advanced, and mineral and agricultural interests have been largely developed, while the

cattle and sheep interests are assuming extraordinary proportions. The valley of the Yellowstone and the valleys along the eastern base of the Bighorn Mountains are gradually opening up with settlements and mailroutes. The mineral wealth of the Black Hills is now undoubted, and ores exist in such quantities as to be almost inexhaustible, while the country around the foot-hills, embraced by the south branch of the Cheyenne River and the Belle Fourche presents the most favorable prospects agriculturally. The progress of the settlements and the increase of farming and grazing interests in Nebraska, Western and Southern Kansas, and Northern and Northwestern Texas, has been very great, while the agricultural and mineral developments in Colorado, Utah, and Montana have more than kept pace with the healthy progress elsewhere noticed throughout this division.

The Indian situation at the present time is, I am sorry to say, unsatisfactory. The Indian Department, owing to want of sufficient appropriations or from wretched mismanagement, has given to the settlements in the Western country constant anxiety during the last year, and, in some places, loss of life and loss of property, attended with dreadful crimes and cruelties. There has been an insufficiency of food at the agencies, and, as the game is gone, hunger has made the Indians in some cases desperate, and almost any race of men will fight rather than starve. It seems to me, with wise management, that the amounts appropriated by Congress ought to be sufficient, if practically applied to the exact purposes specified, and if the supplies are regularly delivered; but the reports of the department commanders forwarded herewith would indicate a different result, except in the case of the Red Cloud and Spotted Tail bands of Sioux, who, although threatening in their conduct, have been the best supplied, and have been humored until their increasing insolence constantly threatens to bring about a breach of the peace. had hoped that the agencies of these Indians would have been retained on the Missouri River, where they could have been fed and looked after at comparatively small expense; but this would not have suited the traders and contractors, who, I fear, labored systematically last summer and fall to work up the result which has been obtained; and now these Indians are on worse ground than the Missouri River bottom, and located at points beyond the river lines of transportation; for instance, Red Cloud's band where the expense of feeding will be probably five times as great as on the Missouri River. In addition, these Indians are now located near the line of travel to the Black Hills, and are on the extreme western limit of their reservation, and where contact with the whites is liable to frequently occur, and I doubt if in the present frame of mind of the Red Cloud Indians the two races can live so closely together without fighting.

I

There does not seem to be now, and there never has been, much steadiness in the management of the Indians, and if it were not for the results which so severely involve the military, this would be none of my business and would not be mentioned here. It is often wondered at by the general public why we should have Indian wars, and again the remark is made that the English Government has always been able to get along without them in Canada and British Columbia. I therefore respectfully submit to the General of the Army the following brief answer to these inquiries: Ten years ago the Indians owned and occupied nearly all the country west of the Missouri River from British Columbia to the Gulf of Mexico, excepting the settlement of Eastern Kansas, Colorado, and Montana, and Eastern and Southern Texas. The Gros Ventres, Assinaboines, Blackfeet, and other bands occupied the country north of the

Missouri River; the Sioux south of that, as far as the Platte River; the Cheyennes south to Beaver Creek in Kansas; the Arapahoes from thence down to the Arkansas River; the Kiowas down to and including both the Canadian Rivers; the Comanches from the Canadians down to the Concho River, in Texas. This almost unlimited extent of country was occupied by two vast herds of buffalo, one grazing in the north, the other in the south, and each herd numbered from two to three millions of animals, and in the same region were herds of elk, antelope, deer, and other large game of almost every variety and in numbers innumerable, while in the valleys were to be found wild roots, vegetables, berries, and fruit in abundance. Nature had produced everything necessary for the subsistence of the Indians, and the whole region was a pasture-field for the numerous herds of ponies which was the wealth and sole means of transportation for the Indians, while the results of the chase and the trapping of game procured them the means of clothing themselves, either with the skins or by barter with the traders, or by both.

This, thus briefly stated, was their condition in this vast extent of country about ten years ago, and this was good enough for, and satisfied the wants of, the savage, while constant feuds among themselves gave them active occupation, as war was their only profession and they disdained work.

They believed that all the region I have described belonged to them, and our Indian policy acknowledged their rights to the country and what it contained; but, alas for the poor savage! along came the nineteenth-century progress, or whatever it may be called, to disturb their happy condition. The white men crowded on to the grounds of the Indians and made encroachments on his rights which no government could stop. Our handful of soldiers was at first sent to protect the Indians, but such attempts were powerless. The government made treaties, gave presents, made promises, none of which were honestly fulfilled, and, like all original treaties with Indians in this country, they were the first steps in the process of developing hostilities. The Indian became jealous; he made in his simplicity blind bargains. He began to see his lands wrested from his possession, his herds of buffalo, which he believed the Great Spirit had given him, rapidly diminish, and the elk, deer, and antelope killed for the market, and by the sportsman, and widely scattered by both, and his rude nature, alike to civilized nature under similar conditions, naturally rebelled. He commenced war-war as he had been accustomed to make it, and men, women, and children, intruders upon his soil, were killed, no difference being made between the innocent or guilty, the armed or unarmed.

The government followed up these acts of hostility with an army too small to intimidate or even punish, and after years of struggle the Indians south of the Union Pacific Railroad, and down to the Gulf of Mexico, including the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Kiowas, and Comanches, were forced on to reservations at Forts Sill and Reno, in the Indian Territory, by the constant hammering of an inadequate force.

Only a breathing spell intervened when the same tide of restless emigration was attracted to the Northwest. The Black Hills contained gold, the valleys of the South Cheyenne, Belle Fourche, and Yellowstone, and along the eastern slope of the Bighorn Mountains, invited the agriculturist, while the upper table-land country presented the finest grazing ranges in the world. The northern herd of buffalo had fattened upon them for hundreds of years, and it was too much for the wave of emigration to withstand, and the invasion of this country commenced. War

with the Sioux followed, and when it ended the country was lost to these Indians, and those who did not flee the country to British America found themselves confined to a reservation embracing the poorest of all this extensive region, with agencies on the Missouri River, with the exception of the Red Cloud band of Ogalallas and the Spotted Tail band of Brulé Sioux, whose agencies are now on White River, Nebraska, so that in 1877 the great country above referred to, which in 1869 belonged to the Indians, and extended from the line of the British possessions on the north, and almost to the Gulf of Mexico on the south, had passed into the hands of the whites, with the exception of the limited reservations assigned to the Indians, and with no compensation beyond the promise of religious instruction, schools, supplies of food and clothing, and an opportunity of learning the ways in which the white man cultivated the ground-most of which promises have never been fulfilled. In other words, we took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this they made war. Could any one expect less? Then, why wonder at Indian difficulties?

These wars might have been regarded as inevitable, and therefore a sufficient number of soldiers should have been provided to meet them; but it was not done, and hence the fatal results which followed. No other nation in the world would have attempted the reduction of these wild tribes and occupation of their country with less than 60,000 or 70,000 men, while the whole force employed and scattered over the enormous region described never numbered 14,000 men, and nearly one-third of this force has been confined to the line of the Rio Grande to protect the Mexican frontier. The consequence was that every engagement was a forlorn-hope, and was attended with a loss of life unparalleled in warfare. No quarter was given by the savages, and the officers and men had to enter on their duties with the most barbarous cruelties staring them in the face in case of defeat. Nor was this misfortune confined to the soldier; it extended to the settler, who was himself killed, or came home to see his wife and children murdered and his stock stolen. Such, in truth, has been the contest on our Western frontier during the last ten years. It would have been less expensive if an army of 60,000 or 70,000 men had been maintained; and, moreover, the blood of gallant officers, soldiers, and citizens would not have rested on our hands.

This, then, was the first cause of our Indian wars. They would have occurred, no matter what course or policy the government might have adopted. We could not deprive these primitive people of their homes, where they had lived in barbarous contentment for centuries, without war; and the only thing strange about these wars was the manner and means adopted by the government to meet them.

The second outbreak of Indian hostilities is caused in this way: After he has lost his country, and finds himself compelled to remain on reservations, his limits circumscribed, his opportunities of hunting abridged, his game disappearing, sickness in his lodge from change of life and food, and insufficiency of the latter, and this irregularly supplied, and the reflection coming to him of what he was, and what he now is, and pinched by hunger, creates a feeling of dissatisfaction which, in the absence of a good, strong force of soldiers, starts him out on the war-path again, and unarmed people are killed, settlements are broken up, farms are abandoned, and general confusion exists. This condition of affairs is well illustrated by the recent outbreak of Northern Cheyennes who lately abandoned their reservation at Fort Reno; and the same might be said