120               REPORTS OF AGENTS IN MONTANA. 
for wages, but I have not been able to get authority to employ white men
to work 
with them and manage thegi. 
All the men I have had for out-of-door labor have been needed all season
until just 
now to show the Indians how to work on their farms and to make them do their
work 
at the proper times. In fact, I should have had a larger force for this work
alone; 
and I will state for the benefit of my successor that whoever is agent here
during the 
next two or three years should be allowed at least twenty men for out-of-door
work, 
from April until November, in addition to his regular force of employs. If
this is 
done every family in the Crow tribe that ever will do any good for itself
can be placed 
upon its homestead and made nearly self-supporting. I would recommend the
em- 
ployment of this additional force as a measure of economy, for it is well
known that 
more work can be obtained from say twenty men in a given time than from one

man employed twenty times as long. I beg the honorable Commissioner to consider

that at Fort Custer, near by, they have six or seven hundred men, whose principle

occupation is to make themselves comfortable, while we, who have a great
and per- 
plexing work to do, are allowed only five men for out-of-door work-not more
than 
one-fourth enough to do it. It is not expected that these men would work
for the 
Indians, but they are needed to manage them and make them work. 
The only complaint the Crows would have a right to make against the Government

is its failure to provide a sufficient force of men to show them how to work
and its 
failure to patent their lands to them as fast as they lacate. FPr years the
Govern- 
ment has expended large sums of money upon them, which it was not bound to
by 
any treaty, but it is now doing them a wrong in the two respects mentioned.
The 
modification of the Crow treaty, mentioned in the beginning of this report,
provides 
for paying irregular employ6s from the moneys owing to the Indians, so there
would 
seem to be no reason after it is ratified why the agent should not be allou
ed to em- 
ploy as many farmers during the summer seasons as can be used to an advantage.

And, again, in the matter ot securing patents for these Indians to their
homesteads, 
which I consider the most important thing an agent can do for his Indians-provided

always the homesteads are made inalienable-I have not been able to secure
any 
favorable replies to the two or three letters I have written to the Department
upon 
this subject. In fact I may say I have received no encouragement whatever
that 
would indicate that the Department contemplated doing anything in this line,
so im- 
portant as it is. 1 have repeatedly requested to be provided with the field
notes of 
the survey of the lands in the valleys of the Big and Little Horn Rivers,
but none 
have arrived up to this time. I venture to put my remarks upon these two
points in 
the form of a complaint against the Government on behalf of my Indians, as
I con- 
ceive it to be my duty to do as agent. 
A very important matter w-e have to report on is our spring round-up of stock
cattle 
belonging to the Indians. On the 8th of November, 1884, we issued to such
Indians 
as had settled down and lived in houses, stock cattle to the number of 746,
of which 
41 were bulls, and the remainder cows and heifers, equally divided. These
cattle 
were issued to 70 Iudias. When the time arrived to begin the spring round-up,
I 
issued two weeks' rations to these seventy families of Indians and ordered
them to 
make a camp at our herdt-rs' cabin, on the Big Horn River, at the mouth of
the 
Rotten Grass Creek, '20 niles distant from the agency. Nearly all obeyed
me promptly, 
and I lost no time in letting the few who lagged behind know that unless
they re- 
ported promptly to our herder and took their full share of the labor of the
round-up 
I would issue the calvt.s belonging to their cows to other Indians who had
none. 
But, although this was the first round-up the Crows had ever been called
on to assist 
in, we have no complaint to make because of any failure on their part. On
the con- 
trary, we cannot speak too highly of their behavior during the ten days we
were 
riding and branding. I hey took the gueatest interest in the round-up, and
would 
often recognize their brands (some of which were indistinct because the irons
had 
been made too small) before my employgs would; and on one or two occasions,

when we had made mistakes and branded their calves to other Indians, they
were 
as quick to discover the mistakes as we, and demanded that the other Indians
calf 
should be branded to them in return. They tried to obey us in everything
we asked 
them to do. They not only furnished plenty of young men to ride the range
in com- 
pany with my herders, but furnished my herders with good fresh horses every
morn- 
ing./ 
As- we had such a large number of brands our round-up was a much more laborious

affair than it would have been it all the cattle had belonged to one or two
persons. 
All these cattle are branded with the individual brand of the Indian and
the Govern- 
ment brand also. We branded on this round-up 226 calves and left 9 on the
range 
which had just been dropped and were too young to travel and ford the streams.

These 226 calves xvere branded to the seventy Indians to whom the umothers
actually 
belonged. This, we think, is a very fair crop of calves considering the fact
that the 
cattle were what is called " pilgrim"' cattle (cattle for th  States
that had never