CHAPTER Va 
Governmental. Aid in connexion with the Construction of the Road.—Indians on the 
Route. 
Incidental aids to the construction of the road.—Government aid to be given to all through roads 
in grants of alternate sections of land, with the usual restrictions. The road should not, how- 
ever, be a government road, maintained and managed by the general government. It will only 
entail great expenditure, lead to delay, and call into exercise a power deemed by many to be 
unconstitutional. The road to be built by private enterprise ; the business capacity, great skill 
developed in capitalisis, engineers and contractors, by our railroad experience, availed of, and the 
whole operation to be pushed with vigor; Irish laborers in the eastern portion, laborers from the 
Sandwich Islands and China in the western; railroad iron to be brought to the road by the con- 
nexion with Lake Superior; every effort made to promote settlement on the road, to furnish sup- 
plies, and cause a way-travel to spring up. 
The cost of the road will be greatly diminished by grants of land being availed of to encour- 
age colonization, and the methods adopted by the contractors to maintain the working force and 
procure supplies. The supplies of meat for all the laborers on the line east of the mountains, 
except for the portion east of the Bois des Sioux, will be furnished from the plains. The inex- 
haustible herds of buffalo will supply amply the whole force till the road is completed. The 
Red river hunters, two thousand men, five thousand men, women, and children, and eighteen 
hundred carts, range from the Mouse River valley to the Red river of the North, and each year 
in June and July, and again in October and November, carry off to the settlements at Pembina, 
and in English territory, at least 2,500,000 pounds of buffalo meat, dried, or in the shape of 
pemican. These people are simple-hearted, honest, and industrious, and would make good 
citizens. They are well affected towards the American government; would, if the furnishing of 
the meat were intrusted to them, settle on our soil; and they could with ease, for many years, 
supply a much larger amount of meat, and at very moderate rates. The Indians of western 
Minnesota, the Gros Ventres, and the Blackfeet, would also supply considerable quantities. 
The laborers with their families should be induced to settle on the line of the road; and the com- 
pany, in the disposition of their grants, should give to them and to settlers small lots contiguous 
to those reserved by government, which would thus be in demand, and could be sold at an early 
period at remunerative rates. Soon population would increase, a thoroughfare be opened, and 
the company’s reserved lots could be disposed of to settlers at a considerable advance. I would 
recommend that the working force, once on the line of the road, be kept there with their families 
throughout the year, and thus, by a course similar to the above, be induced to settle. This 
course once carried out, laborers would offer for the work in suitable numbers, and, on the com- 
pletion of the road, there would be flourishing settlements on the entire line. 
But in an incidental way, under the acknowledged sphere of action of the general government, 
aid can be furnished these roads. 
As preliminary to the subject of governmental action, the following observations are submitted 
in reference to the Indian tribes on the route of the exploration: 
The Indians on the line of the route are the Chippewas, Winnebagoes, Sioux, Assiniboins, 
Crees, Gros Ventres, Bloods, Piegans, Blackfeet, and Crows; and west of the mountains, the 
