CHAPTER XVI. 



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 capitalists, 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 cast 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 Venires, 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 Venires, Bloods, Piegaris, Blackfeet, and Crows ; and west of the mountains, the 



