92 



It would be safe to assume the following as probable deaths in tribes 

 not included in this list : 



Gros Ventres and Mandows 160 



Absarakos 1,000 



1,160 

 Making a total of at least 3,000 souls. 



Betore such blows as this the red race would soon disappear ; no war 

 could be so fatal to them. The government should, by all that is 

 humane, employ some competent person, at a proper salary, to visit 

 them yearly, and vaccinate these Indians, and thus arrest the violence 

 of these scourges. 



These three little bands, the Gros Ventres, Mandans, and Rees, 

 are fast dwindling away. They never can work much harm to the 

 whites, and their mode of life at a fixed abode requires them to be 

 peaceful. They exist now rather by sufferance of the Dakotas than by 

 their own power, for the Dakotas could soon destroy them if they chose, 

 as they did the villages of the Pawnees, on the Loup Fork, in about 

 the year 1836. The Dakotas find it convenient for themselves to 

 permit the existence of these villages, as their produce of corn, &c.j, 

 forms a valuable commodity of trade between them. 



The Ponkas are the small remnant of a once powerful tribe, and 

 now live near the mouth of the Niobrara. They are on friendly terms 

 with the Dakotas. The government agents have lately efi'ected a 

 treaty with them, by which a right to most of their lands has been 

 purchased, and a reserve marked out for their location on the Nio- 

 brara and Ponka rivers, near Fort Randal. The treaty has, 1 believe, 

 not yet been ratified by the Senate. They number about souls. 



The Paivnees were formerly one of the most numerous and power- 

 ful and warlike of the Indians of the prairie. They have, through 

 the agency of the small pox and their constant wars with the Dakotas 

 and Shyennes, been greatly reduced, and their numbers now do not 

 probably exceed 4,000. They occupy the country on the Platte 

 below Fort Kearny, and on Loup Fork, A treaty was made with 

 them in the winter of 1857, by which they ceded a large portion of 

 their lands to the United States, and agreed to retire to a reserve on 

 th^ Loup Fork, where were their villages which were destroyed by 

 the Dakotas. This treaty has not yet been ratified. 



The Shyennes occupy the country between the Platte and Arkan- 

 sas rivers, and number about souls. These Indians have always 



been friends with the Dakotas, and associate much with them. During 

 the summer of 1857, while the vigorous expedition conducted by Col. 

 Sumner was operating against them, a number to the amount of 40 

 lodges took retuge among the Dakotas, in the neighborhood of the 

 Black Hills. 



They will probably unite with the Dakotas, in the event of any 

 general war. Though it is believed, from the great moral efiect pro- 

 duced by the march of the Utah expedition through their common 



