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EFFECTS OF ANNUITIES, 255 
at the expense of the government, and re- 
ceived valuable equivalents beside, in uten- 
sils and other necessaries, and in regular 
annuities. These are sums, generally in 
money, annually paid, for a series of years, 
to the several tribes, proportioned usually to 
the size of the tribe and the amount of ter- 
ritory acquired from it. This institution of 
annuities, however, though intended as the 
most charitable, has doubtless been the most 
injurious branch of the policy of the United 
States towards the Indians. Being thus af- 
forded the means of living without much 
labor, they have neglected manufactures, and 
even agriculture, to a considerable degree, 
and many of them have acquired confirme 
habits of indolence and dissipation ; and 
now that their annuities are growing short, 
they are being left destitute, alien the 
energy, the industry, or the means where- 
with to procure a livelihood. 
But, notwithstanding the constant efforts 
of the general government to make them 
comfortable, and the immense sums of mo- 
ney which have been paid them, and their 
being located in regions far better suited to 
their wants and their habits of life than those 
they abandoned, many of them appear greatly 
dissatisfied with the change and with the 
government ; which seems painfully demon- 
strative of that perverse, restless disposition, 
which appears ever to have characterized the 
‘eonduct of half-civilized nations. 
One ostensible reason for their unwilling- 
