262 HARPIES AND FRAUDS. 
dered unfit to live among their people, or to 
earn a maintenance by labor. There seems 
but little doubt that the funds of each tribe 
might be employed to a much better advan- 
tage in their own country. The influence o 
the institutions would there be more likely ie 
extend to all classes; and by gradual, the 
only practicable means, a change might be 
wrought upon the nation. 
It is one of the calamities incident to the 
state of ignorance in which most of these poor 
tn — and their close, indeed politi- 
with the more civilized people 
= the "United | States, that they are continually 
preyed upon by the unprincipled harpies who 
are ever prowling through their country, ready 
to seize every opportunity of deceiving and de- 
frauding them out of their money or effects.* 
* By no means the least considerable of the frauds practised 
upon the frontier Indians, have been by Maree and govern- 
ment agents. The character of these impositions may be inferred 
from the following instance, as - is told, aia Yi very generally be- 
lieved, upon the southwestern fro 
It had been pretty well ‘anes. that some of who had 
been in the habit of contracting to furnish with subsistence several 
of the southern tribes, in the year 1838 et seg., had been imposing 
most grossly upon the ides as well as the wet ge in the 
way of ‘short rations’ and other delinquencies, which resulted in 
the gain of a very large sum to the parties concerned. About the 
close of their operations, one inal the employés, who was — more 
cunning than the principals, took it into his payee unt of 
some ill-treatment he had suffered, to make an sear af of their 
i He happened to hold a tote of ee ee (which 
were of course of a confidential character), wherein were set orth 
the processes 7 which these frauds were to be tised. 
a complete eins we unless a satisfactor gratification oneal in- 
* oe 
whom it concerned,’ a negotiation was soon set on foot: but the 
‘noisy customer’ ori not silenced, until he was ae ee in 
a 
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