INTRODUCTION. 
Tuts report, although much delayed in point of time, follows naturally my preliminary report 
of 1854, and, in connexion with it, is essential to a full exposition of the subject. When that 
. report was made, the parties of Lieutenant Mullan and Mr. James Doty were still in the field. 
It was expected that, in the discharge of my duties as a commissioner to make treaties with 
the Indians, there would be great facilities for extending the field of observation and of 
reviewing the difficult portions of the route. The preliminary report simply gave the con- 
clusions which had been reached, accompanied by such reports of the officers of the exploration 
as gave the results of personal observation. On my return to Washington Territory, in the 
fall of 1854, I met, at Olympia, both Lieutenant Mullan and Mr. James Doty, who had pre- 
ceded me to that point only a few days. "Their reports, forwarded by me to the War Depart- 
ment, were in season to be published in the first volume, but occupied at that time with my 
duties in negotiating treaties with the Indian tribes, I could do little more than simply forward 
them. These duties occupied my entire time throughout the year 1855. "They required, on 
my part, not simply visiting very extensively different portions of the Territory, but the 
exhausting of every possible means of information in regard to its geography and physical 
characteristics. Copious and accurate information was derived from the Indians themselves. 
It was my invariable custom, whenever I assembled a tribe in council, to procure from them 
their own rude sketches of their country, and a map was invariably prepared on a large scale 
and shown to them, exhibiting not only the region occupied by them, but the reservations 
which were proposed to be secured to them. At the Blackfoot council the map there exhibited 
of the Blackfoot country, of the hunting ground common to the Blackfeet and the Assina- 
boines, of the hunting ground common to the Blackfeet and the tribes of Washington Territory, 
and of the passes of the Rocky mountains, by which this hunting ground was reached, was the 
effective agent in guaranteeing to those Indians the exact facts as to what the treaty did pro- 
vide, and to give them absolute and entire confidence in the government. Thus these treaty 
operations taking me into nearly all portions of the Territory, and finally bringing me to the 
waters of the Missouri, where I remained some three months, enabled me thoroughly to re- 
examine the mountain portion of the railroad route and to extend very largely my general 
knowledge of the country. When I left Fort Benton, on my way hence, in November, 1855, I 
expected to devote the following year to my final report; instead of which, however, as is well 
known to the country, my whole energies and activity were exerted in conducting affairs 
through Indian wars and difficulties of the most serious character, not, however, to the preju- 
dice of the information previously gained. The operations of the Washington forces on Puget 
Sound and the interior, accompanied, as these troops always were, by one or two staff officers 
experienced in exploration, contributed very materially to increase our knowledge of the 
country. "Thus was I occupied, either in managing affairs during a time of war, or bringing 
affairs into proper condition at the conclusion of war, until the end of my term of office. I | 
came to Washington in the fallof 1857 as the delegate of the Territory, with the materials 3» 
