36 



I have evidence on this point from several sources, among others 

 from Col. T. II. Stanton, Paymaster of the Army, whose duties 

 called him to the agency. Another army officer who has given 

 me information on this subject is Lieut. W. L. Carpenter, who 

 was stationed there all winter. In a letter written at the Agency, 

 in April last, he says : " The Indians are all quiet now. The poor 

 wretches have been several times this winter on the verge of 

 starvation, through the rascality of the Indian King. They have 

 been compelled to eat dogs, wolves, and ponies." The supply of 

 food purchased by the Government, carefully and honestly de- 

 livered, would have prevented all this suffering. 



X. — Freight Contract from Cheyenne to Agency. 



The goods and supplies for lied Cloud Agency are all trans- 

 ported by wagon from Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific Railroad, 

 and hence the freight contract for this route is a very important 

 one. Mr. D. J. McCann, a well-known member of the Indian 

 Ring, has had this contract since the present Agency was estab- 

 lished, and the official distance from Cheyenne to this point, as 

 allowed by the Interior Department, is 212 miles. The price paid 

 for freight, during the last fiscal year, was $1.10 per hundred 

 pounds for each hundred miles, and the previous year $1.75 per 

 hundred pounds was paid. This allowed distance of 212 miles 

 was well known to be largely in excess of the true distance, and 

 yet no effort seems to have been made by the Interior Department 

 to ascertain the correct distance, although its attention had been 

 called to the subject in 1873. In. the meantime, the Land Office 

 of the Interior Department has been surveying this same region, 

 and had the Indian Bureau of the same department desired to 

 know the exact, or even approximate, distance, it could readily 

 have obtained official information on that point. In November 

 last, while I was at the Red Cloud Agency, Mr. J. W. Hammond, 

 assistant to the Surveyor-General of Wyoming, surveyed the 

 route from Cheyenne to Red Cloud Agency, and informed me 



