Excerpt from Report of the Secretary of the Interior, 1882, Vol. 2 of 4: Being Part of the Message and Documents Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Second Session of the Forty-Seventh Congress

Among the many causes which exist tending to retard the improve ment Of the Indians, one very important one is the difficulty of procur ing men of the right stamp to act as agents. We have over a quarter of a million of Indians scattered over many thousands of miles of terri tory, many of the points at which they are located being diflicult of access. Many of these Indians, outside of the five civilized tribes, are wild roving nomads, preferring savage to civilized life. These are an untutored and untractable people, who are naturally indolent, improvi dent, and shiftless, and very impatient of restraint or discipline. The object Of the government is to transform these uncivilized people into peaceable, industrious, and law-abiding citizens, and for this purpose a system has been devised, good in many respects; but when we come to operate that system we make a fatal mistake, and a mistake which, if not corrected, will, in my opinion, prevent for generations the aecom plishment of good, which might otherwise be reached in one decade. I refer, of course, to the present system of appointing and paying the men who have the immediate charge of the Indians, and who are known as Indian agents. When the fact is once clearly established that an agent is utterly unfit from any cause for his place, he ought, on any theory of sound business principles, to be removed at once. And a more suitable man put in his place; but it requires as much machinery now, and frs quently more time, to get a new agent appointed than it does to appoint; a minister to the Court of St. James. Within the last year seven entire months were consumed in making such a change at one Of the agencies, where any correct business man transacting his own business would have made the change in less than seven days. This is the fault of the law, and ought to be changed.

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