Mr. Asso". Mr. Speaker, I think no gentleman of this House can have examined the Indian appropriation bills for the last 4 or 5 years without having been alarmed at the constant increase in the appropriations demanded for the maintenance of that dept. I think no gentleman who desires to promote economy in the administration of the Government can fail to have his attention aroused to the necessity of some action on the part of Congress with a view to accomplish that result. At the last session of Congress I submitted a table showing the increasing amount of expenditure required for the continuance of our Present Indian system. I showed how the estimates had grown from something like 100,000 dollars up to nearly 4 million dollars per annum, according to the estimates submitted to the ComAppropriat at the last session of Congress. No other bureau of the Government has made such strides in the amount of expenditure. It becomes important to us to ask what return the U.S and the people of the U.S. are getting for this enormous expenditure. When that inquiry is made we find instead of peace we are getting more of war, and that every season the whole country is alarmed by Indian attacks and outrages and the fear of a general Indian war. If, then, the Present system, which has been attended with a continually increased expenditure, has failed to accomplish the result sought by that expend iture, which is peace and civilization of the Indian tribes, has not the time arrived when Congress should try another system calcu lated to combine the enterprises connected with the Indians under a single head, instead of the 2 heads under which they are now managed. I learn from the ComrIndAff that the outrages recently com, bitted by the Indians near Fort Laramie have been attributed to the conflict between the civil and military authorities. He tells me that when the Indians came in large numbers up to the fort for the purpose of having a talk and mak:ing a treaty, rations at his request were served out to them from the fort. "Well, sir, Lieut enant GenlSherman thought it necessary to aggregate a military force there at that time. Consequently the rations to the Indians were stopped. When that was done and these Indians could not be held there during the delays taking place in the administration of the civil branch of the service without food, as the Indians were likely to starve, then the ComrIndAff ordered the cattle in the neighborhood to be bought for their support. In the mean time the Indians were there and nothing was accomplished. Then the military came in again and ordered the stoping of supplies, for military reasons. The Indians were again left unsupported and obliged to maintain themselves in some way or starve, and so came outrages, according to that bureau. It is to prevent results like this that it is proposed to place the superintendency of Indian affairs under one head, and that the War dept. Does any gentleman here say, as I believe it has been said, that by this you will put a stop to the civilization of the Indians? I say, on the contrary, you will promote that civilization, and I think l could, with time enough, satisfy the House it must result inevitably from change in our Indian system. Does it civilize the Indian who hates a “forked tongue” to send an agent to him who makes a promise in the name of the “Great Father” to give a certain annuity in money and goods, and then when the time comes appropriates the money and most of the goods to his own use? Does it civilize the Indian to teach him dishonesty? Does it civilize him to give him instead of plows small steel mirrors? Does it civilize the Indian when he wants a good blanket to give him a string of beads? Does it civilize the Indians to send agents among them, as in the case of one in 186land 1862, who demanded that an Indian chief should take a fraction of the goods he was allowed under treaty and ive a receipt in full? That chief, (an Oga alla Sioux, I think,) indignant at the outrage and fraud attempted upon him, left the fort in disgust, and a messenger was sent after him with the message that the military would be ordered to arrest and shoot him if he did not give a full receipt. He did s;o he refused every particle, even the small ackage that was tendered, and left in just. against the fraud sought to be perpetrated in the name of the U.S. Government, and there came soon after an Indian war, as it always does come. Do gentlemen say that they cannot better be protected under the War Dept? Here is the testimony of Rev.