The duties of the office are anything but agreeable to an officer who has been educated for the profession of a soldier. Few are disposed to do the incessant drudgery required of an effective agent. As a rule, the permanency of office, the education and _amour propre_ of military life, raises the army officer above the temptations of the ordinary politician; therefore, the _chances_ of an honest administration of affairs are very much in favor of the War Department. To make that management more effective, reasonable pay should be given competent men, as the expenses of frontier life are usually considerable. Years are required to comprehend and order, a practical management of people who are, in one sense, but overgrown, vicious children. Such agents should be retained as long as they remain honest and effective, regardless of church or political creeds. As the wild tribes recognize no authority but that of the _lex-taliones_; by this law they should be governed. _Any attempt to govern or civilize them without the power to compel obedience, will be looked upon by barbarians with derision_, and all idea of Christianizing _adult_ Indians, while they realize the injustice done them by the whites, will prove impracticable. The children may be brought under some moderate system of compulsory education and labor, but the adults never can be. _Moral suasion_ is not comprehended as a _power_, for the Indian’s moral qualities seem not to have been unfolded. The savage is naturally vain, cruel and arrogant. He boasts of his murders and robberies, and the tortures of his victims very much in the same manner that he recounts his deeds of valor in battle, his prowess in killing the grizzly, and his skill in entrapping the beaver. His treachery, is to him but cunning, his revenge a holy obligation, and his religion but a superstitious fear. The Indians that have resorted to labor as a means of future support, should be encouraged and continued under the care of civilians. Their religious instruction, like that of the whites, may safely be left to their own choice; but for the _wild_ savage a just and humane control is necessary for their own well-being, as well as that of the white people; for even in this nineteenth century, life is sometimes sacrificed under some religious delusion.