“The principal uncivilized tribes are the 20,000 Navajos in the Southwest, and the 30,000 Sioux in the Northwest. The first of these have nearly doubled in ten years, own 1,000,000 sheep and 40,000 ponies, are wholly independent and self-supporting, but wild and nomadic; while the Sioux, who are but just holding their own, are still victims to the ration system. In spite, however, of this demoralizing influence, they have improved remarkably of late, chiefly because they have been fortunate in their agents. It is upon the agents that everything depends, and those in charge of the Sioux have gradually decreased the food supply, thus forcing self-support and inducing the younger men to scatter along the river bottoms where there is wood and water, instead of huddling in hopeless dependence about the agencies. Along the banks of the Upper Missouri and its tributaries, and on the Rose-bud and Pine Ridge Agencies, the Sioux have generally broken from the heathenish village life and taken farms up of from one to thirty acres. As I drove last fall down the west bank of the Missouri river I saw hundreds of these farms, with their wire fences, log huts with the supplementary ti-pi, stacks of grain and hay, and everywhere men working in the fields, nineteen out of twenty in citizen’s clothing. As a better class of white settlers comes in, a better feeling comes with them, and the Indian can get in no other way such education as he receives from contact with these people. “The best of these Sioux, 3,500 of whom are now self-supporting, illustrate what we mean by ‘progressive Indians,’ and what has been done for them can be done for all Indians. It is only a question of time and work. Between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountain Ranges, and in Montana, there are many thousand Indians whose condition is not encouraging, chiefly for lack of adequate effort in their behalf; while on the other hand, there are many on the Pacific coast who, under the influence of good agents and good conditions, are doing well. On farming lands Indians improve much faster than in a grazing country. “Government paid last year $1,050,000 for beef for reservation Indians, and $1,200,000 for their education, and only twelve thousand children are at school out of the total of forty thousand who are of an age to receive education. More education and less beef is the need.