—or, perhaps, of “affording a living illustration” of the wisdom and mercy of a policy which, neglecting these poor wretches “without land,” comes down upon other tribes, living peaceably and thrivingly upon reservations “solemnly secured to them for ever,” takes from them their homes and farms, and drives them forth to a new and desolate land; or, if they resist, exasperates them into a war that ends by adding them to the number of “roamers and vagabonds.” The sanguinary conflict which, as we write, is still being waged between a portion of the Nez-Percés Indians and the troops under command of that eminent “Christian soldier,” General Howard, is a flagrant instance of the manner in which Indians of the first and second classes enumerated by the commissioner are driven into the category of “roamers and vagabonds.” We cannot pause to trace the history of this our last and most needless Indian war; we pass it by with the remark that one of the indirect causes of it, according to the report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1874, appears to have been the action of the “American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,” a Presbyterian organization, in selling to a speculator certain lands within the reservation which did not belong to the board, but to the Indians themselves. The report of the commissioner for 1876—the Hon. J. Q. Smith—contains a number of statistical tables, an analysis of which will aid us in forming a correct conception of the present condition of the Indians embraced in the commissioner’s third class, as well as a portion of those in his second class. According to these tables—which contain the latest _official_ returns from all the agencies—the whole number of Indians, exclusive of those in Alaska, and of the “roamers and vagrants,” is put down at 266,151, of whom 40,639 are of mixed blood. The latter are for the most part the children of Indian mothers and of French, Spanish, and American fathers. No less than 153,000 of the whole number “come directly under the civilizing influences of the government agencies,” and of these 104,818 “wear citizen’s dress.” The abandonment of the picturesque blanket for the civilizing coat, the embroidered buckskin leggings for the plain pantaloons, and the gay plume of gorgeous feathers for the hideous hat, is certainly a mark of progress. But when the wigwam is torn down, and the log, frame, or stone house is erected in its stead, a still more decided step towards civilization has been taken; and it may be with surprise that some of our readers will learn that our “savages” have built for themselves, or have had built for them, 55,717 houses, of which 1,702 were erected during last year.