The committee believed that the wars with their incidents of slaughter and extermination by both sides, as occasion offered, were generally the result of white encroachments. It did not fall in with the growing opinion that the control of the tribes should be passed over to the War Department, but recommended instead a system of visiting boards, each including a civilian, a soldier, and an Assistant Indian Commissioner, for the regular inspection of the tribes. The recommendation of the committee came to naught in Congress, but the information it gathered, supplementing the annual reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the special investigations of single wars, gave much additional weight to the belief that a crisis was at hand. Meanwhile, through 1866 and 1867, the Cheyenne and Sioux wars dragged on. The Powder River country continued to be a field of battle, with Powell's fight coming in the summer of 1867. In the spring of 1867 General Hancock destroyed a Cheyenne village at Pawnee Fork. Eastern opinion came to demand more forcefully that this fighting should stop. Western opinion was equally insistent that the Indian must go, while General Sherman believed that a part of its bellicose demand was due to a desire for "the profit resulting from military occupation." Certain it was that war had lasted for several years with no definite results, save to rouse the passions of the West, the revenge of the Indians, and the philanthropy of the East. The army had had its chance. Now the time had come for general, real attempts at peace.