The exasperation of the southern Idaho communities, under continual Indian harassment, became extreme. This was especially true in Owyhee. A meeting of citizens offered rewards for scalps; one hundred dollars for that of a buck, fifty dollars for that of a squaw and twenty-five dollars for "everything in the shape of an Indian under ten."[16] When fifty-five Indians were reported killed in Humboldt, the local paper in Owyhee rejoiced that these were made "permanently friendly"; the next item, in contrast, is an announcement of a Christmas Festival for the Sunday School children at the Union Church, at which there were to be an address, songs by the children, and distribution of gifts.[17] The month previous, on report of seventy Indians being killed and scalped in Nevada, the same paper burst out with,--"Here's seventy more reasons for those safely-located, chicken-hearted, high-toned-treaty-moral suasion philanthropists to ignorantly wail about, and we're glad of it."[18] Since it was so extremely difficult to catch these Indian marauders, a novel proposal was advanced, possibly not in real earnest: "If some Christian gentlemen will furnish a few bales of blankets from a small-pox hospital, well inoculated," the _Avalanche_ announced, "we will be distributing agent, and see that no Indian is without a blanket. That kind of peace is better than treaties." "These ideas suit us exactly," commented the _Idaho World_.[19] In the case of Indians such as these in southern Idaho, the reservation system as yet was impossible; but for the more amenable Indians, who lived farther to the west and north, this system seemed not only possible, but necessary. For the mining advance was sweeping away the native means of subsistence. Game was receding into the more remote localities, and the camass and cous grounds were being continually devastated by the hogs of settlers. The fish supply, to be sure, still remained, but the location of the fisheries on the streams along which most of the travel proceeded made necessary a contact with whites which brought evil results to the Indians. It was fortunate, therefore, that arrangements for the establishment of reservations were well under way, when the mining advance began. For the Indians east of the Cascades the treaties of 1855 (ratified in 1859) provided five reservations, each the size of a large county. These were the Yakima, the Warm Springs, the Umatilla, the Nez Perces and the Flathead. On all of these reservations agents were to be stationed, mills were to be erected, farming tools furnished, and schools and teachers provided. The policy itself was conceived on generous, humane, and enlightened principles, and it is doubtful if, under the circumstances, a better could have been devised. But the test came in administration; the difficulties and weaknesses, as the system worked out, proved to be many and formidable.