or, again, it would scramble to its feet, and the dogs would start off in a panic of fear after a more helpless victim. The field grew thick with these miniature butcheries, the Winchesters cracking, and the spurts of smoke rising and drifting away, the dogs yelping, and the Indians wheeling in quick circles around the steer, shooting as they rode, and hitting the mark once in every half-dozen shots. It was the most unsportsmanlike and wantonly cruel exhibition I have ever seen. A bull in a ring has a fighting chance and takes it, but these animals, who were too weak to stand, and too frightened to run, staggered about until the Indians had finished torturing them, and then, with eyes rolling and blood spurting from their mouths, would pitch forward and die. And they had to be quick about it, before the squaws began cutting off the hide while the flanks were still heaving. This is the view of a beef issue which the friend of the Indian does not like to take. He prefers calling your attention to the condition of the cattle served the Indian, and in showing how outrageously he is treated in this respect. The Government either purchases steers for the Indians a few weeks before an issue, or three or four months previous to it, feeding them meanwhile on the Government reservation. The latter practice is much more satisfactory to the contractor, as it saves him the cost and care of these cattle during the winter, and the inevitable loss which must ensue in that time through illness and starvation. Those I saw had been purchased in October, and had been weighed and branded at that time with the Government brand. They were then allowed to roam over the Government reservation until the spring, when they had fallen off in weight from one-half to one-third. They were then issued at their original weight. That is, a steer which in October was found to weigh eleven hundred pounds, and which would supply twenty or more people with meat, was supposed to have kept this weight throughout the entire winter, and was issued at eleven hundred although it had not three hundred pounds of flesh on its bones. The agent is not to blame for this. This is the fault of the Government, and it is quite fair to suppose that some one besides the contractor benefits by the arrangement. When the beef is issued two weeks after the contract has been made, it can and frequently is rejected by the army officer in charge of the issue if he thinks it is unfit. But the officers present at the issue that I saw were as helpless as they were indignant, for the beef had weighed the weight credited to it once when it was paid for, and the contractor had saved the expense of keeping it, and the Indian received just one-fourth of the meat due him, and for which he had paid in land.