oomed shanties, or mere wigwams built by the
owners of brush, with peculiar low entrances, into which you must creep on
all-fours. These they prefer for summer use, and I found that a number
of the board-shanties were empty and the doors nailed up, their owners
sensibly preferring to live in brush houses during the hot weather.

When I arrived at the agency the Indians were receiving their ration of
flour, and, as they gathered in a great court-yard, I had an opportunity
to examine them. They are short, dark-skinned, generally ugly, stout, and
were dressed in various styles, but always in such clothing as they get
from the Government; not in their native costume. Among several hundred
women I saw not one even tolerably comely or conspicuously clean or neat;
but I saw several men very well dressed. They carried off their rations
in baskets which they make, and which are water-tight. The agent or
superintendent, Mr. Burchard, very obligingly showed me through the camp,
and answered my questions, and what follows of information I gained in
this way.

The Indian shanties contain a fire-place, a bed-place, and sometimes
a table; once I saw a small store-room; and on the walls hung dresses,
shoes, fishing-nets, and other property of the occupants. The agent
pointed out to me that in most of the houses there were bags of flour
and meal stowed away, and remarked, "Whatever they may say against the
President, no one can say that he does not make the Indians comfortable;"
and it is true that I saw everywhere in the camp the evidence of abundant
supplies of food and sufficient clothing in the possession of the Indians.
The superintendent said to me, "They have plenty of every thing; they have
often several bags of flour in the house at once; no man can say they are
wronged."

The earthen floors of the houses were usually cleanly swept; there are
wells at which the people get water; the school-houses are well furnished,
and as good as the average country-school, and the Indians seem to suffer
no hardship of the merely physical kind. The agent, Mr. Burchard, seems to
be a genuinely kind person, simple-hearted, and, I should think, honest;
and his assistants, whom I saw, struck me as respectable men. Indeed,
several persons in the valley, unconnected with the reservation, told me
that under Mr. Burchard's rule the Indians were much better treated than
by his predecessor. I suppose, therefore, that I saw one of the most
favorable ex