is
and Lake Michigan Indians, with whom a conditional arrangement has been
made. This extensive district, embracing a great variety of soil and
climate, has been divided among the several tribes, and definite
boundaries assigned to each. They will there be brought into
juxta-position with one another, and also into contact, and possibly
into collision, with the native tribes of that country; and it seems
highly desirable that some plan should be adopted for the regulation of
the intercourse among these divided communities, and for the exercise of
a general power of supervision over them, so far as these objects can be
effected consistently with the power of Congress, and with the various
treaty stipulations existing with them. It is difficult, indeed, to
conceive how peace can be preserved, and the guaranty of protection held
out to the eastern Indians fulfilled, without some legislative provision
upon this subject.
LEW. CASS.

CONDITION OF THE ARMY.

_Extract from the Report of the Major-General of the Army._

Since my last annual report, the five companies of the regiment of
dragoons, which remained to be raised, have been recruited; and, after
having been organized at Jefferson barracks, they took up their march to
Fort Gibson, where the head-quarters of the regiment were established,
preparatory to entering the Indian country, in conformity to your
instructions.

In consequence of the lateness of the arrival of these companies at Fort
Gibson, and a variety of unforeseen difficulties in obtaining the proper
arms and equipments for the regiment, the movement to the west was
delayed until the 15th of June.

In the mean time, General Leavenworth, who had been appointed to the
command of the troops on the western frontier, south of the northern
boundary of the State of Missouri, detached one company of that regiment
as an escort to the caravan of traders to Santa Fe, in Mexico. He also
employed detachments of the third and seventh regiments of infantry in
opening roads between the posts on the Arkansas and Red rivers, and in
establishing new posts beyond the settlements of the emigrated Indians,
for the purpose of facilitating the movements of the expedition, and
covering the country occupied by those Indians, in the event of a
failure to secure a friendly intercourse with the wild tribes inhabiting
the country beyond them.

These arrangements having be