to eat the Blackfoot grass; and the remonstrances of the Indians have been entirely disregarded.  Some years ago, I came to the conclusion that the proper occupation for these Indians was stock-raising.  Horses they already had in some numbers, but horses are not so good for them as cattle, because horses are more readily sold than cattle, and an Indian is likely to trade his horse for whiskey and other useless things.  Cattle they are much less likely to part with, and besides this, require more attention than horses, and so are likely to keep the Indians busy and to encourage them to work.

Within the past three or four years, I have succeeded in inducing the Indian Bureau to employ a part of the treaty money coming to the Blackfeet in purchasing for them cattle.

It was impressed upon them that they must care for the cattle, not kill and eat any of them, but keep them for breeding purposes.  It was represented to them that, if properly cared for, the cattle would increase each year, until a time might come when each Indian would be the possessor of a herd, and would then be rich like the white cattlemen.

The severe lesson of starvation some years before had not failed to make an impression, and it was perhaps owing to this terrible experience that the Piegans did not eat the cows as soon as they got them, as other Indian tribes have so often done.  Instead of this, each man took the utmost care of the two or three heifers he received.  Little shelters and barns were built to protect them during the winter.  Indians who had never worked before, now tried to borrow a mowing-machine, so as to put up some hay for their animals.  The tribe seemed at once to have imbibed the idea of property, and each man was as fearful lest some accident should happen to his cows as any white man might have been.  Another issue of cattle was made, and the result is that now there is hardly an individual in the tribe who is not the possessor of one or more cows.  Scarcely any of the issued cattle have been eaten; there has been almost no loss from lack of care; the original stock has increased and multiplied, and now the Piegans have a pretty fair start in cattle.

This material advancement is important and encouraging.  But richer still is the promise for the future.  A few years ago, the Blackfeet were all paupers, dependent on the bounty of the government and the caprice of the agent.  Now, they feel themselves men, are learning self-help and self-reliance, and are looking forward to a time when they shall be self-supporting.  If their improvement should be as rapid for the next five years as it has been for the five preceding 1892, a considerable portion of the tribe will be self-supporting at the date of expiration of the treaty.