Our Indians number about 248,000.  Most of them are located on 161 reservations, containing 86,116,531 acres of land.  About 110,000 of these Indians have to a large degree adopted civilized customs.  Lands in severalty have been allotted to many of them.  Such allotments have been made to 10,000 individuals during the last fiscal year, embracing about 1,000,000 acres.  The number of Indian Government schools opened during the year was 195, an increase of 12 over the preceding year.  Of this total 170 were on reservations, of which 73 were boarding schools and 97 were day schools.  Twenty boarding schools and 5 day schools supported by the Government were not located on reservations.  The total number of Indian children enrolled during the year as attendants of all schools was 21,138, an increase of 1,231 over the enrollment for the previous year.

I am sure that secular education and moral and religious teaching must be important factors in any effort to save the Indian and lead him to civilization.  I believe, too, that the relinquishment of tribal relations and the holding of land in severalty may in favorable conditions aid this consummation.  It seems to me, however, that allotments of land in severalty ought to be made with great care and circumspection.  If hastily done, before the Indian knows its meaning, while yet he has little or no idea of tilling a farm and no conception of thrift, there is great danger that a reservation life in tribal relations may be exchanged for the pauperism of civilization instead of its independence and elevation.

The solution of the Indian problem depends very largely upon good administration.  The personal fitness of agents and their adaptability to the peculiar duty of caring for their wards are of the utmost importance.

The law providing that, except in special cases, army officers shall be detailed as Indian agents it is hoped will prove a successful experiment.

There is danger of great abuses creeping into the prosecution of claims for Indian depredations, and I recommend that every possible safeguard be provided against the enforcement of unjust and fictitious claims of this description.

The appropriations on account of the Indian Bureau for the year ending June 30, 1894, amount to $7,954,962.99, a decrease as compared with the year preceding it of $387,131.95.

The vast area of land which but a short time ago constituted the public domain is rapidly falling into private hands.  It is certain that in the transfer the beneficent intention of the Government to supply from its domain homes to the industrious and worthy home seekers is often frustrated.  Though the speculator, who stands with extortionate purpose between the land office and those who, with their families, are invited by the Government to settle on the public lands, is a despicable character who ought not to be tolerated, yet it is difficult to thwart his schemes.  The recent opening to settlement of the lands in the Cherokee Outlet, embracing an area of 6,500,000 acres, notwithstanding the utmost care in framing the regulations governing the selection of locations and notwithstanding the presence of United States troops, furnished an exhibition, though perhaps in a modified degree, of the mad scramble, the violence, and the fraudulent occupation which have accompanied previous openings of public land.