Office Supt. Indian Affairs, Salem, Oregon, May 23, 1870.
Sir:—Having just returned from an official visit to Grand Ronde Reservation, I desire to call attention to a few items that are of importance:—
First. The Indians have an unusual crop in prospect.
Second. They fully realize the advantages to result from having lands allotted in severalty, and therefrom arise questions which I propose to submit. (See paper marked “A.”)
Third. The mills built fifteen years since are totally unfit for service, for the reason that they were not located with good judgment, in this that they were built on a low, flat, muddy piece of river bottom, composed of alluvial deposit that washes away almost like sand or snow, having neither “bed rock nor hard pan” for foundation, constantly settling out of shape and damaging machinery, besides being threatened with destruction at every overflow.
The lower frames of both mills, but more especially that of the saw-mill, are so rotten that they would not stand alone if the props and refuse slates from the saw were removed.
The flour mill is a huge, unfinished structure, supported on wooden blocks or stilts, and double the proper dimension, with an old patched-up wooden water-wheel that has been a constant bill of expense for ten years; machinery all worn out, even the bolting apparatus rat-eaten and worthless, but with one 42-inch French Burr, that, together with mandril, are as good as new.
The saw-mill is the old-fashioned “Single Sash” with flutter wheel, only capable, when in best repair, of making 600 to 1,000 feet of lumber per day; but utterly worthless at present for several reasons, the chief of which is want of water. The “dam” was originally built about one-quarter of a mile above the mills, at an enormous expense to Government, across a stream (that is four
times as large as need be for such mill purposes), with soft, flat alluvial porous banks and mud bottom.
The history of said dam is, that it has broken twenty times in fourteen years, each time carrying away mud enough at the ends of the dam to make room for each successive freshet.