Your duties are summarily defined in the fifteenth section of the act of the Legislature, which authorizes me to make this appointment, and to which I invite your attention.
On calling at this office you will be furnished with the proper blanks to enable you to perform the duties of the important trust committed to your hands, which will indicate with sufficient precision the method of ascertaining the numbers, ages, sex, condition and classification of the remnants of this interesting race. You will find, on running through and examining the blanks for these returns, full scope for all the information that can be of any practical use.
I desire you will be very particular and minute in your inquiries in respect to every matter which relates to agricultural and statistical information, as well as of all other information called for by the returns, which will be furnished to you.
It is believed, from the information which has been received at this office, that there may be found, at the different reservations, Indians who were not originally of the tribe or stock to which they now profess, perhaps, to belong. You will, as far as may be in your power, and without exciting the jealousy and distrust of the Indians, endeavor to ascertain the number of their people, now living at the different reservations, who are not of the original stock or tribe with whom they are now sojourning.
It is important that you do not consolidate or bring into one return any more than the inhabitants of one reservation, and a sufficient number of blank returns will be furnished to enable you to accomplish this object without any difficulty, and you can use some one of the columns which will otherwise be found useless, to denote or mark the number who derive their subsistence from the chase.
It is expected that you will complete the enumeration, and file the several returns in the Secretary’s office by the first day of September next, that I may be able to prepare abstracts and copies to be submitted to the Legislature at the next session.
You will no doubt experience some difficulties in the performance of the duties devolved upon you, owing to the jealousy of the Indians and the novelty of these proceedings; this, it is believed, being the first effort of the kind ever attempted by the State. You will assure our red brethren, that, in taking this enumeration of them, and making the inquiries into their present condition and situation, the Legislature, the Governor of the State, or any of the officers, have no other objects in view but their welfare and happiness.
The Indians within our State are under its guardian care and protection, and it is a high duty that is now to be performed of sending a competent and well qualified citizen to visit them, and inquire particularly into their situation. We have no connection with the government of the United States, or any land company, which prompts to these inquiries into their present social condition.
You will be at liberty to extend your inquiries to the early history and antiquarian remains of the Indians in the central and western parts of the State, but it is desired that these may be as brief as the nature of these inquiries will allow.
With these views of the subject I commit this important trust to your hands, confidently expecting and anticipating a very satisfactory result.