The American Colonization Society has sent to Liberia, since the close of the war, 3,137 colored persons. It is now preparing to dispatch another expedition on the 2d of January next. The number of emigrants will depend, to a considerable extent, on the means yet to be contributed for the purpose. The society is constantly receiving urgent applications for passage and settlement. These, with other movements, especially in South Carolina and Florida, represent, it is estimated, a quarter of a million of men, women and children.
INDIAN NOTES.
Notwithstanding the successful termination of the Nez Percès war, in which General Howard so happily vindicated both his valor and his courtesy, there is no settled and general peace among the Indian tribes. Some 1,700 Sioux broke away while being removed from the Red Cloud agency to their new agency on the Missouri River, and are now on the war path. They have since been committing depredations in the immediate vicinity of Deadwood, Dakota. They number about two hundred lodges, a number not sufficient in itself to render operations against them on a large scale necessary, but probably quite large enough to keep our small available force (exhausted as it is by the long campaign against the Nez Percès) fully occupied should the Indians open hostilities. Although a general Indian war is not considered to be imminent, such an event is not impossible as the outcome of the present troubles, and may be deemed almost probable.
The most serious feature of the situation lies in the probability that the many roving bands who live in the country north and west of the Black Hills, and who are thought to be in sympathy with Sitting Bull, and to have experienced more or less injustice at the hands of the whites, will join with the small band which is creating the present alarm at Deadwood, and thus bring about an outbreak which it would be quite beyond the power of our present reduced military establishment to suppress. The opinion is expressed by officers at the War Department, that the removal of troops from the Black Hills region to the Texas border, may result in the protection of people in the latter section, at the expense of the lives of those who are exposed to much greater danger.
Meanwhile, the Ponca Indians have sent a deputation to Washington, to remonstrate with the President against their removal to a new reservation. They are a peaceful and civilized people, who cannot bear to leave the houses, schools and churches they have built and maintained. The assurances which they received of restitution for their losses, and protection in their new homes, though liberally made and with honest intent, were a poor comfort to them in their enforced removal.
The Sitting Bull Commission report that that doughty chief will not return to this country at present from his retreat across the Canada border. His camp, however, keeps up communication with hostile tribes, stimulating dissatisfaction, and inciting hostility; it furnishes an asylum, also, to fugitives from justice—one hundred of the defeated Nez Percès are now there. The commission suggests, as required by international comity and usage, that they be removed so far into the interior of the neutral State that they can no longer threaten in any manner the peace and safety of our citizens.