“In striking contrast with the lack of agricultural development on irrigated Indian reservations, under the present system, is the marked development of agriculture during the last few years on a number of reservations in the regions of normal rainfall where Indians have had control of their own funds and the responsibility of expending them in the improvement and development of their lands, under the guidance of practical Indian Service farmers.
“The remedies needed will be suggested briefly, as follows:
“1. General legislation that will charge the individual land benefited with the cost of construction and maintenance, payment to be made out of the share in the tribal funds of the individual whose land in benefited or from the proceeds of the sale of the land when it passes from Indian ownership where the share of the individual in the tribal fund is insufficient.
“2. The general legislation suggested in the above paragraph should provide that the tribe whose funds it is proposed to use for the construction of irrigation projects shall be first consulted.
“3. The proposed general legislation should also provide for charging of costs of maintenance and operation against the lands under the project and should give the Indians whose lands are benefited a voice in said maintenance and operation.
“4. In order not to overburden irrigated Indian lands by the legislation suggested, especially since the Indians have not heretofore been consulted, the costs of supervisory engineering and of experimental construction and cost of investigations and preliminary surveys should be excluded from the charges made against the lands and paid from gratuity appropriations.
“5. Reimbursable appropriations from tribal funds should be made immediately for all Indian reservations where the utilization of irrigable lands has not kept pace with the construction of irrigation projects through lack of funds in the hands of individual Indians to make such utilization possible.
“6. Skilled irrigation farmers should be provided out of gratuity appropriations to give advice and assistance to Indians having irrigable lands.”
CHAPTER XXIX. THE BUFFALO
The American bison, commonly called the buffalo, occupied an extended area of the United States in ancient times. About 1850, the range of the buffalo extended from the Red River valley, Manitoba, to central Texas; through western and central Minnesota and as far west as the arid plains of Colorado, and to near the headwaters of the Missouri River in the Northwest. As settlers pushed west of the Mississippi, the buffalo disappeared from eastern Nebraska, Missouri and western Arkansas. The animal does not appear to have ranged in eastern Arkansas or Louisiana, preferring the portion of the country known as the Great Plains, and the entire Missouri River valley. In the later sixties, when the Union Pacific Railroad was built westward, hundreds of hunters were enabled to ship East unnumbered thousands of robes and great quantities of meat. The herds were further restricted, and by 1885, the buffalo almost entirely disappeared.