Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean: Vol. 1, Pt. 2

CHAPTER XVI.
Governmental Aid in connexionwith the Construction of the Road.-Indiansonthe
Route.
Incidental aids to the construction of the road.-Government aid to be given to all through roads
in grants of alternate sections of land, with the usual restrictions. The road should not, however, be a government road, maintained and managed by the genleral government. It will only
entail great expend(liture, lead to delay, and call into exercise a power deemed by many to be
unconstitutional. The road to be built by private enterprise; the business capacity, great skill
developed in capitalists, engineers and contractors, by our railroad experience, availed of and the
whole operation to be pushed with vigor; Irish laborers in the eastern portion, laborers from the
Sandwich Islands and China in the western; railroad iron to be brought to the road by the connexion with Lake Superior; every effort made to promote settlement on the road, to furnish supplies, and cause a way-travel to spring up.
The cost of the road will be greatly diminished by grants of land being availed of to encourage colonization, and the methods adopted by the contractors to maintain the working force and
procure supplies. The supplies of meat for all the laborers on the line east of the mountains,
except for the portion east of the Bois des Sioux, will be furnished from the plains. The inexhaustible herds of buffalo will supply amply the whole force till the road is completed. The
Red river tuliters, two thousand men, five thousand men women, and children, and eighteen
hundred carts, range from the Mouse River valley to the Red river of the North, and each year
in June and July, an(l again in October and November, carry off to the settlements at Pembina,
and in English territory, at least 2,500,000 pounds of buffalo meat, dried, or in the shape of
pemican. These people are simple-hearted, honest, and industrious, and would make good
citizens. They are well affelicted towards the American government; would, if the furnishing of
the meat were intrusted to them, settle on our soil; and they could with ease, for many years,
supply a much larger amount of meat, and at very moderate rates. The Indians of western
'MiLinesota, the Gros Ventres, and the Blackfeet, would also supply considerable quantities.
The laborers with their families should be induced to settle on the line of the road; and the company,, in the disposition of' their grants, should give to them and to settlers small lots contiguous
to those reserved by government, which would thus be in demand, and could be sold at an early
period at remunerative rates. Soon population would increase, a thoroughfare be opened, and
the company's reserved lots could be disposed of to settlers at a considerable adyance. I would
recommend that the working force, once on the line of the road, be kept there with their families
throughout the year, and thus, by a course similar to the above, be induced to settle. This
course once carried out, laborers would offer for the work in suitable numbers, and, on the completion of the road, there would be flourishing settlements on the entire line.
But in an incidental way, under the acknowledged sphere of action of the general government,
aid can be furnished these roads.
As prelininary to the subject of governmental action, the following observations are submitted
in reference to the Indian tribes on the route of the exploration:
The Indians on the line of the route are the Chippewas, Winnebagoes, Sioux, Assiniboins,
Orees, Qros Veutres, Bloods, Pieganls, Blackfeet, and Crows;i and west of the mountains, the