He had apparently been put into the coat in
order that he might receive his guests with proper respect, and in the hurry
some one had forgotten to button it, and he was but half covered, being in a
state of nature on a front presentation from his chin to his toes, his little
body being protected from the winter weather by nothing aside from a coating of
accumulated dirt. The Indians living adjacent to this sub-agency in the small
shacks heretofore described are poorly clad, have no means of livelihood, and
are entirely dependent upon the government for the rations on which they
subsist. There is no game in this country, or at least enough to afford them
subsistence and I was informed that to keep from starving they had killed and
eaten all the prairie dogs, which formerly had their habitat thereabout, and
also had resorted to eating skunks. It is alleged by the Indians that they are
being starved in order to compel them to consent to the sale of their irrigable
lands under the reclamation. The ration issued at that time consisted of ten
pounds of flour per month, two and one half pounds of meat per week for each
person, the rations of meat being weighed as it is cut from the bone from the
dressed carcass, the bone (about 30% of the whole) being weighed as a portion
of the ration; three fourths of a pound of beans per month (four tenths of an
ounce per day), with no bacon or salt pork to cook them with without which they
are not palatable; and two and one half pounds of sugar.
-The Sacred Buffalo Vision by Robert J. Juneau and Robert C. Juneau
pg.111-112
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