tically an agricultural and stock-raising people, and perhaps of
all the Indian tribes, great and small, are first in general
intelligence, in the acquisition of wealth, in the knowledge of the
useful arts, and in social and moral progress. The evidences of a real
and substantial advancement in these respects are too clear to be
questioned; and it is the more remarkable from the fact, that, but a few
years since, they were, as a people, almost ruined by the ravages of
civil war. Their dwellings consist of 500 frame-houses, and 3,500
log-houses. Of the principal crops, they have raised during the year
2,925,000 bushels of corn, 97,500 bushels of wheat, about the same
quantity of oats, and 80,000 bushels of potatoes. Their stock consists
of 16,000 horses, 75,000 cattle, 160,000 hogs, and 9,000 sheep. The
individual wealth is estimated at $4,995,000.

By the latest reports, they had sixty schools in successful operation,
all, with the exception of one managed by the Moravians, maintained out
of the national school-fund, and having in attendance 2,133 scholars.
Three of these schools are for the education of the freedmen living in
the country. The orphans of the Cherokees have been heretofore provided
for in private families, by means of the interest derived from certain
funds invested for that purpose; but during the past year an orphan
asylum has been established under an act of the National Council, where
are now gathered fifty-four of this class. This school is designed
ultimately to embrace in its operations all the orphans of the nation.

The Cherokees have no treaty-funds paid to them or expended for their
benefit. They have, however, United-States and State bonds held in trust
for them by the Secretary of the Interior, to the amount of
$1,633,627.39; also a recognized claim on account of abstracted State
bonds to the amount of $83,000, on which the interest is appropriated
annually by Congress, making in all $1,716,627.39. This sum is divided
under the following heads, viz., national fund, $1,008,285.07; school
fund, $532,407.01; orphan fund, $175,935.31. The interest on these
several sums is paid to the treasurer of the Cherokee nation, to be used
under the direction of the National Council for the objects indicated by
said heads.

_Choctaws and Chickasaws._--These tribes are for certain national
purposes confederated. The Choctaws, numbering 16,000, an increase of
1,000 on the enumeration for 1871, have a reserv