No. 368.
Mr. Foster
to Mr. Evarts.
Mexico, October 7, 1878. (Received October 22.)
Sir: In acknowledging receipt of your dispatch No. 513, of the 20th ultimo, I have to report that on the 5th instant I sent to the acting minister of foreign affairs a copy of the communication of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, inclosed with your dispatch, and assured him that our government would omit no effort to arrest and bring to justice any American Indians who may have committed depredations in Mexico.
With my No. 778, of the 7th ultimo, I sent you a translation of an article prepared by the Mexican foreign office and published in one of the unofficial newspapers of this city, among other things arraigning the authorities of Arizona for encouraging Indian raids into Sonora. With the same dispatch I also sent you a report made by the Mexican consul at Tucson, Arizona, completely disproving the charge and entirely vindicating the American authorities in their treatment of the Indians. These documents may be of sufficient interest to the Indian Bureau to justify you in sending copies to the Commissioner, especially as the report of [Page 624] the Mexican consul throws some light upon the matter referred to in his communication of the 14th ultimo.
I was surprised that in making the publication above alluded to, the Mexican foreign office did not include the said report of the Mexican consul at Tucson, especially as it had been published more than a month before in the official paper of Sonora. Having waited live days and no reference having been made to it, I was unwilling to have so grave a charge against our authorities stand uncontradicted; whereupon I addressed the minister of foreign affairs a note, on the 10th ultimo, informing him of the contents of the consul’s report and of its publication in Sonora, and stating that I could only explain its omission in the publication made by the foreign office on the supposition that it had not yet been received by said office. If such was the case, and he desired to have a copy, I offered to send the minister the official newspaper of Sonora which contained it.
The minister answered me on the 12th ultimo, that the consul’s report had not been received by his department, and said he would be pleased to receive the paper mentioned by me.
On the next day I sent to the minister the newspapers containing the consul’s report; and I confidently expected that he would cause it to be published in the same newspaper of this city in which he had authorized the charge against our authorities in Arizona to be made, but no such publication has appeared.
I have received no further information from the Mexican Government in regard to the reported murder of seventy Mexicans in Northwest Chihuahua by Indians from the United States, nor has any other reference been made to it in the newspapers. I am inclined to believe that the report has been greatly exaggerated, or, if not entirely unfounded, that the raid is the work of the thirty-three Indians mentioned in the Mexican consul’s report who are hiding in the mountains between Chihuahua and Sonora, and whose arrest by the American troops has been prevented by the orders of the Mexican Government itself.
I am, &c.,