No. 360.
Mr. Blaine to Sir Edward
Thornton.
Washington, May 10, 1881.
Sir: I have the honor to inform you that it appears from a letter dated the 3d instant, addressed to this Department by my colleague, the Secretary of War, that on the 29th of March last, scouts attached to the command of Lieutenant Kingsbury, Second United States Cavalry, in Montana Territory, discovered the trail, two days old, of twenty Indians at the crossing of Woody Fork, going west; that on the 3d of the same month a trail was found of a mounted party of about thirteen Indians going west on the divide between Squaw Creek and Musselshell; that at and near Carroll, a large camp containing about 2,000 Blackfeet Indians, was found, and, furthermore, that intelligence was received by Lieutenant Kingsbury to the effect that the Blackfeet and other Canadian Indians engaged in this incursion into the territory of the United States intended re-crossing the boundary line at once to draw their annuities from the Canadian government. It is stated, moreover, that the Indians in question stole a number of ponies in the vicinity of the Yellowstone, at McDonald’s Creek.
In view of the fact that these Indians seem to be regularly domiciled in British territory, and supported by annuities from the Canadian authorities, I beg to express the hope that stringent measures will be adopted by the Dominion government with as little delay as practicable to keep its Indians from making these predatory incursions across the border.
I have, &c.,