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and the governmental agencies at Washington that control and regulate them, the Indian Office, the Secretary of the Interior, the Budget Bureau, and Congress and its committees, that these difficulties must be regarded as obstacles to be overcome, not as excuses for the lack of such essential data. The Indian Office has, of course, figures which purport to be the population of the various jurisdictions, but it would not maintain that they are the product of careful enumerations or that they give sufficient detail to permit of close analysis of work done. In several important jurisdictions, such as Northern California, the Navajo agencies, and the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma, they are to a considerable extent estimates. For one jurisdiction the population has long been given at about 3700, whereas a new superintendent who came in and attempted an actual enumeration found only 2200. The method of arriving at the population has often been to take the tribal roll or an old census as the base and to correct it by the deduction of known deaths and the addition of known births. As many births and deaths occur without the knowledge of the agency, this method after a number of years may result in a wide discrepancy between facts and figures.

Another fruitful source of erroneous deductions from figures based on tribal rolls is the number of Indians living off the reservation and virtually out from under the immediate control and responsibility of the superintendent. One superintendent, in talking with two different members of the survey staff, gave distinctly different figures for the number of Indians included in his population but not living on the reservation and for whom the agency had very little responsibility with respect to supplying social and educational service. Asked for a more precise figure, he had a tabulation made from the mailing list used in sending checks for tribal funds and the result was a figure materially lower than either of the figures previously given. Figures for population which include an unknown number of Indians to whom the social service supplied by the government is inapplicable, can be of little value to the superintendent and other local officers in administering their work and may be distinctly misleading to the central office, the Department, and the Congress in reviewing the work of the agency and supplying it with funds.