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River 192 and Western Shoshone 680; in North Carolina, Eastern Cherokees 2833; in North Dakota, Standing Rock 3626, and Turtle Mountain 4202; in Oklahoma, Cantonment, 724; in South Dakota, Crow Creek 924, and Lower Brule 595; in Wisconsin, Hayward 1365, Lac du Flambeau 839, Laona 875, and La Pointe 1731.
The time spent by any one person at any one place was of course limited. Only in exceptional instances did it exceed three or four days. The several specialists, however, had more or less separate and distinct fields to which they mainly devoted themselves, and thus a great deal could be covered in any one jurisdiction even if the time spent there was short. A three-day visit from all ten of the staff was much more than the equivalent of thirty days’ work by one person, because each individual was a specialist in his particular field, and brought to the problems the years of experience in that field. Then, too, despite the differences in jurisdictions, much was common to all, especially as it related to matters of administration of more or less standardized activities. Thus the evidence was often cumulative. The outstanding illustration of this similarity is perhaps the uniform course of study in government Indian schools, though much else about the schools was almost equally so. Civil Service standards and practices have been fairly uniform so that conditions with respect to personnel tended to repeat themselves. The conditions with respect to accounting, purchases, supplies, and so forth, are other illustrations. Fairly early in the work it became possible in many fields to note quickly general conformity and to look mainly for differences.
The Methods of the Survey. Several persons interested in Indian affairs have expressed a desire for information regarding the methods followed by the survey staff. It seems advisable therefore in this foreword to attempt to give a brief statement of the methods pursued.
Study of Existing Material. Before the survey staff visited a jurisdiction the effort was made to have compiled from the records of the Indian Office the available statistics relating to the major subjects of interest for that jurisdiction. For the first jurisdictions visited Dr. Dale had found it practicable, while in Washington, to examine the narrative reports of the superintendents for the past several years, and the reports of the Board of Indian Commis-