E desire to place before our readers the facts concerning the misappropriation by the government of Indian trust funds for the support of Roman Catholic Indian schools. In such cases as this the only safety is in wide publicity and the awakening of a public sentiment that will prove effective to remedy such abuses of political influence and executive power. We do not know of a better or more comprehensive statement of the case than that made on January 31 last before the subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs by S. M. Brosius, special agent of the Indian Rights Association. It is as follows:

GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMITTEE: We desire to enlist your interest in the need of legislation to prohibit the further use of Indian trust funds for sectarian contract schools.

In a letter from the Honorable Secretary of the Interior, dated 21st inst., in response to a resolution of the House of Representatives, it is shown that for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1904, contracts aggregating $11,563.50 were executed by the Department of the Interior, providing for the support of sectarian contract schools; and for the present fiscal year contracts of a like nature have been entered into amounting to $102,780.

These contracts provide for schools among several tribes, but for the presentation of this phase of the case I will refer to those providing for schools among the Sioux bands of Indians for the present fiscal year. The latter amount to $55,620.00 for the three bands of the Sioux tribe, the Rosebud, Crow Creek and Pine Ridge.

Since the law forbids the use of public funds, the Secretary of the Interior was apparently obliged to secure other funds to meet this expenditure. The total amount of $55,620.00 for the Sioux schools was contracted for support of Roman Catholic schools. A petition from each band of the Sioux mentioned was forwarded to the Indian Office, signed by persons alleged to have rights as members of these tribes.

The petitions are not in compliance with Section 269, Regulations of the Indian Office (1904), since no council was called by the agent for the purpose of ascertaining the desire of the tribe; a small percentage of the tribe, only, have signed the so-called petitions, and such petitions are not properly authenticated, and are

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therefore totally without legal force and effect. We must conclude, therefore, that these contracts were executed by the arbitrary authority of the Executive Department. The Honorable Secretary of the Interior fails to answer the inquiry contained in the House Resolutions, wherein he was requested to show his authority for entering into these contracts.

The intelligent members of the Rosebud band of Sioux, engaged in business at the Agency proper, protest against this usurpation of their rights, and state that they are not Roman Catholics and are opposed to use of their funds. One hundred and six members of the Crow Creek band of Sioux protest, each writing his name, while 53 petitioned for such use of their funds, 42 of these signing by mark. One hundred and sixty-five names appear upon a petition from Pine Ridge Agency favorable to the contracts, and 641 members of the tribes have, so far, protested against expending their funds for contract sectarian schools.

All these Indians entering their protest assert that they are not Roman Catholics and vigorously oppose the use of their funds for the schools of that religious faith. Large numbers of the Indians are communicants in the various Protestant churches and this arbitrary diversion of their funds is most objectionable to them.

It is shown that the contract price of $108 per pupil is largely in excess of the proportionate share due each child of school age, among the Sioux, for school purposes, $15 being about the per capita allowance. The excess expenditure under these contracts is being deducted from the shares due those members who have not asked for such use of their funds, but are now urgently protesting against the same.

Those who have studied the Indian question from the standpoint of his better welfare have largely united in the belief that the trust funds of the Indians should be segregated and individually credited upon the books of the Treasury, and until this is done it is difficult to see how the shares of individual Indians can be diverted for any purpose. If the present plan of expending tribal trust funds for sectarian contract schools is continued arbitrarily by the Department, it must inevitably result in strife and dissension among the Indians. Dr. Lyman Abbott, in the Outlook for Jan. 28, states the situation concisely when he says:

"For the Government, which is the guardian of the Indians, to expend their trust funds for sectarian purposes is to apply to the Indians a policy which would not be applied in dealing with any other people; a policy which is unAmerican, which is in direct contravention of the constitutional provisions of many of our States, which violates the spirit of the Constitution of the United States, and introduces sec

tarian strife among the Indians by setting Protestant and Roman Catholic Indians signing antagonistic petitions. This is but to transfer the ecclesiastical lobby from Washington to the reservation; to jump from the frying-pan into the fire."

We trust that proper legislation may be provided by your Committee to prohibit the further use of Indian trust funds for sectarian contract schools. If not deemed wise to make so far-reaching a provision there should at least be inserted in the Indian Appropriation Act a clause providing that no portion of the funds appropriated by such act shall be expended for support of contract schools other than Government schools.

Dr. Abbott's reference to the ecclesiastical lobby at the capital is pertinent. A statement has been made to me by an honorable Senator, which will be amplified before the Committee on Indian Affairs, if requested, to the effect that a Mr. Scharf, a representative Catholic, submitted a table of twenty close Congressional districts with the alleged Cathouc vote in each, and a written proposal to deliver the necessary votes to carry these districts that might be selected by the Republicans if the appropriations for Catholic Indian schools to the amount of $200,000 were continued for two years longer. Even threats were made by this Mr. Scharf that the defeat of certain Congressmen would be brought about unless opposition to sectarian appropriations was withdrawn.

I will state further that a member of the House of Representatives who was opposing legislation which provided for support of Indian contract schools from Government funds, was approached by the same Mr. Scharf and threatened that if he did not withdraw his opposition to the legislation he (Mr. Scharf) would see to it that the Catholic Church organization would defeat him at the next election. I am authorized to make this statement to this committee. The member referred to is Hon. John H. Stephens, of Texas.

Senator Bard, of California, declared himself the Senator referred to in Mr. Brosius' statement, and corroborated the charges. He was assured by Dr. Scharf that he had authority to make his proposition, and in proof Dr. Scharf showed the Senator a pro forma letter such as was to be sent to Catholic priests in various parishes located in doubtful Congressional territory. This letter purported to be written by the Secretary of the Catholic Club in Washington, and is excellent reading for Americans who are disposed to doubt whether there is a watchful and active Catholic lobby in Washington. It tells how President McKinley appointed four additional Catholic army chaplains, although a great number had already been selected; and says President Roosevelt en

tertained Archbishop Corrigan at a dinner and offered him ten more chaplaincies, part of which he was compelled to refuse for want of a sufficient number of priests. Then it comes to the proposed extension of the Catholic Indian School appropriation, amounting to about $200,000 a year, and mentions the efforts of Dr. Scharf in the matter.

This goes well by the side of the repudiation of Dr. Scharf by the Catholic authorities in Baltimore and Washington. That is an easy way to dispose of him, but the public will decide whether to believe him and the Senator and Representative he approached, or those who find themselves in a tight place and are accustomed to the ethical maxims of the Jesuits. Senator Teller said if the statement of Dr. Scharf was made in earnest, there was more cause to complain of the interference of the Catholic Church than of the Mormon Church in the political affairs of the country.

When the matter reached the proportions of a public scandal, the President sent a letter to Secretary Hitchcock, in which he says that he submitted the question of the payment of these trust funds to the department of justice, which decided that "moneys belonging to the Indians might be applied in accordance with the desire of the Indians for the support of the schools to which they were sending their children." He adds:

There was in my judgment no question that, inasmuch as the legal authority existed to grant the request of the Indians, they were entitled as a matter of moral right to have the moneys coming to them used for the education of their children at the schools of their choice. Care must be taken, of course, to see that any petition by the Indians is genuine, and that the money appropriated for any given school represents only the pro rata proportion to which the Indians making the petition are entitled. But if these two conditions are fulfilled, it is in my opinion just and right that the Indians themselves should have their wishes respected when they request that their own money-not the money of the public-be applied to the support of certain schools to which they desire to send their children. The practice will be continued by the Department unless Congress should decree to the contrary, or, of course, unless the courts should decide that the decision of the

Department of Justice is erroneous.

These two conditions, it is shown, were neither of them fulfilled in case of the

contracts authorized by the President. Section 269 says: "Treaty funds cannot be diverted from the objects for which appropriated without the consent of the tribe, expressed in general council." No such general council was held, and the testimony given by Mr. Brosius and others shows that the great majority of the Indians protest against any such appropriations; while it is extremely doubtful, on on so good authority as that of Episcopal Bishop Hare, whether the Indians whose signatures were on the petitions knew what they were signing. The petition matter is too suspicious to stand the light of day.

Certainly the transaction is directly at variance with the act of Congress, approved June 7, 1897, which says: "And it is hereby declared to be the settled policy of the Government to hereafter make no appropriation whatever for education in any sectarian school." The whole matter is characteristic of the Catholic Indian Education Bureau. Had General Morgan been Commissioner instead of Mr. Jones, these contracts would not have been made even if the President himself had ordered them.

When this matter first came to light, the Board of the Home Mission Society authorized Secretary Morehouse to send a protest to the President, which was done and The courteous reply received. a Board subsequently authorized the following, sent to Representative John H. Stephens, who has sought earnestly to have such contracts prohibited, and who for his opposition to the Catholic schemes was threatened with defeat at the polls. This will explain the Society's position, and that, we believe, of all true Americans who believe in Protestant civilization and liberties.

MY DEAR SIR: On behalf of the Society which I have the honor to represent, the American Baptist Home Mission Society, with a constituency of about a million in the Northern and Western States, I write to express our gratification that you have taken the initiative in the endeavor to have incorporated in the new Indian Appropriation bill a clause prohibiting the application of either the principal or the interest of trust funds held by the Government for the Indians toward the support of sectarian or denominational schools. We hope that the wisdom of this measure will commend itself to the

members of your committee and of the House of Representatives, inasmuch as it is the only way to prevent gross abuses in the administration of such funds.

In a recent communication to President Roosevelt on this subject, the Executive Board of this Society adduced the following reasons against such use of the tunds held in trust by the Government:

(1.) The United States Government having discontinued aid from its own funds for the maintenance of Indian schools under sectarian control should not consent to such appropriation from trust funds held by it for the Indians.

(2.) If this new method of promoting the work of sectarian schools were to become the settled policy of the Government, it would open the door to an unseemly scramble on the part of religious bodies, with possible lobbyists at Washington for as large a share as possible of these trust funds.

(3.) Such a course would also tend to division and strife among the Indians themselves where two or more denominations are represented, as sectarian efforts might be made to secure for one or the other the largest possible appropriation. Indeed, the clear indications are that the requests from these tribes for the appropriation of their money have been secretly worked up by representatives of the body in whose interests chiefly the appropriations have been made, no formal action by a majority of the Indians properly convened having been taken, in some instances apparently a minority surreptitiously securing the grant for their benefit.

(4.) To apply trust funds held either for the individual members of a tribe or for the general good of the whole tribe to such sectarian purposes upon the request of certain members thereof is to divert them from their proper use and to work an injustice to the remainder of the tribe by impairing the amount available for the tribe as a whole.

I assure you that favorable action by your committee upon this subject would be hailed with the greatest satisfaction by all who believe that the Government should not either directly or indirectly have entangling alliance at variance with its settled policy in the administration of these Indian trust funds. soon to learn of favorable action by your committee, I remain, respectfully yours, H. L. MOREHOUSE, Corresponding Secretary.

The Strenuous Life

Hoping

Rev. D. D. Proper, District Secretary for the Central District, including Iowa, writes that during the first fifteen days of January he visited 11 different churches, reaching into Nebraska; including one church twelve miles from a railway, to which he drove on a bitter cold night, and which rewarded him with a generous offering for the Society's work. Such abounding personal work is most effective and productive.

It is expected that a decision will soon be reached in regard to plans for the accommodation of the school at the fall opening in 1905. Friends of this work will here find an opportunity to make their offerings for the equipment of the buildings when re-erected, for the insurance

THE

THE STORY

By President

HE old bell hardly knows itself, its situation is so changed. Fifty years ago it was the town bell of a South Georgia town. It occupied a position of prominence and dignity on the Public Square. Its voice was then a voice of authority. It rang to call the town fathers together; it rang out the alarm of fire; when a citizen was in need of protection he had but to go to the town bell and ring it and the Marshal would come to his aid. Sometimes the Marshal was needed to punish an offending slave. The master would take the culprit to the Square, and in answer to the tones of the bell the Marshal would come, punish the slave, and send him away with his master. At nine

o'clock each night the old bell rang its curfew, and any negro found abroad after that hour without a "pass" was whipped. So that to the negro it told of bondage.

Now it is the bell of a Negro Academy. It occupies again a place of prominence, but not on the public square. It has a

new message to the negroes. It calls the youth to school and tells of deliverance, freedom, opportunity. Few in the town, now a flourishing city, recognize it as the old bell; few now pay heed to it as it rings. Some old negroes still live in the town who remember the days of bondage, but the bell has no terror for them now. It tells of the happier days that have followed the old.

And this is how it came to pass. Somehow the bell lost its occupation. New methods superseded the old and the bell was deposed and lay silent and neglected. in the public square. The principal of one of our academies saw it there and the thought occurred to him that he might secure it for his school. He was successful

NOTE. The academy mentioned by President Sale is situated in the heart of the "black belt," and is one of the excellent schools maintained by the Home Mission Society. Its principal and teachers are all negroes, and prove what kind of educational work can be done by their race, against many difficult conditions. To harbor this interesting old bell, whose story has been so well told above, a belfry is needed. It can be built for only about $40. It would be a fine thing for some of our young people's or junior societies to take this as their work.