WARREN K. MOORHEAD, one of the special commis- 

 sioners to investigate Indian affairs and who made a 

 report severely criticising the Indian policy of the gov- 

 ernment, especially as carried out in Minnesota, writes to the 

 Boston Transcript advocating the appointment of Dr. East- 

 man (Ohiyesa) to succeed Commissioner Valentine who has 

 recently resigned. "Eastman," he says, "is the best fitted 

 man in the United States for the position. Moreover, he is 

 a fighter, and we have never had a fighting man as commis- 

 sioner in our history. 



"That is what the Indian office needs. Not diplomacy, not 

 legal affairs, not this everlasting allotting and educating of 

 Indians which Leupp and Valentine have pushed to the ninth 

 degree but the protection of property and the safeguarding 

 of health. And as sure as there is a sun in the heavens, just 

 so certain is it that we shall have on our hands a race of dis- 

 eased paupers unless we change our policy. 



"Mr. Valentine always tells me when we meet that he 

 realizes that the Indians should be protected. He personally 

 has done, I suppose, all he could. But he has followed stead- 

 fastly that policy established before the days of Commis- . 

 sioner Leupp and ma.de the inexorable law of the Indian office 

 by him, and nothing has occurred that leads him to see the 

 fallacy of such a policy. 



"The essential thing, the backbone of the whole Indian 

 service is this: Protection for property and safeguarding 

 of health. Eastman, himself a full-blooded Sioux, understands 

 this as does no white man. He is not seeking the commis- 

 sionership and never told or wrote me he would accept it. 

 But to him what we are doing for the Indian today 'is as 

 sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.' He realizes that we 

 have made a fetich of educating and allotting. That it is as 

 if we gave our own children valuable property, but no pro- 

 tection, and let them be swindled ad lib. 



"Do not misunderstanding me. I believe in educating and 

 allotting Indians, but I believe in something else also. The 

 trouble is that we have emphasized that phase of Indian cul- 

 ture to the exclusion of everything else. As a result we have 

 such a percentage of tuberculosis, trachoma, scrofula and 



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