The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-09-10
The Indian auestion-Mr. Grant Re


The New York World informs us that Mr.
Orville Grant, brother of the President, has
resigned his position as an Indian agent in
the Sioux country and gone out of all bust
ness" We are sincerely glad to hear this.
Mr.. Grants connection with the Indian agen-
cies in the Northwest was first brought into
prominence by the HERALD. Even the best
friends of the President thought it was a
disgraceful thing for his brother to be under
the Indian Ring. We pointed out to Mr..
Orville Grant that so long as he was dealing
with the Indians his illustrious brother
would be held under suspicion. This seems
to have impressed Mr.. Grant, for he now re-
tires altogether from any connection with
this unsavory affair.
Now that Mr.. Orville Grant has made this
sacrifice-and we have no doubt it is a large
one in pecuniary sense-we trust the Presi-
dent will go deeper into the Indian question,
and satisfy the country that he means to
break up these frauds as rigidly as he is en-
deavoring to break up the whiskey frauds.
AS the matter now stands Mr.. Delano, Secre-
tary of the Interior, is arraigned, in connec-
ton with the Assistant Secretary and the
Commissioner Of Indian Affairs, as directly
sharing the spoils of the Indian Ring The
evidences of their incapacity, if not of worse
practices, are found in the testimony of Mr..
Welsh, of Philadelphia Professor Marsh, of
New Haven and hundred other witnesses,
whose evidence comes to us from different
oartc IF ha 10
since the beginning of this investigation one
statement either from the Interior Depart
ment or from the friends of the Indian Ring
which goes to parry in the slightest degree
the serious charges made by Mr.. Welsh and
Professor Marsh. If there is any value in
human testimony or in high personal char
acter as sustaining such testimony then Mr..
Delano and those with him in the admins
tration of Indian affairs are condemned.
President Grant cannot afford to carry this
burden any longer. Nor should his friends
ask him to do so. Whatever the errors of his
administration no one supposes for moment
that he would willingly take part in any
movement to make money by selling rotten
blankets and mouldy flour to starving Indian
squaws Yet this is the basis of the whole
matter. Our Indian affairs have gradually
fallen into the hands of selfish and unscru-
pulous men. They have grown so rich out
of the profits of this business that they
can afford to maintain powerful
combination at Washington and infu-
ence legislation, to control the decisions of
the departments, to select their own friends
in the Senate and House for the Indian COM
mittees, and even, as has been shown in the
case Of Orville Grant, to impose their will
upon the President himself They have
grown into this power because the Indians
have been far removed from the observation
of the country, because the question has
never yet been one in which our people
could be induced to take any interest, and
because, we are sad to think, there has grown
up in the minds of many communities the
startling and terrible theory that the only
future for the Indians is humiliation, and
that the best policy would be to kill them at
once.
But even if we should adopt the policy of
humiliation let us do it in a humane man
ner, and put an end to the Indian by some
of the swift methods known to science. So
long as we have the torpedo system at New
port, and could blow tribe out of existence
in a moment, why should we descend to the
degrading business of starving them or killing
them with poisonous alcohol ? This is what
we are doing; this is what the country calls
upon the President to suppress.