Stikeen River journal., 1899-06-24
True Bill Filed Against Rev.
 Sheldon Jackson.
The Juneau Grand Jury Charges Him With Deceiving the Gov
 ernment and the People.

The Federal Grand Jury of Alaska has again indicted Rev. Sheldon Jack son. United States educational agent for Alaska, the father of the reindeer transportation scheme for Alaska. This is quite usual custom with Northern grand iuries and little ever comes of it This year the charges are made more plain and are almost severe enough to require an answer.
 The report turned in by the Ex-Gov- Swineford, chairman of the grand jury, charges him with engaging in T useless and expensive attempt to use reindeer for transportation in Alaska, making mendacious official reports, squander- ing school money, and gross inattention 1 to his duties. Rev. Jackson is now in Alaskan waters on the United States revenue cutter Bear He is making a trip to the Siberian coast to secure ad ditional reindeer.
 After telling of the terrible condi- tions of the schools are never visited | by the educational agent and saying a | few mean things about Jacksons reln- deer scheme the report charges him with lying, as follows
 "We charge this man is untruthful. and that he has persistently embodied in his official reports statements con I X which he knew to be absolutely false. He has charged time and time again in his official reports, that the Greco Russian Church oppose the teaching of English in their schools, and threaten parents that if they allow their chil- dren to learn English their boys will be taken away and put into the American army as soon as they are old enough to do duty as soldiers. W hereas, the truth is, that English has always been taught in the principal Greco-Russian schools. We have proof of this fact in the person of an official of this court, who is at least fairly educated in Eng fish, but who never attended any other than Russian school. If he had been guilty of deliberate falsehood in his of ficial reports on schools and education in Alaska, what reliance is to be placed on those he makes concerning the use of reindeer in Alaska?
 "The plain simple truth is that each and every attempt at the use of rein deer sor transportation ln Alaska has been failure. We do not need to point to the cruel starving to death of large thunder of these animals at Haines mission last year in partial proof of the assertion; it is convincingly substantiated by Dr. Jackson's own re- port of the journey made in the winter of lS96-7 by Mr. William A.Kjellmann, in which it is shown that five of his reindeer actually starved to death and that the lives of the balance were only saved by cutting down trees to obtain moss, by which means their lives were prolonged until they could be driven, without harness or sleds, a distance of sixty miles, to where the Lapps, after securing the country several days, fina- lily found pasturage. Yet Dr. Jackson has the effrontery to assert that the re- suit of this trial trip has convinced mis- siOnaries, traders and others residing in Northern and Central Alaska, that domestic reindeer can do for them what they have been doing for centur- ics in Lapland. Mendacity could scar cely go further, even in the threatened
 loss of a cherished appropriation. There is not a miner or trader in Alas ll ka wno 1; will not rather effectively give any quarter whatever.