TO THE EDITOR OF THE OREGONIAN:
    The recent editorial in the Oregonian on "The Yakima Experiment" has led me to ask the favor of a little space to express my thoughts. Man in all ages, however corrupt and ignorant he may be, has never been satisfied to live always in the same state. There is always a still, small voice which prompts him to aim at something better and higher. The Indian was born and raised with the sentiment of personal independence and loyalty. Every man worked for his best interest. Nor is the Indian peculiar in this respect. How long did it take the Caucasian race to attain its present situation? Take, for instance, the Christian church, a very important factor in the civilization of the world. Is it a failure because evil has crept into its doors? Can we say the sun is a failure because it has spots? It still gives light and warmth. Time rolls on and the Indian is still in a degraded condition. He has been driven from his native soil by the sword of the invader, and then darkly slandered by the pen of the historian--treated as a beast. The Indian has but few moral laws and conforms to most of them, while the white man abounds in laws of religion, morals, manners, etc., and how many does he observe? Surely the white man has trampled upon their rights, upon the claims of justice and upon humanity. Have not we, the Indians, borne "the whips and scorn of time" as well as could be expected of a downtrodden race? It is terrible to have the conquerors' feet on our necks.
    Our punishment has been terrible and pitiless. Travelers and newspaper correspondents, seeing the Indians who live in and near town and cities and who have learned the vices of the white man, with a white skin and black heart, judge the Indians by such examples, and thus give a different color to the Indian race. I do not approve any barbaric customs, as the tamanawas and others, and if anything has changed the general disposition of the Indian it is Christianity. Work is indeed essential, but to say that "the Indian must be taught only to herd cattle and to plow, and if he learns this in one or two generations he will have done well" somehow does not set aright with me. I firmly believe that when the old Indians who are a drawback fall in line with the good Indians ("the dead ones") that the present generation will have a fair chance to test this sentence: "It is no use to try to civilize the Indian by educating him in books."
    Educational institutions are diffused all over the land, and the tendency of the present age is to improve intellectually. Education is leading the world to a better state, and shall we be spectators and not partakers? Will you be justified in depriving the Indian of this fundamental basis of civilization? Work there must needs be; but to bring happiness and prosperity, education must go hand in hand with work.
    I recognize that we must work, but unless we also learn books we will be pushed to the wall. Herding cattle and such is well enough in its place, but with this the Indian's ambition will never be satisfied, nor will he continue long to remain stationary. Education shall and must be a vital part of his advancement. All the evils which ruined the Indian in civilization do not necessarily indicate that our day of doom is at hand. There is a powerful agency, which is busily and quietly at work, and in due time will change the popular feeling in regard to the Indian. Give us, who deserve and are unjustly deprived of our rights, equal privileges. Treat us as human beings and you will be so treated. Are we not subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, subject to the same laws and penalties, made of one blood by the same being? If so, give us our first portion of privileges.
    The inevitable tobacco, pipe and whiskey jug will then by no means govern the Indian race. If the morning star has not yet appeared, then indeed I would better herd cattle.
    Labor, I say again, is essential to the progress of the Indians, but the young Indian of today will never be satisfied with herding cattle and being driven into reservations to die off, and to be treated as a foreigner. Thus shorn of everything but his liberty, he can be in no better condition than the Irish and Poles. Are we, the young Indians of today, liable to go "back to paganism"? When the pressure of the hated, degrading and inhuman reservation system is removed, will we then plunge back into paganism? Let the government teach the Indian to work--make him work if necessary--but let it also teach him to think, and to be a man. Let it encourage him to work by allowing him to make the reward of his work sure and permanent for himself and his children.
    Then see if he will not do his share to secure his highest success.
Oregonian, Portland, March 9, 1886, page 1


    I was traveling over the Crow reserve in Montana, when word was brought to me that "an Indian outbreak" was imminent in the Klamath and Modoc country, in Southern Oregon. The news was soon confirmed from several different sources, and I became convinced that some kind of disturbing influence was at work in the region named. But I did not believe there was to be an Indian outbreak. I obtained copies of recent Portland, Oregon, newspapers, from which I learned that there was general agitation and excitement in the country adjacent to the Klamath reserve; that public meetings were being held to protest against the removal of the troops from Fort Klamath, and that the Indian agent was reported to have said that he would leave the reservation if the soldiers were withdrawn. I hoped he had not said so. I did not believe there would be an outbreak, but I concluded that my duty as a newspaper correspondent might require me to be present in the disturbed district. If there was really to be "another Indian war," as people were saying, I wished to be near enough to see what was done, and to have a bit of news at first hand.
    To reach the Klamath and Modoc country I went out to Portland, and from there took the Oregon and California Railroad to its end at Ashland, Oregon, 342 miles south of Portland, and within a few miles of the California state line. The train reached Ashland at 4 o'clock in the morning, and the stage leaves that place for Linkville, 70 miles away, over the Cascade Range, in a few minutes afterward. I have not seen so rough riding anywhere else, though I have been over some pretty ragged country in the Adirondack region of Northern New York, in West Virginia, Tennessee, Texas and elsewhere. This Cascade Mountain stage coach carries the mails, and must go through on schedule time, 70 miles to Linkville in one day. So it "stopped not for stone" or anything else, but, with frequent changes, four powerful horses were kept at the top of their speed all day long. It was like being headed up in a hogshead (with a bushel or two of dust shoveled in) and rolled down a mountainside from morning till night. The journey would not be a safe one for any but those who are young and strong. A remarkably vigorous and athletic young man, who crossed a few days after I went over, was made ill by the journey, and was so bruised and sore that he could not sleep at night.
    Linkville is on the Klamath River, between two of the Klamath lakes. Fort Klamath, which is within seven or eight miles of the agency, is 40 miles farther on. Linkville was in a condition of great excitement. Public meetings were being held, and speeches were made by the Representative in Congress, and by other prominent gentlemen. The object of the meetings was to protest against the abandonment of Fort Klamath as a military post, the government having announced its intention to withdraw the garrison. The speeches were pretty somber, and the newspapers of the region talked luridly of the awful results of leaving the people of the country exposed, without defense, to the attacks of the red-handed and bloodthirsty savages. In all these utterances, I noted two features: One was the fact that nobody said the Indians had really done anything or had intimated any intention of doing anything improper. There were frequent indirect admissions that white men were likely to be the aggressors. The other feature of the talk everywhere was the prominence of business considerations. The garrison furnished a market for supplies of various kinds, and was a benefit in pecuniary ways to all the adjacent country. The opposition to the withdrawal of the soldiers on this ground was, of course, entirely legitimate and reasonable; but the people of the region thought they made their case stronger by gruesome talk without end about the horrors of savage warfare, the midnight attack on the lonely cabin, the scalping-knife, the red flames curling through the crackling roof, and all the rest of it.
    I learned in Linkville that a special agent of the Department of the Interior had been ordered on from Washington to investigate the whole matter. So I said to myself, "There will be no decision regarding the withdrawal of the garrison until he comes and looks over the ground and reports. The Indian war will be postponed for a few weeks. I will look around among the settlers and the new towns and mining camps." So I struck out through the country around the Klamath reserve, with the cattlemen, freighters, mining prospectors, and immigrants. It is a rough country, much of it, with rough travel, rough eating, etc. It was growing cold, with much snow on the mountains, but the air was deliciously pure and exhilarating, and I enjoyed camping out when I had plenty of blankets; but some families of immigrants, who were caught in snow storms when crossing the mountains, suffered intensely, having no food for themselves or their horses for several days.
    I met people from all parts of our country, and from other countries. There were some old men who had crossed the plains in '54, and have been always "on the move" since then, traversing nearly every part of the vast mountain regions from Southern California to the Kootenai country and the Similkameen River. Now they had "heard tell" of some new place, "the best country yit." Others were hurrying out of the region, going north, south, east and west, "anywhere to git out, 'cause there's goin' to be an Indian war." Hundreds of settlers left the country on account of this apprehension.
    All these people were very well behaved while I was with them, although various "rough doin's" were reported as having "been a-goin' on" just before, and in some neighborhoods just after, my visit, and the people often showed that they distrusted and feared each other. I slept one night in the loft of a shanty in a mountain mining camp and freighter's station. A California mining contractor, "out a-prospectin'" went upstairs with me at bedtime. There were two rooms. The miner chose the one nearest the stairway. The only entrance to my room was through his. He locked the outer door of his room, but was disturbed at finding that there was no fastening to the door leading to my room. I laughingly told him I would exchange rooms, but he said he should be "no better off," he "would be in there, and couldn't git out." As he had two huge navy revolvers and a piratical-looking knife, ground sharp at both edges toward the point, I thought he was safe enough. I laughed again, and said I was going to sleep, that I was not afraid of him. But, in the phrase of the country, he "didn't want to take no chances," and I saw that he was disposed to watchfulness. I thought we both needed a good night's sleep, so I drew him into talk. Before eleven o'clock he was urging me to come and see him after he "got located"; to come into his camp any time, day or night, and take the best he had. He said it was like meeting an old friend, and assured me that he and all his friends would stand by me if I was ever in their country and needed anything. I slept till dawn, and when we parted at sunrise my comrade said if I was not sure I had enough money to carry me through to my supplies he could let me have what I needed, "and I tell you you'll be mighty welcome to it." I thanked him, and told him I was "all right," and the next moment we plunged into two different clouds of alkaline dust, as the stage-drivers cracked their whips, and the stages leaped and reeled away on their different roads from the door of the shanty. My new-found friend said he might go on to "the Okanagan country." He had a considerable sum of money with him, and this made him apprehensive, but I thought it would have been wiser to conceal his anxiety.
    The cattlemen and the freighters said there would have to be "a little Indian war." The grass outside was "all a-gittin' used up, and the Indians has plenty that they don't make no use of. The cattle will drift on to the reserve. The Indians'll object, but a white man ain't a-goin' to take no impudence from an Indian." They said if the soldiers were taken away the cattlemen would attend to matters themselves, and "would soon fix the Indians."
    I think that in the minds of many men in that region there is a definite purpose to "crowd" the Indians more and more until a blow is struck by some Indian in self-defense. Then war will exist by act of the Indians (as our government said of Mexico in 1845); there will be a short struggle, a few Indians will be shot, and the United States soldiers will come in and sweep the rest of the tribe off the reservation. They will be sent "to Florida, or someplace else where white men do not want the land," wherever that may be. I saw a great deal of the country and the people around the Klamath reserve, and I thought, from all the indications, there might, very likely, be trouble there next spring or summer. But as yet I had seen none of the Indians themselves. I had only been studying the psychology of the new communities surrounding the Indian country.
    I crossed the reservation to the agency. The special agent from Washington had not arrived. I found that a state of trepidation and alarm really existed at the agency, and that the agent had said, as the newspapers affirmed, that he should not feel safe if the soldiers were withdrawn, and that he should at once resign. As my observations in the adjacent country had convinced me that the post should be maintained, the agent and his people were greatly pleased, and urged me to remain and meet the special agent.
    While we waited for his coming, I traveled over the reservation, visiting the Indians at their homes, and meeting them in throngs on Sundays at church. I talked with all the leading men of the tribe. Most of them can speak English. These Klamaths and Modocs are much farther advanced in civilization than any other Indians I have seen (except, perhaps, a few of the Puget Sound people) and in natural character and ability are decidedly the foremost Indians I have known. In moral qualities and worth many of them are the peers of white men anywhere; brave, frank, manly, public-spirited and honorable. They do not need pity. They are worthy of respect and of a fair chance and start in life. If they can have that, if they are dealt with honestly, they will take care of themselves without troubling anybody. But they are not qualified to meet at once, unshielded, the forces of our fierce, intense and complex civilization. They are lacking in sharpness of fang and length of claw. They have not enough of the beast or the savage in them to make them successful in the struggle for existence with the civilized white men of our country. They are too honest and conscientious, and have too high a moral endowment and development for a prosperous life in the environment that awaits them in contact with our civilization, and they will probably find that "the Indian's country" is mostly underground.
    Many of these Indians live in good framed houses. Some of them which I was in had five or six rooms on the first floor. I was entertained in the homes of these people with a dignified, intelligent and joyous hospitality, which gave me a homesick feeling when I turned again to my long journey toward the East. The leading men came together everywhere to talk with me, and they manifested a thorough and comprehensive intelligence regarding the situation of their people, its dangers and requirements, and a remarkable moderation in all their utterances, though they used the utmost frankness in their discussions.
    I visited Fort Klamath, and had very full conversations with the courteous officer in command of that post. I found that he thoroughly comprehended the condition of the surrounding country, and the various elements of peril which had to be recognized and duly estimated in order to reach a proper decision of the question of the abandonment of the fort. While he showed a proper soldierly deference to the judgment of his superiors, it was plain that he thought the withdrawal of the garrison would be an injudicious proceeding, and that it would probably be followed by mischievous results.
    When the Special Agent of the Department of the Interior arrived, he proved to be Mr. William Parsons, whom I remembered as a New England journalist, formerly editor, I believe, of the New Haven Register. I had lost trace of him, and was not aware that he had entered the service of the government as a special agent connected with Indian affairs. He at once united with the agent in charge of the reservation, Prof. Emery, in requesting me to remain at the agency during the pending investigation of the affairs of the region. I accompanied these officers in their visits to Fort Klamath, and heard their repeated conversations with the officer in command. I went with them in their travels over the reservation, and listened to their conferences with the business men of the adjacent country. The result in regard to military matters was that the special agent decided that it was not, at that time, expedient to abandon Fort Klamath; and while the troops then at the post were ordered to Fort Bidwell, other soldiers were brought down from Vancouver to take their places. (I saw the men and trains on their way to Fort Bidwell.) It was a wise and necessary decision. The presence of the soldiers in that region is indispensable. But it is not on account of any disposition to turbulence or lawlessness on the part of the Indians. No country town in New England, or Quaker community in Pennsylvania, is less inclined to violence or disorder than the Indians of the Klamath reserve. The presence of the soldiers is required because of the determined aggression of the white men of the region upon the rights and lands of the Indians. It is for this reason alone that the expense of maintaining a garrison there is incurred.
    I visited the Sycan country, where collisions had already occurred, and where most serious results were barely averted by the moderation of the Indians and the good sense of some of the officers of the reservation. A large region here, and a considerable proportion of the best grazing land of the Klamath reserve, is claimed by the cattlemen under the swamp-land laws of the state of Oregon. There is a question of title and jurisdiction, which will probably have to be decided by the courts. It is not difficult to forecast the result. The Indians have no money and no friends; they will probably "get left" in nearly all cases when white men set up a claim to Indian lands.
    While the investigation of military matters in the Klamath region was pending, and after it was concluded, I made a thorough examination of the internal affairs and conditions of the reservation. The capabilities of the soil for agriculture are barely sufficient to supply a reason and occasion for the anchorage of each Indian family to a particular spot, so as to secure a basis and opportunity for the development of the sentiments, associations, and civilizing influences of home life. No considerable number of inhabitants can ever obtain support here by the cultivation of the ground. It is a good grazing country, well-watered, and in parts sheltered and favorable for the care of stock during the winter. But there should be no land here for white men. I looked into the matter very thoroughly. Very few, if any, white men have ever seen so much of this reservation; and I wish here to place on record my deliberate judgment that there is no more land on the Klamath reserve than these Indians need for themselves and their children, to give them reasonable means for self-support by stock-raising. If any part of this reservation is taken from the Indians, and opened to settlement by white men, it can be accomplished only by the use of unworthy influences and discreditable methods. If the consent of the Indians to the cession of any considerable portion of the reserve is obtained, it is almost certain that it will be procured by misrepresentation, deception and fraud.
    There are two large government industrial boarding schools on this reservation, one at the agency, the other at Yainax, forty miles away. The one at the agency had been, until a year ago, for a long time under inefficient management. Its contiguity to the agency is unfavorable to the necessary freedom, responsibility, and efficiency of the superintendents and teachers. The former history and traditions of the school are in every respect unwholesome. It should be removed to Modoc Point, twelve or fourteen miles south of its present location, and the superintendent's place should be invested with its legitimate responsibilities. All the boys over twelve years of age who have attended hitherto should be left out in the reorganization of the school, and their places should be taken by younger children of both sexes.
    Mrs. [sic] Florence J. Kilgore, at the time of my visit matron of this boarding school, since then promoted (in accordance with the recommendation of the special agent of the Department of the Interior) to be the first assistant teacher, is one of the most capable and efficient persons among all whom I met in the whole course of my observations. She has resources and endowments for almost any place or work which is open to a woman in the Indian service. Mr. Kilgore, the superintendent, made some mistakes at first, notably that of attempting to discipline and punish large Indian boys and young men without first making sure that he had adequate resources or support; but he has the best counselor a man can have, and if he has a fair opportunity will, I believe, do good work. The Kilgores are from Loudon County, Virginia. They were appointed to places in the government school at Klamath agency, by the Indian Office at Washington, under the present Administration, which should have full credit for having in this case made an admirable selection. If Mr. and Mrs. Kilgore could have chosen their own subordinates and assistants they could at once have begun to reconstruct and improve the school. But when I saw them they were surrounded by incapable persons, and had no efficient seconding whatever.
    The agent here has long been a minister, and was for some years a professor in the State Agricultural College at Corvallis. The work of an Indian agent is entirely unsuited to his powers, qualities, and training, and all its conditions and associations are hampering, irritating, and uncongenial. There is nothing whatever to encourage his continuing in it.
    I passed several days at the government industrial boarding school for Indians at Yainax sub-agency, on the Klamath reserve, forty miles from Klamath agency, examining it in all its departments, critically and thoroughly. It has been for more than four years under the charge of Mr. William T. Leeke. He was formerly for two years clerk at Klamath agency, and before that was for eight years a professor in Ashland College, at Ashland, Oregon, and for some time president of the college. He is an experienced and successful educator. His first assistant is an eminently successful teacher, especially in her natural power of vital control and ascendancy over her Indian young people. The other assistants and subordinates appeared to be earnest and capable young persons, with loyal and thorough devotion to Mr. Leeke's plans and aims.
    I inspected the boarding house and schoolrooms, examined the farming land, gardens, and buildings of all kinds belonging to the school, and observed carefully the quality of the work done, and its effect, as this was shown in the character, manners and behavior of the boys and girls, young men and women. I saw the pupils in their Sunday-school and religious meetings, at their meals, at study and at work. I am obliged to regard this as the best Indian government school that I saw on any reservation. The pupils appeared, many of them, to have reached a higher degree of development of personal qualities, to be more fully formed, intellectually, morally, and socially, than any other Indian young people that I have seen in a government school. The pupils and the teachers recalled to my mind the delightful impressions received at St. John's school (Mrs. Kinney's), at Cheyenne River agency, and at Miss Howe's school, at Springfield, Dakota.
    At the meeting of the pupils and teachers for prayer and religious conversation nearly all took part. It was all very simple, sensible, and wholesome, and the type of religion taught and practiced in the great household of nearly 100 persons appeared to be practical, fervent and sincere. It is Methodist in form and spirit, without a trace of sectarian exclusiveness. The industrial training is of a superior kind, and the girls are farther advanced in their ability for housework, cooking, and kitchen management than any other Indian girls I have seen, unless I except Mrs. Kinney's best young women.
    These Yainax girls are more capable, intelligent, and faithfully efficient in their work than the average of servants in New England towns. There is a symmetry in the character of the instructors at Yainax, and of their work and its results in the development of their pupils, which I have not seen equaled in any other government school. The school appeared to me to deserve complete approval, without deduction or reserve of any kind, and I made a more thorough examination of it, probably, than has ever been made by any other visitor.
    Judging from what I have seen in other cases, I suppose it is possible that there is somewhere in Tennessee or Mississippi a good-hearted, well-intentioned young fellow, entirely without experience or qualification of any kind, who, by some of the "mutations of politics," may come to be thought of, by the powers that be, as the proper person to be rewarded with the place of superintendent and principal of this school. If I could meet this amiable young man, I would tell him candidly that this is not the place for him, and would advise him to apply for a professorship in one of the principal colleges of the country, a post which he would be as competent to fill as this at Yainax, and in which his failure would be no more inevitable, and far less disastrous in its results. There is but one thing that would justify the removal of Mr. Leeke from his place at the head of this school. That would be his selection, at some future time, for the highest place connected with the Indian educational work of the country. That is a place which, by his natural qualities, varied training, and long experience, he would be well qualified to fill.
    These Klamath and Modoc and Pit River Indians are much more steadfastly industrious, under unfavorable conditions, than average white men in any part of our country. They greatly need repair shops for the repair of the wood and iron work of their wagons, etc., at Yainax. Many of them have to go forty or even fifty miles to the repair shops at Klamath agency, and the mechanics there are fully occupied with repairs for the 600 Indians on that end of the reserve. Consequently, it is almost impossible for the 400 Indians of the Yainax sub-agency to obtain repairs for their wagons, and they are thus often disabled for work they are anxious to perform. They work hard even for wages so low as to afford a bare subsistence, and when the sub-agent has a little work for them twice as many present themselves as can be employed.
    Mr. Leeke has somehow carried some of his boys so far along by means of the instruction and practice in the school shops that they can do very fair repairing in the iron and woodwork of wagons; but, alas, they have no material, and no incidental or other fund with which to obtain it. If Mr. Leeke could have $500 a year for two years for this purpose--the purchase of material for the school shops--at his discretion, his Indian boys could do the repairing for the 400 Indians of this sub-agency. If they lived along the Missouri River, where Eastern people could know about them, and see them sometimes, I think I could get help for them. But I fear the needs of Indians beyond the Rocky Mountains seem to our Eastern people unreal and too far away. Yet these Klamaths and Modocs and Pit Rivers are in our country. (Let us learn to call them our countrymen.) I cannot quite give them up, and shall not.
    I found at Yainax a native Indian preacher, Jesse Kirk, a superior man, in poor health and great poverty, with a good and helpful wife and some little children, working without salary or assistance of any kind, for the moral and religious improvement of his people. He has a great thirst for knowledge, but has no books, not even a Bible, only some torn fragments of an old one. Somebody ought to send a Bible, with good large print, and other books, with a little money, for this man, to Prof. William T. Leeke, Bly, Klamath County, Oregon. Mark letters and all mail matter "For Yainax."
    After the Special Agent of the Department of the Interior had looked into matters bearing upon the question of the abandonment of Fort Klamath, he had to conduct a special investigation of the internal affairs and administration of the Klamath agency. The agent had made charges of inefficiency and insubordination, etc., against the superintendent and matron of the government boarding school at the agency. They thought the agent had not properly supported them in their work in the school, and an unhappy and unwholesome state of affairs had been developed. By invitation of the officer conducting the investigation, and of all the people concerned, I was present during the whole course of it. Mr. Parsons administered the oath, and examined the witnesses. Everybody testified in his own behalf, and had the right of cross-examination. The presiding officer appeared to be thoroughly impartial, and careful alike of the interests and rights of all. He displayed remarkable patience, tact, and good judgment in what was often a difficult position. It was very interesting to an observer, but it was sad to see the inevitableness of much of the misunderstanding and disagreement. There were some exciting passages. One afternoon, a melodramatic young woman produced a revolver, which she had very improperly brought into court, and threatened to shoot another young woman who was a witness on the other side. This was too much for the long-suffering judge, and he summarily suppressed the manifestation of a disposition to disorder and violence. Various changes have been made at the agency in consequence of the recommendations of the Special Agent conducting this investigation. They seem to me to have been required by the circumstances of the case, and by the interests of the school and other departments of the government service. Additional changes in the same direction, providing for a pretty thorough reorganization in the administration of affairs at the agency, have, in my judgment, become necessary. Mr. Parsons appeared to be much above the average of government officers of any class, a man of varied powers and acquirements, positive, but deliberate, patient and sympathetic, open to the effect of testimony, and possessed of a natural and cultivated love of justice.
    A few months before the time of my visit to the Klamath reserve an Indian had been killed by a cattleman in the region adjoining the reservation. According to all the testimony, that of white men, the two quarreled a little and then clinched, but the Indian broke away and ran to his pony, which was standing near. He sprang on it and rode rapidly away. But as the Indian started off the white man began firing at him with a revolver. Several shots missed, but finally one struck the Indian in the neck, and he fell to the ground and died in a few minutes. The murderer was arrested, and, after examination, admitted to bail in the sum of $6,000 and set at liberty. The judge heard the testimony and accepted the bail, and then stepped up to his own bar and drank with the murderer, with the sentiment, "Here's hoping you will come out all right." When I was there, the judge himself was under indictment for selling liquor illegally. The people of the region said that within a few months seven men had been shot in this bar-room. In each instance the lights were suddenly extinguished and the shooting done in the dark. It was said that when people expressed indignation on account of the brutal atrocity of the killing, the sheriff kindly advised the murderers that it might be best for them to be away for awhile, until public feeling had cooled down, and that they accordingly withdrew to some other neighborhood. I spent several evenings in this bar-room, but did not see any shooting.
    Nobody in that region expects that the cattleman who killed the Indian will be punished for his crime. When I was there he was riding about his ranges heavily armed, and threatening to kill other Indians, his neighbors said. His men all refused to ride with him, being apprehensive that he would be fired on by some of the friends of the murdered Indian. These incidents will give my readers some idea of the conditions surrounding peaceable and well-behaved Indians in that part of the country, and of their prospects for protection in the enjoyment of their property and their lives.
    I have recent advices from that region to the effect that the impression prevails at Fort Klamath that the post will be "discontinued at the end of the present fiscal year." If this is true, it would be interesting to learn precisely what are the influences which are used so persistently to effect the removal of the last remaining U.S. soldiers from this region. There has been no change in the essential conditions of the problem since last autumn, and a practical estimate of all the circumstances and interests involved still leads to the conclusion that the presence of an efficient garrison at Fort Klamath is a necessity, not on account of any disposition to turbulence on the part of the Indians, but by reason of the manifest determination of unscrupulous white men to oppress and embroil the Indians, and thus bring about a state of things which will enable the cattlemen to possess themselves of the Indian lands. The people there all say that the worst aggressors upon the rights of the Indians in that region are Englishmen, and I heard everywhere of a Lord Something or other as the most brutal and reckless of them all. Perhaps a little inquiry as to the rights of English lords, and of Englishmen in general, on our American Indian reservations, might be in order about this time.
J. B. Harrison, The Latest Studies on Indian Reservations, Indian Rights Association, Philadelphia 1887, pages 100-122  Harrison visited the Klamaths in 1886.