Copy) National Soldiers Home near  Fortress Monroe Va   July 22   1878    Hon. Carl Schurtz Secretary of the Interior   Washington D.C.    Sir.     I have the honor to commend your earnest Endeavors at Reform in the con duct of Indian Affairs, and I notice with great satisfaction that your efforts are bearing fruit, giving ample evidence of the sin cerity of the declarations made by the President and yourself at the be ginning of your Administration, Believing that you are in earnest and being satisfied that you are fully determined to expose fraud, and punish the perpretrators therof, whereever and whenever found, I cannot but signify my gratification at results so far reached, and believe that a good beginning has been made in the right-direction to thoroughly purge the Indian Department of corruptions extending through a long series of years     
        if the present ways and means of Civilizing the Indians be not Changed. A policy which farms  out the Indian race to religious sects whose precepts and practices are totally unlike each other, must result in a signal failure, at least so soon as the rising generation of each tribe grow to Manhood and each intolerant shall assert the Superiority of his particular faith. The theory that a great Cosmopol itan Republic can be built up the foundation of our present form of Government is a plausible one, but totally impracticable, except the Spirit  of toleration  it taught in its full sense as applied by the most lib eral thinkers. Civilization and Education may be tempered with high moral lessons without arousing a prejudice, but the moment  Sectarianism assumes to the rool of Educator then we   ll follow the bloody scenes of Strife and persecution  
        for opinions sake, that have  ever marked the worlds history in bygone times.  I am with great respect  Your Obedient Servant  Rowland A. Colby   written sideways  Letters from Co Ross   amp; Replies 1870  Copy of A Communication  to the Sect Interior from Rowland Colby 1878  
        I deem it proper to state that I Served as a private during the Mexican War in 1846   I was dis- charged for disability incurred in the Service and line of duty for which I receive a pension; that immediately after my dis charge I was appointed a clerk in the Quartermasters Department. Serving in Texas and on the South western frontier until the breaking out of the rebellion in    61 at which time I was assigned to important duties and high trusts in the West Embracing the States of Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, my duties involving great administrative Capacity and strict accountability of large amounts of Governemt funds and property, that I was hon orably mentioned by high Officials as    equal to all duties and faithful to all trusts    and as a mark of merit after the close of the rebell ion received an apointment as    examiner    of Money accounts in Washington.  In writing my past ser vices I design simply to impress  
        you with the fact that when I en tered the Indian Officce as a clerk in March 1869, I possessed the experi ence of twenty years acquired in an honest School of accoun tability, therefore I had no diffi culty in becoming thoroughly familiar with the workings of the differ ent divisions of the office in all their details.  During my term of office it fell to my lot, to make many investigations relative to land and money transactions, and I freely declare that frauds and plunderings existed on every hand Indians were swindled out of their Annuities by agents, traders and middle men, lands held in Sev eralty were conveyed from al- loters without their knowledge or consent, to speculators, Agents and Witnesses, seeming to be alike concerned in the frauds, all man ner of means were resorted to, to dispossess the Indians of their land ed possessions, Especially those in the State of Kansas. Members  
        of Congress from that State as well as Officials in Office were partic ularly active in forcing the Ap proval of questionable deeds of land through the Department, before the fact should become public; that frauds were being resorted to, to  dispossess the Indians of Kansas of lands patented to them in Sever aty by the Government under treaty Stipulations. The records of the Indian Office from 1867 to 1872 show an enormous number of forged and fraudulent convey ances, duly approved by the  Commissioner and Secretary after which Indian owners had no remedy in law, except through the State Courts, where an Indian not being a citizen had no standing or right to go for redress   Such as appealed to the Indian Bureau found little sympathy with the Heads of the  office.  I do not charge that the then Secretaries were cognizant of the condition of affairs, but they might have known the  
        facts had not measures been taken to keep the same from them. Through my instrumentality many wrongs were exposed in Special individual cases. The wholesale frauds of John W. Wright in  the collection from the Govern ment, the bounty money due the 1st 2ond and 3rd Regiments Indian Home Guards amount- ing to about 200,000 dollars was brought to light by me, and his true character shown in a 32 page report, with conclusive evidence of num erous Criminal acts on his part against the United States and the Indian Claimants. In this same transaction the Cherokee Orphans fund was robbed of thou- sands of dollars by said Wright Without even a protest on the part of Officials whose duty it was to carry out the treaty Stipulations of 1866. I was reprimanded by my Superior in office, because I called the at- tention of the Secretary to the  
        facts in a formal report, which report was subsequently suppressed. In an investigation had by the At torney General in 1873 relative to  Wrights frauds, and defalcations the leading investigators, turned out to be a paid tool of said Wright, which fact was evident ly known by the Attorney Gen; Under such circumstances the course of the inquiry led to the suppress ion of the facts sought, and when I was sent for and submitted to official inspection, a brief of facts I could establish without a doubt, I was quietly told that    it would hurt the administration and    would not be good policy    (Atty Gen   l words to me) Too many officials were concer ned in the transaction and a Presidential Election was to be had in the fall   . I held the key, and could have laid the whole frauds bare and given the names of those officially concerned, but    Political Policy    prevailed     
        It was cheaper and more in keeping with the Character of the Conspirators to suppress me    What matters if I had been a faithful and efficient servant of the Government, for more than twenty years, has saved to the government hundreds of thousands of dollars and many lives, I must be stricken in my honest pur poses, so that a clear field might remain for plunder ers of Indian Annuities  and lands    My Education forced my join ing hands with public plun derers, nor could my silence be purchased at the price of position, other causes may be charged why I am not in place   but I can honestly chal lenge any party or parties disputing my statements. One of my last official acts was to discover what had be come of  1,400,000, dollars  
        appropriated by Congress to fulfill certain treaty stipula tions with Indians in Kan sas and Nebraska. I accomplished the task after Examining thousands of Vou chers which I temporarily with drew from the Treasury Department for the purpose. The majority of said Vouchers and Annuity tools revealed a system of fraud hardly exceeded by the discov eries recently by your authority at Standing Rock  Agency. Amounts ranging from 1000 to 30,000 dollars receipt ed for by self-constituted guar dians of incompetent indi ans, and no sign of innate Evidence that such guardians ever paid the incompetents a single dollar, or that such guar dians were ever citizens of the state in which the payments were being made. In my report I showed conclusively the illegal- ity of such payments, and,  the names of the parties receiv-  
        ing the various funds in trust, but no evidence could be drawn from any report made by the agents that any sum or sums of money or articles its equiv alent ever reached the incompe tents for whom the appropriation was intended    Since my connection with the Of ficce ceased, I have watched the course of affairs, and find that the irregularities and plun derings then going on have been Simply Smothered     No Exposure of the guilty, no wrongs righted, no Stolen money returned, but War has  followed in the track of the  Complaining Indians in order to force them to utter Subju- gation to the interests of or ganized rings of plunderers. I am ready to acknowledge  Mr. Secretary that you have ac complished many reforms in the Indian Service, in the  face of great opposition, but  Completeness is far distant,