CH 205

Prof. Robert Prichard

President Ulysses S. Grant's Peace Policy toward Native Americans
and the Ministry of the Episcopal Church

by

Robert W. Prichard

During the early years of his first administration, President Ulysses Grant developed a strategy for dealing with Native Americans that both his supporters and later historians have referred to as "Grant's Peace Policy."¹ Alternatively, they have also referred to it as Grant's "Quaker Policy."² The former title emphasized the hope of a negotiated, rather than a military solution to conflicts between Native Americans and the U.S. government; the latter title, the role that Quakers played in shaping such a government policy.

The interchangeability of the two titles rests on a simple proposition: that it was Quakers who convinced President Grant to adopt a policy favoring negotiated settlement. One account, which has been handed down in Quaker circles, attributed the change in Grant's policy to a single meeting, which took place on January 25, 1869. Robert Utley cited the Quaker story in his The Indian Frontier:

A delegation of Quakers, fresh from a national convention in Baltimore that had adopted resolutions favoring an Indian policy founded on peace and Christianity rather than on force of arms . . . urged Grant to embrace such a policy and, in filling agency posts, to appoint men of religious conviction.... The President-elect replied: "Gentlemen, your advice is good. I accept it. Now give me the names of some Friends for Indian agents and I will appoint them. If you can make Quakers out of the Indians it will take the fight out of them. Let us have peace."³

According to this account, Grant believed the Quaker missionaries would convert the Native Americans to pacifism and therefore make further military action against them unnecessary.

Such stories, while indicative of the important role that Quakers did play, are misleading in two ways: 1) They obscure the ambiguity in Grant's own position. It is an oversimplification to suggest that Grant had arrived at a coherent policy before he took office on March 4, 1869. A closer examination will show that his was a pragmatic and evolving policy. 2) They also draw attention away from the considerable contributions of other denominations. Quakers were not alone in lobbying President Grant for a change in policy. Nor were they alone in helping to carry out the new policies.

The point of this essay is to examine a circle of Episcopalians who would also influence President Grant and cooperate with him in the execution of a policy toward Native Americans. This is not to suggest, however, that the addition of an Episcopal perspective means that the story of Grant's policy toward Native Americans is now somehow complete. Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Dutch Reformed, and Congregationalists also made significant contributions as well. This account should, however, shed additional light on an critical moment in church involvement with Native Americans.

The circle of Episcopalians was led by William Welsh (ca. 1810-1878). Members of the circle included Francis Brunot (1820-1898), Henry Benjamin Whipple (1822-1901), John Johnson Enmegahbowh (ca. 1813-1901 or 1902), the Rev. Samuel Dutton Hinman, and Mrs. Hinman (d. 1876).

Welsh was a Philadelphia merchant, publisher, and philanthropist. An active Episcopal layman, he represented his diocese as a deputy at every meeting of General Convention from 1859 to 1877.⁴ He was also served as one of the managers of Episcopal Church's Board of Missions.⁵ His interest in Native Americans missions dated to 1862, when visited the Episcopal mission to the Sioux in Minnesota.

Francis Brunot lived in Pittsburgh. He was a director of the Allegheny Valley Railway, a friend of William Welsh, and a philanthropist. He served with Welsh as a deputy from the Diocese of Pennsylvania to General Convention from 1859 to 1865.⁶ Brunot was a member of the executive committee of the American Church Missionary Society (an Episcopal missionary society that later united with the Episcopal Church's Board of Missions), and in that capacity became interested in ministry to Native Americans.⁷ He was also a contributor to other Episcopal charitable causes, such as St. Paul's Normal School, the institution for black Americans founded in Lawrenceville, Virginia by James Solomon Russell.⁸

Henry Whipple was a New Yorker. After ordination to priesthood and seven years service as the rector of Zion Church in Rome, New York, however, he accepted a call to serve the Church of Holy Communion in Chicago. Two and one-half years later he was elected the first Bishop of Minnesota, a position in which he would serve for over forty years. Whipple's new diocese included Native American missions. From the time of his first visit to one of the missions in November of 1859, he warmed to the possibility of evangelism among the Native Americans. It became his wish that "God being my helper, it should never be said that the first Bishop of Minnesota turned his back upon the heathen at his door."⁹

John Johnson Enmegahbowh was a member of the Ottawa tribe, who was born in Canada. He was ordained a deacon shortly before Bishop Whipple's arrival in Minnesota. The two became fast friends, often traveling together, both for parish visitations and on fund raising trips in the East. He would be the Episcopal Church's first Native American priest.

Samuel Hinman was among the first European Americans ordained by Whipple. An orphan from Connecticut, he moved to Minnesota shortly before Whipple ordained him a deacon in the fall of 1860. He and his wife began to work with the Santee Sioux in that year. When the Sioux were ejected from Minnesota, the Hinmans followed them west first to South Dakota and then to northern Nebraska. Near the end of his career Samuel Hinman moved to a school at Birch Cooley, Minnesota. He died about 1890. Biographies, diocesan journals, and missionary society publications from the period did not provide the given name of Mrs. Hinman but did note her faithful service with him and her death in 1876.

Before examining their impact of this small circle of Episcopalians, this essay will first survey American policy toward Native Americans prior to the development of Grant's Peace Policy.

American Policy at Mid-century

Prior to 1840, the U.S. Government's most consistent policy toward Native Americans was one of removal. As European Americans settled on the frontier, the federal government used military force and negotiated treaties to push the original Native American inhabitants of the frontier areas further west. Following the passage of Andrew Jackson's Removal Act of 1830, for example, the federal government moved the Choctaws from Mississippi, the Creeks from Alabama, the Cherokees from Georgia and Arkansas, the Chickasaws from Tennessee, and--in so far as it was able--the Seminoles from Florida. All were settled in the Indian Territory, which would later be part of Oklahoma.¹⁰ A similar policy led to the removal of Iroquois and the Oneidas from the North-east.¹¹

Episcopalians, who had been involved in ministry to Native Americans since the seventeenth century, followed the development of this policy in articles in the denomination's national magazine, The Spirit of Missions.¹² The June 1844 edition, for example, carried an extensive account on the results of the removal policy. A detailed chart identified twenty-seven tribal groups with a population of 106,440 that had originally inhabited territory east of the Mississippi. Of that number 83,594 persons were listed as "removed" to the West.¹³

By the mid 1840s, however, this policy of removal to the western frontier was becoming increasingly difficult. The chart in the Spirit of Missions pointed to one source of the difficulty: the tribes that were pushed west by European American settlers collided with the tribes that were already indigenous to the area west of the Mississippi; the Spirit of Missions article estimated this latter group to number 168,909.¹⁴

A second difficulty concerned the expansion of the political borders of the U.S. The admission of Texas to the union (1845), the capture of western lands in the Mexican War (1846-48), and the negotiation of a western border with Canada (1846) meant that the United States was no longer a small nation that was able to push Native Americans beyond its western borders. The nation now spanned the entire continent, and any removal scheme would inevitably involve movement from one part of the nation to another. Bishop Whipple explained it this way: "The two waves of civilization between the Atlantic and Pacific will soon meet. The Indian question must now be settled. . . "¹⁵

William Medill, who was the Commissioner of Indian Affairs during the Polk administration (1845-49), suggested a partial solution to the frontier aspect of the "Indian question" in 1848. While it was no longer possible to move Native Americans west of the U.S. frontier, it was possible to reserve portions of western land that had not yet been settled by European Americans for Native Americans. Medill's successor, Charles E. Mix (commissioner, 1850-69), accepted the idea, and negotiated a new round of treaties. In 1851, for example, the government signed 18 treaties, establishing a series of reservations that contained approximately 12,000 square miles for some 139 Native American groups.¹⁶

The reservation policy provided a theoretical framework with which the federal government could deal with Native Americans, but it did not eliminate the underlying reasons for conflict. European American settlers were still moving into what had previously been Native American land. The federal policy was based on the assumption that Native Americans could either be confined to a portion of what had previously been their territory or be moved--often to the North or South now rather than inevitably to the West. Tribes that were accustomed to settled patterns of agriculture were most likely to acquiesce to the reservation policy, though they often objected to the size, location, and quality of the lands to which they were assigned. Plains Indians and other groups with more nomadic life styles generally objected rather strongly to confinement on reservations. European Americans, noticing the difference in response, often distinguished between the "civilized" or "friendly Indians" and the "uncivilized" or "wild Indians." The "uncivilized Indians" would provide the strongest resistance to the movement of European Americans to the West.

A third factor would contribute to a growing perception by the American public that a new policy was needed: widespread dishonesty on the part of those entrusted with carrying out Indian policy. The treaties negotiated with Native Americans often involved compensation for the ceded lands, typically in a series of annual payments. Agents of the Bureau of Indian Affairs who oversaw the payment of these annuities often diverted them from the Native Americans and paid them directly to merchants who claimed that they had advanced credit to them. In 1851, for example, Indian agent Alexander Ramsey supported claims by merchant Henry H. Sibley for $145,000 of the annuity money promised to the Sioux Indians in Minnesota.¹⁷

Many agreed that the system was corrupt. It was less clear, however, who was responsible for the corruption and how the system should be reformed. Bishop Whipple summed up the attitude of many on the subject when he explained: "There is a vague idea that the Indian system is one of iniquity; that the poor Indian is the victim of robbery and violence; but who is directly responsible, few know and few care."¹⁸ Congress generally blamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The War Department, to which the Bureau had belonged from its creation in 1824, and the newly created Department of the Interior, to which it had moved in 1849, could blame one another for poor oversight. Members of the executive department could, in addition, complain about the quality of Indian agents, who were generally nominated by members of Congress. Westerners blamed inefficient and unconcerned administrators back East for allowing corruption; Easterners pointed out that the major beneficiaries of the corruption seemed to be located in the West.

Despite the growing perception that some new change was needed, however, no coherent new policy would be adopted during the 1850s or early 1860s. National leaders were too deeply occupied with the struggle of North and South. The Civil War years did, however, provide further evidence of the inadequacy of existing policy.

Prior to the war, American soldiers had played an important dual role: they protected settlers from the Native Americans and, less consistently, kept the settlers away from land set aside for the Native Americans. Local volunteers who replaced many of the professional soldiers on the frontier during the war, however, were less inclined to limit the movement of the settlers. Settlers moved aggressively onto what had been Native American land; Native Americans retaliated. Little Crow led an uprising in Minnesota in August of 1862. Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians attacked settlers near their Sand Creek Reserve in Colorado in summer of 1864. The local volunteers retaliated against convenient Native American targets--often friendly and therefore accessible tribes, rather than those that had committed the original acts of aggression--and were hailed as heroes.

As the nation began to recover from the effects of the Civil War, an increasing number of persons would call for a new Indian policy. Leaders of the Episcopal Church, like Whipple, who had been calling for a new policy since the 1862 Minnesota uprising, increased their efforts. Members of the House and Senate devoted considerable attention to Indian policy in 1867 and 1868. The issue inevitably became an important one for Ulysses Grant, who was campaigning for the presidency in the fall of 1868.

President Grant and Congress

According to the popular Quaker account, Grant allied himself in January of 1869 with a Quaker policy of negotiated settlement with Native Americans. A closer examination reveals that Grant's position was far more ambiguous. Prior to the election and during his first year in office, he gave partial support to at least three different approaches to Native American policy: the military solution, extermination, and negotiated peace. His support for reforming the excesses of the annuity system was also open to question.

It was not surprising that Grant, as a former military officer, had some sympathy for a military solution for dealing with Native Americans. Military leaders, like Grant's colleague William T. Sherman, favored pursuing a scorched-earth policy that was similar to that which had proved successful in the Civil War. If tribes did not agree to resettlement on reservation lands (and occasionally when they did, but had not been, in the opinion of the military commanders, sufficiently punished for past offenses), the army killed males on sight, and destroyed crops and livestock. When a tribe, reduced to a point of starvation, surrendered, the government offered a treaty that promised immediate payment of food and goods, and settlement in the vicinity of an army base.

Defeated Tribes did not always remain pacific or resident on the lands to which they had been assigned. Western settlers were not, moreover, always adept at distinguishing between one tribe and another. Some westerners, therefore, favored a far more brutal policy: the murder of all Native Americans. On November 29, 1864, for example, Col. John M. Chivington led the third Colorado Volunteer Cavalry in a dawn attack on a the camp of a tribe of Cheyenne at Sand Creek. The tribe, led by Black Kettle, had been at war, but was negotiating with Chivington for terms of surrender. Chivington's troops slaughtered all who were unable to escape. About two hundred died, two-thirds of whom were women and children. Chivington's Colorado Volunteers arranged a public exhibition of scalps in Denver and were hailed as great heroes.¹⁹

This policy of genocide understandably did little to encourage tribes to come to terms with the U.S. government. It was, however, popular among voters in the West who felt vulnerable to attack by Native Americans. It was an option that Grant was apparently unwilling to rule out, at least during the fall election campaign in 1868. He told a reporter that Americans on the frontier would be protected even if it were necessary to eliminate every tribe to do so.²⁰

Church Groups were the major proponents of a negotiated peace with the tribes that had not yet agreed to the reservation policy. According to advocates of this view, the major obstacle to peace with the Native Americans had been the poor behavior of the United States government and its representatives. Peace was possible, but only if the government mended its ways.

While many of the supporters of the policy were located in the East at a safe from any potential violence, others were not. The Rev. and Mrs. Samuel Hinman's ministry to Sioux in Minnesota and Nebraska made them subject to potential violence from two directions: from Native Americans unhappy or unfamiliar with their work and from settlers who saw them as aiding the enemy. Samuel was beaten unconscious after the Minnesota uprising of August 1862 by a group of settlers who were unhappy with his intercessions on behalf of the Santee Sioux.²¹

In October of 1868 Bishop Whipple laid out the basic outline of a negotiated peace policy for the Episcopal Church's Board of Missions, which was then meeting at the Church of Transfiguration in New York City. Bishop William R. Whittingham of Maryland, who presided at the meeting, noted Bishop Whipple's long-standing concern for Native Americans. Whittingham had "seen [Whipple] go three times every year to Washington to plead for these red men," but that he had to that point met with little success, returning each time "with his poor, crushed heart." Whipple spoke movingly to the Board of the ill-treatment of Native Americans in Colorado, Nebraska, and Minnesota. According the account in Whipple's autobiography, "men and women wept" in response to the "awful story" that he had to tell.²²

Whipple indicted the U.S. for three hundred years in which it had "pursued the policy of extermination, carried on at the cost of untold millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives."²³ He compared the U.S. policy toward the Native Americans with that of the English in Canada, and found the U.S. policy lacking:

Our own sense of justice, our pity for the helpless, and our fear of God, demand that the men who go to make [treaties with the Indians] shall be God-fearing men. It makes one ashamed and sick at heart to think of the history of Indian treaties. The parties are a Christian nation and a heathen people. The treaty is made ostensibly to extend civilization. It is often made in order to pay certain claims of traders and others against the Indians, to secure land for speculation, and to provide a new opportunity to fill some political plunderer's pocket. Every provision of the treaty is gauged as to the amount which can be stolen, and, if possible, some loop-hole left which will make way for a new treaty, when the Indian can be used again as a key to unlock the nation's treasury.²⁴

Whipple also provided graphic examples of the continued mistreatment of the Native Americans. He spoke of a Native American woman who "was violated by brutal white men, and then such demon-like cruelty committed on her person that she died under their hands . . . in the sight of a village of white men [and] known to the [Indian] agent." Yet "no one was punished and no investigation made." He said that, following the uprising in Minnesota in 1862 "the friendly Indians and the Winnebagoes, who were innocent, were taken to the Upper Missouri [where] over one thousand died of disease and starvation. Soldiers tell the sad tale of women picking over the dung of their horses to find half-digested kernels of grain to save their children from death."

Whipple compared the Native American character to that of the "Saxon race before the Cross had changed the heathen Saxon to a manly Christian." He thought that there was little wonder that few Native Americans accepted the religion of the European Americans. He quoted "an old chief" who had told him that he would only believe the Christians when they demonstrated the ability "to do right."²⁵

Whipple believed that the English followed a very different strategy. Unlike the Americans, they provided the Native Americans with the benefits of civilization:

The difference is this; whenever [the English] civilization comes in contact with an Indian tribe they localize them, guarantee them rights, place them under law, and give them individual rights of property. They plant among them schools and missions. They send them agents who believe there is a God and are afraid and ashamed to steal. They appoint those agents . . . for other ends than as a reward for political service. They make their own civilization the pioneer, instead of gathering a mass of discontented savage humanity on their border.²⁶

Whipple's favorable characterization of the English policy in Canada would soon become a rallying point for Episcopalians. The English provided the Native Americans with individual property rights (protected by law and therefore not easily stolen or renegotiated), schools and missions, and God-fearing agents. Why couldn't the United States government adopt a similar policy?

Bishop Whipple identified William Welsh as an ally during his presentation to the Board of Missions. Whipple noted both Welsh's generous financial support and his labor "for the reform of the Indian system."²⁷

As the story of Grant's meeting with the Quakers in January 1869 would suggest, the president-elect was also willing to entertain discussion of this policy of negotiated peace. "Grant's peace policy" was thus a highly ambiguous term. He wanted peace, but, depending on the audience, it was a peace that was to be won by military force, extermination, or negotiation and reform.

Grant also had reasons to simply support the status quo with all of its potential for mismanagement and corruption. In December 1870 the New York Sun printed a listing of twenty-two members of his family who were employed by or in business with the federal government. Four of Mrs. Grant's brothers were included; one of them, John Dent, was identified as an "Indian Trader for New Mexico, under [the] Indian Bureau." The Sun went on to note that John Dent was the only such trader in the territory and that his position was worth $100,000 a year.²⁸ Reform of U.S. policy might prove financially disadvantageous to Grant's extended family.

The president-elect would not be, of course, the only agent of the U.S. government making policy toward Native Americans. Congress also played an important role. Members of the Senate, led by John B. Henderson (1826-1913) of Missouri (term, 1862-69) and James Rood Doolittle (1815-97) of Wisconsin (term, 1857-69), leaned toward a policy of negotiated settlement. Henderson chaired the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Doolittle was a graduate of Hobart College and an ally of Bishop Whipple's.

The members of the House of Representatives were more inclined toward a military solution. For them, the best avenue of reform lay in returning the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the War Department. Concerted opposition from Quakers and other church groups prevented this solution from being adopted in 1867.²⁹ The idea would, however, be advanced again.

Members of the two houses had been able to compromise on June 20, 1867 on a bill creating a commission to negotiate with the Native Americans. They did so, however, by appointing both military officers (including Grant's friend William T. Sherman) and advocates of a negotiated peace (including Senator Henderson) to serve on the commission. The Peace Commission was able to negotiate treaties with a number of tribes on the Great Plains, though it failed to secure treaties with Red Cloud and some other Sioux leaders.³⁰

Members of the peace commission had less success in dealing with one another. The party favoring negotiated peace had the upper hand at the time that an initial report was issued in January 1868. When the committee met in October 1868, however, Senator Henderson was unable to attend, and those favoring a military solution engineered an invitation to presidential candidate Grant as an observer. Thus constituted, the commission reversed its earlier policies. It advocated abolition of some treaties, the wider use of military force, and the transfer of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the War Department. The Peace Commission never met again.³¹

President Grant

After his inauguration on March 4, 1869, President Grant moved very quickly to establish a new direction in government policy toward Native Americans. As his actions in the year before his inauguration might suggest, the new policy would not be a simple adoption of one of the alternatives that had been suggested in the previous year (military conquest, extermination, or negotiated peace). It would be a combination of approaches.

There were three important elements of Grant's policy in this first year. The first was a new policy concerning the choice of Indian Agents. He announced a freeze on the reappointment of civilian Indian agents (most of whom were political appointees, who had been nominated by members of Congress), until a system could be devised to determine their worthiness. Some interpreters suggest that Grant's real desire at this point was to turn the whole matter over to the Quakers, but that he was prevented by political opponents from doing so.³² That interpretation is open to question, however. What the president did do was to appoint military officers, who were temporarily assigned to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, to fill most vacancies among the Indian agents.³³ In his autobiography, General Sherman, who was certainly not an impartial source, would quote Grant to the effect that this appointment of military officers was the central plank of Grant's policy.³⁴

There were, however, two important exceptions to the military appointments. The new president asked the Society of Friends for recommendations for persons to serve as Indian superintendents and agents in Kansas and Nebraska.³⁵ The two states were important ones for the government's policy. The federal authorities hoped to clear all Native Americans from Kansas in order to make way for railroad construction and for western migration; many of the tribes were to be resettled in Nebraska.

The second element in Grant's policy was the appointment of a new Commissioner for Indian Affairs. Grant selected former general Ely Samuel Parker, a friend who had served as an army engineer with him throughout much of the Civil War. The choice of a military man accorded well with Grant's policy of selecting military officers as Indian agents. Parker brought another important qualification to the job as well; he was an Iroquois. His non-anglicized name was Donehogawa. An extraordinary man, he had studied at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and worked on the Erie Canal before entering the army.³⁶ He was the first Native American to hold the position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Although a former soldier, he might favor negotiations in circumstances in which officers like Sherman would advocate military action.

The third element in Grant's policy was the appointment of a set of civilians to a new commission. The Peace Commission of 1867-68 had suggested that the President "appoint some person or persons in the distant Territories, either civilians or military men, to make inspection of Indian Affairs and report to him."³⁷ By the fall of 1868 Senator Doolittle had introduced authorizing legislation for such "local boards of commissioners." Bishop Whipple spoke enthusiastically about the plan in an October 1868 presentation to the Board of Missions, but Congress moved more slowly.³⁸ After considerable debate, it included a form of the legislation in the funding bill that it adopted on April 10, 1869.

The final form of the congressional bill envisioned a board of nine unpaid volunteers. The body was to be known as the Board of Indian Commissioners. This was a potentially confusing name, since the paid appointee who headed the government agency dealing with Native Americans was known as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He was not a member of the Board.

The new Board of Indian Commissioners was to have three responsibilities. i) It was to have authority similar that to an auditor in financial matters, exercising "under the direction of the President, joint control with the Secretary of the Interior, over the disbursement" of funds.³⁹ It was to have the right to "inspect the records of the Indian Office . . . [of] the various Indian superintendencies and agencies in the Indian country . . . [and of] purchases of goods for Indian purposes" and to advise "the Commissioner of Indian Affairs . . . [and] the Secretary of the Interior . . . as to changes in modes of purchasing goods, or conducting the affairs of the Indian Bureau proper." ii) The commission was also to have some role in the supervision of personnel, advising "superintendents and agents in the performance of their duties." The bill did mention the possibility of the commission's hearing complains against agents, but it made no specific mention of any role in their appointment. iii) Finally, the commission members were to have a policy-making role. They were to make "recommendations . . . as to the plans of civilizing or dealing with the Indians."⁴⁰

The peace commission of 1867-68 had included three generals: William T. Sherman, William S. Harney, and Alfred H. Terry.⁴¹ Grant chose only civilians for the new commission created by Congress. The nine members of this Board of Indian Commissioners were all were active in church and philanthropic affairs. The majority of the members were from cities on the eastern seaboard: two each from Philadelphia and New York, and one from Boston. The remaining four were from Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago, and Indiana. The original nine members of the commission were:

• Nathan Bishop of New York City

• Felix R. Brunot of Pittsburgh

• Robert Campbell of St. Louis

• William E. Dodge of New York City

• John V. Farwell of Chicago

• Henry S. Lane of Indiana

• George H. Stuart of Philadelphia

• Edward S. Tobey of Boston

• William Welsh of Philadelphia

Brunot and Welsh represented the Episcopal Church.⁴² Brunot's biographer would later explain their choice by suggesting that "they seemed to the President the two leading laymen of the day."⁴³

Seven of the nine members (all but Dodge and Lane) were able to be present for an organizational meeting on May 26, 1869. They elected the two Episcopalians as their officers: William Welsh as president and Felix R. Brunot as secretary. Board members called on President Grant and established subcommittees to deal with Native Americans in three large geographical areas.⁴⁴

The three elements in Grant's program--the selection of military officers as Indian Agents, the choice of a Native American who was a former general, and the creation of an all-civilian Board of Indian Commissioners--would not work together smoothly. There was an almost immediate clash between Welsh of the Board of Indian Commissioners and Commissioner of Indian Affairs Ely Parker. Thereafter, the members of the Board of Indian Commissioners would become increasingly critical of the appointment of military officers as agents.

Andrew Johnson's Commissioner of Indian Affairs, National G. Taylor, had served as president of the earlier peace commission of 1867-68.⁴⁵ With no official place on the Board of Indian Commissioners, Parker may have been anxious that the new body would undermine his authority. He wrote to the commissioners, raising a series of questions, which the hoped would set the agenda for their board. The letter was read and discussed at the organizational meeting. In it, Parker characterized what he believed to be the overall desire of the board members for "the humanization, civilization and Christianization of Indians." He then asked eight questions of the board members. The first three were a review of the work of the peace commission of 1867-68. The remaining questions focused on the general problem of how to "civilize" the Native American population.⁴⁶

The letter indicated that Parker shared much of the vocabulary and many of the concerns of the Commissioners. Welsh was, however, unhappy with Parker's understanding of the relationship between the Board and existing federal authorities, for it suggested that the role of the Commissioners was to be chiefly advisory. Welsh believed that the Board should have the authority to take immediate action to correct what he believed to be fairly obvious cases of financial dishonesty and mismanagement.

Even before his appointment to the board, Welsh had been using the pages of the Episcopal Church's Spirit of Missions to organize the Episcopal Church as an effective advocate for Bishop Whipple's reform program of granting individual property rights, establishing schools, and appointing Indian agents nominated by churches. The January 1869 issue carried, for example, Welsh's four-page report on missions to the Dakota Indians, which were conducted by the Hinmans. Welsh referred to government plans to move the Native Americans west into the Dakota territory and suggested ways in which the Episcopal church could respond to the situation.⁴⁷

Welsh also noted that A.T. Twing, the Secretary and General Agent for the Board of Missions, had accepted his offer "to take charge of the organization of auxiliary associations to aid the Domestic Committee" of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in ministry to Native Americans.⁴⁸ Recognizing that the majority of support for the Hinmans had come from "a few zealous women," Welsh planned to create a network of diocesan women's organizations with a national office in Philadelphia. Five women had already agreed to help him with the effort. Bishop Robert Clarkson of Nebraska and Secretary Twing both signed the letter to indicate their approval.

The Episcopal Church was not, of course, the only religious group to campaign for the rights of Native Americans. Most of the regional yearly meetings of Quakers had, for example, subcommittees devoted to Native American affairs.⁴⁹ There soon would also be interdominational bodies as well, such as the Indian Aid Society in New York City (1870).⁵⁰

William Welsh believed that the new Board of Indian Commissioners would provide an effective means of translating the ideas of these philanthropic organizations into public policy. Parker apparently disagreed.⁵¹ Matters between Welsh and Parker came to a head quickly. On July 19, 1869 Parker received a letter from Welsh detailing what he believed to be irregularities in the dealing with the Sioux. Welsh attached copies of letters from Samuel Hinman to support his claims. The civilized and settled tribes were, he believed, receiving less generous provisions than those which had not yet come to peace terms. Welsh also pushed one of the elements of the reform suggested in Whipple's Board of Missions address of the previous year. It was time, Welsh argued, to begin to title Indian land to individual Native Americans, so that they could enjoy the same legal rights as other Americans, and thereby be protected from the government's constant renegotiation of treaties. Parker wrote a guarded reply on July 20, in which he indicated: (1) the desired division of land would violate presidential policy; (2) that it would require the congressional action; and that (3) he would, in any case, begin his own investigation of the matter by writing to Superintendent Janney, one of the new Quaker Indian superintendents.⁵² Parker answered the charges about the unequal provisions in a later letter, in which he explained that "instructions are to give all the Indians the same kind of variety of ration, except that in the South no bacon is given." He admitted that he was unable to say "how instructions are carried out," but pointed out that he had received "no complaints from any quarter . . . since the last change in the ration was made."⁵³

On July 29--nine days after Parker's first reply--Welsh resigned as chairman and member of the Board of Indian Commissioners. He apparently convinced Robert Campbell, who had been the runner-up in the election of a chairman for the board, to resign as well. Parker accepted Welsh's resignation, but persuaded Campbell to remain.

The Board met again in November of 1869. Members chose the remaining Episcopalian, secretary Felix Brunot, as their new chairman and selected John V. Farwell to replace him as secretary. Grant appointed Vincent Coyler, a New York artist, to fill the vacancy on the board.⁵⁴

Brunot took his responsibility seriously. Although Board members were unpaid volunteers, Brunot devoted his energies to the job of chairman almost full-time for the next five years. Brunot's biographer explained:

Mr. Brunot saw that the task before him was tremendous. There was a race to civilize, there were agents to humanise, and there was a great nation to educate in the principles of Christian love toward an oppressed and heathen race. It is small wonder that with such a task before him Mr. Brunot should devote five years of his busy life to this intricate problem; for, beside going constantly to New York and Washington for the meetings of the Board, conferring with the missionary societies, going ever and anon to Washington to consult with the President and the Secretary of the Interior, writing letter and articles to rouse the public conscience, making out the elaborate annual reports--a duty which naturally fell upon him as President of the Board--beside all this, he spent three or four months each summer visiting the Indian tribes on their own ground. Others of the Board gave much time to the work; Mr. Brunot gave practically all his time for these five years.⁵⁵

Slattery concluded that "no business man ever toiled harder for money than this man toiled for a despised race."⁵⁶

Both President Grant and Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano were aware of Brunot's diligence. When the position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs became vacant in the middle of 1871, Grant and Delano offered it to Brunot. William Welsh and Bishop Whipple encouraged him to accept it. Convinced, however, that there was "not a moment more of his time [that he] could . . . give" to Native American affairs, he declined.⁵⁷ Brunot reported his refusal of the offer to the November 1871 meeting of the Board of Indian Commissioners.⁵⁸

Historians have generally discounted Welsh's importance because of this early resignation.⁵⁹ A closer examination will show, however, that Welsh's involvement with and influence upon Indian policy did not end with his resignation. He continued to speak favorably of the Board of Indian Commissioners in the pages of the Spirit of Missions and apparently regarded his resignation as strengthening the hand of those in Congress who wanted to give more authority to the body.⁶⁰ He continued to head the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society's auxiliary for Native Americans and chaired a General Convention Committee on Indian Affairs. Indeed, over the next several years, he and Felix Brunot proved an effective team. Brunot, who would remain as the chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners until 1874, worked from within the board; Welsh, no longer a government appointee, helped shape Episcopal Church policy and served as an effective outside critic of the Grant administration policy.

The Allocation of the Indian Agencies

Grant's decision to appoint military officers as Indian agents may have eliminated some of the financial mismanagement committed by political appointees under the spoils system. The Indian Commissioners were convinced, however, that a basic problem persisted even with military appointees. An 1873 publication from the Board of Indian Commissioners would later explain:

Complaints [had] become general that, in the frequent change of agents, no missionary efforts could long be carried on at any specific agency without encountering, sooner or later, from some agent of differing religious views or of no religious views, a degree of opposition or persecution which would necessarily extinguish such missionary enterprise and even destroy the fruits of past labors. When it is remembered that efforts of this kind must, to achieve valuable results, be continued for many years, confidence being a plant of slow growth in savage breasts, and the hope of the missionary being almost universally founded on the education of the rising generation, while, in fact, Indian agents were under the old political regime changed every few months, or every two or three years at the longest, it will readily be seen that the chances of missionary enterprises being cut off in the flower were far greater than the chances of continuance and success. Such indeed had been the general history of these efforts among the Indians of North America, and it may fairly be said that almost the only enterprises of this kind which have secured a permanent footing are those which preceded the Government control of the Indians, and which had founded themselves on the confidence and sympathies of the natives too strongly to be shaken by official hostility or neglect.⁶¹

Members of the Board of Indian Commissioners recognized the choice of a military officer over a civilian nominated by a member of Congress did not necessarily guarantee support for missionary activity.

To members of the board, there was a logical solution to the problem. The pattern followed in Kansas and Nebraska--appointment of superintendents and agents nominated by the Society of Friends--could be extended to other denominations and states. Sympathy grew for this idea during 1869 and 1870, though the Board itself would take no official stand on the idea until July of 1870.⁶²

Grant, however, was not yet convinced. During 1869 and the early months of 1870 he was able to win additional support in Congress for his system of appointing military officers as his Indian agents. Members of Congress even expressed some willingness to return the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the War Department. In the spring of 1870 news of another attempt at genocide--this time led by Major E. M. Baker against the Piegan Blackfeet in Montana on January 23, 1870--reached Washington, however. Major Baker men had killed all the members of the tribe who had been unable to escape: thirty-three men, ninety women, and fifty children.⁶³

The system of military appointees had function well in one way, for it was the military officer who served as an Indian Agent to the Blackfeet who had reported the massacre, which others had tried to keep secret. After the massacre, however, Congress had grave doubts about the military's ability to deal with the Native Americans. On July 15, 1870 it passed an act banning the further appointment of military officers as Indian Agents and requiring the replacement of those who were currently in office.⁶⁴

According to General Sherman's Memoirs, the action was taken in the expectation that Grant would be forced to return to the system of appointing congressional nominees. Grant responded, however, by accepting the recommendation of the members of the Board of Indian Commissioners and expanding his controlled experiment with the Quakers to cover all nominees.⁶⁵

The Commissioners and the Appointment of Agents. The Board met in New York City in July of 1870. Francis Brunot proposed and the Commissioners adopted a resolution that expressed hearty approval of this new appointment policy. Secretary Colyer reported at the same meeting that he had already contacted "the Presbyterian Board of Missions, the Methodist Missionary Society, the American Church Missionary Society, the Baptist Home Missionary Society, and other Christian Societies" about making nominations.⁶⁶

The appointment of a new set of superintendents and agents began in the latter half of 1870, but initially proceeded slowly. It was a time-consuming task to find qualified replacements for all of the military officers. It was not until December, for example, that Grant appointed a new superintendent for the Territory of Arizona. Though agreeing to appoint nominees of religious organizations, the President nonetheless managed to show the Protestant philanthropists that he was a man of his own mind. His appointment for Arizona was a Jew who was a former lieutenant colonel in the army.⁶⁷

The Board of Indian Commissioners arranged for a joint meeting in Washington on January 13, 1871 with church representatives in order to expedite the appointment of church nominees. Among those who attended were representatives from the Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Quaker, Reformed, and Unitarian churches.⁶⁸ William Welsh represented the Episcopal Church.

Those who attended the meeting were in general agreement on several issues. They believed that the religious bodies "which are called upon to recommend Indian Agents should be at liberty to select agents . . . without reference to the locality of their residence or their political opinion." The commissioners and church representatives shared a "general sense" that it was inappropriate to nominate clergy to serve as agents. They agreed to supervise the agents that they nominated, to offer them aid "in promoting the civilization and Christianization of the Indians," and to suggest alternative candidates should any nominee not be "satisfactory to the President or the Senate."⁶⁹

Those present at the meeting apparently also agreed upon a division of labor. In areas where one denomination already had a history of working with a tribe, that denomination made the appointment of the agent. Where no church was active, a denomination working with a nearby tribe was given the responsibility and invited to initiate a mission.⁷⁰

The successive reports from the Board of Indian Commissioners recorded the progress of the system. The 1872 report indicated that the churches had taken responsibility for seventy-two agencies.⁷¹ The division followed a somewhat consistent geographical pattern. Methodists (14 agencies) concentrated on the west coast. The two groups of Quakers (Orthodox Friends, 10 agencies; Hicksite Friends, 6 agencies) worked in Nebraska, Kansas, and the Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Most of the efforts of the Presbyterians (10 agencies) were in the Southwest, and most of those of the Roman Catholics (7 agencies) in the territories along the Canadian border. Episcopalians (8 agencies) worked with agencies in the Dakota territory (Yankton, Ponca, Upper Missouri, Fort Berthold., Whetstone, Cheyenne River, and Red Cloud and Wyoming (Shoshone and Bannock), and Congregationalists (4 agencies) were concerned primarily with Wisconsin and Minnesota. The exception to this general geographical pattern was the Baptists, who were responsible for 6 agencies in four states.

The 1873 report of the Board of Indian Commissioners noted minor changes in these patterns.⁷² The report in that year also included population figures, providing a better indication of the relative responsibilities of the denominations than the listing of agencies, which ranged greatly in size. Five of the denominations made appointments for agencies with combined populations of over 20,000: the Methodists (54,473), Baptists (40,800), Presbyterians (38,069), Episcopalians (26,929), and Friends (Orthodox Friends 17,724 + Hicksite Friends 6,598=24,322). Two others were responsible for agencies with between 15,000 and 25,000 persons: Roman Catholics (17,856) and Congregationalists (14,476 + 1,496 for the American Board=15,972). The remaining denominations (Christian Church, Dutch Reformed, Unitarians, and Lutherans) were responsible for agencies with fewer than 10,000.

To a certain degree this arrangement corresponded to the size of the denominations in the general population. The three denominations responsible for the largest number of persons were arranged in order of size: Methodists (second largest American denomination), Baptists (third), and Presbyterians (fourth). Episcopalians (eighth in the general population, but fourth in agency population) and Friends (not among the top nine denominations in the general population, but fifth in agency population) were, however, higher on the scale than numerical strength would indicate; the difference was a result both of historic interest in Native Americans and political clout in Washington. The relatively lower placement of Roman Catholics (largest single church in the U.S., but sixth in agency population) and Mormons (ninth in U.S. population, but not included in any allotment) undoubtedly reflected the suspicion with which they were held by the Protestant majority in America. That of the Christian Church (fifth in U.S. population, eighth in agency population) and the Lutherans (sixth in U.S. population, but eleventh in agency population) may have reflected a limited record of involvement in Native American missions.⁷³

This allotment would remain in place with only minor changes during Grant's two terms as president. Rutherford Hayes, who followed Grant to the White House in 1877, quickly dismantled the system, however. The disastrous defeat of the army at the Battle of the Little Bighorn during the summer before he took office fed a growing popular perception that a major change in policy was needed. Carl Schurz, Hayes' Secretary of the Interior, favored separating church and government efforts toward the Indians. The new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Ezra Ayers Hayt, complied. In 1877 he replaced thirty-five agents who had been church nominees, effectively shutting the denominations out of the appointment process.⁷⁴ The Board of Indian Commissioners would continue to function until 1933, but only in an advisory capacity; it no longer played a role in the appointment of agents.

The Commissioners’ influence on Governmental Policy. Although they were able to preserve their role in the selection of personnel until 1877, the Commissioners were not always pleased with the degree to which they were able to influence government policy, even during the Grant administration. They had the authority to investigate financial dealings with the Native Americans but not to remedy the corruption they discovered. They played a role in negotiating treaties with numerous tribes, but lacked the political clout to force the federal government to honor those agreements. For their part, the federal authorities in the Bureau of Indian Affairs were not always happy with the influence of the Board, which was always pointing out their errors. Welsh had, for example, played an important role in forcing the resignation of Commissioner Eli Parker in 1871.⁷⁵

Although never possessing the degree of authority that they would have liked, even during the favorable years of the Grant administration, the Board of Indian Commissioners did create an atmosphere of cooperation between the churches and the government that would persist in some measure up to 1933. Church and government shared a common dream of bringing European American civilization to Native Americans that would inform both government policy and church mission strategy. The allotment of agencies to different churches during the Grant administration would, moreover, both reinforce and extend denominational patterns of missionary work among the Native Americans.

The Episcopal Church's Ministry to Native Americans

The Episcopal Church's ministry to Native Americans had moved west from New York with the expanding frontier. Episcopal missionary Eleazar Williams had accompanied the Oneidas when they were moved from New York to Wisconsin in 1823. James Lloyd Breck, a clergyman who had worked with the Oneida in Wisconsin, began a mission to the Chippewas in Minnesota in 1852. In September of 1860 Bishop Whipple of Minnesota expanded the church's ministry to Native Americans in his state by assigning the Rev. and Mrs. Samuel Hinman to initiate a mission with the Santee Sioux.⁷⁶

Bishop Whipple served as an advocate for the Native Americans following their war with the settlers in 1862. He pleaded the cause of those tribes that had protected settlers during the fighting, asked President Lincoln for amnesty for the 306 prisoners sentenced to death (268 were pardoned), and preached to those who were imprisoned. When the Santee Sioux were ejected from the state, Whipple sent the Hinmans with them, first to the Dakota territory (1863) and then to Nebraska (1866).⁷⁷

This Nebraska reservation provided the base of operations from which the Episcopal Church was able to extended its ministry into the Dakota territory. In February of 1869 Samuel Hinman reported to the Spirit of Missions that there was a "substantial mission house and a beautiful chapel" on the Santee agency, and that there were "one thousand baptized persons, three hundred and thirty-seven communicants, two hundred children in our care, four young men preparing for the sacred Ministry, two candidates for Holy Orders, and one native Deacon!"⁷⁸

The extension of ministry to new tribal groups was often made in response to requests from the Native Americans themselves. This had been the case with the Santee Sioux in Minnesota, who had asked for a ministry and a school in the summer of 1860. It would also be the case with the Yankton Sioux, who had learned of the Episcopal Church's ministration to the Santee and requested a mission of their own; the church responded in 1869. William Welsh reported in an 1871 issue of the Spirit of Missions that the upper BrulJ Sioux had also asked for a school. Even when there was no specific request, however, missionaries often benefited from the good reputation that they had earned in their dealing with neighboring tribes. The church's record with the Santee and the Yankton no doubt helped the Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, who went to the Poncas in 1871.⁷⁹

Initially William Welsh functioned as a kind of unofficial bishop for the Dakota territory. He visited the territory repeatedly, raised funds through the auxiliary association he had established, sent personnel, communicated with them once they were in the field, and reported on their work both at the annual meetings of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.

Welsh and his allies also used the pages of The Spirit of Missions. to provide a steady stream of information about Native American missions. In 1870, for example, the January issue carried a transcript of a meeting of the Board of Missions at which Welsh appealed for money. The February issue carried a cover letter from Welsh and an account by Samuel D. Hinman of his work with the Santee, his contacts with the Ponca, and his plans for work with the Yankton. Hinman prepared a translation of a letter from Sioux catechist W.B. Wapasha for the May issue and reported that the Rev. Joseph Cook had agreed to initiate work at the Yankton agency. There was a follow up story on the Yankton in August and in November a story of about visits in the Dakota Territory by William Welsh and Bishop Robert Harper Clarkson (the missionary bishop of with nominal responsibility for the Dakota territory). The latter issue also included an editorial about the Mr. Welsh's discoveries on his tour and a plea from Mrs. Hinman for replacement of buildings destroyed by a tornado. The final issue of the year carried the minutes of the meeting of the Board of Missions, at which Welsh had a reported on the Dakota missions. In order not to be overlooked, Episcopalians in Minnesota contributed articles about their work among Native Americans in both April ("The Voice of the Red Man to the White" by John Johnson Enmegahbowh) and June ("Help for the Chippeways").

William Welsh had strong convictions about the use of church funds. He made it clear at the joint meeting of Board of Indian Commissioners and church representatives In January of 1871 that the Episcopal Church opposed a policy adopted by many of the other denominations. The old problem of the use of government annuities to the Indians was at issue. All were aware of long history of misappropriation of funds intended for the Indians, but most denominations believed that it should not prevent churches and agents nominated by them from expending annuity money on behalf of the Native Americans. They believed, for example, that they should be able to use annuity money to build schools. The majority at the joint meeting in 1871 voted for a resolution that declared that this would be appropriate since the expense of school construction would, otherwise, "be too heavy for the missionary societies to undertake."⁸⁰

William Welsh went on record as disagreeing. He had been thinking over the matter for some time and had stated his objections at the annual meeting of the Episcopal Church's Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society the previous month. As representative of the new "Indian Department" of the Domestic Committee, he introduced three resolutions: one approving President Grant's new appointment policy, one encouraging the Domestic Committee to "stir up the Church in its duty to the Indians," and a third asking "the Domestic Committee to avoid the use of Government funds in building or sustaining Churches for Indians, or in maintaining schools or hospitals that are under the control of its missionaries, relying upon charitable offerings for all its missionary operations." The first two resolutions passed immediately. Directors of the missionary society asked for a rationale for the third.⁸¹

Welsh explained by contrasting the success of the Hinmans with the difficulties faced by another denomination:

A Presbyterian Mission accepted this aid [for the construction of a school], and a Government sawmill was employed in sawing lumber for it. This almost caused a rupture. If you take Government money and establish schools you can not teach the Church Catechism in those schools. The Agent is not allowed to aid any one religious body more than another. The Indians have felt that Mr. Hinman came to them for the Love of Christ and this is the secret of his success.⁸²

Bishop Joseph C. Talbot of Indiana, who had served as Missionary Bishop of the Northwest from 1859 to 1865, agreed with the general principle that Welsh advocated and provided his own example:

The Indians will learn that Mr. Welsh's Church is an honest Church, and that it is not robbing them. I could name an Indian Agent who took the Agency a bankrupt, and who managed to come out a rich man, although his salary was $1,500 . . . . The Indians understand it. A suspicion does attach to the Government now, and will for some time to come; and I believe that for the present it is wise to work independently . . . .⁸³

Some bishops were concerned about the implications of the resolution for other missionary endeavors, such as the Freedman's Commission, which was working among African Americans in the American South. Welsh's resolution was, therefore, withdrawn and a less formal resolution adopted. The directors of the missionary society agreed to "an understanding that Mr. Welsh's pledges to the Government were unchanged." They also expressed their unanimous and "hearty approval and great confidence" in Mr. Welsh's work with Native American missions.⁸⁴

It was this strategy of refusing government aid that Welsh advocated at the January 1871 meeting of church officials with the Board of Indian Commissioners. In January of the following year, when he again represented the Episcopal Church at a joint meeting of missionary representatives and the Board of Indian Commissioners, Welsh was able to report on the success of his fund raising:

Books, pictures, clothing, and some implements of husbandry and medicines, have been sent by the Episcopal Church, which has spent about $50,000 in the last two years in erecting buildings and maintaining it mission schools. The Indian commission [i.e. Indian committee of Foreign and Domestic Missionary Society of the Episcopal Church] asks for $50,000 to carry forward its work during the year 1872.⁸⁵

No other denomination was identified as having contributed more.

Welsh was aware that his superintendency of the missions in the Dakota territory was only to be temporary. Back in 1868 the General Convention had adopted legislation establishing a missionary district for Native Americans.⁸⁶ The House of Bishops did not, however, elect a missionary bishop to serve in the district. Rather, they decided, as Welsh explained in an article in the Spirit of Missions in January of 1869, to wait until the Native Americans "shall be peaceably settled and Congress shall have acted definitely" on their relocation.⁸⁷

Samuel Hinman indicated his support for the idea in his contribution to that January 1869 issue of the Spirit of Missions. He wrote:

Should the recommendation of the Indian Peace Commission be carried out by Congress, all the Indian tribes roaming through the North-west will be concentrated in one great Territory, north of Nebraska and west of Dakota. Schools and Missions will be established among them. If this plan should be consummated, our Church should send a Bishop there, with his Presbyters, Deacons, candidates, catechists and schools. It would be more than enough work for one Bishop, and it would be a work which, in the right hands, with God's blessing, would produce great results in a little while. There would be at least one hundred thousand souls as tractable as children, and far more disposed to receive, gladly and gratefully, Christian teaching, than any other heathen on the globe.⁸⁸

Hinman saw the formation of a missionary territory and the election of a bishop as a means of providing needed coordination and supervision for the work among Native Americans. Action on the proposal still had not been taken by 1871, but when the General Convention met in that year it reaffirmed the idea of an missionary district. The House of Bishops acted first, adopting a resolution that realigned the boundaries and gave the missionary district a new name. William Welsh introduced the legislation into the House of Deputies:

Resolved, that instead of the resolution adopted by this House on October 27, 1868, establishing a new missionary jurisdiction, this House do establish, from and after January 1872, such a jurisdiction with the following boundaries: On the east by the Missouri river; on the south by the State of Nebraska; on the west by the 104th meridian, the territories of Wyoming and Nebraska; on the North by the 46th degree of north latitude, and including the several Indian Reservations on the left bank of the Missouri river, north and east of the said river.

Resolved, That the style of the Bishop of the Indian jurisdiction now erected shall be Missionary Bishop of Niobrara.⁸⁹

The Deputies agreed. The House of Bishops then placed the territory temporarily under the care of Bishop Robert Harper Clarkson, the Missionary Bishop of Nebraska and Dakota.⁹⁰

When the House of Bishops met in November of the following year, Bishop Whipple of Minnesota nominated the secretary of the foreign committee of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, William Hobart Hare, for the new missionary territory. He was elected the Bishop of Niobrara and consecrated on January 9, 1873. His duties as secretary of the foreign committee kept him busy until April, when he headed west.⁹¹

At the time of Bishop Hare's consecration, the church's most active mission was that among the Santee in northern Nebraska, which was headed by the Hinmans. It included one native American priest (Paul Mazakute), two Native American deacons (Daniel Hemans and Luke Walker), and three congregations. The appointment of the Indian agent was entrusted to the Hicksite Friends. Of the six agencies allotted to the Episcopal Church in the Dakota territory, missions had already been established at four: the Yankton Agency, the Upper Missouri (or Lower BrulJ Agency), the Cheyenne River Agency, and the Ponca Agency. There was also a mission at the Crow Creek Agency.⁹² The church had not yet, however, established a foothold at the Fort Berthold, Red Cloud, or Whetstone agencies. Work was also progressing slowly with the Shoshones in Wyoming (which were not part of Bishop Hare's responsibility). Bishop of Colorado George Randall visited the agency in 1873, but died soon after from pneumonia; a permanent mission would not begin until 1883.⁹³

Felix Brunot's 1874 report for the Board of Indian Commissioners included details on the schools constructed on the various reservations. The Episcopal Church had by that time constructed a school on the Ponca and Shoshone agencies, two schools for the Upper Missouri (or Lower BrulJ) Agency, and five for the Yankton. No schools were listed for Fort Berthold or for Whetstone (also called the Upper BrulJ or Spotted Tail agency).⁹⁴ No information of any kind was included for Red Cloud or Cheyenne River agencies, but the following year's report again listed them as under the care of the Episcopal Church. That year's listing noted several changes, however. Fort Berthold was moved to the care of the Congregationalists, and Crow Creek and the White Earth Agency in Minnesota were added to the Episcopal Church.⁹⁵

Welsh and Brunot, and their allies had done an extraordinary job of directing the church's ministry to Native Americans from a distance. They were extremely happy, however, that Hare was now able to provide full time direction to this growing ministry. As chairman of the General Convention's Committee on Indian Affairs, Welsh told the General Convention of 1874:

The consecration of the Right Rev. William Hobart Hare, D.D., as Bishop of the missionary jurisdiction of Niobrara, has given the greatest relief to the members of the Committee and greatly encouraged desponding Indians by the appointment of a Bishop for them solely.⁹⁶

Hare would be able to provide the church's ministry a kind of leadership that was simply could not be accomplished at a distance.

While Hare's arrival did not signal the end of Brunot and Welsh's involvement in ministry to Native Americans, it did coincide with a decreasingly level of involvement on their part. Brunot, concerned with the same lack of authority that had troubled Welsh, resigned as chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners on May 27, 1874. Six other members of the Board resigned with him.⁹⁷ Like Welsh's earlier resignation, however, this action did not signal an end to Brunot's interest in the Board. When, for example, Grant considered turning to the military for Indian agents in 1876, Brunot quickly came to the defense of the system of religious appointment.⁹⁸ Age was catching up with Welsh, who would die in 1878.

Hare was able to expand the church's ministry both to the agencies to which it had been given the right of nomination and to others in the area. In the period between 1871 and 1882, he and other bishops would send eighty new missionaries. They would ordain twenty Native Americans to the diaconate and two to the priesthood.⁹⁹ In 1883, the General Convention felt secure enough about the work with the Native Americans in South Dakota to expand Bishop Hare's responsibilities to include European American settlers as well. Thereafter, he would be the Bishop of South Dakota.

Grant's Peace policy only lasted a few years. Even during its short life, it had, however, given Episcopalians a vision of the way in which church and government could cooperate to improve the welfare of native Americans.

¹Among recent authors who have used this designation are Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970), 180; Robert M. Utley, The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 129-30; Owanah Anderson, Jamestown Commitment: The Episcopal Church and the American Indian (Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 1988), 47; and Valerie Sherer Mathes, Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 3. Utley notes that Grant himself used the slogan.

²For an example of an author who also uses the label "Quaker Policy" for this policy, see Brown, Wounded Knee, 180.

³Utley, Indian Frontier, 129. Utley quoted Thomas C. Battey's introduction to Lawrie Tatum, Our Red Brothers and the Peace Policy of President Ulysses S. Grant (Philadelphia, 1899), 17-18.

⁴David L. Simpson. "A Data Base for Measuring the Participation Levels of Episcopalians in Elected Office and Including a List of the Lay Delegates to the General Convention of the Church from 1785 to 1895," (M.T.S. thesis, the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia, 1987), list number 2: 85.

⁵In 1877 there were fifteen lay persons and fifteen clergy who served as managers. See "Appendix II-4: List of Managers,"Journal of the Proceedings of the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of American Assembled in a General Convention, held in the City of Boston . . . in the year of our Lord 1877 (Boston: Printed for the Convention, 1878), 497.

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