THE INDIANS.
[From the New York Tribune.]
THE INDIAN COMMISSIONERS.
Annual Meeting—Missionary Co-operation—Interview with the President.
The Board of Indian Commissioners met in this city January 10th, to receive the annual reports of the several religious bodies to which, under the policy adopted by President Grant some years ago, the selection of agents and other field employés of the Indian service has been confided, and to make up their own annual report. Representatives from the Presbyterian Foreign and Domestic Missionary Boards, the Baptist Home Mission Society, the several Yearly Meetings of Friends, the American Board, the American Missionary Association, and the Unitarian Association, were present. A report was received from the Episcopal Board. The Methodist and Roman Catholic Boards sent no reports, and several of the smaller denominations having agents also failed to present a statement of their work.
These annual conferences of the Board of Commissioners and the representatives of the different religious denominations, unofficial as they are, have been of great benefit to the official administration of Indian affairs, and, at some critical periods, have helped to save the peace policy from disaster. The Conference this year has been unusually interesting, in view of the disposition lately manifested to transfer the control of Indian affairs to the War Department, and of a new class of questions respecting the Indians themselves, which assume practical importance in view of their rapid progress toward civilization.
It appears that the religious sentiment of the country, as represented by those who control and direct its efforts to civilize and Christianize the Indians, is unanimously opposed to a change in the present general policy toward the Indian, in the mode of its administration; and many weighty facts and reasons are brought to the support of this opposition. The new questions brought into view, affecting the Indians themselves, are specified in the following address to the Board of Indian Commissioners, adopted by the representatives of the religious societies, and presented this morning:
“This Convention would respectfully express its deep interest in certain recommendations, in relation to the welfare of the Indians, which received the approval of similar conventions held in former years, but which have not yet gained their rightful place in the action of the Government. Among these are: