brought away for trial. The official correspondence from the various departments with the district attorney included a letter from Agent Tiffany to the Interior Department, asking that these Indians be at once tried, and yet Agent Tiffany released all the guilty Indians without punishment and held in confinement these eleven men for a period of fourteen months without ever presenting a charge against them, giving them insufficient food and clothing, and permitting those whose guilt was admitted by themselves and susceptible of overwhelming proof, to stalk about unblushingly and in defiance of law. This, too, under the very shadow of his authority, and in laughing mockery of every principle of common decency, to say nothing of justice.
How any official possessing the slightest manhood could keep eleven men in confinement for fourteen months without charges or any attempt to accuse them, knowing them to be innocent, is a mystery which can only be solved by an Indian agent of the Tiffany stamp. The investigations of the Grand Jury have brought to light a course of procedure at the San Carlos Reservation, under the government of Agent Tiffany, which is a disgrace to the civilization of the age and a foul blot upon the national escutcheon. While many of the details connected with these matters are outside of our jurisdiction, we nevertheless feel it our duty, as honest American citizens, to express our utter abhorrence of the conduct of Agent Tiffany and that class of reverend peculators who have cursed Arizona as Indian officials, and who have caused more misery and loss of life than all other causes combined. We feel assured, however, that under the judicious and just management of General Crook, these evils will be abated, and we sincerely trust that he may be permitted to render the official existence of such men as Agent Tiffany, in the future, unnecessary.
The investigations of the Grand Jury also establish the fact that General Crook has the unbounded confidence of all the Indians. The Indian prisoners acknowledged this before the Grand Jury, and they expressed themselves as perfectly satisfied that he would deal justly with them all. We have made diligent inquiry into the various charges presented in regard to Indian goods and the traffic at San Carlos and elsewhere, and have acquired a vast amount of information which we think will be of benefit. For several years the people of this Territory have been gradually arriving at the conclusion that the management of the Indian reservations in Arizona was a fraud upon the Government; that the constantly recurring outbreaks of the Indians and their consequent devastations were due to the criminal neglect or apathy of the Indian agent at San Carlos; but never until the present investigations of the Grand Jury have laid bare the infamy of Agent Tiffany could a proper idea be formed of the fraud and villany which are constantly practised in open violation of law and in defiance of public justice. Fraud, peculation, conspiracy, larceny, plots and counterplots, seem to be the rule of action upon this reservation. The Grand Jury little thought when they began this investigation that they were about to open a Pandora's box of iniquities seldom surpassed in the annals of crime.
With the immense power wielded by the Indian agent almost any crime is possible. There seems to be no check upon his conduct. In collusion
