A correspondent of the Pioneer Press launches his thunderbolts at Rev. E.H. Alden, 1878. Alden “…has been in office about eighteen months, and his summary removal within the next ten days is one of the certainties of the future. He sent in his resignation last winter; it was accepted… Alden… a bright Englishman who is now on his way to England, ‘is about the most absurd and incompetent man that could have been selected for the place.’ He can’t keep his word with the Indians. Every Indian on the reservation HATES HIM, and last winter they threatened to kill him… He tells the Indians so many lies that they can’t stand him. It is admitted that there has been no big stealing under Alden, but it is thought that he only lacked the courage. He did this, however: He carried his wife on the pay roll when she was in Minnesota for two months, and swore before G.P. Flannery, of Bismarck, that she was present at the agency and actually performing the work. He made his wife clerk, and raised the salary to $1000 from $8000 per annum. The department cut it down to $800 after two months. Alden admits his wife was in Minnesota, but excuses the irregularity with the statement that he had a girl acting in her place, and that girl testifies that she received $25 per month only. Mrs. Alden therefore pocketed $116 belonging to the government…
“Another thing that Alden did ought to remove him and demonstrate his unfitness for any office. He kept the agency prices up to the trader’s figures. To induce the Indians to work they are paid in their own rations at the trader’s prices, so as not to conflict with the trader or injure his business. An Indian works a day and gets a check calling for $1.50. He goes to the agent and gets bacon, for example, for this day’s work. That bacon should be sold him at the cost price laid down at Berthold. The price is twelve cents per pound and the Indian should receive twelve and a half pounds for his day’s work. The trader’s price, however, is twenty-five cents, and the agent is ruled by that. The Indian, therefore, gets six pounds and a half. The cost of coffee to the agency is twenty cents per pound, and the trader’s price is fifty cents per pound. The Indian for his day’s work, should get seven pounds and a half, but he really gets only three. Dry buffalo meat costs ten cents per pound and the trader’s price is twenty-five cents. The Indain, instead of getting fifteen pounds for his work, only gets six. The agent buys his sugar; three barrels at a time, from the trader. It costs him thirteen cents per pound, but he turns it in to the Indians at twenty-five cents. All this is simply swindling, and the reverend agent who does it ought to be drummed off the agency and kicked out of the church he professes to walk upright in. The trader is guilty of a trick like this: An Indian comes in with a five, ten or twenty dollar bill and puts it down for a dollar’s worth of goods; the trader hands out to him in checks and not money. The Indian has to come back there and trade out his checks, and one half of it is profit to the trader. The other day some Indians fired into the steamer Josephine and killed a soldier. If white men were the victims of such petty thieving, what would they do? Shoot one soldier? In Pittsburg they would redden the sky with the flame of their torch and sprinkle the pavement with the blood of innocent men, women, and children.”
