Here follow excerpts from a record of the same proceedings made by Moses A. Hewson, a native of Metlakahtla.

Harry Lang, chairman of the meeting; Edw. Marsden, secretary, reading will and letter.

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M. A. Hewson, tenth speaker, said: Mr. Mardsen, the people appoint you to read and translate both the will and trustees' letter to us people. Why don't you translat in our language correct? I notice you twist some items on both the will and letter, so these ignorant old people who don't understand English language believe your translation

Letter from Moses A. Hewson, a native of Metlakahtla, to Dr. Henry J. Minthorn, medical missionary at Metlakahtla, January 14, 1919:

A letter from the trustees contained a very excellent greeting to the people here and Edward Marsden translate the letter to them in this meeting twist the words in making the people to keep away from the will.

LETTER FROM THE TRUSTEES OF THE ESTATE OF WILLIAM DUNCAN TO THE METLAKAHTLANS

Letter from H. C. Strong and Dr. B. L. Myers, trustees under the last will and testament of Father Duncan, to the Metlakahtlans, March 5, 1919:

Decemebr 23, 1918, we dispatched a message to the Metlakahtlans, expecting that it would be read and discussed at your Christmas gathering. We endeavored therein to speak clearly, telling you of our plans and desires for the future work to be done at Metlakahtla under the provisions of the will of the late William Duncan.

We are informed that this communication was not made public till January 6, and it was then read and translated to you by Mr. Edward Marsden.

Through various sources we are informed that Mr. Marsden misrepresented both the spirit and the English language used in our communication, declaring the same to you to be a snare.

We believed we were writing to friends and that they would be interested and pleased with our suggestions and plans for work which so vitally concerns them. We did not think that our letter would be translated to you by one who would seek to misrepresent our words and purposes. In this Mr. Marsden has dealt with us, as he has with Mr. Duncan for many years, forcing us to consider any message coming from him as his personal expressions and not that of the Metlakahtla people.

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It is our desire to do everything in our power toward assisting in bringing about a united, contented, and happy community at Metlakahtla.

MARSDEN ADMITS ADDING TO INTERPRETED STATEMENT

Particular attention is called to the following excerpt from a letter written by Marsden to William T. Lopp, superintendent of education of natives of Alaska, on March 21, 1918:

Your letter of February 26 last, bearing on the exclusion of Edward Benson from holding stock in the Metlakahtla Commercial Co., has been received and carefully read

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While I admit that the Benson affair has caused us much embarrassment as well as placing your department in a bad way, I fear that the matter has been unduly stretched toward the breaking point in the minds of your associates and superiors.

MARSDEN NOT SWORN BY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS TO INTERPRET CORRECTLY

While it has been a long- and well-established rule of procedure that all witnesses and their interpreters must be sworn, it has not been found in any instance, in any of the so-called investigations at Metlakahtla, that Marsden was sworn as an interpreter, or that any of the alleged statements of the natives which he was intrusted with translating were made under oath.

Under the law such statements are entirely incompetent as evidence, and a conspiracy to defraud the Government by furnishing its officials with false statements is held by the courts to be an infamous offense (U. S. Code, title 18, secs. 81 and 88).

FALSELY INTERPRETED STATEMENTS USED BY DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE IN REPORT TO SECRETARY OF INTERIOR

The Report to the Secretary of the Interior by committee on matters pertaining to Annette Islands Reserve, Alaska, May 3, 1927, made use of falsely interpreted statements mentioned in this section.

SECTION 78. MISGUIDED NATIVES ENTICED INTO MAKING FALSE STATEMENTS

Scheme of Government agents to disrupt Metlakahtla. Natives encouraged by agents of Bureau of Education to make false statements. Official positions and special privileges given to defamers of Father Duncan. Defamers of Father Duncan finacially rewarded.

In attempts to alienate from Father Duncan the affection of the natives and to build up departmental reports and the untruthful and surreptitious file on Metlakahtla through which the Secretary of the Interior was deceived and misled into ordering the seizure of the property of Father Duncan and his Christian mission, seductive and enticing offers in the way of financial benefits and employment were made by agents of the Bureau of Education to corrupt and induce the natives to become traitors to their benefactor and to aid and participate in their schemes.

SCHEME OF GOVERNMENT AGENTS TO DISRUPT METLA KAHILA

That Government agents deliberately attempted to bring about a conflict between Father Duncan and his followers and alienate from him their affection, is shown by the following statement in a letter from William T. Lopp, superintendent of education of natives of Alaska, to Philander P. Claxton, Commissioner of Education, written on July 2, 1914, at the time of the unlawful and outrageous seizure of Father Duncan's privately owned water-power pipe line:

* A Metlakahtlan, backed by an appointment and specific instructions from Superintendent Beattie, could look after the pipe line and would place Mr. Duncan in the position of fighting his own people

*

While attempting to deceive and mislead the natives into believing that the property of Father Duncan and his mission (built with his personal funds) belonged to them, Charles D. Jones, the teacher of

26465-39-pt. 35-63

the Bureau of Education's school at Metlakahtla, wrote to Lopp, on November 18, 1914:

I would strongly recommend that not only this warehouse on the dock be officially turned over to the natives at the earliest possible date, but that the cannery, sawmill, store, old schoolhouse, girls' home, old town hall, etc., all be transferred to the immediate use of the natives and thus wholly eliminate Mr. Duncan's claim to them *.

Such suggestions could have been made for no other purpose than to induce the misguided dupes of the plotters into making false statements so as to deceive and mislead the Secretary of the Interior into approving the schemes which had been concocted by the conspirators for despoiling Metlakahtla.

The conspirators well knew that Father Duncan had always taught the natives to honor and respect the word of officials of the Government; and they also knew that when they, as agents of the Secretary of the Interior, falsely and wickedly told the natives that Father Duncan had robbed them, some of his weaker converts, intimidated by Marsden and the Bureau agents, could be more easily enticed into making false statements.

NATIVES ENCOURAGED BY AGENTS OF BUREAU OF EDUCATION TO MAKE FALSE STATEMENTS

Among the numerous instances in which the Bureau's agents manifested desires to grant favors to Father Duncan's native adversaries, and offer illegal inducements which might influence his friends to turn against him, the following may be mentioned.

When the Council of Annette Islands Reserve sent delegates to William T. Lopp, the Bureau's Chief of its Alaska Division at Seattle, Wash., as early as 1909, to ask of him a favor, Lopp stated to them, as is shown by the affidavit made on June 15, 1921, by Benjamin A. Haldane, one of the delegates, that—

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* if you people will go back and extinguish the Duncan mission and all its work, we will then be able to help you, and your people will be able to get all you want.

After telling how he had spoken for two and a quarter hours to the Metlakahtlans, giving them "a strong dose of anti-Duncan dope”, Lopp further explained in his letter to Beattie, dated December 31, 1915, how he had advised Edward Benson and other natives to "prepare a statement against [Father Duncan] with Jones' help", and that he (Lopp) would present it to the Secretary of the Interior.

The falsity of Lopp's statement in that letter in regard to Father Duncan's financial relations with the natives is exposed in chapter X, Slanders Refuted; section 82, Defamatory Statements Refuted. Subsection: Lopp Deceived Natives With Anti-Duncan Dope."

Following the agitations of Lopp and Marsden, Edmund Verney, and Mark Hamilton, two of Marsden's principal lieutenants in the clandestine organization to create discontent at Metlakahtla, concocted false claims against the estate of Father Duncan, but proof being at hand to show the falsity and fraudulent nature of these fictitious claims, they were never filed with the executors of Father Duncan's estate.

Lopp's disposition to undermine Father Duncan and wean away his faithful followers through enticements was again manifested

when, in speaking of two other natives, he suggested in his letter of December 1, 1917, to Beattie, that Peter Simpson be made general manager of the sawmill, and that Paul Mather be used as the mill's "inside man", adding that in his opinion this arrangement "would do much to break down the influence of the few Duncan followers."

OFFICIAL POSITIONS AND SPECIAL PRIVILEGES GIVEN TO DEFAMERS OF FATHER DUNCAN

It has been shown in other connections that signatures of natives to petitions were procured through misrepresentations and deceptions, and that, in some instances, their signatures were cut from other documents and pasted to faked so-called native petitions sent by Marsden and his fellow conspirators to the Secretary of the Interior.

We have also seen how Edward Marsden, a nonresident of Metlakahtla, was used by the plotters as a crafty tool in vicious attacks on Father Duncan, and how he was rewarded by being illegally made Secretary of Annette Islands Reserve.

The desire of the Bureau agents to recognize and reward the efforts of renegade natives who sought Father Duncan's overthrow and elimination was so strong that Beattie strove to find remunerative employment for Edward Marsden, when he was threatened with removal as a missionary by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions. To accomplish this Beattie was willing to foist Marsden on the Government by giving him a place on its pay roll, as is shown by his letter of August 14, 1917, to Lopp, in which he said:

I had a brief talk with Mr. Marsden while out on the boat with him and General Pratt last week relative to the matter of his working with the Bureau the coming winter, but have not yet had an opportunity to sit down and thresh the matter out with him. The more I think the matter over, the more I think we will be able to use him. Yet, I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with him before sending in my recommendation.

As shown in other connections, an examination of the departmental reports on Metlakahtla discloses that the defamatory allegations they contain were not made by the representative and responsible natives of Metlakahtla, but were uttered by unstable and misguided natives inspired or instigated by Marsden, by agents of the Bureau of Education or their confederates.

Among the clique of native plotters most active in assisting Marsden and the Bureau agents in vilifying, defaming, and propagating slanders against Father Duncan were Mark Hamilton, Edmund Verney, Alfred B. Atkinson, and Roderick F. Davis.

The records show that Marsden, Edmund Verney, and Mark Hamilton had long before left Metlakahtla, had lost their membership in the mission colony, and had returned to Metlakahtla only as trouble makers.

It was through this group of unreliable natives that the infamous slanders were disseminated, charging that Father Duncan had exploited the natives and had appropriated to himself funds which the plotters falsely stated were given by friends of the mission to build. the cannery created with his personal funds for the support of his benevolent enterprise.

Through the machinations of Marsden and agents of the Bureau of Education, these trouble makers were installed in positions as members of the Council of Annette Islands Reserve, where they acted as puppets in carrying out the schemes of the Bureau agents and their fellow conspirators.

DEFAMERS OF FATHER DUNCAN FINANCIALLY REWARDED

The Bureau of Education not only illegally seized the property of Father Duncan and his Christian mission without any warrant of law whatever, and in a barbaric manner, but it also proposed to divide among favored natives the property illegally seized in its raids; and the natives who refused to join in the plot were intimidated, discriminated against, blacklisted, and menaced.

Through the domination of the Bureau of Education and the intimidation and corrupting political methods introduced and practiced by them at Metlakahtla, the plotters obtained control of the administration of local affairs; and the rule of the majority, under the beneficent guidance and advice of Father Duncan, was superseded by a local administration controlled by the plotters and self-seeking natives who dealt out special privileges to themselves and to those who would be of use in furthering the schemes of the conspirators. The misguided and faithless natives who were most active in betraying their benefactor were rewarded when the bureau of education placed them in official positions on Annette Islands Reserve, in which positions they illegally turned over to themselves and their fellow plotters valuable rights and privileges, leading to gross financial irregularities of which Marsden himself subsequently was accused by agents of the Government.

To supplant the commercial enterprises which had been conducted so successfully by Father Duncan in the best interest of the natives, the Bureau of Education organized the Metlakahtla Commercial Co., principally owned by the Brendible and Marsden families, and permitted it to monopolize the commercial affairs of Annette Islands and to drive out of business independent enterprises conducted by other natives.

With the aid and sanction of the Bureau of Education, it was arranged for the Metlakahtla Commercial Co. to furnish labor to the cannery under a labor contract, through which the natives were sweated and forced to relinquish to the Metlakahtla Commercial Co. during 2 years more than one-third of their wages for labor in the

cannery.

After Father Duncan was forced by the Secretary of the Interior to close his store, members of the executive committee placed in office through the intrigues of agents of the Bureau of Education and their confederates, illegally transferred to themselves Father Duncan's sawmill for a grossly inadequate consideration.

Among other illegal attempts to appropriate property for the Metlakahtla Commercial Co., Marsden, Atkinson, and Brendible, as members of the executive committee, unlawfully turned over to themselves, as officials of the commercial company, a lot which, because of its central location, had previously been legally granted to the village fire brigade.