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something like wallpaper paste. How could they expect human beings to remain at the agency and live on remnants, leavings, garbage?
    The new Indian Bureau was going to be handed over to the vari- ous religious denominations, and that would take care of the cor- ruption. He hoped. A man can always hope. Dr. Reed had some doubt about the Methodists, but the Episcopalians were fairly solid. However, the Baptists might end up holding wild camp meetings with the red men out there somewhere in the Rocky Mountains
    and who knew what would happen then? He thought about asking for some regulations that Indian agents not be allowed to speak in tongues.
    “The salary for the Indian agent at the Comanche Agency will be provided by the government and managed by the Society of Friends Indian Committee,” he said. “We have convinced this Con- gress to dissolve the Office of Indian Affairs, and so assign each of the tribes, or tribal areas, to various religious denominations.”
    Samuel looked up with his fork in his hand, surprised.
    “I would have thought it impossible that Congress would ever dissolve any government agency,” he said.
    “Well, they have. Now, the Episcopalians are taking the Sioux.” “Really?”
    “And, let’s see, the Methodists have—” The shipowner paused. Peter Simons said, “They have the Ojibway.”
    Samuel was surprised in a reserved and expressionless way. They had convinced the government to disband the Office of Indian Affairs and then the government, out of its ability to call into be- ing these bureaucracies as if conjuring them up from some book of magic, invented the Indian Bureau.
    “And what tribe does the Society of Friends have?”
    “The Comanche and the Kiowa, and a group called the Kiowa- Apache,” Lewis Morgan said.
    The green mint jelly sparkled on the tender meat. Samuel was hungry, and so he ate steadily and quietly.
    “And what do we know about these tribes?”
    Morgan lifted his fork. “Ah, let’s see now. The Kiowa are one thing, and then there is this group of some kind of Apache that lives with them and has for many years. They are called Kiowa-Apache. They don’t speak the same language but they always live together.” “The salary is adequate,” said the accountant. “We want an hon-
    est agent who does not have to make up years of absence from his home by illicit trading. It is five thousand a year.”
    “That’s very generous,” said Samuel.
    Dr. Reed nodded his white head and put his papery hands into
    his lap. “This committee has met now for a good many years. Our hearts have gone out to the suffering of the Indian people.” He thought for a moment. “I was born in 1789. I remember my par- ents talking about the Shawnee Wars in Ohio, and the Pennsylvania militia’s murder of ninety Moravian Christian Indians at Gnaden- hutten. Used hatchets on them while they knelt and prayed. Lord Amherst’s distribution of smallpox-infected blankets. What treaty have we not broken with these people?”
    “Yes,” said Peter Simons, and there were murmurs of assent around the table. “Have you read the reports about the massacre in Colorado? Colorado State troops falling upon a peaceful village of Cheyenne.”
    Morgan nodded. “I read them last week.” “Did you know any of them, Lewis?” “No. What does it matter?”
    “All women and children. They did fiendish, fiendish things. How can this go on?” Simons looked around the room. “The colo- nel should be taken under arrest.”
    “And the Georgian’s attacks on a civilized, literate people, the Cherokee,” said Dr. Reed. “Our Meeting raised funds for them and sent relief, and they died and wept all the way to Oklahoma Terri- tory.”
    “I know.” Samuel laid down his fork.
    “ ‘What owest thou unto thy Lord?’ Psalm Fifty-two. And so Elizabeth Fry asked of us all.”
    “Yes, of course.”
    Beyond the library window came the sound of the great bell in the Swedish church. The clanging wavered