Word was received this week that President Harrison, at his summer resort at Crescent Springs, Pa., had on Monday removed Gen. E. L. Applegate as Indian agent of Klamath Reservation, and appointed D. W. Mathews of Salem, formerly in the drug business in Ashland, in his place. Gen. Applegate was appointed a year ago at the instigation of Senator Mitchell and the Oregon delegation, and right from the start became disgusted at the way the administration was conducting Indian affairs. Every week seemed to add more disgust, and the General, being very good with his pen, kept the department at Washington well posted with his views. During Cleveland's administration the Indian Department was regularly divided among the different denominations, and the head of affairs being of a liberal turn of mind, things went smooth. When good Mr. Harrison went in with his infant damnation and can't-go-to-heaven on anything but a Calvinistic shingle doctrine, he appointed to the heads of Indian departments a lot of fanatical sectarian bigots--better grounded in bigotry than himself, if that could be--who have been conducting the department on that narrow line, fighting the Catholic Church with the venom characteristic of sectarian jealousy, and rooting out as near as possible all Christian ideas that do not conform to the hellfire damnation orthodox pattern. Add to this mixture the fact Agent Applegate is generally termed an infidel, and you can see what a monkey and parrot of a time they have been having. Gen. Applegate was asked to resign some time ago by the Indian Commissioner. He was disgusted enough to quit willingly but would not do so if it gave his fanatical enemies any pleasure. He will now expose the administration and its management. He says the department officers who have called there thoroughly ignore the government and conduct themselves as if the church was their guiding star, and that the work now going on will soon produce worse results than the dark ages ever saw.
Valley Record, Ashland, September 18, 1890, page 2


    The Record is in possession of a copy of the following letter written by Gen. E. L. Applegate, recently removed by President Harrison from the Indian agency at the instigation of Bishop Newman's Methodist conference, because of his non-orthodox opinions. The letter was written to his son:
    A few days ago I received the following letter from Washington:
    My Dear Sir:--I received this day your census return of the Klamath agency. I want to thank you for your most excellent work. Your compensation will be forwarded you in a few days.
E. L. APPLEGATE, U.S. Indian Agent,
    Klamath County, Oregon.
    Now he wants to thank me for my most excellent work. The best work I did was in amending the oath furnished me, by curing it of its theoretical impossibilities and bringing it within the range of human possibilities. I reduced the oath, before I took it, to common sense, so that the work could be done in a common-sense way--and he wants to thank me! and pay me! I feel as though I ought to allow him to do so; for it is certainly the first symptom of sense that I have yet seen manifested by this Administration.
    It appears that when the Oregon delegation closely pressed the Department for the charges against me, the Acting Commissioner gave the business away. It was this, my appointment "was a staggering blow to the confidence of many Republicans."
    These staggering Republicans could not have been in Oregon, because after I was appointed we had an election here and the Republicans carried the state by a large majority--I believe, by an increased majority. No, it was not in Oregon. The western Republican does not stagger at trifles. They were undoubtedly eastern Republicans.
    This complaint was put in by Brother Millikins Dorchester, and I am of the opinion that with him and his class it is a species of "blind staggers," and the condition is in the mind and inherited. You know that notwithstanding his great pretense of saintly piety we are able to prove this Brother Millikins to be a liar and a sneak. And why should he not be? The Constitution of the United States forbids the government from propagating any religion, and these officers of the Indian service are sworn to carry out that Constitution; and, therefore, when we find them meddling and practically propagating religion, by their official authority and at the expense of the government, and enforcing religious tests, we see that they are not only capable of lying but are, in reality, not only traitors to the cause of civil liberty, but also perjured knaves.
    Their only defense is their lack of sense. That their lunacy is inherited. That it descends from the fabricators of the blue laws, and the prosecutors of heretics and witches.
    Finding that I belonged to no religious order, that I was a person whose mind was measurably free from the bias of the old superstitions, and in some degree capable of the enjoyment of mental liberty; and was, therefore, in perfect accord with the principles of the Constitution; and that, therefore, I would not be likely to prostitute a government office to the enforcement of any religion--that I would simply let religion be so merely a personal right as the Constitution places it--then, per consequence, these fanatical cranks were staggered--my appointment was a staggering blow!
    Is this what has become of the great Republican Party?
    Are these blind staggerers to set the test of who may be rewarded or honored by this party?
    I am of the opinion that if the Republican Party allows itself to be rode and drove by these blind staggerers, and makes its appeal to the American people in this handicapped situation, it will be liable to receive some staggering blows that will send it to grass; for I am satisfied that the American people are not yet so far degenerated as to quietly allow a few religious cranks to convert the national government into an hierarchy.
    It snowed yesterday and I was out late, giving directions how a guard should be maintained all night on a large coal pit we are burning. As I came home there was quite a blizzard blowing. I was alone and everywhere was dark and shut up; all, except the guard fire and the upper bay window of the agent's house. The sidewalk was covered with snow and the dark and obscure scenes, outlined by streaks and flecks of snow, reminded me of last winter and the awful life and death struggle we had here. Many and vivid were the recollections awakened in my mind. It actually seemed to me that I could hear the voices of my children and friends in the sighings of the wind in the limbs of the trees. Then I keenly missed you, and the rest of the folks; and I couldn't help reflecting on the partiality, injustice and meanness of the inner priesthood of the immortal Indian ring. How that preacher-agents here had been allowed to have a number of the members of their own families employed here in the public service--as many as three or four of them at a time; and how that I could not be allowed one, and how that every stupid technicality was immovably placed across my path to prevent, and did prevent it. These cranks, these fanatics, these inheritors and perpetuators of the barbarisms, superstitions, injustice and meanness of the dark ages recognized that I did not belong to the hierarchy that has already seized upon the Indian department. It seemed to me that I bore the same relation to them that the loyal officer in the army bore to the seceding Confederates--I could surrender, be struck down, or fly! As these dismal thoughts passed through my mind the wind swept over the adjacent pine forest with a yet louder roar, and for the moment I imagined that I was a Siberian exile.
Valley Record, Ashland, October 30, 1890, page 1


    An Indian school was started at Linkville, Oregon, some weeks ago and it now is attended by eighty pupils.
"Coast Items," San Francisco Call, October 31, 1890, page 8