Documents concerning the Education Home

Testimonials

IRA report

Newspaper

IRA book

Daniel La France's autobiography

Welsh's reaction was to blame Mrs. Cox, whose "powers of persuation, coercion, and mystification of the truth are such that it is a very difficult thing to contend with her." If he had any doubt of these powers, she made him a believer by threatening the IRA with legal action. But Welsh was not one to back down, and he had his own weapons, as well as friends in high places. City and State was read in the homes of hundreds of influential Philadelphians, and it carried several articles on the scandalous conditions at the school. Earlier Welsh had briefed Commissioner of Indian Affairs Jones on the Educational Home's problems, and in the summer of 1899 Brosius persuaded Jones to send a school inspector. After being thoroughly briefed on arrival by Sniffen, the inspector spent three weeks in Philadelphia. The report of his investigation upheld all that the IRA had said, and Mrs. Cox recognized that it was futile to continue the fight. In October 1899, nearly three years after Welsh first brought the matter to the attention of Dr. Hailmann, she decided not to apply for government funding for the next fiscal year.

Notes

1. General Armstrong was the founder of the Hampton School.
2. Samuel Brosius was the IRA staff member in Washington D. C. He succeeded Francis Leupp.
3. Dr. Hailmann was superintendent of the Indian Schools.
4. Matthew Sniffen was in charge of the IRA Philadelphia office and later took on a larger role in the IRA.

References

1. The Indian Rights Association - The Herbert Welsh Years, 1882 - 1904, by William T. Hagan (University of Arizona Press, 1985). A lot of the material for the extracted section comes from the IRA Archives at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Document History

• HTML document created by MB 2024-06-24; updated 2024-08-15