Scope and Contents

Consists of correspondence with two newspaper clippings. Includes detailed discussion of the efforts of Grinnell and Merriam, through contacts with President Theodore Roosevelt and influential Congressmen, to bring about Federal investigation of charges of maladministration by the Indian Agent at the Blackfeet Reservation in 1903-4. It also contains accounts of actions taken to try to end practices adversely affecting Indians such as appropriation and ration cuts, grants of grazing rights to white cattlemen and reservations, and Agency mismanagement, with specific reference to the Cheyenne, the Standing Rock Dakota, and Geronimo's Apaches, as well as the Blackfeet. Other letters are concerned primarily with scientific discussions of ornithological, zoological, and botanical subjects and of conservation and the need for National Parks and National Forests.