Letter from Secretary of the Interior E. A. Hitchcock to the President
This letter encloses a report, by Horace Speed, U.S. District Attorney of Oklahoma and S.F. Fallon, Special Inspector, on the investigation into the conduct of Indian Agent O.A. Mitscher of the Osage Reservation.
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OCR Page 1 of 8-2-
in a designated depository of the United States, and if no desig-
nated depository is convenient, those statutes provide that the
Secretary of the Treasury is to designate some place as such de-
pository, and the loaning or use, in any manner, of those funds
for the private benefit of such disbursing officer is severely
reprehended.
It requires no learning to enable any one to know
that if trust funds are loaned out, the interest arising from the loan
is also trust funds and belongs to the beneficiary and not to the
public officer having the funds in trust.
A very clear statement of this rule has been made in
the case of the Territory against Thompson, 10th Oklahoma, p.409:
422-423.
In the taking of this interest and the not returning
it to the Government, or to the proper fund, Mr. Mitscher has violated
his duty and has put himself in a position where his private in-
terest necessarily conflicts with the proper discharge of his duty.
Every day those trust funds remained in bank he gained profit and
it was to his interest to delay the payment or proper transfer,
while it was to the interest of the Government that the payment or
proper transfer should be promptly made. His action, therefore,
in this matter was wholly improper.
Second. Under correspondence had between Mr. Mitscher
and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and the Commissioner of
Indian Affairs and the Office of the Secretary, informal allotments
of land to individual Osages and to the heads of families were rec-
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