"We'll Discuss it at Mohonk"

"WE'LL DISCUSS IT AT MOHONK" By Larry E. Burgess* Albert K. and Alfred H. Smiley, twins, were born of Quaker parents in Vassalboro, Maine, March 16, 1828. They both attended Haverford College and graduated together in 1849. Both also taught for several years at Haverford, then founded a school of their own in Philadelphia. After separating for a time—Alfred going to Iowa and Albert back to Vassalboro—they went together again in 1860 to teach at Moses Brown School in Providence, Rhode Island, where Albert continued as teacher and principal until 1879. In 1870, however, the brothers began a venture that changed their Uves considerably. In 1869 they had bought property on Lake Mohonk, in Ulster County, New York, and the next year opened an inn which they soon developed into a prosperous vacation spot. In 1879 Alfred began a similar operation at nearby Lake Minnewaska, and Albert gave up teaching to devote his whole time to the hotel. "Lake Mohonk" came to be well-known, however, not only as a vacation resort but as the site of three series of annual conferences on social issues of the time which Albert sponsored—one on Indians, another on the Negro, and a third on international arbitration. This article discusses Albert's role in the first two of these conference series. After witnessing his brother's successful hotel opening at Lake Minnewaska and completing his own move to Lake Mohonk, Albert Smiley was touched by a third event of importance in 1879: President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him a member of the Board of Indian Commissioners. John D. Lang of Vassalboro, an acquaintance of the Smiley family, had served on the Board of Commissioners since its inception in 1869. When a vacancy appeared in 1879, it was Lang among others who suggested Smiley as a possible appointment. Another Smiley friend, from Providence, was H. A. C. Barstow, former chairman of the Board of Indian Commissioners. Smiley always believed that it was Barstow's influence upon the President that led to his being appointed to the Board. * Redlands, California. 14 We'll Discuss It at Mohonk15 As a Quaker, Smiley was steeped in a tradition of concern for social problems and consideration for their solution. Quakers had long been involved with Indian missions in education and in defending the Indians' right to a full life as citizens of the United States of America. In calling for formation of the Board of Indian Commissioners in 1869, President Ulysses Grant cited the need for adopting a new policy toward the Indians in the United States. Grant branded the whole Indian question as being "the subject of embarrassment and expense." He was firm in his desire to see Indian affairs purged of the inefficiency and corruption that continually plagued them. "The management of the original inhabitants of this continent . . . has been attended with continuous robberies, murders and wars," Grant declared. He also declared that he had "adopted a new policy towards these wards of the nation . . . with fair results so far as tried, and which I hope will be attended ultimately with great success."1 As a result of Grant's efforts, the Board of Indian Commissioners was empowered under an act of Congress on April 10, 1869. It was charged to cooperate with the administration in the management of Indian affairs. Its members were to be leading philanthropists and humanitarians, to serve without pay. Grant enjoined "all the officers of the government connected with the Indian service ... to afford every faculty and opportunity to [the commissioners] ... to give . . . respectful heed to their advice . . . and to cooperate with them."2 Albert Smiley attended the annual meeting of the Board in Washington, D.C, in the winter of 1879. "Charges of corruption were made at that meeting against certain officers of the Indian Bureau by one of the members of the board," he recalled, "and a committee of the board was appointed to investigate them, of which I was made chairman." Three weeks of careful investigation by Smiley netted evidence against the three men and Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz dismissed them from the Indian service. Schurz then called upon the Board to investigate...