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[[Printed letterhead]]
Tom Watson's Magazine
121 West 42nd Street

New York, October 23, 1905.
[[end letterhead]]
74 [[on sticker]]

Hon. Charles Andrews.
       Utica, N.Y.

     After you left Mohonk, Dr. Lyman Abbott by order of the conference appointed a committee to investigate the question of securing the inheritance of land to the Indians instead of leaving them a prey to shyster lawyers and frontier probate judges who are elected by them. If something is not done to alter the present system there will be unending litigation and the result will be the practical disinteritance of the Indians, in which case all that has been done for the Indians in the way of missionary work and education during the last twenty-five years will go for naught. 
      Twenty-five years ago I drew a bill to provide for this difficulty at the request of Professor Thayer, who was at that time the head of the department of constitutional law in Harvard. He took it and put his senior class to work on the subject. That class gathered for him every decision that had ever been made upon Indians and made a brief of them, together with all statutes relating to the subject that had been enacted up to that time. With that before him he went to work to perfect the bill. He then placed it in the hands of Justice Strong, (retired) of the supreme court of the United States who put his secretary to work to review the whole subject and ^[[Judge Strong]] then gave his personal attention to perfecting the bill, after which it was returned to me. [[strikethrough]] then [[/strikethrough]] There was