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=                           Herbert_Welsh                            =
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                            Introduction
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Herbert Welsh (1851-1941) was a United States political reformer and
worker for the welfare of the indigenous peoples of North America.


                             Biography
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Herbert Welsh was born in Philadelphia, the youngest of eight children
of John Welsh, a prosperous merchant and philanthropist. He was
educated at the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia and graduated from
the University of Pennsylvania (1871), and then studied art at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In May 1873, he
sailed to Paris to study in the studio of Léon Bonnat, of Paris. In
the spring of 1874 he returned to Philadelphia and for a period worked
as an artist.

Welsh became known as an earnest advocate for the rights of Native
Americans, a calling triggered by a visit to the Sioux Reservation in
1882. In 1883, his actions resulted in the founding of the Indian
Rights Association in Philadelphia, and he served as its corresponding
secretary for 34 years and its president for 11 years. Over the next
30 plus years, he urged the public and the United States Congress to
provide education for Indian children, holding of lands in severalty
by the Indians (also known as Allotment, which would have disastrous
outcomes for Native communities under the Dawes Act), and to extend
civil law to their reservations.

He was also prominent in state politics as a reformer, one of the
leaders of the movement in 1890 against political corruption and boss
rule in Pennsylvania, which resulted in the defeat of George W.
Delamater and the election of Robert E. Pattison for governor of
Pennsylvania in that year's election. He was president of the Civil
Service Reform Association of Pennsylvania, member of the executive
committee of the National Civil Service Reform League, and, beginning
in 1895 to 1904 was editor of 'City and State', a weekly devoted to
the interests of good government. In January 1894, Welsh became chair
of the committee to plan the National Municipal League at a meeting of
civil reformers held in Philadelphia, including Teddy Roosevelt, Louis
Brandeis, and Frederick Law Olmsted. This organization evolved into
the National Civic League, active today. In 1884, he was elected as a
member to the American Philosophical Society.

He was well known as a lecturer on the problems of indigenous peoples,
civil service reform, and municipal government, and contributed
articles on these topics to magazines. In 1909, following timber
cutting on Mt. Sunapee in New Hampshire near his summer home, Welsh
led the effort to raise funds to conserve the mountain lands. In 1911,
those funds provided for the Society for the Protection of New
Hampshire Forests to purchase 656 acres on the north slopes. Welsh led
the Sunapee Chapter of SPNHF for more than 20 years, eventually
expanding the land holding to 1185 acres, which became the bulk of
Mount Sunapee State Park,  For his health, beginning in 1915, Welsh
began to walk from his home in Philadelphia to Sunapee, New Hampshire
in June, a trek of roughly 400 miles, taking about one month and
continued until 1929 at age 78.
Welsh died on June 28, 1941, in Montpelier, Vermont.


                               Works
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*'Four Weeks Among Some of the Sioux Tribes in 1882'
*'Civilization Among the Sioux Indians'
*'A Visit to the Navajo, Pueblo, and Hualapai Indians of New Mexico
and Arizona in 1884'
*'Allotment of Lands - Defense of the Dawes Indian Severalty Bill'
(1887)
*'The Other Man's Country' (1900), a criticism of the Government's
Philippine policy.
*'[https://books.google.com/books?id=3OgNAAAAIAAJ The Action of the
Interior Department in Forcing the Standing Rock Indians to Lease
Their Lands to Cattle Syndicates]', Philadelphia: The Indian Rights
Association 1902.


                           External links
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*
*The [http://www2.hsp.org/collections/manuscripts/w/Welsh0702.html
Herbert Welsh collection], including papers covering all aspects of
his career, are available for research use at the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania.


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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Welsh