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I am working on a piece about Mark Twain and I need to obtain some contextual information for a note Twain made in 1877 (approximately) while working on Methuselah's Diary, to wit: "Put in Custer and Howard and the Peace Commissioners (Quakers) and the Modoc Lava Beds, etc. and satirize freely." Twain did not elaborate, and his views on these subjects do not appear in the Methuselah draft nor elsewhere in his writings or correspondence. What I want to know in particular is what probably is meant by the reference to "Peace Commissioners" and "Quakers." I realize that commissions were sent out fairly constantly in the 1870s to parlay with Indian groups, but I wonder what Twain specifically had in mind --a commission dealing with Chief Joseph or an earlier one, possibly in connection with Custer's "scientific" expedition to the Black Hills. Thanks Darryl Brock
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
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