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THE
AMERICAN INDIAN
IN THE
UNITED STATES
PERIOD 1850–1914
BY
WARREN K. MOOREHEAD, A.M.,
AUTHOR, “THE STONE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA,” CURATOR
OF THE DEPARTMENT OF AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY,
PHILLIPS ACADEMY, ANDOVER, MASS.; MEMBER OF
THE UNITED STATES BOARD OF INDIAN
COMMISSIONERS; FELLOW, AMERICAN
ASSOCIATION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF
SCIENCE, ETC.
THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN;
HIS POLITICAL HISTORY AND OTHER TOPICS
A PLEA FOR JUSTICE
1914
THE ANDOVER PRESS
ANDOVER, MASS.
COPYRIGHT 1914
WARREN K. MOOREHEAD
[Illustration:
RED CLOUD (MAKH-PIYA-LUTA)
War Chief of all the Sioux.
]
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
INTRODUCTION 9
I. TWO POINTS OF VIEW 17
II. THE U. S. INDIAN OFFICE IN 1913 25
III. THE INDIANS TODAY AND HON. E. E. AYER’S REPORT 31
IV. THE OJIBWA OF MINNESOTA 45
V. THE LEGAL COMPLICATIONS AT WHITE EARTH—THE DEPARTMENT OF
JUSTICE 57
VI. THE WHITE EARTH SCANDAL 66
VII. SOME INDIAN TESTIMONY AND AFFIDAVITS. SICKNESS 77
VIII. THE ROLL. STORIES. RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHITE EARTH 89
IX. THE SIOUX AND THE MESSIAH CRAZE 99
X. THE DANCE 111
XI. THE AGENCY; THE GOVERNMENT; LOUIS SHANGRAUX AND THE
TROOPS 118
XII. THE DEATH OF SITTING BULL AND A TRAGEDY AT WOUNDED KNEE 123
XIII. THE FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES 133
XIV. CAPTAIN GRAYSON’S VIEWS; MISS BARNARD’S WORK; THE MINORS’
ESTATES 148
XV. WHAT IS LEFT OF INDIAN PROPERTY IN OKLAHOMA 157
XVI. THE LEASING SYSTEM; CHOCKTAW AND CHICKASAW; FINAL
RECOMMENDATIONS 164
XVII. RED CLOUD. THE GREATEST INDIAN OF MODERN TIMES 173
XVIII. RED CLOUD’S LATER YEARS 181
XIX. SITTING BULL—THE IRRECONCILABLE 190
XX. EDUCATION 200
XXI. WHY SOME INDIANS OBJECT TO SENDING CHILDREN TO SCHOOL,
AND FURTHER COMMENTS ON EDUCATION 211
XXII. THE APACHE, PAPAGO AND PUEBLO. THE DESERT INDIAN 219
XXIII. THE CAREER OF GERONIMO 233
XXIV. THE NAVAHO 241
XXV. INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST 253
XXVI. HEALTH OF THE INDIANS 1880 TO 1912 265
XXVII. THE INDIAN’S RELIGION; HIS CHARACTER; PHILANTHROPIC
ORGANIZATIONS 279
XXVIII. IRRIGATION PROJECTS 291
XXIX. THE BUFFALO 299
XXX. THE PLAINS INDIANS FIFTY YEARS AGO AND TODAY 311
XXXI. THE INDIANS OF CALIFORNIA 325
XXXII. A STATISTICAL TABLE. PREPARED BY MEN AND WOMEN IN THE
FIELD 341
XXXIII. FARMING AND STOCK-RAISING. INDIAN FAIRS 359
XXXIV. FOUR IMPORTANT BOOKS 367
XXXV. OFFICIAL VIEWS OF INDIAN CONDITIONS 378
XXXVI. RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FROM FIELD WORKERS 387
XXXVII. THE COMMUNISTIC LIFE. INDIAN MEN AND WOMEN OF PROMINENCE.
MORALITY 399
XXXVIII. TWO STORIES. UNWISE PURCHASES 407
XXXIX. GENERAL COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS 417
XL. CONCLUSIONS 423
INDEX 435
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
Frontispiece. Red Cloud (Makh-piya-luta). War Chief of all
the Sioux
Arthur C. Parker. Iroquois. State Archaeologist of New York 19
Indian Home, Onondaga Reservation, New York 21
Map showing Country, 1879 Opp. 24
Modern Indian Home 30
Government Sawmill, Ft. Belknap Reservation, Montana 34
Map showing Country, 1913 Opp. 34
U. S. Indian School, Chilocco, Oklahoma 37
Lewis Tewanima, a Full-blood Hopi Indian 38
James Thorpe. Educated at Carlisle 39
Honorable Gabe E. Parker, Choctaw 46
Buildings, Pine Point, White Earth, Minnesota 48
Ojibwa, blind from Trachoma, Pine Point, Minnesota 52
Indian School Children in Uniform, Pine Point, White Earth,
Minnesota 55
James Bassett, Full-blood Ojibwa in Tribal Costume 58
Dispossessed Ojibwa at Rear of Agency Buildings 61
Group of Thirty Persons constituting Linnen-Moorehead Force,
White Earth Investigation, 1909 64
Ojibwa Chief, Ke-way-din, Pine Point, White Earth
Reservation, Minnesota 72
Evicted Indians, Twin Lakes, White Earth Reservation,
Minnesota, 1909 73
Rose Ellis. Full-blood Ojibwa 78
Ojibwa Graveyard, White Earth, Minnesota 92
Modern Sioux Cabin and Summer Tent, Pine Ridge, 1909 104
Government School Buildings, 1909 106
Sioux Farming. White Clay Creek, Pine Ridge, 1909 108
No Water’s Camp of Ghost Dancers, 1890 110
Ghost Dance at No Water’s Camp 114
The “Indian Gate”, Pine Ridge, 1890 122
The Catholic Mission near Wounded Knee Battlefield, Pine
Ridge 126
Monument in Memory of the Chief Big Foot Massacre, Sioux 131
Cherokee Female Seminary at Talequah, Oklahoma 138
Chief Plenty Coups Opp. 143
Cherokee Male Academy near Talequah, Oklahoma 146
Shack of a Poor Creek Indian, Oklahoma, 1913 155
Old-style Cabin, 1850–1890. Cherokee. Oklahoma 158
Chief Keen-Fa-Chy addressing the Council Opp. 168
Red Cloud and Professor Marsh 176
Jack Red Cloud Opp. 180
The Hide Hunter’s Work, 40,000 Buffalo Hides, Dodge City,
Kansas. 1876 182
The Last Arrow Opp. 188
Dr. Charles A. Eastman, Sioux 202
Class in Agriculture, Chilocco Indian School 208
Improved Indian Home in the Southwest 215
Pima Home, Arizona 222
The Voice of the Water Spirits Opp. 226
Indian Buildings of Recent Construction 228
Southern Ute, Colorado 231
Geronimo 234
Pomo Woman Weaving a Twined Basket, California 239
Navaho Silversmith and His Outfit 244
Red Goat and His Mother, Navaho, 1902 246
Navaho Winter Hogan 250
Modern Indian House, Oklahoma 251
Exhibit of Grain, Vegetables and Fruits, Bead-work and
Baskets 256
Indian Pack Train in the Mountains 259
The Challenge. Nez Perce Warrior 262
Sanitorium School, Fort Lapwai, Idaho 266
Aged Woman now nearly blind from Trachoma 269
A Tuberculosis Patient 272
National Indian Association Hospital at Indian Wells, Arizona 275
Indian Cabin, North Dakota 276
Rev. Sherman Coolidge, Arapaho 278
Navaho Woman Weaving a Blanket 290
Navaho Home, New Mexico 294
Rincon Reservation, Mission Indians, California 297
U. S. Cavalry attacking Black Kettle’s Village 302
The Hide Hunter 306
Creek Church and Camp-meeting Ground 309
Oglala Woman Opp. 314
Better Class of Full-blood Indians of Thirty Years Ago 320
Linguistic Stocks in California 328
Colored Blanket (title on plate) Opp. 343
Leupp Hall, Students’ Dining Room. Chilocco Indian School,
Oklahoma 362
Indians Receiving Instruction in Plumbing. Haskell Institute,
Kansas 364
Navaho Summer Hogan 365
A Full-blood Sioux Girl, 1888 370
Seminole Indian Houses and Cyclone Cellar, Oklahoma 374
Indians Commercial Department 376
Class in Domestic Arts. Haskell Indian School, Kansas 382
Mourning the Dead 385
Conference of Indian Y. M. C. A. Students at Denver, Colorado 386
Creek Man and Woman cutting Wood, Sylvian, Oklahoma, 1913 393
Alaskan Indian Children 396
Portrait of Bay-bah-dwun-gay-aush 398
The Last Outpost Opp. 403
Large Indian House 404
Carlisle Indian School Buildings 406
Carlisle Indian School Campus 412
Ojibwa Woman Dying of Consumption 416
President Grant’s Medal to Red Cloud 419
Miss Kate Barnard of Oklahoma 426
Chief Peo-peo-tolekt. Nez Perce Warrior 430
The Fading Sunset Opp. 433
INTRODUCTION
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
With some diffidence I present a history of the American Indian during
the transition period.
Excepting two or three bulletins, and some public addresses, all my
publications have dealt with archaeological subjects, and the Indian of
the past.[1] A study of the Indian of this country, during recent years,
seems to indicate that at no time in his history has he faced a more
critical situation than that which confronts him today.
A helpful understanding of him and his needs is vastly more important
than further scientific study.
In writing this book it has been difficult to select that which should
be published. A wealth of material relating to the complex life of
modern Indians and their affairs was offered. The comparisons between
tribes of today and a century ago present an absorbing field for study.
I have frequently with difficulty checked myself, as it was more easy
and pleasant to speak of the past rather than of modern days.
It is comparatively simple to record existing Indian customs still
surviving in out-of-the-way corners of the United States. But such do
not represent the present cultural state of the Indian as a whole. As my
book aimed at a correct perspective of the Indians today, the inclusion
of such matter and the exclusion of the widespread Indian activities in
other directions, might result in a distorted perspective—certainly the
picture (while more pleasing) would not be true to life. It will be
observed by readers, that while I have generally described the
activities of modern Indians, that the real purpose of the book is to
bring before the American public the acuteness of the Indian problem,
and to suggest certain recommendations.
A perusal of the following chapters will acquaint readers with all the
facts—how that the Indian has been hurried into citizenship. We have
changed his entire life within the space of a few generations and forced
upon him serious problems. In fact, we have brought about so stupendous
a change in his life, that his very existence is threatened. As will be
indicated, much of the old life obtains in spite of all our civilizing
influences. While this is true, the preponderance of evidence indicates
that the greater majority of our Indians have passed into the
transitional state. Whether they shall become upright, self-supporting,
intelligent American citizens, depends upon our attitude rather than
upon them.
Since we have brought about the extinction of tribal and communistic
life among the Indians, absolute responsibility for the future of the
Indian rests with us. In the olden days, under the general tribal life,
the Indians were able to band together and protect themselves. Now that
most of our reservations have been cut up, and the Indians placed upon
individual farms, it is impossible for them to join in any movement for
self-protection. They are now citizens, rather than members of a tribe.
Hence, it is quite easy for unscrupulous white persons to take advantage
of them. While we thought we were acting in the best interests of the
Indian, what we really did, was to destroy natural barriers which
formerly kept out the enemy.
One should not object to, or find fault with an established policy,
unless one offered a constructive policy in the place of that which he
sought to destroy. I have, therefore, pointed out in my Conclusions
what, in my opinion, must be done would we save the Indian.
INDIAN ART AND OLD INDUSTRIES
The arts and industries of the Indians (barring a few exceptions) have
been modified by contact with the Whites. As an illustration, the
beadwork of the Ojibwa, Malecite, Penobscot, Iroquois and others is very
different from the art of two centuries ago. Basketry still obtains, but
except on the Pacific coast and in the Southwest, much of the textile
work is influenced by European culture, and I have therefore omitted a
consideration of Indian art in general.
In the chapter on the Navaho there was reference to the extensive
blanket industry of that people. There is no danger of the blanket
industry becoming extinct, although it may deteriorate because certain
well-meaning, but misguided persons desire to superintend the Navaho
art.
The basketry is threatened with extinction. The manufacture of beadwork,
moccasins and Indian garments continues in various sections of the
country, but has become modernized in design and manufacture. With the
scarcity of deer, elk and buffalo, substitutes are now employed. This is
observed in so common an article as moccasins—which are far inferior to
those in use fifty years ago.
When Honorable R. G. Valentine was Commissioner, I made a somewhat
lengthy report on the possibilities of aboriginal art, or manufacture,
as a commercial asset to the Indians. I recommended that the old basket
and blanket weavers, and the few remaining Indians who are skilled in
making bead designs, moccasins, and other articles, be encouraged in
their native arts. I recommended to the Commissioner that he establish a
Bureau of Arts and Industries somewhat different from that one
maintained at the present time. That the older men and women should be
encouraged to make their baskets and blankets as in olden days, and that
these should be marketed through certain agencies and the profits accrue
to the Indians. I took the position that it was useless to attempt to
instruct young Indians in the arts of their parents. That these persons
were properly instructed in the great Indian schools, but that the true
expression of aboriginal art was found among the few, old, self-taught
persons. Art cannot be superintended, and if we continue such a course
we will destroy what remains and have in its place that which is the
opposite of true art. Our attempt to “teach” the Indians music ended in
failure.
The Indian Office should encourage the old art-workers to make their
products in their own way with absolutely no supervision upon our part.
A PROPHECY VERIFIED
Events have moved rapidly of late, and as the Introduction proofs come
back from my publishers, the press dispatches from Washington announce
the appointment of Honorable Gabe E. Parker as Commissioner to the Five
Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma. Mr. Parker is one of the brightest of our
educated Indians. Miss Barnard has just informed me that her successor
in the Department of Charities and Corrections has been named. With
these changes, Mr. Mott’s remarkable prophecy of last February (_See p.
163_) is with one exception, completely verified.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many persons, and a number of governmental Departments, to
whom I am especially indebted. When I began the preparation of this
manuscript nearly a year ago, I explained to officials in the United
States Indian Office, Department of Justice, Smithsonian Institution,
Indian Rights Association, and other organizations that I intended to
prepare a history of the Indian of the transition period. It was made
clear that a history must contain both the good and the bad; that a mere
description of school activities and progress in arts and industries,
would result in confirming the public in the present erroneous, but
widespread opinion, that all our Indians are properly cared for,
protected, and really becoming self-supporting.
Great credit must be given to various officials and private citizens for
their earnest cooperation. The subject was a delicate one for them to
handle. Taking everything into consideration, I have clearly indicated
that the present unsatisfactory condition of our Indians grew up through
a gradual process of evolution. We must not select the administration of
Mr. Morgan, or that of Messrs. Leupp and Valentine, or the present one,
under Mr. Sells, and state—“It was under this regime that the Indian
began to lose his property.” Beginning fifty years ago, the evolution
proceeded regularly, but irresistibly, until it terminated in the
bureaucracy of present times. No particular administration, and no group
of men are to blame.
Honorable Cato Sells, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and Honorable E.
B. Meritt, Assistant Commissioner, both instructed under-officials to
afford me every possible courtesy in the preparation of this book, and I
am greatly indebted to both of them.
To Mr. Rodman Wanamaker and Dr. Joseph K. Dixon, I express thanks for
the permission to reproduce photogravure plates illustrating the Indian
of fifty years ago. Messrs. Doubleday Page & Co., publishers of Dr.
Dixon’s book, “The Vanishing Race”, were good enough to make the
impressions.
Mr. George Wharton James and his publishers, A. C. McClurg & Co.,
permitted me to reproduce a fine, colored Navaho blanket and an
illustration of a weaver, from “Indian Blankets and Their Makers”. Mr.
J. Weston Allen of Boston also rendered me valuable assistance. The
Carlisle School, Haskell Institute, and the United States Indian School,
Chilocco, furnished information regarding their work, loaned me several
plates and sent photographs. I have thanked the Superintendents in the
list on this and the next page.
Mr. C. E. Kelsey of California; Mr. Grant Foreman of Oklahoma; Capt. G.
W. Grayson of Oklahoma, and L. V. McWhorter of Washington, have my
special thanks for contributing pages to this book. I also am indebted
to Hon. F. H. Abbott, Secretary of the Board of Indian Commissioners,
for information; Mr. M. K. Sniffen for Alaskan notes, and Miss Kate
Barnard, Mr. M. L. Mott and H. C. Phillips for suggestions.
In addition to the above I am indebted to many other persons, all of
whom contributed more or less information. The list of these follows:
Miss Caroline W. Andrus of Hampton, Va.; Mr. Marshall C. Allaben of New
York City; Mr. Edgar A. Allen of Chilocco, Oklahoma; Mr. Benjamin W.
Arnold of Albany, N. Y.; Hon. Edward E. Ayer of Chicago; Mr. S. L.
Bacon; Mr. A. F. Beard of New York City; Dr. Carl B. Boyd; Major John R.
Brennan of Pine Ridge, So. Dak.; Hon. John B. Brown of Muskogee, Okla.;
Dr. Charles M. Buchanan of Tulalip, Wash.; Rev. Eugene Buechel, S. J.;
Miss Gertrude A. Campbell; Mr. W. S. Campbell; Rev. Aaron B. Clark; Rev.
John W. Clark of New York City; Hon. P. P. Claxton of Washington, D. C.;
Miss Mary C. Collins; Mr. Charles E. Dagenett of Washington, D. C.; Mr.
Ira C. Deaver; Rev. P. Flor Digman, S. J.; Dr. Fred Dillon; Rev. George
D. Doyle; Dr. Charles A. Eastman of Amherst, Mass.; Mr. J. R. Eddy; Mr.
F. E. Farrell; Mr. E. R. Forrest of Washington, Pa.; Hon. A. N. Frost of
Lawrence, Mass.: Mrs. Bella McCallum Gibbons; Mr. H. V. Hailman; Hon. C.
F. Hauke of Washington, D. C.; Rev. Aloysius Hermanutz, O.S.B.; Dr. F.
W. Hodge of Washington, D. C.; Rev. Roman Homar, O.S.B.; Rev. Alexander
Hood; Rev. Ebenezer Hotchkin; Major John R. Howard of White Earth,
Minn.; Mr. Seth K. Humphrey of Boston; Mr. H. Huson of Oklahoma City,
Okla.; Rev. Julius Jette, S. J., of Tanana, Alaska; Hon. Dana H. Kelsey
of Muskogee, Okla.; Rev. William H. Ketcham; Rev. Bruce Kinney, D. D.,
of Topeka, Kan.; Mr. Wm. C. Kohlenberg; Mr. J. T. Lafferty of Winfield,
Kas.; Dr. A. D. Lake; Rev. Simon Lampel, O. S. B.; Hon. Franklin K. Lane
of Washington, D. C.; Hon. E. B. Linnen of Washington, D. C.; Mr. G.
Elmer E. Lindquist of Lawrence, Kas.; Hon. O. H. Lipps of Washington, D.
C.; Rt. Rev. Arthur S. Lloyd, D. D., of New York City; Colonel J. S.
Lockwood of Boston, Mass.; Mr. Charles F. Lummis of Los Angeles; Mr.
Arthur E. McFatridge; Mr. David L. Maxwell; Mr. A. P. Miller; Mr. John
M. Moore of Nashville, Tenn.; Rev. S. L. Morris, D. D., of Atlanta, Ga.;
Rev. George de la Motte, S. J.; Dr. Joseph A. Murphy of Washington, D.
C.; Rev. J. S. Murrow; Mr. A. F. Nicholson; Mr. A. S. Nichelson; Mr. E.
C. O’Brien of Washington, D. C.; Mr. Arthur C. Parker of Albany, N. Y.;
Mr. Henry W. Parker of Boston; Rev. Herman F. Parshall; Dr. Charles
Peabody of Cambridge, Mass.; Mr. H. B. Peairs of Washington, D. C.; Mr.
Charles E. Pierce of Flandreau, So. Dak.; Rev. W. A. Petzoldt; Rev. W.
B. Pinkerton; Mr. J. Harvey Randall; Mr. G. W. Reed; Rev. John Robinson;
Rev. Fridolin Schuster, O. F. M.; Rev. Simon Schwarz; Rev. Paul de
Schweinitz of Bethlehem, Pa.; Mr. W. W. Scott; Mr. John H. Seger of
Clinton, Okla.; Mr. Theodore Sharp; Miss Frances C. Sparhawk of Hyde
Park, Mass.; Mr. Ernest Stecker; Rev. W. E. Stevenson; Rev. Bernard
Strassmaier; Mr. Edward L. Swartzlander; The Editors of the _North
American Review_; Miss Eliza W. Thackara; Mr. Frank A. Thackery of
Sacaton, Ariz.; Mr. Harry H. Treat; Rev. Edward F. Van Waerbergh; Hon.
George Vaux, Jr., of Philadelphia; Rev. Chrystom Vermyst, O. F. M.; Dr.
W. W. Wallace of Farmington, N. M.; Rev. Anselm Weber, O. F. M.; Mr.
William H. Weinland; Mr. M. M. Welch of Atlanta, Ga.; Rev. Charles L.
White, D. D., of New York City; Mr. H. C. Wilson; Mr. John R. Wise of
Lawrence, Kan.; Mr. E. M. Wistar of Philadelphia, Pa.; Rev. C. A. Woody,
D. D.; Hon. J. George Wright of Muskogee, Okla.; Mr. Robert M. Wright of
Dodge City, Kas.
A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OMITTED
It is difficult, if not almost impossible, to compile a satisfactory
bibliography relating to Indians and Indian affairs between the years
1850 and 1914. Aside from reports emanating from officials and
Departments, the largest body of literature is that dealing with the
ethnology of existing tribes. Under the term ethnology would be included
several divisions of the science. Most of the ethnologic works, reports
and papers fall within no specified dates. Hence, a paper may cover one
or two centuries, or it might be confined to some aboriginal activity in
modern times. To compile a bibliography restricted to governmental
reports, books by individuals, addresses, special articles, etc.,
concerning the administration of Indian affairs, and omitting scientific
books and papers, is unsatisfactory and quite incomplete. I therefore
omitted a general bibliography, although I cite some 150 books, reports
and addresses. To readers who may desire to pursue the subject further,
I would suggest that in addition to the Handbook of American Indians,
there are the publications of the Smithsonian Institution and Bureau of
Ethnology, Washington. A large number of reports have been issued by
these scientific institutions the past forty years, and they cover
practically all activities of many of our Indian tribes. The American
Anthropologist (1888–1914) will be found to contain valuable papers upon
the language, folk-lore, religion, philology and general ethnology of
modern tribes. The Handbook of American Indians contains a bibliography
of more than forty-two pages in length.
Indian songs and music are presented in a large volume in a most
attractive manner by Miss Nathalie Curtis. Basketry and blankets are
described by Professor Mason and Mr. G. W. James. Dr. Charles A.
Eastman’s books of Indian life are excellent—and there are many others.
These in addition to the Smithsonian, Bureau of Ethnology, Handbook, and
Anthropologist cited, will afford readers an abundance of material.
CORRECTIONS
After [Chapters I-XXX] had been printed, Commissioner Sells notified me
that through a typographical error on [page 27], the 600,000 acres of
irrigable lands had become 6,000,000! It would be exceedingly gratifying
could we claim that the Indians had under cultivation 6,000,000 acres,
but as the sum total is but 600,000, I cite the correction.
On [page 25], last paragraph, fourth line, “under the Chiefs of
Divisions”; should be, “in the various Divisions”.
[Page 112], second paragraph from bottom, fifth line: “witnessed many of
these dances”, should be “witnessed many different dances”.
[Page 217]. It was necessary to omit a special chapter devoted to
agriculture for the reason that in various places in the book the
industries of modern Indians were commented on at length. In [Chapter
XXXIII], Farming and Stock Raising, it was thought best to omit the
bibliography. Therefore, the last sentence in the paragraph should read,
“These cover, in a general way, all phases of education.”
[Page 247]. Last paragraph. “John T. Shelton” should be, “William T.
Shelton”.
[Page 252], center of page: Parquette, should be Paquette.
-----
Footnote 1:
A bibliography of these will be found in “The Stone Age in North
America.” Vol. II, pages 408–410.
CHAPTER I. TWO POINTS OF VIEW
The American Indian may be regarded from two wide and divergent points
of view; that of the scientist, and that of the humanitarian. Under the
former should be grouped all study of the Indian, past and present,
falling under the general science of anthropology, and its various
divisions and sub-divisions. This includes the study of the Indian as a
primitive man belonging to the Red Race, and different from all other
races on the face of the earth. This view comprises archaeology,
physical anthropology, ethnology, folklore, religion, etc.
The second, under the general title of humanitarianism, includes all
progress, education, missionary endeavor, and that which may be summed
up under the title Civilization, or as the modernists have it, “Social
Service.”
After much thought, it occurs to me that we must view the Indian from
these two and quite opposed angles—the scientific, the philanthropic.
The average man or woman is not interested in the Indian from the point
of view of the scientist. This is quite natural. But, persons of
intelligence are interested in the Indian as a strange and peculiar
individual. He appeals to their imagination. The public has had
presented to it during past years, great numbers of books, pamphlets and
articles all dealing with the Indian, and most of them regard him from
what is known as “the popular point of view.” Having read, or glanced
through scores of these, it is my firm conviction that, after all, we
have not properly understood the Indian.
The scientists have made him the subject of technical study, beginning
with the generalities of two centuries ago and continuing down to the
minutest of detail of modern investigations. Through our records of
wars, and our sensational articles, we have been given the impression
that his days were spent in fighting, and his nights in war dances. To
the scientist he has appeared, not as a man, but as a bit of life to be
dissected and preserved; or a specimen duly catalogued, described, and
placed in an exhibition case. To the average man or woman, influenced by
sensational books, and degrading wild-west shows, and that modern
invention, the motion picture, he presents a figure as unreal as it is
unhuman.
The Indian of today, with few exceptions, having lost his aboriginal
characteristics, the faith of his fathers and his whole life changed, is
indeed, a fit subject for the educator, the philanthropist, and the
social reformer.
Would one desire to understand this very peculiar race of red men, one
should begin his study by observing the Indian of today. And his
observation should cover the character, activities and condition of this
Indian of modern times. He should regard him not merely through the
cold, unsympathetic eyes of the scientist, who looks for survival of
savage or primitive customs, but in a larger and broader sense. To begin
with, everyone should realize that the survivors of the American race[2]
are more in need today of protection and help than of scientific study.
From a purely scientific point of view, the Indian has been pretty
thoroughly studied the past fifty years. This statement of mine does not
necessarily imply that there should be no technical study of the
American Indian in these present days. But as between the work of the
scientist and that of the humanitarian the Indian is vastly more in need
of the latter than of the former.
In the belief that our studies of the American Indian have so progressed
that one may now consider the race in its entirety, I have set myself
the rather ambitious task of preparing a number of volumes treating of
the American Indian of the present and past. After much deliberation it
has occurred to me that the Indian of today should be first
considered—hence this volume. At the outset, we find that generally
speaking the Indian throughout the United States although maintaining
much of his original speech, and in places some of his aboriginal
characteristics, yet, as a whole, he is in the transition period.
Our native Americans are, and have been, a remarkable people. Their very
manner of life, their striking and picturesque costumes, their peculiar
color and their diversified languages seem to have challenged the
attention of explorers, travelers, priests and scientists. It is to be
doubted if there is another aboriginal race, on the face of the earth,
concerning which more books, articles and reports have been published.
In Europe, as well as in America, the Indian is celebrated in song and
story, yet since the discovery of America his domination has gradually
diminished, and the period of his greatest activity (since the advent of
the white race) is very short lived compared with that of other tribes
of men. From 1500 to 1700, he may be said to have controlled a
sufficient extent of the United States and Canada, to dominate it. His
power after the year 1700 rapidly diminished, and in 1800 we find that
he did not control any large areas save west of the Mississippi and west
of Lake Superior. Up to the year 1865, he dominated a large portion of
the West, South West and North West. From 1880 down to the present time,
his sun has rapidly declined and he may be said today to have passed out
of the tribal estate, to have ceased to be a factor in national life as
a separate race. He is rapidly becoming merged into our larger body of
citizens, and while some thousands of Indians (perhaps 45,000) live and
think in the past, the great majority of Indians, like the great
majority of foreign immigrants, belong to the body politic.
[Illustration:
ARTHUR C. PARKER
Iroquois. State Archaeologist of New York; Secretary Society American
Indians.
]
So, we consider the majority in this study of the Indian, rather than
the minority; leaving that fraction to the scientist.
If we are consistent in the statement that we shall begin with the
present and work backward into the past, we must consider in this volume
the activities and the life of the modern Indian, and the modern Indian
being in the transition period presents us very little in the way of
folklore and traditions. A careful study of the recent reports of
ethnological investigators emphasizes this truth. The writers have
invariably sought out the _older_ Indians, for the very good reason that
they knew much concerning the past. The greater number of Indians—the
middle-aged and young, and the thousands of educated Indians—are not
able to furnish material such as scientific investigators seek. A
confirmation of my statement will be found in that excellent memoir,
“Chippewa Music,” by Miss Frances Densmore. This was published by the
Bureau of Ethnology in 1913. In this worthy publication, denoting much
research, Miss Densmore is dependent on the older people for her
information. Even these older persons, as they appear in the photographs
accompanying the book, are dressed in garments such as are worn by white
persons. Many of these Indians (as in the case of other tribes) keep a
few old war bonnets, buckskin coats, moccasins, leggings, embroidered
belts, etc., with which they adorn themselves on state-occasions, but
their natural dress today, is European in character. Not only in Miss
Densmore’s book but in the reports of other investigators in the United
States, where a group of Indians are assembled, one observes more
evidence of European than native American costumes. It is frequently (if
not usually) necessary to ask the Indians to put on their tribal
costumes, and sometimes they are compelled to borrow a garment here and
there among their friends in order to make up properly. There naturally
arises the pertinent question—are not modern Indians so saturated with
civilization that their opinions of tribal customs of past decades
should be accepted with due reserve? This important question should be
considered by some one of our numerous writers on Indian topics.
The two maps presented opposite pages 25 and 35, will bring home to
readers the tremendous shrinkage of Indian lands during the short space
of thirty-five years.
The map, presented by Commissioner Sells in his report for 1913, as
contrasted to the map of 1879, shows that the Indian reservations have
been cut down to at least one-third. The population in the year 1881
will be found in small figures on each area given on the map. It will be
seen by comparing the period of 1879 with 1913, that the Navaho have
greatly increased, and also the tribes now living in Oklahoma (formerly
Indian Territory). Others have either diminished, or show slight
increases.
[Illustration:
INDIAN HOME, ONONDAGA RESERVATION, NEW YORK
]
The increases are due to growth of the mixed-blood elements, to white
men marrying Indian women.[3] The allotment plan, the accumulation of
tribal funds, the increase in property values—all these factors induced
many persons to “get on the Indian rolls” and thus swell the numbers;
while the pure-blood Navahos are increasing, I doubt if other tribes
show growth—save in the mixed-blood element referred to above.
Certainly these two maps present us with facts for serious study. They
indicate the rapidity with which the Red Race’s property is being
legislated away. Many reservations have been abolished, and the Indians
allotted land in severalty. If the Indians held such lands as white men
hold their farms, the whole Indian area today would be as large as
formerly, even though reservation lines are abolished. Some do hold
their lands. But most of them sell, lease, or mortgage; the maps, after
all, tell the sad truth, and the erasure of governmental lines usually
means the blotting out of Indian titles.
TABLE 1.—INDIAN POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES
FROM 1850 TO 1913
Year Authority
1850 Report of H. R. Schoolcraft 388,229
1853 Report of United States Census, 1850 400,764
1855 Report of Indian Office 314,622
1857 Report of H. R. Schoolcraft 379,264
1860 Report of Indian Office 254,300
1865 do 294,574
1870 Report of United States Census 313,712
1875 do 305,068
1876 do 291,882
1877 do 276,540
1878 do 276,595
1879 do 278,628
1880 do 322,534
1881 do 328,258
1882 Report of Indian Office 326,039
1883 do 331,972
1884 do 330,776
1885 do 344,064
1886 do 334,735
1887 do 243,299
1888 do 246,036
1889 do 250,483
1890 Report of United States Census 248,253
1891 Report of Indian Office 246,834
1892 do 248,340
1893 do 249,366
1894 do 251,907
1895 do 248,340
1896 do 248,354
1897 do 248,813
1898 do 262,965
1899 do 267,905
1900 do 270,544
1901 do 269,388
1902 do 270,238
1903 do 263,233
1904 do 274,206
1905 do 284,079
1906 do 291,581
1907 do 298,472
1908 do 300,412
1909 do 300,545
1910 do 304,950
1911 do 322,715
1912 do 327,425
1913 do 330,639
TABLE 2.—INDIAN POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES, EXCLUSIVE OF ALASKA,
JUNE 30, 1913
(Figures compiled from reports of Indian School superintendents,
supplemented by information from 1910 census for localities in which no
Indian Office representative is located.)
Grand total 330,639
———————
Five Civilized Tribes, including freedmen and
intermarried whites 101,216
By blood 75,253
By Intermarriage 2,582
Freedman 23,381
Exclusive of Five Civilized Tribes 229,423
———————
Grand total 330,639
INDIAN POPULATION BY STATES AND
TERRITORIES, 1913
Alabama 909
Arizona 41,505
Arkansas 460
California 16,513
Colorado 870
Connecticut 152
Delaware 5
District of Columbia 68
Florida 600
Georgia 95
Idaho 4,089
Illinois 188
Indiana 279
Iowa 365
Kansas 1,345
Kentucky 231
Louisiana 780
Maine 892
Maryland 55
Massachusetts 688
Michigan 7,512
Minnesota 11,338
Mississippi 1,253
Missouri 313
Montana 11,331
Nebraska 3,890
Nevada 7,756
New Hampshire 34
New Jersey 168
New York 6,029
New Mexico 21,725
North Carolina 7,945
North Dakota 8,538
Ohio 127
Oklahoma 117,274[4]
Oregon 6,414
Rhode Island 284
South Carolina 20,555
South Dakota 20,555
Tennessee 216
Texas 702
Utah 3,231
Vermont 26
Virginia 539
Washington 11,335
West Virginia 36
Wisconsin 9,930
Wyoming 1,715
It will be observed that between 1850 and 1887 there is wide difference
of opinion as to the number of Indians. In 1886 there were 334,000
Indians, whereas in ’87 the number is given as 243,000. This must be due
to faulty enumeration, or to estimating rather than counting. The
gradual increase from 1898 to 1913 is for the reason assigned, page 21.
In the table presented by Commissioner Sells it will be observed that
the Indians have made some progress along various industrial directions.
As he has grouped under a total valuation of $22,238,242, all the
horses, cattle, hogs and sheep raised by the Indians, it is difficult to
compare this table with those of 1879–1881. I present tables of those
years prepared long ago by the Board of Indian Commissioners and
published by them February 1st, 1882. It will be seen that the number of
acres under cultivation are about the same thirty-two years ago as at
the present time. In 1881 there were over 2,000,000 head of stock owned
by Indians. The value of sheep would reduce an average of $10 per head,
horses and cattle would raise it. Some horses might be worth as high as
$50, most of them would average $15. Cattle would range from $15 to $25
per head at that time. Mules would be higher, while hogs might be
averaged at $8 per head, and sheep, $2. We might strike an average of
$10 per head, which would amount to $20,000,000. In view of the present
increased value of livestock, the $22,000,000 worth of property and
livestock at the present time cannot amount to more than 2,000,000 head.
(_See [page 29]_)
I think the slight increase noted in the 1912 table is due to the
progress of certain Indian tribes (notably the Navaho) and the increased
money value per head of stock. It does not mean that the Indians own
more “live” property today than they did in 1881.
All of this, it is understood, is no reflection on the Honorable
Commissioner or his able assistants. It merely indicates that the
Indians, as a body, have not progressed to the extent that we would
desire.
════╤════════════╤═════════════════════════════════════
│ Acreage │ CROPS RAISED BY INDIANS
│agricultural│
│ lands │
│ cultivated │
│ by Indians │
────┼────────────┼───────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────
│ │ Hay │Corn Tons│Wheat Bu.│Oats and
│ │ Tons │ │ │ Barley
│ │ │ │ │ Bu.
────┼────────────┼───────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────
1912│ 558,503│158,478│1,525,334│1,343,213│1,001,504
────┼────────────┼───────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────
1904│ 365,469│405,629│ 949,815│ 750,788│1,246,460
────┼────────────┼───────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────
1898│ 352,217│215,163│1,339,444│ 664,930│ 599,665
────┴────────────┴───────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────
════╤════════════════════════════════
│ STOCK OWNED BY INDIANS
│
│
│
│
────┼───────┬───────┬──────┬─────────
│Horses │Cattle │Swine │ Sheep
│ │ │ │
│ │ │ │
────┼───────┴───────┴──────┴─────────
1912│ [5]$22,238,242
────┼───────┬───────┬──────┬─────────
1904│295,466│297,611│40,898│ 792,620
────┼───────┼───────┼──────┼─────────
1898│328,866│214,474│37,359│1,041,315
────┴───────┴───────┴──────┴─────────
[Illustration:
Map showing
INDIAN RESERVATIONS
in the United States
West of the 83^{rd}. Meridian
and
NUMBER OF INDIANS
belonging thereto
1879
]
-----
Footnote 2:
We are Americans by adoption. The real American race is the Indian.
Footnote 3:
Excepting the Navaho.
Footnote 4:
Includes 23,381 freedmen and 2,582 intermarried whites.
Footnote 5:
Commissioner Sells gives in his 1912 report only the value of the
stock owned, whereas in 1904 and 1898 the number is given.
CHAPTER II—THE U.S. INDIAN OFFICE IN 1913
The Bureau of Indian Affairs was organized in 1824, and was under the
War Department. On March 3, 1849, the Interior Department took over the
management of the Indians. Since 1832, there have been 31 Commissioners
of Indian Affairs. The longest tenure of office was that held by
Honorable Wm. A. Jones.
The present Commissioner is Honorable Cato Sells of Texas, who took
charge June 4, 1913. Mr. Sells has already inaugurated a new and
progressive policy and his work is highly commended by every person
having the welfare of the Indians at heart.[6] A splendid tribute has
been paid him by M. K. Sniffen, Esq., Corresponding Secretary of the
Indian Rights Association. Honorable Edgar B. Meritt, who has served
faithfully for many years, is Assistant Commissioner.
There are in addition to these high officers, Second Assistant
Commissioner, Honorable C. F. Hauke; and Honorable E. B. Linnen, Chief
of the Inspection Service. I have always considered the Inspection
Service the most important of all. It is therefore very satisfactory
that we have as Chief of the Division, a man who has had twenty-five
years’ experience as Inspector and former Secret Service official. And
right here, I wish to state that if the Inspection Service had been
efficient in past years, the horrible scandals in Minnesota, Oklahoma
and elsewhere never would have occurred.
There are Chiefs of Divisions in education, land and finance; Chief
Supervisors of schools, health, industries, irrigation, forestry and
construction. There are ten Supervisors and eight Special Agents serving
in the various Divisions. The roster of officers for this year contains
the names of hundreds of conscientious and competent men and women
scattered throughout the entire West and in Washington, whose sole
purpose is to make of these Indians good American citizens. No one who
has investigated the Indian situation as it presents itself today can do
other than accord to all these persons the full meed of praise. They
labor under great disadvantages. If they are radical, they call down
upon their heads the wrath of those who covet Indian lands; if they are
conservative, the officials of various benevolent organizations accuse
them of aiding and abetting the grafters in their nefarious work. If a
single mistake is made—though unintentional—it is pointed out by some
disgruntled person living in the Indian country. The complications, the
situation, and the opposition which they are called upon to face might
well cause many of their critics to timidly decline to exchange places
with them.
I am entirely sincere in the above statement. Because it has been my
unpleasant duty to point out needed reforms—not to use a stronger term—a
few good people have imagined that I criticised the personnel of the
Indian Service. That would be not only unkind, but also unjust, and in
all that I have published, written or spoken, I have never thought to
criticize any man or woman save those who were engaged in defrauding
Indians.
As will be presented in the final chapter of this book, the Indian
Office machinery is efficient, and the personnel competent. The only
question—and it is a great question—is whether our manufactured product
is what it should be. Our machines are perfect, but do we run them
properly?
The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Mr. Sells, issued a valuable report
December 8, 1913. It covers the period from July 1, 1912, to June 30,
1913. In order that we may grasp the full significance of the work being
done by the Indian Office, and the magnitude of the problems confronting
us, it is necessary to present some statistics, taken from this report.
There are some 6,000 employees in the Indian Service, and 330,639
Indians. Among the Indians are included a great many mixed bloods and
persons who have married Indian women. This swells the total, as I have
pointed out on Page 21.
The property of these Indians is estimated by the Commissioner to be
worth nearly $900,000,000. As competent observers in the State of
Oklahoma claim the Indians have property there rising $500,000,000 in
value, it is my candid opinion, after considering the Navaho, Crow,
Sioux, Yakima, Apache and all other lands, minerals, timber, etc., in
the United States, that the sum is probably nearer $1,200,000,000. There
is also in the United States Treasury some $48,848,744 in cash.
There has been appropriated since the year 1881, and including the year
1914, this generous sum for the education, allotting, protection of
Indians and the maintenance of the thousands of employees in the Indian
Service, viz:—$263,623,004.01. This enormous sum properly and wisely
expended from the year 1881 to the present time would have solved the
Indian problem in the United States. But two great obstacles stood in
the way—the politician in the East and the grafter in the West. The
Honorable Commissioner cannot state in his report that it is due to
these two influences that our Indian history is, beyond question, the
darkest page in the general American history, but such a statement is
absolutely correct.
Of these 330,000 Indians, 180,000 have received farms, or as the Indian
Office calls them, allotments. 34,000,000 acres have been used for this
purpose and there remain 39,000,000 acres. The Commissioner states that
the timber held by Indians is worth $80,000,000.
Since 1876 the Government has spent $80,000,000 for schools and
education, and there are now 223 Indian day schools on or near Indian
communities; 76 boarding-schools on reservations and 35 non-reservation
schools. There are 65,000 Indian children, and all go to school save
17,500 who are either defectives or unprovided for.
There are 25,000 Indians suffering from tuberculosis; yet there are but
300 beds in all the Indian hospitals. This is a condition that would not
be tolerated outside of an Indian community in the United States, for
twenty-four hours. Thirty-two per cent of the Indian deaths are due to
pulmonary tuberculosis as against 12.02 per cent among the white people
of the United States. 60,000 Indians suffer from trachoma. This eye
disease was introduced by the lower class of European immigrants and it
spread throughout nearly every Indian community.
“I find that the Indians have more than 600,000 acres of irrigable land,
approximately 9,000,000 acres of other agricultural lands, more than
50,000,000 acres grazing lands, and that the Government has expended
approximately $10,000,000 in connection with Indian irrigation projects.
“Many able-bodied Indians who have valuable lands are wholly or
partially without seeds, teams, implements, and other equipment to
utilize properly such lands. This is particularly true in several
reservations where large sums of public or tribal funds have been used
in constructing irrigation systems, and is in part the reason why such
large areas of irrigable and other agricultural lands are not under
cultivation.
“The valuable grazing lands of the Indians offer unusual opportunities
for increasing the meat supply of the country, at the same time
furnishing a profitable employment for the Indians as well as utilizing
their valuable grazing lands. During the last year the Indians
cultivated less than 600,000 acres of their vast area of agricultural
lands.
“It shall be my purpose to attempt to procure reimbursable
appropriations so as to advance to the Indians needed agricultural
equipment in order that they may make beneficial use of their resources
and become self-supporting and progressive citizens. These reimbursable
appropriations, if procured and properly used, will result in ultimately
decreasing the gratuity appropriations for Indians.”[7]
Commissioner Sells very wisely emphasizes agricultural work,
stock-raising and cooperation with the United States Department of
Agriculture. He calls attention to the enormous number of lands leased
by the Indians to white men, for agricultural purposes.
One of the most interesting and illuminating sections in the report is,
to my mind, the table number 7: “General data for each Indian
reservation, under what agency or school, tribes occupying or belonging
to it, area not allotted or specially reserved, and authority for its
establishment, to Nov. 3, 1913.”
A study of this table indicates that tracts of these lands have been
sold under various acts of Congress. The statements appear: “Open to
settlement 1,449,268 acres” or, “1,061,500 acres were open to
settlement.” All this indicates that enormous tracts have been sold to
settlers, or disposed of by the Government after the Indians had been
allotted. This policy has been persistently carried on in the State of
Oklahoma, although I have repeatedly urged not only the Commissioner of
Indian Affairs, but also the Commissioner of the Five Civilized Tribes
to conserve some of these lands. I have contended, also, that the
Indians are not properly protected in their property rights, and many of
them are becoming paupers; that large tracts of land should be reserved
by the Government in order that each dispossessed or pauperized Indian
should be entitled to a small home at some future time. The policy of
disposing of enormous tracts of grazing and agricultural land is
extremely short-sighted.
I have been told, when calling attention of Commissioner Wright, or the
Indian Office, to the fact that some of these surplus lands should be
conserved, that under the law, this cannot be done. The land is tribal
property, or by act of Congress on such and such a date the lands were
ordered sold. There is always authority for these sales, and no one can
question it. But the policy continues, and to me appears very
pernicious. Certain Indians on some of our reservations have either
disposed of their holdings, or been swindled out of them. If none of the
surplus lands are retained, there will be nothing available for these
Indians, and they will soon become homeless paupers. We have an
illustration of that in California. There we permitted the Indians to
lose their property, or to be evicted. In recent years we have spent
large sums of money purchasing tracts of irrigated land to provide homes
for the very Indians we permitted to lose their homesteads. Certainly
this is a very short-sighted and unbusiness-like policy.
The progress of the Indian the past year in arts and industries has been
fairly satisfactory. Most of the Superintendents report increased
industry on the part of their wards. The Commissioner presents nearly
200 pages of tabulated statistics covering progress and values. The
Indians have not worked in the same proportion as have white people for
various reasons. I shall set forth these in detail in a subsequent
Chapter.
RESULTS OF INDIAN LABOR
INDIANS EXCLUSIVE OF FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES
═════════════════════════════════════════╤═════════╤═════════╤═════════
│ 1879 │ 1880 │ 1881
Number of acres broken by Indians │ 24,270│ 27,105│ 29,558
Number of acres cultivated │ 157,056│ 168,340│ 205,367
Number of bushels of wheat raised │ 328,637│ 408,812│ 451,479
Number of bushels of corn raised │ 643,286│ 604,103│ 517,642
Number of bushels of oats and barley │ │ │
raised │ 189,054│ 224,899│ 343,444
Number of bushels of vegetables raised │ 390,698│ 375,843│ 488,792
Number of tons of hay cut │ 48,333│ 75,745│ 76,763
Number of horses owned │ 199,732│ 211,981│ 188,402
Number of cattle owned │ 68,894│ 78,939│ 80,684
Number of swine owned │ 32,537│ 40,381│ 43,913
Number of sheep owned │ 863,525│ 864,216│ 977,017
Number of houses occupied │ 11,634│ 12,507│ 12,893
Number of Indian houses built during the │ │ │
year │ 1,211│ 1,639│ 1,409
Number of Indian apprentices who have │ │ │
been learning trades │ 185│ 358│ 436
│ │ │
FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES │ │ │
│ │ │
Number of acres cultivated │ 273,000│ 314,396│ 348,000
Number of bushels of wheat raised │ 565,400│ 336,424│ 105,000
Number of bushels of corn raised │2,015,000│2,346,042│ 616,000
Number of bushels of oats and barley │ │ │
raised │ 200,000│ 124,568│ 74,300
Number of bushels of vegetables raised │ 336,700│ 595,000│ 305,000
Number of tons of hay cut │ 176,500│ 125,500│ 161,500
Number of bales of cotton raised │ 10,530│ 16,800│
Number of horses owned │ 45,500│ 51,453│ 64,600
Number of mules owned │ 5,500│ 5,138│ 6,150
Number of cattle owned │ 272,000│ 297,040│ 370,000
Number of swine owned │ 190,000│ 400,282│ 455,000
Number of sheep owned │ 32,400│ 34,034│ 33,400
─────────────────────────────────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────
At the conclusion of Chapters upon health, education, irrigation, etc.,
I have presented bibliographies. Readers will obtain a good idea of the
progress made along various directions if they will consult some of the
writers’ reports, speeches, etc.
_The Red Man_, published at Carlisle Indian School; the _Chilocco School
Journal_, and papers printed at Haskell, Pine Ridge, and Hampton all
contain many practical articles upon arts and industries and kindred
topics. For these journals the Indian Service officials frequently write
articles, and in them speeches and addresses upon Indian topics by
prominent men are often reproduced.
These journals are creditable publications and do much toward
enlightening the boys and girls as to progress in other schools—thus
acting as an incentive to further effort. It is unfortunate that the
public at large is not familiar with them. Were they generally
circulated, much ignorance of Indian education would disappear.
[Illustration:
MODERN INDIAN HOUSE
Although on the Allegheny reservation, N. Y., this is the common type
of house occupied by better-class Indians in many States.
]
-----
Footnote 6:
Cato Sells—An Appreciation. Pamphlet; Philadelphia, 1914.
Footnote 7:
Sells’ Report, 1913.
CHAPTER III. THE INDIANS TODAY AND HON. E. E. AYER’S REPORT
We have seen in the preceding chapter that the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, his assistants, Supervisors, Inspectors and Special Agents
stand at the head of a very great Bureau; and that under them are
thousands of employees. The diagram on the following page is an outline
plan of the entire Indian Service, beginning with that great body, the
Congress of the United States, and passing through its various
ramifications down to the amalgamation of the educated, competent Indian
into the body of American citizens.
This comprehensive table was published by Honorable F. E. Farrell,
Superintendent of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency, in the school
publication _The Carrier Pigeon_, in December, 1912.
We should first realize the tremendous difference between the Indians of
1850 and those of 1914. A comparison of the Indian reservation map of
1879 and the map of 1913 will give readers some idea of the tremendous
changes in Indian life in this country. In the short space of fifty
years, the entire West has been transformed from an Indian country to a
white man’s country. The problem of these Indians is today, not so much
an ethnologic study, as it is a citizenship and humanitarian problem.
Although there are a few scattered bands of Indians on the public domain
(notably Papago and Navaho, and a few other bands) more than nine-tenths
of these people are under direct Federal or State supervision. As I have
remarked elsewhere, a great many of the Navaho and certain other Indians
still keep up tribal customs and continue in the faith of their
ancestors, but for the greater part, the Indians are, and should be,
considered a part of our body politic. Before discussing some of the
larger tribes, and certain phases of Indian history in the broad sense,
we should review the Indian situation as it presents itself generally in
the United States.
Beginning with the far East, we should glance at the thousand or more
native Americans living in Maine and New Brunswick.
Several hundred Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians are located at
Oldtown, Maine, and on the St. Croix River above Princeton, Maine. These
are of superior intelligence, and all are self-supporting. There is some
drunkenness, but it is not prevalent, as among some of our western
tribes.
DIAGRAM OF THE INDIAN SERVICE
┌───────────────────────┐
│Congress of the United │
│ States │
├───────────────────────┤
│Statutes, United States│
├───────────────────────┤
│ The President │
├───────────────────────┤
│ Secretary of Interior │
├───────────────────────┤
│ Regulations, Indian │
│ Service │
├───────────────────────┤
│Commissioner of Indian │
│ Affairs │
│ District Supervisors │
└───────────┬───────────┘
│
┌───────────┴───────────┐
│Non-reservation Schools│
├───────────────────────┤
│ Reservation Agencies │
├───────────────────────┤
│ Agent, Superintendent │
└───────────┬───────────┘
│
┌──────────────────────┴──────────────────────┐
┌────────────┴──────────┬───────────────────────┬──────────┴────────────┐
│ AGENCY OFFICE WORK │ AGENCY FIELD WORK │ BOARDING SCHOOL │
├───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│Inheritance: │Individual Indian │Education │
│ │ Money: │Health │
│ Family history │ Purchases—Animals’ │Academic and industrial│
│ Hearings, reports, │ feed, implements, │ training │
│ findings, etc. │ buildings │Recreation │
│ │ │Religious and moral │
│Land Patents: │Industries: │ instruction │
│ Sales—P. │Care of farm, stock, │Employees—social │
│ Leasing │ implements, methods, │ relations │
│ Negotiations, bonds, │ seed selection, │Property │
│ rentals, reports, │ meetings, etc. │Supplies │
│ authorities, etc. │ │Outing system │
│ │Health and Sanitation: ├───────────────────────┤
│Individual Indian │Care of home, premises,│ │
│ Money: │ Matron, Farmer and ├───────────────────────┤
│ Banking, bonds of │ Physician │ Day School │
│ bank, authorities, │ ├───────────────────────┤
│ disbursements, │Law and Order: ├───────────────────────┤
│ reports, etc. │Suppression liquor │ Public School │
│ Industrial reports, │ traffic, dances ├───────────────────────┤
│ statistics, │ peyote feasts, │ Amalgamation │
│ agricultural fairs, │ customs, care of ├───────────────────────┤
│ etc. │ minors, etc. │ │
│ │ │ │
│Finance: │Forestry: │ │
│ Agency and School │Sale of timber, │ │
│ funds, │ permits, fires, etc. │ │
│ apportionments, │ │ │
│ disbursements, │Irrigation: │ │
│ reports, etc. │ │ │
│ │Leasing: │ │
│Purchases: │Negotiations, │ │
│ Advertisements, │ improvements, │ │
│ Vouchers, etc. │ collection rentals, │ │
│ │ appraisement, etc. │ │
│Property: │ │ │
│ │Land: │ │
│Employees: │Sales, appraisements, │ │
│ Records, reports │ allotments │ │
│ │ │ │
│Tribal Funds, │Construction: │ │
│ Interest │ Specifications, │ │
│ │ superintending │ │
│ │ construction, │ │
│ │ repairs, insuring │ │
└───────────────────────┴───────────────────────┴───────────────────────┘
The Indians are under the jurisdiction of the State of Maine. The
Penobscots own all the islands in the Penobscot River between Oldtown
and Millinockett. They are, for the most part, guides, farmers,
carpenters, clerks and lumbermen. Many of them earn excellent wages—from
$2 to $5 per day. I saw no evidences of poverty. The people are
intelligent and of good character. Consumption is not common, and
trachoma cases are rare.
The reason for the splendid condition of the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy
Indians should not be lost upon our officials and Indian Committees in
authority in Congress.
They have been surrounded by a high class of white people, and have been
left alone to develop and progress. While they have been protected by
the State of Maine, no discrimination has been made against them, as in
the case of Indians in Oklahoma, Minnesota, California and elsewhere.
They enjoy the same citizenship as is conferred upon Whites, and it does
not consist of “paper promises,” but is real and effective. Theirs is no
story of dishonesty and disease.
The past summer, while on an archaeological expedition on the St. John
River, I visited three villages occupied by Malecite Indians, in New
Brunswick, Canada. All of them are well situated, one at the mouth of
the Tobique River; another at Edmunston; and a third near Woodstock.
While these Indians are poor, there is no general pauperism, and their
general health is better than among the Indians I have visited in our
United States (exclusive of Maine).
In one respect the plans followed by the Canadian officials are superior
to ours, and evince more ability (or rather stability) in the handling
of the Indians. Instead of allotting these Indians, giving them deeds to
valuable property, permitting them to be swindled by unscrupulous white
persons, and then spending years in profitless litigation, in an attempt
to make grafters return property taken from the Indians, these Canadians
have continued the reservation system under a modified form. The Indians
own their tracts of land, as with us, but do not hold deeds, or trust
patents to same, therefore the lands cannot be sold or mortgaged; thus
the incentive to fraud is removed.
The Indians serve as farmers, guides, carpenters and fishermen. Most of
them are Catholics, and there is a priest located at the Tobique
village. He lives among them and encourages them in various arts.
The census gives a few Indians as residing in our eastern states, but
they are white people in every way, save color.
To discover the next body of Indians exceeding more than three or four
hundred, we must go down South where we find a few bands of Cherokees in
Swain and Jackson Counties, North Carolina; and scattered throughout
Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama there are 1100 or 1200 residing on what
was originally a part of the habitat of this great nation.
[Illustration:
GOVERNMENT SAWMILL, FT. BELKNAP RESERVATION, MONTANA
Lumber cut by Indians.
]
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING INDIAN RESERVATIONS WITHIN THE LIMITS OF THE
UNITED STATES 1913]
Some of the Iroquois still reside in western New York, notably in
settlements not far from Buffalo. These Indians, as in the case of the
North Carolina Cherokees, are chiefly mixed-bloods, have adopted our
customs, live in fairly comfortable houses and are in no need of
Government supervision. Among the Iroquois of New York, the percentage
of tuberculosis and other diseases was so low as to be practically nil.
In one of the recent Government reports it is given as but a fraction
over one per cent.
There has recently developed agitation seeking to break up their
reservation. This is most unfortunate, as the tracts are small; the
Indians are doing well and desire to be let alone. They deserve to
remain in peaceful possession of their old-time homes.
All of the remaining Indians east of the Mississippi, and south of the
Great Lakes need not enter into our discussion. Save for a noticeable
Indian color in the case of some individuals, the bulk of them have
ceased to be real Indians. The New York Iroquois, in recent times, have
made creditable progress in arts, and have produced a number of
prominent men and women. A large number of them serve in responsible
positions and so far as they are concerned there is no Indian problem.
We may, therefore, eliminate the eastern half of the United States, with
the exception of Wisconsin, Michigan and Florida.
In Florida we have the descendants of the Seminoles, estimated at 600,
and are an offshoot of the Creeks, or Muskokis. These still cling to
their ancient homes in the Everglades, and have withstood all attempts
to make of them either educated Indians or agency Indians. During Mr.
Leupp’s administration, he proposed to me that I go to Florida and spend
a winter cultivating the friendship of these Indians and see if it were
not possible to persuade them to send their children to school. I was
unable to carry this mission into effect, but I understand that recently
the Government sent a Special Agent there, who has compelled a number of
the children to attend school. The draining of the Everglades is now
well under way, and soon the hunting and fishing-grounds of these people
will be very much restricted. They have always been self-supporting and
they merit consideration, and should have our help. It is to be hoped
that before the ditching of the Everglades is completed, these Indians
will be properly provided for. This is a subject I would commend to the
attention of the Federal authorities.
In Wisconsin we have quite a large number of Indians at the present
time, located on reservations, or clustered about schools. These number
9,930, and Wisconsin ranks ninth in the entire country in point of
Indian population. Wisconsin is the first State, on our inspection tour
from the East to the West, wherein we find a large body of Indians still
in the transition period. They belong to the following bands:—the Ojibwa
(Chippewa), Menominee, Potawatomi, Oneida, Winnebago and a few others.
The Ojibwa are by far the most numerous, amounting to, approximately,
two-thirds of the entire number. Whether all of these five tribes
originally belonged in Wisconsin, is a question which may be deferred to
the ethnologist. We are treating of the State in recent times, as I have
previously remarked in this book. Therefore that great question—the
origin of these Indians and their presence in the State of Wisconsin—is
not our concern. They are here located at the present time, and, in
general, are making fair progress.
Honorable Edward E. Ayer, of the Board of Indian Commissioners, last
year, made an extended investigation of the timber problem confronting
the Menominee Indians. Mr. Ayer has kindly furnished me with an advance
copy of his report in order that I might present a synopsis. Seldom has
an investigation been conducted under more auspicious circumstances. Mr.
Ayer took with him a number of persons, including a practical lumberman
of wide experience. As the Menominee problem is one concerned with
timber, rather than land values, it was very important that the work be
thoroughly done. Mr. Ayer covered the entire reservation in his report.
“The Menominee Indians originally occupied the greater part of the State
of Wisconsin. They ranged from what is now the site of Milwaukee north
along the west shores of Lake Michigan to Menominee, North Michigan, and
west to the Wisconsin River and Black River. Along Green Bay and the Fox
River Valley were their principal settlements, and on the shores of
Green Bay they first met the white man, when Father Marquette, La Salle
and the first French descended the Great Lakes from the Canada
settlement on exploration voyages of early days. On the reservation at
Keshena is now the successor of the first French Mission established by
Marquette at Green Bay.
“A woods Indian, the Menominee was a striking figure, of generally six
feet and over in height, a giant in strength. Few in numbers when
compared with other great tribes, his bravery and fighting qualities
enabled him to hold his own with surrounding tribes, Potawatomies on the
south, Sauk and Fox and Winnebago on southwest, the great Dakota or
Sioux natives to west and Chippewa on the shore of Superior to the
north, and the Hurons to the east of them. Their word once given could
be relied upon. The French, English and American nations, each in turn,
made treaties with them and all were faithfully kept. The Menominee was
a peaceful nation, seldom the aggressor, but mighty in wrath, once
justified in taking the warpath. From early times these Indians have
been the white man’s friend. In our Civil War many soldiers were
recruited from their band, and today here exists the only Indian G. A.
R. Post in America. Their pursuits are farming, lumbering and
manufacture of lumber products. At Neopit is the seat of a large
milling-plant industry, capitalized for one million dollars. It has a
sawmill with an output of forty million feet yearly, a planing-mill of
twenty million capacity and carries a stock on hand of forty million
feet of lumber, also laths, shingles, etc. The town numbers about one
thousand men, women and children, and here may be seen the advanced
Indian living in his modern cottage surrounded with all the home
comforts of modern life and partaking of the same social enjoyments as
his white brother. A modern day school and a mission day school furnish
education to his children, as does town life social instruction to his
home, and the mill industrial education to himself and sons.
[Illustration:
U. S. INDIAN SCHOOL CHILOCCO, OKLA.
A glimpse in one of the rooms of the Department of Domestic Art.
Students making Uniforms and other dresses for school use.
]
“At Keshena is the seat of the Agency, head of administrative affairs,
and two large boarding-schools, Government and mission, with combined
capacity for 300 children. Scattered out from Keshena for a radius of
twelve miles is a scene of agricultural progress, Indian farmers whose
efforts vary from farms of 5 to 80 acres, cleared, fenced and in various
stages of improvement.
[Illustration:
LEWIS TEWANIMA
In the 10,000–meter run at the Olympic Games in Stockholm Tewanima won
second place. He is a full-blood Hopi Indian and is considered
America’s greatest long-distant runner. Educated at Carlisle.
]
[Illustration:
JAMES THORPE
World’s Champion All-Round Athlete, Winner of the Pentathlon and the
Decathlon, Stockholm, 1912. Educated at Carlisle.
]
“The tribal funds on deposit in the Treasury of the United States are
approximately $2,000,000, gathered from fruits of their own toil and in
the sale of their timber products.
“The tribe numbers about 1700 souls. Statistics show about 575
able-bodied males, aged 18 years and over. Labor figures for the reserve
show of this number an average of 264 adult Indians continuously
employed the year round, earning in wages $91,630.47, not including
subsistence. The greatest value of the Neopit operations is as a school
of industry. Its value educationally, morally and civilly cannot be
measured in dollars and cents.”
Mr. Ayer found that the Government had erected a sawmill at Neopit. This
mill sawed Indian timber exclusively.
Some years ago the mill’s operations were not satisfactory, there being
extravagance in management. Since Mr. Nicholson was appointed, all of
this has been remedied, and after liberal deductions for all expenses,
the mill shows a profit of $443,176.17 to the Menominee Indians (from
July, 1910 to September 30, 1913). He found the mill employed a large
number of Indian men, while other Indians found employment working with
the logging crews in the woods. The mill served a double purpose. Not
only were the Indians employed and earned good wages, but they also
received the benefits of the mill’s earnings.
There is practically no poverty on the reservation, and little sickness.
The houses are clean and well kept.
Mr. Ayer’s exhaustive study of conditions led him to make several
recommendations, one or two of which I append herewith:—
“I recommend that two, four or six of the brightest young Indians on the
Reservation be sent to Wisconsin State College of Agriculture at Madison
to take a full course in forestry and scientific farming, that they may
come back to the reservation equipped to teach the Indians who have
elected to make farms.
“I would also recommend that there be a company or tribal store at
Neopit and a branch one at Keshena and that the goods shall be sold say
on a basis of 12½ or 15 per cent, which would make the stores absolutely
self-sustaining and the Indians would get the necessities of life much
cheaper. These stores should also carry a stock of the ordinary
agricultural tools that might be used and there should also be a bank,
say with forty or fifty thousand dollars capital connected with the
Neopit store, where the employees of the mill could get checks cashed.
“Now, if they want to buy anything extraordinary, an agricultural tool
or any other thing, or cash their check, they have got to go twenty
miles away to Shawano for the purpose, and they are subjected to all the
temptations of the outside towns. I think everything ought to be
supplied to the Indians on the reservation so that they would have as
little necessity of leaving it as possible.”
A complaint had gained circulation to the effect that the mill was
losing money and had been extravagantly managed. There were some grounds
for this five years ago, but not during the past three years. A certain
attorney, wishing to take over the management of tribal affairs, visited
the Indians and, calling their attention to a few logs here and there,
which had not been properly handled, persuaded the Indians to raise a
sum of money to pay his expenses to Washington. Here he made complaints
to the Commissioner and others. His presence on the reservation caused
dissatisfaction. Ayer’s investigation proved that the loss was nothing
compared with the great financial benefits accruing to the Indians,
through the mill’s operation.
I mention this at some length for the reason that Mr. Ayer’s report was
unjustly criticised by one or two persons who lent willing ears to the
self-seeking attorney.
His report covers all questions relating to farming, education, health,
and the sale of timber to better advantage. The mill is a model of
efficiency, conserves the Indians’ timber to the tribe’s best interest,
and similar mills should be conducted on other reservations.
The amount of timber remaining to be cut is variously estimated at from
1,500,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 feet. It will thus be observed that the
Menominee Indians are possessed of a very valuable property. The
authorities should heed Mr. Ayer’s suggestions, coming as they do, from
a practical timber man of many years’ experience.
The greatest tracts of timber (aside from Menominee) are on Chippewa
lands at Bad River and La Pointe. Some are exceedingly valuable. I
addressed the Department and received assurance that the Commissioner
was aware of the dangers of a “second White Earth.” The following
official communication (in part) is evidence that these Indians will be
protected:—
“Under the treaty of September 30, 1854 (10 Stats. L., 1109), 1063
Indians within the La Pointe or Bad River Reservation, Wisconsin, have
been allotted a total area of 8,387,068 acres. Approximately 45,000
acres of surplus tribal land remain, authority for the allotment of
which exists in the Act of February 11, 1901 (31 Stats. L., 766), as
amended by the Act of March 2, 1907 (34 Stats. L., 1217). Nothing is
said in these acts about the allotment of timber lands and the remaining
tribal lands within this reservation are very valuable for timber
purposes, some of the eighty-acre tracts being estimated to yield
approximately $30,000 for the timber alone. Other tracts containing but
little timber are not desirable and an equitable division of the lands
in allotment cannot be made under existing conditions.
“Two factions exist in the tribe, one in favor of allotting under
existing laws and the other in favor of selling the timber, distributing
the proceeds per capita and thereafter allotting the lands to the
unallotted Indians belonging on this reservation.
“Appended hereto is the part of the Office file relating to this
allotment correspondence, particularly the submission to the Department
of the request for authority to procure agreements from the Indians to
allot the lands under the existing laws with the understanding that the
timber should be cut and sold for the benefit of the tribe at large.”
(File omitted in this book.)
For several years there have been extensive cuttings of pine timber on
the reservations at Bad River, Lac du Flambeau, Lac Courte Oreille, and
Fond du Lac. The total amount cut on each of these reservations was as
follows: Bad River, 57,183,770 feet; Lac du Flambeau, 23,049,110 feet;
Lac Courte Oreille, 4,268,050 feet; Fond du Lac, 13,128,775 feet. All of
this timber was cut on allotments except 12,068,620 feet cut from
unpatented lands of the Lac du Flambeau Reservation, claimed by the
State of Wisconsin as swamp lands, and 56,955 feet cut from tribal lands
of the Bad River Reservation.
A number of circular letters were addressed by me to persons living in
Wisconsin, requesting information as to the condition of the Indians. It
is known that not only is there vocational training in the schools, but
also more or less higher educational training. One of my correspondents,
a missionary, takes the view that there has been too much higher
education of Indian children in his State, and it would be far better to
confine the work to the teaching of trades and give no book instruction
beyond the fundamentals. He thinks that the average Indian when educated
beyond this point, is not willing to take his place as an ordinary
workman. Another gentleman, while expressing satisfaction with much that
has been done, sums up the situation in the particular Indian community
in which he resides as follows: “Too much red tape.”
The progress of these Indians while slow, is satisfactory. They do not
present a sufficiently interesting problem for our study at the present
time. It is safe to predict that within a generation, a full-blood
Indian in Wisconsin will be a rarity. They may continue to live an
indefinite length of time in various communities where they are now
settled, but Government supervision (save possibly on the Menominee
reservation) may be safely withdrawn in the near future.
In Michigan the larger number of Indians are Chippewa (Ojibwa), with a
sprinkling of Ottawa and Potawatomi. Schools care for a majority of
their children, and the adults are, for the most part, quite
self-supporting. They may be dismissed from our pages.
Proceeding westward to the headquarters of the Mississippi, we have the
great Minnesota region which is generally covered in my four chapters
upon White Earth reservation. West of the Mississippi River, there are
very few Indians in that great area of Texas (but 702), and in Iowa,
Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana; the numbers range from 313 to 780.
These areas may be set aside as containing such a preponderance of white
population as to render those of Indian blood an extreme minority. Of
the mountain states, Colorado contains but 870 Indians, Wyoming 1715,
and the others 4,000 to 11,000. The great Indian populations are,
therefore, confined to nine states. Ten states contain from 800 to
8,000. The remaining twenty-nine contain but a fraction of the entire
Indian body, and they are now more white than Indian.
Texas, in spite of its enormous size, is interesting in that but a
handful of Indians are in evidence. In 1850 the Indian population was
considerable. Nelson Lee’s book of captivity among the Comanches[8]
gives an idea of the extent of the roving bands of Comanches and Apaches
infesting the State in early days. The hostility of the Texas people was
such that through the organization of the famous Texas Rangers those
Indians were either driven out of the State or exterminated. Very little
consideration was shown them, and I can find no evidence of any general
effort being put forward to protect these Indians in their rights or
place them upon reservations or establish schools among them. Our troops
were frequently sent into Texas, and as late as 1875, roving bands of
Indians infested the western part of the State and carried on raids into
old Mexico, or stole stock from Texas ranches. As to the number of
Indians in the State of Texas just prior to the Civil War, there seems
to be no reliable statistics.
The Texas tribes were of the general Caddoan stock, of which the
Comanche appear to have been the largest and strongest branch. These
Indians ranged through the valleys of the Brazos and Colorado and
extended their conquests to the land of the Apache, along the Rio
Grande, to the west. They were essentially buffalo Indians and were not
agriculturalists, but presented the purest nomadic type found in the
southwest. This must not be misunderstood. The Navaho are nomadic to a
certain extent, but their range has been limited. Moreover they possess
flocks and herds. There is no evidence that the Comanche ever
domesticated sheep, goats, and cattle, although they frequently obtained
stock in their raids against the Texans. As they were continually on the
move following the buffalo in its migrations, or planning war parties
against the white people and Mexicans alike, they were pure nomads, as
stated above.
Years ago, during the height of Indian troubles in Texas, a law was
passed expelling red men from that State. Indians entering the State
were subjected to fine, imprisonment or expulsion. The feeling against
the race was very bitter, and Indians in Texas never received just
treatment.
A few of them were, in later years, taken to Indian Territory, but most
of the Comanches, it is safe to affirm, were killed in action. Although
the Texas rangers were superiorly armed and better mounted, the Apaches
continued their warfare from the earliest times down to about 1870, when
their power was permanently broken. They were very cruel and vindictive.
Nelson Lee’s narrative, to which I have referred, is one of the most
interesting Indian captivities ever brought to my attention. It presents
a vivid picture of the Comanche as they were during the period preceding
our war with Mexico.
CHAPTER IV. THE OJIBWA OF MINNESOTA
The Ojibwa commonly known as Chippewa, constitute one of the great
divisions of the Algonkin stock. We shall have much to say concerning
their ethnology, in a subsequent volume. But following the scope
accepted for this book, we shall treat of the Ojibwa as one of the great
Indian tribes (numerically), at the present time and one much “advanced”
along the white man’s trail.
The year 1850 found the Ojibwa, or Chippewa, Indians located as they are
at the present time, with some exceptions. A few in Wisconsin and on the
shores of Lake Superior; some at Turtle Mountain in North Dakota, but
most of them living in the State of Minnesota at Leech Lake, White
Earth, Red Lake and Cass Lake. The number of these Indians in the year
1851 was about 28,000. In 1884 the entire number is given as 16,000. In
1905, the “Handbook of American Indians” estimates that there are 15,000
in British America and 17,144 in the United States.
Those who wish to trace the migrations, and study the interesting
customs and folklore of these people would do well to consult an
interesting book written by an Ojibwa, Mr. William W. Warren. The
manuscript of this work was prepared between 1850 and 1853. Warren’s
mother was three-fourths Ojibwa and his father a white man. He died of
tuberculosis June 1, 1853, and the Minnesota Historical Society did not
publish his history of the nation until 1885. Clearly, Warren was the
most prominent of later-day Ojibwa; he had served in the Minnesota
Legislature, and he was possessed of a brilliant mind and would
doubtless have made his mark in the world had he lived.
In the early ’50’s and ’60’s a few of the fur companies still did
business in northern Minnesota. It was no uncommon sight to see the “Red
River ox carts” bringing supplies into northern Minnesota, or carrying
loads of furs to the nearest Hudson Bay post, in the Red River valley to
the north. The Ojibwa came in contact with the French-Canadian element
during the activities of the fur trade, and had little in common with,
or met few Americans, until white settlers from the East increased in
numbers in the State of Minnesota.
While this and the succeeding chapter are confined chiefly to White
Earth, a description of Leech Lake and Red Lake reservations should not
be omitted.
[Illustration:
HONORABLE GABE E. PARKER, CHOCTAW
Registrar of the United States Treasury.
]
The Ojibwa Indians living on Red Lake have not been allotted, but hold
their land in common. The pine timber possessed by them is valued at
several million dollars. Most of the cabins are grouped about the shores
of Red Lake, and the Indians while not well-to-do, are far from
pauperism. It has not been necessary to ration them as in the case of
White Earth, where the Superintendent, Major John R. Howard, last winter
fed 762 Indians. The reasons for this are set forth in succeeding pages.
The Ojibwa at Leech Lake have valuable white pine, but this has been cut
under Government supervision and the dreadful scandals occurring at
White Earth have been avoided. At Leech Lake, Red Lake, and Cass Lake,
the Indians live by working in the lumber camps, agriculture, fishing,
and some serve in other branches of industry. They have, however,
depended entirely too much upon interest payments made by the
Government. Much of the educating, training and support of these Indians
is paid for by the interest accruing to the Indian on a fund of several
million dollars in the United States Treasury and belonging to the
Ojibwa of Minnesota. It has been pointed out by other observers, and
emphasized in addresses at Lake Mohonk and elsewhere, that this fund is
a curse rather than a blessing. The mixed-blood element, controlled by a
few shrewd French-Canadians, wish to secure possession of it; attorneys
are attracted by its presence; the young men and women, in some cases,
will not work since they expect to be supported out of the fund. It
should be divided up per capita among the Indians. The Government should
control, or supervise, the portions belonging to Indians known to be
incompetent or drunkards, and instead of paying them money, give them
groceries and clothing until their portion of the fund is exhausted.
Councils should be called on all reservations, or at central points, on
allotment groups, and the Indians made to understand that with the
payment of this money, responsibility on the part of the United States
ceases,—excepting in the case of incompetents, referred to above.
With the dreadful lesson of White Earth, staring everyone in the face,
it is incomprehensible that Red Lake should be allotted, and the timber
issued to the Indians. Yet there was a determined effort to bring about
such a result, and it was only through opposition of the Indian Office,
and Inspector E. B. Linnen and others that the steal was prevented.
The Indians live in frame and log dwellings. The birch-bark wigwam is
rare—save for summer residence. Ordinary “store clothes” are worn by all
persons. The birch-bark canoe still persists, and there are some
survivals of ancient customs. Such a majority of the people speak
English and live like the lower classes of Caucasians, that the bands
may be considered less Indian than the Sioux, and much less primitive
than the Navaho. The photographs prove this statement.
Let us look backward and compare conditions of the ’80’s and of
1905–’12.
Rev. Joseph A. Gilfillan was a missionary in northern Minnesota for
twenty-five years. He became entirely familiar with the Ojibwa language
and spoke it fluently. He is a quiet, modest man. The Indians told me of
numbers of heroic actions on his part during the twenty-five years he
labored in and about White Earth reservation. During the spring of one
year, when the ice on the lake was breaking up, two white men were in a
most perilous situation, and although there were larger and stronger men
standing about, no one would venture out to save the lives of the
unfortunates. Gilfillan went out—although he frequently broke through
the ice—and managed to bring both men ashore.
[Illustration:
BUILDINGS PINE POINT, WHITE EARTH, MINNESOTA
Built and formerly occupied by Rev. James Gilfillan as a school. Now
used as Government School.
]
On another occasion, he was held up by several armed men, sent out by
the mixed-blood and French-Canadian element, who opposed his missionary
labors. In fact, one of the men presented a gun and threatened to shoot
him if he continued in his determination to preach to the Indians that
Sunday. The above incidents (and more could be related) give an idea of
the character of this worthy man. He has never been engaged in any of
the disputes regarding the deplorable situation among the Minnesota
Ojibwa, and it required considerable urging on my part to persuade him
to testify before the Congressional Investigation Committee of which
Honorable James Graham was Chairman.
Rev. Gilfillan, largely at his own expense, built splendid schoolhouses,
missions and chapels at Pine Point, White Earth and Twin Lakes. His
mission was successful and he had at one time several hundred Indians in
attendance in both school and church, and a corps of efficient workers.
I think it is correct to state that there were more church members on
White Earth reservation during Gilfillan’s administration than at the
present time. Certainly the moral tone was far above that which obtains
today. It is sad to relate that Gilfillan’s missions were discontinued,
and the buildings where he devoted so many years of unselfish labor were
taken over by the United States Government at far less than their actual
value.
Rev. Gilfillan’s statement made to me, and accepted by the Congressional
Committee[9] and published in their report is as follows:—
WASHINGTON, D. C., DEC. 9, 1910
“Hon. Warren K. Moorehead,
Andover, Mass.
“My dear Sir: Your favor of 8th instant has just reached me, and it
gives me pleasure to answer your inquiries. The first is, ‘While
there was much suffering when you were missionary at White Earth,
Pine Point, Twin Lakes, etc., is it not your opinion that there was
less swindling than at the present time?’
“In answer I would say that I do not consider there was any
suffering at all to speak of from June, 1873, when I went there,
till along toward 1898, when I left. The Indians raised garden
produce; many had fine fields of wheat. They could gather all the
wild rice they wanted to; fish were abundant. Some of the men made
two or three hundred dollars by the muskrat hunt each spring. They
made a good deal by furs. Some hunters killed as many as forty deer
in a winter. They made maple sugar. They had all the berries they
could gather. From all these varied sources they made a good living.
They had unlimited fuel at their doors. They were rent free. I have
heard people say, and I believe it, that there was not nearly so
much poverty or suffering as in a white city, where the poor have
only one resource—wages. If they had wished to raise a little more
vegetables, as potatoes, corn, etc., they could have lived on the
fat of the land. They were in those days happy, peaceful, and
contented communities. To the above-enumerated sources of income of
theirs I omitted to mention that there passed through my hands for
them, given by the Episcopal mission, more than $130,000 in money
for all imaginable purposes—from spectacles to building churches for
them and supporting their children in schools. There were several
thousand dollars’ worth of clothing sent me for them by charitable
people. There was no crime during the twenty-five years I was there,
although for many years there was not even Indian police. There was
no instance of holdup or robbery, not to speak of greater offenses.
Life and property were absolutely safe—far safer than in any white
community I know. None of them would ever have thought of molesting
anyone. They were in those days happy, peaceful, harmless people. As
to how the present state contrasts with that, you have been out
there lately and know better than I.
“As to your second question, whether there was less swindling than
at the present time, I would say that then there was none at all.
The Indians had no lands to sell; no property of any kind except
their little patches of gardens, their little furs, wild rice, etc.
There was nothing to tempt the cupidity of the white man. As to how
that contrasts with the present, you have been out there and know
better than I.
“But I ought to qualify this by saying that for some years in the
nineties there was a great deal of swindling from them unwittingly
perpetrated by the Government, for an account of which I refer you
to my inclosed printed statement made to Mohonk Conference in 1898,
which you will find on Page 13 of the inclosed pamphlet. And that
you may know that the statements made therein are true, I may inform
you that the then Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Hon. William
Jones, who went to the ground and personally investigated, endorsed
upon that statement: ‘I find that the statements herein made by Mr.
Gilfillan are in the main correct.’ This indorsement does not appear
on the copy I send you, but is on other copies. To briefly specify
the heads under which this swindling was done: it was; First, by
billeting upon them three Chippewa commissioners at $39 a day for
the three, making with their clerks, etc., $88 a day, the Indians
said; said commissioners being mostly politicians out of a job, and
their positions almost sinecures. Secondly, by repeated farcical
‘estimating’ of their pine; three several ‘estimations’ (pretended),
covering a period of perhaps nine years; two of said estimations
costing $360,000, and then done dishonestly in the interests of
those who bought the pine, whereas the real worth of the work, done
honestly, was only $6,000. Thirdly, by cutting green pine, but
paying for it as ‘dead and down’ pine, so getting for it
seventy-five cents a thousand instead of five dollars a thousand.
But most destructive of all was the swindling done by fire; the
timber being fired to allow of its being cut as ‘dead and down’ and
paid for at seventy-five cents a thousand instead of five dollars.
It was a pitiful sight to see those magnificent pine forests, where
I used to ride for seventy miles on a stretch through great pine
woods, shapely and tall, the trees reaching up, it seemed, 100 feet,
that, like the buffalo, could never be replaced, now all blackened
and scarred, killed and dead. The glory of the State of Minnesota
was gone when in the nineties her magnificent pine forests that
covered so large an area of her northern part were fired to get the
Indians’ pine for seventy-five cents a thousand.
“Now, as to your next question, whether there was more drinking
among the Indians then than now. I am glad to say that for many
years after 1873, when I first knew them, there was, one may say, no
drinking among the Indians. The mixed-bloods, who were mostly
French-Canadian mixed bloods, always drank a little, but the Indians
were remarkably free from it. The White Earth Indians lived
twenty-two miles from the railroad, the nearest place where they
could get liquor; they were almost that distance from the nearest
white men. The Red Lake Indians were one hundred miles from the
railroad, the Cass Lake one hundred, the Leech Lake seventy miles.
They were almost as far from any white men, except the Government
employees and the missionaries. So they were secluded from the white
man and his vices. But the great reason of their immunity was the
missions. The influence of the Gospel and the church in their
secluded position kept them safe. It is no reflection on the White
Earth Indians to say that in the place from which they had been
removed in 1868—Crow Wing—they had fallen most dreadfully under the
dominion of the ‘firewater,’ both men and women. They were in a most
dreadful state of degradation from that cause. But never was the
power of the Gospel more signally shown than in their cleansing and
renovation on the White Earth reservation. I never saw a drunken
Indian nor even one that I thought had tasted liquor. They had
become communicants of the church, had their family prayers, their
weekly prayer meetings from house to house, where they exhorted each
other to steadfastness in the Christian life. What had such a people
to do with liquor? Some of them, who at Crow Wing had been in the
lowest depths, told me that they had not tasted liquor in twenty
years, others for other periods; and I know they told the truth.
Among all the chiefs, numbering perhaps twenty, on White Earth
Reservation, there was just one who drank, and he, I am informed,
had the liquor supplied to him by a mixed-blood, who, in payment,
got him to swing the Indians to his schemes.
[Illustration:
OJIBWA, BLIND, FROM TRACHOMA, PINE POINT, WHITE EARTH RESERVATION,
MINNESOTA
]
“But into this fair garden of temperance Satan drew his shining
trail and toward the last years of my residence there sadly marred
it. It was found that much money could be made out of Indians
drinking, and it soon grew up into a most profitable industry. It
came about in this way: Congress, as everybody knows, passed a law
that liquor should not be sold or given to Indians. A set of men
arose who saw the money there was in that; they arrested Indians who
had taken a drink, or as witnesses, took them to St. Paul or Duluth,
fiddled with them a little, and then presented a bill of $400, I
believe, to the Government for each Indian, which money was paid,
and they divided it up among them. The Indians had all the whisky
they wanted while under the care of these deputy marshals, as they
were called; they kept drunk while with them, and they brought
plenty of liquor home with them to the reservations when they
returned. They did not want to stop the Indians drinking; they
encouraged it; the more drinking the more cases and the more money
for them. This was found so profitable that it grew to a monstrous
height. Once they had, it was said, every adult male Indian on the
White Earth Reservation in St. Paul in whisky cases, a distance of,
say 240 miles, and for every one of these men they got perhaps $400.
The most of the deputy marshals who made the arrests were
French-Canadian mixed-bloods of the lowest character, nearly all of
whom openly and frankly drank themselves, though in the eyes of the
law Indians like the Indians they arrested; and a high official of
the United States Government told the writer that one of those
half-breeds made $5,000 a year out of it, as much, perhaps, as the
salaries of the members of the Cabinet of the United States
Government. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars or how many
millions they got out of the Government by this swindle under the
form of law it would be interesting to know. Some of those
mixed-bloods worked that gold mine for eighteen years. The loss of
so much money to the Government was pitiful, but not half so pitiful
as the terrible demoralization of the Indians by the operations of
those men. Here again the good intentions of the Government in
passing that law, that liquor must not be given or sold to Indians,
was turned into death and destruction to them, and became most
bitter gall in its carrying out by the agents of the Government to
enrich themselves.
“So the answer to your question as to whether the Indians drank more
then or now must be that in the early years after 1873, when there
was just one honest white deputy marshal named Nichols, they drank
practically none at all, most of them never tasting it for years;
but that later, after the swarm of mixed-blood deputy marshals
arose, there was much drinking under the manipulation of those men,
restrained, however, by their very great lack of money, for at that
time none of them had got any.
“As to your other question, namely, the relative healthfulness of
the Indians then and now, I would say that there was always much
tuberculosis among them, owing to their crowding into one-room
cabins, heated very hot in the winter, without ventilation; and if
there was one tubercular patient, that one was spitting over
everything, so that if there was one sick in a family he or she
almost necessarily communicated the infection to everyone who was
infectible. They say that formerly, when they lived practically in
the open air, winter and summer, in their birch-bark wigwams, though
in a 40–degrees-below-zero temperature in winter, and lived on a
flesh diet, that consumption was unknown among them; but in the
transition state, when shut up in the one-room cabin, living on salt
pork and heavy bread, and in many other unsanitary ways, the ravages
of consumption have been serious. Whether worse now than in the days
from 1873 to 1898 I do not know. I only remember a few who had sore
eyes, which I suppose was trachoma, in those days.
“Believe me, very respectfully yours,
“J. A. GILFILLAN”
There has always been a conflict between the full-bloods and
mixed-bloods of Minnesota, and especially at White Earth reservation.
This dates from the migration of a number of mixed-blood Indians
(chiefly French-Canadian) from Canada. They have caused no end of
trouble, and by clever manoeuvering dominated the councils.
The favorite chief of the entire Ojibwa nation was Hole-in-the-Day. He
became war chief in 1846. The Indians talk of him even at the present
day, and the story of Ojibwa, presented towards the end of this book,
will be found of interest in this connection.
The Indians told me, during the investigation of 1909, who were
responsible for the murder of this fine old chief, but they were
unwilling to testify, fearing the vengeance of the French-Canadian
element. The following interesting communication, from one in authority,
clears up the murder of Hole-in-the-Day, and explains the hostility
between the scheming mixed-bloods, and the honest, although ignorant
full-bloods.
[Illustration:
INDIAN SCHOOL CHILDREN IN UNIFORM, PINE POINT WHITE EARTH, MINNESOTA
]
“During the summer of 1912 Mr. James T. Shearman was detailed by the
Honorable Secretary of the Interior to secure testimony concerning the
eighty-six mixed-blood Indians suspended from the White Earth rolls. At
this hearing certain testimony was given that may be of interest to you,
as it explains the assassination of the then head chief of all the
Chippewas, Hole-in-the-Day, who was killed at Crow Wing by a party of
Leech Lake Indians in 1886. At this hearing an old, blind Indian
testified that Clement Beaulieu, father of Gus Beaulieu, Albert
Fairbanks, uncle of Ben Fairbanks, and certain other mixed-bloods
employed him and other Indians then living at Leech Lake to go to Crow
Wing and kill Chief Hole-in-the-Day, agreeing to pay the Indians $2000
for the deed. They went to Crow Wing and killed him according to
agreement. Later, when the mixed-bloods refused to pay the price agreed
upon, they organized another party and came to White Earth, intending to
kill Beaulieu and certain other mixed-blood families. Upon their arrival
here they were induced by the present Head Chief, Me-zhuck-ke-ge-shig,
who was related to one of the party, to return to Leech Lake. After this
old, blind Indian finished his story, Me-zhuck-ke-ge-shig, now about
ninety years of age, went upon the stand and confirmed the testimony of
the former witness. Mr. Shearman’s report is probably on file in the
Secretary’s office, and I am informed that a brief of the testimony was
made by Mr. E. C. O’Brien of the Department of Justice, and you can
probably obtain a copy of the same.
“Since Mr. Shearman was here on the matter referred to, I have been
furnished additional testimony concerning the killing of
Hole-in-the-Day. It appears that the party left Leech Lake under the
pretext of going hunting, there being nine in the party, and that only
four of them were in the plot to kill Hole-in-the-Day. When they got to
the Crow Wing country May-dway-we-mind said: “Hole-in-the-Day dies
today.” Later, they met him about a mile and a half from the Crow Wing
Agency at a branch of the two roads, where he was killed. After the deed
was done, one of the party named Ay-nah-me-ay-gah-bow asked why he had
been killed. The answer was that they were told to do it and that there
was a reward for killing him, that each one of the party was to get a
thousand dollars and a nice house built for him, and the one who shot
first was to take Hole-in-the-Day’s place as Head Chief. The man who
asked the first question also asked who offered the reward and he was
told that Clement Beaulieu (father of Gus H. Beaulieu), Albert Fairbanks
(uncle of Ben L. Fairbanks), ——[10] with others, were the men.
“Me-zhuck-ke-gwon-abe or Jim Bassett also stated that about four years
after the killing he came with May-dway-we-mind, Num-ay-we-ne-nee,
Way-zow-e-ko-nah-yay, O-didh-quay-ge-shig and Day-dah-tub-aun-gay to
White earth for the money that had been offered as a reward and which
they did not obtain.
“It is a matter of history that Hole-in-the-Day was opposed to the
admission of the mixed-bloods to this reservation and that he was killed
at their instigation, and there has been irrepressible friction between
these Indians ever since.”
-----
Footnote 8:
Three Years Among the Comanches; Albany, 1859.
Footnote 9:
Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Expenditures in the
Interior Department, House of Representatives. House Resolutions, 103,
March 6, 1912.
Footnote 10:
Name omitted.
CHAPTER V. THE LEGAL COMPLICATIONS AT WHITE EARTH—THE DEPARTMENT OF
JUSTICE
Judge Marsden C. Burch, representing the Attorney General of the United
States (Department of Justice) before the Committee on Expenditures in
the Interior Department, House of Representatives, went into modern
Ojibwa history at great length. The hearings began July 25, 1911, and
continued through March 27, 1912. The testimony lies before me, and it
fills 2,759 pages. It would be well nigh impossible for readers to
consult this enormous bulk of evidence submitted by several hundred
witnesses. He found, as have others, that they moved into Minnesota from
the head of Lake Superior some seventy years ago. About 1868 the White
Earth reservation was established, and the following bands were located
at White Earth, Leech Lake, Red Lake, and Cass Lake in Minnesota: the
Mississippi; the Otter Tails; the Pillagers; and a few Indians still
claiming they belonged to the Lake Superior band and the Fond du Lac
band. The White Earth reservation consisted of thirty-six townships, or
829,440 acres. The population in 1909 was 5,300; about 700 full-bloods
and 4,600 mixed-bloods. Those who have traveled over it will agree with
Judge Burch’s statement.
“I have never seen a more beautiful stretch of territory than that
embraced in the present White Earth reservation. It contained lakes and
streams, prairies and forests, timber enough of white pine originally
there to build all the elegant buildings that might have been needed for
centuries to come, of the most valuable character—timber which now
converted into lumber would be worth in the open market, ranging by
various grades, from $35 to $110 per thousand feet, board measure. It is
hard wood, ample for fuel and all kinds of purposes. There were marshes
and lakes wherein they could fish, and whereon they could hunt and
gather wild rice for their sustenance; and the richest of prairie lands
imaginable, high, rolling, healthy—everything that could be desired for
the last stand of a great race.”
On January 8, 1912, Judge Burch made a longer speech which reviews the
entire political and Departmental history of White Earth.[11] Some
readers may wish to know a little concerning the legal procedures by
which Indians are dispossessed. We will, therefore, take White Earth as
an example, and omit the discussion of similar troubles elsewhere. I
present about a fourth of his address.
[Illustration:
JAMES BASSETT, FULL-BLOOD OJIBWA IN TRIBAL COSTUME
]
In 1869, the Nelson Act was passed. This provided for the collecting of
scattered Ojibwa from ten localities and concentrating them at White
Earth, Red Lake and Leech Lake. Judge Burch enters into a lengthy
discussion of how the Nelson Act was followed by a bill introduced by
Senator Clapp, and that in January, 1904, Representative Steenerson of
Minnesota introduced another bill. Of this the Judge says:—
“Under the terms of this Steenerson Act each Indian who had received an
allotment on the White Earth Reservation or was entitled thereto should
have an additional allotment sufficient to make the original and
additional total 160 acres, provided that if there should not be enough
land for 160 acres each, the additional allotments should contain only
so much land as could be allotted by dividing the total remaining
allotable land by the number of eligible allottees.
“We expect to show that of this White Earth Reservation there was an
area of lake surface aggregating 59,731.24 acres; also that there is
claimed as swamp land going to the State as part of its quota under the
organic law of Congress 26,658.15 acres. The allotments additional under
the Steenerson Act were made by one Simon Michelet, the White Earth
Indian Superintendent, or Agent, at that time. By omitting the two items
of lake land and State swamp land from consideration, he figured that
there was sufficient territory practically to furnish each allottee the
full 160 acres of land, and thus he proceeded to allot to those who
first came to be served the total of 160 acres; of course, including all
the valuable pine upon the reservation.
“We expect to show that those who were thus favored by these complete
additional allotments were largely composed of persons who could be
handled in the matter of purchase of the timber by the representatives
of the lumber companies that had procured the greater portion of the
timber in the four townships. Large numbers of persons eligible to
additional allotments, but who came later, were denied the same because
there was no land left for them, there being 31,516.88 acres lacking. It
will thus be seen that the so-called additional allotment under Michelet
was a fraud upon the rights of from 400 to 500 Indians who were
absolutely left out in the cold. In addition to this, it would seem that
the allotments made included the 59,000 odd acres of lake land, thus
increasing the fraud upon those who were not favored with pine in these
additional allotments. The allotment was, of course, in direct violation
of the Steenerson Act itself. It is a matter of question whether those
who had knowledge of and participated in the benefits arising from these
illegal allotments can not be yet reached by a court of equity and they
compelled to account for their misdeeds.
* * * * *
“No machinery for carrying into effect the Clapp amendment was provided
therein, and thus it remained to be determined who were and who were not
adults of the mixed-blood and freed from restraint as to alienation. The
result was that designing persons rushed in and obtained deeds and
mortgages indiscriminately; that is, from children of the mixed-blood
and adults of the full-blood the same as adults of the mixed-blood. In
all of these they were accustomed to recite the competency of the
Indian, and attached to the deed in each case they usually secured what
purported to be the affidavit of two persons that the allottee was an
adult Indian of the mixed blood, which affidavits were ordinarily passed
with the deed in making mesne conveyances or in recording in the proper
county recording office. In connection with these transactions we shall
be able to demonstrate to the committee that every variety of fraudulent
schemes and devices which would occur naturally to acute minds was
resorted to to defraud the Indians. The taking of these deeds in
violation of law from minors of the mixed-blood and from full-bloods
eventuated in the action of the Government in requiring the Department
of Justice to file about 1,200 bills in equity to remove the clouds from
the titles to lands thus unlawfully obtained.
“Following upon the sudden acquirement of money by persons in some
respects less fitted to handle the same and make proper use of it than
white children of tender years, there came a condition of affairs which
we expect to demonstrate to the committee as most deplorable and
shameful, a stain upon the fair fame of a great and enlightened State.
Saloons ran wide open. Cheap and tawdry articles were sold at
extravagant prices. The Indians were overreached, and the money they had
obtained from selling or mortgaging their lands or timber was coaxed
from them in exchange for objects of little or no value, but of supposed
utility—such as decrepit horses, defective vehicles, unmanageable sewing
machines, and even pianos of little worth. A perfect frenzy of
drunkenness characterized many who took their way to the neighboring
town of Detroit, and encamped in its vicinity, and practically the same
conditions occurred in the hamlets along the Soo Road. The land-shark,
passing under the more dignified title of real-estate agent, was
everywhere in evidence, and the money-loaning shark, posing under the
more dignified business appellation of banker, was engaged in
over-reaching the Indian right and left.
* * * * *
“From the close of 1906 or 1907, when isolated transactions were going
on, the fiercest of the fraud and debauchery had subsided, till the
summer of 1909 a condition like that of the quiet which succeeds a
prolonged intoxication occurred. The Indians had mainly, in one form or
another, parted with their heritage and in most instances, had suffered
severely from the result. Poverty, sickness, a sense of mortification
and loss at the hands of the white men pervaded their minds and
depressed their spirits. The pine again, as in the case of the four
townships, by clean-cut lines of apparent division had shown up in the
ownership and possession as to certain territory (and this the largest
and most valuable part) of the Nichols-Chisolm Lumber Co.—pine reputed
in extent to be of the amount of 150,000,000 feet.
[Illustration:
DISPOSSESSED OJIBWA AT REAR OF AGENCY BUILDINGS
Rice River, White Earth, Minn., 1909.
]
“Pine in another clean-cut and well-defined territory, reputed to amount
to about 50,000,000 feet, was found to be in the possession and under
the control of the Park Rapids Lumber Co.; and in still another section,
equally well defined in its boundary line, a reputed 50,000,000 feet was
controlled by the Wild Rice Lumber Co. Likewise the best of the
agricultural lands had fallen into the hands of, or under the control
of, the so-called bankers at the hamlets before mentioned, and certain
men of great wealth and influence resident in the city of Duluth, as
well as in St. Paul and Minneapolis.
* * * * *
“The first result of the treaties of 1889 was the saddling upon the
Chippewas of an allotting commission of three members and a large
retinue of subordinates. The expense of this commission was $88 a day,
and the work that the commission and its subordinates accomplished could
doubtless have easily been done by an allotting clerk at $1,000 a year.
Besides this commission many other white officials were sent to the
reservations, ostensibly to supervise the cutting of the timber and on
many other pretexts, for all of which the Indians had to pay. A corps of
estimators, each drawing $6 a day of the Indians’ money, was appointed
to estimate the pine on the Red Lake Reservation. Fraud having been
discovered in making this estimate, a new corps of estimators, numbering
about twenty-six, was appointed to do the work over again. Each of the
new corps also received $6 per day of the Indians’ money.
“The new corps proved to be grossly incompetent. They were always well
supplied with whiskey and drank heavily. They spent most of their time
in towns fifteen or twenty miles distant from the pine they were sent to
estimate. Some of the interlopers were members of this corps of
examiners, and, though they absented themselves for long periods of
time, they still drew their pay. It has been asserted that the total
cost to the Indians of these two corps of estimators was $350,000 and
that the real value of their work was about $6,000; that in many cases
the pine had been underestimated in the interest of the purchasers. The
second corps of estimators were likewise discharged and a third corps
appointed to go over the work previously done. Like the celebrated case
of Jarndice v. Jarndice, it seems that after all the proceedings were
over, although the pine alone on the reservations, exclusive of that on
the White Earth Reservation, was supposed to be worth from $25,000,000
to $50,000,000, there would be little or nothing left but heirs.
Although an Indian entitled to a share of the immense value of these
lands and forests might be starving to death, he could not procure two
cents from his great wealth to buy a pound of flour.
“While the proceeds from the sale of the pine was thus being squandered,
the Indians were also being defrauded by the loggers and lumbermen who
were purchasing the timber. By the conspiracy at the Crookston sale in
1900, the Indians doubtless lost several thousand dollars, and by the
fraudulent operations under the so-called ‘dead and down’ act, they lost
even a greater sum.
“Another source of complaint on the part of the real Indians of
Minnesota is the payment of annuities to persons whom the Indians
contend are not members of their tribe, and whose names are not properly
upon the tribal rolls, and who consequently had no rights thereto.
“Another grievance of which the real Indians bitterly complain and which
was the immediate cause of the outbreak of the Pillagers in 1898,
resulting in the killing of a major and six soldiers of the United
States Army, and the wounding of many others, was the conduct of certain
mixed-blood deputy marshals, several of whom it is claimed by the
Indians were persons who had improperly been placed upon their tribal
rolls. These deputy marshals originated and developed, as we shall
expect to show, a system of arresting and transporting to St. Paul,
Duluth, and Detroit various members of the tribe, charging them either
with bringing whiskey upon the reservation or with some other like
offense. We expect to show that the purpose of these mixed-blood deputy
marshals was to secure fees for making such arrests and for bringing
other Indians to the said cities as witnesses against the Indians
accused. The practice continued for some years, until finally, as we
expect to show, a member of the Pillager Band was arrested in this
manner and taken to Duluth. He was left at Duluth without money to buy
food or to buy transportation home, and compelled to walk back to the
reservation, a distance of more than 200 miles. When he arrived at the
reservation he was nearly dead from exposure and starvation.
* * * * *
“An instance of the manner in which the Minnesota Indians have been made
the instruments or causes for defrauding the Government through
Congress, in the interests of attorneys, and these same parties who have
been so often suggested, is the Mille Lac Indian case. An appropriation
of $40,000 was secured through an act of Congress ostensibly for the
relief of the Mille Lac Indians as a payment for certain alleged
improvements made by them upon the Mille Lac Reservation. The matter
came up this way:
“In 1854 the Mille Lac Band ceded their reservation to the Government.
In 1862, when Chief Hole-in-the-Day advised a combination with the Sioux
for an uprising against the Government, these Indians refused to
participate on account of their ancient enmity with the Sioux. To reward
them for their loyalty the President promised them they might still
remain on their reservation as long as they did not interfere with the
Whites.
[Illustration:
GROUP OF THIRTY PERSONS CONSTITUTING LINNEN-MOOREHEAD FORCE WHITE
EARTH INVESTIGATION, 1909
]
“Under the Nelson Act, in the treaty of 1889, they ceded this privilege
of occupancy to the Government, but some portions of them refused to
remove to White Earth, claiming that they had never really ceded
anything to the Government. As an inducement for these parties to leave,
Congress was persuaded to appropriate $40,000, or so much thereof as
might be necessary for the purpose, to pay these parties for the
improvements they had made during their occupancy of the reservation.
(32 Stat. L. 268.) Michelet and this same ——[12] went over for the
Government to investigate and appraise the improvements, and found
practically none—nothing but the charred remains of some Indian tipis;
but to eat up, that is, to cover the entire $40,000, these charred
remains were appraised at the original cost of the tipis, and items were
inserted in the list of improvements, such as the profit an Indian would
make gathering wild rice for a year, for gathering wild honey for a like
period, and other like items. Now, the real disposition of the money
seems to have been as follows:
“First, $4,000 was paid to Gus H. Beaulieu for attorney’s fees, $2,500
was paid to D. B. Henderson as attorney’s fees, and $1,500 to D. B.
Henderson for expenses. Four chiefs received $1,000 each. About $17,000
was then prorated among the Indians; $10,020 then remained in the hands
of Gus H. Beaulieu.
“It then became necessary for the Mille Lac Indians to employ another
set of attorneys to sue Beaulieu for the $10,020. After considerable
expensive litigation, Beaulieu deposited $5,600 to the credit of the
Mille Lac Band in the Merchants National Bank of St. Cloud, Minn., and
paid $1,000 to the Indians’ attorneys.
“The traders in the vicinity of the Mille Lac Reservation then commenced
suit for the money so deposited, claiming that the individual members of
the band owed them money for goods. Again a compromise was effected with
the result that a portion of the $5,600 was turned over to Agent
Michelet for distribution. There is now about $208 waiting for the
claimants.
“We think this is indicative of the way in which Congress has
contributed innocently from the public funds to the support and
enrichment of a few persons of little or no merit, by a species of
pretense of recompensing the Indians who, in the end, have slight
participation in the generous provisions so by Congress made.”
-----
Footnote 11:
Hearings before the Committee on Expenditures in the Interior
Department of the House of Representatives, H. R., 103, pp. 244–261.
Footnote 12:
Name omitted.
CHAPTER VI. THE WHITE EARTH SCANDAL
Judge Burch’s research led him to conclude that the Indians were in
vastly better shape forty years ago than at the present time. The
reading of Warren’s book, Gilfillan’s testimony, and other evidence
establishes it beyond question that the Indian does not seem to have
suffered to any great extent in either health or morals prior to 1880.
The older men of the tribe, who were keen mentally in spite of great
age, when I visited those Indians in 1909, told me much regarding their
past. I visited them under most auspicious circumstances, being
empowered by the Indian Office to conduct investigations of affairs at
White Earth, and having at my command numerous interpreters and
assistants. The old shaman, Bay-bah-dwun-gay-aush, Me-zhuck-ke-ge-shig,
Ojibwa,[13] Mah-een-gonce, and others with whom I talked a great deal,
laid the blame for their present deplorable condition on the
unscrupulous French-Canadians, mixed-blood element, as well as covetous
white men who sought timber and land. Gilfillan has pointed out in his
letter the increase of drunkenness due to large financial rewards
offered by the Government in pursuing a mistaken policy.
Father Aloysius Hermanutz has been at White Earth since 1878. In his
testimony before the Graham Investigating Committee, he stated that the
full-blood Indians at that time were in good condition. Nearly everyone
owned a team of oxen, a cow, and cultivated fields. Many of them raised
vegetables and there was much weaving of rugs and small carpets. They
had an Agent, Mr. Charles Ruffey, who was kind to them but very strict.
The farmer was a competent man and knew how to make Indians work.
“I met him one day on the road on horseback. He went to that Indian—to
that farm—I met him there and asked him where he was going, and he said:
‘There are two Indians, Father, up beyond that church. They didn’t plow
their field in order to put the seeds in, and the Agent ordered me to
tell them if they don’t plow their fields now (it was in April) that the
team will be taken away from them.’ And of course they were oldtimers.
That was Saturday when I saw them, and on Sunday morning they started to
plow. They were scared and they plowed their fields. At the time the
Indians were in very good condition, and then afterwards it changed and
they went down again.”
The illustrations accompanying these chapters were taken during the
investigation of 1909 and give some idea of conditions obtaining at that
time. So much has been said and written regarding the situation of the
Minnesota Ojibwa, that the Government adopted heroic measures, and
conditions are to a great extent ameliorated, but they are still far
from satisfactory.
Omitting the racial traits of the people the past sixty years, let us
consider their present condition and the causes leading up to it.
The 1889 bill (Congress) was known officially: “For the Relief and
Civilization of the Chippewa Indians.” There is both sarcasm and irony
in that phrase, which only those of us who know what kind of “relief and
civilization” the Chippewas have received since the bill was passed, can
appreciate.
At the time White Earth reservation was created, a treaty was made with
the Ojibwa bands, March 19th, 1867. It was the Government’s intention at
the time this solemn treaty was signed, to encourage progress in
industry, and to permanently locate the Ojibwa upon farms. With so
laudable a purpose in view, one of the provisions of this treaty was as
follows: Any Indian who brought under cultivation ten acres of land, was
entitled to a fee simple patent, or deed, for forty acres additional,
and so on up to 160 acres. This encouraged many Indians to become
industrious and they brought under cultivation many tracts of land. In
1887, under the Dawes Act, the holdings of agricultural land were
limited to eighty acres. After the “Relief and Civilization” act of
1889, Gus Beaulieu, a French-Canadian-Indian politician, and others
became very active in and about White Earth reservation. A Mr. Darwin S.
Hall was appointed Chippewa Commissioner and became interested in Mr.
Beaulieu’s projects.
Whatever the original purpose of this act, it was used by venal white
men to get hold of the Indians’ land. Previously the land had all been
in a reservation and could not be touched. Now it was coming under the
control of individual Indians and might be sold.
The Indians could not be thrown neck-and-heels off their reservation,
although I suppose certain interested persons of northern Minnesota
would have adopted that happy expedient were it possible. Some kind of
legislation must be enacted whereby the wolves could enter the flock, if
not entirely disguised, at least so covered that the shepherd of the
flock might have some difficulty in differentiating between the sheep
and the wolves. So it came about that the “Clapp Amendment” was passed
as a rider to the general Indian appropriation bill. The Clapp amendment
in substance, provided that any mixed-blood Indian could dispose of his
property, but full-bloods and minors could not.
If either Senator Clapp or Congressman Steenerson ever endeavored to put
an end to the abuses resulting from the passage of this legislation
their efforts have failed to accomplish results. I never heard that
anyone in Congress tried to remedy the evils following the passage of
these bills. Two of the missionaries, Rev. Felix Nelles of Pine Point
and Rev. Aloysius Hermanutz of White Earth, wrote to the Indian Office,
protesting that the Indians were being swindled out of their property.
But Father Felix reports to me by letter that so far as he is aware
neither the protest of himself nor his superior, Father Aloysius, had
any effect.
When the Act of 1867, establishing White Earth reservation, and which
Judge Burch has discussed, was put into effect, a great number of
Indians by hard work, notably the chief of the entire five living bands
of Chippewa, a grand old man, whose name is Me-zhuck-ke-ge-shig, took
advantage of this and earned many acres of land. This chief was looked
up to by the Indians, was a good man himself, and many of his friends
followed his example, worked hard and earned forty, eighty or one
hundred and sixty acres. Imagine the surprise of these Indians when, at
the time the pine lumber was allotted, some one in Washington announced
that the Indians who had received farm lands could not participate in
the pine allotting. In other words, the French-Canadians, the
mixed-bloods and such full-bloods as had not worked and were not
industrious, received pine tracts valued from few to many thousands of
dollars, and those who had obeyed the wishes of the Indian Office, had
advanced by hard work along the “road to civilization,” were debarred
from participation. It was precisely as if a college passed its drones
and conditioned its honor-roll men. No wonder these White Earth Indians
do not care to work, and say they “cannot understand Washington.” If
whoever was responsible for such a ruling had sat down and deliberately
tried to figure out the most certain way of injuring the Ojibwa Indians,
he could not have conceived a better plan.
Immediately after I was appointed on the Board of Indian Commissioners,
a correspondent wrote me from Wisconsin that the Ojibwa Indians at White
Earth were in bad condition. The Indian Rights Association had made a
similar complaint. Rev. Charles Wright, Episcopal missionary at Cass
Lake, shortly after the scandals began to develop, on his own
responsibility borrowed money and in spite of the opposition of the
Indian Agent, Simon Michelet, he went to Washington to lay the
grievances of the Indians before the President. He bore letters of
introduction from Governor John A. Johnson and United States Senator
Knute Nelson. The lumber companies, it was supposed, wired the Indian
Commissioner of Wright’s mission. He did not find favor at Washington,
never succeeded in seeing the President, and sorrowing and sick at heart
he was compelled to return to Minnesota.
The Board of Indian Commissioners having no funds, I asked the Indian
Office to appoint me as Special Agent with full powers, and send me to
White Earth. This was done about March 1st. I spent five weeks
investigating conditions in the southern part of the reservation, Pine
Point, and returned to Washington the latter part of April, 1909. The
first of July, Inspector E. B. Linnen and myself were sent to White
Earth with full authority. We employed a total force of thirty-seven
persons and made a complete investigation.
During the first five weeks at White Earth, save for local employees, I
was entirely alone. The investigation soon developed that millions of
dollars’ worth of pine timber and farm lands had been stolen from the
Indians. As soon as it was ascertained that I was working in the
interests of the Indian, the lumber companies and the mixed-blood and
French-Canadians attempted in every possible way to end the
investigation. They first tried bribery, and later intimidation. They
lured away several of my witnesses, and even some of the Government
employees informed me that it was hopeless to fight the great land and
timber interests back of the despoilation of 5,300 Indians. Matters went
from bad to worse. Some idea of the physical strain may be had from the
statement that I lost fifteen pounds weight in five weeks. As the other
Inspectors and Special Agents had not reported on White Earth
conditions, the Indian Office could not, at first, believe my story. At
last, I received a telegram asking me to come to Washington. I had at
that time one hundred and three affidavits representing more than a
million dollars worth of property, and involving county officials,
lumbermen and presidents of national banks. Ill feeling had developed in
the local towns. The nearest railway station, Park Rapids, was distant
eighteen miles. Ogema, on the “Soo Line,” lay forty-five miles to the
north. Knowing that the enemy would attempt to prevent the affidavits
going East, I started Doctor Isaac Stahlberg, Government physician, for
Park Rapids at noon. He arrived there about half-past three o’clock and
volunteered the information that I would probably take the 5 o’clock
train East.
Meanwhile, at 7 o’clock that same morning, in three vehicles, nine of
us, including five armed Indian policemen, started for Ogema to the
north. We reached our destination without incident, and I delivered the
affidavits to Commissioner Valentine in Washington two days later.
Honorable Robert G. Valentine, then Commissioner, took great interest in
the White Earth affair, supported my contentions, and at his suggestion
a very experienced man, Inspector Linnen, returned with me to the scene
of action, as has been stated. We had the hearty cooperation of
Superintendent John R. Howard, who was appointed early in 1908 and
succeeded Simon Michelet. Major Howard has filled one of the most
difficult positions in the entire Indian Service. He has been bitterly
opposed by the mixed-blood element through Beaulieu’s newspaper.
Neighboring towns have organized Boards of Trade, and these have
appealed by committee and through the press to Congress, alleging that
the Interior Department and Department of Justice have interfered with
business.
Howard’s position has been no sinecure, and in addition to his other
troubles, he was given a chief clerk who happened to be a disputatious
person, who had caused trouble in California, and on arrival at White
Earth became friendly with some of those who were opposing him. This
tense situation was not brought to an end until vigorous protests were
lodged by a number of us at Washington.
The beginning of the great scandal at White Earth is interesting as well
as dramatic. What I have to say in succeeding pages is not in the
official language of the report made by Linnen and myself, but is drawn
from departmental sources.
I make this explanation, for I am well aware that what follows will
sound to some readers as a page from Russian, or Turkish, history,
rather than a leaf from the history of one of our own states in our own
great and free country!
The 24th of April, 1905, was set as the date on which the white, Norway
and other valuable pine tracts would be allotted to the Indians of White
Earth. The word was passed throughout the reservation, and the
French-Canadians, who are there in considerable numbers and most of whom
show very slight trace of Indian blood, were the first to appear.
Educated mixed-blood Indians also arrived some days previous. A line was
formed near the United States Government building door some time
Saturday afternoon. The allotting was to begin Monday morning. It is
interesting to note that first in the line was Margaret Lynch, a young
white girl, whose father and mother were white people, and who, the
Indians properly maintained, had no right to an allotment. The girl
received allotment number one, for which her father refused $22,000 cash
the next day.
The Agent at this time was Simon Michelet. He was possessed of a violent
temper, according to the sworn testimony of a policeman employed at the
White Earth Agency for nearly ten years. Michelet was friendly with Gus
H. Beaulieu, the Nichols-Chisolm Lumber Company and others who were
equally interested in obtaining timber from the White Earth Indians. It
was bad form, to say the least, for the United States Agent to use his
office at this time to hold long conferences with the representatives of
the lumber companies.
What was said behind the closed doors no one knows, but what occurred at
the time of the allotting sheds a little light on the situation. The
chief clerk of agent Michelet was one J. T. Van Metre. As he resigned
his position after the timber was allotted and entered the real estate
business, this added another complication to the already confused
affairs at White Earth.
During the allotting of the pine timber there was such confusion, the
line became broken and many people lost their places. My two
investigations on the reservation, covering nearly seventeen weeks, lead
me to believe that the most valuable tracts were selected in advance,
and that the names of those who were to have them were entered on a list
for use at the allotment.
In support of this contention is the affidavit of Robert Henry, sworn to
September 24th, 1909, who came early to White Earth at the time of the
allotment and passed into the agent’s office shortly after the allotting
began. He held in his hand descriptions of forty or fifty different pine
tracts, and yet was told that all had been selected and he could not
have a good pine allotment. Not enough people preceded Henry to have
drawn each of these allotments. The same is true of a woman who had in
her hand fifty descriptions, and she was told that all of these had been
selected. It early in the day became evident that the full-bloods were,
if possible, to be kept from getting any land, for by the Clapp
amendment only the mixed-bloods could sell their land.
Early in the day when the full-blood Indians were clamoring for
recognition and insisting that the French-Canadians and white people be
kept back, John St. Luke, the policeman, testifying under oath,
September 24th, 1909, says: “Agent Simon Michelet came out of his office
in an excited manner, and told me to keep the Indians out and let the
mixed-bloods in. There seemed to be confusion in the line. Michelet
pushed some of these Indians back, swearing at them, and told me to club
them if necessary, to keep them from crowding in.” St. Luke refused to
do this.
At last the full-bloods registered a protest, some of the Indians sent
for their guns, and things took on a serious aspect. Presently by way of
compromise it was agreed that for every mixed-blood that received a pine
allotment a full-blood should also obtain one. This continued until all
of the twenty or more miles of pine timber had been allotted in tracts
of eighty acres each to the Indians.
[Illustration:
OJIBWA CHIEF, KE-WAY-DIN, PINE POINT, WHITE EARTH RESERVATION,
MINNESOTA, 1909
]
The pine timber allotted these Indians ranged all the way from tracts
worth $2,000 or $3,000 to those valued as high as $25,000. Since the
lands were allotted, iron ore has been found in quantities under certain
parts of the reservation. How extensive are these bodies, no man may
know, and the value might be a few millions, or many hundreds of
millions.
[Illustration:
EVICTED INDIANS, TWIN LAKES, WHITE EARTH RESERVATION, MINNESOTA, 1909
]
The effect of the allotment on the Whites near White Earth was
immediate. Mushroom banks sprang up in the surrounding small towns. The
Indians in their affidavits (of which Linnen and myself took 505)
testified that lawyers, banks, county officials, and business men of
prominence in Detroit, Ogema, Mahnomen, and other towns, joined in the
scramble to secure their pine lands and farm tracts.
As few of these men spoke the language, it was necessary to have
interpreters, and the educated Indians were soon divided into two camps,
those who were willing for pay to interpret for the land-sharks and
timber thieves, and those who would not help in defrauding their own
people.
It is sad to note that in a hundred or more instances the Indians were
purposely made drunk and their lands taken away from them while under
the influence of liquor. Many of the Indians do not remember what kind
of papers they signed, whether deeds or mortgages, or whether any papers
were signed at all.
While our investigation was in progress, and we had moved over to Rice
River, Mr. J. Weston Allen visited us for three weeks. He came as a
representative of the Boston Indian Citizenship Committee, and because
of his high standing in the legal profession, rendered valuable
assistance in the investigation.
The key to the whole situation lay in the question of blood. As has been
shown before, the mixed-bloods only could sell their land. The
full-bloods could not. Consequently we assembled the old record-keepers,
medicine men, chiefs, and Indians of prominence who knew their own
people. Some of these were more than eighty-five years of age and none
of them under seventy. When an Indian appeared before us to give his
testimony, we first asked him whether he was a full-blood or a
mixed-blood, and the names of his parents and grandparents. The old
witnesses, probably twelve or fifteen, might not all know the parents or
grandparents of the Indian testifying. But three, four, six, and
sometimes eight of them would know the family history, and would be able
to swear whether the Indian was a full-blood. If he was a mixed-blood,
we told him with regret that we could do nothing for him.
One affidavit of the Indian himself as to his blood relationship and
parents was taken, another signed by the old witnesses to the same
effect. A third affidavit related to the property possessed by the
Indian, with number and description of allotments, and by careful
questioning we ascertained when and where he had disposed of his land.
The fourth affidavit was by the interpreters in which they solemnly
declared that they had correctly interpreted our statements to the
Indian and his answers to us, and that he understood the nature of the
papers that he had signed. The interpreters also made further affidavit
that they had carefully interpreted to the old Indian witnesses the
papers that they signed. In addition to all of the above, we frequently
took affidavits of Indians who were present during the swindling
operations. Thus it will be seen that the evidence was very complete,
positive and exact. So far as I know, no investigating force on a
reservation had ever done more work in the same length of time. We
labored from eight o’clock to twelve, one to six, and frequently from
seven until eleven at night.
The Indians took great interest in the investigation, and as we moved
from one portion of the reservation to another we were accompanied by
large numbers of these poor people. On one occasion over eighty Indians
were present, and we were compelled to turn two large school buildings
into dormitories.
These Indians had lost their property almost without exception. Whether
the term “swindle” is used or not is immaterial. They lost their
property through many and devious ways. The affidavits indicated that in
many instances Indians appeared before the buyers either drunk or
somewhat under the influence of liquor. Not only did the interpreters
give the Indians liquor, but frequently the Indians drank of their own
accord. Of course the bankers, lawyers, county officials and real estate
men knew that the ordinary code of business ethics would not countenance
their dealings with drunken persons. But these land-owners being
Indians, and the sentiment of the thirty-seven individuals and firms who
in the affidavits are shown to be responsible for the conditions at
White Earth being against Indians as land-owners, no discrimination was
made and Indians were permitted to “do business” whether drunk or sober.
Next to drunkenness as a means of separating the Indian from his land,
the deliberate deceit practised by the buyers stands out conspicuously.
Scores of affidavits and statements were taken of Indians who owned two,
three, five, or even seven or eight trust patents. The trust patent was
preliminary paper, but as trust patents would in the process of time
become deeds, the white people did not differentiate and trust patents
were in most cases accepted the same as deeds. In order to be within the
law it was necessary to prove the Indians mixed-bloods. Most of the
Indians were therefore sworn as mixed-bloods. They frequently protested,
stating that they were full-bloods, but were described in the papers as
mixed-bloods just the same. Therefore few of the papers signed by these
Indians were read or interpreted to them, and in the majority of cases,
as the Indian could neither write nor read, he did not know whether he
was signing receipts, mortgages, deeds or releases. The favorite form of
expression used by the interpreter, according to affidavits, was “the
buyer says this is a legal document which you would not understand if
read to you, and all you have to do is to sign your name and receive the
money.” Very few Indians appear to have sworn to the papers they signed.
When an Indian appeared with more than one trust patent he was usually
told that one of these would be purchased or mortgaged and the others
would be held for him and he could sign papers for all of them. Many of
the buyers were accustomed to say to the Indian, “You have no safe in
your cabin, and if these papers burn up you would lose your land. You
had better let me keep them in my safe.” Then the Indian signed and
parted with the papers and we can imagine the result.
Allotments acquired by inheritance are called by the Indians “dead
allotments.” Such estates must be probated. In other communities the fee
is anywhere from a few dollars to fifteen dollars or more, but in
Detroit, Mahnomen, Ogema and Wauban, the usual charge varied from $50 to
as high as $150, according to the credulity of the victim—and there were
other charges. When the Indians reported to us that they had signed over
“dead allotments” to be probated, we frequently discovered that it was
not clear in the Indian’s mind how so much money was necessary in order
to settle these estates, but having surrendered the trust patent, he was
without anything to show for his inheritance. Frequently little or
nothing accrued to the Indian after the benevolent attorney or banker
had been paid for his efforts in directing the Indian’s footsteps along
the broad highway of civilization.
Instances are not wanting where deceased Indians were actually
resurrected long enough to dispose of land which they had neglected to
convey during life, and affidavits are not lacking which recite that
so-and-so was an adult mixed-blood and competent to handle his affairs.
I have in mind one case of a boy resting in his grave at Pine Point.
Certain individuals made affidavit that this boy was alive, and was of
age, and thereby they secured control of his valuable pine allotment.
The affidavits bristled with forgery and perjury.
Men employed in the livery stables of Detroit and elsewhere told me that
as soon as the lands were allotted all the available teams and drivers
were engaged by the buyers, and that night and day for many months these
men scoured the reservation and pursued the Indian men, women and
children until they had secured the best farms and timber tracts
available. There is one man in particular whose history is interesting.
He walked into Detroit a tramp ten years ago and began washing dishes in
a hotel. Just how he got his start is under dispute, one man claiming
that a stranded theatrical company left several trunks of gaudy
paraphernalia in Detroit, which this man traded to some drunken Indians
for a tract of land. Whether this is true or not, he was successful in
Indian land speculation, and at present he is now a leading citizens of
the region. Some of the Indians call him, “the white wolf, with the gold
teeth.”
Where was the United States Indian Bureau, while this disgraceful scene
was being enacted? Where was the Indian Agent, sworn to protect these
people? Where were the Inspectors and Special Agents? How was it that
the testimony of missionaries and others, and their warnings, produced
no effect in Washington? These are questions I have repeatedly asked,
and nobody has ever answered them.
-----
Footnote 13:
According to Miss Densmore’s spelling: “Odjibwe”; “Maingans”;
“Meja-kigi-jig”. I have spelled the names as pronounced.
CHAPTER VII. SOME INDIAN TESTIMONY AND AFFIDAVITS. SICKNESS.
During the height of the pine and land purchases, crowds of Indians at
White Earth were persuaded to visit Detroit and Park Rapids and Ogema.
Contrary to the law, whiskey was frequently sold them. They tell how at
Park Rapids, in the little square in the centre of the village, drunken
Indians were lying on the grass in numbers, and at Ogema a saloon keeper
was passing liquor in a bucket, and handing it out by the dipperful to
Indians.
After the buyers had used persuasion to get the Indians to give up their
allotments, they resorted to stronger measures in dealing with those who
would not sell. A wife of a policeman at Pine Point, Mrs. John Rock, was
awakened at eleven o’clock in the night by Detroit buyers, who forcibly
entered her cabin, and stayed until two o’clock in the morning until
they obtained one of her tracts of land.
When Indians visited Detroit and partook of liquor they were arrested.
On being brought before the authorities and fined, they were told by the
attorney who was supposed to defend them, or by the kind-hearted land
buyer, that they must sell or deed over a tract of land in order to pay
the fine. Sworn testimony in several cases is to this effect.
When Indians were brought into the offices of the buyers and hesitated
about selling or mortgaging, more persuasive arguments were used. In the
case of Grace Rock, who visited E. G. Holmes’ bank, the testimony now in
the hands of the Government is to the effect that as she did not wish to
sell at the price offered, and started into the hall, one of those
present cried to Interpreter Morrison, “Go and fetch her back, and if
she will not sell, we will throw her into the lake.”
Me-zhuck-ke-gway-abe in affidavit No. 268, July 29, 1909, states that
one Fred Saunders got him to drink and then bought his land. A minor
son, Willy Bassett, was told to sign papers, or he would be put in jail.
In the case of Mrs. Lawrence Roberts, her affidavit recites that she
appeared before banker Anundensen with Interpreter Robert
Morrison—“Anundensen asked if I was a mixed-blood and I said my parents
are full-bloods. He said that is all right. We signed papers.”
I quote this case because it is typical of nearly one hundred others.
The papers which she signed were not explained to this woman and may
well have recited that she was a mixed-blood Indian.
[Illustration:
ROSE ELLIS
One of the interpreters serving during the investigation of 1909.
Carlisle graduate. Full-blood Ojibwa.
]
A number of Indians have stated that “If you are related to
mixed-bloods, it is all right.” I make particular mention of this
mixed-blood question because, before the Congressional Investigation
Committee Gus Beaulieu claimed that I endeavored to prove all Indians
full-bloods, and that these Indians, having previously sworn before the
land buyers that they were mixed-bloods, should now be indicted for
perjury. We were especially careful in all our evidence, and we
discriminated against those who appeared to be mixed-bloods—if there was
any discrimination at all. Only Indians who were undoubtedly full-bloods
were entered as such.
The fact that many Indians may have previously sworn that they were
mixed-bloods does not prove them to be such. They were made to sign
these papers, the papers were not explained to them, and if there is any
perjury, the white people are responsible, rather than the Indians who
have been duped.
When the business of dealing in Indian lands was at its height, carloads
of wild bronchos from South Dakota, and broken-down horses from St. Paul
were shipped up to the Indian country. The business was apparently
conducted on a large scale, for several hundred Indians testified to
having traded their allotments for a little cash and teams of horses,
buggies, harnesses and sleighs, not to mention old pianos, graphophones
and other useless articles in the struggle of the aborigines for
existence. As the Ojibwa are woods or canoe Indians, and not “Horse
Indians” as are the Sioux, very few of them understood the management of
horses. Even if the horses had been strong and active, it is doubtful if
they would have been of any considerable value to these Indians. Some of
the horses lived but a few weeks. Many of them were so old that their
teeth were worn down. The broncho would run away and smash the old buggy
or sleigh.
Five interpreters, who confessed as to their part in these proceedings
in order to escape prosecution, told how the bankers and real estate men
often stood in their office doors and laughed heartily as the poor
Indians drove away after conducting their business.
One young lady, who is a Carlisle graduate, told me that she and her
sister, believing that the man who paid the Indians money for their land
was cheating, put on Indian costumes, painted up and passed before him.
Each girl was to receive $750. He said, “Do you speak English?” She
replied, “kawin,” which is emphatic “no.” He then proceeded to count
ones and twos aloud until he had reached what would appear to an
ignorant Indian to be $750, but was in reality about $130. This girl
stood aside and her sister then appeared. The man asked the same
question, and she, waiting until he had counted the money, then said in
English, “Don’t you think you had better count that over?” He flushed
and stammered and made good the full amount to each sister. A woman sold
a million feet of pine timber for $10,000 and came home with a thousand
one-dollar bills stuffed in a long stocking.
One of our old Indian witnesses at Pine Point, sold seventy thousand
feet of pine timber valued at nearly a thousand dollars, and all he
received was ten dollars.
In the case of the old woman O-mo-du-yea-quay, she testified she was
visited by interpreter Joe Flammand, who told her that Lawyer Beum would
pay her $500 for her eighty acres. “When I got there, they gave me a
little less than forty dollars and bought me a house alongside the
railroad, containing one bedstead, two chairs, a small table and a
little cook-stove. After that Flammand would come to my house and give
me a dollar or a quarter. After a little while he told me that my money
was all gone.”
One of the saddest stories told me at White Earth will be found in
Official Affidavit 359, that of O-nah-yah-wah-be-tung. This man had
valuable pine timber which, he states, he sold for $7000. The Indian
having received the money, the grafters immediately got busy. One
William Lufkins, a mixed-blood, persuaded him to pay $1800 for a ranch
building. This was moved from some distance on the prairie to Ogema. A
large sum was charged for moving the building. I heard that $400 was
charged for moving it across the railroad tracks, which procedure
occupied less than an hour. After the house was established on a lot
fronting on the main street of Ogema, the Indian was told that he should
go into business as do white people. It was suggested that he start a
feed store. He trusted one or two men to visit St. Paul and buy flour
and feed in order to stock his store. These men squandered a thousand
dollars in dissipation. He sent them three hundred more and they
returned with a small quantity of feed stock. Thus the man’s money
dwindled until he was defrauded out of his entire $7000, and is today a
pauper.
In the following cases I have stated the facts briefly, without giving
the Indian’s name.
In the testimony on file in case numbered 382, it appears that a certain
attorney and prominent man, had brought before him an Indian woman who
did not wish to sign papers, and the attorney said if she did not do so
he would have her arrested and put in jail. The proprietor of a lodging
house at Detroit, according to this sworn statement, gave these Indians
liquor.
[Illustration:
State of Minnesota )
)SS
County of Becker )
On this 8th day of September, A.D. 1909, before me, E. B.
Linnen, U. S. Inspector, Dept. of Interior, personally came
Gah-bay-yah-nah-quod-doke, who being first duly sworn by me
according to law, deposes and says:
I am a full blood Indian of the Otter Tail Pillager band of Chippewa
Indians belonging to and residing upon the White Earth Indian
reservation in Minnesota; my father’s name was Be-wash and my
mother’s name was Mah-ge-moze-o-quay; the names of my grandfather
and grandmother on my father’s side were Con-duh-wah-we-zoo and
——————; the names of my grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s
side were Wah-be-gay-cake and Ah-go-mo; and each of said persons was
a full blood Indian.
Her mark.
Witness to mark. Gah-bay-yah-nah-quod-doke
We, the undersigned being first duly sworn according to law, each
for himself and not one for the other, all depose and say:
That we are Chippewa Indians belonging to and residing upon the
White Earth Indian reservation in Minnesota; that we are personally
acquainted with the above mentioned deponent and know her to be a
full blood Chippewa Indian; that the names of her parents and
grandparents are as set forth above, and that each of said persons
was a full blood Indian.
Witness His mark
May-zhuck-ke-ge-shig
Witness His mark
Gay-bay-yah-mah-ge-wabe
Witness His mark
Day-cah-me-ge-shig
Witness His mark
Ah-yah-baince
Witness His mark
Gay-me-wah-nah-na-quoit
Witness His mark
Bay-bah-dwung-way-aush
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 8th day of
September, A.D. 1909.
U. S. Inspector, Dept. of Interior.
Copy of Official Affidavit with thumb-print signatures, used by
Linnen-Moorehead Investigators
]
According to affidavit numbered eleven, banker M. J. Kolb at Ogema sent
for one of the Indians and stated that he wished to buy the pine on the
minor son’s allotment. The minor was aged fourteen. The Indian went to
Kolb’s bank and found another man there, who stated that, although the
child was a minor, yet he would buy the timber and stand the risk. Kolb
paid the Indian $100 and ten dollars of this was given to Jim Bunker,
the interpreter. A month later the banker sent for the Indian and
stated, “You better bring your trust patent of your original allotment
to me or you will probably be arrested.” Thus Kolb obtained the Indian’s
original allotment in addition to the minor child’s pine. I might
continue repeating similar instances.
Two important and shocking statements I reproduce here. Government
official numbers, 247 and 92. They are self-explanatory.
STATE OF MINNESOTA } SS
COUNTY OF MAHNOMEN }
On this 23d day of August, A.D. 1909, before me, W. K. Moorehead,
Spec. U. S. Indian Agent, personally came Mayn-way-way-be-nace, who
being first duly sworn by me according to law, on oath deposes and
says:
Two years ago Mr. Waller of Waubun, Minn., came to my house
for the trust patent of my original allotment No. 2321 for
E2NE—Sec. 8, 144–40. This was hardwood timber. He gave me $20
cash. When he came he made this statement, “I have already
arranged at the Court House to have you arrested, and have
come over here to get your trust patent to take care of your
land for you.” My wife, Ah-be-dah-sah-mo-quay, and my
children, Antoine and Maggie (Mah-geed) were witnesses. Andrew
Vanoss came with Mr. Waller as interpreter. Vanoss gave me
whiskey and also presented me with a pint bottle of whiskey.
Mr. Waller took the trust patent and handed me $20 in cash. As
near as I can judge, my giving up the trust patent cancelled
the obligations incurred in the mortgage referred to in the
affidavit signed by my wife, Ah-be-dah-sah-mo-quay.
In the fall of 1908 I went to Mahnomen with the Trust Patent of my
additional allotment No. 1702 for N2SW—Sec. 36—145–38. This may be
timber land. I saw L. O. Johnson, of the Prairie Land Company. I
sold the land to Johnson for $364. He did not ask any questions as
to my blood relationship. I signed papers, my wife was present.
Willie Brunette was interpreter. I was drinking at the time.
Three years ago Fargo and Peake of Ogema, Minn., came to my house
and asked if I had any dead allotments to sell. I told them I had
three: Naysh-kah-we-gah-bow, age 36 yrs.; Mah-co-day-we-gwaince, and
Zo-zed, age about 4 yrs. Fargo and Peake said that they would take
these three trust patents of the dead allotments to be probated.
They also stated that when my grandchildren (who were also heirs)
come of age they would pay the value of these allotments. This
summer they paid me $130. This is all I have ever received. My wife
and I signed papers. Willie Lufkin, was interpreter. I paid him one
dollar ($1.00).
About the middle of June, 1909, I took the trust patent of my
deceased grandchild, Simon Smith, to J. T. Van Metre of Mahnomen,
Minn., to be probated. I have received no money. This was allotment
No. —— for ——
The allotment of Naysh-kah-we-gah-bow was No. 2323 for S2SE—Sec.
2—144–41; of Mah-co-day-we-gwaince was No. —— for ——; of Zo-zed was
No. 2326 for E2SE—Sec. 5—144–40.
_His mark_
MAYN-WAY-WAY-BE-NACE.
Witness to mark
Georgia Lacy
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 23d day of August, A.D. 1909.
WARREN K. MOOREHEAD
_Spec. U. S. Indian Agent_
STATE OF MINNESOTA } SS
COUNTY OF BECKER }
Margaret Coburn, or
Margaret Colburne Age 45.
Allottee Orig. 2951, Lots 1–2–&9,
Sec. 6, Twp 142, R 42.
On this 6th day of September, A.D. 1909, before me, W. K. Moorehead,
Spec. U. S. Indian Agent, personally came Margaret Colburne, who
being first duly sworn by me according to law, deposes and says:
That about two years ago, in August, 1907, a man named Ephraim
Budrow came to my house at Cloquet, Minn., and finding me there
alone and observing my crippled condition, said, “I am surprised to
see you in this condition. Why don’t you sell some of your land?” He
asked me how much land I had. This man seemed to know about my land.
He asked for the two trust patents of my deceased husband, Joe
Colburne, No. 2950 for SW|4 of SW|4, Sec. 32 & SE|4 of SE|4, Sec.
31, T 143—42, for my own trust patent, as above, and for that of my
child Joseph, No. 2953 for Lots 4 and 12, Sec. 30, Twp 143, R 42.
Said Budrow walked back and forth in the room in an excited and
nervous manner, and presently he went out before I could stop him,
taking the three trust patents with him. Because of my crippled
condition I could not run after him but managed to crawl to the
window and called to him to stop. He paid no attention to me.
My son-in-law came home about noon. His name is Frank Houle. He
asked me what I was crying about and I told him that said Budrow had
run off with the three trust patents belonging to my husband
(dec’d), myself and the boy. My son-in-law started at once for town
to hunt for Budrow but could not find him. That same evening,
however, my son-in-law caught hold of this Ephraim Budrow as Budrow
was boarding the train and told Budrow to give up the trust patents
he had taken from me. Budrow reached into a pocket and handed out
some papers to my son-in-law, which my son-in-law thought were the
three trust patents but which proved to be only the trust patent of
my child Joseph. Three days after, when we managed to get enough
money, my son-in-law went to Ephraim Budrow’s house at Fish Lake,
White Earth reservation and said Budrow promised to give up the
other two trust patents the next morning, but during the night
Budrow went away. My son-in-law waited for Budrow two days but
Budrow failed to turn up.
About two months ago, when I was in Waubun, I was taken sick and
needing some money, the lawyers were very insistent that I touch a
pen, and after I did so I received $400 for myself and $100 for my
son. They asked me if I was a mixed-blood and I told them no, that I
was a full-blood. I was not sworn to these papers. There was no
interpreter and I did not understand the papers.
Her mark
MARGARET COLBURNE.
Witness to mark
C. E. DENNIS.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 6th day of September, A.D.
1909, at White Earth, Minn.
WARREN K. MOOREHEAD,
_Spec. U. S. Indian Agent_.
It should be clear to all persons that those in authority should have
informed these Indians that a trust patent lost did not mean the loss of
property. By sending a small fee to Washington a duplicate trust patent
would be issued to any Indian who could prove that he had lost his.
Indians were allowed to remain in ignorance of this, and were led to
believe that the trust patent was everything. Therefore, when they lost
a trust patent they supposed they had lost their allotment.
The entire space assigned to this chapter could be devoted to a
discussion of health conditions but it is too heart-rending to take up
in detail. The Chippewa Indians are suffering from tuberculosis,
scrofula, trachoma and other diseases. Thirty-two per cent of the
children in the Government schools on examination by Government
physician, Dr. Edwards, were found to have trachoma; fifty per cent of
the Indians living at Pine Point have tuberculosis. Unless drastic
remedies are adopted the Ojibwa will soon be a thing of the past. The
Indian Office has built a hospital, and has rented of the Episcopal
church a small one, yet these care for but a fraction of the sick.
The Catholic priest, Father Roman Homar, in charge of the Mission at
Rice River, reported to me under date of April 29, 1910, that there was
more suffering than ever before in his territory; that Indians died that
winter, that many of the Indians were compelled to hunt rabbits, not for
pleasure, but from necessity, and that practically all the rabbits on
the reservation were killed. He exhausted his little fund and much of
his own salary in caring for the unfortunate. Early in April he had
utilized all the lumber at his disposal for the making of coffins, and
for the last Indian that he buried, just previous to writing the letter,
he made the coffin out of the church wood-box.
Rev. Father Felix, Catholic Missionary at Pine Point, and Rev. Wilkins
Smith, Episcopal missionary at Twin Lakes, both wrote to me of the great
suffering and poverty, sickness and death, and how their resources were
taxed beyond their ability to meet the same, in order to relieve even
such Indians as were connected with their various missions. The large
orphan school near White Earth village is crowded.
_Ojibwa Squaw Dance_
[Illustration:
Sung during the dance at Rice River, August, 1909. Recorded by W. K.
Moorehead.
This is the favorite song of the squaw dance. During five evenings,
when I listened to the music, and observed the ceremony of the
dance, this song was rendered more frequently than any of those
reproduced in Miss Densmore’s book. There are no words. The
musicians, five to eight in number, sat around a large drum, beating
time thereon and singing at the top of their voices. The repetition
of the song continues for nearly an hour. After a short intermission
the singers change to another air, but soon return to the favorite.
Gifts or favors are bestowed by dancers on their partners, and
according to Indian etiquette the full value must be returned when
one asks a person who has “favored him” to dance. The Indians never
slight each other or return trinkets for valuables. That “right” is
reserved to the white participants who once in a while take part.
]
The Government boarding school is now attended by about 300 pupils and
does excellent work. At the time of our investigation, however, it was
in a most unsatisfactory condition, and immediate reforms had to be
inaugurated.
Prior to the Linnen-Moorehead investigation there was entirely too much
swindling of school children. One would imagine that pupils in a
Government school, and under the protection of the American flag, would
be safer than pupils in ordinary institutions not governmental in
character. Yet there are many cases on record where children, little and
big, have lost their allotments while attending school. For this the
Indian Office does not seem so much to blame as the teachers and
superintendents who should have refused admission to persons who came to
transact business with minors. It is gratifying to learn that the
Commissioner has issued strict orders, and now it is impossible for
strangers, land sharks, or others to enter Government boarding schools
and swindle minors out of their property. My only regret is that the
strong, right arm of the Government did not protect these poor people
and their children prior to my arrival at White Earth.
Miss Phillomea Donnell was a pupil in the school at Flandreau, South
Dakota, where many Indian children are assembled each year for
instruction. She lived as do the others, in large dormitories. She
testifies that while she was there, a prominent, educated Indian
appeared and entered the music room without opposition on the part of
any teacher or person in authority, and sent for Miss Donnell. She came
down from her room, and the man produced a folded paper and a fountain
pen. He said that there was a dispute as to how her name was spelled on
the Government roll. There was some discussion about it, and he secured
her signature on each side of this paper in order, as he assured her, to
correct any error in the record. So she signed the paper in both places,
and he gave her a folded piece of paper, or an envelope, and told her it
was a present for her. Indians frequently make each other presents when
visiting, and so she did not look at this paper until she had been in
her room some time, as he told her it was a surprise. When she looked at
the paper she found it was a check for $500. Then, realizing that her
allotment of eighty acres, near the town of Mahnomen, was a valuable
allotment, she concluded that probably he had made her sign a paper the
result of which would be the loss of her land. She immediately sought
the superintendent of that school and he referred the matter to
Inspector Linnen and myself. The Indian had come to the school in an
automobile to hasten matters. There were no witnesses to the signature,
and he had no power of attorney in South Dakota, but only in Minnesota.
Yet in a few days the deed was recorded with the signature of witnesses.
In our capacity as Government officials we reported this outrageous
proceeding to the Department, prepared carefully-drawn affidavits
covering the entire circumstances, and rushed them to Washington to
enable the Commissioner to take immediate action. Up to the last that I
heard from Miss Donnell, she had obtained no relief from the Government,
but has been compelled to pay $57 out of her own funds (which were
limited) to obtain her own land. The buyer would not have given it up
but for the fact that he knew we were ready to proceed against him. I
cite the case of this girl in detail, although there are others which
could be mentioned where frauds were practised on minor children in the
Government schools.
When the Graham Committee hearings were published, the affidavits and
correspondence were made public. The Indian is supposed to have
persuaded Miss Donnell to speak in his favor. One of the Department of
Justice officials told me that the case against him was dropped.
We learned that certain educated Indians made a practice of going to
these Government schools, calling the pupils into the parlor or the
music-room or parade-ground, and transacting business with them.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ROLL. STORIES. RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHITE EARTH
Many years ago the employees at White Earth Agency made a roll of the
Chippewa Indians. One would suppose that so important a document as a
register of all the Indians would be accurate. But the original roll, as
on file at the White Earth office, in 1909, bristled with inaccuracies.
For instance, the name Mah-geed is the Ojibwa pronunciation of Maggie.
Many of the Indian girls were named Mah-geed by the priests and
missionaries. Those who made the Government roll apparently thought that
Mah-geed was a distinguished Indian name, so they had entered up quite a
number of Mah-geeds. No other name is added.
The Ojibwa name for old woman is Min-de-moi-yen. To the clerks who made
the roll this sounded like the name of an Indian, so they solemnly set
down many such names. “Young girl” is E-quay-zince. There are a large
number of E-quay-zinces in the roll. Yet, mind you, this is the official
roll, to which I objected, and to which the Indian Office employees
replied that if it was so entered on the roll it must be correct! When
Indians are assembled together, if one would call for E-quay-zince or
Mah-geed, it would be precisely as if, in an audience of two or three
hundred white persons, the speaker should ask for a “young girl” named
Mary to come forward, or request that “the lady” come to the platform.
By whom, aside from old Joe Pereault, an illiterate and troublesome
French-Canadian, who was employed for some time in the Agent’s office at
White Earth, this roll was made, I do not know.
As the roll we found in the Agent’s office in 1909 had been there for
years, I have often wondered how the authorities could differentiate
between the various Mah-geeds. If annuity money is to be paid an Indian
woman, E-quay-zince; what E-quay-zince would receive said payment? And
the same is true with reference to Min-de-moi-yen. If on an occasion of
great moment all the women of these names should appear at the agency
simultaneously, how would the employees be able to deal with them? The
spectacle would be amusing, and complicated, to say the least.
Inspector Linnen and myself made an accurate roll of the full-blood
Indians. We did not trouble ourselves concerning the mixed-bloods, who
were citizens, and under the law can dispose of their property. We were
sent to Minnesota to make an investigation as to the full-blood Indians,
and our work was confined to these Indians. If I remember correctly, we
entered five hundred and fifteen names.
The oldest and most reliable men of the tribe were assembled at the
various points where we investigated. These men knew all of the Indians
living in certain parts of the reservation, and their parents. In many
instances, they knew the grandparents and whether they were full-blood
or mixed-blood Indians. Through the assistance of two or three
interpreters, we carefully examined the witnesses in the presence of
those old men. An affidavit was drawn, in accordance with the facts, and
each witness attached his thumb-print thereto. On page 81 I present a
photographic copy of an affidavit taken by Mr. Linnen. It will be
observed by study of this that the testimony was exact in detail, and
the Indian proved to be a full-blood. If this plan were followed on all
the reservations in the United States, accurate lists of Indian
population would result. The list was made on ethnological lines. The
trouble has been, that men who were not acquainted with Indian customs
or descent, and who did not assemble together a sufficient number of the
older Indians, have attempted to make these rolls.
At the conclusion of our work at White Earth, the affidavits, the rolls,
and other papers were given to the Indian Office, and submitted by them
to the Department of Justice. The Department accepted our affidavits and
put them in legal form and began prosecutions, which have extended down
to the present time.
When Hon. Marsden C. Burch had charge of the White Earth cases for the
Attorney General, Mr. E. C. O’Brien served as his assistant. Hon. C. C.
Daniels succeeded Judge Burch, and Mr. O’Brien is associated with him in
the prosecutions. Mr. O’Brien kindly read proofs of my White Earth
chapters and offered suggestions. Mr. O’Brien says:—
“All suits are based on the Linnen-Moorehead roll, except a few
suggested by Mr. Hinton. The Hinton roll includes all Indians on the
reservation, and was prepared to determine who were entitled to fee
simple patents.”[14]
* * * * *
Mr. John H. Hinton was appointed Special Agent and sent to White Earth
to make a new roll of the Ojibwa. I was informed he added many names,
but Mr. O’Brien’s recent letter indicates that this is not correct. The
“interests” responsible for the White Earth scandal, petitioned Congress
a year ago to make a new roll of the Ojibwa. This bill nearly passed. A
Commission of two is now making a roll of allotments, which Mr. O’Brien
assures me are not included in the suits.
All lovers of justice may pray that no new roll be attempted. The
Linnen-Moorehead list is accurate and has stood the test.
Having assembled as our witnesses the most reliable old Indians, we were
able to check up the many errors in the Government roll. Frequently
there would be as many as forty or fifty Ojibwa assembled in the
schoolroom where our hearings were held. When the interpreter called out
such a name as Min-de-moi-yen, or E-quay-zince, or Mah-geed, the other
Indians would shout with laughter, and when they had recovered
sufficiently they would state they did not know what individual Indian
was named as there were a score who might respond to that appellation.
The Ojibwa Indians have had a number of attorneys in the past twenty, or
twenty-five years. None of these men seem to have concerned themselves
with the prevention of the wholesale thefts of land and timber. The
gentleman who acted as attorney at the time of our arrival, became
active toward the end of our investigation, and did what he could to
secure justice for the Indians. But he had done nothing previously along
such lines, and his activities savored of a death-bed repentance. The
Secretary of the Interior did not approve his re-election. The
full-blood Indians were against the employment of the attorney, and the
mixed-blood Indians, headed by Gus Beaulieu, were very insistent that
the attorney be retained. During the three years prior to 1909, the
attorney had received in salary and expenses about $20,000.
A large council was called in July by the Indians to talk over the
attorneyship. Mr. Linnen and myself were spectators, and while we could
have helped the poor, ignorant full-bloods, because of our official
position, we were compelled to sit in silence and see Gus Beaulieu and
John Carl, Rev. Clement Beaulieu and others manipulate the meeting. The
first morning, there were sufficient full-bloods to have outvoted the
Beaulieu element, two to one. But Gus Beaulieu and his brother, Rev.
Clement Beaulieu, consumed the time in speech-making, while Ben
Fairbanks sent mixed-bloods in teams all over the reservation to bring
in those who would vote according to Gus Beaulieu’s desires. At the
afternoon session the full-blood Indians might have carried their point,
but they spent their time answering the arguments of the two Beaulieus
and others, being cleverly heckled into making long speeches.
The next morning, the council adjourned to a larger hall, in the center
of White Earth village. By this time the mixed-blood element
predominated and a very motley crowd was assembled, including a number
of saloon-keepers of Ogema and other towns, and several interpreters who
were mentioned in the affidavits as having acted as go-betweens in land
and timber deals. To shorten my story, the poor full-blood Indians were
outvoted, they were asked to write out ballots (which they did not
understand and most of them could not write) and the attorney was
re-elected. We made a report against the council, and the Secretary of
the Interior sustained our objections.
[Illustration:
OJIBWA GRAVEYARD, WHITE EARTH MINNESOTA
Nearly all of these burials are those of consumptives the past few
years.
]
In addition to the Chippewa attorney, there was also a Chippewa
Commissioner. The Graham Investigating Committee considered him at some
length.
Senator Clapp asked that Darwin H. Hall be appointed Chippewa
Commissioner. The history of this appointment is interesting, but must
not (at present) be related. Previous to that, Hall had been employed at
various intervals until his employment totaled eight years and cost
$31,845. In this connection it is well to remark that the investigation
made by Linnen and myself, including the employment of thirty-seven
persons, and lasting all summer and part of the fall, cost for my part
$3,066.64. Mr. Linnen’s expenses could not have been more than a third
of that sum.
Hall came to White Earth while Linnen and I were investigating, and was
of no value to us. He helped us in no way. He was detailed to move some
200 or 300 Mille Lac Indians about one hundred miles (more or less). I
had offered to move these same Indians in sixty days, but my offer met
with no cordial response. During the twenty months that Hall was in
office he moved fifty Indians, according to my information, and
fifty-one according to the Indian Office report. At that rate, his job
would have lasted nearly seven years! It cost him $167.50 per head to
move an Indian one hundred miles. It would have cost $33,500 to move 200
Indians to White Earth!
I met Hall at the Hiawatha Hotel, White Earth, prior to the arrival of
Mr. Linnen. We stepped out into the street in order not to be overheard
and I told him of the dreadful situation of the Chippewa Indians and how
that he could help us right their wrongs. He informed me that he had no
sympathy with the investigation, and I could see his attitude was
hostile.
The Secretary of the Bureau of Catholic Missions, Charles S. Lusk, wrote
to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in August, 1910, calling attention
to the sad condition of these Indians, that the removal of a portion of
them to White Earth had brought them under the influence of one Gus
Beaulieu and other politicians. They were promised houses, lands and
farming implements. In Washington three years ago I met a delegation of
the Ojibwa. Three of the members of this body were personally known to
me, and the Chief Ah-bow-we-ge-shig well known. They told me that the
last thing that Darwin Hall did was to summon the Mille Lacs and
persuade them to move a considerable distance from their homes. He left
them in camp, promising to return shortly and move them to White Earth.
These Indians waited two weeks. They had little food. Mr. Hall did not
move them, and they suffered privations, and at last returned to their
former homes. The story of the Mille Lacs reads as a page from Helen
Hunt Jackson’s “Century of Dishonor,” yet this scandal did not occur in
the old days, but is recent history. Who is responsible?
Almost any other body of men and women in the world would be utterly
discouraged if they had passed through the same experience that fell to
the lot of the Ojibwa Indians of White Earth, Minnesota, during
twenty-five years. I am acquainted with no community in the East where,
in the minds and hearts of the citizens, there would remain even a
particle of respect, or regard, or confidence, in any government, or
culture, or civilization, responsible for such a condition. The sole
saving grace is the natural cheerfulness and optimism of the Ojibwa
people, as a whole. Many of them are discouraged, and most of them will
not farm or work, for the reason that the farming and working in the
past resulted in those who were industrious being disciplined, (see page
68) and those who were indolent being rewarded. No white man or woman
would work under similar circumstances. Yet, contrary to all precedents,
they are cheerful and optimistic. They have a keen sense of humor, they
laugh and joke among themselves. I desire to vary the monotony of this
recital of wrongs and sufferings, by illustrating a few incidents.
The old witnesses and the interpreters, after dinner one noon hour, were
having an animated discussion. A number of us were lolling about on the
ground, smoking, and one of the officials happened at this moment to
stretch and yawn. One of the old Indians immediately laughed and said
something which caused the other Indians to shout with merriment. The
interpreter turned to me and said, “Mah-een-gonce says, that that is the
first white man he has seen to open his mouth and a lie did not hop
out.”
When the Indians were assembled in council on one occasion, a long
letter from Washington arrived which was read by the clerk, and
interpreted by John Lufkins, a Carlisle graduate. At the conclusion of a
tedious interpretation requiring an hour, a prominent Indian, whom we
called “Shorty,” but whose correct name was Ah-bow-we-ge-shig, arose and
uttered a few words not requiring more than fifteen or twenty seconds in
utterance. His reply to the long, well-worded, indefinite Washington
letter is worthy of preservation. “That letter is like the food that we
Indians have today, all soup and no meat.”
When some of the preliminary trials were heard at White Earth,
previous to action by the Department of Justice, the old Indian
Bay-bah-dwun-gay-aush, eighty-two years of age, and who was possessed
of remarkable memory, was on the witness stand. This Indian knew the
family history of several hundred persons and was entirely familiar
with all parts of the reservation. The lawyers, however, would ask him
where was located a piece of land described as Township 4, Section 15,
Range 142, and who owned it, instead of asking the Indian, “Who owns
the land at the head of Otter Creek?” or “Who used to live at the head
of Otter Creek?” The attorneys purposely asked the Indian in a way to
confuse him, in order to substantiate their contention that Indian
testimony was not reliable.
Having stood this annoying and unfair grilling for a long time, old
Bay-bah-dwun-gay-aush said something to the interpreter which caused the
other Indians to laugh. His remark was, “Why does the lawyer ask me
where the Indian land is? The white lawyers know better than I, because
they now own most of the lands.” I believe that he added that they had
stolen them, or words to that effect.
Inspector Linnen, Mr. Allen and myself were criticised by those who
sought, unsuccessfully, to discredit our work; for the reason that we
looked on during a squaw dance. One reverend gentleman contended that we
were encouraging “pagan ceremonies”. In fact, he reproached one of the
Government officials rather severely. The Government official denied
having taken part in a pagan dance, whereupon the reverend gentleman
asked him, “Have you seen many pagan dances?” “I can truthfully say,”
replied the official, “that I never observed but one dance which might
truly be called pagan.” The reverend gentleman seemed shocked, but made
bold to inquire: “On what reservation?” “It was on no reservation. The
only real pagan dance I ever witnessed was the inaugural ball in
Washington during Harrison’s administration.”
On another occasion, toward the end of the investigation, we were
visited by a reverend gentleman much concerned as to the welfare of the
Indians, a most worthy person, but who seemed to concern himself with
details, rather than the great important questions and problems of White
Earth. There was a good deal of drinking among the Indians, and the
police made frequent arrests. The day following an arrest, when the
Indians had become sober, they were brought into Major Howard’s office
where a sort of “fatherly court” was held. These hearings might be
roughly compared to police court affairs in other communities. Mr.
Linnen and myself occasionally went in, but usually we were in the
schoolroom taking testimony. Because we did not assume charge of all
those multitudinous details, the worthy gentleman from the East seemed
to think that we were neglecting our duties. He thought we did not seem
appalled by the laxity of morals, etc. Such was not the case, for we had
already made a lengthy report to the Secretary of the Interior and
Commissioner of Indian Affairs on the whiskey curse and on immorality.
However, he spoke to an educated Indian, and rather reprimanded us. The
Indian’s answer was one of the best I have ever heard. He said, “Doctor,
I will give you an Indian illustration. The shed, the stable and the
house are all on fire. Linnen and Moorehead are trying to save the house
first, and the stable next, but the shed is doomed. You want them to
abandon work on the house and begin on the shed.”
Today the Department of Justice has before it something like sixteen
hundred cases involving lands at White Earth. Several times have I
written the Honorable Attorney General for information. While some lands
have been returned, and some reforms instituted, it must be admitted
that there has not been the prompt, efficient “clean-up” for which we
hoped. This has had a bad effect elsewhere on both Whites and Indians.
It is my firm conviction that white people are encouraged to defraud
Indians, for the reason that they are willing to “take a chance.” That
is, they know that the Indian property can be obtained in a short time,
whereas the procedure of recovery will drag through months, (and usually
years) and that the Government stands more than an even chance of being
defeated. It was defeated in the first White Earth cases.
The Indians take the point of view that the grafters are more powerful
than the Great Father at Washington. While this seems entirely
illogical, nevertheless it is entirely true—from the Indians’ point of
view. The Indian loses his property under such conditions as occurred at
White Earth, by the removal of restrictions, in a few days, or a few
weeks, elsewhere in a few months, or not more than a few years. He knows
that this is true and that it occurs all over the United States. The
Government does not spend a few weeks, or a few months in recovering the
property, save in very rare instances. Usually, the Government cases
drag on for years. The Indians write letters to the men who began the
investigation, or the attorneys who tried the cases, and they receive
just such replies as fill the files in my office: “I have the honor to
advise you that the Department is doing all it can to bring the cases to
trial. There was much testimony to be taken before they could be tried
on their merits.[15] Some are now almost ready for trial, and we hope to
submit them before the close of the calendar year;” or, “The Department
is doing all possible;” or, “The delays are due to the activity of the
attorneys on the other side;” or, “It has been found that according to
Act 462, 57th Congress, that these white persons are empowered”, etc.;
or, “The information contained in your communication of the 13th has
been submitted to our legal department,” etc., etc. From the Indian
point of view, there is anything and everything under the sun except the
return of the property or the punishment of the guilty. This is strong
language, but it is absolutely true. So long as we permit Indians to
lose their property without let or hindrance from us, our Indian
citizens will lose their property; and so long as we administer our
justice in such a manner that the burden of the proof seems to rest on
the poor Indian rather than upon the white grafter, just so long will
the bulk of the Indians care neither for industry nor education, neither
for civilization nor Christianity. The Indian must have the same
standing and the same justice in court as the white man. Furthermore,
there must be a swift administration of justice, and some means devised
whereby the tricks of grafters’ lawyers may be overcome.
The Inspection Service, under the supervision of Honorable E. B. Linnen,
is now what it should have been ten years ago. I went into this phase of
the White Earth situation in 1909, very thoroughly. There had been
Special Agents and Inspectors at White Earth time and again.
One who had done real work was Mrs. Elsie E. Newton, one of the most
able and conscientious women in the Indian Service. She had visited the
sick and the suffering, had made recommendations, had done her part
toward remedying intolerable conditions.
How the others could have visited such a place as White Earth and not
reported on actual conditions is incomprehensible, unless we accept Mr.
Valentine’s address at Lake Mohonk, in October, 1909, in which he stated
that too many of his Inspectors were blind and deaf! I talked with one
or two men now out of the Service, who used to be Special Agents, and
they did not even know the names of all the places on the reservation! I
don’t know of one of them who went into the cabins and sat down and
talked to the Indians and heard their troubles. Most of them drove from
the railroad station at Ogema, over to the Agent’s office and talked
with Mr. Michelet, the agent preceding Howard.
I would close this chapter on White Earth with an incident which
occurred at Pine Point during the first investigation, March-April,
1909.
The Chief of the Otter Tail Pilligers lives at Pine Point. One of the
most dramatic instances which occurred during the investigation happened
in the latter part of March before the large party, employed during the
summer, had begun their labors. It was cold and we were compelled to
hold our examinations indoors. Just opposite the office was a schoolroom
in which some sixty Indian children were assembled under the charge of
three or four white teachers. The chief had lost a number of children
and other relatives, and thus he and his wife were heirs to about eleven
allotments. These were easily worth $45,000 or $50,000, being mostly
pine timber. With the exception of one or two others, this man had been
robbed of more property than anyone else, and it was pathetic to hear
him state how certain men in whom he trusted, had taken advantage of his
ignorance. When he had finished his long recital of wrongs, I remarked,
“You must have lost entire faith in the white people and in the
Government at Washington.” “Oh, no,” he replied, “I think that
Washington would give me justice if only the men there could hear my
story.” Just as he completed this statement, the school session came to
an end, and we heard through the thin partition the childish voices
singing in unison “My Country, ’Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty”—and
this was the first time in my life that the words sounded in my ears
like a hollow mockery and a sham.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WHITE EARTH
Omitting ethnological reports and Warren’s book (see page 45) those
who desire to study conditions at White Earth, Leech Lake, Red Lake,
and Cass Lake, are referred to the reports of the Secretary of the
Interior, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and the Board of Indian
Commissioners the past twenty years. These contain all
administrative details.
The legal aspect of the prosecution will be found in pamphlets
issued by the Department of Justice, and the U. S. Court of Claims.
White Earth has been the subject of much investigation on the part
of Committees of the Senate and House of Representatives. The most
lengthy and exhaustive investigation, covering every phase of the
subject, is the report of the Committee on Expenditure in the
Interior Department, Honorable James M. Graham of Illinois,
Chairman. House Resolution No. 103; July 25, 1911–April, 1912; 2759
pp. Those who care to follow the subject further, will find in this
lengthy report an enormous amount of material.
A synopsis entitled “The Lesson of White Earth” will be found in the
report of the 30th Conference of Friends of the Indian and Other
Dependent Peoples held at Lake Mohonk, N. Y., October, 1912.
-----
Footnote 14:
Letter of Dec. 2nd, 1914. Federal Building, Minneapolis.
Footnote 15:
Letter of Aug. 29th, 1914.
CHAPTER IX. THE SIOUX AND THE MESSIAH CRAZE
The Sioux is one of our most famous Indian nations. As the Iroquois
activities two centuries ago placed them in the forerank of American
aborigines, so the Sioux from the days of Lewis and Clark down to the
present have been much in evidence. They are primarily a strong, hearty
race possessed of dominant spirit. Their reservations at Standing Rock,
Rosebud, Pine Ridge, etc., contain most of the 28,000 natives of this
stock. Reference to Major Powell’s linguistic map will acquaint readers
with the enormous extent of territory they once occupied. The
Commissioner’s map of 1913 shows that these people today own a small
fraction of their original holdings.
The general progress of the Sioux, the famous men that they have
produced, I have covered in the chapters treating of Education, Red
Cloud, Sitting Bull, etc.
They were known to the army officers as Horse Indians, and to many
others as Plains Indians. The horse was to the Sioux what the birch bark
canoe was to the Ojibwa or the Penobscot. In early days their habitat
was almost entirely confined to the Great Plains, the foothills of the
Black Hills and the Missouri River. They were in Minnesota at an early
period, but were driven westward and southward by the Ojibwa. The older
Ojibwa claim that the Sioux frequently surprised hunting parties of
these woods Indians, and that whenever the Ojibwa were caught out on the
plain by the Sioux, they were invariably defeated with great loss. The
Ojibwa therefore resorted to the strategy of luring the Sioux into the
woods. Where this was possible, the expert woodcraft of the Ojibwa came
into play and they generally defeated their enemies with heavy
slaughter.
1850 to 1868 found the Sioux supremacy on the Great Plains unquestioned.
With the coming of the railroad, and steamboat navigation on the
Missouri, and the great influx of white traders, their powers declined
as I have indicated in some detail on other pages.
The story of the Brulé, Miniconjou, Oglala, Teton and other divisions,
so far as history is concerned, is pretty much the same. The buffalo was
their chief support, in fact their very life was bound up in this
animal. The wild horse was a later acquisition. In order to understand
them thoroughly, the past fifty years, we should study in detail the
life of Red Cloud, that of Sitting Bull, and in addition the Messiah
craze, as previously mentioned.
The contrast between the Pine Ridge of today and that of 1890 is almost
beyond belief. In 1890, one of the strangest ceremonies imaginable was
in full swing. In 1909, when I visited Pine Ridge, exactly nineteen
years later, I found the Sioux working upon their allotments, farming,
digging irrigation ditches, and doing their best toward “taking the
white man’s road.” On the plains where once clustered the tipis of the
Ghost dancers were the large, modern brick buildings of the Oglala
school, a most successful institution where young men and women are
trained in the arts. Certainly the progress of these Indians is more
than surprising—it is remarkable. And it is chiefly due to the fact that
they have had as their Superintendent or Agent a man who is in sympathy
with them and who has not been replaced through political influence.
Major John R. Brennan has supervised the famous old fighting Oglala
Sioux for more than fifteen years.
The progress of these Indians is, as I have said, creditable, but they
are still poor, there is much suffering, and the increase in stock has
not been as large as desired. Farming operations continue on a large
scale, but the soil is more suited to grazing than farming, although the
Indians do the best they can under the circumstances.
All of the Sioux have so far progressed, that it is unthinkable that any
fanaticism such as the Ghost dance will again overtake them. It is quite
safe to predict that since all of their children have been educated and
nearly all of the Sioux of every reservation have been allotted land in
severalty, they will continue to progress, and if the ravages of
tuberculosis are stayed, a large number of the descendants of the
full-bloods will survive and become useful citizens.
These Indians, after the surrender of Sitting Bull, were not much in the
public eye until occurred the famous Ghost dance, or Messiah craze, and
that being the chief event since the Custer fight we must needs devote
considerable space to it.
On several occasions during the past two centuries, in this country,
Indian shamans, or priests, have prophesied the coming of an Indian
Messiah. We shall at some future time consider this interesting subject
in detail, but within the period embraced in this book, that peculiar
craze which swept throughout the West and the South during the year
1890, and known as the Ghost Dance, is the chief religious event.
Mr. James Mooney of the Bureau of Ethnology, published a very
comprehensive monograph, in 1896, entitled “The Ghost Dance Religion”,
in the Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology. I shall draw
the information presented in this chapter partly from Mr. Mooney’s
account, but more especially from my own investigation made in the
winter of 1890 at Pine Ridge reservation, South Dakota, where among the
Oglala Sioux the Messiah craze reached its culmination.
The music of the Oglala dances was taken down at the time by Mr. George
E. Bartlett (Husté) and myself. Our work was not copyrighted, and soon
found its way into various publications, and after being harmonized, our
music was soon in general use. It is no more than fair to say that as I
lay no claim to special skill as an ethnologist, Mr. Mooney, having more
training and experience in such studies, was able to present the songs
and their translations more accurately. I believe, in my original
articles published in the _Illustrated American_ of New York in January
and February, 1891, some of the Sioux word-syllables were not properly
spaced, a number of accent marks omitted, and there were a few minor
errors. But in the main the account as published was correct, although
it was a “popular”, rather than a technical paper.
I did not investigate the Messiah in the West, although the new religion
was inaugurated by him. The Sioux told me a great deal concerning him.
He was known to them as Johnson, whereas Mooney gives as his proper
name, Wovoka. In November, 1891, a year after the trouble at Pine Ridge,
Mr. Mooney set out for Pine Ridge, where he spent considerable time, and
then visited Walker Lake reservation in Nevada, where Wovoka (Johnson)
lived. Here he obtained at first hand the information concerning the
origin of the Messiah religion, and has presented us with a very
valuable and interesting account.
As in the case of all Messiahs or prophets, Wovoka was a dreamer. He
inherited the spirit of prophecy, for his father before him was known as
a prophet. The young man at the time of Mooney’s visit, had never
wandered beyond the valley wherein he resided—a small area, some thirty
miles in length. Wovoka belonged to the Paiute, and his religion may be
summed up in this statement which Mooney records.
“When the sun died, I went up to heaven and saw God and all the people
who had died a long time ago. God told me to come back and tell my
people they must be good and love one another, and not fight, or steal,
or lie. He gave me this dance to give to my people.”
If the missionaries and Government employees had seized upon the
beautiful sentiment uttered in this remarkable paragraph, the new
religion might have been turned to good account. Instead of that, as we
shall see presently, an Agent utterly ignorant of Indians, saw in this
sacred ceremony nothing beyond a “war dance” and he sent for troops—the
very worst possible thing he could have done.
Mooney spent many days conversing with this interesting person, Wovoka,
who told him that he had given to his people this dance about two years
previously. He seems to have talked very freely with Mr. Mooney,
permitting him to take his photograph, and when Mooney left, the prophet
gave him as souvenirs to exhibit to his friends, a blanket of rabbit
skins, sacred paint endowed with miraculous powers and which plays an
important part in the ritual of the Ghost dance religion, and other
trinkets.
In Oklahoma Mooney met with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes and they gave
him a written statement of the doctrine of Wovoka, which he was
permitted to take to Washington to convince the authorities, “that there
was nothing bad or hostile in the new religion.”
Mooney traveled many months West and South and his excellent report is
evidence that he studied every phase of the dance. My work was confined
to Pine Ridge where I studied the dance while it was in progress. There
it appeared in all its purity; there the white people made of it a
“warlike” demonstration; there stupidity and ignorance transformed a
peaceful, religious ceremony into a bloody tragedy—Wounded Knee.
I employed three interpreters: the Weasel (Itonkasan,) George Bartlett
(Husté), and a Frenchman, whose name I do not recall.
Doctor Charles A. Eastman, the Sioux, some years after my account was
published, informed me that it was correct, and he was present before,
during and after the trouble at Pine Ridge, and knew all the actors
intimately.
Summing up Mr. Mooney’s conclusions in a few words, the Messiah craze of
1890 was a mixture of Christianity and Indian religion.
In a nutshell, the Messiah craze conformed to the sentiments of Jesus
Christ. It was not expressed in His language, but the frequent
repetitions of such sentiments as “you must not fight”, and, “do injury
to no one”; “give up the bad white man’s ways”; “live as brothers as you
did before the Whites came”; “Dance faithfully to the Great Spirit”;
“Father and Mother are talking”; etc., indicate a belief in the better
things of life and of the hereafter. Instead of hostility, peace was
proclaimed; instead of avarice, the communistic life was advocated.
There was only one discontented element, or discordant note, and that
was the stand taken by Sitting Bull and a few other Indians, who seized
upon this craze to further their own personal aims. Major McLaughlin has
commented in full on Sitting Bull’s attitude in his book, pages 183–220.
And while I do not entirely agree with him, it is beyond question that
Sitting Bull sought to gain through the Messiah craze. To a certain
extent he advocated armed resistance, but the dominating desire in his
mind, a careful review of events would indicate, was that Sitting Bull
desired above all things to see the Indians restored to their old-time
domination. Like the others, he prayed for the return of the buffalo,
without which “the good old days” would be impossible. He probably
believed that volcanic action (“wave of mud”, as the Oglala called it)
would sweep across the country, destroy the Whites and leave the red men
happy possessors of the Plains and countless herds of bison, elk and
deer. That was the belief of many of the Indians, and so expressed by
them during the Ghost dance.
The Ghost dance, or Messiah craze, was seized upon by all these Sioux as
a means of salvation out of their troubles. We must remember that these
Indians had lived but a few years on the reservation at Pine Ridge. In
1876, only fourteen years before, they killed Custer and wiped out
several companies of the Seventh Cavalry. They had made some progress,
but they were still ration Indians, and the cutting down of the supply
of beef, etc., hundreds of thousands pounds, before the Indians had
become self-supporting, caused widespread suffering.
It is not necessary to repeat the troubles of the Sioux here. I have
referred to some of the treaties, Indian cause for dissatisfaction, in
other pages of this book. In the spring of 1889, so I was informed at
Pine Ridge, Congress passed an act authorizing the purchase of a large
tract of land from these people. Honorable Charles Foster, ex-Governor
of Ohio, and several other gentlemen were appointed a committee to
negotiate with the Indians. According to the Indians’ version, many
councils were held and a great deal of discussion ensued. Sometimes the
debates were rather strenuous and they all related to purchase of
lands—to the further curtailing of the Sioux reservation—the same old
story. An intelligent educated Indian summed up their cause as follows:—
“The lands secured by the treaty were divided into three classes. All
tracts selected for farming or grazing purposes within a period of three
years from February 15, 1890, were to be sold at $1.25 per acre. Those
purchased during the two years following were valued at seventy-five
cents per acre. The portions remaining unsold after the expiration of
five years could be bought for fifty cents per acre. The money received
from the sale of the land was to be placed in the United States
Treasury, subject to interest, which was to be paid to the Indians at
regular intervals.
“Any Sioux whom his Agent considered qualified for supporting himself
was to be allowed to select for his own use a tract of land, the area of
which was determined by the number of members in his family. Farming
implements and utensils, oxen or horses, seed, etc., and fifty dollars
in cash were also to be given him. Notices to acquaint the Sioux with
this proposition were posted in conspicuous places in the agency
buildings, and every inducement was offered the people to take the land
in severalty. So far, about one hundred at Rosebud, a smaller number at
Standing Rock, and some two hundred at Pine Ridge have made applications
to the Agents for allotments.
[Illustration:
MODERN SIOUX CABIN AND SUMMER TENT. PINE RIDGE, 1909
]
“Inquiries were made of many of the leading men on the reservation as to
why more persons did not avail themselves of the Government’s liberal
offer and become self-supporting. The Indians’ answers and their reasons
for not taking up land in severalty convinced all questioners not
already prejudiced that under the present condition of affairs it would
be impossible to interest more than a small percentage of the nation in
agriculture.”[16]
Some of the Indians’ statements may be denied in Washington. The Indians
have always maintained that many things are told them by Commissioners
which are never carried into effect. I am quite aware that only the
written recommendations are acted upon. That is, the report of a
Commission may be quite different from the Indians’ ideas or
understandings of the councils and the debates. Politicians will
cultivate the good will of Indians just as they cultivate voters. The
politician frankly admits: “a platform is made to get in on.” The
failure to keep these promises, and the difference between the actual
performance and the words so freely uttered in the presence of the
Indians, caused much dissatisfaction and paved the way for the Messiah
craze.
Another serious cause for complaint occurred after the Messiah craze
started. Doctor Royer sent out the Indian police and brought in all the
friendly Indians, in order to differentiate them from the “hostiles.”
That is, he compelled all Indians who were not dancing, and those who
were lukewarm toward the Messiah doctrine, to move to the agency and
live in tents and canvas tipis under his direct supervision. When I
reached Pine Ridge, these tents extended in little groups, here and
there, for two miles. As most of the Indians lived in log cabins, this
foolish order worked great hardship. Many of them lost stock, their
cabins were broken into, and they were compelled to seek support from
the Government. Royer was forced to issue a great quantity of rations.
As the younger children, for the most part, were accustomed to living in
the log houses referred to, this change in winter to life in the open
was responsible for a heavy increase of diphtheria and other diseases.
The Indians bitterly complained and began to say they thought the
Government had deliberately set about destroying the Pine Ridge Sioux.
As a result of the mismanagement, the ignorance, the suffering, and the
presence of the troops, the progress of the Pine Ridge Sioux was delayed
many years, and much of the advancement of the previous ten years was
forever lost. The only redeeming feature at Pine Ridge, in my opinion,
was the appointment of Major John R. Brennan as Agent. He took charge
shortly after the military domination ended and after years of labor
managed to inspire confidence in the Oglalas.
The succeeding pages describe the dance ceremonies as related to me at
Pine Ridge in November and December, 1890. I have left much of the
narrative in the present tense, as written then.
The Indians located in the Dakotas have been in the habit of visiting
the Utes and Arapahoes every summer for the purpose of trading. They
also hunted game en route. While the Sioux are unable to converse with
these tribes, means of communication is possible through the medium of
the sign-language, which was well understood by all Plains Indians. Most
of the older Oglala, Miniconjou, and Brulé are able to use it at
present.
[Illustration:
GOVERNMENT SCHOOL BUILDINGS; ON SITE OF “HOSTILES’ CAMP” OF 1890. PINE
RIDGE, 1909
]
Keeps-the-Battle (Kicizapi Tawa) told me a few days ago that it was
during the visit of the Pine Ridge Sioux last July that he first heard
of the coming of the new Messiah. He related the following story:
“Scarcely had my people reached the Ute village when we heard of a white
preacher whom the Utes held in the highest esteem, who told a beautiful
dream or vision of the coming of a great and good red man. This strange
person was to set aright the wrongs of my people; he could restore to us
our game and hunting grounds, was so powerful that every wish or word he
gave utterance to became fulfilled.
“His teaching had a strange effect upon the Utes, and, in obedience to
the commands of this man, they began a Messiah dance.”
Keeps-the-Battle further said that, immediately upon the arrival of the
hunting-party at Pine Ridge, a small dance was held in imitation of the
ones they had seen while among the Utes, but that until the medicine men
began to superintend the ceremonies nothing unusual occurred. The dances
were held every few days until the middle of August. Then, with scarcely
any warning, a wild and general desire took possession of a large part
of the nation to welcome the expected Messiah the moment he set foot
upon earth. Mr. H. G. Galagher was then Agent, and, fearing that the
enthusiasm of the Sioux under his charge might terminate in an outbreak,
he visited White Bird’s camp accompanied by fourteen Indian police. As
he approached the village, twenty warriors sprang out of the brush and,
drawing their Winchesters, called upon him to halt. They would not
permit him to advance, and compelled the party to turn about and retrace
its footsteps to the agency.
The news of this bold action spread like wildfire through the country,
and being heralded and exaggerated by the daily press, caused many an
uneasy and timid settler to prepare to remove to the nearest point upon
the railroad.
The news of the failure of the agent to stop the Messiah dance was
carried by couriers to the Indians at Rosebud and Standing Rock
reservations, and the more susceptible persons became infatuated with
the new craze. Meetings and dances were arranged at points distant from
the agency posts, in order that no employee might interfere. Of course,
both the Sioux and the Whites were much excited. The former were ready
and willing to throw off forever the odious yoke of oppression; the
latter, fearful for the safety of their homes and families.
The white people became frantic from fear, houses were barricaded and
all Indians viewed with suspicion. A sensational press magnified events,
and settlers accused many friendly Indians, who had joined the dance for
no other purpose than worship, of hostile intentions. This accusation,
coupled with the arrival of some four or five times as many troops as
were necessary to subdue the small number of lodgers which later fled
into the borders of the Bad Lands, had the effect of turning the more
timid toward the agency, while the braver middle-aged and young men fled
to the northward.
[Illustration:
SIOUX FARMING. WHITE CLAY CREEK, PINE RIDGE, 1909
]
But to return to the mission of Agent Galagher last summer. It is quite
natural to suppose that the Agent was not a little frightened at his
reception near “White Bird’s” camp, and, as subsequent events would seem
to indicate, he feared to assert his authority and compel the Sioux to
discontinue their dance. He hoped that in time the craze would die out
without interference on his part. But instead of ceasing, the number
participating increased, and really things began to assume a very
threatening aspect. Then came the change of Agents and Dr. D. F. Royer,
of Alpina, South Dakota, succeeded Mr. Galagher. Royer was not the man
for so trying a post, and as both the Agents were political appointees,
trouble was certain to follow. And no sooner did Indians begin to dance
than Royer bombarded Washington with requests for troops. He sent a
letter or telegram every day.
The dancers were not slow to take advantage of Galagher’s or Royer’s
non-interference, and a report gained wide circulation to the effect
that their Agent was afraid to command the police to arrest the
principals in the dance. The medicine men and Indians of the same stamp
as the late Sitting Bull, addressed the young men somewhat after the
following manner:
“Do you not see that the Whites on the reservation are afraid of you?
Why do you pray to great Wakantanka to send the Saviour on earth when
the remedy lies in your own hands? Be men, not children. You have a
perfect right to dance upon your own reservation as much as you please,
and you should exercise the rights, even if you find it necessary to use
your guns. Be brave, and the good and great Wakantanka will aid your
arms. Be cowards, and he will be ashamed of you.”
Now let us consider the Messiah craze as it appeared in its purity.
In nearly all religious beliefs the candidate for admission to the
church or body of worshippers is compelled to pass through certain
ceremonies. In our own day we maintain certain practices which have
nothing whatever to do with one’s salvation, but which have been handed
down both by tradition and historical record, and on this account are
sacredly preserved.
There do not appear to have been any special preparations on the part of
the candidates. The sweat-lodge was in frequent use, and many Indians
purified themselves. The sweat-bath was common among the Sioux in
1889–1890. But during the Messiah craze its use became widespread, and
the dancers thought it prepared them, or purified them, for the dance.
The pipe is also smoked during the sweat. When the young men issue from
their bath the perspiration is fairly streaming from every pore. If it
is not cold weather they plunge into a pool in the creek nearby, but if
it is chilly they wrap blankets about their bodies. None of the Whites
and half-breeds who have witnessed these things ever saw a Sioux rub
himself after issuing from the bath.
The largest camp of the dancers prior to the departure for the North was
located upon Wounded Knee creek. Other camps of considerable extent
existed upon White Clay creek, four miles from the agency headquarters,
upon Porcupine and Medicine Root streams. No Water’s camp became, later,
the general rendezvous.
The shamans took the dance under their charge. One of them seemed to be
“high priest,” or at least controlled the affair. Three or four
assistants served, and had power to stop or start the dance.
[Illustration:
NO WATER’S CAMP OF GHOST DANCERS, 1890
A. Council Lodge. B. No Water’s Tipi
Sketch by Husté, Pine Ridge.
]
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Footnote 16:
Written in 1890, at Pine Ridge