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.
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.
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.
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.”