NORTHWESTERN TREATY COMMISSION.
In the meantime a commission had been appointed to go up the river and make treaties with certain tribes of Indians in regard to the right of way for railroads across their lands. It was officially known as the Northwestern Treaty Commission, but was popularly referred to as the Peace Commission of 1866. It was composed of Newton Edmunds, Governor of Dakota Territory; General S. R. Curtis, a well-known officer of the Iowa Volunteers; Orrin Guernsey, and the Rev. Henry W. Reed, who so long figured as an Indian agent on the upper river. The Commission were well provided with presents and proposed to travel in becoming state. Captain La Barge had secured for the summer, while the Octavia was building, another boat, a fine new one, the Ben Johnson. The Commission contracted with the Captain to carry them up the river and back at three hundred dollars per day. One of the Commissioners wanted the Captain to hire his son as clerk, or in some other capacity, at five dollars per day. The Captain had made up his crew and did not care to go to this extra and unnecessary expense. But as the Commissioner rather insisted, the charter price was raised to $305 per day, and the young man enjoyed a fat sinecure during the trip—an instance of the kind of corruption which was almost universal in the period following the war.
PEACE COMMISSION A FAILURE.
To Captain La Barge the voyage seemed more like a pleasure excursion than a business enterprise. The boat moved by very leisurely stages, always tying up early in the evening and starting late in the morning. Whist and other games were the order of the day. Long stops were made at all interesting points, and the party enjoyed exceptional opportunities of seeing Indian life in all its wildness. As a means of accomplishing any good, the Commission was looked upon from the first by the people of the Missouri Valley as little more than a farce. No end of ridicule was poured upon it, and it was held up to the general contempt by those who had any definite acquaintance with the situation. The Indians were generally loath to negotiate, fearing that the Commission “would want them to sign some paper that would take from them their lands and houses and oblige them to seek new ones farther west.” It cannot be said that any good came from this Commission—certainly nothing to justify its great expense. It did without doubt create new complications, lead to increased dissatisfaction on the part of the Indians, and, on the whole, aggravate an already serious situation.[71]
Some of the incidents on this trip had a flavor of danger about them, and we shall narrate one as given us by Captain La Barge. It related to an interview of the Commissioners with the Yanktonais, who were well known as the most relentlessly hostile of any of the Sioux tribes.
“Some twenty miles below the mouth of White Earth River,” said Captain La Barge, “I saw two Indian hunters on the hills. I hailed them, landed the steamer, asked them on board, and after feasting them (an indispensable preliminary to the transaction of any business), inquired if they were Yanktonais, and if so where were the rest of the tribe. They replied in the affirmative, and said that their camp was about ten miles off, on the White Earth River. The Chairman of the Commission asked them to go to camp and tell the chiefs to move their whole village down to the mouth of the White Earth and there await the arrival of the boat for the purpose of holding a council. He inquired the size of the village, and found it to be six hundred tepees, which meant about three thousand Indians.
A VIGOROUS REMONSTRANCE.
“I remonstrated at this proposition, strongly urging that only the chiefs be invited. Should so powerful a band of these hostile Indians get any advantage of us they would certainly use it. We had no power of resisting them, having only thirty people in all, and they were poorly armed. The Indians would, I feared, make a rush and attempt to capture the steamer as soon as we landed. Our interpreter, Zephyr Rencontre, seconded me in this opinion. I had been in the power of these Indians once before, and, thanks to Rencontre, I was wearing my hair on this occasion.
AFRAID OF INDIANS.
“The Chairman of the Commission said he perceived that I was afraid of the Indians, but not to be alarmed; he would answer for all harm. The Indians would never dare molest a government officer. To me, who had spent all my life among the Indians, this gratuitous insinuation from a mere novice in Indian experience cut me to the quick, and I replied: ‘Very well, I will land as you say, but before we get through we shall see who is afraid of Indians.’