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.