“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.