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.
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.