As the administration of Mr. Ramsey had been signalized by the opening of many millions of acres of Indian lands to white men’s occupation in southern Minnesota, so in Governor Gorman’s day great areas were opened in the Chippeway country of northern Minnesota. It is probable that Mr. Rice, more familiar with the Chippeways than any other public man, was most influential of all in procuring the cessions.
The earliest explorers to the shores of Lake Superior had brought away specimens of native copper and Indian reports of hidden metallic treasure. In 1826 Governor Lewis Cass obtained, by a treaty made at Fond du Lac with the Chippeways, the right of the whites to search for metals and minerals in any part of their vast country. Although no mining development took place, the belief persisted that there was great metallic wealth in the upper lake region. The first cession in the northwest was that of the Chippeways of Lake Superior in September, 1854, of the “triangle” north of the lake, extending westward to the line of the St. Louis and Vermilion rivers, embracing nearly three million acres. This great cession was followed by another still greater, early in 1855. Nearly four hundred townships in the north central part of the state were freed from Indian incumbrance. The two cessions cover nearly one half of the area of the state. It was the lumber interest which desired the acquisition of 1855. On the area liberated stood large bodies of the finest pine forests of America. The current belief was that they could never be exhausted. Of Chippeway country there remained a trapezoidal block in the extreme northwest corner of the state, which was not acquired by treaty until 1863.
In 1851, immediately after the conclusion of the Sioux treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, Governor Ramsey made the long journey from St. Paul to Pembina, and there made a treaty with the local Chippeways for the cession of a great tract. This treaty went in with the Sioux treaties for confirmation and had to be “sacrificed” to secure favorable action by the Senate on them. What “interest” desired the extinction of Indian titles upon such a remote and disconnected area is not well known. Mr. Norman W. Kittson had operated there since 1843, for the American Fur Company. The ratified treaties mentioned left the Chippeways, some ten thousand in number, concentrated on reservations of moderate extent set apart in the ceded territory. These they still occupy, generally in peace, depending largely on their annuities for subsistence. Their progress in civilization and Christianity has been sufficient to keep the missionaries and teachers from giving up in despair. No body of ecclesiastics ever had a more complete rule over a people than the medicine-men of the Chippeway Indians.
An incident of the Chippeway treaty of 1854 must here have mention, at the risk of tedium. As was usual, the half-breeds had to be conciliated by a benefaction to prevent them from dissuading the Indians. It was given them in the shape of an eighty-acre tract in fee simple to each head of a family or single person over twenty-one years of age, of the mixed bloods. This distribution was made and all beneficiaries, three hundred and twelve in number, were satisfied, within two years. Ten years after the negotiation of the treaty an accommodating commissioner of Indian affairs, upon application through Delegate Rice, issued two certificates for eighty-acre tracts to two members of a prominent Minnesota family, mixed bloods of the Chippeways of Lake Superior, who had never lived with those Indians. He also ruled that the grant extended to Chippeway mixed bloods of any tribe wherever resident. To prevent the oversight of any worthy beneficiaries under these rulings, industrious gentlemen at once employed themselves in searching them out and revealing their unsuspected good fortune. “Factories” were established at La Pointe, Wisconsin, Washington, D. C., St. Paul, and in the Red River country, and nearly twelve hundred were discovered. Later examinations of the lists showed that in some cases both man and wife had been reckoned as heads of families; and that the names of some minors, of some Chippeway families with too little white blood to fairly count as “breeds,” and of a few deceased persons had been enrolled. The motive for this extraordinary diligence lay in the fact that the certificates or “scrip” could be used for the location of pine on unsurveyed lands, giving the holder the opportunity of ranging the woods and selecting the most valuable. These certificates the half-breeds were commonly willing to alienate for a small consideration. That they were on their face absolutely unassignable, and so good only in the hands of the beneficiary himself, was no serious obstacle to the ingenious operators. Two powers of attorney, one to locate, the other to sell, served as a virtual conveyance to the speculating lumberman.
James Harlan, Secretary of the Interior in Lincoln’s second administration, put a stop to this pretty game. But his successor, O. H. Browning, yielded to the persuasions of interested parties, and on July 11, 1868, reopened the doors to them. Within a few weeks a prominent citizen filed 315 applications and received 310 pieces of scrip. An investigating committee expressed the opinion that “probably not one of these was valid.” They were good for 24,800 acres of pine. The liberal secretary ruled that they might be located on any lands ceded by the Chippeways by any treaty, and need not be selected on those ceded at La Pointe in 1854. Applications continued to come in. In the following year, 1869, Colonel Ely F. Parker, by birth a Seneca Indian, was made commissioner of Indian affairs. Taking up the applications, he rejected them all and gave notice that no more scrip would issue under the treaty of 1854. Holders of certificates obtained in the manner described were discouraged, but not cast down. They prevailed on the Secretary of the Interior in 1870 to appoint a gentleman of Minnesota a special agent to examine claims. Reporting progress in March, 1871, that agent had found 135 persons entitled to scrip.
Columbus Delano was Secretary of the Interior in the year last mentioned. Assured that the subject of Chippeway half-breed scrip would bear scrutinizing, he appointed the Neal commission. The report of that commission brought the facts above related to the surface. Of the 135 claims reported valid by the late special agent they found two legitimate. They approved eleven out of 495 others presented. The commission also examined 116 “personal applications,” filed in the St. Cloud land office, and these without exception were fraudulent. That number of persons, belonging to a Red River train bivouacked at St. Cloud, had been taken into the land office and steered through the motions of applying for scrip. For this accommodating service they were paid from fifteen to forty dollars apiece. The commission recommended that no more Chippeway half-breed scrip under the treaty of 1854 should be issued, unless by order of Congress, and that the persons who had been guilty of subornation of perjury, forgery, and embezzlement should be prosecuted.
This did not conclude the long drawn out matter. Pieces of scrip accompanied with powers of attorney in blank had been freely bought and sold for use in locating pine. These vouchers fell into the hands of bankers, and represented considerable investments. It seemed a hardship that these holders should suffer loss. On June 8, 1872, Congress passed a bill with the innocent title “An act to quiet certain land titles.” It provided that “innocent parties” holding Chippeway half-breed scrip in good faith, for value, might purchase the corresponding lands at a price to be fixed by the Secretary of the Interior, not less than one dollar and a quarter an acre.
The Jones commission, appointed to ascertain the innocent holders, reported thirteen individuals and firms entitled to the benefits of the act, and approved 216 entries conveying 17,280 acres of the best pine in Minnesota, worth eight to ten dollars an acre. As to the price to be paid, the commissioners advised the department that it would be useless to ask more than two dollars and a half an acre, for if put up at auction, combinations of bidders would hold bids to that figure. The commission vindicated the claimants from any participation in the original frauds, but found that they had been much too careless in their investments, and so had become victims of persons who had “got up a scheme with wonderful prudence and caution.” These victims, thus resorting to Congress for relief, were the sharpest pine land operators ever known in Minnesota.
This recital may teach how and why liberal gratifications were always desired for mixed bloods, when Indian treaties were negotiated.