A Century of Dishonor/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
THE WINNEBAGOES.
The Winnebagoes belonged to the Dakota family, but, so far as can be known, were naturally a peace-loving people, and had no sympathy with the more warlike tribes of their race. The Algonquins gave them the name of Winnebagoes, or “people of the salt-water;” and as the Algonquin word for salt-water and stinking-water was the same, the French called them “Les Puants,” or “Stinkards.v The Sioux gave them a more melodious and pleasing name, “O-ton-kah,” which signified “The large, strong people.”
Bancroft, in his account of the North American tribes, says “One little community of the Dakota (Sioux) family had penetrated the territories of the Algonquins: the Winnebagoes dwelling between Green Bay and the lake that bears their name preferred to be environed by Algonquins than to stay in the dangerous vicinity of their own kindred.”
One of the earliest mentions that is found of this tribe, in the diplomatic history of our country, is in the reports given of a council held in July, 1815, at “Portage des Sioux,” in Missouri, after the treaty of Ghent. To this council the Winnebagoes refused to send delegates; and their refusal was evidently considered a matter of some moment. The commissioners “appointed to treat with the North-western Indians” at this time reported that they found “the Indians much divided among themselves in regard to peace with the United States.” Some of them “spoke without disguise of their opposition to military establishments on the Mississippi,” and many of them, “among whom were the Winnebagoes, utterly refused to send deputies to the council.” This disaffection was thought by the commissioners to be largely due to the influence of British traders, who plied the Indians with gifts, and assured them that war would soon break out again between the United States and Great Britain. It is probable, however, that the Winnebagoes held themselves aloof from these negotiations more from a general distrust of white men than from any partisan or selfish leaning to the side of Great Britain; for when Dr. Jedediah Morse visited them, only seven years later, he wrote: “There is no other tribe which seems to possess so much jealousy of the whites, and such reluctance to have intercourse with them, as this.”
Spite of this reluctance they made, in 1816, a treaty “of peace and friendship with the United States,” agreeing “to remain distinct and separate from the rest of their nation or tribe, giving them no assistance whatever until peace shall be concluded between the United States and their tribe or nation.” They agreed also to confirm and observe all the lines of British, French, or Spanish cessions of land to the United States.
In 1825 the United States Government, unable to endure the spectacle of Indians warring among themselves, and massacring each other, appears in the North-western country as an unselfish pacificator, and compels the Sacs, Foxes, Chippewas, and Sioux, including the Winnebagoes, to make a treaty of peace and friendship with each other and with the United States. The negotiations for this treaty occupied one month; which does not seem a long time when one considers that the boundaries of all the lands to be occupied by these respective tribes were to be defined, and that in those days and regions definitions of distance were stated in such phrases as “a half day’s march,” “a long day’s march,” “about a day’s paddle in a canoe,” “to a point where the woods come out into the meadows,” “to a point on Buffalo River, half way between its source and its mouth.” These were surely precarious terms for peace to rest upon, especially as it was understood by all parties that “no tribe shall hunt within the actual limits of any other without their consent.”
At the close of this treaty there occurred a curious incident, which Schoolcraft calls “an experiment on the moral sense of the Indians with regard to intoxicating liquors.” “It had been said by the tribes that the true reason for the Commissioners of the United States speaking against the use of ardent spirits by the Indians, and refusing to give them, was the fear of expense, and not a sense of its bad effects. To show them that the Government was above such a petty motive, the commissioners had a long row of tin camp-kettles, holding several gallons each, placed on the grass; and then, after some suitable remarks, each kettle was spilled out in their presence. The thing was ill-relished by the Indians, who loved the whiskey better than the joke.”
At this time the lands of the Winnebagoes lay between the Rock and the Wisconsin rivers, along the shore of Winnebago Lake, and the Indians claimed that the whole lake belonged to them. It was here that President Morse had found them living in 1822. He gives the following graphic picture of their pleasant home: “They have five villages on the Lake, and fourteen on Rock River. The country has abundance of springs, small lakes, ponds, and rivers; a rich soil, producing corn and all sorts of grain. The lakes abound with fine-flavored, firm fish.” Of the Indians themselves, he says: “They are industrious, frugal, and temperate. They cultivate corn, potatoes, pumpkins, squashes, and beans, and are remarkably provident. They numbered five hundred and eighty souls.”
In 1827 a third treaty was signed by the Winnebagoes, Chippewas, and Menomonies with the United States and with each other. This treaty completed the system of boundaries of their lands, which had been only partially defined by the two previous treaties. Of these three treaties Schoolcraft says: “These three conferences embody a new course and policy for keeping the tribes in peace, and are founded on the most enlarged consideration of the aboriginal right of fee-simple to the soil. They have been held exclusively at the charge and expense of the United States, and contain no cession of territory.”
They were the last treaties of their kind. In 1828 the people of Northern Illinois were beginning to covet and trespass on some of the Indian lands, and commissioners were sent to treat with the Indians for the surrender of such lands. The Indians demurred, and the treaty was deferred; the United States in the mean time agreeing to pay to the four tribes $20,000, “in full compensation for all the injuries and damages sustained by them in consequence of the occupation of any part of the mining country.”
In 1829 a benevolent scheme for the rescue of these hard-pressed tribes of the North-western territory was proposed by Mr. J. D. Stevens, a missionary at Mackinaw. He suggested the formation of a colony of them in the Lake Superior region. He says—and his words are as true to-day, in 1879, as they were fifty years ago: “The Indian is in every view entitled to sympathy. The misfortune of the race is that, seated on the skirts of the domain of a popular government, they have no vote to give. They are politically a nonentity. * * * The whole Indian race is not worth one white man’s vote. If the Indian were raised to the right of giving his suffrage, a plenty of politicians on the frontiers would enter into plans to better him; whereas now the subject drags along like an incubus in Congress.”
It did, indeed. Appropriations were sadly behindhand. The promises made to the Indians could not be fulfilled, simply because there was no money to fulfil them with. In 1829 a Washington correspondent writes to Mr. Schoolcraft: “There is a screw loose in the public machinery somewhere. In 1827 we were promised $48,000 for the Indian service, and got $30,000; in 1828 $40,000, and got $25,000.” A little later the Secretary of War himself writes: “Our annual appropriation has not yet passed; and when it will, I am sure I cannot tell.”
Tn 1830 the all-engrossing topic of Congress is said to be “the removal of the Indians. It occupies the public mind throughout the Union, and petitions and remonstrances are pouring in without number.”
Meantime the Indians were warring among themselves, and also retaliating on the white settlers who encroached upon their lands. The inevitable conflict had began in earnest, and in September of 1832 the Winnebagoes were compelled to make their first great cession of territory to the United States. In exchange for it they accepted a tract west of the Mississippi, and before the 1st of June, 1833, most of those who were living on the ceded lands had crossed the river to their new homes. Their title to this new country was not so good as they probably supposed, for the treaty expressly stated that it was granted to them “to be held as other Indian lands are held.”
Article three of this treaty said, “As the country hereby ceded by the Winnebagoes is more extensive and valuable than that given by the United States in exchange,” the United States would pay to the Winnebagoes $10,000 annually in specie for twenty-seven years. The Government also promised to put up buildings for them, send teachers, make various allowances for stock, implements, tobacco, etc., and to furnish them with a doctor.
The Winnebagoes agreed to deliver up some of their number who had murdered white settlers. Lands were granted by patent to four Winnebagoes by name—two men and two women; for what reason, does not appear in the treaty.
Five years later the Winnebagoes ceded to the United States all their lands east of the Mississippi, and also relinquished the right to occupy, “except for hunting,” a portion of that which they owned on the west side. For this cession and relinquishment they were to receive $200,000; part of this sum to be expended in paying their debts, the expense of their removal and establishment in their new homes, and the rest to be invested by the United States Government for their benefit.
In 1846 the Winnebagoes were forced to make another treaty, by which they finally ceded and sold to the United States “all right, title, interest, claim, and privilege to all lands heretofore occupied by them;” and accepted as their home, “to be held as other Indian lands are held,” a tract of 800,000 acres north of St. Peter's, and west of the Mississippi. For this third removal they were to be paid $190,000—$150,000 for the lands they gave up, and $40,000 for relinquishing the hunting privilege on lands adjacent to their own. Part of this was to be expended in removing them, and the balance was to be “left in trust” with the Government at five per cent. interest.
This reservation proved unsuited to them. The tribe were restless and discontented; large numbers of them were continually roaming back to their old homes in Iowa and Wisconsin, and in 1855 they gladly made another treaty with the Government, by which they ceded back to the United States all the land which the treaty of 1846 had given them, and took in exchange for it a tract eighteen miles square on the Blue Earth River. The improved lands on which they had been living, their mills and other buildings, were to be appraised and sold to the highest bidder, and the amount expended in removing them, subsisting them, and making them comfortable in their new home. This reservation, the treaty said, should be their “permanent home;” and as this phrase had never before been used in any of their treaties, it is to be presumed that the Winnebagoes took heart at hearing it. They are said to have “settled down quietly and contentedly,” and have gone to work immediately, “ploughing, planting, and building.”
The citizens of Minnesota did not take kindly to their new neighbors. “An indignation meeting was held; a petition to the President signed; and movements made, the object of all which was to oust these Indians from their dearly-purchased homes,” says the Report of the Indian Commissioner for 1855.
Such movements, and such a public sentiment on the part of the population surrounding them, certainly did not tend to encourage the Winnebagoes to industry, or to give them any very sanguine hopes of being long permitted to remain in their “permanent home.” Nevertheless they worked on, doing better and better every year, keeping good faith with the whites and with the Government, and trusting in the Government's purpose and power to keep faith with them. The only serious faults with which they could be charged were drunkenness and gambling, and both of these they had learned of the white settlers. In the latter they had proved to be apt scholars, often beating professional gamblers at their own game.
They showed the bad effects of their repeated removals, also, in being disposed to wander back to their old homes. Sometimes several hundred of them would be roaming about in Wisconsin. But the tribe, as a whole, were industrious, quiet, always peaceable and loyal, and steadily improving. They took hold in earnest of the hard work of farming; some of them who could not get either horses or ploughs actually breaking up new land with hoes, and getting fair crops out of it. Very soon they began to entreat to have their farms settled on them individually, and guaranteed to them for their own; and the Government, taking advantage of this desire on their part, made a treaty with them in 1859, by which part of their lands were to be “allotted” to individuals in “severalty,” as they had requested, and the rest were to be sold, the proceeds to be partly expended in improvements on their farms, and partly to be “left in trust” with the Government. This measure threw open hundreds of thousands of acres of land to white settlers, and drew the belt of greedy civilization much tighter around the Indians. Similar treaties to this had been already made with some of the Sioux tribes and with others. It was evident that “the surplus land occupied by the Indians required for the use of the increasing white population,” and that it was “necessary to reduce the reservations.”
There is in this treaty of 1859 one extraordinary provision: “In order to render unnecessary any further treaty engagements or arrangements with the United States, it is hereby agreed and stipulated that the President, with the assent of Congress, shall have full power to modify or change any of the provisions of former treaties with the Winnebagoes, in such manner and to whatever extent he may judge to be necessary and expedient for their welfare and best interest.”
It is impossible to avoid having a doubt whether the chiefs and headmen of the Winnebago tribe who signed this treaty ever heard that proviso. It is incredible that they could have been so simple and trustful as to have assented to it.
Prospects now brightened for the Winnebagoes. With their farms given to them for their own, and a sufficient sum of money realized by the sale of surplus lands to enable them to thoroughly improve the remainder, their way seemed open to prosperity and comfort. They “entered upon farming with a zeal and energy which gave promise of a prosperous and creditable future.”
“Every family in the tribe has more or less ground under cultivation,” says their agent. He reports, also, the minutes of a council held by the chiefs, which tell their own story:
“When we were at Washington last winter, we asked our Great Father to take $300,000 out of the $1,100,000, so that we could commence our next spring's work. We do not want all of the $1,100,000, only sufficient to carry on our improvements. This money we ask for we request only as a loan; and when our treaty is ratified, we want it replaced. We want to buy cattle, horses, ploughs, and wagons; and this money can be replaced when our lands are sold. We hope you will get this money: we want good farms and good houses. Many have already put on white man’s clothes, and more of us will when our treaty is ratified.
“Father, we do not want to make you tired of talk, but hope you will make a strong paper, and urgent request of our Great Father in respect to our wishes.”
In 1860 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs writes: “The Winnebagoes continue steadily on the march of improvement. * * * The progress of the Winnebagoes in agricultural growths is particularly marked with success. There have been raised by individuals as high as sixty acres of wheat on a single farm. * * * The agent’s efforts have been directed to giving to each Indian his own allotment of land. * * * Wigwams are becoming as scarce as houses were two years ago. * * * All Indians who had horses ploughed and farmed their own lands. * * * The Indians were promised that new and comfortable houses should be built for them. The treaty not yet being ratified, I have no funds in my hands that could be made applicable to this purpose. * * * The greater part of the Indians have entreated me to carry out the meaning of the commissioner on his visit here, and the reasons for my not doing so do not seem comprehensible to them. * * * The school is in a flourishing condition.”
In 1861 the commissioner writes that the allotment of lands in severalty to the Winnebagoes has been “substantially accomplished;” but that the sales of the remaining lands have not yet been made, owing to the unsettled condition of the country, and therefore the funds on which the Indians were depending for the improvements of their farms have not been paid to them. They complain bitterly that the provisions of the treaty of 1859 have not been fulfilled. “It has been two years and a half since this treaty was concluded,” says the agent, “and the Indians have been told from one season to another that something would be done under it for their benefit, and as often disappointed, till the best of them begin to doubt whether anything will be done. * * * The Indians who have had their allotments made are ‘clamoring for their certificates.’”
Drunkenness is becoming one of the serious vices of the tribe. They are surrounded on all sides by white men who traffic in whiskey, and who are, moreover, anxious to reduce the Indians to as degraded a state as possible. “There are some circumstances connected with the location of this tribe which make it more difficult to protect them from the ravages of liquor-selling than any other tribe. They are closely surrounded by a numerous white population, and these people feel very indignant because the Indians are settled in their midst, and are disposed to make it as uncomfortable for them to remain here as they can, hoping at some future time they may be able to cause their removal.”
The time was not far distant. In 1862 we find the Winnebagoes in trouble indeed. A ferocious massacre of white settlers by the Sioux had so exasperated the citizens of Minnesota, that they demanded the removal of all Indians from the State. The people were so excited that not an Indian could step outside the limits of the reservation without the risk of being shot at sight. The Winnebagoes had utterly refused to join the Sioux in their attack on the whites, and had been threatened by them with extermination in consequence of this loyalty. Thus they were equally in danger from both whites and Indians: their position was truly pitiable.
In the Annual Report of the Interior Department for 1862 the condition of things is thus described: “While it may be true that a few of the Winnebagoes were engaged in the atrocities of the Sioux, the tribe, as such, is no more justly responsible for their acts than our Government would be for a pirate who happened to have been born on our territory. Notwithstanding this, the exasperation of the people of Minnesota appears to be nearly as great toward the Winnebagoes as toward the Sioux. They demand that the Winnebagoes as well as the Sioux shall be removed from the limits of the State. The Winnebagoes are unwilling to move. Yet the Minnesota people are so excited that not a Winnebago can leave his reservation without risk of being shot; and as they have never received their promised implements of agriculture, and the game on their reservation is exhausted, and their arms have been taken from them, they are starving.”
Their agent writes: “These Indians have been remaining here in a continuous state of suspense, waiting for the Government to cause the stipulations of the treaty of 1859 to be carried into operation: such has been their condition for three years and a half, and they do not understand why it is so. * * * The fact that a very few of the Winnebagoes were present and witnessed, if they did not take part in, the massacre at the Lower Sioux Agency, has caused the Winnebagoes themselves to be universally suspected of disloyalty. * * * The hostile feelings of the white people are so intense, that I am necessitated to use extra efforts to keep the Indians upon their own lands. I have been notified by the whites that the Indians will be massacred if they go out of their own country; and it is but a few days since an Indian was killed while crossing the Mississippi River, for no other reason than that he was an Indian, and such is the state of public opinion that the murderer goes unpunished.”
As to the loyalty of the tribe, the agent says: “There is no tribe of Indians more so.” There is “no doubt of their loyalty as a tribe. * * * In consequence of a threat made by the Sioux, immediately upon their ontbreak, that they (the Sioux) would exterminate the Winnebagoes unless they joined them in a raid against the white people, the Winnebagoes have lived in fear of an attack from the Sioux, and have almost daily implored me for protection. * * * To further assure them, I requested of the Governor of the State that two companies of United States infantry be stationed here in their midst, which has allayed their fears. * * * Notwithstanding the nearness of the belligerent Sioux, and the unfriendly feelings of the white people, and other unfortunate circumstances, I am confident that my Indians will remain loyal to the last. * * * They have been informed that, notwithstanding their fidelity to the Government and the people, the people of this State are memorializing Congress to remove them out of the State—which they consider very unjust under the circumstances, for they have become attached to this location and would not leave it willingly, and think their fidelity ought to entitle them to respect and kind treatment.”
The “popular demand” of the people of Minnesota triumphed. In February, 1863, Congress passed an act authorizing the “peaceful and quiet removal of the Winnebago Indians from the State of Minnesota, and the settling of them on a new reserve.” It was determined to locate them “on the Missouri River somewhere within a hundred miles of Fort Randall, where it is not doubted they will be secure from any danger of intrusion from whites.” All their guns, rifles, and pistols were to be taken from them, “securely boxed up,” labelled “with the names of their respective owners.” The Department impressed it on the agent in charge of the removal that it was “absolutely necessary that no time should be lost in the emigrating of these Indians.” The hostile Sioux were to be removed at the same time, and to a reservation adjoining the reservation of the Winnebagoes. The reports of the Indian Bureau for 1863 tell the story of this removal.[1]
The commissioner says: “The case of the Winnebagoes is one of peculiar hardship. I am still of the opinion that this tribe was in no manner implicated in or responsible for the cruel and wanton outbreak on the part of the Sioux; but its consequences to the tribe have been as disastrous as unmerited. In obedience to the Act of Congress, and the popular demand of the people of Minnesota, they have been removed to a new location upon the Missouri River, adjoining that selected for the Sioux. Contrasting the happy homes, and the abundant supply for all their wants which they have left behind them, with the extreme desolation which prevails throughout the country, including their present location, and their almost defenceless state, as against the hostile savages in their vicinity, their present condition is truly pitiable; and it is not surprising that they have become to some extent discouraged, and are dissatisfied with their new homes. It cannot be disguised that their removal, although nominally peaceable and with their consent, was the result of the overwhelming pressure of the public sentiment of the community in which they resided; and it is to be feared that it will be many years before their confidence in the good faith of our Government, in its professed desire to ameliorate and improve their condition, will be restored, “Their misfortunes and good conduct deserve our sympathy.”
The Act of Congress above mentioned provides for the peaceable removal of the Indians. In its execution some of the members of the tribe were found unwilling to leave their homes; and as there was neither the disposition nor the power to compel them to accompany their brethren, they remained upon their old reservation. The most of them are represented as having entirely abandoned the Indian habits and customs, and as being fully qualified by good conduct and otherwise for civilized life. Many of them are enlisted in the military service, and all are desirous of retaining possession of the homes allotted to them under the provisions of their treaty.
“The trust lands belonging to the tribe have been placed in the market, and from the amount already sold has been realized $82,537 62. An appraisement has also been had of the lands of the diminished reserve, and the same will soon be placed in the market.”
In the Report of the Superintendent of the North-west Territory for the same year is the following summing up of their case: “The case of these Winnebago Indians is one of peculiar hardship. Hurried from their comfortable homes in Minnesota, in 1863, almost without previous notice, huddled together on steamboats with poor accommodations, and transported to the Crow Creek Agency in Dakota Territory at an expense to themselves of more than $50,000, they were left, after a very imperfect and hasty preparation of their new agency for their reception, upon a sandy beach on the west bank of the Missouri River, in a country remarkable only for the rigors of its winter climate and the sterility of its soil, to subsist themselves where the most industrious and frugal white man would fail, five years out of six, to raise enough grain upon which to subsist a family. The stern alternative was presented to this unfortunate people, thus deprived of comfortable homes (on account of no crime or misdemeanor of their own), of abandoning this agency, or encountering death from cold or starvation. They wisely chose the former; and after encountering hardships and sufferings too terrible to relate, and the loss of several hundred of their tribe by starvation and freezing, they arrived at their present place of residence [the Omaha Agency] in a condition which excited the active sympathy of all who became acquainted with the story of their wrongs. There they have remained, trusting that the Government would redeem its solemn promise to place them in a position west of the Missouri which should be as comfortable as the one which they occupied in Minnesota.
“This tribe is characterized by frugality, thrift, and industry to an extent unequalled by any other tribe of Indians in the North-west. Loyal to the Government, and peaceable toward their neighbors, they are entitled to the fostering care of the General Government. The improvement of the homes which they have voluntarily selected for their future residence will place them in a short time beyond the reach of want, and take from the Government the burden of supplying their wants at an actual expense of $100,000.”
It was in May, 1863, that the Winnebagoes gathered at Fort Snelling, ready for their journey. The chiefs are said to have “acquiesced in the move as a matter of necessity, for the protection of their people,” but some of them “actually shed tears on taking leave.” Colonel Mix, who was in charge of this removal, wrote to Washington, urgently entreating that tents at least might be provided for them on their arrival at their new homes in the wilderness. He also suggests that it is a question whether they ought to be settled so near the hostile Sioux, especially as just before leaving Minnesota some of the tribe had “scalped three Sioux Indians, thinking it would propitiate them in the kind regards of their Great Father at Washington, and, as a consequence, they would perhaps be permitted to remain in Minnesota.”
The removal was accomplished in May and June. There were, all told, 1945 of the Winnebagoes. They arrived to find themselves in an almost barren wilderness—a dry, hard soil, “too strong for ploughs;” so much so, that it was “difficult to get a plough to run a whole day without breaking.” A drought had parched the grass, so that in many places where the previous year several tons of good hay to an acre had been raised there was not now “pasturage for a horse.” The cottonwood timber, all which could be procured, was “crooked, difficult to handle, fall of wind-shakes, rots, etc.” The channel of the Missouri River here was so “changeable,” and the banks so low, that it was “dangerous to get too near.” They were obliged therefore to settle half a mile away from the river. No wonder that on July 1st the Winnebagoes are reported as “not pleased with their location, and anxious to return to Minnesota, or to some other place among the whites.” They gathered together in council, and requested Superintendent Thompson to write to their Great Father for permission “to move among the whites again. * * * They have lived so long among the whites that they are more afraid of wild Indians than the whites are.” The superintendent hopes, however, they will be more contented as soon as he can get them comfortable buildings. But on July 16th we find Brigadier-general Sulley, commander of the North-western expedition against Indians, writing to the Department in behalf of these unfortunate creatures. General Sulley having been detained in camp near Crow Creek on account of the low water, the chiefs had gone to him with their tale of misery. “They stated that nothing would grow here. They dare not go out to hunt for fear of other tribes, and they would all starve to death. This I believe to be true, without the Government intends to ration them all the time. The land is sandy, dry, and parched up. * * * The land is poor; a low, sandy soil. I don’t think you can depend on a crop of corn even once in five years, as it seldom rains here in the summer. * * * I find them hard at work making canoes, with the intention of quitting the agency and going to join the Omahas or some other tribe down the river. They said they had been promised to be settled on the Big Sioux River. * * * I told them they must stay here till they get permission from Washington to move; that, if they attempted it, they would be fired on by my troops stationed down the river.”
This is a graphic picture of the condition of a band of two thousand human beings, for whose “benefit” $82,537 62 had just been realized from sale of their lands by the Government, to say nothing of the property they owned in lands yet unsold, and in annuity provisions of previous treaties to the amount of over $1,000,000 capital! Is not their long suffering, their patience, well-nigh incredible?
Spite of the dread of being fired on by the United States troops, they continued to make canoes and escape in them from this “new home” in the desert, and in October the Department of the Interior began to receive letters containing paragraphs like this: “I have also to report that small detachments of Winnebagoes are constantly arriving in canoes, locating on our reserve, and begging for food to keep them from starving.”—Agent for Omaha Agency.
These are the men who only one year before had been living in comfortable homes, with several hundred acres of good ground under cultivation, and “clamoring for certificates” of their “allotted” farms—now shelterless, worse than homeless, escaping by canoe-loads, under fire of United States soldiers, from a barren desert, and “clamoring” for food at Indian agencies!
The Department of the Interior promptly reports to the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Minnesota this “information,” and calls it “astounding.” The Department had “presumed that Agent Balcombe would adopt such measures as would induce the Winnebagoes to remain upon their reservation,” and had “understood that ample arrangements had been made for their subsistence.” It, however, ordered the Omaha agent to feed the starving refugees till spring, and it sent word to those still remaining on the reservation that they must not “undertake to remove without the consent of their Great Father, as it is his determination that a home that shall be healthy, pleasant, and fertile, shall be furnished to them at the earliest practicable moment.”
This was in the autumn of 1863. In one year no less than 1222 of the destitute Winnebagoes had escaped and made their way to the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska. Here the Superintendent of the Northern Superintendency held a council with them.
“They expressed,” he says, “a strong desire to have some arrangement made by which they would be allowed to occupy a portion of that reservation. It was represented that the Omahas wished it also. * * * I found that I could not gain their consent to go back to their reservation, and I had no means within my reach of forcing them back, even if I had deemed it proper to do so.” The superintendent recommended, therefore, that they be subsisted where they were “until some arrangement be made for their satisfaction, or some concert of action agreed upon between the War Department and the Interior Department by which they can be kept on their reservation after they shall have been moved there.”
In September of this same year the agent for the Winnebago Reserve wrote that the absence of a protecting force had been one of the reasons of the Indians leaving in such numbers. “Both the Winnebagoes and Sioux who have stayed here have lived in fear and trembling close to the stockade, and have refused to separate and live upon separate tracts of land.”
He gives some further details as to the soil and climate. “The region has been subject, as a general rule, to droughts, and the destructive visits of grasshoppers and other insects. The soil has a great quantity of alkali in it; it is an excessively dry climate; it very seldom rains, and dews are almost unknown here: almost destitute of timber. * * * It is generally supposed that game is plenty about here. This is an erroneous impression. There are but a very few small streams, an entire absence of lakes, and an almost entire destitution of timber—the whole country being one wilderness of dry prairie for hundreds of miles around; hence there is but a very little small game, fish, or wild fruit to be found. In former times the buffalo roamed over this country, but they have receded, and very seldom come here in any numbers. * * * The Indians must have horses to hunt them: horses they have not. The Winnebagoes had some when they first arrived, but they were soon stolen by the hostile Sioux.”
Agent Balcombe must have led a hard life on this reservation. Exposed to all the inconveniences of a remote frontier, three hundred miles from any food-raising country; receiving letters from the Interior Department expressing itself “astounded” that he does not, “induce the Indians in his charge to remain on their reservation;” and letters from citizens, and petitions from towns in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska, imploring him to “gather up” all the wandering Winnebagoes who have been left behind; unprovided with any proper military protection, and surrounded by hostile Indians—no wonder that he recommends to the Government “to remove and consolidate” the different tribes of Indians into “one territory” as soon as possible.
The effects of this sojourn in the wilderness upon the Winnebagoes were terrible. Not only were they rendered spiritless and desperate by sufferings, they were demoralized by being brought again into conflict with the wild Sioux. They had more than one skirmish with them, and, it is said, relapsed so far into the old methods of their barbaric life that at one of their dances they actually roasted and ate the heart of a Sioux prisoner! Yet in less than a year after they were gathered together once more on the Omaha Reservation, and began again to have hopes of a “permanent home,” we find their chiefs and headmen sending the following petition to Washington:
“Our Great Father at Washington, all greeting,—From the chiefs, braves, and headmen of your dutiful children the Winnebagoes.
“Father, we cannot see you. You are far away from us. We cannot speak to you. We will write to you; and, Father, we hope you will read our letter and answer us.
“Father: Some years ago, when we had our homes on Turkey River, we had a school for our children, where many of them learned to read and write and work like white people, and we were happy.
“Father: Many years have passed away since our school was broken up; we have no such schools among us, and our children are growing up in ignorance of those things that should render them industrious, prosperous, and happy, and we are sorry. Father: It is our earnest wish to be so situated no longer. It is our sincere desire to have again established among us such a school as we see in operation among your Omaha children. Father: As soon as you find a permanent home for us, will you not do this for us? And, Father, as we would like our children taught the Christian religion, as before, we would like our school placed under the care of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. And last, Father, to show you our sincerity, we desire to have set apart for its establishment, erection, and support, all of our school-funds and whatever more is necessary.
“Father: This is our prayer. Will not you open your ears and heart to us, and write to us?”
This letter was signed by thirty-eight of the chiefs and headmen
of the Winnebagoes.
In March, 1865, a new treaty was made between the United States and this long-suffering tribe of Indians, by which, in consideration of their “ceding, selling, and conveying” to the United States all their right in the Dakota Reserve, the United States agreed “to set apart for the occupation and future home of the Winnebago Indians forever” a certain tract of 128,000 acres in Nebraska—a part of the Omaha Reservation which the Omahas were willing to sell. The United States also agreed to erect mills, break land, furnish certain amounts of seeds, tools, guns, and horses, oxen and wagons, and to subsist the tribe for one year, as some small reparation for the terrible losses and sufferings they had experienced. From this word “forever” the Winnebagoes perhaps took courage.
At the time of their removal from Minnesota, among the fugitives who fled back to Wisconsin was the chief De Carry. He died there, two years later, in great poverty. He was very old, but remarkably intelligent; he was the grandson of Ho-po-ko-e-kaw, or “Glory of the Morning,” who was the queen of the Winnebagoes in 1776, when Captain Carver visited the tribe. There is nothing in Carver's quaint and fascinating old story more interesting than his account of the Winnebago conntry. He stayed with them four days, and was entertained by them “in a very distinguished manner.” Indeed, if we may depend upon Captain Carver's story, all the North-western tribes were, in their own country, a gracious and hospitable people. He says: “I received from every tribe of them the most hospitable and courteous treatment, and am convinced that, till they are contaminated by the example and spirituous liquors of their more refined neighbors, they will retain this friendly and inoffensive conduct toward strangers.”
He speaks with great gusto of the bread that the Winnebago women made from the wild maize. The soft young kernels, while full of milk, are kneaded into a paste, the cakes wrapped in bass-wood leaves, and baked in the ashes. “Better flavored bread I never ate in any country,” says the honest captain.
He found the Winnebagoes’ home truly delightful. The shores of the lake were wooded with hickory, oak, and hazel. Grapes, plums, and other fruits grew in abundance. The lake abounded in fish; and in the fall of the year with geese, ducks, and teal, the latter much better flavored than those found nearer the sea, as they “acquire their excessive fatness by feeding on the wild rice which grows so plentifully in these parts.”
How can we bear to contrast the picture of this peace, plenty, and gracious hospitality among the ancient Winnebagoes with the picture of their descendants—only two generations later—hunted, driven, starved? And how can we bear to contrast the picture of the drunken, gambling Winnebago of Minnesota with this picture which Captain Carver gives of a young Winnebago chief with whom he journeyed for a few days?
Captain Carver, after a four days’ visit with the Winnebagoes, and “having made some presents to the good old queen, and received her blessing,” went on his way. Two months later, as he was travelling to the Falls of St. Anthony, he encountered a young Winnebago chief going on an embassy to some of the bands of the “Nadouwessies” (Sioux). This young chief, finding that Captain Carver was about to visit the Falls, agreed to accompany him, “his curiosity having been often excited by the accounts he had received from some of his chiefs. He accordingly left his family (for the Indians never travel without their households) at this place under charge of my Mohawk servant, and we proceeded together by land, attended only by my Frenchman, to this celebrated place. We could distinctly hear the noise of the water full fifty miles before we reached the Falls; and I was greatly pleased and surprised when I approached this astonishing work of nature; but I was not long at liberty to indulge these emotions, my attention being called off by the behavior of my companion. The prince had no sooner gained the point that overlooks this wonderful cascade than he began with an audible voice to address the Great Spirit, one of whose places of residence he imagined this to be. He told him that he had come a long way to pay his adorations to him, and now would make him the best offerings in his power. He accordingly threw his pipe into the stream; then the roll that contained his tobacco; after these the bracelets he wore on his arms and wrists; next an ornament that encircled his neck, composed of beads and wires; and at last the ear-rings from his ears; in short, he presented to his god every part of his dress that was valuable. During this he frequently smote his breast with great violence, threw his arms about, and appeared to be much agitated. All this while he continued his adorations, and at length concluded them with fervent petitions that the Great Spirit would constantly afford us his protection on our travels, giving us a bright sun, a blue sky, and clear, untroubled waters; nor would he leave the place till we had smoked together with my pipe in honor of the Great Spirit.
“I was greatly surprised at beholding an instance of such elevated devotion in so young an Indian. * * * Indeed, the whole conduct of this young prince at once charmed and amazed me. During the few days we were together his attention seemed to be totally employed in yielding me every assistance in his power, and even in so short a time he gave me innumerable proofs of the most generous and disinterested friendship, so that on our return I parted from him with the greatest reluctance.”
In 1866 the report from the Winnebagoes is that they are “improving;” manifest “a good degree of industry;” that the health of the tribe is generally poor, but “as good as can be expected when we remember their exposures and sufferings during the last three years.” The tribe has “diminished some four or five hundred since they left Minnesota.” One hundred soldiers have returned, “who have served with credit to themselves and to their tribe in the defence of their country.” No school has yet been established on the agency, and this is said to be “their greatest want.”
The superintendent writes: “The appropriations under the late treaty have all been made, and the work of fitting up the reservation is progressing. It affords me the highest personal satisfaction to assure the Department that this deeply-wronged and much-abused tribe will soon be in all respects comfortable and self-sustaining. They entered upon their new reservation late last May, and during the present year they have raised at least twenty thousand bushels of corn.”
In 1867 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs says: “The Winnebagoes have a just claim against the Government on account of their removal from Minnesota, the expenses of which were borne out of their own tribal funds. The Government is clearly bound in all honor to refund to them moneys thus expended.”
It would seem that there could have been no question in the beginning as to who should pay the costs of such a removal as that. It should not even have been a tax on the general Government, but on the State of Minnesota, which demanded it—especially as there was no shadow of doubt that the demand was made—not because the citizens of Minnesota had any real fear of the peaceable and kindly Winnebagoes (who were as much in terror of the Sioux as they were themselves), but because they “coveted the splendid country the Winnebagoes were occupying, and the Sioux difficulties furnished the pretext to get rid of them with the aid of Congressional legislation.”
Some members of the tribe who remained in Minnesota still claimed their “allotted” lands; “their share of all moneys payable to the Winnebagoes under treaty stipulations, and that their share of the funds of the tribe be capitalized and paid to them in bulk; their peculiar relations as Indians be dissolved, and they left to merge themselves in the community where they have cast their lot.” The commissioner urges upon the Government compliance with these requests.
In 1868 a school was opened on the Winnebago Agency, and had a daily attendance of one hundred and fifty scholars. The tribe adopted a code of laws for their government, and the year was one of peace and quietness, with the exception of some dissatisfaction on the part of tho Indians in regard to three hundred cows, which, having been sent to the agency in fulfilment of one of the provisions of the treaty, were nevertheless ordered by the Indian Burean to be “kept as Department stock.” The Indians very naturally held that they had a right to these cows; nevertheless, they continued peaceable and contented, in the feeling that they had “at last found a home,” where they might “hope to remain and cultivate the soil with the feeling that it is theirs, and that their children will not in a few days be driven from their well-tilled and productive lands.” They are, however, “growing exceedingly anxious for the allotment of their lands in severalty.”
In 1869 “preparations” were “being made for allotting the lands to heads of families.”
In 1870 “the allotment of land in severalty to the Indians has been nearly completed, each head of a family receiving eighty acres. * * * The Indians anxiously look for the patents to these, as many have already commenced making improvements. * * * At least thirty have broken four acres of prairie apiece, and several have built houses. * * * Three schools are in operation, and four hundred acres of ground under cultivation.”
In this year comes also an interesting report from the stray Winnebagoes left behind in Wisconsin. They and the stray Pottawottomies who are in the same neighborhood are “remarkably quiet and inoffensive, giving no cause of complaint; on the contrary, the towns and villages where they trade their berries, maple-sugar, etc., are deriving considerable benefit from them: a number have been employed in lumbering, harvesting, and hop-picking. A number of mill-owners and lumbermen have informed me that the Indians they have employed in their business have been steady, good hands. * * * There are nearly one thousand of these Winnebagoes. Some of them have bought land; others are renting it; and all express an anxiety that the ‘Great Father’ should give them a reservation in this region, and allow them to remain.”
In 1871 the Nebraska Winnebagoes deposed their old chiefs, and elected twelve new ones, to serve one year; these were mainly from the younger members of the tribe who were in favor of civilization and progress. This was an important step toward breaking up the old style of tribal relations.
In 1872 we hear again from the “strays” in Wisconsin. The whites having complained of them, Congress has appropriated funds to move them to their respective tribes “west of the Mississippi;” but the removal has not been undertaken “for various reasons,” and the commissioner doubts “whether it can be accomplished without additional and severe legislation on the part of Congress, as the Indians are attached to the country, and express great repugnance to their contemplated removal from it.”
The poor creatures are not wanted anywhere. Spite of their being “steady, good hands” for hired labor, and useful to towns and villages in furnishing fruits and fish, the Wisconsin people do not want them in their State. And the agent of the Winnebago Reservation writes, earnestly protesting against their being brought there. He thinks they are in moral tone far below the Indians under his charge. Moreover, he says “the prejudice in the surrounding country is such” that he believes it would be bad policy to remove any “more Indians” there. Nebraska does not like Indians any better than Wisconsin does, or Minnesota did. He adds also that his Indians “would be greatly stimulated to improve their claims if they could secure the titles for them. They have waited three years since the first allotments were made. It is difficult to make them believe that it requires so long a time to prepare the patents, and they are beginning to fear that they are not coming.”
In 1873 the Winnebagoes are cited as a “striking example of what can be accomplished in a comparatively short time in the way of civilizing and Christianizing Indians. * * * Their beautiful tract of country is dotted over with substantially-built cottages; the farmers own their wagons, horses, harness, furniture of their houses—dress in civilized costume, raise crops—and several hundred Winnebago men assisted the farmers in adjoining counties during the late harvest in gathering their grain crop, and proved themselves efficient and satisfactory workmen.”
In the winter of 1874 the Wisconsin “strays” were moved down to the Nebraska Reservation. They were discontented, fomented dissatisfaction in the tribe, and in less than a year more than half of them had wandered back to Wisconsin again; a striking instance of the differences in the Government’s methods of handling different bands of Indians. The thirty Poncas who ran away from Indian Territory were pursued and arrested, as if they had been thieves escaping with stolen property; but more than five hundred Winnebagoes, in less than one year, stroll away from their reserve, make their way back to Wisconsin, and nothing is done about it.
In 1875 there are only two hundred and four of the Wisconsin “strays” left on the Nebraska Reservation. All the others are “back in their old haunts, where a few seem to be making a sincere effort to take care of themselves by taking land under the Homestead Act.”
The Nebraska Winnebagoes are reported as being “nearly civilized;” all are engaged in civilized pursuits, “the men working with their own hands, and digging out of the ground three-fourths of their subsistence.” They have raised in this year 20,000 bushels of corn, 5800 bushels of wheat, and 6000 bushels of oats and vegetables. They have broken 800 acres of new land, and have built 3000 rods of fencing. Nearly one-sixth of the entire tribe is in attendance at schools. The system of electing chiefs annually works well; the chiefs, in their turn, select twelve Indians to serve for the year as policemen, and they prove efficient in maintaining order.
What an advance in six years! Six years ago there were but twenty-three homes and only 300 acres of land under cultivation on the whole reservation; the people were huddled together in ravines and bottom-lands, and were dying of disease and exposure.
In 1876 the Winnebagoes are reported again as “fast emerging from a condition of dependence upon their annual appropriations. * * * Each head of a family has a patent for eighty acres of land. Many have fine farms, and are wholly supporting themselves and families by their own industry. * * * The issue of rations has been discontinued, except to the Wisconsin branch of the tribe and to the sick-list.”
Tn what does this report differ from the report which would be rendered from any small farming village in the United States? The large majority “wholly supporting themselves and their families by their own industry;” a small minority of worthless or disabled people being fed by charity—i. e., being fed on food bought, at least in part, by interest money due on capital made by sales of land in which they had a certain reckonable share of ownership, Every one of the United States has in nearly every county an almshouse, in which just such a class of worthless and disabled persons will be found; and so crowded are these almshouses, and so appreciable a burden is their support on the tax-payers of State and county, that there are perpetual disputes going on between the authorities of neighboring districts as to the ownership and responsibility of individual paupers: for the paupers in civilized almshouses are never persons who have had proceeds of land sales “invested” for their benefit, the interest to be paid to them “annually forever.” It is for nobody's interest to keep them paupers, or to take care of them as such.
We now find the Winnebagoes once more quietly established in comfortable homes—as they were, in their own primitive fashion, in 1822, when Dr. Morse visited them on the shores of their beautiful lake; as they were, after our civilized fashion, in 1862, on the healthful and fertile up-lands of Minnesota. In their present home they seem to have reason, at last, to feel secure, to anticipate permanence, safety, and success. Their lands have been allotted to them in sevéralty: each head of a family has his patent for eighty acres. They are, in the main, self-supporting.
How does the United States Government welcome this success, this heroic triumph of a patient people over disheartening obstacles and sufferings?
In the Annual Report of the Secretary of the Interior for 1876 the Secretary says: “As a matter of economy, the greatest saving could be made by uniting all the Indians upon a few reservations; the fewer, the better.” He says that there is land enough in the Indian Territory to give every Indian—man, woman, and child—in the country seventy-five acres apiece. He says, “The arguments are all in favor of the consolidation.” He then goes on to enumerate those arguments: “Expensive agencies would be abolished; the Indians themselves can be more easi!y watched over and controlled; evil-designing men be the better kept away from them, and illicit trade and barter in arms and ammunition and whiskey prevented. Goods could be supplied at a greater saving; the military service relieved; the Indians better tanght, and friendly rivalry established among them—those most civilized hastening the progress of those below them; and most of the land now occupied as reserves reverting to the General Government, would be open to entry and sale.”
Here are nine reasons given for removing all Indians to Indian Territory. Five of these reasons ostensibly point to benefits likely to accrue from this removal to the Indians. The other four point to benefits likely to accrue to the Government; the first three of these last are, simply, “saving;” the fourth is the significant one, “gain”—“most of the land reverting to the General Government would be open to entry and sale.”
It was before this necessity of opening Indian lands “to entry and sale” that the Winnebagoes had been fleeing, from 1815 to 1863. It seems they are no safer now. There is evidently as much reason for moving them out of Nebraska as there was for moving them out of Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The Secretary goes on to say: “As soon as the Indian is taught to toil for his daily bread, and realize the sense of proprietorship in the results of his labor, it cannot but be further to his advantage to be able to appreciate that his labor is expended upon his individual possessions and for his personal benefit. * * * The Indian must be made to see the practical advantage to himself of his work, and feel that he reaps the full benefit of it. Everything should teach him that he has a home; * * * a hearth-stone of his own, around which he can gather his family, and in its possession be entirely secure and independent.”
The logical relation of these paragraphs to the preceding one is striking, and the bearing of the two together on the case of the Winnebagoes is still more striking.
In the same report the Commissioner for Indian Affairs says: “If legislation were secured giving the President authority to remove any tribe or band, or any portion of a tribe or band, whenever in his judgment it was practicable, to any one of the reservations named, and if Congress would appropriate from year to year a sum sufficient to enable him to take advantage of every favorable opportunity to make such removals, I am confident that a few years’ trial would conclusively demonstrate the entire feasibility of the plan. I believe that all the Indians in Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota, and a part at least of those in Wyoming and Montana, could be induced to remove to the Indian Territory.”
He adds “that the Indian sentiment is opposed to such removal is true,” but he thinks that, “with a fair degree of persistence,” the removal “can be secured.” No doubt it can.
Later in the same report, under the head of “Allotments in Severalty,” he says: “It is doubtful whether any high degree of civilization is possible without individual ownership of land. The records of the past, and the experience of the present, testify that the soil should be made secure to the individual by all the guarantees which law can devise, and that nothing less will induce men to put forth their best exertions. It is essential that each individual should feel that his home is his own; * * * that he has a direct personal interest in the soil on which he lives, and that that interest will be faithfully protected for him and for his children by the Government.”
The commissioner and the secretary who wrote these clear statements of evident truths, and these eloquent pleas for the Indians’ rights, both knew perfectly well that hundreds of Indians had had lands “allotted to them” in precisely this way, and had gone to work on the lands so allotted, trusting “that that interest would be faithfully protected by the Government;” and that these “allotments,” and the “certificates” of them, had proved to be good for nothing as soon as the citizens of a State united in a “demand” that the Indians should be moved. The commissioner and the secretary knew perfectly well, at the time they wrote these paragraphs, that in this one Winnebago tribe in Nebraska, for instance, “every head of a family owned eighty acres of land,” and was hard at work on it—industrious, self-supporting, trying to establish that “hearthstone” around which, as the secretary says, he must “gather his family, and in its possession be entirely secure and independent.” And yet the secretary and the commissioner advise the moving of this Winnebago tribe to Indian Territory with the rest: “all the Indians in Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota” could probably be “induced to move,” they say.
These quotations from this report of the Interior Department are but a fair specimen of the velvet glove of high-sounding phrase of philanthropic and humane care for the Indian, by which has been most effectually hid from the sight of the American people the iron hand of injustice and cruelty which has held him for a hundred years helpless in its grasp.
In this same year an agent on one of the Nebraska agencies writes feelingly and sensibly:
“Nothing has tended to retard the progress of this tribe in the line of opening farms for themselves so much as the unsettlement occasioned by a continued agitation of the subject of selling their reservation and the removal of the tribe. * * * The improvement that has been made at this agency during the past three years in the direction of developing among the Indians the means of self-support, seems to have caused an uneasiness that has been prolific of a great deal of annoyance, inasmuch as it has alarmed this speculative element around us with the fear that the same (continued) will eventually plant the Indians on their present fertile land so firmly that they cannot be removed, and thus they be deprived of the benefits of manipulating the sale of their reservation.”
Nevertheless, the Winnebagoes keep on in their work—building houses, school-buildings, many of them of brick made on the ground.
In this year (1876) they experienced a great injustice in the passing of an Act of Congress fixing the total amount to be expended for pay of employés at any one agency at not more than $10,000. This necessitated the closing of the fine building they had built at a cost of $20,000 for the purpose of an industrial boarding-school.
In this year’s report their agent gives a resumé of the financial condition of the tribe: “By treaty proclaimed June 16th, 1838, the Winnebagoes ceded to the United States all their land east of the Mississippi, in consideration of which they were to receive $1,100,000. The balance of this, after making certain payments, was to be invested for their benefit, on which the United States guaranteed to pay them an annual interest of not less than five per cent.
“The Winnebagoes receive no support from the Government, other than from the interest appropriated annually on what remains of these funds. This in 1870 amounted to over $50,000. Since then the half-breeds, numbering one hundred and sixty persons, members of the tribe remaining in Minnesota at the time of the removal of the Indians from that State in 1863, have, in accordance with the provisions of the act making appropriations for the Indian service, approved March 3d, 1871, been paid their proportion of the principal of all Winnebago funds, as shown on the books of the Treasury at that time, including the proportion of $85,000, on which but five more instalments of interest were to be paid, per fourth Article treaty October 13th, 1846. In computing this proportion, the whole number of the tribe considered as being entitled to participate in the benefits of the tribal funds was 1531; which number included only those located on the Winnebago reservation in Nebraska at that time, in addition to the one hundred and sixty already spoken of. By this Act of Congress the Nebraska Winnebagoes, who comprise only that portion of the tribe which has complied with treaty stipulations, and quietly acquiesced in the demands of the Government, were deprived of nearly one-eighth part of their accustomed support.
“Other reductions were afterward made for the purchase of a reservation adjoining the old one in this State, and for removing to it the wandering bands of Winnebagoes in Wisconsin. These were supposed to have numbered in all nearly one thousand persons. They had not been in the habit of receiving any attention or acknowledgment from the Government since they, as a tribal organization, had declined to treat with it. Nearly all of them objected to removing from Wisconsin to their now reservation in Nebraska, and, as a natural consequence, soon returned after being compelled to do so. At the present time there are probably less than one hundred of the number remaining here. For the past three years the sum to which the Wisconsin Winnebagoes would have been entitled had they remained on their reservation, amounting in all to $48,521 07, has been set apart, awaiting such act of Congress as will give relief in the premises; thus reducing the total amount received per annum by that portion of the tribe living on the reservation to but little more than one-half of what it was seven years ago. It seems needless to say that they are very much dissatisfied at this, and that when they refer to the subject I have some difficulty in satisfying them as to the justice of the governmental policy in setting apart funds (to be expended at some future time) for the benefit of certain individuals who persist in absenting themselves from their reservation, while others, who are absent but a few months, are deprived of all advantages from issues of supplies or payments that may have been made during their absence.”
This case is a good illustration of the working of the trustee relation between the United States Government and its wards.
In 1877 we find the Secretary of the Interior still recommending that the Indians be “gradually gathered together on smaller reservations,” to the end that “greater facilities be afforded for civilization.” He reiterates that “the enjoyment and pride of individual ownership of property is one of the most effective civilizing agencies,” and recommends that “allotments of small tracts of land should be made to the heads of families on all reservations, to be held in severalty under proper restrictions, so that they may have fixed homes.”
The commissioner also recommends “a steady concentration of the smaller bands of Indians on the larger reservations.” He calls attention again to the fact that there are 58,000 square miles in the Indian Territory “set apart for the use of Indians, and that there they can be fed and clothed at a greatly diminished expense; and, better than all, can be kept in obedience, and taught to become civilized and self-supporting.”
In 1878 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs reports that a bill has been drawn “providing for the removal and consolidation of certain Indians in the States of Oregon, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, and the Territories of Washington and Dakota. * * * A reduction of twenty-five reservations and eleven agencies will thus be effected. * * * There will be restored to the public domain 17,642,455 acres of land.” He says that “further consolidations of like character are not only possible, but expedient and advisable. * * * There is a vast area of land in the Indian Territory not yet occupied.”
With the same ludicrous, complacent logic as before, he proceeds to give as the reason for uprooting all these Indians from the homes where they are beginning to thrive and take root, and moving them again—for the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh time, as it may be—the fact that, “among the most radical defects of the policy formerly pursued with the Indians, has been the frequent changes in their location which have been made. * * * Permanent homes, sufficient aid to enable them to build houses, cultivate the soil, and to subsist them until they have harvested their first crops, will wean them entirely from their old methods of life, and in the course of a few years enable them to become entirely self-supporting. * * * Among the more forcible arguments which can be presented in connection with this subject is the fact that the expenses attending the removal and consolidation of the Indians, as herein proposed, will be more than met from the sale of lands vacated. * * * Much of the land now owned by these Indians is valuable only for its timber, and may be sold at an appraised value for an amount far in excess of the price fixed by law, and yet leave a large margin of profit to the purchaser into whose hands the lands will fall. * * * I can see no reason why the Government should not avail itself of these facts, and in effecting the consolidation of the Indians, and the opening of the lands for settlement, sell the same for an amount sufficient to support the Indians in their new locations, without any actual drain on the Treasury in the future. * * * The lands belong to the Indians, and they are clearly entitled to receive the full value of the same when sold.”
In this sentence we reach the high-water mark of the sophistry and dishonesty of the Department’s position. “The lands belong to the Indians,” but we will compel them to “restore to the public domain” (i.e., to give up to white settlers) 17,642,455 acres of them. The Indians “are clearly entitled to receive the full value of the same when sold,” but we will compel them to expend that “full value” in removing to a place where they do not want to go, opening new lands, building new houses, buying new utensils, implements, furniture and stock, and generally establishing themselves, “without any actual drain on the Treasury” of the United States: and the Department of the Interior “can see no reason why the Government should not avail itself of these facts.”
All this is proposed with a view to the benefit of the Indians. The report goes on to reiterate the same old story that the Indians must have “a perfect title to their lands;” that they have come to feel that they are at any time liable to be moved, “whenever the pressure of white settlers upon them may create a demand for their lands,” and that they “decline to make any improvements on their lands, even after an allotment in severalty has been made, until they have received their patents for the same,” and that even “after the issue of patents the difficulties surrounding them do not cease.” Evidently not, since, as we have seen, it is now several years since every head of a family among these Winnebagoes, whose “removal” the commissioner now recommends, secured his “patent” for eighty acres of land.
Finally, the commissioner says: “Every means that human ingenuity can devise, legal or illegal, has been resorted to for the purpose of obtaining possession of Indian lands.” Of this there would seem to be left no doubt in the mind of any intelligent person, after reading the above quotations,
It is not to be wondered that when the news of such schemes as these reaches the Indians on their reservations great alarm and discontent are the result. We find in the reports from the Nebraska agencies for this year unmistakable indications of disheartenment and anxiety. The Winnebagoes are reported to be very anxious to be made citizens. A majority are in favor of it, “provided the Government will adopt certain measures which they consider necessary for the care and protection of their property.”
They have had a striking illustration of the disadvantage of not being citizens, in an instance of the unpunished murder of one of their number by a white man. The story is related by the agent tersely and well, and is one of the notable incidents in the history of the relation between the United States Government and its wards.
“Henry Harris, a Winnebago in good standing, an industrious man and a successful farmer, was employed by Joseph Smith, a white man, to cut wood on his land in Dakota County, a short distance north of the reservation. While alone and thus engaged, on the 29th of last January, Harris was shot through the heart with a rifle-ball. I had his dead body taken before the coroner of the county, and at the inquest held before that officer it was shown, to the satisfaction of the jury that rendered a verdict in accordance therewith, that the Indian came to his death at the hands of one D. Balinska, who had been for many years leading a hermit’s life on a tract of land that he owned adjoining the reservation, and who had threatened Harris's life a few months before, when they quarrelled about damages for corn destroyed by Balinska’s horse. There being snow on the ground at the time of the murder, Balinska was tracked from his home to the place where, under cover, he did the shooting; and his shot-pouch, containing a moulded ball of the same weight as the one cut from the body of the Indian, was found near by and identified. Notwithstanding this direct evidence, which was laid before the Grand-jury of Dakota County, that honorable body was unwilling to find a ‘true bill;’ for the reason, as I understand, that it was only an Indian that was killed, and it would not be popular to incur the expense of bringing the ease to trial. This is but another illustration of the difficulty of punishing a white man for a wrong committed against an Indian. I need hardly say that the Indians, when comparing this murder with that of a white man, committed eight years ago by five of their young men—who, upon less direct evidence, were sentenced to imprisonment in the State Penitentiary for life—are struck with the wonderful difference in the application of the same law to whites and Indians.”
The report from the Winnebago Agency for 1879 tells the story of the sequel to this unpunished murder of Henry Harris. The agent says: “In my last report I referred to the murder of one of our best Indian farmers by a white man, who was afterward arrested and discharged without trial, though there was no question as to his guilt. As a sequel to this, one white man is known to have been killed last May by Holly Scott, a nephew of the murdered Indian; and another white man is supposed to have been killed by Eddy Priest and Thomas Walker, two young Indians who have left for Wisconsin. The murdered white men had temporarily stopped with the Indians. Their antecedents are unknown, and they are supposed to have belonged to the fraternity of tramps. Holly Scott was arrested by the Indian police, and turned over to the authorities of Dakota County for trial, the State Legislature having at its last session extended the jurisdiction of that county over this reservation, by what authority I am unable to say.
“The effect of these murders was to unsettle the Indians, nearly all industry being suspended for several weeks. They feared that the white people would do as they did in Minnesota in 1862, after the Sioux massacre, when the Winnebagoes were driven from their homes in Minnesota. * * * A number of our most quiet and industrious men became alarmed, and moved their families to Wisconsin, encouraged in so doing by the hope of receiving from the Government a share of the funds which have been set apart from the annual appropriations during the past four years for the benefit of the Wisconsin Winnebagoes, and which they suppose aggregate a large amount which will soon be paid in cash.”
This brings the story of the Winnebagoes down to the present time. What its next chapter may be is saddening to think. It is said by those familiar with the Nebraska Indians that, civilized though they be, they will all make war to the knife if the attempt is made by the Government to rob them of their present lands on the plea again of offering them a “permanent home.” That specious pretence has done its last duty in the United States service. No Indian is left now so imbecile as to believe it once more.
Whether the Winnebagoes’ “patents” in Nebraska would, in such a case, prove any stronger than did their “certificates” in Minnesota, and whether the Winnebagoes themselves, peaceable and civilized though they be, would side with the United States Government, or with their wronged and desperate brethren, in such an uprising, it would be hard to predict.
- ↑ See Appendix, Art. VI.