THAT INDIAN OUTBREAK IN MINNESOTA.
By W. N. G.
When the Indian dares to defend what he supposes to be his rights, in his own crude way, having exhausted his feeble efforts to secure them in the “civilized” way, he is usually termed a “treacherous redskin.” But when the white authorities wreak vengeance upon him for daring to assume that he has any rights, the Indian blood that is spilled is always deemed the result of patriotism and exemplary courage. In nearly all Indian uprisings there is to be found in the background the shadow of the white man’s misdealings. The late trouble with the Pillager Indians in Minnesota seems to have been no exception to the rule, according to a correspondent of the Chicago Record. The battle of October 5 cost the lives of seven white men and seventeen Indians, with fourteen white men wounded. The causes which led to the battle are thus set forth in the Record:— “The outbreak was caused by the determination of the Indians to prevent the arrest and punishment of their head chief, who is accused of violating the laws that prohibit the sale of whisky on Indian reservations. “There has been a great deal of trouble in this particular tribe about the whisky traffic. It has been difficult to make the Indians comprehend why they should be punished for selling whisky to each other, when white men in the villages around are allowed to do so, freely and without interruption. Their ‘untutored minds’ can not catch on to the logic of such discrimination, and the license system adds to their perplexity. Eighteen or twenty Indians have been punished for selling whisky to their neighbors, and the neighbors who bought it were taken to Duluth and held as witnesses until the trials were over, when they were released and told to go home. They received their witness fees and their mileage, and most of them proceeded to get roaring drunk on the money. Nobody prevented them from buying whisky in Duluth, and the men who sold it to them were not interfered with, which they consider a rank injustice on the part of the officers of law. “Bush Ear, the chief, who was the principal offender against the whisky laws and regulations, managed to escape arrest when the original raid was made, and he lay low until he thought the trouble had blown over; but the deputy marshal, who was biding his time, caught him when he came down to the agencies to draw the annuities for his people, and endeavored to run him off to Duluth. But the Indians were too quick for him, and rescued the prisoner. They were not only impelled by loyalty to their chief but by a sense of injustice arising from the circumstances I have described. The regulars were sent to assist the local authorities in arresting and bringing in all the offenders, with the result above stated.” The Independent gives a further detail of the causes of grievance which these Pillager-Chippewas have suffered at the hands of the government’s servants and their favorites. We quote a few paragraphs: “In 1889 a commission negotiated with the Chippewas for the cession of all their lands in Minnesota, except the Red Lake and White Earth reservations, and also of so much of those reserves as should not be needed for allotments. The Indians who were not then living at Red Lake or White Earth were to have the option of removing to White Earth and receiving allotments there, or of taking allotments upon the ceded lands; special inducements in the way of houses, cattle, and implements were held out to those who should remove. “The Pillagers, as a whole, entered reluctantly into this agreement, and many stoutly opposed it. The leaders of the opposition were the band, numbering about 400, which lived on or near Bear Island—an island toward the northern end of Leach Lake, about a hundred yards from the mainland, ten miles from the sub-agency and twenty-five miles by water from the town of Walker, which is just off the reservation on the southern shore of the lake. Isolated, independent, and heathen—not one of them has accepted Christianity—they have watched with bitterness the wasting away of their possessions. For some years they refused to accept any cash annuity, tho lately they have taken it. What irritated other Chippewas incensed them. “The principal argument which induced the Indians to sign the agreement was the provision that the proceeds of the sale of all their valuable pine should be divided equally among them all after deducting expenses of estimating and sale, cost of removing and allotting Indians, pay of commissioners, etc. “It would be hard to find a more iniquitous proceeding than the estimating of that pine, first under the Harrison and then under the Cleveland Administration. Half of the twenty-six estimators employed at $6.00 a day knew nothing whatever of the business. They made up their reports from guesses, or from the estimates of others, or carefully under estimates in the interests of the lumbermen. Much of their time was spent in carousing and gambling in camp and in the neighboring towns. A report of an investigation published by Congress shows that the second fraudulent estimating cost $150,000, and that the underestimated tracts had all been sold, while those correctly estimated remained unsold. The estimating is now being done for the third time, and for the third time the Indians must foot the bills. “The commissioners appointed to remove and allot Indians expended in three years and eight months $145,000, more than half of it in salaries. “For many years, under the wretched fee system, deputy marshals have made fat livings by arresting Indians as liquor drinkers or witnesses, bringing them before the courts, and then collecting fees for serving papers, mileage, etc. Hundreds of Chippewas have thus been taken to St. Paul. Sometimes the liquor was furnished by the very one who made the arrest. The object was not to suppress but to increase liquor drinking, and the whole proceeding would have been a farce if it had not been an outrage. However, since deputy marshals have been given salaries instead of fees, this evil has been lessened. “One or two years ago an old man of Bear Island was taken to Duluth in some liquor case, and when the deputy marshal had no further use for him, he left the Indian to foot and beg his way home, 200 miles, as best he could. The next time he was wanted he was unwilling to go; his friends stood by him, and they in their turn were served with warrants for resisting a United States officer. Later they were prevailed upon to deliver themselves up, and were let off with slight punishment. “Probably few agencies have suffered more from political appointments than has the White Earth Agency. Agents have been changed with every administration, and during a long series of years most of them have been inefficient or worse, have made no attempt to elevate the Indians, or even to break up drinking, gambling, and vice of all kinds; and sometimes they have gone so far as to encourage the wild, demoralizing Indian dances, against the express prohibition of the Indian office. Indirectly, the dead soldiers of Minnesota, like many of their fever-stricken comrades of Southern camps, may be considered victims of the spoils system.”