The Making of the Red Lake Indian Reservation

The history of the Ojibwe lands and the Red Lake Reservation are an integral part of the history of Buena Vista, for northern Minnesota was Ojibwe land when the white man came. Indeed, until 1896, at least half of the site that was to become Buena Vista was on the Red Lake Reservation. Before 1896, large sections of the roads Buena Vista was to depend on were also part of the reservation : The Leech Lake Trail, the Fosston Trail, and the future Blackduck County Road were at least in part on land legally belonging to the Red Lake band.

The Ojibwe begin to give up their lands

How the Ojibwe lands were reduced to a reservation and then diminished again and yet again is essential to the story of settlement and logging in northern Minnesota, for without that reduction neither could take place. The narrative of events along with an explanation of the Chippewa treaties is most fully told by N.H.Winchell in his The Aborigines of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN: The Minnesota Historical Society, 1911. Winchell's volume is a compendium of the customs, religion, artifacts, as well as an exposition of the treaties and historical events before and after contact with the white man. Winchell tries to be as inclusive as possible.

The earlier attitude toward the Ojibwes of Minnesota is illustrated by C.R.Ruffee in his 1875 report The Condition of the Chippewa in Minnesota.. His attitude, typical of writers of his time, is that the more the members of a tribe approached standards of the White Man's civilization, the better off they were. "Civilizing the Indians" was United States policy.

The Ojibwe upon these several reservations, with the exception of those at White Earth, live in wigwams, constructed in the primitive manner so well known, affording but poor protection from the elements, and none of the conveniences essential to a civilized life, and are clad only with the blanket and breech-clout . . . .

Ruffee's report is very sympathetic and supportive of the Ojibwe claims, but his particular admiration is for the inhabitants of White Earth:

. . .several hundred, who six years ago were as repulsive in all their habits and characteristics as any in the State, but who now live in comfortable dwellings; are clad in the habits of their civilized neighbors; own, possess, and care for personal property; successfully cultivate with their own labor large tracts, and produce by their own industry sufficient to supply themselves with most of the necessities of civilized life.

The administration by the Whites tried hard to bring "civilization" by making the Native Inhabitants farmers, a pursuit at odds with their hunting and gathering culture. The United States also provided annuities. Whatever their intention, they made the recipients more dependent upon the goods, "necessities," and equipment that money could buy.

Probably the institutions most disturbing to the old ways of living were the boarding schools, where children wore the clothing of the Whites, learned their lessons in English, and learned the religion of the white man as well. In the boarding schools, students were kept away from their families for years in order to acculturate them to white civilization. Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families 1900-1940 by Brenda J. Child (University of Nebraska Press, 1998) is a "study of the boarding school experience from the perspective of the American Indian students and their family members who lived in or lived with these institutions for many decades." It makes use of letters from both students and their families. Many children from the Red Lake Reservation were sent to the off-reservation boarding schools she discusses, especially Haskell in Lawrence Kansas and Flandreau in South Dakota.

We Choose to Remember has reminiscences of schooling on the reservation.

 

Red Lake Boarding School
courtesy Beltrami County Historical Society

Erwin Mittelholtz edited in 1937 Historical Review of the Red Lake Indian Reservation. Mittelholtz has moved a good way beyond Ruffee in his attitude toward native people.. For his volume, Mittelholz had Rose Graves join him as Tribal Editor. He wanted to be fair, accurate, and supportive of the Red Lake band.

Mittelholtz, publishing in 1937, might well handle some of his topics differently if he were writing today. Also, like most recognized historians of his time, Mittelholtz looked particularly to written accounts, though he by no means confined himself to them. The problem for the historian is that such sources may put an emphasis on reports from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and from missionary societies, on appointments to postmasterships and other positions, and on economic reports such as the number of board feet turned out by the saw mill. Such material does not and is not intended to speak for the members of the Red Lake band. The report writers may understand the concerns of the band, but not necessarily as the members themselves feel them.

The problem of history

In telling the story of the past, it is not so much the facts that give problems. It is often a matter of who decides what facts are important, for history is interpretation as well as facts. The dependence on these particular sorts of facts represents an attitude that has passed. If members did not want to send their children to missionary schools, what did they want? Is a saw mill what they needed? The Congress thought so. Did the people of Red Lake agree? Is the allotment plan "generous" if it gives each of them 160 acres and citizenship (after five years) but takes away all their other land?

Mittelholtz showed his interest in a new kind of history by including the minutes of the seven conferences held in 1889 between the President's commissioners and the chiefs, headmen, and warriors of Red Lake and Pembina. There the modern reader can see the beliefs and convictions the tribal elders brought to their meeting.

May-dway-gwa-no-nind, the Head Chief, understood history as a continuum in which he occupied one spot, and the young men and women, who don't get into many histories, occupied another: ". . . .we make a mistake, it is for a lifetime. I ask you to be very patient." "I ask that you reserve the whole of the lake as ours and that of our grandchildren hereafter. . . . "
 

Young People of the Red Lake Band
courtesy of the Beltrami County Historical Society

Members of the Red Lake band should certainly speak for themselves on what affects them and their history, and they are beginning to do so. Students of the Red Lake High School, Project Preserve, have published two books. One is To Walk the Red Road: Memories of the Red Lake Ojibwe People, 1989. The other is We Choose to Remember: More Memories of the Red Lake Ojibwe People, 1991. Both these books contain reminiscences of the elders and stories of the past as well as pictures that take readers back to an earlier time. Project Preserve continues with videos and other projects.

Project Preserve Members, 1993

Left to right: Justina Pemberton, Lynette Bedeau, Bridget Stately, unknown

Salena Branchard, Kelly Green, Fred Auginash

These young people are learning to speak for themselves.

There is a sixteen-page tribal newspaper published bimonthly, The Red Lake Nation, now in its eighth volume. It is devoted to news and stories of the Red Lake Indian Reservation, Tribal Council minutes, and stories on the national scene on such subjects as health and politics that would be of interest to the Red Lake Band.

The Ojibwe News, a weekly newspaper published in Bemidji, has as its focus the interests of Native Americans at Red Lake, Cass Lake, Leech Lake, and the White Earth Reservation, though it also carries news of events elsewhere.

The story of the Red Lake Reservation from the point of view of the Anishinabæójibway has been told by Wub-e-ke-niew (1928-1999) in We Have A Right to Exist, New York, 1995. He has done a great deal of research to tell the history of the tribe and the reservation the way he thinks it should be told. His writings are published on the web page (www.maquah.net/homepage.html). Among other writings are the full text of We Have the Right to Exist and columns from the Ojibway Times.

As might be expected, more and more pages on the internet are being devoted to the interests of the Ojibwe. Many of the reservations, including Red Lake, are represented.

Doubtless the story of the tribe, its accomplishments, its adversities, and its culture will be told again and again as descendants of the men who ceded or were deprived of their territory become interested and especially knowledgeable in their history. At the beginning of the century white men, usually sympathetic white men, spoke for them. Those who are on the reservation no longer want that. They feel it is they who should decide what a history of the Red Lake tribe should be.

A short narrative of relations

The Ojibwe, Chippewa as the government calls them, were fairly late comers to northern Minnesota. The Dakota or Sioux held the land before they were driven out by the Ojibwe. The approximate date for the Ojibwe final subjection of the Red Lake and Leech Lake area was somewhere between 1750 and 1770. The earlier history of the area must be gleaned from oral tradition and fro0m archaeological finds. N.H.Winchell, who deals with the Dakota as well as the Ojibwe, has a detailed account along with comments on customs and illustrations of artifacts. A short relation of the basic facts as known or surmised may be found in Erwin F. Mittelholtz, "Pre-Ojibwa Habitation of Northern Minnesota," in Historical Review of the Red Lake Indian Reservation, Red Lake Minnesota, A History of Its People and Progress, Rose Graves Tribal Editor. Published by General Council of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians and the Beltrami Historical Society, copyright 1937, Beltrami County Historical Society, Bemidji, Minnesota.

The earliest holdings of the Red Lake and Pembina bands stretched from about Devils Lake, ND, to the holdings of the Cass Lake and Leech Lake (Pillager and Mississippi) bands. The first attempt to make inroads into the Ojibwe lands was made by Gov. Ramsey in 1851. As explained by Winchell, the Pembina band would have ceded 5,000,000 acres in the Red River valley for $230,000. This treaty was not confirmed by the U.S.Senate.

Old Crossing Treaty and 1864 Supplement

The first cession of lands by the Red Lake and Pembina bands was at the treaty made in 1863 at the Old Crossing of the Red Lake River, a location about seven miles northeast of Crookston, MN, near the present small town of Huot. The Old Crossing Treaty greatly reduced the holdings of the two bands. Ceded to the U.S. was the land bound by a line from the point on the shore of Lake of the Woods where British and American boundaries meet (Northwest Angle) southwesterly to the head of the Thief River, down the channel of the Thief River to the Red Lake River, southwest and then west to the mouth of the Wild Rice River, up the channel of the Red River to the Cheyenne River, up the Cheyenne to Poplar Grove and then generally north to the border. From there the line ran back along the present border to Lake of the Woods. This was a tremendous cession. Although the meeting with the Red Lake and Pembina bands had been planned earlier, the Dakota uprising of 1862 contributed to the urgency of completing the treaty.

The first Red Lake Reservation

The treaty describes the land that was given up. The land remaining was the first Red Lake Reservation. It was enclosed by a line that ran from the Northwest Angle down to the head of the Thief River. It followed the channel of the Thief River to the Red Lake River. The line then ran to the approximate location of the present town of Bagley, MN. From there it ran northeast to Turtle Lake -- the future location of Buena Vista. It then ran generally northeast to the Rainy River then back along the border to the Northwest Angle.

This treaty took from the bands and gave to the government the Red River of the North, the most important north-south navigation link to Canada. It also took for the United States the Red River valley, the most fertile land of the entire area. It also took and made available for homesteading the valuable prairie lands of the present western Polk and Red Lake counties and Marshall and Kittson counties, all in northwestern Minnesota.

For all this, the U.S. agreed to pay $20,000 per year for twenty years, The bands would not be liable for punishment of past offenses. $100,000 would be given to indemnify traders and others for depredations and the bands would be given $2,000 for powder, lead, twine, etc. $150 per annum would be paid to chiefs with $500 to each to build a house. Also, $5,000 for cutting a road from Leech Lake to Red Lake, to become known as the Leech Lake Trail. Also, each mixed blood related to the Chippewas and a citizen would receive 160 acres. Moose Dung (leader of the band on the Thief River) and Red Bear (leader of the Pembina band) would each receive 640 acres, the one near the thief River the other near the Red River. See the Old Crossing Treaty 1863 for the exact terms.
 

Mays-co-co-caw-ay (Red Robed)
commonly called Moose Dung
courtesy Beltrami County Historical Society

In 1864 a supplementary treaty changed the payment from $20,000 for twenty years to $10,000 for the Red Lake Band and $5,000 for the Pembina band during the pleasure of the President. The U.S. also agreed to expend further money for farming implements, saw mill, etc. and to spend certain sums of money on the chiefs. In lieu of lands, the mixed bloods were to receive scrip. For the exact details examine The Treaty of 1864. Ella Hawkinson in "The Old Crossing Treaty and its Sequel," Minnesota History (Sept., 1934), 282-300 lists the differences between the two treaties.

Tensions grow

These cessions were ahead of the settlement of the area as well as the logging so that tension was lifted for a short time. Soon, however, pressure grew around the perimeter of the reservation as settlers and loggers moved closer and as members of the band moved beyond the boundaries hunting game.

Several events prior to 1889 combined to bring pressure on both the government and the Red Lake Reservation to explore additional cessions. In the Old Crossing Treaty of 1863, Congress authorized the cutting of a road from Leech Lake to Red Lake, and progress was made on this project. In 1873 and 1874, Congress appropriated money for a road from Red Lake to the White Earth Reservation; that road -- the Red Lake Trail --was completed in 1875. Then in 1888 the Great Northern completed its line from Crookston to Fosston, near the western edge of the Red Lake Reservation. The stage was set for easy access by settlers and lumbermen to the lands of the Red Lake band.

Theft and Fraud on Reservation Land

Already the Red Lake band had experienced theft of their pine from the Canadians along the Rainy River and from the timber companies operating in Minnesota. The complaints from the Ojibwe of fraud and theft were so insistent that the governor of Minnesota (after a resolution in the legislature) appointed C.A.Ruffee to investigate and write a report laying out what justification there might be for the complaints. Ruffee's Report on the Condition of the Chippewas of Minnesota in 1874 confirmed much of the theft, fraud, and depredation that the Red Lake band complained of.

Ruffee, in an appended section entitled "Exhibit 'A'", included a speech made by the White Earth chief Wah-bon-e-quet (White Cloud) ; Ruffee quotes the chief's own words as he makes his complaint to Indian Inspector Daniels.

Perhaps the clearest and most damning statement of the illegal practices of the timber companies and the corruption and ineptness of the government bureaucracy set up to protect the inhabitants of the Red Lake and Leech Lake reservations was the Rev. J.A.Gilfillan's testimony before the House of Representatives' Committee on Indian Affairs on Feb. 2, 1899. Gilfillan's statement led to some reform, but it was too late to be of much help.

The allotment act of 1887 prepared the way for the act of 1889 and the policy that was to follow. By its terms, any Indian, as a parallel to the homestead law, could select (from a specified area) and receive 160 acres and citizenship in the U.S. by staying on the land for five years. Unlike the homestead law, the allotment law did not require payment of $1.25 per acre after five years to gain a perfect title.

By 1892 the land along the western edge of the reservation had been taken up by White homesteaders, and the timber companies were finishing their logging on the White Earth Reservation; some persons or companies (the Red Lake speakers singled out T.B.Walker) were already illegally taking pine from the reservation. In 1889 Congress passed "An act for the relief and civilization of the Chippewa Indians in the State of Minnesota." This legislation set off the last large series of land cessions to the government in northern Minnesota.