Agreeably to your kind request to address you on the subject of the unanimous request of the thirty Chippewa Indians who lately appeared before you and who represent most of the Indian villages of northern Minnesota, asking you to give them the "Menominee plan" in the handling of their valuable pine, and also the removal of some other things which they regard as very oppressive, and which cumulatively brought about the late outbreak by some of their number, I gladly do so.
As to my sufficient knowledge of the subject, it is necessary for me to inform you that I have lived with these Indians for the last twenty-five years; know all of them intimately and personally; speak their language, and so have access directly to their minds. My business of missionary has required me to travel incessantly -- a circuit of 225 miles or thereabouts -- their country, riding or driving, or by birch-bark canoe, so that I have had exceptional opportunities to see and know. I do not know any other person who has been so situated.
First let me say that I have always considered those Chippewas the most harmless people I have ever known. There has been no instance of any white person having been robbed, or stolen from, or molested in any way in the last twenty-five years. I have always considered person and property much safer among them than among the whites anywhere.
To go back to the origin of these troubles and to show the necessity of a change to the "Menominee plan," or some other plan than the present, which has produced such disastrous results -- the death of Major Wilkinson and his brave soldiers and in their profound dissatisfaction -- may recall that in 1889 a commission of three appointed by the government made a treaty with them to cede most of their reservations. By the terms of that treaty, roughly stated, the pine on the lands ceded, after having been estimated, was to be sold for their benefit and the proceeds lodged at Washington to their credit, they to receive the interest, and at the end of fifty years the principal to be divided among them.
The Indians were very averse to making a treaty. They feared that in some way they would be in the end deceived and cheated, and it required a great many months of persuasion to induce them to sign, and many finally refused to sign. They realized that that pine was the last thing they had, and if they lost that all was gone. In order to make all as secure as they could they brought in a Bible and had the commissioners repeatedly swear both by kissing the book and with uplifted hand, that that treaty would be honestly and fairly carried out. As one of the commissioners was a Roman Catholic bishop they thought that his oath would be kept.
It is to be observed also that the pine they ceded is the last remaining great body of pine in the Northwest. That in Michigan has been largely cut away; likewise in Wisconsin; also in Minnesota, outside of the lands they ceded. The principal commissioner, Hon. Henry M. Rice, told them it was worth from $25,000,000 to $50,000,000, exclusive of the pine on the White Earth reservation, which is worth I know not how much more.
But immediately after the treaty the despoiling of them began in the ways hereinafter briefly described. First, a commission of three members, each of whom received the large sum of $13.00 a day out of their funds, was quartered upon them, which commission, reduced to one member since June 30, 1897, continues till the present time. There were thus three commissioners drawing $39 a day salary for over seven years. But that was not all; those commissioners hired other persons under them at various sums, some $5 a day, some more, some less, so that the Indiana said the total cost of that commission to them was $88 a day. The ostensible business of this commission was to allot lands to Indians removing to White Earth reservation, etc., and later to allot lands to those deciding to remain at their old homes, as Leech lake, etc., but I may quote what an admirable and experienced special agent of the Indian Department told me:
He knew of one woman in the employment of the government who would allot more Indians than all that commission or that an additional clerk in the United States Indian agent's office at $1,000 a year could have done it all.
He said it was a political job to give those men places at $13 a day, with little or nothing to do. The Indians looked at it in the same light, and constantly complained of it --that it was robbing them. Living with those commissioners for so many years, and seeing what they had to do, I could not view it otherwise than the inspector and the Indians did, and always thought, and still think, that it was an outrage on them. Those men seemed generally to have little to do. While the treaty was being made there might have been reason in three commissioners, but after it was finished one could have done all that was to be done, and instead of a salary of $4,745 a year, which each had and have, I think $1,000 a year would have been very high pay, for the United States Indian agent, who has what I would consider fifty times the work, gets $1,500 or $1,800, or something of that sort. The commissioners were largely Congressmen who had lost their places. The amounts they gave their under-employees I would consider very wasteful. The commissioners themselves were unexceptionable in their habits, but many of their employees were most demoralizing to the Indians, and their influence the very worst.
The Chippewa commissioners' report shows that only 59 persons removed to White Earth reservation in the preceding year and were allotted. There is really hardly anything to do.
The Indians here a few days ago unanimously asked for the ceasing of that commission, alleging that the United States Indian agent could do the very little that remains to be done. In this I think they are right. But a thing of more wide reaching destructiveness was the pine estimators. In August, 1891, a first corps was appointed at salaries of $6 a day each, to be paid out of their funds, to estimate their pine. The exact number of these I do not know, but I think over twenty. After they had been at it nearly two years the cry was raised that they had done it fraudulently, and so in May, 1893, the government appointed a second corps of estimators, this time 27 in number, also at $6 a day each, out of the Indians' funds, to go over what the first corps had done.
This second corps continued many years till August, 1897, when once more the same old cry of fraud was raised, and the department, discharging the second corps as incompetent, appointed a third corps, this time twenty-three in number, also at $6 a day, to go over what the previous corps had done. It thus appeared that there was no end to it, but that they would keep on estimating and estimating till the value of the thing was all estimated away. The chairman of the Chippewa commission at that time, and the principal representative of the government in the Chippewa country, repeatedly told the writer that there had been paid out of the Indians' funds, for the first two appraisements only, the sum of $360,000 but that the real value of the work was $6,000, and that he could have it done for that sum, and done honestly, whereas it was done dishonestly and in the interests of the purchasers. Special Inspector J.George Wright, who was sent out to examine the matter, reports (see Miss. Docs. relating to Indian Affairs, vol. 40, Report of Indian Inspector J. George Wright, p. 5):
A total of 85 40 acre tracts were examined and found to contain 17,271,000 feet, against 9,635,000 feet previously reported, of which 61 tracts, containing 12,472,000 feet, against 5,547,000 reported, were sold, and 24 tracts with 4,799,000 against 4,088,000 previously reported, remained unsold at the time of my examination.
It thus appears that after those first two estimations or appraisals the parties buying the lands paid for only something over five-twelfths of the timber actually growing thereon, the loss falling on the Indians. Hon. Melvin R. Baldwin, ex-member of Congress and the chairman of the Chippewa commission in that region, and who knew well all the circumstances always claimed that those sales were fraudulent; went on to Washington and used every means in his power to prevent the confirmation of those sales, but in vain. I would respectfully refer this honorable body to Hon. Melvin R. Baldwin for full information about those repeated appraisals and those sales, for he had made a special study of the whole matter, knew it thoroughly; and I ever found him a very honest man. He also said that it would take only a certain number of months - how many I have forgotten - to make that estimation or appraisal, the first two of which lasted from August, 1891, to August, 1897, costing the Indians, as stated by him, $360,000.
As to the advantage of those first two appraisals, Commissioner of Indian Affairs D. M. Browning reports (Miss. Docs. relating to Indian affairs, vol. 40, p. 2, "Pine lands and pine timber on Red Lake Reservation, Minn."):
I have examined Inspector Wright's report carefully and given consideration thereto. From the facts shown in the report and accompanying papers it is quite clear to my mind that the estimates heretofore made are absolutely worthless.
According to the treaty made with the Indians the estimators were to be competent, as equity would dictate, but they were, most of them, grossly incompetent, as said report and inquiry of J. George Wright shows. Some of them were saloon keepers, some paperhangers; most knew nothing about pine, and the general belief was that they spent their time principally in playing cards under a pine tree, drinking whiskey, and attending dances in white towns 15 or 20 miles off, where they loaded up with whiskey and then returned to the pines. One took the Keeley cure; many were absent a long time, but drew pay. (See Wright's report.) All these things lasted for years and everybody knew them. It was hard for the Indians to see their wealth melting away at both ends, one, the salaries to useless Chippewa commissioners, $39 a day, or, as they thought, $88 a day for the expenses of that commission, and the other end, $162 a day to the second corps of estimators, the manner of whose lives they were daily witnesses to. Yet be one of them never so hungry he could not get 2 cents out of all his millions of pine to buy himself one pound of flour.
It will be observed that at the sale of the pine under those estimates tracts that had been estimated up to the actual amount of pine growing on them were left unsold, but those that were grossly underestimated were all bought. By similar means in the future the Indians foresaw the loss of all their pine. It is to be observed, also, that at that time, as the only way of preventing fraud, Commissioner Browning advocated the adoption of the La Pointe plan. (See his letter dated January 26, 1897, Pub. Doc., vol. 40, p. 4, Pine Timber on Red Lake Reservation.)
In another way, also, the substance of the Indian was cast away. Frank Hume, of Fosston, Minn., took a piece of land marked "agricultural" (so marked by the estimators as having no pine on it) for his homestead, as he had a right to do, and has since cut over 1,000,000 feet of pine on same, and has another winter's cutting. This I give from information and belief, not from actual knowledge. Inspector J. George Wright also recommends the adoption of the La Pointe scale. He gives the cost of estimating to date, including four townships on the White Earth reservation, as having been $151,200. Whether he means both estimations or the last only, I do not know. (See p. 11 of his report.)
But there is one means of fraud that has been made use of under the present law that has caused the Indians more loss than all other things combined, and that threatens, the way that it is worked, to take all their pine from them for a mere song, and that is fire. Under the law as it now is, green standing timber can not be cut, neither on the diminished reservations they have retained for themselves nor on the lands they have ceded, unless, of course, on tracts that have been bought by some individual purchaser, and those are an almost infinitesimal amount of the whole. So there stands an immense amount of growing timber that can not be got at in any way, and if it could be got or cut it would bring $5 a thousand, the usual price for logs in that region. But by touching a match to it in a dry time, such as comes in that climate every year and generally several times in a year, letting the fire run through it and blacken it a little, it can be got for 75 cents a thousand, for the present regulation allows "dead and down" timber to be cut, the purchaser paying only 75 cents. Of this 75 cents, 50 cents goes to the credit of the Indians and 25 cents is taken by the government for expenses, etc.
It is thus a very strong temptation to a man when he wants to get the timber and yet can not get it at any price, and if he could get it would have to pay $5 a thousand, to let the fire run through it and then get it for 75 cents. The logs are just as good, even if they are a little blackened about the stump of the tree. The consequence of this allowance of cutting "dead and down" is that fires have run wherever there is pine since the adoption of this permission, and the general belief of the people is that fires have been set by those wishing to log, or in their interest. The writer, in traveling through the country, has had occasion to see that wherever there has been a fine body of pine fires have run, but nowhere else. There were miles and miles of magnificent pine forests on the Red lake and White Earth reservations before this policy was adopted, but now much of it is a blackened waste, and the attempts to fire it have sometimes been plainly visible.
Going once to a mission station, 32 miles distant, there was no sign of fire anywhere till I came to a fine piece of pine, where there had evidently been painstaking and persistent attempts to fire it. The ground was not very dry, and the fire did not run well, and it had been started again and again. The Indian who lived at the next house, about six miles beyond, told me that two men had been out there setting fires; that some men wanted to log there. And being in a logging ranch of white men on ceded lands one night, the headman observed to the others: "The law ought to be changed so a man could cut green pine; as it is now, if a man wishes to cut a piece of pine he has first to fire it." Of course, if it be very dry when the fire once starts, it does not stop with the piece intended to be burned, but travels far, and makes it all into what can be called "dead and down." The present method, therefore, offers a premium for incendiarism of $4.25 for every thousand feet; gives him the article for 15 per cent of its value as a reward for firing it. Being at Leech Lake some time ago, I heard the head chief telling the Indian clergyman that he observed fires springing up after two Indians who had gone out into the woods; that there was no fire there before they went, and that he saw that they were hired by those who wished to log to set fires. And an operator in logs, whose name I did know but can not recall, told me that they were going to get all the pine on the Leech lake reservation at these reduced rates by burning.
In all this the loss falls on the Indian; he gets only 10 per cent of the value of his timber. Fifty cents a thousand is placed to his credit; and as long as men can get it in that way they will never pay $5 a thousand for it. And following this system a loss will ultimately fall on the Government. It has advanced $2,000,000 to the Chippewas (see report of the Secretary of the Interior for the year ending June 30, 1898, p. 39), reimbursable out of the proceeds of their pine, a great part of which has been wasted, as before described, for the salaries and expenses of the Chippewa Commission, and for the three estimations of pine above described, and has done the Chippewas no good; but if the Indians' pine is to go by fire, and so bring to their credit only 10 per cent of its real value, there will hardly be enough to reimburse the government that two millions. For the sake of the government, therefore, no less than for the sake of the Indians, the present premium offered to fire should be withdrawn.
In another way, also, the Indians have been constantly defrauded, namely, by loggers cutting green timber under pretense that it was "dead and down," and paying for it as "dead and down," 75 cents per thousand. For many years the Indians have been going to their United States Indian agent and trying to have it stopped, but in vain. They have constantly affirmed that it was so, but they have not been listened to. Last winter the writer had occasion to drive on the ice by a good many landings of people logging on the reservation, where their logs were hauled, and with him was a lifelong lumberman, an honest man. In some of the landings there was not one green stick -- genuine dead and down, with the bark fallen off; and one could not but admire the honesty and the goodness of the owners of the camps who had saved such property, which else in a few years more would have become worm-eaten and good for nothing. But most of the piles of logs were composed of green logs, some almost exclusively; and the practical lumberman spoken of said, after inspecting them all, that from "two-thirds to three-fourths of those logs are green."
The writer thought the same, and he has been about logging camps more or less for twenty-six years. But it does not require an expert; anyone who can see can tell a green log from a dry one. The Indians have been constantly robbed by cutting green logs for "dead and down." Afterwards we drove through the works and saw the stumps. They were nearly all green stumps, and my companion called my attention to how the tops were thrown -- near clumps of green pine, so that when the next fire swept through they also might be converted into "dead and down."
How much this cutting of green trees for dead and down may amount to in the aggregate may be imagined from the fact that the government now holds a judgment of $460,000, I believe it is, against one firm for cutting some green mixed with "dead and down" a few years earlier. How much, then, does it amount to when so many scores of camps have been in the business To show that this is still going on as actively as ever, I file herewith as an appendix the letter to the United States Indian agent at White Earth, marked "A."
There are inspectors appointed to see that green logs are not cut, which inspectors are paid out of the Indian funds, and they, if they wish, can allow any tree that is a little blackened about the roots by fire to be cut as "dead and down," even though the top is green and the tree would be green for years and years. There is hardly a pine tree but what bears some mark of fire about the roots, perhaps of years ago, and if that subterfuge be wished to be adopted it may all be cut as "dead and down."
If it be demanded, as it has been, why I did not urge this matter before, the answer is, first, that as a missionary I did not consider it wise for me to right any wrongs, even if they were great, nor to engage in any matters outside of my own field; secondly, that the interests were so powerful and backed by such millions of capital, controlling state politics and legislation and influencing national, that it was hopeless for one individual, and especially for one as humble as I, to effect anything even if I tried; and, thirdly, that last winter I did what I could by writing to the senators and representatives of the state, or some of them, about it. Afterwards I became alarmed in my own mind lest I should cause the innocent to suffer with the guilty, lest my letters should cause a sweeping order to be issued stopping all logging, which I knew would ruin some men -- my friends and neighbors of twenty-five years -- who I knew were doing perfectly honest work making a hard living by cutting "dead and down" timber that was really such, and who had invested their all in logging supplies, so I wrote a second letter deprecating the issuance of any such sweeping order, and saying that many were cutting in perfect honesty. If any part of that second letter be quoted, I ask that both letters be printed in full.
By all the methods hereinabove spoken of, I think, and have long thought, that the Chippewas are going to be robbed of everything they possess if those things be not stopped, as I know they are the real cause of the lamentable outbreak of last October, and also fear and believe that they will be the cause of a more serious and general outbreak to come. The Indians have already lost a great deal, mostly by burning, and in consequence taking their pine worth $5 for 50 cents. A white man, a former merchant of excellent judgment, who lives among them and knows all the circumstances estimates this loss at from three to five millions of dollars to the present time. The Menominee plan, which the Indians unanimously ask for, which Commissioner Browning recommended -- or rather the La Pointe plan, something similar, which also Inspector Wright recommended, and which also the natural guardian of these Indians, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, strongly recommends, as will be seen by his letter marked "B," herewith made a part of this paper-- that plan will stop all fraud, all burning, do away with estimating, will satisfy the Indians, and ought to be satisfactory to everybody.
*"Hearing of the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota before the Committee on Indian Affairs," Thursday, Feb. 2, 1899, Washington, 1899.
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