Treaties

[mdenney]

Letter from Bishop Whipple to President Lincoln

March 6, 1862

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The sad condition of the Indians of this State, who are my heathen wards, compels me to address you on their behalf. I ask only justice for a wronged and neglected race. I write the more cheerfully because I believe that the intentions of the Government have always been kind; but they have been thwarted by dishonest servants, ill-conceived plans, and defective instructions.

Before their treaty with the United States, the Indians of Minnesota were as favorably situated as an uncivilized race could well be. Their lakes, forests, and prairies furnished abundant game, and their hunts supplied them with valuable furs for the purchase of all articles of traffic. The great argument to secure the sale of their lands is the promise of their civilization. . . . The sale is made, and after the dishonesty which accompanies it there is usually enough money left, if honestly expended, to foster the Indians' desires for civilization. Remember, the parties to this contract are a great Christian Nation and a poor heathen people.

From the day of the treaty a rapid deterioration takes place. The Indian has sold the hunting-grounds necessary for his comfort as a wild man; his tribal relations are weakened; his chief's power and influence circumscribed; and he will soon be left a helpless man without a government, a protector, or a friend, unless the solemn treaty is observed.

The Indian agents who are placed in trust of the honor and faith of the Government are generally selected without any reference to their fitness for the place. The Congressional delegation desires to award John Doe for party work, and John Doe desires the place because there is a tradition on the border than an Indian Agent with fifteen hundred dollars a year can retire upon an ample fortune in four years.

The Indian agent appoints his subordinates from the same motive, either to reward his friends' service, or to fulfill the bidding of his Congressional patron. They are often men without any fitness, sometimes a disgrace to a Christian nation; whiskey-sellers, bar-room loungers, debauchers, selected to guide a heathen people. Then follow all the evils of bad example, of inefficiency, and of dishonesty--the school a sham, the supplies wasted, the improvement fund squandered by negligence or curtailed by fraudulent contracts. The Indian, bewildered, con-

-432-
scious of wrong, but helpless, has no refuge but to sink into a depth of brutishness. There have been noble instances of men who have tried to do their duty; but they have generally been powerless for lack of hearty cooperation of others, or because no man could withstand the corruption which has pervaded every department of Indian affairs.

The United States has virtually left the Indian without protection. . . . I can count up more than a dozen murders which have taken place in the Chippewa Count[r]y within two years. . . . There is no law to protect the innocent or punish the guilty. The sale of whiskey, the open licentiousness, the neglect and want are fast dooming this people to death, and as sure as there is a God much of the guilt lies at the Nation's door.

The first question is, can these red men become civilized? I say, unhesitatingly, yes. The Indian is almost the only heathen man on earth who is not an idolater. In his wild state he is braver, more honest, and virtuous than most heathen races. He has warm home affections and strong love of kindred and country. The Government of England has, among Indians speaking the same language with our own, some marked instances of their capability of civilization. In Canada you will find there are hundreds of civilized and Christian Indians, while on this side of the line there is only degradation.

The first thing needed is honesty. There has been a marked deterioration in Indian affairs since the office has become one of mere political favoritism. Instructions are not worth the price of the ink with which they are written if they are to be carried out by corrupt agents. Every employee ought to be a man of purity, temperance, industry, and unquestioned integrity. Those selected to teach in any department must be men of peculiar fitness,--patient, with quick perceptions, enlarged ideas, and men who love their work. They must be something better than so many drudges fed at the public crib.

The second step is to frame instructions so that the Indian shall be the ward of the Government. They cannot live without law. We have broken up, in part, their tribal relations, and they must have something in their place.

Whenever the Indian desires to abandon his wild life, the Government ought to aid him in building a house, in opening his farm, in providing utensils and implements of labor. His home should be conveyed to him by a patent, and be inalienable. It is a bitter cause of complaint that the Government has not fulfilled its pledges in this respect. It robs

-433-
the Indian of manhood and leaves him subject to the tyranny of wild Indians, who destroy his crops, burn his fences, and appropriate the rewards of his labor.

The schools should be ample to receive all children who desire to attend. As it is, with six thousand dollars appropriated for the Lower Sioux for some seven years past, I doubt whether there is a child at the lower agency who can read who has not been taught by our missionary. Our Mission School has fifty children, and the entire cost of the mission, with three faithful teachers, every dollar of which passes through my own hands, is less than seven hundred dollars a year.

In all future treaties it ought to be the object of the Government to pay the Indians in kind, supplying their wants at such times as they may require help. This valuable reform would only be a curse in the hands of a dishonest agent. If wisely and justly expended, the Indian would not be as he now is,--often on the verge of starvation.

There ought to be a concentration of the scattered bands of Chippewas upon one reservation, thus securing a more careful oversight, and also preventing the sale of fire-water and the corrupt influence of bad men. The Indian agent ought to be authorized to act as a United States Commissioner, to try all violations of Indian laws. It may be beyond my province to offer these suggestions; I have made them because my heart aches for this poor wronged people. The heads of the Department are too busy to visit the Indian country, and even if they did it would be to find the house swept and garnished for an official visitor. It seems to me that the surest plan to remedy these wrongs and to prevent them for the future, would be to appoint a commission of some three persons to examine the whole subject and to report to the Department a plan which should remedy the evils which have so long been a reproach to our nation. If such were appointed, it ought to be composed of men of inflexible integrity, of large heart, of clear head, of strong will, who fear God and love man. I should like to see it composed of men so high in character that they are above the reach of the political demagogues.

I have written to you freely with all the frankness with which a Christian bishop has the right to write to the Chief Ruler of a great Christian Nation. My design has not been to complain of individuals, nor to make accusations. Bad as I believe some of the appointments to be, they are the fault of a political system. When I came to Minnesota I was startled at the degradation at my door. I gave these men missions;

-434-
God has blessed me, and I would count every trial I have had as a way of roses if I could save this people.

May God guide you and give you grace to order all things, so that the Government shall deal righteously with the Indian nations in its charge.

Your servant for Christ's sake,
H. B. WHIPPLE,
Bishop of Minnesota.

From Henry B. Whipple, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate ( New York: Macmillan Co., 1899), pp. 510-514.

-435-

[mdenney]

CHAPTER 13
Those Who Stayed
OF ALL THE splinter groups into which the Santee Sioux were fragmented after the uprising, none have so quietly dramatic a history as those few who never left Minnesota or who returned to the state after a discreet interval. Defying both hostile public opinion, which persisted long after the outbreak, and the poverty that was their lot for having renounced the benefits extended to the tribe, they hung on at or near their old homes until the government finally, in 1884, extended belated and limited recognition to them. After that their numbers were gradually augmented by migration from outside the state, until by 1960 there were more Santee Sioux living on the small reservations in Minnesota than there were on the Santee Reservation in Nebraska.

The story of the Santees who stayed behind goes back to 1853, when the bulk of the Mdewakantons and Wahpekutes were removed, albeit temporarily, to the reservation on the upper Minnesota. For several years, many of them spent most of their time in their old territory, showing up at the agency only for the annuity payment, and some never did establish residence on the reservation. A few families lingered around Faribault, aided by Alexander Faribault, who helped them send their children to the local schools and gradually merge with the white community. There is evidence that some also hung on in the Wabasha vicinity, perhaps members of that portion of the old Wabasha

-258-
band who refused to move to the reservation in 1853. The naturalist and author Henry David Thoreau reported seeing "Dacotah shaped wigwams" just below Wabasha when he passed up the Mississippi in the spring of 1861, and several months after the uprising a group of nineteen Sioux who had lived peaceably there all through the hostilities were captured by the military and taken to Fort Snelling. A record kept by the Prairie Island people says that one of their number went up to the Redwood to make maple sugar in the spring of 1862, lingered through the summer, and was caught up in the war that fall. 1 Passing references in newspapers of the 1850's and early 1860's also suggest that many of the lower Sioux remained in the vicinity of their old villages throughout the reservation period.

In addition to those who had partly or completely severed their ties with their tribe before the uprising, there was a larger number who were not removed with the main body in 1863. When 1,318 Sioux were shipped out of Fort Snelling that May, 137 were left behind to serve as scouts against the hostile Indians on the frontier. To this figure, which included women and children, must be added an indeterminate number who had testified against their fellows the previous autumn and believed that their lives would be jeopardized if they were forced to rejoin the tribe. 2 The fate of these "friendly Sioux" was a matter of concern, not only to themselves, but to friends of the Indians like Bishop Whipple and General Sibley; even Galbraith expressed concern about what might happen to them if they were made to accompany their tribesmen. On December 18, 1862, a petition was signed by five chiefs of the lower Sioux, five of the upper, and by other braves and headmen, disavowing participation in the uprising and asking that they be permitted to return to the reservation and the farms they had cultivated before the outbreak. The fact that the petitioners were among the very few not tried by the military court the previous fall indicates that their protestations of innocence were sincere. Although Antoine Freniere, a mixed-blood as vindictive as any of the whites, charged that these men merely wanted to return to the reservation in order to dig up plunder they had buried during the fighting, several

____________________ 1 Central Republican ( Faribault), June 10, 1863; Goodhue County Republican ( Red Wing), January 16, 1863; "History of Prairie Island Sioux, Begun by Thomas Rouillard-Related by Eliza Wells and Translated by Grandson, Norman Richard Campbell," ms, Minnesota Historical Society; Walter Harding, ed., Thoreau's Minnesota Journey: Two Documents ( Geneseo, N.Y.: Thoreau Society, 1962), p. 4.
2 Charles E. Mix to William P. Dole, May 18, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LR, Northern Superintendency.

-259-
prominent citizens were inclined to give them at least the benefit of the doubt. 3

An early version of the bill to abrogate all treaties with the Santee Sioux contained a provision which would have awarded 160 acres of land to each Indian who had helped the whites during the uprising, provided him with agricultural implements, stock, etc., and given him a lifetime annuity of fifty dollars. 4 This clause of the bill was widely denounced in the newspapers, on the ground that Little Crow's case demonstrated that the "good Indian" of today might be the hostile of tomorrow. The Mankato Weekly Record predicted that the signers of the petition--the "pets," as it called them--might in five years be reenacting the scenes of the previous August. "Christianizing Indians has proved an expensive undertaking to Minnesota," wrote editor John C. Wise, "and our people want no more experiments in that line." 5

Despite the opposition, the removal bill that became law on March 3, 1863, contained a provision authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to grant eighty acres of land on the old reservation to "any meritorious individual . . . who exerted himself to save the lives of the whites in the late massacre." No mention was made of any other assistance or annuity. Perhaps because the land itself would be of no use to the Indian without implements, stock, and seed, which he was quite unable to purchase for himself, nothing was done to carry out this provision until 1865, when Congress passed a bill that enabled the Secretary of the Interior to assist the Indians financially in establishing themselves. 6

Meanwhile, the friendly Sioux had been living in extreme poverty, preserved from starvation only by the charity of their white friends. When Sibley's spring campaign of 1863 was about to begin, Bishop Whipple asked him what was to be done with the families of his scouts and the other Indians who had rescued whites. Upon Sibley's reply that they would have to go to the new reservation on the Missouri with the rest of their tribe, the bishop suggested that they be turned over to him and sent to Faribault. An appeal to Alexander Faribault brought an offer of part of his farm as a camping place for these unfortunates. Only Faribault's reputation in the city named for him enabled him to so defy public opinion as to harbor members of the hated Indian race on his

____________________ 3 54th Cong., 2nd Sess., S. Rpt. 1362, pp. 16-17; St. Paul Pioneer, December 14 and 18, 1862. According to Freniere, only one Indian, John Other Day, and two halfbreeds, Joseph Coursoll and Jack Frazer, were free of complicity in the uprising. Someone, probably Sibley, wrote to the Pioneer, denying Freniere's charge.
4 St. Paul Pioneer, January 15, 1863.
5 Mankato Weekly Record, February 7, 1863.
6 U.S. Statutes at Large, XII, 819-820; XIII, 427.

-260-
property. As it was, he was threatened and had to publish in the local newspaper a detailed statement identifying the Indians who were living on his land. None of those camping there in June, 1863, had taken any part in the uprising, he asserted, other than to help the whites escape; some had never lived on the reservation at all; one, a widow, had a son in the Union Army at the time. 7

Although this public notice of the innocence of Faribault's guests prevented any violence that might have been planned, the four years that the Indians lived on his land were not altogether pleasant ones, for either him or them. They had no money, and their attempts to raise crops were largely unsuccessful. Faribault, who owned a mill, employed them when he could and sustained them by outright charity the rest of the time. They dug and sold ginseng, which had a certain popularity at the time, until the land had been so dug over that several years would be required for the ginseng to recover. They were not allowed to dig on other people's land. At the beginning of April, 1866, Faribault presented a claim for $3,871.44 to the government, partially covering his expenditures since March 1, 1863. His account included such items as "One coffin for child--$6.00" and "One coffin for son--$12." 8 His claim was eventually honored by the government, but it is unlikely that Faribault, who died in comparative poverty himself, was ever fully compensated for his generosity to his Sioux relatives.

The bill passed by Congress and approved February 9, 1865, was due largely to the exertions of Bishop Whipple, who made six trips to Washington at his own expense on behalf of the Sioux in Minnesota and elsewhere. Called "An Act for the Relief of certain Friendly Indians of the Sioux Nation, in Minnesota," it noted that these Indians were destitute because of their services to the whites in 1862, authorized the President to investigate their condition and "make such provision for their welfare as their necessities and future protection may require," and appropriated $7,500, one third of which was to be paid to John Other Day, the rest to " such other Indians as shall appear specially entitled thereto, for their friendly, extraordinary, and gallant services in rescuing white settlers from massacre in Minnesota." 9

____________________ 7 Henry B. Whipple, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate ( New York: Macmillan Co., 1899), pp. 133-134; Central Republican, June 10, 1863.
8 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, p. 235; Alexander Ramsey to Secretary of the Interior, enclosing Faribault's account dated April 1, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR.
9 Henry B. Whipple to Lewis V. Bogy, December 25, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR; U.S. Statutes at Large, XIII, 427.

-261-
The determination of who was to share in the appropriation took some time and the actual distribution even longer, but action toward carrying out the provision for the Indians' welfare began almost at once. In the absence of Bishop Whipple, who was in Europe, his protégé, Samuel D. Hinman, immediately began agitating to have the government fulfill the clause in the removal act that provided for eighty-acre farms on the old reservation to be granted to the friendly Sioux. Hinman, in Washington at the time, wrote Commissioner Dole on March 15, 1865, asking that twelve sections of land be withdrawn from pre-emption and sale until each deserving head of family had received the allotment promised in 1863. Two days later the Secretary of the Interior authorized him to select the lands to be reserved. The tract Hinman proposed to locate his Indians on was on the south bank of the Minnesota River, in the vicinity of the old agency, including what is today the Lower Sioux Indian Community. Hinman was authorized to gather and establish the Indians on these lands, and Superintendent Clark W. Thompson was instructed to spend $800 to buy farm implements and seeds and to have lands plowed for the Indians. 10

Although Hinman must surely have realized that there would be widespread public sentiment in Minnesota hostile to such a scheme as he envisioned, he went blithely ahead with the plan and collected at Faribault as many Indians as he could preparatory to establishing them on their lands. At this point his efforts were abruptly halted. General Sibley wrote him late in April that he had received orders from General John Pope forbidding any settlement of Indians on the old reservation without further orders from Pope or from higher authority. Even at this point the opposition of the whites might have been overcome but for the sudden revival of anti-Indian feeling that followed the murder by a small party of half-breeds of a family living south of Mankato. On the second day of May this group of renegades, led by John Campbell, a son of old Scott Campbell and a deserter from the Union Army, fell upon the Andrew Jewett family and killed or fatally wounded all four members of the family. A few days later Campbell was taken into custody on suspicion, subjected to a brief and somewhat irregular trial, and summarily hanged on the present site of the Blue Earth County courthouse. Although Campbell and his companions

____________________ 10 Samuel D. Hinman to Dole, March 15, 1865; Secretary of Interior John P. Usher to Dole, March 17, 1865, NARS, RG 75, LR; Dole to Hinman, March 23, 1865, NARS, RG 75, LS.

-262-
were outlaws primarily and Indians only secondarily, the savagery of their behavior led to such an upsurge of hatred for all Indians as to render impracticable any further efforts to locate the friendly Sioux on their old reservation. There followed an exchange of letters between Pope, backed by Sibley, and General Ulysses S. Grant, with the result that Grant finally sustained Pope's action in forbidding Hinman to proceed further with his plan. Grant remarked, with a degree of detachment not possible to those closer to the scene, that perhaps the Indians needed protection from the whites as much as the whites needed protection from the Indians. 11 Thus ended the first and only really serious attempt in the sixties to let the Sioux return to their old reservation.

On the chance that another attempt might be made, however, the citizens of Minnesota made known their opposition through appropriate channels. On February 28 of the following year a joint resolution of the state legislature and a memorial to the Secretary of the Interior were submitted in protest against the rumored proposal to settle "certain meritorious Indians upon our frontier." It complained that such Indians would have intercourse with the hostiles on the plains who had been harassing the Minnesota frontier since 1862. Furthermore, said the memorial, "The experience has shown, that even under ordinary circumstances a settlement of Indians in a body among whites is very detrimental and injurious both to the Indians and whites." Although the whites were said to entertain the kindest feelings toward these Indians individually, they insisted that the lands in question be opened to settlement. 12 The inconsistency of their argument and the absurdity of the prediction that Indians who had remained in Minnesota out of fear of the hostiles would now make common cause with the latter may have been noticed by the Secretary of the Interior, but he took no further action to settle the friendly Indians on the lands chosen for them by Hinman.

The failure of Hinman's plan left Alexander Faribault reluctantly footing the bill for the support of the Sioux on his land, with no

____________________ 11 Henry H. Sibley to Hinman, April 27, 1865, NARS, RG 75, LR; Mankato Weekly Union, May 5, 1865; Thomas Hughes, History of Blue Earth County ( Chicago: Middle West Publishing Co., [ 1901]), pp. 149-154; The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, First Series, Vol. 48, Pt. 2, pp. 347, 359, 367, 480. The story of the attempt to settle the Indians on their old reservation is summarized in Hinman to Whipple, May 30, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR.
12 Joint Resolution of the Minnesota State Legislature and Memorial to the Secretary of the Interior, March 16, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR.

-263-
certainty of ever being reimbursed by the government. Besides presenting his claim, he requested in the spring of 1866 that the Indians be removed from his land and otherwise provided for. They were doing irreparable damage to his standing timber, and this he knew he would never be compensated for. 13 So long as the main body of the Santees were at Crow Creek, there was an understandable reluctance to send those in Minnesota to rejoin their tribesmen, but when the Crow Creek people had been removed to the Niobrara, supposedly a satisfactory home, pressure for the removal of the remnants at Faribault and elsewhere became stronger. Sibley wrote the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Dennis N. Cooley, in April, 1866, that, with the exception of eight men and their families, these people would be willing to go to the new reservation and should be removed in time to plant crops there that season. The next month their removal was authorized by the Secretary of the Interior, but for reasons not clear no action was taken at that time, and by the first of June the plan had been temporarily abandoned. 14

Since the Indians were not going to be removed as Sibley had recommended, the Indian Office decided to make temporary provision for them and to investigate their situation more thoroughly before taking further action. As soon as the altered intention of the government was known, Bishop Whipple set the Indians to work plowing some thirty or forty acres of Faribault's land, on which they put in a crop of corn, potatoes, and vegetables. The expenses, over a hundred dollars, were borne by the bishop himself, though Faribault continued to give what financial aid he could. The Department of the Interior also appointed a special agent, Shubael P. Adams, to investigate the condition of the Indians, submit suggestions for action, and attend to the distribution of the $7,500 appropriated by Congress the previous year. Adams arrived at Faribault late in June and spent several weeks collecting information on the "Scattered Sioux," as they came to be called. 15

Adams found that there were 374 Sioux in Minnesota, including

____________________ 13 Ramsey to James Harlan, March 10, 1866; Alexander Faribault to Secretary of the Interior, June 2, 1866; Hinman to Whipple, April 6, 1866; Hinman to Secretary of the Interior, March 29, 1866, ibid.
14 Sibley to Dennis N. Cooley, April 13, 1866; Harlan to Cooley, May 5, 1866; Whipple to Harlan, June 1, 1866, ibid. In his official report Cooley gave the "various delays" as the reason for not removing the Indians that spring. See Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, p. 46.
15 Cooley to Whipple, June 12, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, p. 235.

-264-
those at Big Stone Lake, who spent part of their time in Dakota Territory. He found 65 at Faribault, 12 at Wabasha (most of whom had fled from Crow Creek that spring), 158 on the Yellow Medicine and at the scouts' camp about seventy miles south of there, and 139 at the head of Big Stone Lake. More than half of them were mixed-bloods. Those at the scouts' camp received rations (but no pay) and spent a good share of their time hunting; except for about 40, he did not recommend their removal to Niobrara. Likewise, those at the Yellow Medicine, some of whom were farming, and those at Big Stone Lake constituted no annoyance to white settlers where they were and might well be left there. The Faribault and Wabasha groups, however, lived mostly on charity, having no hunting grounds and being able to raise only a small part of their necessities. Adams said, probably incorrectly, that they had no attachment to their present locations and were willing, even anxious in many cases, to go to the Niobrara. 16

[mdenney]

On the strength of Adams' recommendations, it was decided to remove the Indians that year, and Alexander Faribault was designated, at Bishop Whipple's and Sibley's suggestion, to do the job. His appointment did not reach him, however, until early in September, which he regarded as too late in the season for such an operation. The Indians were scattered around the woods, some of them gathering wild rice, and assembling them would take a considerable time. For these reasons, as well as on the grounds of poor health, Faribault declined the appointment but expressed a readiness to remove the Indians the next spring, provided the compensation were raised from five to ten dollars a day. 17 So another winter passed without any action toward the removal of the friendly Sioux.

These people were somewhat better provided for during the winter of 1866-1867 than in previous years, for some of them had received their shares of the $7,500 Adams had been ordered to disburse. The selection of those who were to receive the money was a difficult task. Bishop Whipple had the primary responsibility, but he enlisted the aid of the other missionaries, such as Riggs and the Williamsons, General Sibley, and everyone else who had personal knowledge of the circumstances. A list containing thirty-six names was finally submitted to Commissioner Cooley in June, 1866, and approved by him soon afterward. Besides such well-known individuals as Other Day (whose share

____________________ 16 Shubael P. Adams to Cooley, August 10, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR.
17 Sibley to Cooley, August 9, 1866; Harlan to Cooley, August 29, 1866; Faribault to Cooley, September 9, 1866; Orville Browning to Cooley, September 26, 1866, ibid.

-265-
of $2,500 Bishop Whipple thought outrageously large), Taopi, Lorenzo Lawrence, and Paul Mazakutemane, the list included eleven names suggested by Sibley; they were men who had performed no acts of marked heroism but who had by their moderating influence helped prevent the slaughter of the white captives. Adams did not disburse the money himself, but delegated Dr. Jared W. Daniels of Faribault to perform that part of the job. Daniels paid the Faribault Indians at once, in the fall of 1866, a few more the next winter, and nearly all the rest the following spring. Those who received the money early enough bought seed and tools and set about farming in the summer of 1867. 18

Since those at Faribault had been assured that they would be removed the next summer, they apparently spent their money for food and other necessities. Alexander Faribault reported in the fall of 1866 that they were well supplied with provisions for the winter. Their condition was by no means enviable, however. They were still living in the worn-out tipis they had owned before the uprising, they had had no new blankets nor much clothing for four years, and their crops the previous summer had been washed out by a freshet. Ralph Waldo Emerson, on a lecture tour that winter, visited their encampment "in a wild piece of timber" late in January. In a letter to his daughter Ellen, he told of entering one of their tipis, in the company of Faribault's son, and finding them sitting on the ground, about to eat their supper, which was placed on a board. In one tent two young girls were singing psalms in Dakota. Emerson, nurtured on the romantic ideal of the early nineteenth century, regretted that " the light was not birch-bark nor pine-knot, but a kerosene lamp." 19

The next spring Secretary of Interior Orville Browning authorized Superintendent Edward B. Taylor to have the Minnesota Sioux removed to the Santee Reservation under Hinman's supervision. No sooner had the news that they were to be removed become generally known than a chorus of protests arose, emanating primarily from those Indians who had all along objected to joining their tribesmen, but echoed also by some people who might have been expected to rejoice at the prospect. Not only were objections received from such friends of the Indians as Stephen R. Riggs, Thomas S. Williamson, and ex-Senator

____________________ 18 Whipple to Cooley, June 2, 1866; S. P. Adams to Cooley, June 26, 1866; Jared W. Daniels to Cooley, August 24, 1866, and June 10 and August 31, 1868, ibid.
19 Faribault to Cooley, September 9, 1866; Whipple to Bogy, December 25, 1866, ibid.; Ralph L. Rusk, ed., The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), V, 493.

-266-
Henry M. Rice, but similar sentiments were expressed by Governor William R. Marshall, former Governor Ramsey, and sixty-one citizens of Faribault, who signed a petition asking that certain members of the group there be permitted to stay. The principal objection was the compulsory nature of the proposed removal. Riggs asked that the order be modified so as to permit those who wished to stay to do so. Governor Marshall thought it an injustice that Indians who were farming and were "to all intents and purposes . . . citizens" should be removed against their will. Rice pointed out that "to send them amoung [sic] their own people whom they opposed and openly fought during the Indian war would be, I fear, sending them to their graves." His rather visionary recommendation was that they be sent to some place suitable to them and unobjectionable to the whites. 20 As might be expected, the most moving of the pleas came from the Indians themselves. Accompanying one of Governor Marshall's letters was an undated petition from Taopi and six others, partly in the handwriting of Bishop Whipple and bearing evidences of his literary style throughout. Pathetically the petitioners begged,

Reward not we beseech thee our father our loyalty by delivering us up to the vengeance of our enemies We are but a little band all that remains of a once powerful nation upon the soil which was the hunting grounds of our fathers We shall need but a little space but for a little while Our white brothers now lords of soil once ours should not deny us this little boon. 21

When the removal was finally carried out, in July, 1867, it was voluntary, although the Indians who chose not to leave were informed that no further provisions for their removal at government expense would be made. Hinman left the Santee Agency June 10 and arrived twelve days later at Faribault, from which base he visited all the Indian groups in southern Minnesota and took a census of them. This proved more difficult than he expected, for some of the Indians kept moving back and forth between the Missouri River and the Redwood area. Since the Sissetons and Wahpetons now had a reservation of their own, he omitted them from his figures, though they had accounted for the great majority of those Adams had found the previous year. Except for three lodges

____________________ 20 Browning to Edward B. Taylor, April 19, 1867; Stephen R. Riggs to Browning, March 11, 1867; Henry M. Rice to Browning, April 10, 1867; William R. Marshall to E. B. Taylor, April 18, 1867; Ramsey to Whipple, July 6, 1867; petition from Faribault citizens, July 30, 1867, NARS, RG 75, LR.
21 Petition from Taope [sic], et al., (undated), accompanying letter of Marshall to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, May 29, 1867, ibid.

-267-
whom Colonel Sam McPhail, proprietor of the town of Redwood Falls, had permitted to live in that vicinity, all the upper Sioux had been ordered away to their reservation. Hinman found seventy-five Sioux at Faribault, two at Mendota, four at Wabasha, and one lodge above Fort Snelling. All those at Faribault seemed willing to go except Taopi and his relatives and another man who had bought land in the vicinity. Those at Mendota and near Fort Snelling were cultivating large fields under the protection of their friends and relatives who were citizens, and they had no wish to leave. Two of the four at Wabasha seemed willing to leave but were deterred by the others, including one who lived across the river in Wisconsin. Hinman also learned that John Bluestone had bought a farm near Shakopee and was doing well at farming. All of these people he left behind. Those he took with him to Santee numbered five lodges, or thirty-nine individuals--slightly more than half the number at Faribault. Because of flooding due to recent rains, Hinman and his party had a miserable trip to Nebraska, but they arrived safely on August 15, exactly a month after their departure.22

Although the Hinman expedition of 1867 marked the end of the long struggle to remove the Sioux from Minnesota, it did not end efforts to locate the remnant on their old reservation. The next spring Bishop Whipple wrote to Sibley and to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs asking that Taopi and his friends be granted eighty-acre tracts there. Taopi he described as "poor, homeless, destitute, and yet worthy of our gratitude for rescuing our captives." 23 The wheels again ground slowly; and in May, 1869, Whipple was authorized to make new selections, not to exceed twelve sections of land, in a locality where there would be no conflict between the white settlers and the Indians. By this time, of course, it was difficult to find any land on the old reservation that had not been occupied by whites. Even in 1865, when Hinman had first tried to locate the Indians there, he was told that several pre-emption claims had been made on the tract chosen by him. In 1869 the land then withdrawn from sale was restored to the market, and now there was nothing available below the Yellow Medicine. McPhail, asked by Bishop Whipple to examine the country above there, was able to find only two suitable locations, one at the extreme western end of the old reservation, on the Dakota border, the other at the foot of Big Stone Lake. Since

____________________ 22 Hinman to Hampton B. Denman, August 20, 1867, ibid. See also Central Republican, July 17, 1867.

[mdenney]

23 Whipple to Sibley, April 7, 1868; Whipple to Commissioner of Indian Affairs, April 30, 1868; Sibley to Browning, April 20, 1868, NARS, RG 75, LR.

-268-
both of them were close to the new Sisseton Reservation, the bishop suggested that Sisseton Agent Daniels be given charge of such Indians as might be placed there. 24

Nothing came of this scheme. It would not have helped Taopi in any case, for he had died on February 19, 1869, after falling ill on a hunting trip far north of St. Paul and returning to Faribault to die. He had earlier told Bishop Whipple that he expected never to have another home except his grave. 25 The rest of the little colony at Faribault stayed on, generally accepted by their white neighbors and gradually rising out of the abject poverty that had characterized their early years. In 1884 the Faribault Democrat presented a rather favorable picture of them:

Here in Faribault there are a number of Indian families, who have comfortable homes, and clothed in the garments of civilization, provide for themselves as do their white neighbors. They are all faithful Christians and every Sunday, no matter what the weather, finds them in their places in the Cathedral and at least once a month reverentially kneeling at the altar to receive the Holy Communion. 26

Less than five years later they left Faribault to join the newly established colony near the old agency site, where Hinman helped them to build a church and where the largest of the Sioux enclaves in Minnesota today is situated.

During the sixteen years after Hinman's removal of those at Faribault, the history of the Sioux in Minnesota is almost a total blank. The government having no further obligations toward them, they are scarcely mentioned in the correspondence of the Indian Bureau. It appears, however, that the fifty or so remaining in the state when Hinman removed the rest in 1867 were joined in succeeding years by a good many who preferred the risks of independence in their old homeland to the security of reservation life. Once the initiative had been taken by the people who went to Flandreau in 1869, others followed their example,

____________________ 24 Secretary of Interior Jacob D. Cox to Ely S. Parker, May 25, 1869; Joseph W. Wilson, Commissioner of the General Land Office, to Cox, May 27, 1869; Parker to Whipple, June 11, 1869; Samuel McPhail to Whipple, August 24, 1869; Whipple to Parker, September 1, 1869, ibid.
25 Central Republican, March 3, 1869; William Welsh, comp., Taopi and His Friends, or the Indians' Wrongs and Rights ( Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen and Heffelfinger, 1869), pp. 53-54; George C. Tanner, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota 1857-19O7 ( St. Paul: Published by The Committee, 1909), p. 401.
26 Faribault Democrat, June 27, 1884.

-269-
choosing to migrate all the way to Minnesota, where they were later joined by some of the Flandreau colonists. The 1870 census showed 175 Indians, nearly all of whom were presumably Sioux, scattered through the southern counties. Aside from 34 in Chippewa County, probably the remnants of the scouts' camp, the largest concentrations were at Faribault and Traverse des Sioux, with smaller groups at Bloomington (the residence of Gideon Pond), in the Shakopee-Prior Lake area, and on Grey Cloud Island in Washington County. The number continued to increase in subsequent years, until in 1883 a special census revealed 237 Sioux in Minnesota. 27

Only once between 1867 and 1883 was a serious attempt made to bring the Minnesota Sioux back within the pale of government benefits. Late in 1875 the Reverend David Buel Knickerbacker, rector of Gethsemane church in Minneapolis, wrote Commissioner Edward P. Smith in behalf of the Sioux Indians then living at Mendota, Shakopee, and elsewhere in the state. He estimated their numbers at perhaps 125 or 150, of whom 75 were living at Mendota. He described them as industrious, temperate, and honest, all professing Christians. Besides cultivating about ten acres of land and collecting wild rice, they supported themselves by making moccasins and working on farms during harvest. The church helped supply them with clothing and provisions. The land they occupied at Mendota was owned by Sibley, who offered to donate a few acres if the government would buy some more and put up a few small houses. Knickerbacker believed that $500 a year judiciously expended would protect them from want in the winter, and they would soon be independent. "It seems impossible to persuade them to leave here to go to their people in Nebraska," he remarked, indicating that their removal was still regarded as a desirable solution to the problem. 28

[mdenney]

Commissioner Smith replied that, although these people had treaty rights at the Flandreau, Sisseton, or Santee agencies, it would probably be best to leave them where they were rather than try to remove them. There were unfortunately no funds available to help them in their present locations, except possibly the civilization fund, which was running low. All he was willing to suggest was that perhaps the Bureau

27 A. T. Andreas, ed., An Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Minnesota ( Chicago: Lakeside Building, 1874), pp. 14-15; "Memorial Notices of Rev. Gideon H. Pond," Minnesota Historical Collections, III ( 1870- 1880), 371.
28 David B. Knickerbacker to Edward P. Smith, October 13, 1875, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency.

-270-
could help them if Sibley would provide them with the land he had offered. 29 Knickerbacker wrote back that Sibley would sell about one hundred acres for $2,000, less $200 which he would deduct as his donation in place of the ten or twenty acres promised. The commissioner's line had hardened by this time, however, and the project went no further. He replied early in 1876 that he considered the proposed purchases an expense not justified by the financial condition of the Indian Office at the time. He added, rather sharply, "I do not recognize that these Indians, failing to comply with previous requirements as to their removal, have any claim upon this office. If they choose the privileges of independence, they must also assume its burdens." 30

Information on the Sioux in Minnesota during the seventies is scarce indeed. Yet it is evident, from scattered references in newspapers and Indian Bureau correspondence, that some were more or less permanent residents in the Red Wing and Wabasha areas and that others paid periodic visits to their old homes. 31 A Dakota County history published in 1881 provides the information that there were a few Indians living there at that time. The picture it gives of the Mendota colony is not as favorable as that offered by the Reverend Knickerbacker. The settlement then consisted of an encampment of seven tipis, containing, when visited, thirty-five women and children and only one or two men; the rest of the men were away hunting in Dakota Territory. They lived in a "primitive and savage manner" and were said to "speak no English,

____________________ 29 E. P. Smith to Knickerbacker, October 21, 1875, ibid.
30 Knickerbacker to E. P. Smith, November 22, 1875; E. P. Smith to Knickerbacker, January 20, 1876, ibid.
31 In 1877, Santee Agent Isaiah Lightner wrote Commissioner Smith that Charles Hedges, an industrious Indian, had bought some land near Red Wing and wished to take with him the property issued him by the government. Lightner thought there would be a number of his charges going to Minnesota. The same year the Red Wing Argus complained of the number of drunken Indians seen almost daily on the streets, but the editor was more concerned about where they were getting the stuff than with the convenience of future historians, and he provided no further information. There were Indians at Wabasha two years later, when Francis Talbot, an old trader who had worked under Alexis Bailly, inquired about getting an appointment as trader at Santee. He professed to be well known to "some of the chiefs there and their relatives here [at Wabasha]." In the spring of 1879 and again in the fall small parties of Indians passed through Lake City on their way to Wabasha; the second party was made up of three squaws, one brave, three broken-down horses, one papoose, and "one gamin of a brave," according to the Cannon Falls Beacon. See Lightner to John Q. Smith, May 16, 1877, and Francis Talbot to Superintendent of Indian Bureau, January 27, 1879, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies; Red Wing Argus, June 28, 1877; Cannon Falls Beacon, March 7 and September 12, 1879.

-271-
profess no religion and own no land." It treated another group more generously. These were "the few quiet people who cultivate a little land on the bottoms below Hastings, and sell pipes and beadwork to the whites. They are regular attendants of the Episcopal church." Their principal man was Ma-pi-awa-con-sa, locally known as Indian John. 32

The picture we get from these varied sources is that of a people striving for obscurity, a goal which the whites were perfectly willing to help them attain. Their poverty was due not so much to laziness, as the whites charged, as to economic and cultural handicaps which unfitted them for competition with the white population and obliged them to live on the fringes of society, the objects of charity, contempt, or, at best, good-natured condescension. Too few to be feared any longer, they were looked upon by their white neighbors much as the village idiot might be: harmless, useless, a burden to society. Although the whites doubtless wished the government or some other agency would take upon itself responsibility for the Indians' support, they were really not a big enough burden to cause much concern. If they had been picturesque, they might have been more popular; then they could have put on war dances at county fairs and Fourth of July celebrations, as some of them later did. But for the most part they were not picturesque but pitiably drab, people the community would just as soon not have strangers see. Fortunately, as the white settlers saw it, the Indian was said to be the vanishing race; no doubt these little encampments of aborigines would soon die off.

____________________ 32 Edward D. Neill, History of Dakota County and the City of Hastings ( Minneapolis: North Star Publishing Co., 1881), pp. 195-196.

-272-

[mdenney]

Commissioner Smith replied that, although these people had treaty rights at the Flandreau, Sisseton, or Santee agencies, it would probably be best to leave them where they were rather than try to remove them. There were unfortunately no funds available to help them in their present locations, except possibly the civilization fund, which was running low. All he was willing to suggest was that perhaps the Bureau

27 A. T. Andreas, ed., An Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Minnesota ( Chicago: Lakeside Building, 1874), pp. 14-15; "Memorial Notices of Rev. Gideon H. Pond," Minnesota Historical Collections, III ( 1870- 1880), 371.
28 David B. Knickerbacker to Edward P. Smith, October 13, 1875, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency.

-270-
could help them if Sibley would provide them with the land he had offered. 29 Knickerbacker wrote back that Sibley would sell about one hundred acres for $2,000, less $200 which he would deduct as his donation in place of the ten or twenty acres promised. The commissioner's line had hardened by this time, however, and the project went no further. He replied early in 1876 that he considered the proposed purchases an expense not justified by the financial condition of the Indian Office at the time. He added, rather sharply, "I do not recognize that these Indians, failing to comply with previous requirements as to their removal, have any claim upon this office. If they choose the privileges of independence, they must also assume its burdens." 30

Information on the Sioux in Minnesota during the seventies is scarce indeed. Yet it is evident, from scattered references in newspapers and Indian Bureau correspondence, that some were more or less permanent residents in the Red Wing and Wabasha areas and that others paid periodic visits to their old homes. 31 A Dakota County history published in 1881 provides the information that there were a few Indians living there at that time. The picture it gives of the Mendota colony is not as favorable as that offered by the Reverend Knickerbacker. The settlement then consisted of an encampment of seven tipis, containing, when visited, thirty-five women and children and only one or two men; the rest of the men were away hunting in Dakota Territory. They lived in a "primitive and savage manner" and were said to "speak no English,

____________________ 29 E. P. Smith to Knickerbacker, October 21, 1875, ibid.
30 Knickerbacker to E. P. Smith, November 22, 1875; E. P. Smith to Knickerbacker, January 20, 1876, ibid.
31 In 1877, Santee Agent Isaiah Lightner wrote Commissioner Smith that Charles Hedges, an industrious Indian, had bought some land near Red Wing and wished to take with him the property issued him by the government. Lightner thought there would be a number of his charges going to Minnesota. The same year the Red Wing Argus complained of the number of drunken Indians seen almost daily on the streets, but the editor was more concerned about where they were getting the stuff than with the convenience of future historians, and he provided no further information. There were Indians at Wabasha two years later, when Francis Talbot, an old trader who had worked under Alexis Bailly, inquired about getting an appointment as trader at Santee. He professed to be well known to "some of the chiefs there and their relatives here [at Wabasha]." In the spring of 1879 and again in the fall small parties of Indians passed through Lake City on their way to Wabasha; the second party was made up of three squaws, one brave, three broken-down horses, one papoose, and "one gamin of a brave," according to the Cannon Falls Beacon. See Lightner to John Q. Smith, May 16, 1877, and Francis Talbot to Superintendent of Indian Bureau, January 27, 1879, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies; Red Wing Argus, June 28, 1877; Cannon Falls Beacon, March 7 and September 12, 1879.

-271-
profess no religion and own no land." It treated another group more generously. These were "the few quiet people who cultivate a little land on the bottoms below Hastings, and sell pipes and beadwork to the whites. They are regular attendants of the Episcopal church." Their principal man was Ma-pi-awa-con-sa, locally known as Indian John. 32

The picture we get from these varied sources is that of a people striving for obscurity, a goal which the whites were perfectly willing to help them attain. Their poverty was due not so much to laziness, as the whites charged, as to economic and cultural handicaps which unfitted them for competition with the white population and obliged them to live on the fringes of society, the objects of charity, contempt, or, at best, good-natured condescension. Too few to be feared any longer, they were looked upon by their white neighbors much as the village idiot might be: harmless, useless, a burden to society. Although the whites doubtless wished the government or some other agency would take upon itself responsibility for the Indians' support, they were really not a big enough burden to cause much concern. If they had been picturesque, they might have been more popular; then they could have put on war dances at county fairs and Fourth of July celebrations, as some of them later did. But for the most part they were not picturesque but pitiably drab, people the community would just as soon not have strangers see. Fortunately, as the white settlers saw it, the Indian was said to be the vanishing race; no doubt these little encampments of aborigines would soon die off.

____________________ 32 Edward D. Neill, History of Dakota County and the City of Hastings ( Minneapolis: North Star Publishing Co., 1881), pp. 195-196.

-272-

[mdenney]

CHAPTER 14
Up from Oblivion
THE SIOUX in Minnesota did not vanish, nor were the white people of the state permitted to forget them. In fact, as people from Santee and from the Flandreau and Brown Earth colonies drifted back, perhaps only temporarily at first, then settled down to stay, their numbers gradually increased. The returnees were as mixed in their motives as they were in their origins. Some left Santee because they resented living under the authority of an Indian agent. Some fled the reservation because, like the Flandreau colonists, they wanted to dissociate themselves from the tribe. Some of them no doubt sincerely wished to take up farms and live like white men; unfortunately, not all were qualified by experience or temperament for the life of a farmer, competing with white farmers. Some had tried farming at Flandreau or Brown Earth, had lost their lands in mortgages or sold them for a pittance, and now wanted to try again, in a country where a crop was somewhat more certain. More than a few of those who came back were mere restless drifters who would never have succeeded anywhere. Whatever their motives, all these people had one characteristic in common with the Europeans who emigrated to America in the same period: they were dissatisfied where they were and hoped to better their lot somewhere else.

The special census of 1883 showed that they numbered 237, scattered

-273-
throughout the southern third of the state. None of the fourteen localities in which they had settled accounted for many families. The largest, Shakopee, had eleven families, or forty-seven individuals; the second largest, near Wabasha, had nine families, or forty individuals. Thirtythree were camped on Grey Cloud Island, twenty-four at Mendota, and twenty at Bloomington. The other groups were even smaller: six families at Faribault, three at Hastings and Redwood, two at Red Wing, one each at Prior Lake, Kapozha, West St. Paul, and St. Peter, and four families at Maiden Rock, Wisconsin. 1 Most of them lived in tipis, set up on the lands of white men who did not object to the Indians' presence. Some had made down payments on land which they were trying to farm with inadequate equipment. One of them was Good Thunder, one of the heroes of the uprising, who had appeared in July, 1883, near the site of the old Redwood agency. Later that year a few more tipis were seen on the bluff overlooking the Minnesota River, and in the spring of 1884 Good Thunder, who had sold his Flandreau homestead for $400 and a team of horses, bought eighty acres of land for $694.2 His example was followed by Charles Lawrence, who bought an adjacent eighty, and within a few years quite a little colony had formed, consisting mostly of more or less uninvited guests who set up their tipis on the lands of their more affluent relatives. Located across the Minnesota from the old Birch Coulee battle site and from the town of Morton (called Birch Cooley post office until 1894), this Indian community was commonly called Birch Coulee.

The manner in which the Birch Coulee settlement began was probably to some extent typical of the way all of the colonies started. A few brave souls took the leap, and others followed. For the most part, these people were wretchedly poor. Few had land enough to farm successfully, and those who did lacked the necessary stock and equipment. So they depended largely on the bounty of their white neighbors for their survival and thus did not endear themselves to those neighbors, whose attitude toward Indians was conditioned by what they had seen, or perhaps only heard, of the 1862 Uprising. Old friends of the Sioux, such

____________________ 1 List of Dacotah Indians in Minnesota, October 1, 1883, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sioux in Minnesota file. Unless otherwise indicated, all Indian Office documents cited in this chapter are in the file labeled "Sioux in Minnesota" rather than included under any particular agency.
2 J. G. Larsen, "Indian Mission Dates from 1860," Morton ( Minn.) Enterprise, February 27, 1936; Benjamin W. Thompson to John D. C. Atkins, December 31, 1885, and January 2, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR; Redwood County Register of Deeds, Deed Record 10, p. 301.


-274-
as Bishop Whipple and General Sibley, noticed their plight, however, and continued their long campaign to right the wrongs the Indians had suffered. The Indians had new friends, too, such as Representative Horace B. Strait of Shakopee, who in 1884 engineered through Congress an appropriation for their benefit. 3

The Indian appropriations act for 1885, passed July 4, 1884, contained a short paragraph under the section headed "Sioux of Different Tribes, Including Santee Sioux of Nebraska," providing the sum of $10,000 for "the purchase of stock for the Medewakanton band of Sioux Indians, in the State of Minnesota, and other articles necessary for their civilization and education, and to enable them to become selfsupporting. . . ." An amendment approved March 3, 1885, provided that the Secretary of the Interior might disburse the money "for agricultural implements, lands, or cash," as in his judgment might seem best, and that $720 should be expended to pay a practical farmer to teach the Indians agriculture. The appropriation was intended to benefit only those Sioux who had been uniformly friendly to the whites during the uprising and had therefore found themselves unwelcome with the rest of the tribe. This restriction was eventually found unworkable, but for a time at least lip service was paid to it. 4

When this innocuous piece of legislation was passed by Congress, there was no intention to provide reservations for the Minnesota Mdewakantons or to return them to a wardship status, for that was precisely what they had just left. Yet when money is appropriated, someone must be appointed to disburse it, and this implies a government agent. Once an agent is appointed, he is soon making many of the Indians' decisions. If land is to be purchased and the Indians are at a disadvantage in buying it from white owners, a government agent is needed to make the purchases. And if the Indians prove themselves unable to hold onto the land, it must be placed in a restricted status, under government trusteeship. Hence, although the present-day Minnesota Sioux are technically correct in saying that their people

____________________ 3 Surprisingly few facts have been discovered concerning the preliminaries that must have led to this appropriation. The Shakopee Argus, July 24, 1884, credits Strait with the insertion of the item in the Indian appropriations act.
4 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXIII, 87, 375; Robert B. Henton to Commissioner John H. Oberly, December 31, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR. The directive from the Indian Office specified that the appropriations were intended "for the benefit of those of the Mdewakanton Band, who remained faithful to the whites during the outbreak of 1862-3, and thereby incurred the enmity of other Indians, and for the descendants of those friendly Indians."

-275-
were pioneers in the same sense as the white squatters of an earlier period, it is none the less equally true that their settlements soon became Indian reservations, except for fee patented land, and have remained so.

Preparatory to distributing the appropriation, the Indian Bureau designated Walter S. McLeod, mixed-blood son of the trader Martin McLeod, to conduct a census of the Indians and determine their most pressing needs. In order to prevent a rush into Minnesota by Indians from Dakota and Nebraska wishing to share in the largess, the act was made applicable only to those who were residents of the state on October 1, 1883. 5 With the assistance of Good Thunder, Phillip Chaska of Mendota, and John C. Wakeman of Grey Cloud Island, McLeod prepared a census roll containing the information on the location and numbers of Sioux in Minnesota given earlier in this chapter. According to McLeod and the Reverend William C. Pope, Episcopal rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in St. Paul, they were most in need of land and houses; some already in possession of farms wanted teams, cows, harness, stoves, or wagons. They also needed clothing for their children who were attending white schools. McLeod said they objected to being paid like annuity Indians and suggested that half the money be given them in cash to use as they saw fit. Bishop Whipple was not so confident of their ability to handle money wisely; he thought they should be paid a specified sum monthly if the money was to be used for rations. 6

Before the payment was made, there was disagreement over whether mixed-bloods should share. Commissioner Hiram Price was prepared to include them in the payment, but McLeod argued that their inclusion would make each person's share so small that it would scarcely buy a spelling book. Besides, it was his understanding that the appropriation had not been intended to apply to mixed-bloods, but only to full-bloods who desired to "assimilate with the population generally in dress, habits, custom and association in society. . . ." 7 McLeod's wishes were allowed to prevail this time, but the problem remained to

____________________ 5 Horace B. Strait to Hiram Price, July 19, 1884; Secretary of Interior William Teller to Price, February 26, 1885; Walter S. McLeod to Price, August 21, 1884; Strait to Price, March 21, 1885, NARS, RG 75, LR.
6 McLeod to Price, August 21, 1884; Henry B. Whipple to Strait, August 28, 1884; William C. Pope to Price, December 9, 1884, accompanying list of "Wants of Minnesota Dacotahs," NARS, RG 75, LR.
7 Strait to Price, September 5, 1884; McLeod to Price, September 15, 1884, NARS, RG 75, LR.

-276-
vex disbursing agents in the future, for the great majority of the Sioux in Minnesota were of mixed blood, and there was no reliable way to discriminate among people with varying degrees of Indian ancestry.

The payment, consisting of cash and articles deemed of use to the Indians, was made in April, 1885, at Shakopee, by W. H. Robb, a bonded employee of the Indian Bureau appointed for the purpose. As the first payment to the Mdewakanton Sioux since 1861, it was a memorable occasion. Some of the descendants of those who participated still retain photographs taken then, showing the Indians in full tribal regalia. The Scott County Argus reported on March 19 that Shakopee had been full of Indians the previous Thursday and Friday. "They kept coming from every direction until about four hundred aboriginees were among us," the paper said. This gathering was for the purpose of enrolling; the actual payment came a few weeks later, after the rolls had been carefully examined to see that no unauthorized persons shared in the distribution. Each applicant was subjected to a rigid examination in the presence of the rest of his band. The payment was completed by April 15, and all the Indians dispersed to their homes. 8

Later in the year a detailed statement of how the cash portion of the payment had been spent was submitted to the Indian Office, signed by Wakeman, Chaska, and Charles Lawrence and endorsed by Sibley and Reverend Pope. Most of it was used to buy land or to make further payments on land already purchased. A group of Wabasha citizens wrote the commissioner that the Indians there had spent their share wisely and that another like appropriation would be useful in helping them to be self-sufficient. 9 There were, of course, some dissident voices. The Reverend Samuel D. Hinman, who had joined the Birch Coulee colony, wrote the next year that after the payment a dance had been held at Mendota at which the old heathen practice of sacrifice was revived-only now they sacrificed "one keg of beer or two." For weeks thereafter it was "one grand carouse," he wrote. The Indians drank to the new President, Grover Cleveland, "a democrat, the party which treated with us of old and gave us money to buy whiskey and beer." 10 Another

____________________ 10 Samuel D. Hinman to Whipple, September 3, 1886, ibid. If Hinman's rendition of the toast to Cleveland is accurate, it is not clear what incident the Indians were referring to. The treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota in 1851 and the Doty
8 Scott County Argus (Shakopee), March 19, 1885; Strait to Price, March 21, 1885; W. H. Robb to Atkins, April 15 and 16, 1885, NARS, RG 75, LR.
9 John Wakeman, Phillip Chaska, and Charles Lawrence to Atkins, November 27, 1885; Citizens of Wabasha to Atkins, October 3, 1885, NARS, RG 75, LR.

-277-
kind of protest came from the Indians living at Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, who had been excluded from the payment on the ground that they were not residents of Minnesota. Five days after the business at Shakopee was over, a white resident of Maiden Rock wrote the commissioner on behalf of John and Jacob Walker, who had been refused payment, and a year later Felix Rock wrote in behalf of "those Indians in and about Red Wing and those who did not get their share of the appropriation in 1884." If there was to be another $10,000, he thought they should get an extra allowance. 11 Since the Walkers, who had left Santee in the seventies, later lived at Prairie Island, it seems likely that they moved there about this time in order to qualify for the next payment.

The rumor of a second appropriation was well founded, for on May 15, 1886, Congress authorized another $10,000 for the Minnesota Mdewakantons. The need for another distribution of money was increased by the presence of a growing number of Sioux in Minnesota. Good Thunder had been making satisfactory progress in paying for his farm and raised enough food for his own needs in 1885, but the influx of newcomers was "eating him up," as Special Agent Benjamin W. Thompson wrote at the end of the year. By this time there was an encampment of Flandreau people a mile or two east of Good Thunder's farm, and others were scattered around in the woods near the river. Some Sissetons from the Brown Earth settlement had been so excited by the promises of two or three agitators that they had left their farms, on which there was a five-year restriction, and made pretended sales for a yoke of cattle, in hopes of becoming Mdewakantons and sharing in the benefits now coming to the Minnesota Sioux. 12

The language of the 1886 appropriation bill was identical with that of the earlier one, as amended, giving considerable latitude to the Secretary of the Interior in the expenditure of the money. Believing that the Indians' most immediate need was for farms, Bishop Whipple recommended that the greater part of the fund be spent to purchase

____________________ treaties in 1841 (at all of which liquor was consumed) were negotiated under Whig administrations. The 1837 and 1858 treaties were made with small delegations brought to Washington, and it is unlikely that much drinking went on then. The beneficiaries of the 1885 payment could have had but dim recollections of the Prairie du Chien treaties of 1825 and 1830.
11 A. Cook to Atkins, April 21, 1885; Felix Rock to Atkins, April 26, 1886, ibid. Rock (or Rocque), a promising young mixed-blood, died at Prairie Island in 1888, at the age of 29.
12 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXIV, 39; Benjamin Thompson to Atkins, December 31, 1885, and January 2, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR.

[mdenney]

278-
land in the Birch Coulee area. Although he recommended Strait as a good man to negotiate for it, the Indian Office decided to employ McLeod, already serving as farmer and general handyman. He was formally commissioned as farmer and special disbursing agent on October 16, 1886, his earlier commission having expired the previous month. 13 McLeod recommended that all purchases be made at Birch Coulee, Shakopee, and Prairie Island, the last site to be used for all the Indians not residing at the other two or willing to move there. Beginning in April, 1887, he bought seven small tracts, aggregating nearly 330 acres, plus a ten-acre plot at Hastings. The largest block, 147 acres, was bought at Birch Coulee, part of it from Charles Lawrence, who was having difficulty paying for the land he had bought earlier. Two adjacent tracts totaling 98 acres were purchased in Scott County, not far from the village of Prior Lake. Nearly half of that area belonged to John Bluestone, on whose land many of the Shakopee group were living. Nearly 85 acres were purchased on Prairie Island in Goodhue County. Altogether, these purchases accounted for more than $4,100 of the appropriation. McLeod also spent $549.17 in paying off mortgages on the land belonging to Good Thunder and Charles Lawrence. 14

Together with some 447 acres previously owned by the Indians, these purchases gave the Minnesota Mdewakantons a small but not insignificant land base, enough for them to practice a subsistence agriculture of sorts. The land was divided into small tracts ranging from three to fifteen acres and deeded to individual Indians in fee simple, without restrictions. At Prairie Island, for example, the principal eighty-acre unit was divided into eleven narrow strips a half-mile in length and ranging from six to nine rods wide. The next step was to provide houses for the Indians. Six had been built on Prairie Island by the next December, apparently strung out along one end of the land purchase, and it was understood then that six more would be built. Most of the fourteen families living there at that time occupied tipis. Similar conditions existed at the other colonies, although McLeod had reported in August, 1886, that there were then thirty-seven frame and four log houses among the Minnesota Sioux. 15

____________________ 13 Whipple to Atkins, July 5, 1886; McLeod to Atkins, September 2, 1886; Commission dated October 16, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR.
14 McLeod to Atkins, September 2, 1886, and November 28, 1887, ibid.; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, pp. 111, 178-179.
15 McLeod to Atkins, August 11, 1886; Hastings H. Hart to Atkins, December 10, 1887, NARS, RG 75, LR; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, pp. 178-179.

-279-
Bishop Whipple's intention was to establish a single Indian community at Birch Coulee, under the auspices of the Episcopal Church, and he regretted the purchases made at other points. Late in 1887 he wrote Representative John L. Macdonald, Strait's successor, reviewing the accomplishments of the two earlier appropriations and requesting another, of $20,000, of which $1,000 should be earmarked for a school, complete with furniture, books, and other equipment. The earlier appropriations had largely failed, he said, because much of the land had been bought in places that were unsuitable for farming. With the larger sum now proposed, used exclusively to build up the Birch Coulee settlement, he believed it would be possible to "remove all of these scattered Sioux and have a model Christian village." 16 As might be expected, Hinman strongly endorsed this view. He wrote his bishop that the Indians at Faribault, Mendota, and Birch Coulee were doing reasonably well but that the others were living like vagabonds, "drinking and eating what their women earn--by work, or begging or bylines of shame." The Prairie Island group was especially distasteful to him. He accused them of being the chief offenders in putting on the old heathen dances, "for purposes of gain, at the time of the Winter Carnival and Ice Palace at St. Paul." The affair lasted only ten days, but the participants spent at least three months preparing for it and much longer recovering afterward. He charged that they spent thirty dollars per person for "finery and dissipation" and then begged the rest of the year. He added that they were not wanted at Birch Coulee and should be deprived of any share in the benefits enjoyed by their more industrious brethren. 17 The Whipple-Hinman view carried considerable weight, but it was partially offset by other friends of the Sioux, such as Francis Talbot of Wabasha, who argued that the Indians were attached to their old homes and should not be forced to move to Birch Coulee. 18

The next legislation in behalf of the Minnesota Mdewakantons, which became law on June 29, 1888, reflected Whipple's wishes in large part, although it did not require the beneficiaries to join the Birch Coulee colony. Out of the $2,000 appropriated, $1,000 was to go, as he had requested, to build a school "at the most suitable location." The expenditure of the rest was again to be at the discretion of the Secretary

____________________ 16 50th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 228, pp. 2-3.
17 Hinman to Whipple, September 3 and December 31, 1886, and October 23, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR.
18 Francis Talbot to Representative Thomas Wilson, April 5, 1888, ibid. Talbot's view was concurred in by the Reverend J. C. Birch, rector of Grace Episcopal church in Wabasha, and other citizens, whose supporting statements were submitted, along with Talbot's letter, to Commissioner Atkins on April 19, 1888.

-280-
of the Interior. Perhaps the most important new provision contained in this bill was that setting May 20, 1886, rather than October 1, 1883, as the date by which all who were entitled to benefit must have been living in Minnesota; it was also specified that they must have severed their tribal relations. 19

McLeod's commission expired in the fall of 1888, and he was replaced by Robert B. Henton, a long-time acquaintance of the Minnesota Sioux, strongly recommended by Bishop Whipple, who had been lukewarm about McLeod. Henton had lived near the old agency before the uprising--one of his sons had been born on the third day of the outbreak--and he had later become a businessman in Morton and owner of most of the townsite. Soon after his appointment he made a thorough investigation of conditions among the Indians under his charge and submitted some recommendations to the Indian Office. He found that important changes in their population distribution had taken place since the census of 1883. The Birch Coulee settlement was now the largest, with eighty-six people; that near Prior Lake was second, with sixty-two. These groups and the three families at Hastings and the two at Bloomington he considered to be well situated and permanent, even though they all needed more land. The few at Faribault were about to move to Birch Coulee. 20

The rest were badly situated, and Henton thought they would have to be removed. Mendota and Grey Cloud Island, each of which now had only eleven Indian residents, were mere squatters' camps and should not be allowed to continue, since land could not be bought there except at prices too high for the limited appropriation. The Wabasha location, where seven families now lived, was unsuitable for farming; most of the people lived in town, anyway. Prairie Island, now the third largest colony, with forty-six inhabitants, was reserved for Henton's severest condemnation. Though a good location on the ground of its seclusion, it was otherwise unfortunate, for it had no hay or timber, and the land was unsuitable for farming. Local whites encouraged the Indians to stay in the hope of selling land to them, and the county poor fund aided them "liberally" to the extent of one to three dollars doled out weekly per family. "It seems necessary that these should be removed

____________________ 19 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXV, 228-229.
20 Secretary of Interior William F. Vilas to Oberly, November 19, 1888; Henton to Oberly, December 31, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR; Morton Enterprise, November 4, 1898. After McLeod's appointment late in 1886, Hinman wrote Whipple: "He has entirely adopted our views, and we wish to withdraw all opposition to him." Hinman described him as a Democrat, not a Christian but not an opponent of Christianity. See Hinman to Whipple, December 31, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR.

-281-
elsewhere," he wrote. "They must select a new location or stop asking aid from the County poor fund." Elsewhere the Indians were poor but self-reliant; those at Prairie Island seemed to be "complaisant beggars" who brought themselves into continual disrepute. Though it would be impossible to sell the land except at a loss, he suggested inducing as many as possible to leave and dividing their holdings among those who stayed. No more purchases should be made there. 21

Despite Henton's convictions, supported by Bishop Whipple, when he came to making more land purchases, he was obliged to include not only the despised Prairie Island site but also Wabasha, where no land had previously been bought. His position and that of Bishop Whipple were further undercut by a proviso in the appropriations act of March 2, 1889, which specified that "as far as practicable lands for said Indians shall be purchased in such locality as each Indian desires, and none of said Indians shall be required to remove from where he now resides and to any locality or land against his will." About all the comfort the Birch Coulee advocates could take from this bill was that it earmarked $1,000 more for the completion of the school. Another $8,000 was appropriated on August 19, 1890, with the specification that $2,000 of it was to be expended for the Prairie Island settlement--the only time any of the Sioux colonies were mentioned by name in such a bill. This provision virtually ended Bishop Whipple's dream of concentrating all the scattered. Sioux at Birch Coulee. 22

The actual purchase of land under these appropriations began in April, 1889, when slightly over 650 acres were bought adjoining the earlier purchases in the Birch Coulee vicinity. The next month Henton bought 40 acres at Hastings for five families and 120 acres at Prairie Island. He would have preferred removing the eleven families at the latter site, but, as he wrote, "These Indians are of the Red Wing or Wacoute band and this is their old home, therefore though the soil is poor they are loth to leave it and we have no means of compelling their removal." There was a school adjacent to the settlement there, and the Indians went to church in Red Wing. Fortunately, the white neighbor from whom the land was bought was a "young, industrious Swede with a family, who is their friend and aids them in every way by advise and example." 23 Under the provisions of the appropriations made in 1889 and 1890, Henton also bought 110.24 acres of Mississippi River bottom-

____________________ 21 Henton to Oberly, December 31, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR.
22 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXV, 992-993; XXVI, 349.
23 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, pp. 110-111; Henton to Oberly, April 8 and 9, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR. This "young Swede." A. A. Johnson,

-282-
land near Wabasha, of no value as farm land but of use as camping grounds to the Indians, who obtained most of their living from the river. He added to the previous holdings in Scott County by purchasing nearly 170 acres near Prior Lake and rounded out the tract at Birch Coulee by another 99 acres, 9 of which were bought from Samuel Taopi for use as a site for the new school. 24

Henton made one important innovation in these land purchases. Before he began buying up lands, he discovered that of the tracts previously bought and deeded directly to the Indians, one had been sold, two mortgaged, and several denuded of timber. He thought that future purchases should be retained by the government, at least until it could be determined which Indians were reliable. 25 His policy was followed in the later purchases, with the result that all of this land, except for the tracts at Wabasha and Hastings, is still in Indian possession, whereas most of the earlier purchases had slipped out of the Indians' hands by 1900. The few that they still clung to by the early 1930's were so encumbered with mortgages and unpaid taxes that the government at that time tried to buy up as many as possible for incorporation into the tracts still held in federal ownership.

Although Henton spent $16,581.42 for land, and $2,000 went to complete and furnish the school at Birch Coulee, a considerable part of the various appropriations was used for other purposes, ranging from the purchase of cattle and machinery for Indians seriously attempting to farm, to food and clothing for the aged and indigent. Henton period. ically submitted detailed statements of his expenditures which provide a good picture of what the government was trying to do for the Minnesota Sioux. In 1890, for example, he spent $1,568 at Prairie Island, $900 of which went for three teams and sets of harness, $150 for three wagons, $30 for two plows, $15 for three cultivators, $50 for a mower, $23 for a rake, and $400 for twenty acres of timber, a purchase that was never consummated. At the same time he spent $987 at Birch Coulee, $3,712 at Prior Lake, $970 at Bloomington (including a land purchase which did not go through), $728 at Wabasha, and $378 at Hastings. 26

____________________ later wrote of the Indians that "the most of them are industrious. And I think would make good farmers if they had a start." See A. A. Johnson to Commissioner Thomas J. Morgan, February 26, 1890, NARS, RG 75, LR.
24 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, pp. 110-111; Henton to Oberly, April 7 and 12, May 15, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR.
25 Henton to Oberly, March 5, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR.
26 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, p. 111; Henton to Morgan, May 1 and October 29, 1890, NARS, RG 75, LR.

-283-
Later the same year he submitted another statement, which included $713 for aid--principally food and clothing--to a few of the older people at Prairie Island, Hastings, and Wabasha. Out of the $8,000 appropriated that year, he proposed to spend only $500 on aid to the old and infirm, mainly several women ranging in age from seventy to ninety who had no particular homes but lived irregularly with various families. The Birch Coulee settlement required no such assistance that year, but the other groups all had some members who were destitute. 27 The next summer Henton delivered two teams of horses, three wagons, four harrows, four plows, and ten cows to the Indians there and a similar quantity to the Prior Lake colony. 28

White attitudes toward these little Indian settlements varied widely. Although it may have been true, as Henton charged, that some whites encouraged the Indians to stay in hopes of selling unproductive land to the government, the general feeling toward them seems to have been unfriendly. In May, 1889, a group of local farmers met in a rural school near the Birch Coulee community to protest against the presence of the Indians in the locality. Although the resentment was ostensibly directed mainly at the exemption of the Indians' lands from taxation (those recently purchased and held in government ownership), a newspaper report in the Redwood Falls paper said that the "farmers living in this locality do not regard them in any respect as desirable neighbors." One of the speakers at the May 7 meeting argued that the first Indians to return should have been ordered away; but since that had not been done, the only course was to "employ the best means at hand to get rid of an element of society we do not want." A petition was drawn up for presentation to Congressman John Lind. The Reverend Nathan N. Gilbert, an official of the Episcopal Church, wrote the commissioner that the best people in Redwood County did not sympathize with this movement, which, however, should be watched in order "to check it at the outset." 29

Opposition to the Prairie Island people stemmed mostly from the drain their chronic poverty produced on the county poor fund. The county officials wished some other agency to accept responsibility for them; and, after learning from the State Board of Corrections and Charities that the Indians were legally a charge on the county, they

____________________ 27 Henton to Morgan, October 29 and November 11, 1890, NARS, RG 75, LR.
28 Morton Enterprise, June 5, 1891.
29 Redwood Reveille, May 8, 1889; St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 9, 1889; Nathan N. Gilbert to Morgan, May 11, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR.

-284-
began corresponding with the Indian Office. A Red Wing newspaper reported late in 1887 that they had received from one to three hundred dollars a year from the poor fund and urged that they be sent to their proper reservation. Despite efforts by the government to come to their assistance, they remained a burden on the county. In 1891, Henton reported the complaint of the Goodhue County Board of Commissioners that the Indians there were constantly calling for aid. 30

[mdenney]

It is impossible to determine how much of the opposition to the Indian colonies was due to the stated reasons and how much to the latent hostility to Indians left over from the days of '62. The phrase "dirty redskins" continued to be used in weekly newspapers, without quotation marks and without humorous intent, for many years after the uprising. As late as 1893, when the Minnesota Board of World's Fair Managers issued a booklet titled Minnesota: A Brief Sketch of Its History, Resources and Advantages, the Red Wing Daily Republican commented that there was too much about the Indian in it. "We cannot believe it desirable to associate the thought of the Indian with the current idea of the Minnesota of today," observed the editor. 31 If the more articulate and presumably better educated members of the community looked upon Indians in general as outcasts, there is every reason to suppose that the mass of the white population at least shared this attitude and probably went much further in anti-Indian sentiment.

Objection to government recognition of the Sioux in Minnesota came from another source: the agents and missionaries on the Santee Reservation. In 1886, Alfred L. Riggs wrote Commissioner Atkins that aid given these renegades would only create ferment among the Santees. He charged that there was a movement afoot among certain white men and Indians to re-establish the Redwood agency and that some of the Indians expected to recover the annuities forfeited in 1863 and the old tribal organization that had been broken up at Santee by majority vote. If assistance were given them, it would be a "premium upon laziness, a step backward towards barbarism, and encouragement to idle dreams," he wrote; and if the dream of re-establishing the agency should be realized, it would "establish a perpetual Indian community in the heart of civilization." 32 Agent Hill added his voice to the chorus

____________________ 30 Hart to Atkins, December 10, 1887; Henton to Morgan, March 16, 1891, ibid.; Red Wing Argus, December 22, 1887; Goodhue County Board of Commissioners, "Proceedings," 1888, pp. 128, 131.
31 Red Wing Daily Republican, September 11, 1893.
32 Alfred L. Riggs to Atkins, April 29, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR.

-285-
in 1888, complaining that the conduct of the Minnesota Sioux in holding the old pagan dances was having a disquieting effect on the Santees, some of whom had gone to West St. Paul the previous winter to take part in the festivities there. Though credited with breaking away from the reservation and becoming self-supporting, the Minnesota Sioux were actually more uncivilized than many of the Santees, as evidenced by this reversion to barbarism. He called their conduct "quite disgraceful" and reported that "a few of the least progressive" at his agency had been induced to leave their homes on visits to their relatives in Minnesota. 33

If the whites had objections to the presence of the Indians, the latter had complaints of their own. There were essentially three groups who felt themselves discriminated against in the distribution of benefits under the various appropriations: those who lived at Mendota, Grey Cloud Island, Bloomington, and other points at which no land was purchased and who therefore derived no benefit from land purchases; those who were excluded on the ground that they were mixed-bloods; and those who arrived in Minnesota after the May 20, 1886, deadline. The first two groups were made up to a considerable extent of the same individuals, people who had lived in and around the Twin Cities, regarding themselves and being regarded, not as Indians, but as members of the general population. Even those who qualified as Indians could not benefit substantially from the appropriations unless they moved to one of the settlements where land had been purchased. Henton believed that pressure should be brought on them by withholding food and clothing in order to persuade them to move. 34

Since the line between mixed-bloods and full-bloods was never precisely determinable, the former were gradually admitted to participation in the benefits enjoyed by their Indian relatives. Henry Belland, Jr., writing under the name of Tewasdakeduta, asked early in 1891 that they be paid in provisions in such amounts as would assure equality among them and their Indian relatives who had received land and stock. By July, 1892, clothing and food had been distributed to 132 mixed-bloods, most of whom supported themselves by day labor; more names were later added to the list, and there were many others who expressed no wish to participate. 35 Henton was always opposed to per-

____________________ 33 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1888, p. 173.
34 Henton to Morgan, July 24, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR.
35 Tewasdakeduta [Henry Belland, Jr.] to Secretary of Interior John W. Noble, March 26, 1891; Henton to Morgan, July 24, 1892, and February 14 and March 3, 1893, ibid.

-286-
mitting mixed-bloods to share, arguing that the 198 full-bloods objected to sharing the small appropriations with the 722 mixed-bloods who were on his census roll by 1898. He believed that at least the payments should be restricted to full-bloods, half-bloods, and minor children of the latter. 36

Complaints also came from members of the outlying communities who charged that Hinman dominated Henton and was trying to exclude from the appropriations all those who refused to move to Birch Coulee. The Reverend John Eastman, one of the spokesmen for the dissatisfied element, wrote that only Hinman's friends received any benefits. Henton denied these charges and said that delays in consummating the land purchases had created suspicion among the Indians.37 There is no doubt, however, that Hinman wished to concentrate the Indians at Birch Coulee, and he may have let fall some remarks that sounded like threats. Hinman's zeal for his church also left him open to accusations of another kind of discrimination. Complaints came from Big Eagle, John and Moses Wakeman, and several others who had come to Minnesota from Flandreau after the 1886 deadline. They were Presbyterians, Eastman an ordained minister of that faith. Henton's refusal to admit them to benefits or to assign them land was seen as an effort by Hinman to discriminate against anyone who did not join the Episcopal Church. Henton denied the charge, claimed that Big Eagle and the Wakemans had been hostile in 1862, and expressed the opinion that they were trying to break up the settlement, which they were unable to control. 38 Whatever the truth of these charges and countercharges, the little Sioux colonies were already rent with factionalism, an evil that has persisted ever since.

The Birch Coulee settlement, if it did not realize all of Bishop Whipple's hopes for it, did achieve a measure of prosperity and stability beyond any of the other Sioux communities in Minnesota. Hence its early history deserves separate consideration. As we have seen, its population grew rapidly after Good Thunder had established himself there in 1883. By the end of 1885 there were sixteen tipis, fifty-four souls, in the vicinity. That year Hinman, fresh from his unhappy

____________________ 36 Henton to Commissioner William A. Jones, January 13, 1898, ibid.
37 John L. Macdonald to Oberly, January 27 and February 9, 1889; David Wells to Morgan, February 21, 1890; John Eastman to Morgan, March 12, 1890; Henton to Oberly, February 26, 1889; Henton to Morgan, March 4, 1890, ibid.

38 Henton to Morgan, February 26 and March 15, 1889, ibid. In view of Hinman's record at Santee, there may have been some substance to the charges made against him now.

-287-
experience at Santee, visited the growing community. At the request of Bishop Whipple, he returned in the spring of 1886 to resume the mission work that had been broken off by the uprising nearly twenty-four years earlier. Good Thunder offered the church twenty acres of his land, on condition that a house of worship be erected there. The offer was promptly accepted, and by the end of 1887 the bishop was able to report that he had built "a mission house with a room attached large enough for worship." 39 This structure proved inadequate to the needs of the flock, and in 1889, after the Faribault group had moved to Birch Coulee, a stone church was begun. Although the site was not the same as that of the church almost completed in 1862, the stone that remained from the old building was used in the construction of the new one. At the laying of the cornerstone, on August 27, 1889, Good Thunder brought a written request from the Indians that the church be named St. Cornelia's, in honor of the wife of their beloved bishop. 40

The consecration of St. Cornelia's, on July 15, 1891, was a major event in the history of the little Indian community. Bishop Whipple opened the service by leading the procession and reading a part of the liturgy in Dakota. The lesson was then read by Napoleon Wabasha, who had settled at Birch Coulee too late to benefit from the various appropriations and who had recently been made lay reader to give him some employment. At the regular morning service Bishop Whipple told how, thirty-three years earlier, Taopi, Good Thunder, and Wabasha had requested him to send a missionary to the lower Sioux, and he had sent Hinman. He then reviewed the more recent history of the congregation, with special emphasis on Good Thunder's contribution. 41 Hinman was not present at this dedication, for he had died on March 24,

____________________ 39 Whipple to Atkins, December 11, 1885, ibid.; George W. Tanner, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota 1857-1907 ( St. Paul: Published by the Committee, 1909), p. 404; Henry B. Whipple, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate ( New York: Macmillan Co., 1899), pp. 181-182; Morton Enterprise, February 27, 1936; Redwood County Register of Deeds, Deed Record 19, p. 66. The indenture for the transfer of Good Thunder's twenty acres is dated August 7, 1889, but the transfer had presumably been made two years earlier and not recorded until then. It conveys the tract from Good Thunder and Sarah Good Thunder to "Rt. Rev.Henry B. Whipple, Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, and his successors in office in Trust for to be used as a site for church, Parsonage, School and Burial Grounds for the Mdewa[ka]nton Sioux Dakota Indians of Minnesota." A consideration of one dollar was given, as in the case of the nine acres bought from Taopi for a school site.
40 Tanner, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota, p. 404; Whipple, Lights and Shadows, p. 182; Faribault Democrat, June 6, 1890.
41 Morton Enterprise, July 24, 1891.

-288-
1890. For a number of years after his death the little stone church was served by the rector at Redwood Falls. Then, in 1899, Henry Whipple St. Clair was made deacon and placed in charge of the church. In 1904 he was ordained to the priesthood. Of Sioux blood himself, he was the son of the Reverend George Whipple St. Clair, the first of his people to be ordained by Bishop Whipple. 42

[mdenney]

Bishop Whipple was responsible also for the other institution started in the little village about this time. It was at his behest that the 1888 appropriations act had contained a provision for a school. Though he seems to have hoped that the school would be placed under the management of the Episcopal Church, it came to be conducted as a day school by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. When bids were let for its construction, they all exceeded the $2,000 limit set by Congress, and the size of the building had to be reduced. It was finally built, however, and was ready for use by the spring of 1891. The first teacher was Robert H. C. Hinman, son of the missionary, who had charge of it for nearly thirty years. 43

With the advantage of better soil than the other Sioux communities had, Birch Coulee prospered more than they did. In 1894, when dry weather had virtually destroyed the crops on the sandy soil of Prairie Island, Henton was able to report that the people at Birch Coulee were doing well. He added that they were more industrious than the people of the other localities; "Many of their homes are indications of refinement and thrift," he remarked. Although their principal reliance was on agriculture, lace-making was introduced in the nineties as a means by which the women could find useful employment and supplement the meager income from farming. The idea originated with Miss Sibyl Carter while on a trip to Japan. She first introduced it on the White Earth Reservation in 1886 and then persuaded Bishop Whipple's niece, Miss Susan Salisbury, to teach the Sioux women at Birch Coulee the art. It caught on well, and soon they were turning out some pieces of fine workmanship. 44

The gradual improvement in the material condition of the Minnesota

____________________ 42 Tanner, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota, pp. 404-405; Whipple , Lights and Shadows, p. 176.
43 Whipple to Atkins, July 6, 1886; Henton to Morgan, December 6 and 20, 1890, NARS, RG 75, LR; 50th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 228, p. 3; 50th Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 61, p. 3; Morton Enterprise, June 26, 1891; Pioneer Press, June 24, 1891.
44 Henton to Daniel M. Browning, February 21, 1894, NARS, RG 75, LR; Morton Enterprise, September 23, 1892; Tanner, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota, pp. 406-407.

-289-
Sioux was more apparent at Birch Coulee than it was at the other colonies, but everywhere they gradually came to be accepted by the white community. References to them in newspapers, though often condescending and patronizing, lack the asperity and undisguised contempt of earlier years. Their activities are mentioned, not in quite the same tone as those of the whites, but with the implied assumption that these activities would interest the general public. The Morton Enterprise might report the result of a baseball game between the local Indians and a team from Wabasha (won by the latter, despite partial umpiring by a local merchant) or might mention an exchange of visits between the Birch Coulee Sioux and those of the Sisseton Reservation. On their return from one such trip, the local group brought back thirty-three head of ponies and several cattle. As if to demonstrate their assimilation, in 1897 the Birch Coulee men organized a brass band and toured the countryside, giving concerts in various towns.45

The Prairie Island people were more noteworthy for such distinctively Indian activities as pow-wows held in the traditional manner. Early in 1887, when they had been there only a year or two, they played host to a traveling company of Winnebago and Omaha dancers. In 1892 (and probably on many other occasions) they presented war dances in a tent as part of the Fourth of July celebration in Red Wing. 46 Here and elsewhere the Indians made and sold moccasins, catlinite pipes, drums, and similar articles to supplement their income. Not all of the activities they indulged in were approved by the church, which continued to exercise a close surveillance over them. The old prejudice against Indian dances, even though they might be quite devoid of religious significance now, remained strong, however much appeal the dances might have to the general public. And certainly the church did not approve of the considerable amount of drinking that went on, even at Birch Coulee, despite federal and state regulations forbidding the sale of liquor to Indians. Newspaper reports of drunkenness are too numerous to be dismissed merely as isolated cases blown up out of proportion for journalistic purposes. 47

Economically, the condition of the Minnesota Sioux worsened during the early 1890's. This deterioration was due in large part to the poor quality of the land purchased at most of the colonies, aggravated by several years of drought. The Indian Office received an increasing

____________________ 45 Morton Enterprise, June 19 and July 31, 1891, and May 7, 1897.

46 Red Wing Daily Republican, February 17, 1887, June 29 and July 5, 1892.
47 Morton Enterprise, September 11 and 18, 1891.

-290-
number of letters telling of "destitution" among these people as the $60,000 appropriated between 1884 and 1890 gradually dried up, and local newspapers contained a discouraging number of items like one in the Hastings Democrat early in 1895, telling of the death of a woman from starvation at Prairie Island. The newspaper commented that almost all of the Indians in the locality were in want of the necessities of life; one family had lost two pigs and thirty chickens because they had nothing to feed the animals. Calling for charity, the paper pointed out that the Indians "cannot make their wants known, and they don't know how to work, and could not obtain employment if they did." 48

[mdenney]

In response to the situation confronting the Minnesota Sioux, Congress in 1895 resumed the practice of appropriating funds for their benefit. Then and for the four following years the sum of $5,000 was appropriated annually for the "temporary support and civilization of Sioux, Medawakanton Band, in Minnesota." 49 There is no indication that these small gratuities did more than relieve the counties of part of the burden of keeping the Indians alive. When Special Agent James McLaughlin toured the Sioux communities in 1899, he found poverty everywhere except at Birch Coulee and recommended that the lands elsewhere be disposed of, since the Indians were unable to make use of them. After talking with Episcopal Rector C. C. Rollit, of Red Wing, he concluded that the Prairie Island people were "neither thrifty nor industrious, and were it not for the aid given them by Mr. Rollit at intervals, there would be considerable want among them at times." The county was willing to bury them at public expense but had no funds to give them medical assistance. 50

The immediate reason for McLaughlin's visit was the resignation in the summer of 1898 of Robert B. Henton as special disbursing agent. With Henton's resignation the question arose whether the services of an agent were any longer needed for the Minnesota Sioux. Except for

____________________ 48 Michael McHugh to Secretary of Interior Hoke Smith, August 8, 1893; Henton to Hoke Smith, January 11, 1894; Henton to Representative O. M. Hall, February 22, 1894, NARS, RG 75, LR; Hastings Democrat, quoted in Red Wing Daily Republican, February 13, 1895. McHugh claimed to have originated the idea of asking government help for the Minnesota Sioux and said that he was spending two or three dollars a week helping those in and around Hastings. He also asked to be appointed agent. Hall, a native of Red Wing, endorsed Henton's request for an appropriation, saying that he knew of the destitution of those Indians living between Red Wing and Hastings.
49 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXVIII, 873, 892; XXIX, 338; XXX, 78, 144, 586, 938.
50 James McLaughlin to Secretary of Interior E. A. Hitchthingy, March 17, 1899; McLaughlin to Jones, March 17, 1 89)9, NARS, RG 75, LR.

-291-
those at Birch Coulee, they all opposed the appointment of another agent and wanted a straight cash payment. On the recommendation of the Reverend W. H. Knowlton of Redwood Falls and Representative J. T. McCleary, a local man, George L. Evans, was appointed in 1899. His term of service was brief. The last appropriation was made on March 1 of that year, and in June, 1900, Evans was notified that his services would no longer be needed after the end of the fiscal year. 51 Thus ended the first stage of the history of the Minnesota Sioux following their return from exile.

Although only sixteen years had passed since their recognition by the Indian Office and by Congress, certain important changes had come over them in that brief period. In 1884 they were unwelcome vagabonds, with no legal title to the lands they occupied, except for that which had been purchased with their own money; by 1900 most of them were established on land bought for them by the government, most of it securely held in government ownership. The location of their settlements had changed considerably, too. Since the younger, more ambitious people tended to gravitate to the places where land was available, the settlements near the Twin Cities had dwindled away until they were occupied only by the elderly, who were cared for by local churches and relief agencies. Thus Mendota, Grey Cloud Island, and Bloomington had been virtually abandoned by the turn of the century. Furthermore, the people assigned plots of land at Wabasha had not chosen to occupy them but had mostly moved to Prairie Island or one of the other colonies, and the Hastings group dwindled to one woman, who finally consented to have the land there sold to the state of Minnesota. To all practical purposes, therefore, by 1900 the Minnesota Mdewakantons were concentrated at three points: Birch Coulee, Prairie Island, and Prior Lake. 52

As the twentieth century dawned, the Minnesota Sioux were far from the self-sufficiency that Bishop Whipple had thought they would

____51 Morton Enterprise, August 19 and November 4, 1898; McLaughlin to Jones, March 17, 1899; W. H. Knowlton to Jones, January 27, 1899; George L. Evans to Jones, June 20, 1900, NARS, RG 75, LR. Henton, who died shortly after his resignation, had served under two Democratic and two Republican administrations and had always been reappointed even though local Republicans applied for the post during the Harrison and McKinley administrations.
52 J. F. Jacobson to Representative C. R. Davis, January 14, 1906; Emma Judson to Commissioner Francis E. Leupp, May 8, 1906; Acting Secretary of Interior Thomas Ryan to Commissioner of the General Land Office, August 27, 1906, NARS, RG 75, LR; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXXIV, 78.

-292-
achieve if the government would give them a helping hand. Perhaps they were no better off than they would have been if they had remained on their reservations in Nebraska and South Dakota. But they had satisfied the homing instinct that made them restless on those reservations, and they had established permanent communities which, small though they were, stood as authentic survivals of the Sioux people in their ancient homeland.

-293-

[mdenney]

CHAPTER 15
The Twentieth Century: Santee
THE HISTORY of the Santee Sioux in the twentieth century can be understood only against the background of the general trend of Indian affairs during the period. The policies pursued by the Indian Bureau during the first quarter of the century were essentially a continuation of those followed in the last decade of the previous century. The Dawes Act had come as the culmination of a long period of reform agitation, and it was hard for those in charge of Indian policy to admit that allotment had been a failure. The continuing attrition of the Indians' land base was not seen as a misfortune so long as Bureau officials and the American public persisted in the assumption, contradicted by the census returns, that the Indian was a vanishing race. As one recent writer has commented, "Authorities responsible for policy continued to refer to a diminishing population long after the growth curve had turned upward." 1 And in the face of what should have been convincing evidence that the Indian was far from self-sufficiency, the Bureau gradually withdrew its services to tribes that seemed relatively far along in the acculturation process.

The first real indication of an approaching change in government policy came in 1926, when Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work asked

____________________ 1 D'Arcy McNickle, The Indian Tribes of the United Slates: Ethnic and Cultural Survival ( London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 53.

-294-
the Institute for Government Research, a privately endowed foundation, to carry out an economic and social survey of conditions among the American Indians. Two years later the survey staff submitted a statement of its findings, usually called the Meriam Report after Lewis Meriam, who served as technical director. The Meriam Report was an eye-opener to those who had supposed that the Indian problem was solved or well on the way to solution. It described the economic plight of the Indian in sober prose, backed by statistics, and emphasized the failure of allotment. It offered specific recommendations for the reform of Indian policy--recommendations that amounted to a repudiation of the time-honored thesis that the Indians must ultimately be totally assimilated to the larger society.

Charles J. Rhoads, who became commissioner in 1929, and his assistant commissioner, Henry Scattergood, made some policy changes in line with the Meriam Report's recommendations, but there was no major change of direction until the appointment in 1933 of John Collier as commissioner under the Roosevelt administration. Collier's approach, embodied in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, proposed not merely to stop the loss of Indian lands but to recover some of what had been already lost. Instead of being told to "hurry up and get assimilated" and to give up the remnants of their culture, Indians were encouraged to preserve what they had left. And they were given an opportunity to organize as legal entities and draw up constitutions for effective tribal government. In addition to substantive changes in policy, the Collier program brought to the management of Indian affairs a missionary fervor not heretofore seen in the twentieth century. In Indian policy, as in other areas of American life, the Depression shook old beliefs and made innovation easier than in normal times.

Although Collier remained commissioner until 1945 and his basic philosophy was shared by his immediate successor, William A. Brophy, the vigor and much of the effectiveness of his program were lost with the coming of World War II and the diversion of the national energies to other purposes. 2 After the war a mood of retrenchment in the country, and especially in Congress, led to efforts to reduce expenditures in the Indian Service and, indeed, to abolish the Bureau altogether. Reflecting a sense of frustration at the failure of government policy to accomplish its purpose of incorporating the Indian into the fabric of American life, Congress in 1953 passed House Concurrent Resolution 108, which called on the government, "at the earliest possible time," to get out of

____________________ 2 John Collier, From Every Zenith ( Denver: Alan Swallow, 1963), p. 369.

-295-
the Indian business. 3 The bywords of the 1950's came to be "termination" and "relocation "--the unilateral severance of Bureau services to individual tribes and the Bureau-sponsored movement of Indians from reservations to cities where more jobs were available.

In the later 1950's the pendulum began to swing back in the other direction, after the policies of the previous few years had been repeatedly attacked and their deficiencies pointed out by responsible critics; and with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 the policy of termination was officially declared dead. Once again emphasis was placed on helping the reservation Indian to make a living where he was and on continuing Bureau services until a tribe considered itself ready to dispense with them. As in the Collier administration, the Indian was to play the major role in policy decisions on individual reservations.

No sooner did the new approach begin to show results, however, than involvement in the Vietnam civil war brought a demand for cutbacks in domestic programs, and the call for termination began to be heard again. When Philleo Nash, the anthropologist appointed commissioner by President Kennedy, resigned in the spring of 1966, his successor, Robert L. Bennett, was subjected to close scrutiny by a Senate committee, which reportedly demanded, as a price for confirming his nomination, that he promise to speed up the withdrawal of the federal government from Indian affairs. 4 To the distress of Indians all across the country, termination, far from being dead, appeared by 1966 to be once more an extremely live issue.

To a degree, the Santee Sioux have all been affected by the general course of Indian policy in the twentieth century, and their history has consisted in part of puzzled reactions to these increasingly frequent reversals of policy. Yet their responses have not been uniform. In fact, the interested observer is less likely to be struck by the common elements in their recent history than by the divergent courses followed by the various fragments of the Santee Sioux in the present century.

On the Santee Reservation there was a gradual withdrawal of government services, marked by the closing of the agency in 1917. Although this group took advantage of the Indian Reorganization Act, a mass exodus followed in the 1940's and 1950's, amounting almost to abandonment of the reservation. At Sisseton and Devils Lake the dissipation

____________________ 3 McNickle, Indian Tribes of the United States, pp. 61-62.
4 New York Times, April 10, 1966. The Senate Interior Committee complained that there had been virtually no legislation in recent years to terminate federal control of Indian tribes.

-296-
of the Indians' land base went on for the first three decades of the century, and the failure of both groups to accept the IRA prevented proposed land purchases from materializing. Meanwhile, a growing population created an increasingly desperate situation. The Flandreau and Minnesota Sioux were largely neglected until the 1930's, but then their condition improved. The IRA was accepted by the Flandreau colony and by both Lower Sioux (Birch Coulee) and Prairie Island; extensive, though insufficient, land purchases were made, and a revival of community spirit occurred.

Any discussion of the history of these groups in the twentieth century is bound to be sketchy, and any judgments rendered are inevitably inconclusive, since not all the returns are yet in. Even Santee, whose history a superficial observer might think finished, still retains much of its identity as an Indian community after more than seventy-five years of attempted assimilation, and probably will continue to do so for some time to come. Yet its history for the first thirty years of the century was largely one of decay and deterioration. One cause may have been that, judging from their official reports, the men placed in charge there lacked the evangelical zeal displayed by such men as Janney and Lightner in the 1870's.

H. C. Baird, whose term of office carried over into the new century, was the last to bear the traditional title of agent. In keeping with the belief that the Indian Bureau's responsibility toward its wards was in the future to be primarily educational, the old-time agents were replaced early in the century by superintendents. Early in 1902, Wilbert E. Meagley was appointed superintendent of the Santee government school and was charged with all the duties "heretofore devolving upon the Indian agent at the Santee Agency as to agency matters. . . . " 5 After some delay, Meagley took office in February, 1903, and retained the position for more than six years. Although the school was closed in 1909, Meagley's successor, Frank E. McIntyre, kept the title of superintendent, as did the man who followed him in 1914, Charles E. Burton, who remained in charge of the agency until it was discontinued. 6

____________________ 5 Commissioner William A. Jones to Wilbert E. Meagley, January 27, 1902, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency.
6 Jones to E. A. Hitchthingy, December 24, 1902, ibid. Meagley's appointment was withdrawn when George W. Saunders was appointed. The Civil Service Commission did not approve Saunders appointment, however, and Meagley became superintendent early in 1903. See Meagley to Jones, February 24, 1903, ibid.

-297-
These first seventeen years of the twentieth century were marked by the loss of much of the Santees' remaining land and by the continued erosion of what was left of their culture. Both losses came about as a result of a combination of circumstances for which the Indians and the government shared culpability. The premature attempt to make farmers out of the Indians by legislative fiat through allotment was a failure from the beginning. The practice of leasing, well established by 1900, withstood official disapproval, and the Bureau was finally forced to accept it in order to exercise any measure of supervision over it. Besides collecting the rentals, so as to protect the Indian from dishonest whites, the agency deposited the money and paid it out only on authority from the Indian Office. Furthermore, a regulation was long in effect requiring every able-bodied Indian to reserve at least forty acres of his allotment for his own use. This rule was manifestly inappropriate at Santee, where much of the reservation was unsuited for farming and where few of the Indians had enough stock or equipment. Hence in 1902 it was modified to permit Indians whose allotments were rough and broken to lease their entire farms for grazing purposes. 7 Although leasing provided the Indians with some income, it was never enough to give them an adequate livelihood.

A more serious problem was that of the loss of Indian land. This came about in two ways: through the sale of inherited and "non-competent" interests and through the issuance of patents. As the original allottees died, their allotments came into the possession of their legal heirs, who sometimes were quite numerous. Since ordinarily none of the heirs were financially equipped to buy out the others, the land thus inherited became "fractionated," i.e., the undivided property of several individuals. Subdividing the allotments was impracticable because it would have left the heirs with uneconomically small units. The solution usually resorted to was to sell the lands and divide the proceeds among the heirs. The same easy way out was taken with regard to allotments owned by people who, because of age or physical handicaps, were unable to farm them.

Land sales under these two categories began before 1900 and continued until well into the third decade of the century. By 1904 eighty-

____________________ 7 George W. Saunders to Jones, September 9, 1902; Assistant Secretary of Interior Thomas Ryan to Jones, September 26, 1902, ibid. Leasing was first legalized by Congress in 1891, to the extent that allottees unable to use their allotments because of age or disability were permitted to lease them for a three-year period, under conditions prescribed by the Secretary of the Interior. See U.S. Statutes at Large, XXVI, 795.

-298-
five tracts had been sold, for a total of $95,895. From then until 1923 local newspapers frequently contained notices of prospective sales, with descriptions of the tracts offered and the names of the allottees. Some allotments were offered for sale repeatedly, since they were virtually worthless, even for grazing purposes. The Indian Office did all it could to encourage buyers. In 1910 regulations were changed so that only 15 per cent of the price needed to be paid at once; another 10 per cent was to be paid when the legal papers were signed, and 25 per cent would be paid yearly thereafter. 8 Most of the sales were to land dealers rather than to individual farmers or ranchers. Examination of a marked reservation map shows that the tracts sold were widely scattered and followed no perceptible pattern. So the purchasers could not expect to block out large acreages. It made little difference, however, for cattle could be run on leased lands quite as conveniently as on purchased lands.

A great part of the land lost by the Santees in the half-century following allotment was patented to individual owners and then sold. The issuance of patents began as soon as the twenty-five-year restrictive clause expired in 1910. A competency board was appointed to determine which Indians were qualified to receive patents and which would require a longer period of government guardianship. It was understood by local whites, and presumably by Bureau officials, that most of the patentees would promptly sell their lands. At least there was no hypocrisy in the Niobrara newspaper, which saw the competency hearings as offering "a considerable opening of lands to settlement since it will give the [Indians] first class patents to their lands." Recalling the efforts to have the Santees removed back in the 1870's, Edwin A. Fry, erstwhile editor of the Niobrara Pioneer, remarked that this end would shortly be realized. "As we begin to see things now, it will not be more than another dozen years before the Santee lands will have passed from their control and the white man in possession," he wrote. 9

The process did not move quite as swiftly as Fry expected. For one thing, the competency board displayed some sense of responsibility and did not classify all the Indians as competent. Enough were so classified, however, that many tracts of land promptly came into the market. Some of the allottees were living at Prairie Island or elsewhere in

____________________ 8 J. F. House, Supervisor of Indian Schools, to Jones, July 6, 1904, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Niobrara Tribune, December 22, 1910. At one sale in 1917, a total of $88,000 was realized. See the Niobrara Tribune, January 18, 1917.
9 Niobrara Tribune, November 10, 1910.

-299-
Minnesota and had no interest in their lands other than a pecuniary one. A surprisingly small number of patents were issued annually-usually only three or four--but the lands were almost invariably sold. Interestingly, the superintendent was often less inclined to grant patents than the Indian Office. McIntyre asked authority to suspend recommendations on applications for patents, and when it was denied, he tried to delay the procedure as much as possible. 10

Technically, the Indian Bureau no longer exercised any supervision over an Indian once a patent had been issued to him, but in practice the distinction between wards and nonwards was shadowy. Often a man would receive a patent and sell his farm, but his wife would remain under guardianship, and both would continue to benefit from whatever meager services the government still offered her. Despite the attempt to represent the Santees as self-sustaining, they were still very far from that condition early in the twentieth century. Meagley pointed out in 1903 that the government then still employed for the Santees and Poncas "seven mechanics, an engineer, and a miller, supplying all necessary material for their work; two doctors with the necessary drugs have been furnished; large gratuities in the way of wagons, plows, harrows, mowers, harnesses, twine, etc., have been furnished. . . ." Yet, thought Meagley, the average Santee believed himself to be self-supporting. 11

The fact that the Indians were still to some extent beneficiaries of services not accorded the general population was often a source of resentment on the part of local whites. This feeling occasionally found expression in the newspapers, as when the Niobrara Tribune remarked that, although the Indians in the vicinity owned some good farms, "the shiftlessness and worthlessness prevalent among them [had] been a serious drawback to the town." The industrious ones were in a minority, said the paper, and those who had attended Carlisle, Haskell, or other Indian schools seemed not to have profited much from their training. The Indians had their complaints, too, though they less frequently found expression in print. Occasionally a letter might appear in the newspaper. One published in 1911 criticized "our white neigh-

____________________ 10 Meagley to Francis E. Leupp, July 25, 1906; Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1916, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency. After 1906 the superintendents' reports were no longer published in the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, but they continued to be submitted, in typewritten form, and are preserved in the National Archives. Normally, they consist of a narrative and a statistical part, both of which come to be increasingly routine with the passage of the years.
11 Meagley to Jones, August 31, 1903, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency.

-300-
bors, who are always ready to give us advice and who claim that they are doing so for our personal benefit," and wondered why, if they were such good neighbors, they attacked the superintendent. Why didn't they help fight the whiskey problem instead of contributing to it? Why didn't they want the Indians to attend school? The letter ended: "All that they do tell us is that we are thoroughly competent to handle our own affairs, boost us and endorse us for our patents to our allotments, but when our land is sold and the money spent, Where-Do-WeStand." 12

[mdenney]

Besides the services afforded by the agency, the Santees received benefits of other kinds during the early 1900's. Until 1907 they continued to receive income from the "Sioux Fund "--the proceeds from the sale of the Great Sioux Reservation, in which the Santees had been adjudged to have an interest. About 160 of them also shared in the settlement of the Sisseton-Wahpeton claims case and received $154.70 each. The Sisseton-Wahpeton claims case has a long and tangled history, to which only passing attention can be paid here. It stemmed from the argument that the upper Sioux had not taken part in the Uprising of 1862 and should not have been deprived of their share of the annuities due them under the terms of the treaty of Traverse des Sioux. After being in and out of Congress many times, it was finally accepted and turned over to the Court of Claims. The case was settled in 1907, and payment made in 1909. 13 A few of the upper Sioux had surrendered in the fall of 1862 and had accompanied the lower Sioux to Crow Creek and thence to the Niobrara. There had also been some intermarriage and a certain amount of drifting back and forth between the Santee and Sisseton reservations.

The Santees had their own claims case repeatedly before Congress. Though originating in a council held at Santee in 1884, the case received little attention until the 1890's, when two factions, one led by James Garvie, the other by John Eastman of Flandreau and former Santee Agent Charles Hill, later a banker in Springfield, South Dakota, joined forces and pressed their cause with vigor. In order to counter the government's claim that the 1868 treaty nullified all previous treaties, Garvie obtained testimony from the two surviving members of the

____________________ 12 Niobrara Tribune, January 29, 1914, and June 29, 1911.
13 Meagley to Commissioner Robert G. Valentine, October 27, 1906, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Niobrara Tribune, March 4, 1909. The Sisseton-Wahpeton claims case is discussed at length in William W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, II ( St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1961), 418-437.

-301-
delegation that signed the treaty to demonstrate that pressure was used to induce them to sign. 14

The Santee claims case finally passed Congress in 1917. The Indians claimed the sum of $2,468,878.40, after deducting the benefits received from the government. The government found other benefits, however, and revised the figures so that the Santees wound up owing a substantial sum! This led to further revision of the figures by their lawyers, with the result that the Santees were finally judged to be entitled to $386,597.89, less about 10 per cent to their lawyers. Payment was made in the winter of 1924. After thirty years of waiting, the Santees finally received $129.30 each. This was perhaps enough to justify the premature rejoicing of the Niobrara Tribune, which had commented, upon the passage of the bill in 1917, that "it looks good to the auto dealer and the merchant and the man who has anything to sell and who resides near Santee at the present time." It may also have staved off outright destitution for a time, though its effects must necessarily have been brief. 15

Despite the earnest endeavors of missionaries and Indian Bureau officials, the Indian culture had not been completely stamped out by the beginning of the twentieth century, as evidenced by the survival of the old dances. In 1901, the fiftieth anniversary of the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, some of the Santees held a celebration in honor of the chiefs who had signed those treaties. This became an annual event and included dancing by a handful of old men who had served as scouts in 1863 and 1864. In an effort to exercise some control over it, Superintendent McIntyre tried in 1910 to combine it with an Indian fair, but the only result was that for several years there were two such affairs. 16

____________________ 14 Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 437-439; Niobrara Tribune, July 22 and 29, August 5 and 26, and September 2 and 9, 1920, August 3, 1922, April 12, 1923, and February 7, 1924. The account by Garvie in the Tribune, July 22 to September 9, 1920, is extremely detailed but should be read with caution, as the writer was the leader of one of the factions in contention for the honor of winning the case.
15 Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 438-439; Niobrara Tribune, March 8, 1917, and February 7, 1924.
16 Niobrara Tribune, August 5, 1909, August 18, 1910, July 20 and 27 and August 10, 1911, September 12, 1912, and July 10, 1913; Edward H. Eastman and David Graham to Valentine, July 17, 1911; Frank E. McIntyre to Valentine, August 5 and 25, 1911, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency. A group calling itself "an Indian Committie organized for the purpose of management of celebration of the old Chief Made Wa Kan Ton" wrote the commissioner complaining of McIntyre's innovation. The phraseology led Indian Bureau officials to suppose that "Made Wa Kan Ton" was the

-302-
It is well to remember that the policy of discouraging or even forbidding these dances continued in force far into the twentieth century. Although professing to follow a "policy of persuasion," McIntyre actually forbade dancing by the old scouts at the fairs in 1913 and 1914 and thereby stirred up ill feeling. His successor, Burton, was more liberal. When he requested permission for the old men to dance for an hour, he was told by the assistant commissioner that there would be no objection provided the dances were held in the daytime only and no "immoral dances" were allowed. "No school children or young Indians of your reservation should be permitted to be spectators at these dances," the official wrote, "as the Office thinks it would be better to keep their ideas away from these old-time customs as much as possible." 17

How much of the impetus for these dances came from the Indians themselves and how much from white people is debatable. Certainly they were encouraged by the merchants of nearby towns for commercial purposes, and most of the spectators were whites. When the official celebration was merged with the fair, every effort was made by the superintendent to subordinate the distinctively Indian features to those that might be found at any county fair. For a few years the Indian Bureau furnished $200 in premiums, and one of the largest landowners on the former reservation offered another $105 by way of encouraging the Indians to exert themselves in agriculture. 18 Although the fair may have served in some degree as a means of hastening the acculturation process by satisfying the Indians' wish for a celebration of their own, it had certain features that displeased the superintendent, and it never succeeded in getting a monopoly on the reservation festivities. Some drinking inevitably accompanied it (though sometimes this was carried on mostly by whites), and the appearance of Winnebagos, Yanktons, and other tribes naturally required return visits by the Santees when those tribes held their fairs. As for unauthorized celebrations on patented land, the superintendents were uniformly opposed to them and did

____________________ name of a chief, and subsequent correspondence contains numerous references to this nonexistent chieftain.
17 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1911; Charles E. Burton to Commissioner Cato Sells, March 30, 1915; Assistant Commissioner E. B. Merritt to Burton, May 18, 1915, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency.
18 Niobrara Tribune, August 5, 1909, August 10 and 31 and September 28, 1911, September 12, 1912, and September 23, 1915; McIntyre to Valentine, August 25, 1911; Burton to Sells, March 26, 1915, and February 12, 1916, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency.

-303-
what they could to discourage Indians from attending them, though of course they had no direct control over them. 19

Although it might not seem evident from the close supervision still exercised by the superintendent over the personal affairs of the Indians, there was during this period a phased withdrawal of agency functions and Bureau services. Meagley closed down the gristmill in 1904, since it was costing far more to operate than the slight benefits warranted. 20 A month or so after McIntyre's arrival in the summer of 1909, he closed the boarding school. Since the plant was in poor shape and "not well thought of by the Indians," his action met with little opposition. The presence of the Santee Normal Training School and of a number of district schools on the reservation made the boarding school superfluous in the superintendent's eyes. As a matter of fact, however, the district schools did not provide an adequate substitute, chiefly because of hostility from whites. When a Bureau school official visited the reservation in 1916, he found the situation quite unsatisfactory. Since the teachers were not employed by the government, they felt no responsibility toward the Indian children. "The irregularity of attendance and the natural timidity of the Indian children rather annoy the teacher," he reported, "and, in most cases, no doubt, the teachers feel relieved when the Indians drop out." 21

Discontinuance of the agency, considered even before 1900, became apparently feasible in 1917, after both Nebraska and South Dakota had adopted prohibition ordinances, and one of the principal obstacles to freeing the Santees from supervision seemed to have been removed. A special agent sent to determine the advisability of closing the agency reported that of the 1, 173 Indians on the reservation, 734 were considered competent, and another 300 were probably so. Aside from 74 elderly, indigent, or diseased Indians, all could safely be released from

____________________ 19 McIntyre to Sells, October 9, 1914; B. J. Young to Valentine, August 3, 1911, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency; Niobrara Tribune, September 23, 1915.
20 Meagley to Jones, July 27, 1904; Meagley to Leupp, December 12, 1904, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency.
21 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1910; Sam B. Davis, Supervising Superintendent, to Sells, June 12, 1916, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency; Word Carrier, XXXVIII ( September-October, 1909), 3. The attendance problem was complicated by Nebraska law, which did not require children to attend school if they lived more than two miles away or did not have an open road to school; many of the Santees lived in isolated crooks and corners of the rugged country and did not have ready access to good roads or schools nearby. See Key Wolf, Day School Inspector, to House, May 6, 1922, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency.

-304-
guardianship; these exceptions could be placed under the Yankton Agency. Only 18,000 acres of land remained in Indian hands, and the quantity was diminishing steadily. 22 Commissioner Cato Sells, on the strength of this recommendation, advised the Secretary of the Interior that the agency be discontinued and all employees except the agency physician, the interpreter, the government farmer, and a single police private be discharged. The decision having been made, Superintendent Burton turned over the government property to Yankton superintendent A. W. Leech, and one September morning residents of the agency noticed that for the first time in many years the 7:50 work bell failed to ring. Local newspapers treated this event as evidence of the completion of the government's task with the Santees and complimented the Indians on their signal achievement. But an inspector who visited Santee the next year reported that more rations were issued there than at the Yankton Agency. 23

The agency plant, including the school, was not disposed of for nearly a decade, while the Bureau carried on unsuccessful negotiations with Knox County for the assumption by the county of responsibility for the aged and indigent. Meanwhile the buildings deteriorated and became a resort of bootleggers and a "loafing ground for worthless, shiftless Indians and whites of questionable character," as one Yankton superintendent reported. After several crimes had been committed in the vicinity, the superintendent called for the removal of the subagency that had been retained after 1917, in order to break up "this cesspool of inequity [sic]." The recommendation was carried out in 1926, when the government farmer was transferred to the old Ponca agency west of Niobrara, and the crumbling buildings were sold at auction. Except for the campus of the Santee Normal Training School and the Episcopal mission, the auction left the old Santee Agency a virtual ghost town. 24

____________________ 22 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1917; H. S. Taylor to Sells, July 26, 1917, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency.
23 Sells to Secretary of Interior Frank K. Lane, August 6, 1917, ibid.; Superintendent's Annual Report, 1918; R. E. L. Newberne, Special Supervisor, to Sells, April 20, 1918, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency; Niobrara Tribune, September 13 and 20, 1917.
24 Burton to Sells, August 27, 1917, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency; Superintendent's Annual Report, 1919; H. W. Sipe to R. E. L. Daniel, March 27, 1925; Daniel to Commissioner Charles H. Burke, April 15, 1924, and March 1, 1926; Burke to Daniel, October 8, 1924; Hearing on matters relating to Santee reservation, Nebraska, before E. B. Merritt, Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs, March 30, 1926, Daniel to Burke, August 24, 1926, and August 11, 1927; H. M. Gillman, Jr., to Burke, June 181927,

-305-
Withdrawal of government services to the Santees was premature, but the Indians' complaints were dismissed as the natural reluctance of the recipients of unearned benefits to part with them. Superintendent Leech reported in 1921 that the Santees were "living in hopes of the United States placing them back on the ration roll again and supporting them in idleness after they have dissipated their means, which most of them have already done." Because neither Leech nor his successor, R. E. L. Daniel, appears to have had much sympathy for the Indians, one may legitimately question the objectivity of their evaluation of the situation at Santee. 25

The government got an inside look at conditions there from a source other than the superintendent in 1926, and the spectacle was not cheering. After receiving resolutions from the Knox County Board of Commissioners, the Niobrara Commercial Club and the village council, and the Santee Indian Mission, Representative Edgar Howard of Nebraska visited the reservation late that year, in connection with the disposition of the agency buildings, and reported that conditions were "deplorable beyond words." Because of drought, no corn had been harvested in the previous two years, and many of the people were destitute. Howard asked, not for a survey (which had been promised), but for an immediate issue of food. An issue of rations was promptly made, and an investigation was also ordered. District Superintendent

[mdenney]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
____________________ 1927; Merritt to Secretary of Interior Hubert Work, August 27, 1927, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency; Niobrara Tribune, February 21 and July 3, 1924, November 19, 1925, and November 4, 1926. About the time the agency was discontinued, an attempt was made to promote a land boom in the vicinity. The town of Santee was platted, a bank was organized, and there was even talk of getting a railroad. Not much came of this effort, and when the bank folded in 1926, the high hopes for a sizable town on the site of the old Indian agency collapsed. See the Niobrara Tribune, April 12 and 19, 1917, January 31, 1918, May 8, 1919, July 3, 1924, and July 1, 1926; Word Carrier, LV ( March-April 1926), 3.
25 A. W. Leech to Sells, March 21, 1921, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency. Stephen S. Jones, a Santee, characterized Daniel as "hard-boiled" and charged that he had ordered patents issued to allottees who wished their land to remain in restricted status. He had attempted to discharge the agency physician, Dr. George J. Frazier, also a Santee, but appeals from Frederick B. Riggs, superintendent of Santee Normal Training School, and others frustrated this intention. See Jones to John M. Green, March 6, 1930; Daniel to Burke, April 15, 1924; William Abraham and Joseph Johnson to Burke, January 11, 1926; Gillman to Burke, June 18, 1927, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency; Niobrara Tribune, February 4, 1926. Daniel was not Leech's immediate successor, but the two men who served as Yankton superintendent between these two had very brief terms. J. F. House was placed in charge April 1, 1922, and relieved the following June 30. Harvey K. Meyer was superintendent for a time in 1922 and 1923.

-306-
O. C. Upchurch of Pierre, accompanied by the agency physician, Dr. George J. Frazier, visited seventeen homes, met with members of the tribal council, and recommended immediate relief for needy families. Upchurch also reported that Daniel had tended to ignore the Indians pleas. "It is claimed," he said, "that he has a brash way of dealing with his charge and in some instances really [has] put a deaf ear to any pleas." Relief funds were made available for use at Santee, but this was a stopgap measure only and did not get at the roots of the problem. 26

The general economic depression that followed the stockmarket crash in 1929 brought the Santee situation to a crisis and precipitated the government back into the Indian business to a degree unanticipated in earlier years. Transfer of the welfare burden to Knox County worked only indifferently in normal times; the Depression found that county, like other units of local government all over the country, utterly incapable of meeting the welfare needs of its white population, let alone the Indians. It not only cut off poor relief, but sent a bill to the Department of the Interior for $9,011.20 for expenditures made for Indians between 1919 and 1932. The government took the position that to honor this requisition would be to set a precedent, and "we would find ourselves deeper in the Indian problem than we have been for many years." 27 On the Great Plains the situation was aggravated by drought. The crop in 1931 was the smallest ever known, everyone was in debt, and the Farmers Union elevator in Niobrara was going out of business because there was no grain to be shipped out and the farmers had no money to pay for grain that might be shipped in. 28

That summer a meeting was held at Santee to ask for government help to the destitute Indians before the arrival of cold weather. Some assistance was rendered by the Red Cross and by government agencies, largely in the form of direct relief. The distinction between wards and nonwards complicated the handling of benefits, since government appropriations were restricted to those in the former status. Like it or not, the government was deeper in the Indian problem than it had been for years. The Meriam Report had pointed out, before the Depression, that people unable to support themselves, whether Indian or non-Indian, were a social responsibility requiring help from some government

____________________ 26 Niobrara Tribune, November 18 and 25 and December 23, 1926.
27 Ibid., January 21 and February 11, 1932 ; Peyton Carter to Commissioner Charles J. Rhoads, February 24, 1933; Rhoads to Representative Edgar Howard, March 30, 1933, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency.
28 Niobrara Tribune, August 6, 1931.

-307-
agency--federal, state or local--or from private charities. In the Depression only the federal government, which had a long history of responsibility to the Indians, was big enough to cope with the problem. 29

The Santee Sioux accepted the Indian Reorganization Act by a vote of 260 to 27 at an election held November 17, 1934. In a way, it is rather surprising that they voted to accept the act, for they had been proceeding in the opposite direction so long that some major psychological reorientation must have been required of them. Furthermore, their recent experience with the Indian Bureau had not been pleasant. Their dissatisfaction with the successive Yankton superintendents was transferred to a new object when, in 1933, the Yankton Agency was abolished and the Santees were placed under the Winnebago Agency. Complaints against the Winnebago superintendent, Henry M. Tidwell, and members of his staff began reaching Representative Howard, including a telegram from the Knox County Board describing Tidwell as "absolutely incompetent" and demanding immediate relief for fifty destitute families. An investigation by the Indian Bureau substantiated the charges, and shortly thereafter Tidwell was replaced by Gabe E. Parker, a man of Choctaw descent and sympathetic to Collier's policies. 30

Aid to the Santees under the new administration did not, of course, await the appointment of Parker. Federal Emergency Relief Administration funds were made available in 1933, and many of the Indians were set to work building and improving roads that summer. Some were employed in an Indian Emergency Conservation Work project to develop a public campground on the old agency site. The new government farmer, James W. Brewer, encouraged the Indians to grow subsistence gardens, but no attempt was made at that time to get them back into the wheat and cattle business. They were encouraged, however, to devote some of the proceeds from their road work to the purchase of seed. Direct relief in the form of surplus mutton bought from the

____________________ 29 Ibid., August 6, 1931 ; Lewis Meriam et al., The Problem of Indian Administration ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928), pp. 89-93.
30 John D. Forsythe to Howard, March 19, 1934; Clyde W. Flinn to A. L. Hook, June 9, 1937, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency; Gillman to Commissioner John Collier, June 27, 1933, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency; B. G. Courtright to Louis R. Glavis, Director of Investigations, March 22, 1934; Courtright to Collier, March 23, 1934; Ray Ovid Hall to Mary McGair, April 30, 1934, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency. A petition from Howard Redwing and others to Representative Howard, dated June 26, 1933 (NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency), said that one family was so near starvation that they used as food some dead and partly decomposed chickens thrown onto a barn roof by whites.

-308-
Navajos, blankets, shoes, and other clothing was also furnished in 1933 and 1934. When about 130 cattle were issued in October, 1934, the Indians were given complete freedom to keep their cows or butcher them. 31

Important as these various forms of assistance were, they were in the final analysis palliative rather than remedial. The Santees could not achieve self-support by rebuilding roads or constructing a campground, and the land base remaining to them was insufficient for successful farming. The Meriam Report had stressed the Indians' dependence on agriculture in the future as in the past and had proposed methods to retain and make usable the land resources left to them. One of the objectives of the Indian Reorganization Act had been to permit tribes organized under its provisions to undertake land acquisition programs, the land thus acquired to remain in tribal ownership. In response to a circular from the Bureau in June, 1935, the Santee tribal council prepared recommendations for purchases which they felt would give their people an adequate land base. By this time they had only 3,132.29 acres left out of the amount allotted in 1885, plus about 1,800 acres of fee patent land, nearly all of which was encumbered with unpaid taxes and mortgages. The members of the council estimated that only 2,352 acres of this land was suitable for agriculture. The government farmer thought that out of 105 families only 3 had enough land to provide a cash income from farming, and only 15 had enough for subsistence needs; the remaining 87 families were, to all practical purposes, landless. 32

Land purchases made with IRA funds ultimately came to 3,368.54 acres, mostly in 1936 and 1937. This was far less than the Bureau had planned to buy and fell short of the Santees' needs, just as purchases for other tribes failed to meet their needs. Funds dried up with the coming of World War II and the diversion of appropriations to defense purposes. As late as the summer of 1940 the landless Santees were said to be "anxiously awaiting the acquisition of additional areas in order that further benefits to individuals, families, and the tribe might be realized." They have continued to wait ever since. Pending completion of

____________________ 31 Niobrara Tribune, July 20 and September 7 and 14, 1933; February 8, April 19, May 3, June 14, July 5, and October 11, 1934.
32 Meriam, The Problem of Indian Administration, p. 488; James W. Brewer to Gabe E. Parker, August 3, 1935; Resolution to Commissioner of Indian Affairs from David Frazier and Ulysses Redowl, September 24, 1936; Hook to J. M. Stewart, Director of Lands, March 24,1937, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency.

-309-
Besides the purchase of land, several other measures were taken to improve the condition of the Santee Sioux. The Indian Reorganization Act had provided for a sum of $10,000,000 to be used for reimbursable loans to tribal groups. The principle of reimbursable loans was not new, but previous experience with it had been discouraging. More intelligently managed, it proved much more successful in the 1930's, although at Santee as elsewhere the amount of money available was never enough for the needs of the tribe. Rehabilitation funds were also obtained for construction of houses and farm buildings, a project that did much to improve living conditions among those families that were able to benefit. In line with the Collier administration's emphasis on encouraging community spirit, a "community self-help building" was completed in 1937, containing a large room with a capacity of nearly two hundred, a kitchen at the rear, and smaller rooms for sewing projects, committee meetings, or a tribal office; in a wing were spaces for weaving and other arts and crafts activities and a carpentry shop. 34

It is important to note that in all those projects the Indians themselves were consulted and did much of the planning. Though opposed to the withdrawal of government supervision, Commissioner Collier and his allies had no brief for paternalism. Everything was done to encourage the Indians to take the initiative, apparently with good results, for many of the ideas discussed by Indian Bureau officials came originally from the Indians themselves. Superintendent Parker reported after one meeting at Santee, concerned with a plan for subsistence garden plots for the old and needy: "It would do your heart good, as it certainly did mine, yesterday afternoon to sit through long hours of serious expectant

____________________ 33 82nd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2503, p. 62; Flinn to Hook, June 6, 1937; Fred H. Daiker to Thomas H. Kitto and David June 5 1940 Frazier , NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency.
34 Parker to Collier, February 24, 1936; Isaac Redowl to Parker, August 18, 1938; David Frazier et al., to Collier, October 15, 1936; Xavier Vigeant to William Whipple, December 22, 1938; Vigeant to Ralph Bristol, January 14, 1939; Samuel H. Thompson, Supervisor of Indian Education, to Collier, December 2, 1938, ibid.; Niobrara Tribune, July 2, 1936, and October 7 and 14, 1937. The community building was burned in the spring of 1965, after serving the Santee tribe more than twenty-seven years.

-310-
and profoundly appreciative attitudes and discussions of the members of the Santee Sioux Tribal Council." 35

The constitution and bylaws drawn up after acceptance of the IRA were designed to reflect the peculiar status of the Santees as Indians in an advanced stage of acculturation. For example, whereas many tribal constitutions gave the tribe jurisdiction over marriage and divorce practices, such a provision was omitted from the Santee constitution because these Indians "wanted to move in the direction of comprehensive State control over law and order and domestic relations rather than in the direction of tribal regulation of Indian custom marriages and Indian conduct." 36 After being approved by the Department of the Interior, the constitution and bylaws were accepted by the tribe, 28460, on February 29, 1936. The council elected that year proved a more effective instrument of community policy than the old rubber-stamp body that had been instituted late in the nineteenth century and had existed nominally since then. 37

[mdenney]

Education was a central concern of the Collier administration, though at Santee it was distinctly subordinate, as a government activity, to other objectives, inasmuch as the reservation had long been incorporated into the county public school system. A specialist in Indian education visited six one-room schools and one two-room school in 1935 and found conditions markedly better than a similar tour of inspection nineteen years earlier had found them. Out of a total enrollment of 194 in those schools, 98 of the children were Indian. Their tuition was paid by the government. The rates varied from twenty-five to thirty cents a day at the smaller schools, and was forty cents at the two-room school, that at Santee village, where a lunch of soup, sandwiches, meat, fruit, doughnuts, and cocoa was served. Ten of the nineteen pupils there were Indians, all of whom attended regularly except for four from one family. The teachers all reported that the Indians did as well as the white children. In 1938 the same specialist found a great increase in enrollment, and a higher proportion of absenteeism among whites than among Indians. 38

____________________ 35 Parker to Collier, June 24, 1937, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency.
36 Charlotte T. Westwood to Daiker, November 10, 1937, ibid.
37 Niobrara Tribune, March 12, 1936. Some of the superintendents considered the old council more of a nuisance than an aid to them. See Superintendent's Annual Report, 1910, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency.
38 S. H. Thompson to Collier, January 29, 1935, and December 2, 1938, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency.

-311-
In the middle 1930's the Santee Normal Training School was still functioning, under the direction of Rudolph Hertz, who had succeeded Frederick B. Riggs, son of Alfred L. Riggs, in 1933. Its enrollment was down to seventy-four boarding pupils and seven day pupils, but it employed twenty people, including six teachers, all with college degrees. In the spring of 1936 it ceased its long service to Indian young people and was transformed the following autumn into an institution for adult education, designed chiefly to provide refresher courses to families engaged in missionary work. Its career in this capacity was brief, however, and in 1938 the American Missionary Association disposed of several of the buildings, which were promptly wrecked for the lumber. The tribal council leased the land and some of the remaining buildings for use as living quarters for families who had not been benefited by the housing program. 39

It would be pleasant to conclude this account of the Santee Reservation by reporting that the aims of the Collier administration were all achieved and the Indians placed in a position of economic security. Unfortunately, such was not the case. Just as the nation as a whole recovered very slowly from the effects of the Depression, so the Santees at the end of the 1930's were still far from self-sufficiency. Superintendent Parker was obliged to report in 1940 that the condition of all the Nebraska Indian groups was "one of almost total dependence upon Federal Government for work and direct relief; Agency allotments and WPA, Social Security, ADC, Old Age Assistance, NYA, and the like. . . ." He attributed the situation to more than ten years of drought and grasshopper infestations, livestock diseases, and lack of available employment for Indians off the reservation. 40

During World War II the situation was somewhat alleviated because of the availability of work in war plants and the temporary employment of many men in the armed services. judging from the census figures since 1940, many of the Santees who left the reservation during and after the war never returned. Between 1940 and 1960 there was a 65 per cent loss in the Indian population of the five townships that comprised the old Santee Reservation, as contrasted to a 13 per cent increase

____________________ 39 S. H. Thompson to Collier, January 29, 1935; lease dated May 1, 1939, between Board of Home Missions of the Congregational and Christian Churches and the Santee Tribe of Nebraska, ibid.; Niobrara Tribune, May 14, 1936, December 10, 1936, and June 30 and November 10, 1938.
40 Parker to Collier, August 13, 1940, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency.

-312-
between 1930 and 1940. 41 By 1960 there were only 317 Santees still living in the reservation area. In general and with many exceptions, it has been the most industrious and best-qualified who have left, with the result that the Indian Bureau and local agencies have continued to face many problems among those who have stayed behind.

One may wonder why the Nebraska reservation, alone among those occupied by the Santee Sioux, has suffered so extreme a decline in its resident population. Although no definitive answer can be given, certain factors, cultural and geographical, may go far toward accounting for the phenomenon. Cultural variations probably affect the differential rates of population increase or decline on the respective reservations. The people at Sisseton and Devils Lake are less acculturated than those at the other reservations and hence less likely to leave home and try their wings in the white-dominated society of the cities. The more highly acculturated people at Flandreau and the Minnesota colonies have more employment opportunities in the reservation area or within commuting distance than do those on the Santee Reservation. Santee is the only Santee Indian community that does not have a fair-sized town within reasonable commuting distance. Niobrara, the only nearby town, had a population of 736 in the 1960 census, as contrasted to 3,218 for Sisseton, South Dakota (in addition to Watertown [14,077] and others near the Sisseton Reservation); 2,129 for Flandreau, South Dakota, with its Indian school employing a sizable staff; 6,299 for Devils Lake, North Dakota; 2,728 for Granite Falls, Minnesota; 4,285 for Redwood Falls, Minnesota; and 10,528 for Red Wing, Minnesota. 42

____________________ 41 United States Census, 1930, Population, Vol. III, Pt. 2, p. 117; 1940, Vol. II, Pt. 4, p. 681; 1960, Pt. 298, pp. 60-61. The decennial census figures cannot be taken as entirely reliable. Only those who identify themselves as Indians are so classified, and it is possible that part of the increase in the 1930's reflects a greater willingness by some individuals to be regarded as Indians then. The figures given here are taken from the column headed "other," i.e., other than white or Negro.
42 As will be noted in Chapter 17, the Flandreau people have in fact abandoned their "reservation" and are living in the town. The marked population growth noted among most of the Santee Sioux groups in the United States has been paralleled by an even more spectacular increase among the descendants of the Santees who fled into British territory after the Uprising of 1862. The total population of the seven reserves in Manitoba and Saskatchewan occupied by those people grew from 830 in 1904 to 1,922 in 1964. See Dominion of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, Pt. II, pp. 76-79; and Traditional Linguistic and Cultural Affiliations of Canadian Indian Bands ( Ottawa: Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 1964), pp. 25, 26, 27, 28.