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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 15:54:04 GMT -5
the blackest pages in the history of white injustice to the Indian. In order to understand how it could have been countenanced by men of integrity and humanity like Sibley, one must attempt to comprehend the frame of mind in which the white population of Minnesota found itself during and after the uprising. Contemporary newspapers provide some indication of the popular mood. Far from the scenes of massacre, in a part of the state that could hardly have felt itself in immediate danger, a Red Wing editor wrote of the Sioux four days after the attack on the lower agency: "They must be exterminated, and now is a good time to commence doing it." 20 Closer to the scenes the same sentiment was expressed. A Mankato newspaper announced on August 30: "The cruelties perpetrated by the Sioux nation in the past two weeks demand that our Government shall treat them for all time to come as outlaws, who have forfeited all right to property and life." 21 The editor of the other Mankato newspaper told his readers that if its columns were not overflowing with news, it was because he had joined one of the volunteer companies formed "for the extermination of Indians. . . ." 22 A group of men involved in the defense of Fort Ridgely entered into a solemn compact that if they survived the attack they would not rest until they had exterminated every man, woman, and child in the Sioux nation. 23 As late as February, 1863, a Faribault newspaper published a letter that declared: "Extermination, swift, sure, and terrible is the only thing that can give the people of Minnesota satisfaction, or a sense of security." 24 No doubt the sentiment reflected in the newspapers grew largely from the atrocities reported from the war zone. But in view of the remarks made in 1857 by Special Agent Prichette about the desire of the whites to use an Indian war as a pretext for seizing lands, one is justified in wondering how much that motive figured in the hysterical utterances of the newspapers and of public men in the weeks following the out- ____________________ 20 Goodhue County Republican (Red Wing), August 22, 1862. 21 Mankato Semi-Weekly Record, August 30, 1862. 22 Mankato Independent, September 11, 1862. The editor, Clinton B. Hensley, contracted pneumonia on this "Indian hunt" and died six days before the execution of the convicted Indians. 23 Pioneer and Democrat ( St. Paul), September 4, 1862 (citing the Stillwater Messenger, September 2, 1862). 24 Central Republican ( Faribault), February 18, 1863. The writer of the letter did not favor removal of the Indians: "The settlers are too generous to send as a blightly curse, to any portion of this fair earth, those fiends [who] would pollute the foulest regions of h-ll by being colonized there!" -124- break. Although the evidence would not support the contention that the Sioux Uprising was deliberately provoked by the whites as an excuse for exterminating the Sioux or driving them out of the state and opening their lands to settlement, there were undoubtedly plenty of Minnesotans who felt, and perhaps expressed the view privately, that the cloud had a silver lining, that though the murder of hundreds of settlers was a high price to pay to be rid of the Indians, yet one could not be blind to the advantages it now offered in terms of the opportunity to satisfy the greed of those safely behind the lines. And what better way was there to mask this greed than to wave the bloody shirt and call righteously for the extermination of the "inhuman fiends" who had heretofore stood in the way of Manifest Destiny, Minnesota brand? Whatever the motives, vengeance was called for, and vengeance there had to be. Since the most clearly guilty among the Sioux were scattered over the prairies to the west, the popular demand for retribution had to be satisfied by punishing such Indians as were available. Although those who had voluntarily surrendered might reasonably be assumed to be innocent--and one of the captives who later wrote of her experiences was unable to recognize any of the murderers in that group--they were available and thus had to serve in the absence of more suitable material. According to missionary Riggs, who accompanied Sibley's expedition, as soon as the captives had been released, they began to tell of "Indian men who had maltreated these white women, or in some way had been engaged in the massacres. . . ." So the next day Sibley asked Riggs to serve as a medium of communication between the women and himself. The result was the apprehension of a few of the Indians and the organization of a military commission to examine others against whom charges might be made. This plan was innocuous enough at first, but pressure from public opinion forced a change in procedure; and in a few weeks, "instead of taking individuals for trial, against whom some specific charge could be brought, the plan was adopted to subject all grown men, with a few exceptions, to an investigation of the commission, trusting that the innocent could make their innocency appear." 25 Thus the revered Anglo-Saxon principle of law that a person is considered innocent until proved guilty was reversed in the case of Indians. Riggs, writing years afterwards, admitted that it was impossible for ____________________ 25 Stephen R. Riggs, Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux ( Boston: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 1880), pp. 206-207; Stephen R. Riggs to Martha Riggs, September 27, 1862, copy in Riggs Papers, Minnesota Historical Society. -125- the Indians to "make their innocency appear," particularly since participation in battles was grounds for a conviction on a charge of murder. Isaac V. D. Heard, a lawyer who served on the commission and later wrote a history of the Sioux war, justified the departure from the usual rules of war on the grounds that "the battles were not ordinary battles." Since New Ulm was defended by civilians, an attack on it was not war but murder. Besides, wrote Heard, most of these Indians must also have been engaged in individual massacres and outrages. The marauding bands "undoubtedly" consisted of the same men who made the sustained attacks on Fort Ridgely and other fortified positions, so they were not engaged in war either. Heard's clincher, however, is this example of logic as employed by white men in 1862: "The fact that they were Indians . . . would raise the moral certainty that, as soon as the first murders were committed, all the young men were impelled by the sight of blood and plunder . . . to become participants in the same class of acts." 26 If the manner in which the trials were conducted represented a departure from normal legal procedure, the method used to disarm the bulk of the Indians was a violation of common decency. The first ones arrested were handled in a straightforward fashion, but a ruse was employed to place 236 others at the mercy of their captors. Informed that their annuities were to be paid and that they must first be counted, as had been the practice in previous years, the men were sent through a doorway and there asked to give up their arms, with the promise that they would receive them back shortly. As soon as they did so, they were chained by the ankles two and two, as those arrested earlier had been. No doubt Sibley and his officers thought they were being comparatively lenient, for some of the soldiers advocated making any agreement with the Indians to obtain the captives and then murdering all the Indians--men, women, and children. 27 Sibley's intention when he began the trials was apparently to execute promptly all the men found guilty by his commission. Actually, he had no authority to take such action, nor did his superior, General John ____________________ 26 Riggs Mary and I, p. 207; Heard, History of the Sioux, pp. 255-257. 27 Heard, History of the Sioux War, p. 187. According to Big Eagle, the half-breeds who served as intermediaries between the Sioux and the military had assured him and the other men that they would be kept prisoner only a short time; he served three years in prison and narrowly escaped hanging. See Holcombe, "A Sioux Story of the War," pp. 397, 399. -126- Pope, who had been placed in command of the Military Department of the Northwest in September. As the convictions multiplied, this intention faded, and Sibley merely kept on with the trials, meanwhile awaiting orders from superior authority. The procedure was to present certain charges against each prisoner, based on information provided by the half-breeds and others who had been held captive by the Indians. According to Heard, Riggs served as a virtual "Grand Jury" in assembling this evidence; Riggs later denied this ascription of authority to him. Although the missionary shared the general feeling that most of the Indians tried were guilty, and wrote President Lincoln that the "great majority" should be executed to meet the "demands of public justice," he had serious reservations about the manner in which they were convicted. The greater part, he said, "were condemned on general principles, without any specific charges proved. . . . " 28 For his suggestion that even Indians perhaps deserved a fair trial, he was roundly condemned, as were other missionaries, including the elder Williamson. When the trials were finally concluded, on November 5, nearly four hundred Indians and half-breeds had gone through the process, which sometimes accommodated forty in a single day. Of them, 303 were judged guilty of murder and sentenced to death. One, Joseph Godfrey, a mulatto married to an Indian woman, though convicted on evidence as reliable as any offered in these trials, proved himself so useful at supplying evidence to convict his recent comrades-in-arms that his sentence was later commuted. The commissioners managed to persuade themselves that there was some doubt of his guilt, though they allowed no such doubts to intrude upon their judgment of men less pliable or less articulate. 29 The condemned Indians and a few women and children who accompanied them were removed from the camp on November 9 and marched to a hastily improvised prison just west of Mankato. As they passed through New Ulm, they were attacked by local citizens, then engaged in disinterring some of those who had been killed in the fighting late in August; fifteen prisoners and several guards were ____________________ 28 Riggs, Mary and I, p. 208; Stephen R. Riggs to President Abraham Lincoln, November 17, 1862, Riggs Papers. 29 Godfrey served three years in prison, together with the Indians, and then accompanied them upon their release to the Niobrara reservation in Nebraska, where he became known as a quiet, industrious man who seldom left his farm. He died in 1909. Niobrara (Nebr.) Tribune, July 8, 1909. -127- seriously injured by the barrage of bricks and stones with which the "Dutch she devils," as Sibley called them, bombarded the now defenseless Indians. Two days before the departure of the prisoners, the rest of the captured Sioux were sent down the river to Fort Snelling. They, too, were attacked along the way. As they passed through Henderson, they were set upon by the enraged populace with guns, knives, clubs, and stones. Several were injured, and one infant was so badly hurt that it soon died. Those who survived this assault and the following winter remained in a dismal encampment on the flats below Fort Snelling for about six months, tormented by wild rumors concerning the fate of their menfolk and perpetually in danger of being killed by parties of whites who repeatedly threatened to break through the wooden fence erected for their protection. When the trials were completed, the general assumption was that all 303 of the men condemned to death would be speedily hanged. President Lincoln, however, intervened and ordered General Pope to send him the complete trial record, which he then turned over to two men with instructions to examine each case carefully, with special reference to those who had been convicted of rape or of murdering innocent settlers. Although under conflicting pressures from humanitarians who urged leniency and from citizens of Minnesota desirous of revenge, Lincoln apparently consulted his own conscience in the matter before him and reduced the number to be executed to forty, including Godfrey, whose sentence was commuted upon recommendation of the military commission that had tried him. Lincoln's action was, of course, displeasing to the people of Minnesota, whose spokesmen, Governor Ramsey and the congressional delegation, had been insisting that the Indians must all be executed or lynch law would prevail. After an abortive attack on the condemned by a Mankato mob on December 4, Ramsey issued a proclamation calling on the people of the state to refrain from mob violence. He assured them that even if the President should see fit to interfere with the rightful course of justice by saving any of the prisoners from the halter, they would still be subject to state law, and the will of the people would prevail through legal means. 30 There was no further violence, even after Lincoln's order was made public, though the newspapers continued their attacks on the "sickly sentimentalists" who had exerted a baneful influence on the President. Nevertheless, ____________________ 30 His proclamation is in Minnesota Executive Dacuments, 1862, pp. 64-66 (extra session). -128- the prisoners were removed from Camp Lincoln on the day after the attempted assault and placed in more secure confinement in what is now downtown Mankato. After one postponement, the execution was set for December 26, across the street from where the prisoners were being held. Elaborate precautions were taken to prevent an outbreak of violence. Martial law was declared for an area ten miles around, the sale of liquor was suspended, and troops were concentrated in the town to guarantee that the Indians would meet their deaths in proper legal fashion. These precautions were unnecessary; the spectacle of thirty-nine Indians to be hanged at once was a good enough show to divert the citizens from any more active sports. The condemned men were separated from their comrades four days before the execution and were offered the services of both Protestant and Catholic missionaries. All but two accepted Christian baptism. Contemporary accounts make much of their last farewells to their friends and families. As on an earlier occasion, the most eloquent words were those of Rda-in-yan-ka, who dictated the following letter to his father-in-law: WABASHAW: You have deceived me. You told me that if we followed the advice of General Sibley, and give ourselves up to the whites, all would be well--no innocent man would be injured. I have not killed, wounded, or injured a white man, or any white persons. I have not participated in the plunder of their property; and yet to-day, I am set apart for execution, and must die in a few days, while men who are guilty will remain in prison. . . . My wife and children are dear to me. Let them not grieve for me. Let them remember that the brave should be prepared to meet death; and I will do so as becomes a Dacotah. 31 A last-minute change of schedule was the removal of one name from the list of those to die. The remaining thirty-eight condemned mounted the scaffold chanting their death song, reluctantly allowed the white caps to be adjusted over their heads, and then attempted to grasp each other's hands in a final gesture of solidarity. The trap was sprung by William Duley, some of whose family had been killed at Lake Shetek. His personal desire for revenge and that of the spectators was satisfied ____________________ 31 Quoted in Heard, History of the Sioux War, p. 284. The execution of the Sioux is recounted in many places, notably in Thomas Hughes, History of Blue Earth County ( Chicago: Middle West Publishing Co., [ 1901]), pp. 127-136. Comparison with contemporaneous newspaper accounts reveals several discrepancies in Hughes' account, which was evidently based largely on the recollections of John C. Wise, editor of the Mankato Semi-Weekly Record in 1862. -129- as thirty-eight Sioux corpses dangled from the scaffold. When all had been pronounced dead, the bodies were buried in a shallow grave nearby, from which they were shortly exhumed for use as cadavers by local physicians. 32 As injustice had characterized every previous stage in the treatment of the Sioux, so it also figured in the selection of the men who were to die. Among the 303 originally condemned to death there were three or four by the name of Chaskay, and two or three Washechoons. All were numbered, but since no one could remember which number was attached to which individual, Joseph R. Brown was entrusted with the job of examining the charges so as to determine which men were intended in Lincoln's order. Riggs later wrote that, although " extraordinary care" was meant to be used, when he and Brown afterward compared the men's stories and confessions, made a day or two before their death, they were forced to conclude that two mistakes had occurred. And the marshal of the prison told Bishop Henry B. Whipple that on the day after the execution, when he went to release a man who had been acquitted for saving a woman's life, he was told: "You hung him yesterday." 33 Although the Sioux still in custody, both at Mankato and at Fort Snelling, had to be disposed of, and although Little Crow was still at large, the execution that December day at Mankato brought the Sioux war to an end. It was a totally unnecessary conflict precipitated by an accident, disastrous for its white and its Indian victims alike. Did it have any redeeming features? The missionaries professed at the time to see in the mass conversion of the Indians an unlooked-for and welcome benefit, an example of good coming out of evil. Others saw in the selfless devotion of the loyal Indians and in the courage displayed by some of the white victims of the uprising evidence of heroism which compensated in part for the bestiality shown on both sides.34 Though the Sioux Uprising produced individual heroes and hero- ____________________ Besides the attacks on the prisoners at New Ulm and on their families at Henderson, white atrocities included throwing a wounded Indian into a burning building at Fort Ridgely. This "daring but somewhat cruel feat" was witnessed by Sergeant J. C. Whipple and reported to Charles S. Bryant. See Bryant and Murch, History of theGreat Massacre 32 Minnesota Pioneer, December 28, 1862; Nathaniel West, The Ancestry, Life, and Times of Hon. Henry Hastings Sibley, LL.D. ( St. Paul: Pioneer Press Publishing Co., 1889), p. 291. 33 Riggs, Mary and I, p. 211; Henry B. Whipple, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate ( New York: Macmillan Co., 1899), p. 132. The Washechoon who was executed was later discovered to have been a sixteen-year-old white boy who had been brought up among the Indians. See Hughes, History of Blue Earth County, p. 129. -130-
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 15:54:56 GMT -5
ines, it revealed no leader of heroic stature, as some earlier Indian wars had done. Noble deeds were performed by many of the participants in the conflict. Among the whites there was the ferryman who, according to legend, kept the ferry going until all who wished to use it had crossed or until he was killed by the Indians. Among the Indians there were John Other Day, Lorenzo Lawrence, Paul Mazakutemane, Simon Anawangmani, and others, who took very real risks to help their white friends. They were praised in the newspapers and from the pulpits, and some of them received a more tangible reward through a congressional appropriation for their benefit a few years later. But no amount of praise for their courage can disguise the fact that they were the betrayers of their people. Some, like Taopi, who testified in the trials, were so hated that they dared not go to live among their people after the uprising. 35 The fashion once was to designate as heroes only the "good Indians" --those who cooperated with the whites in the despoliation of their people. The pendulum has swung the other way in recent times, and we have in such a book as Alvin M. Josephy The Patriot Chiefs a longdelayed tribute to those who refused to collaborate--not the mere troublemakers but the leaders who fought for their way of life and sometimes chose to die rather than submit. An attempt could probably be made to "rehabilitate" Little Crow and invest him with the dignity of a tragic hero. Yet, though Sibley's biographer calls him the successor to Osceola, Black Hawk, Tecumseh, and King Philip, he lacks the stature of those men. If his final gesture in leading his people in what he knew to be a hopeless cause places him in a class with the great chieftains, his earlier collaboration with the whites--sometimes, it would seem, for personal gain-- deprives him of the true heroic stature. Other than Little Crow, only one of the hostiles who fought and died ____________________ Great Massacre, p. 201. Many of the depredations which the Indians' annuities were used to pay were actually committed by white looters who roved through the abandoned country picking up what the Indians had left. 35 The conflicting stories about the ferryman are discussed in Joseph Connors, "The Elusive Hero of Redwood Ferry," Minnesota History, XXXIV ( June 1955), 233-238. The Pioneer and Democrat for August 27, 1862, mentions that Other Day was currently quite a "lion" in St. Paul, where he addressed an audience at Ingersoll's Hall and where the familiar portrait of him was made by the photographer Joel E. Whitney. Taopi's testimony and that of his mother may have resulted in some convictions, but it brought no tangible rewards from the government. He died in extreme poverty in 1869. See the Central Republican, March 3, 1869, and the Faribault Repulican, October 18, 1871, and also William Welsh, comp., Taopi and His Friends, or the Indians' Wrongs and Rights ( Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen and Heffelfinger, 1869), pp. 53-54. -131- in 1862, Rda-in-yan-ka, emerges as a candidate for the position of tragic hero. Fully knowing of the duplicity of white men and aware, at least by mid-September, of the futility of the war he was fighting, he deliberately chose death in preference to surrender. If there is in his final message to his father-in-law a note of petulance, there is also a stronger note of defiance, the defiance of one who is not afraid to die but who wants the reasons for his death and the manner of his death known and remembered by his own people and perhaps by his enemies. One would like to learn more about Rda-in-yan-ka. As it is, about all we know, besides the text of his two known utterances, is the sketchy information provided by the court record. He was accused, on the testimony of David Faribault, of being active in nearly all the battles and of functioning as a kind of exhorter to his fellows. In his defense he said only that he had gone to Little Crow and tried to stop the killings when he learned of them on August 18. He did not deny the charge, brought by Paul Mazakutemane and Lorenzo Lawrence, that he opposed surrendering the captives, and he "supposed that he was to be hung for that." 36 He was probably right in this supposition, for he was not accused of any of the classes of crimes specified in Lincoln's order. Whatever the end of the Sioux Uprising may have meant to the white man--a chance to speculate in land or acquire a farm in lands previously unavailable, a demonstration of the Lord's saving power over men about to be executed, or something else--for the Sioux it meant just one thing: catastrophe. It meant their expulsion from the land where they and their ancestors had lived since the immemorial past, and, more than that, it meant the shattering of whatever unity the Santee bands had possessed. Never again were the Mdewakantons, Wahpekutes, Sissetons, and Wahpetons one people, occupying a single fairly well defined land area. Henceforth they were scattered over states and provinces, with hundreds of miles separating their dispersed settlements and the lands between rapidly filling up with white men, who learned eventually to tolerate the Indian, if only to exploit him, but never to accept him as an equal. ____________________ 36 Heard, History of the Sioux War, pp. 281-282. Heard reports (p. 292) one other grim tradition concerning this man. At the execution he suffered the final indignity of having the rope break, so that, although probably dead, he had to be strung up a second time. Hughes assigns this ignominy to Cut Nose, the most hated of the thirtyeight. See Hughes, History of Blue Earth County, p. 134. Contemporary newspaper accounts do not name the man who fell. -132- CHAPTER 7 Exile ALTHOUGH THE execution of the men thought to be most deeply implicated in the massacres of 1862 partially satisfied the demand of the Minnesota citizens for vengeance, two more objectives remained to be realized: the Sioux had to be expelled from the state, and an effort had to be made to punish the fugitives still roaming the prairies to the west. The accomplishment of the second of these aims--to the degree that anything was accomplished--had little bearing on the Santees and can be summarized briefly. Besides Little Crow's group of diehards, most of the upper Sioux had fled before Sibley's army in September, 1862, and spent the winter in the Devils Lake area. Although most of them had not been involved in the massacres, they judged it expedient to stay out of the way of white men not disposed to make fine distinctions between guilty and innocent Indians. In the spring of 1863 a campaign was planned to kill or capture these remaining "hostiles" and incidentally to demonstrate to all the Sioux that United States troops could invade their country with impunity. The projected campaign took the form of a gigantic pincers movement involving two bodies of troops, one moving northwest from Fort Ridgely, the other advancing up the Missouri from Fort Randall to cut off the retreat of those Indians driven west by the first. Sibley, -133- now a brigadier general, commanded the first force, General Alfred Sully the second. 1 Whether the 1863 campaign was a success or a failure, from the standpoint of the whites, depends on what standards of measurement are used. On the one hand, Sibley's enemies saw it as an ineffectual waste of the taxpayers' money which not only failed to kill or capture any large number of Indians but left the Minnesota frontier comparatively unprotected and subject to isolated raids by small bands of Indians. On the other hand, the expedition did drive the main body of the Sioux west of the Missouri, at least temporarily, and destroyed enormous quantities of their supplies and equipment. Three battles were fought in July: Big Mound, Dead Buffalo Lake, and Stony Lake, all in what is today east-central North Dakota. All resulted in one-sided victories for the military force, which had modern rifles and some artillery, while the Indians had to fight mostly with shotguns and bows and arrows and were chiefly concerned with protecting the retreat of their women and children. Sully's failure to move up the Missouri rapidly enough to effect a meeting with Sibley permitted the bulk of the Indians to escape west of the river. Sully did, however, achieve the biggest victory of the expedition in the battle of Whitestone Hill, fought in present-day Dickey County, North Dakota, on September 3. The Indians' casualties were heavy, and a large number of captives, mostly women and children, were taken. 2 The dissatisfaction of many Minnesotans with the campaign of 1863 grew partly out of the continued hostility of Indians closer at hand. Beginning in April and continuing through July, the settlers were plagued by a series of petty horse-stealing raids, in the course of which ____________________ 1 The campaigns of 1863 and 1864 are treated in some detail in William W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, II ( St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1961), 265-301. The present account follows this treatment, supplemented by Robert Huhn Jones, The Civil War in the Northwest ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960). Among the primary sources consulted are The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1886- 1901); Board of Commissioners, Minnesota in the Civil and Indian Wars, 1861- 1865 ( St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co., 1890, 1893); A. P. Connolly, A Thrilling Narrative of the Minnesota Massacre and the Sioux War of 1862-63 ( Chicago: A. P. Connolly, 1896); David L. Kingsbury, "Sully's Expedition Against the Sioux in 1864," Minnesota Historical Collections, VIII ( 1895- 1898), 449-456; and "Diary Kept by Lewis C. Paxson , Stockton, N.J.," North Dakota Historical Collections, II ( 1908), Part 2, 102-163. 2 The site of the battle of Whitestone Hill is in a state park today. There is an impressive shaft on the hill commemorating the soldiers who were killed there, and an inconspicious marker below honoring the Indian dead. -134- several whites were killed. Not only did the raiders reach exposed frontier settlements like those on the Watonwan River and the edge of the Big Woods in McLeod and Wright counties, but they even penetrated as far as Le Sueur, Rice, and Dakota counties, east of Mankato and St. Peter. The profound sense of insecurity engendered by these raids led the state government to resort to extreme measures to end the menace. On July 4 a volunteer force of scouts was authorized and a $25 bounty on Sioux scalps declared. Sixteen days later a reward of $75 was ordered, payable to anyone not serving with this force who could provide satisfactory proof that he had killed a Sioux warrior. In September the reward was increased to $200. 3 One of these raids resulted in the killing of Little Crow. The chief and his immediate followers had spent the winter without adequate provisions on the northern plains and had sought aid from the British authorities at Fort Garry. Although the governor of Rupert's Land refused to give them ammunition when they called on him late in May, he did relieve their starvation with an issue of provisions. 4 In June, Little Crow, his son Wowinapa, and a few followers invaded the area of McLeod and Meeker counties, where some settlers were murdered, probably by members of their band. On the evening of July 3, Nathan Lampson and his son Chauncey fired on two Indians picking raspberries in a thicket north of Hutchinson. They killed one, who was later identified as Little Crow, and the other, Wowinapa, was later captured by the military. The chief's body was thrown on a heap of entrails at a slaughter house; his scalp eventually ended up in the state historical society. Thus ignominiously perished the leader of the Uprising of 1862. 5 The less than complete success of the 1863 campaign led to the outfitting of another the following year. Again two columns, one moving up the Missouri, the other west from Minnesota, were employed. They contrived to meet on the Missouri and then headed into the comparatively unknown country to the west, where they fought a major ____________________ 3 Minnesota Executive Documents, 1863, pp. 339-349, 192, 196, 198. This source lists only four beneficiaries under the terms of these orders, three of whom received $25 each, the other $75. See ibid., pp. 223, 224, 226, 403. As Walter Trenerry pointed out in an article a century later, these orders, issued by the state adjutant general, were illegal. See Walter N. Trenerry, "The Shooting of Little Crow: Heroism or Murder?", Minnesota History, XXXVIII ( September 1962), 15 3. 4 Secretary of State William Seward to Secretary of Interior John B. Usher, July 2, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LR. 5 Mankato Weekly Union, July 17, 1863; Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 281 - 285. -135- engagement with the Indians in the Killdeer Mountains and did some desultory skirmishing in the Badlands. This expedition added to the geographical knowledge of what is now western North Dakota, and it probably also contributed to the starvation of the Indians whose supplies were destroyed, but it bore little relationship to the Sioux Uprising or its perpetrators. Most of the Indians encountered were Yanktonais and Tetons, who had taken no part in the uprising and were doubtless somewhat puzzled at the gratuitous invasion of their country. From this point on, the military campaigns on the prairies lose whatever connection they had with the 1862 outbreak and merge into the long series of wars with the Sioux that ended only with the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890. 6 Although the newspapers of Minnesota were calling for the expulsion of all Indians from the state, attention naturally centered early in 1863 about the Sioux who had been taken into custody at Camp Release. These people--the prisoners held at Mankato and the larger group at Fort Snelling--spent a miserable and anxious winter. The condemned men probably fared better than their families. Out of the 350 or more, only thirteen died during the winter, as against about 130 in the camp at Fort Snelling. Under the stimulus of Thomas S. Williamson, who preached to them every Sunday, and Robert Hopkins, one of their number and a Christian, the men in prison underwent a mass religious conversion. Early in February, Williamson and Gideon Pond, satisfied that the professions of faith were in most cases sincere, baptized 274 of the prisoners. Eventually nearly all were baptized. Along with this burst of religious enthusiasm came a desire to adopt other features of the white man's culture, notably the written word. According to Riggs, the prison became one great school that winter. The prisoners practiced writing on slates and with pen and paper until they were able to express themselves with sufficient fluency to write letters to their families. One contemporary account had it that by March they were turning out one or two hundred letters weekly, which Williamson faithfully carried to the camp below the fort. 7 The knowledge acquired during the winter of 1862-1863 later proved valuable to the men who were released, some of whom became leaders among their people. ____________________ 6 Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 296 - 300. Further expeditions in 1865 and 1866 encountered no Indians. 7 Ibid., II, 249 - 251 ; Stephen R. Riggs, Tah-koo Wah-kan; or, the Gospel Among the Dakotas ( Boston: Congregational Publishing Society, 1869), pp. 342-354; Mankato Weekly Record, March 7, 1863. -136- The families of the condemned men, together with the rest of the captive Sioux, experienced a similar wave of religious enthusiasm and interest in learning. They too were under the influence of missionaries, to whom goes the credit for the transformation that swept over them. John P. Williamson, who had barely begun missionary work on the old reservation at the time of the uprising, joined them at their place of confinement and remained with them all winter, as did Samuel D. Hinman, the Episcopal missionary whose work on the reservation had likewise been cut short by the outbreak. Williamson held nightly prayer meetings in the garret of an old government warehouse large enough to seat five hundred. Although he proceeded more cautiously than his father, he did baptize at least 140. Hinman baptized 144, including all the chiefs of the lower Sioux, and soon had 300 under his care. These two men thus laid the foundations for the later strength of the Episcopal Church and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions among the Santees. Father Augustin Ravoux, who had ministered to the convicted prisoners before they were executed, baptized 184, but he did not remain in the camp and hence did not gain so lasting an influence for the Catholic Church as the other men did for their denominations. 8 The number in these two concentration camps varied somewhat throughout the winter. At the end of February there were 322 prisoners at Mankato, plus about 20 cooks, laundresses, and other service personnel--all Indians--employed by the prison authorities.9 The other group contained 1,601 on December 2 and 1,591 on March 10, the 130 deaths having been nearly offset by additions captured by the military during the winter. At the time of the earlier census, the total included 295 upper Sioux, 133 Wahpekutes, and 112 half-breeds without tribal affiliation; the rest were Mdewakantons. 10 The extreme congestion, ____________________ 10 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1863, pp. 313 - 316 ; Henry H. Sibley to Usher, March 14, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LR. Among the Mdewakantons, the largest band was Wacouta's, with 221 members, followed by Taopi's with 214, Traveling Hail's with 193, Wabasha's with 165, Eagle Head's with 109, Good Road's with 98, and Black Dog's with 61. Taopi was chief of the "farmer Indians," a band made up of men from several of the traditional villages. Since he was originally from Kapozha, however, he may be considered the legitimate successor to the chief of that village, Little Crow. Traveling Hail was chief of the old Lake Calhoun band, and Eagle Head led an offshoot of the Shakopee band, most of whose members had taken flight with their chief as the uprising came to a close. Mankato, chief of the Good Road band, had 8 Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 252-254; Riggs, Tah-koo Wah-kan, pp. 355-361. 9 Mankato Weekly Record, March 7, 1863. -137- which encouraged the spread of measles and other diseases, together with exposure to cold, accounted for most of the deaths, which were heaviest among the children. Except for the cramped quarters, the Indians' physical circumstances were probably little worse than they would have been in a normal winter on the reservation. Anxiety over their fate added to the hardship of this dismal winter and created a psychological state only partly alleviated by the religious consolation afforded by their acceptance of Christianity. The missionaries who devoted themselves to the welfare of the Indians were handicapped in their work by the continued vindictiveness of the surrounding white populace. The calumny directed indiscriminately at all Indians naturally fell to some extent on those whites who did not share the majority view. Hinman was attacked physically by a party of roughs who broke into the stockade and beat him unconscious. Riggs, the elder Williamson, and others who defended the Indians publicly were denounced as "avaricious priests" who, like other dogs, had had their day. 11 When it was rumored that these men had interceded with the President and urged him to stay the execution of some of the condemned prisoners, they were denounced as mawkish sentimentalists or, by the more extreme, as "contemptible fools" and "cold hearted scoundrels." 12 Even Bishop Henry B. Whipple, perhaps the most respected churchman in the state, came in for his share of obloquy for his role--an important one--in preventing this legalized murder. In 1859, at the age of thirty-seven, he had been consecrated Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota. Almost at once he began interesting himself in the welfare of the Indians. Besides opening a mission at the lower agency in 1860, he had begun work among the Chippewas. Several months before the uprising he had written to President Lincoln attacking the government's Indian policy, and that fall he had gone to Washington and appealed in person for clemency in the matter of the condemned prisoners. For the latter action and for his frequent and public calls for moderation he was roundly condemned by a large segment of the population. 13 ____________________ been killed at Wood Lake, and Big Eagle, chief of the Black Dog band, was one of the condemned men held at Mankato. 11 Henry B. Whipple, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate ( New York: Macmillan Co., 1899), p. 133; Central Republican ( Faribault), February 18, 1863. 12 Central Republican, May 13, 1863. 13 Bishop Whipple's service in the cause of the Indian reform movement had only begun at this time. In the next twenty-five years he was to interest himself in virtually every phase of the movement and to become a powerful influence on government -138- After several letters from him had appeared in the newspapers, someone purporting to speak for "many citizens" asked publicly, "Has'nt [sic] Bishop Whipple, relative to the condemned Indians in this State, nearly written himself into the ground?" In his autobiography he tells that at one time he was warned that some frontiersmen had been overheard saying that they "must go down to Faribault and clean out that bishop." And he said that after he had issued the sacrament of confirmation to some of the captives at Fort Snelling, a newspaper account was headlined "Awful Sacrilege--Holiest Rites of the Church Given to Red-handed Murderers." 14 The most stridently and ferociously antiIndian newspaper in the state was the Central Republican of Faribault, the Episcopal seat and Bishop Whipple's residence. Referring to another visit of the bishop to the camp, it commented: "God was mocked and his religion burlesqued by the solemn farce of administering the sacred ordinances of baptism and confirmation to a horde of the treacherous fiends at Fort Snelling not long since." 15 The ferocity of the sentiments expressed by contemporary newspapers was aggravated by political considerations, each party trying to outdo the other in catering to what it believed to be the popular mood. At a time when the motto was "Extermination or Removal!"--the former preferred--it was impossible for any political figure or party organ to remain neutral or even to approach neutrality. Hence the savagery of public statements by Governor Ramsey and the congressional delegation from Minnesota is attributable in part at least to their feeling that it would have been political suicide to urge restraint and sweet reasonableness where the Indian question was concerned. Under such pressure from their constituents and their political opponents, both the Minnesota legislature and the congressional delegation moved rapidly to bring about the expulsion of the Sioux from the state. As early as Governor Ramsey's special message to the legislature policy as the spokesman for the humanitarian groups that were seeking to recast that policy along new lines. ____________________ 14 St. Paul Pioneer, December 6, 1862; Whipple, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate, pp. 136, 160. The editor of the Pioneer, comparatively moderate on the Indian question, said that Whipple deserved a respectful hearing, even if his views were unpopular. 15 Central Republican, June 10, 1863. The editor of this newspaper was Orville Brown, known among his many enemies as "Awful Brown," who later bought the Mankato Record, transformed it into a Republican organ, and served several years as postmaster of Mankato. Born in 1810 in New York, he died in 1901, doubtless still regretting that all the Sioux had not been exterminated. -139-
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 15:55:37 GMT -5
on September 9, 1862, the idea was broached of abrogating all treaties with the Sioux and reimbursing victims of the uprising from the annuities still due under the treaties. His proposal at that time was to ask that two million dollars be applied to this purpose, but the bill introduced in Congress by Representative Cyrus Aldrich on December 2 reduced the sum to $1,500,000. Although this amount was further reduced in the Senate, the notion expressed in Ramsey's message was accepted in principle by both houses. More important to most white Minnesotans was the expulsion of the Sioux. On December 16, Senator Morton S. Wilkinson introduced a bill calling for their removal, together with one providing for the removal of the Winnebagos. 16 After some weeks in the congressional hopper, the desired legislation was finally obtained, in the form of two acts, the first approved February 16, the second March 3, 1863. The first of these was titled "An Act for the Relief of Persons for Damages sustained by Reason of Depredations and Injuries by certain Bands of Sioux Indians" and concerned chiefly the mechanics of paying the victims of depredations. The first section, however, specifically abrogated all treaties entered into by the government with the four bands of Santee Sioux and denied them any further benefits under the terms of these treaties, including all rights to occupancy of lands in the state of Minnesota. 17 The second piece of legislation, titled "An Act for the Removal of the Sisseton, Wahpaton, Medwakanton, and Wahpakoota Bands of Sioux or Dakota Indians, and for the disposition of their Lands in Minnesota and Dakota," was the necessary sequel to the first, which had left the dispossessed bands without a place to live. The act of March 3 did not specifically designate a future home for them, but it did call upon the President to assign to them a tract of land, outside the limits of any state, large enough to provide each member of the tribe willing to farm with "eighty acres of good agricultural lands, the same to be well adapted to agricultural purposes." It further provided that the proceeds from the sale of their former reservation should be invested for their benefit. None of the money was to be paid directly to the Indians, as under the old system, but it was to be used to advance them in farming so that they would become self-sustaining. On the same date Congress approved an appro- ____________________ 16 Minnesota Executive Documents, 1862, p. 11 (extra session); Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 246; Minnesota Pioneer, January 6 and 15, 1863; Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 3rd Sess., pp. 100, 104. 17 U. S. Statutes at Large, XII, 652-654, 819-820. -140- priation of $50,016.66 for the removal of the Sioux and their establishment in their new homes. 18 These two pieces of legislation constituted something of an innovation in United States Indian policy. Heretofore it had been the practice always to employ the treaty-making power in altering the relationship between the government and an Indian tribe; even though the tribe had been defeated in war and the pretext of a treaty between sovereign entities was patently absurd, the hoary farce was enacted. Now a precedent had been set for unilateral abrogation of treaties and the management of Indian affairs by Congress, without even the illusion of the Indians' consent. If there seemed to be some justification for this action in the case of the Sioux, there was none for the bill, approved February 21, calling for the "peaceful" removal of the Winnebagos, who had not, as a tribe, taken any part in the uprising. 19 In a sense, these acts anticipated the abandonment, seven years later, of the whole practice of negotiating treaties with Indian tribes. Since the act of March 3, 1863, did not specify where the Indians' new home would be, this became the topic of considerable discussion. Various theories had been advanced in the months since the uprising as to what should be done with the Indians. The advocates of outright extermination, though noisy, were not numerous among people whose opinion carried much weight in the determination of policy. Even Galbraith, who confessed to "feelings of exasperation against these savages" and who was emotionally involved by the need for self-justification, conceded in his official report that "few will contend that the Sioux and all other Indians can be 'exterminated' just now." 20 Galbraith's suggestion for a reservation was a reasonable one. He proposed placing the Santees on a tract of land at the northern end of the Coteau des Prairies, an area partly included in the later Sisseton Reservation in northeastern South Dakota and southeastern North Dakota. The rest of his proposal was not so reasonable. He wanted to surround the Indians with a military guard to keep them from all but ____________________ 18 Ibid., XII, 819-820, 784. This sum was one third that heretofore stipulated to be paid under the terms of the various treaties. A supplementary appropriation of $137,293.40 was made June 25, 1864, for deficiencies in the subsistence and removal expenses of both Sioux and Winnebagos. See ibid., XII I, 172. 19 Ibid., XII, 658-660. 20 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1863, pp. 294, 296. Galbraith report, pp. 266-298, is one of the major primary sources of information on the Sioux Uprising. -141- authorized contacts with white men and put them to work in a fashion not easily distinguished from slavery. His personal vindictiveness emerges clearly from his recommendation: The power of the government must be brought to bear upon them; they must be whipped, coerced into obedience. After this is accomplished, few will be left to put upon a reservation; many will be killed; more must perish from famine and exposure, and the more desperate will flee and seek refuge on the plains or in the mountains. . . . A very small reservation should suffice for them. 21 Sibley offered a somewhat similar proposal, with the exception that the reservation he proposed would have been around Devils Lake. He, too, wanted the Indians surrounded by a military cordon and reduced to beneficent servitude. One suggestion, which apparently received serious consideration for a time, was to send the convicted men to the Dry Tortugas, off the Florida coast, there to live out their lives. Surely the wildest proposal was that of James W. Taylor, who wanted to send all the Minnesota Indians--Sioux, Winnebagos, and Chippewas, numbering some 47,000--to Isle Royale in Lake Superior, to survive or starve as they could. 22 Whatever the merits of these various suggestions, none of them was adopted. Instead, Secretary of Interior Caleb B. Smith recommended to Congress in December that the Santee Sioux be placed on the Missouri River and drafted a bill to this effect. The site for their new home was later narrowed down to a point within a hundred miles of Fort Randall. Because the country below that post was beginning to fill up with white settlers, this instruction effectually limited the choice to some point above the fort--not too far above, however, for there was a supply problem to consider. The decision as to the exact site of the reservation was left to Superintendent Thompson, who received both oral and written instructions while in Washington in the spring of 1863. Thompson went exploring late in May, after the Indians had already been started on their way, and rather hastily, it would seem, decided upon a site about eight miles above the mouth of Crow Creek, some eighty miles above Fort Randall. He had been disappointed to find most of the country above the fort utterly unsuitable, devoid of timber or other resources; and knowing that the boat carrying the Indians was only a couple of days behind him, he apparently selected the first spot ____________________ 21 Ibid., 1863, p. 296 22 Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 256 - 257. -142- that seemed remotely acceptable. In his report to Commissioner Dole, made the day he arrived, he said: "I believe this is about the location the Secretary expected me to make; it is the best there is here anyway, so that I hope for your and his approval." Four days later he had almost convinced himself that it was a good place. "This is decidedly the best country above Fort Randall on the ceeded [sic] lands," he wrote the commissioner. "It has good soil, good timber and plenty of water." It was not perfect, however: "The only drawback that I fear is the dry weather. On the hills the grass is already dried up; but this is said to be an unusual season." 23 The three seasons the Santees spent at Crow Creek all proved to be "unusual," but Thompson kept right on justifying his desperate choice of a reservation in the face of irrefutable evidence that he had made a disastrous error. The first Sioux to leave Minnesota upon the opening of navigation in the spring of 1863 were the prisoners at Mankato. In order to forestall any possible violence by local mobs, plans for their removal were kept more or less secret until almost the last minute. There had been rumors that they were to be removed, but nothing definite was known until the Favorite docked at Mankato on the evening of April 21. The next morning four companies of infantry were on guard duty, in lines across the street in front of the prison. About 15 or 20 women went first, followed by 48 men who had been acquitted of formal charges but had been kept in confinement for no better reason than that they had been caught in bad company. These men were dropped off at Fort Snelling and joined their tribesmen who had spent the winter there. The 278 remaining prisoners came next, chained in pairs (3 who were ill were carried on blankets by their companions), and finally a company of troops who were to accompany them. Although there were many spectators, there was no disorder. The Mankato Weekly Record commented: "All believe they richly deserve hanging," but since this was not the President's will, "the next best thing was to take them away." 24 Many whites still refused to credit the story that these men had undergone a religious conversion and treated this report with ridicule. Commenting on a prayermeeting said to have been held on board the Favorite, the Central Republican thought it would have been fine if the boiler had exploded: ____________________ 23 Commissioner William P. Dole to Clark W. Thompson, April 8 and 9, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LS; Thompson to Dole, May 28 and June 1, 1863 (in Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1863, pp. 310-311, 316). 24 Mankato Weekly Record, April 25, 1863; Minnesota Pioneer, April 24, 1863. -143- What a glorious termination of Father Riggs' life-long Christian labors among the heathen it would have been if in the midst of that prayer season [sic] on the Favorite an explosion had occurred, which would have landed our land-lubber soldiers in some muddy marsh . . . while Father Riggs, with his pet lambs cleansed from all their sins in the blood of the innocents they slaughtered last Fall, purified through the gospel of [John] Beeson, and sanctified by faith in Riggs--went home to glory! 25 On the day before their departure Bishop Whipple wrote the Secretary of the Interior inquiring about the fate of the prisoners. Mentioning trials conducted in the heat of anger and errors made then and later, he suggested that perhaps they deserved a better fate than being sent to prison, far from their families. He thought some sort of reform school would be preferable, where they could learn to read and to practice trades that would be useful to them on their release. 26 These recommendations may have been given some attention, but they do not seem to have altered the immediate plans of the government, which were to confine the men at Camp McClellan, an army barracks near Davenport, Iowa, erected at the beginning of the Civil War for the reception of recruits. Except for some nineteen, who had been sentenced to specific prison terms, they were to be held here indefinitely, or until other plans for their disposition were decided upon. 27 The part of Camp McClellan in which the Indians were confined consisted of four barracks, one of which was used as a hospital and as quarters for the women and children who had accompanied the men. The camp, located on a high elevation, covered an area two or three hundred feet square and was enclosed by a board fence fifteen feet high. The barracks were of a temporary sort and afforded little shelter in the winter. Since the fuel the prisoners were allowed usually lasted only half a day in the coldest part of the winter, they spent their afternoons shivering in their worn blankets. Many developed tuberculosis and other diseases, and about 120 died during the three years they spent there. In the summer this "prison" was not a bad place. The inmates were permitted a good deal of freedom. They could work on nearby farms or go into town and trade mussel-shell rings, bows and arrows, and other products of their labor, all without a guard. No attempt at escape was ever made, although one is said to have been contemplated ____________________ 25 Central Republican, May 6, 1863. 26 Henry B. Whipple to Usher, April 21, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LR. 27 Stephen R. Riggs, Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux ( Boston: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 1880), p. 220; Mankato Weekly Record, May 9, 1863. -144- at one time. The interest in religion and education which had begun at Mankato continued here. Some of the money earned by trade went for books, which were thus in good supply among the prisoners. The elder Williamson had charge of the prisoners for the first two years and ministered to their needs diligently. Early in his stay with them, he ran into difficulty and was for a time excluded from the prison on the grounds that they were "such abominable villains, incarnate devils, guilty of murder, rape and countless other atrocities, that it was wrong to show them any kind of sympathy even so far as to preach the gospel to them." But later the ban was lifted, after Williamson protested that it constituted a violation of religious freedom. The Indians divided themselves into bands, according to their old village allegiances, each under a hoonkayape, or elder, and carried on their religious activities in this fashion. 28 Meanwhile, the main body of the Sioux at Fort Snelling were shipped out early in May, also by steamboat. Although an overland route would have been much shorter, Sibley had written Secretary of Interior Usher in March recommending shipment by water as cheaper and safer and pointing out that to send them by land would expose them to attack by hostile whites and also provide too many opportunities for escape. 29 While Superintendent Thompson was in St. Louis arranging for the transportation and subsistence of the Indians and buying farm implements and other necessary items, the actual removal was entrusted to his brother, Benjamin Thompson. On May 4 the first installment, made up mostly of women and children, boarded the Davenport and started on their way down the Mississippi. The boat, 35 feet wide and 205 feet long, carried 771 Indians and a military escort of 40 men. In such fashion did the contractor, Pierre Chouteau, Jr., and Company, fulfill the terms of the contract that called for "ample space for comfort, health, and safety" of the Indians. The next day the Northerner, pulling three barges and hence less crowded, departed with 547 Indians aboard. 30 Thompson's contract contained a provision that the passengers might ____________________ 28 Minnesota Pioneer, April 29, 1863; Mankato Weekly Record, May 9, 1863; Riggs, Mary and I, pp. 221-223; Riggs, Tah-koo Wah-kan, pp. 369-374; Thomas S. Williamson to Dole, July 25, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LR; Thomas S. Williamson to Stephen R. Riggs, May 9, 1863, August 18, 1863, and September 11, 1863, Riggs Papers. Williamson's first letter to Riggs cited here contains a detailed description of the prison camp. 29 Sibley to Usher, March 14, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LR. 30 William E. Lass, "The Removal from Minnesota of the Sioux and Winnebago Indians," Minnesota History, XXXVIII ( December 1963), 355-359; Minnesota Pioneer, May 5 and 6, 1863. -145- be transported by rail from Hannibal to St. Joseph. This was done with the second shipment. The Indians, accompanied by the younger Williamson, were jammed into freight cars, 60 to a car, for the trip across Missouri two days after their arrival at Hannibal on May 9. The first party, which included Hinman, went by boat all the way, transferring at St. Louis to the Florence for the slow ascent of the Missouri. At St. Joseph the two groups were reunited and completed the trip in incredible congestion. Williamson wrote his mother from St. Joseph that if all 1,300 were crowded onto one boat, it would be "nearly as bad as the Middle Passage for slaves." 31 He later described conditions on board the Florence, saying that when 1300 Indians were crowded like slaves on the boiler and hurricane decks of a single boat, and fed on musty hardtack and briny pork, which they had not half a chance to cook, diseases were bred which made fearful havoc during the hot months, and the 1300 souls that were landed at Crow Creek June 1, 1863, decreased to one thousand. . . . So were the hills soon covered with graves. The very memory of Crow Creek became horrible to the Santees, who still hush their voices at the mention of the name. 32 They had good reason to recall Crow Creek in after years with feelings of horror. The site chosen for their new home was as unsuitable as anything their nightmares might have conjured up in the months they remained at Fort Snelling anxiously awaiting the government's decision. Historian Heard, writing with evident relish, described it as "a horrible region, filled with the petrified remains of the huge lizards and creeping things of the first days of time. The soil is miserable; rain rarely ever visits it. The game is scarce, and the alkaline waters of the streams and springs are almost certain death." 33 If it was not quite that bad, it was certainly not a country "well adapted to agricultural purposes," as called for by the removal act. After a year's residence there, the agent described it in his annual report for 1864 as a droughtstricken desolation, a land with no lakes, almost no timber--"the whole country being one wilderness of dry prairie for hundreds of miles around." 34 The hope that the Indians might support themselves was ____________________ 31 John P. Williamson to Mrs. Thomas S. Williamson, May 13, 1863 (in Frances H. Relf , ed., "Removal of the Sioux Indians from Minnesota," Minnesota History Bulletin, II [ May 1918], 422-423). 32 Quoted in Riggs, Mary and I, p. 224. 33 Isaac V. D. Heard, History of the Sioux War and Massacres of 1862 and 1863 ( New York: Harper and Brothers, 1863), p. 295. 34 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1864, p. 411. -146- obviously incapable of fulfillment the first year because they had arrived too late and inadequate preparations had been made for them. Besides that, the region, never subject to heavy rainfall, was passing through a cycle of extreme drought in the 1860's, and "literally nothing" was harvested in 1863 and 1864. Furthermore, there was not much game in the area, and the Indians were forbidden to leave the reservation and hunt on the prairies, though a party accompanied by Williamson did go out during the first winter and brought back enough meat to save the colony from starvation. 35 Since the Indians could not support themselves at Crow Creek, the only way to save them from starvation was for the government to supply them with their necessities. This proved difficult because of the distance from all sources of supply, the brief period of navigability on the Missouri (and it was unusually low during the drought), the loss of cattle on the hoof in transit, and the exorbitant prices charged by suppliers. To prevent the scandal that would have resulted if the Indians had all starved, Thompson contracted for a quantity of pork and flour, together with three hundred head of beef cattle, to be shipped overland from Mankato in the late fall of 1863. This "Moscow expedition," as the newspapers called it, may have saved the Santees from extinction, but the pork and flour shipped to them had been condemned as unfit for consumption by soldiers, and the beef cattle became emaciated during their 292-mile trip to the reservation. The meat and flour, with appropriate quantities of water, were dumped together into wooden tanks made of fresh cottonwood logs, and the "rotten stuff" was ladeled out to the squaws. 36 The condition of the Indians at Crow Creek was relieved only temporarily and in indifferent fashion by the "Moscow expedition" of 1863 and its successor in 1864. It remained desperate during the entire period they were exiled there. The meager sum of $100,000 appropriated annually by Congress was insufficient to provide adequately for the Indians' needs. The three hundred deaths that occurred during the first ____________________ 35 Ibid., 1864, p. 410 ; Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 260-261; J. P. Williamson to Riggs, March 2, 1864, Riggs Papers. The younger Williamson wrote to Riggs that there was not even enough grass for prairie fires. He also remarked that on Isle Royale the Indians could at least have caught fish. See J. P. Williamson to Riggs, June 9 and July 22, 1863, Riggs Papers. 36 T. S. Williamson, et al., to Dole and Usher, September 8, 1864 (in Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1864, p. 421); Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 439-441; J. P. Williamson to Riggs, December 26, 1863, and January 16, 1864 (dated 1863), Riggs Papers. -147- few months were due largely, said the missionaries, to the lack of suitable food and clothing. As late as 1865 the absence of a physician or any medicines made it impossible to treat the great amount of illness aggravated by exposure and malnutrition. 37 As an illustration of the extremities to which the Indians were reduced, one of the soldiers who accompanied the first relief expedition reported on his return to Mankato that the squaws were picking half-digested kernels of grain out of horse manure and boiling them up for soup. Bishop Whipple repeated this story in numerous letters to government officials and also asserted that many previously respectable women had turned to prostitution as the only means of keeping themselves and their children alive. So desperate did the exiles become that some fled across the prairies in midwinter and arrived, half-starved and nearly frozen, at Faribault, having eaten nothing but roots dug from the frozen ground along the way. 38 The Winnebagos, whose number included a higher proportion of men, started leaving the reservation almost as soon as they arrived, most of them going to the Omaha reservation. Eventually, in 1865, the fait accompli of their flight was recognized by the government, and a treaty was made with the Omahas granting the Winnebagos part of their reservation. 39 ____________________ 37 T. S. Williamson, et al., to Dole and Usher, September 8, 1864 (in Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1864, p. 421); U.S. Statutes at Large, XIII, 180, 550, 559; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1865, pp. 1 89), 221. The amount appropriated in 1864 and 1865 was $100,000 each year, supplemented in the latter year by $54,711.83 for the Santees, the Winnebagos, and the Yanktons, to replace goods lost by the burning of the Welcome at St. Louis on July 15, 1864. The second "Moscow expedition" is discussed in the Mankato Weekly Record, November 26, 1864. For a complete account of these expeditions, see William E. Lass, "The 'Moscow Expedition,'" Minnesota History, XXXIX (Summer 1965), 227-240. 38 Mankato Weekly Record, January 16, 1864; Whipple to Secretary of Interior James Harlan, June 1, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR; Faribault Democrat, March 31, 1876 (quoting a letter from Whipple to New York Times, March 3, 1876). The letter to the Weekly Record from "One Who Has Been There" said of conditions at Crow Creek: "The condemned and rotten pork which was sold at the old Agency in this county [ Winnebago Agency] last fall for $1.25 per hundred, was carted across the country with us, and is now being retailed to the Indians by the traders at 25 cents per pound." The soldiers were said to have tried to burn the pork in their stoves, "but the stench was so awful that they could not remain in their tents." 39 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1863, pp. 321-323; George B. Graff to Dole, March 27, 1864; O. H. Irish to Dole, March 28, 1864; John A. Burbank to H. B. Branch, December 23, 1863; Burbank to Dole, January 11 and October 19, 1864; Robert W. Furnas to William M. Albin, September 28, 1864, NARS, RG 75, LR, -148-
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 15:56:23 GMT -5
The blame for keeping the Santees at Crow Creek rests partly with Superintendent Thompson, who refused to admit that he had made a mistake, partly on the preoccupation of the country with the Civil War, and partly on a failure of communication between the agent at Crow Creek and his superiors in Washington. Although Galbraith put in a brief appearance at the reservation, he was speedily assigned to work with the commission evaluating depredations claims, and the Winnebago agent, St. A. D. Balcombe, was placed in charge of the Santees. 40 Whatever Balcombe may have thought of Crow Creek, he does not seem to have exerted himself at first to have the Indians moved. Even when Indian Bureau officials requested his opinion on the suitability of the reservation, he apparently neglected to reply until prodded again and again. When he did write, no attention was paid to what he said. Once the commissioner refused to approve an additional expenditure for provisions on the ground that the Indians should sustain themselves partly by hunting. Yet Balcombe had earlier informed him that they had been disarmed and that the military commanders refused to let them hunt off the reservation. 41 Miserable as conditions at Crow Creek were, some effort was made to re-establish the institutions of the old reservation. As soon as Thompson had arrived, late in May, he had set about erecting temporary buildings, surveying the reservation, and plowing the ground on which it was hoped a crop might be raised. Since the Sioux and the Winnebagos were to be given adjoining reservations, he thought it advisable to locate the agency on the line between them so that it could serve both. A stockade four hundred feet square was constructed for the protection of ____________________ Winnebago Agency; Mankato Weekly Record, March 19, June 4, and September 3, 1864; Charles J. Kappler, comp. and ed., Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, II ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), 872-874. 40 Dole to Thomspon, May 30, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LS; Thompson to Galbraith, June 23, 1863; Thompson to Dole, June 24, 1863; Thompson to St. A. D. Balcombe, December 18, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LR, Northern Superintendency; Dole to Balcombe, February 8, 1864, NARS, RG 75, LS. John Williamson wrote Riggs: "I think that Supt Thompson will bring every influence to build up this Agency and as long as this Administration lasts will succeed." Thompson, he thought, was involved in a scheme to divert trade to the upper Missouri via Mankato by building a line of forts of which that at Crow Creek was one. See J. P. Williamson to Riggs, December 26, 1963, Riggs Papers. 41 Acting Commissioner Charles E. Mix to Balcombe, August 12, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LS; Thompson to Balcombe, December 18, 1863, NARS, RG 75, LR, Northern Superintendency. -149- the agency buildings and personnel. A sawmill was set up to prepare the cottonwood and other timber for use in the buildings, and roads were cut so that the cattle could be brought to the river for watering. Except for the plowing, which was wasted effort, these undertakings produced quite a satisfactory agency plant by the end of the summer. 42 The stockade and the small contingent of troops stationed there were insufficient protection, according to Balcombe, who reported in 1864 that it had been a year "full of fears anxieties and misfortunes." The agent and the Indians alike were acutely aware that they were surrounded by hostile Sioux, who looked with contempt on both their tribesmen who had surrendered and the alien Winnebagos. Consequently both tribes "lived in fear and trembling close to the stockade, in one consolidated community" instead of scattering on farms as they were supposed to do. When a report reached the agency that even the few troops stationed there would be withdrawn, Balcombe, in a paroxysm of terror, appealed to the commissioner for two companies of soldiers, to be subject exclusively to his orders, independent of the commanding officer of the district. He insisted that if the troops left, no whites or Winnebagos would stay at the agency. Commissioner Dole called this request "strange" and refused to consider it. Shortly afterward General Sully took away the cannon and all the troops except an infantry lieutenant, twelve infantrymen, and ten cavalrymen. One of the bastions to the stockade had never been completed, and another had recently burned. The agency was obviously in no condition to defend itself against a determined attack by the western Sioux whom Sully's campaign had stirred up. 43 Balcombe's personal anxiety may account in large measure for the semihysterical quality of his reports, but he had become convinced, by the end of the second summer of drought that the Indians were right in believing that nothing could be grown at Crow Creek. Unless it was the government's plan to let them become extinct, they would have to be placed in a more satisfactory location. Thompson did not, however, share Balcombe's feelings. In his report to the commissioner accompanying that of the agent, he largely negated the effect of the latter by saying that the Sioux were well pleased with the location, and if it were not for the faultfinding of the Winnebagos and the disposition of the whites to tell them the reservation was no good, all would be well. 44 ____________________ 42 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1863, pp. 310-311, 317-318; 1864, p. 408; J. P. Williamson to Mrs. Stephen R. Riggs, September 26, [ 1863], Riggs Papers. 43 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1864, pp. 408-411, 422-423. 44 Ibid., 1864, pp. 411-412, 402. -150- The missions provided the only hopeful note in Balcombe's report for 1864. The two missionaries who had accompanied the Indians to their new home had soon made an effort to re-establish the schools they had operated in Minnesota. Williamson opened a day school early in December which ran during the following winter with an average attendance of about a hundred. Most of the scholars were large, said Williamson, adding, "Nearly all the small children died in 1863. . . ." He reported that, whereas in 1862 only 20 of these people professed Christianity, now his congregation numbered 222. Balcombe reported that 412 Sioux had withdrawn from the tribe and wanted the "religion of civilization." Intemperance was no longer a problem, even though transients passing through provided an occasional source of whiskey. 45 The condition of the Santee Sioux improved somewhat in 1865. For one thing, they escaped from the obstinacy of Thompson and the timorousness of Balcombe. As part of a general administrative reorganization in the Indian Bureau, the Northern Superintendency was transferred that spring from St. Paul to Omaha, and the Crow Creek agency was placed under the Dakota Superintendency. Newton Edmunds, governor of Dakota Territory and ex officio superintendent of Indian affairs, was a native of Michigan who had previously served as a clerk in the Surveyor General's office. His older brother, James M. Edmunds, was commissioner of the General Land Office. After his nomination to the governorship, Edmunds had taken an especially active interest in Indian affairs. Now he followed the time-honored practice of replacing the agent and other personnel at the agency with men of his own choosing. Balcombe, who had never been formally appointed agent for the Sioux, was instructed to follow the majority of the Winnebagos and locate his agency on the land purchased for them from the Omahas. Simultaneously James M. Stone was appointed agent for the " Sioux of the Mississippi," as the Santees were still officially called. 46 Stone seems to have made a favorable impression on missionary Williamson, who wrote his father that the new agent was a "quiet unassuming man" and told Riggs: "I think the Agent will treat the Ind's kindly, and make a fair distribution of what is sent them, but that the funds will all be managed by the Governor ( Edmunds) and other men ____________________ 45 Ibid., 1864, pp. 413-415. 46 Ibid., 1865, pp. 47-48 ; Dole to Thompson, March 24, 1865; Dole to Balcombe, March 25, 1865; Dole to James M. Stone, March 27, 1865; Dole to Newton Edmunds, March 27, 1865, NARS, RG 75, LS; Herbert S. Schell, History of South Dakota ( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), pp. 105-106. -151- not here." 47 Like most Indian agents in their first report, Stone professed to have found everything in wretched shape on his arrival. One bastion of the stockade had no roof; plastering was needed; the fences were in poor condition; the prairie sod was badly broken; only 2 cows and 17 wagons, mostly in poor condition, had been turned over to him; of 170 ox-yokes, only 30 could be made serviceable; the boiler in the sawmill was leaky; the logs turned over to him were largely rotten; the powder magazine was a damp hole seven by nine feet; and beef that had been packed in snow had spoiled when warm weather came. 48 But Stone had great faith in the future of Crow Creek. The corn crop looked good, and although the potatoes had been ravaged by grasshoppers and bugs, he felt sure that the Indians were on their way to self-sufficiency. The supply problem was improving, too. Disdaining another Moscow expedition, Governor Edmunds industriously set about supplying Crow Creek from local sources, cutting some bureaucratic corners to do so. In justification of his failure to follow official directives, he reported that the Indians said "they have never before had as good beef or as much of it." According to Edmunds, they were also well pleased with their new agent and were generally doing better. About 3,000 bushels of corn were raised that year, enough to save many from starvation. 49 All was not rosy, however, despite Edmunds' optimistic view of the situation. Many of the Indians were still living in the cloth tipis they had brought with them from Minnesota or in bark shanties, which the governor described as "totally unfitted for winter." Stone persuaded fifteen of the most industrious to build log houses, and Edmunds urged the expenditure of a thousand dollars toward the construction of more. The hundred or so able-bodied men in the group were now permitted to hunt off the reservation, but when a party tried to enter the area east of the James River, where bison were plentiful, they were turned back by scouts acting under instructions from Joseph R. Brown and had to return with but little meat. Any Sioux from west of the James were regarded as hostile, regardless of their pedigree. Major Robert H. Rose, commanding at Fort Wadsworth, wrote Stone to that effect in the sum- ____________________ 47 J. P. Williamson to T. S. Williamson, June 20, 1865, Williamson Papers, Minnesota Historical Society; J. P. Williamson to Riggs, June 21, 1865, Riggs Papers. 48 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1865, pp. 219-220. 49 Ibid., 1865, pp. 228-229 ; Edmunds to Commissioner Dennis N. Cooley, January 31, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR. -152- mer of 1865, adding ominously "And I take no prisoners." Edmunds thought this threat should be sufficient grounds for removing Rose from his command, if not for dismissing him from the service, but the military were not accustomed to paying much attention to the opinions of men in the Indian Service. The Santees were unhappy about their exclusion from the area east of the James, especially since their relatives, the Sissetons, now gathered around Fort Wadsworth, were permitted to hunt there. 50 The Santee Sioux diminished steadily in number throughout the years they spent at Crow Creek, despite occasional accessions as the military rounded up fugitives during the expeditions of 1863 and 1864. Late in August, 1863, 116 prisoners were turned over to Colonel Stephen Miller at Fort Snelling, and the next winter 60 or 70 more surrendered. Most if not all of them were eventually delivered to Crow Creek, as were those who fled the reservation that winter and returned to Minnesota. Then, in 1864, some of the convicted men at Davenport were released and sent, together with a number of women and children--54 in all--to the agency. Yet when Stone took charge in June, 1865, he found only 1,043 Indians, more than 900 of them women, at Crow Creek. 51 Thus the death rate must have remained high even after the first six months, when casualties were heaviest. Unknown to the hapless Indians, events were taking place in Washington and elsewhere that were to result in their removal from Crow Creek in the spring of 1866. Brief as it was, the Crow Creek episode was an important period in the history of the Santee Sioux. Following upon the total disorganization of their society at the end of the uprising, it marked the beginning of new patterns of organization. The seven Mdewakanton bands had retained their identity, despite split-offs, during the reservation period of 1853-1862. They were still used for census purposes in the camp at Fort Snelling and seem to have formed the basis for the organization of the convicts at Camp McClellan. But the removal to Crow Creek and the three years there proved too much for the survival of these long-established tribal divisions. Early in 1866, ____________________ 50 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1865, pp. 189, 221; Stone to Cooley, October 4 and November 2, 1865, NARS, RG 75, LR. 51 C. G. Wykoff to Dole, September 24, 1863; Sibley to Thompson, May 14, 1864; Thompson to Dole, June 16, 1864, NARS, RG 75, LR; Sibley to Thompson, October 12, 1864; Thompson to Balcombe, October 14, 1864, NARS, RG 75, LR, Northern Superintendency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1865, p. 228. -153- Agent Stone reported that he had appointed a chief of a band of Santees made up of remnants of six old bands. 52 Although he probably overestimated his ability to make chiefs that the tribe would accept, his statement suggests that the old loyalties were breaking down and also that the initiative had passed from the Indians themselves to the representatives of the white man's government in Washington. As with so many other Indian tribes in the period after the Civil War, the dependence on the white man for much of their material culture was being extended to a dependence on him for their social and political organization as well. Coupled with the mass acceptance of Christianity, this meant that the Santee Sioux were losing their specifically Indian cultural identity. The rest of their story is essentially a chronicle of the process by which this loss came about and the sporadic and largely ineffectual efforts to arrest it. ____________________ 52 Stone to Edmunds, February 6, 1865, NARS, RG 75, LR. -154- CHAPTER 8 Recovery at Niobrara CROW CREEK was visited in the fall of 1865 by a peace commission consisting of Governor Edmunds, who acted as chairman; Edward B. Taylor, newly appointed Northern Superintendent; Generals Henry H. Sibley and Samuel R. Curtis; Orrin Guernsey; and the Reverend Henry W. Reed, who had been previously appointed to investigate conditions there. Their visit was brief, but in their official report they spoke "in the strongest possible terms" on the "state of semi-starvation for two years" and recommended that the Santees be moved. 1 Although several possible sites for a new home were considered, Superintendent Taylor, who seems to have been the most influential member of the commission, favored an area at the mouth of the Niobrara River in northeastern Nebraska Territory. He plugged for this location while in Washington in February, 1866, and Indian Commissioner Dennis N. Cooley, after consultation with Reed and the two generals, approved the recommendation. On February 27 an executive order was issued withdrawing from pre-emption and sale four townships in what is now Knox County. 2 ____________________ 1 Com. of Indian Affairs, Anuaal Report, 1866, p. 230. 2 Ibid., 1866, p. 223; Charles J. Kappler, comp. and ed., Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, I ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), 861. The establishment of the Santee Reservation is discussed in greater detail in my article "The Establishment of the Santee Reservation, 1866-1869" in Nebraska History, XLV ( March 1964), 59 - 97, of which the first part of this chapter is a summary. -155- The chief advantage of this site, as Taylor saw it, was that it had plenty of timber and at least two thousand acres of tillable land. In addition, being lower on the Missouri, it would be much easier to supply than Crow Creek. Taylor estimated that the cost of transportation could be cut in half at once, and he professed to believe that the Indians could be made self-supporting by October of 1867, after which the only cost to the government would be that of running the agency. Although a few settlers--not over half a dozen, Taylor thought--had taken claims on the land, their claims could be repurchased at a cost only slightly above the government price of public lands. 3 As soon as Taylor's plan became known, opposition developed in Dakota Territory, where commercial interests wanted to retain the patronage of the Crow Creek agency. The Yankton newspaper charged that the removal plan was a scheme concocted by Nebraska politicians for the benefit of their state, and Governor Edmunds, who seems not to have been consulted in the choice of a new location, argued that, given another year, Agent Stone could raise an abundance of food at Crow Creek, where the soil was just as good as at Niobrara and where the government had erected several thousand dollars' worth of buildings. 4 Nothing came of Edmunds' pleas, made early in April, for by that time plans for the removal of the Indians were well under way. The first to go to the new reservation were the prisoners at Davenport. The number of fugitives captured by the military since 1863 almost equaled the 120 deaths in the prison, so that by 1866 there were still, 177 prisoners and 70 women and children. After the pardoning of 30 or 40 in 1864, Thomas S. Williamson and others had worked actively for the release of the rest. Commissioner Cooley was kindly disposed toward them, saying in his report for 1865: "The only offence of which many of them appear to have been guilty is that of being Sioux Indians, and of having, when a part of their people committed the terrible outrages in Minnesota, taken part with them so far as to fly when pursued by the troops," and indicating that plans were under consideration for their release. 5 The stage was thus set for their removal to Nebraska. Upon the rec- ____________________ 3 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, pp. 223-224; Edward B. Taylor to Commissioner Dennis N. Cooley, April 6, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR. 4 Union and Dakotaian (Yankton), May 26, 1866; Governor Newton Edmunds to Cooley, March 17 and April 6, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR. 5 Stephen R. Riggs, Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux ( Boston: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 1880), pp. 220-223; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1865, p. 27; George E. H. Day to Stephen R. Riggs, October 27, 1865, Riggs Papers. -156- ommendation of General Alfred Sully, commanding the Department of Iowa, and General John Pope, the War Department agreed to turn the prisoners and their families over to the Indian Bureau. After some confusion caused by conflicting orders as to whether the War Department or the Interior Department was to furnish transportation and the failure of the agent assigned to receive and accompany them to appear before their departure from Davenport, the 247 Indians were finally placed on board the steamboat Pembina on April 10 for the trip to St. Louis, where they were transferred to the Dora and sent up the Missouri. 6 The trip was tedious and uneventful. The Indians took in the sights of St. Louis during their stop there, and one is said to have boasted of killing and scalping a dozen white women during the uprising. For the most part, however, they spent their time making pipes and other articles for sale along the way. They held twice-weekly religious services and devoted much time to reading books in Dakota. 7 After their arrival at the Niobrara about the middle of May, the Dora went on up the river with supplies for Fort Rice. It had been expected to bring down the Crow Creek people on its return trip, but hitches developed, and the Indians and their property had to be transported by land. The failure of the Dora to bring a hundred sacks of flour, as it had been expected to do, left the people at Crow Creek in a difficult plight. With supplies on hand for only ten days, Reed, serving as special agent, decided to send the old and infirm in wagons with some provisions, in hopes of reaching Fort Randall before their supplies were exhausted. They were sent on their way May 28, and the rest of the population went on foot or horseback, reaching Niobrara on June 11. 8 The whole operation had been rather badly managed, through the fault of no one in particular, but the reunion of the former prisoners with their families compensated for much of the inconvenience. ____________________ 6 General Alfred Sully to John P. Sherburne, Assistant Adjutant General, Department of the Missouri, December 29, 1865; Secretary of Interior James Harlan to Secretary of War E. M. Stanton, January 13, 1866; E. Schriver, Inspector General, to Harlan, January 30, 1866; Cooley to Harlan, March 26, 1866; Harlan to Cooley, March 27, 1866; General John Pope to Harlan, March 29, 1866; Jedediah Brown to Harlan, April 14, 1866; E. Kilpatrick to Cooley, May 3, 1866; Kilpatrick to Harlan, April 10 and 14, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, pp. 233-234. 7 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, p. 234; St. Louis Democrat, April 14, 1866 (cited in Mankato Weekly Record, April 28, 1866). 8 Kilpatrick to Harlan, April 14, 1866; E. B. Taylor to Cooley, May 3, 1866; Henry W. Reed to Cooley, May 25, 1866; J. Brown to Harlan, June 18, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, p. 232. -157- Preparations for their arrival had been under way for some time. Before the prisoners had arrived, Taylor had requisitioned a large hotel building at the Niobrara townsite and had bought two small buildings for storehouses. When the first Indians arrived, they were set to work planting corn and potatoes on some land already broken by one of the white settlers in the vicinity. The first site of the agency was at the townsite, about a mile east of the present town of Niobrara. There the Indians lived in tents, and the missionaries, their families, and other white people occupied the hotel. Very few improvements were made here, and those of a temporary nature. Because of lack of wood and also because of complaints from settlers that the Indians were committing minor depredations, they were removed that fall to winter quarters near the mouth of Bazile Creek, three or four miles down the Missouri from the townsite. The agency was re-established there, and various buildings, including warehouses, sleeping quarters for the employees, an agency office, a blacksmith shop, and an interpreter's house, were erected before cold weather set in. All the buildings were one-story, sodroofed affairs of logs, intended for only temporary occupancy. The missionaries built their own houses, of the same materials and much the same construction. 9 The tentativeness of these successive locations cannot have failed to impress the Indians with the uncertainty of their tenure in this new home. Although the amount of land withheld from entry and sale had been nearly doubled by a second executive order on July 20, the lands cannot be spoken of as a reservation in the customary sense of a permanent home guaranteed to the Indians by treaty with the United States government. Secretary Harlan's letter requesting the original withdrawal of four townships from the market stipulated that the withdrawal should be only temporary, "until the action of Congress be had, with a view to the setting apart of these townships as a reservation for the Santee Sioux Indians. . . ." 10 And until such action should be taken, there was nothing to prevent the government from moving the Indians anywhere it pleased. ____________________ 10 Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, I, 8 61)-8 62). 9 E. B. Taylor to Cooley, May 3, 1866; Hampton B. Denman to Commissioner Lewis V. Bogy, January 8, 1867; E. B. Taylor to Cooley, October 20, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, p. 243; Riggs, Mary and I, p. 232; Winifred W. Barton, John P. Williamson, a Brother to the Sioux ( Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1919), p. 109; John P. Williamson to Thomas S. Williamson, September 17, 1866, and to Mrs. Thomas S. Williamson, November 3, 1866, Williamson Papers; John P. Williamson to Stephen R. Riggs, November 12, 1866, Riggs Papers. -158-
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 15:56:54 GMT -5
The uncertainty of the Indians' position, coupled with their own dissatisfaction, provided an opportunity for the Dakota politicians to work for their removal. Even before they arrived at Niobrara, a storm of protest went up from the white settlers on the opposite side of the Missouri. Although the complaints stressed the danger to the white population from "these hell hounds of Minnesota notoriety," as territorial delegate Walter A. Burleigh called them, the real motives seem to have been a desire to regain the patronage of the agency. When the Dakota politicians proposed a new home for the Santee Sioux, they suggested not some remote spot farther west, but a tract of land between the James and Big Sioux rivers, in eastern Dakota. This scheme was opposed, for different reasons, by the congressional delegations from Nebraska, Iowa, and Minnesota, by Episcopal missionary Samuel D. Hinman, and by the Indian Bureau itself. The plan went as far as the issuance of an executive order, dated March 20, 1867, closing the proposed reservation to white settlement, but Hinman persuaded the chiefs to reject it, and nothing further came of it. 11 Although the scheme was defeated, the Santees were not quite through moving. In the spring of 1867 they were instructed to move to a point a few miles below the agency and plant there one season, "with the assurance that if they were pleased with the location it would be secured to them as a permanent home." 12 This proposed new location, called Breckenridge after a city projected for the site in the early days, was said to be favored by the Indians and had the advantage, as the new superintendent, Hampton B. Denman, saw it, of being well supplied with hardwood timber. The Bazile Creek site had been virtually denuded of timber during the Indians' brief stay there, and the nearest timber was at Breckenridge, where much of the lumber used in the construction of houses and other buildings the previous fall had been obtained. 13 On the strength of the promise made to the Indians, Agent Stone ____________________ 11 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, p. 229; Memorial to the President of the United States Relative to the Removal of the Santee Band of Sioux Indians, January 10, 1867; Ignatius Donnelly and William Windom to Secretary of Interior Orville Browning, March 20, 1867, NARS, RG 75, LR; Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 3062; Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, I, 897-898; J. P. Williamson to Riggs, May 3, 1867, Riggs Papers. 12 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1868, p. 246. 13 James M. Stone to Denman, May 27, 1867; Denman to Bogy, January 8, 1867, NARS, RG 75, LR; J. P. Williamson to Mrs. T. S. Williamson, November 3, 1866, Williamson Papers. -159- went ahead during the summer of 1867 and moved the agency buildings to the new site. As soon as the breaking plows that had been ordered arrived, early in June, he set part of the teams to breaking new land there while the rest were used to haul the buildings. About two thirds of the plowing that year was done in the Breckenridge vicinity, the rest at the old Bazile Creek site. A good deal was accomplished that summer, and if grasshoppers had not made one of their periodic incursions and destroyed the crops, it might have marked a real step toward self-sufficiency for the Santees. 14 Grasshoppers were not the only source of trouble that summer, however. Although the new agency site was on previously reserved lands, some of the most valuable timber lay just east of the reservation boundary, and in order to acquire it (and for other reasons), Denman recommended the addition of one full and one fractional township to the east of the reservation as it then existed. He also recommended that two of the originally reserved townships, including that on which the townsite of Niobrara was located, be restored to the market. His suggestions were not acted upon immediately, and in the interval certain Dakota citizens got wind of the plan and set about taking claims on the sections containing the timber Denman especially wished to reserve. Technically within their rights, since no order had been issued withdrawing this land from entry, they refused to move away when Stone informed them that the land where they were cutting timber and building a house had been reserved for the Indians. 15 Under the impression that the lands had already been withdrawn, Hinman had begun building a mission, when he was interrupted by a pair of "meddlesome squatters from Dacota," as Denman called them. The wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly, and it was not until November 16 that an executive order was finally issued adding to the reservation the lands desired by Denman and restoring to the market the township containing the townsite. 16 A delegation of Indians who had gone to Washington early in 1867 to consider the proposal to remove them to Dakota had been told then that another peace commission would visit them the next summer. When it arrived, about harvest time, its message was not calculated to please the Indians. According to Agent Stone, they were told "that ____________________ 14 Stone to Denman, May 31, June 5, and September 21, 1867, NARS, RG 75, L.R. 15 Denman to Bogy, January 8, 1867; Stone to Denman, August 30, 1867, ibid. 16 Samuel D. Hinman to Denman, August 30, 1867; Denman to Acting Commissioner Charles E. Mix, September 5 and 6, 1867, ibid.; Kappler. Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, I, 862. -160- they must leave here next Summer, that none would be allowed to remain unless they abandoned their tribal relations and relied upon their own exertions for support." 17 Although this threat was doubtless intended to stimulate the Santees to greater efforts in their own behalf, its effects were in fact demoralizing. The tribesmen were unwilling to give up their tribal relations, and they were unprepared to take upon themselves the full task of their support. The result was that instead of working harder, they almost gave up working at all. Stone and Denman believed that, after the "debased and indolent life led by these Indians" since leaving Minnesota, it would take several years of intensive training before they could be placed on their own, and instead of being hauled off to a new reservation, they should be allowed to sink their roots deeply into the one where they were. 18 This recommendation, sensible as it was, did not coincide with the plans of the peace commissioners, who wished to set up a vast reservation--a northern Indian territory--bounded by the forty-sixth parallel, the Missouri River, the Nebraska border, and the 104th meridian. In their report to the President the next January they included the Santees among the tribes to be placed on the reservation, although they added that it might be advisable to let them and the other Nebraska tribes remain where they were and become incorporated with the citizens of the state. They persuaded the Santees to allow their chiefs and headmen to inspect the country that had been designated for them on the proposed reservation, but it was found to be much like Crow Creek. To their objections, voiced by the agent and superintendent, the only comfort Commissioner Nathaniel G. Taylor could give was the instruction to tell the Indians that it would be "perfectly safe" for them to plant and that they would "not be removed from their present location against their own consent." 19 His promise apparently did not satisfy the Indians, for at the end of April, 1868, Stone wrote that even those who had formerly been the most industrious were refusing to plant this year. They expected the peace commission back that summer, to tell them to move. With an unconscious irony that one more familiar with their history would have noticed, Stone observed that their uncertainty tended to weaken their ____________________ 17 Stone to Denman, November 30, 1867, NARS, RG 75, LR. 18 Stone to Denman, January 31, 1868; Denman to Commissioner Nathaniel G. Taylor, February 3 and 17, 1868, ibid. 19 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1868, pp. 46, 246-247; N. G. Taylor to Denman, March 3, 1868, NARS, RG 75, LR. -161- respect for the government and for their agent, and might eventually destroy their faith in the integrity of the men in charge of that government. 20 Denman repeatedly went to bat for the Santees. Submitting Stone's remarks to the commissioner, he added his own comment that they had suffered enough in the previous six years to atone for any crimes they might have committed during the uprising and that it was now time to show "magnanimity and kindness." In his official report for 1867 he had stressed their atonement: All treaties with these Indians have been abrogated, their annuities forfeited, their splendid reservation of valuable land in Minnesota confiscated by the government, their numbers sadly reduced by starvation and disease; they have been humiliated to the dust, and in all these terrible penalties the innocent have suffered with the guilty. He asked for a treaty commission to guarantee them their present reservation and recommended that part of their annuities be restored. 21 When another peace commission went up the Missouri in June, 1868, it stopped at the Santee Agency just long enough to gather the chiefs and virtually force them to accompany the party to Fort Rice. The outlook was ominous. Williamson wrote to his father that " Stone says the Commissioners talked more independent than last year. They said they had made up their minds the Santees could not stay in Nebraska so they were going [to] tell them at once that they had to go up in the new T[erritory] when they came to council. It was all a humbug to ask what they wanted when the dose was all ready cut & dried." 22 The outcome was not so bad as he and the Indians expected, however. When the chiefs returned from Fort Rice, they had signed, on behalf of the Santees, the 1868 treaty of Fort Laramie with the Sioux. The provisions of that treaty which affected the Santees were those providing for the allotment of lands to anyone desiring to farm. The act of March 3, 1863, had contained a similar provision, but now the Indians' consent was obtained and the size of the proposed allotments increased from 80 to 160 acres. According to Stone's annual report, the commissioners assured the Indians that if they would adopt white customs, take land in severalty, and begin farming, the government would allow them to remain where they were and assist them generously in their efforts. 23 ____________________ 20 Stone to Denman, April 30, 1868, ibid. 21 Denman to N. G. Taylor, June 12, 1868, ibid.; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1867, p. 265. 22 J. P. Williamson to T. S. Williamson, June 19, 1868, Williamson Papers. 23 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1868, p. 247; Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, II, 999-1000. -162- The 1868 Fort Laramie treaty, the last participated in by the Santee Sioux, provided the basis for most legislation concerning them in subsequent years. If its terms left their situation still somewhat indefinite, the allotment provision gave them some measure of security. The stage which may properly be called the establishment of the Santee Reservation came to an end in the summer of 1869, when the boundaries were finally determined. To forestall threatened immigration into a township adjacent to the reservation, an executive order was issued on August 31 withdrawing it from entry and sale; at the same time three townships south and southwest of Niobrara which had never been occupied by the Santees were restored to the market. These changes left the Santee Reservation a compact rectangular tract of land, twelve miles from east to west and averaging about fifteen miles from north to south, encompassing 115, 075.92 acres. It included some good agricultural land, particularly in the southern and eastern parts and along the streams, but a great deal of it was suited only for grazing. One superintendent, after examining the reservation, described it as "the roughest and least valuable tract of country I have seen in Nebraska, a large part of it being bluffs and steep hills only fit for pasturage." His successor doubted that the bluff land, covered with wild sage and cactus, was good even for pasture, except in the ravines. In the 1890's, when the potentialities of the area had been more fully revealed, a member of Congress commented that "for the past three or four years, on account of the extreme drought, it would be difficult to graze one steer on five acres of these high lands on the Missouri bluffs." 24 Though parts of the Santee Reservation, especially the wild, rugged area called the Devil's Nest, possess a certain austere beauty, agriculturally it was no substitute for the rich lands of the Minnesota valley taken from the Indians by Congress in 1863. The year 1869 brought other changes to the Santee Sioux. As part of President Grant's revamping of Indian policy, the Northern Superintendency was turned over to the Society of Friends. Samuel M. Janney replaced Denman as superintendent, and his brother, Asa M. Janney, was appointed Santee agent. The Janneys, natives of Loudoun County, Virginia, were both in their late sixties when they came to Nebraska and were lifelong members of the Society. Samuel, the elder by two years, was the author of at least ten books and pamphlets, including ____________________ 24 Hinman to Commissioner Ely S. Parker, June 29, 1869, NARS, RG 75, LR; Samuel M. Janney to Parker, August 19, 1871; Barclay White to Parker, January 11, 1872, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Sioux Agency; Kappler, Indian Afffairs, Laws and Treaties, I, 862-864; 54th Cong., 2nd Sess., S. Rpt. 1362, p. 7. -163- some poetry on Indian themes. He had at one time operated a girls' boarding school in Virginia and had interested himself in Negro education before the Civil War. The two men were full of ideas about the management of the agency, ideas which, for better or worse, continued to affect the Santee Sioux long after the Janneys had left office. 25 One of the pet schemes nursed by Agent Janney, who had been a miller in his home state, was to build a gristmill on Bazile Creek, move the agency there, and establish the Indians on farms surrounding this administrative center. There was no flour mill within forty miles, and it was thought that a considerable saving could be made by grinding the wheat raised by the Indians rather than shipping in flour, as had been done in the past. Shortly after he took office, Janney began drawing up specifications for a mill, and construction got under way in 1870. After several delays, the mill was finally ready to start grinding in June, 1871. No sooner had it begun operating, however, than portions of the dam gave way because of the porous nature of the soil. Such accidents continued to interrupt milling activities throughout the years the mill was in operation. A fine three-story chalkstone structure, it speedily became a liability rather than an asset to the agency and eventually had to be abandoned. 26 Janney's hopes for moving the agency to Bazile Creek were never realized, but another project of his, an Indian police force, did become a reality. The idea originated when the chiefs refused to take action against one Mazazidan, who was charged with abusing his wife and stealing horses. Janney and his employees were finally obliged to arrest Mazazidan themselves, but the agent thought it would be better to have a corps of men, carefully selected for reliability, who would be responsible to the agent for the maintenance of law and order. In October, 1869, he asked for, and shortly received, authority to organize a police force to consist of one man from each of the six bands, chosen by the chiefs. At first he tried paying them on a fee basis, so much for each arrest, but he found them overzealous and had to abandon that policy ____________________ 25 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1868, p. 5; Henry E. Fritz, The Movement for Indian Assimilation, 1860-1890 ( Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963), pp. 73-74; William Bacon Evans, "Dictionary of (American) Quaker Biography," ms in Quaker Collection, Haverford College. 26 S. M. Janney to Parker, August 20, 1869, and June 17, 1870; Asa M. Janney to S. M. Janney, September 17, 1869, January 10, June 27, and November 12, 1870, NARS, RG 75, LR; A. M. Janney to S. M. Janney, June 4 and 21, 1871, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Sioux Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1883, p. 108. -164-
· Title: History of the Santee Sioux: United States Indian Policy on Trial · Publisher: University of Nebraska Press · Publication Date: 1993 · Page No: * in favor of a flat wage of five dollars a month. 27 Except for a few intervals, the police force, one of the first such experiments on any reservation, remained a permanent institution at Santee for the rest of the nineteenth century. Janney's most important achievement during his two years as agent was the allotment of land to the Indians and their settlement on farms scattered over the reservation. The uncertainty of their tenure led some of the more thoughtful to the conviction that their only security lay in the allotment of land in severalty. Fearing that nothing would be done toward this end at Santee, and resenting the authority of the old chiefs, a number of the men who had emancipated themselves from tribalism while at Davenport left the reservation in the spring of 1869, together with their families, and took up homesteads in the valley of the Big Sioux River, in the vicinity of the later town of Flandreau, South Dakota. To forestall similar action by others, Janney began to press strongly for allotment almost as soon as he became agent. He called the Indians together in the summer to tell them of his plans and to get their reaction. He was able to report a favorable response, and sent to Commissioner Ely S. Parker a petition from the chiefs and headmen asking for allotment as a means of preventing a further exodus by men who believed " that the Government does not intend to give them here a permanent home." 28 Although Janney's first intention was to allot 160 acres to each of two hundred heads of families, under the terms of the 1868 treaty, he later adopted the plan of allotting smaller farms of 40 and 80 acres, as specified in the act of March 3, 1863. He proposed to spend $329 per family, this sum to cover a house (for fifty dollars), a yoke of oxen, a stove, a cow, six sheep, two goats, and two hogs. It would be best, he thought, to settle the valleys first, since they contained the land best suited for the Indians and also because there was a threat of a land grant to a railroad that would follow the course of Bazile Creek. 29 As with his other projects, the allotment did not proceed quite as Janney wished. There were delays in the survey, and the agent was faced with knotty problems such as how much land to give a man with more than one wife. By the end of May, 1870, however, two hundred farms of So acres and two ____________________ 27 A. M. Janney to S. M. Janney, October 19, 1869, and January 22, 1870, NARS, RG 75, LR. 28 A. M. Janney to S. M. Janney, June 19, 1869; Chiefs and Head Men to Commissioner Parker, July 19, 1869, ibid. 29 A. M. Janney to S. M. Janney, October 1, 1869, and January 10, 1870; S. M. Janney to Parker, January 3, May 31, and June 17, 1870, ibid. -165- hundred 40 acres had been laid out. Some Indians had already settled on their farms then, and by the next spring about sixty families were thus located, despite a drought the previous year which had resulted in an almost complete crop failure. 30 In his last annual report, made in July, 1871, Janney wrote that about 80 houses had been built on individual allotments and furnished with windows and doors from a sawmill which he had set up two years earlier. Most of the houses had tables, often covered with oil cloth; bedsteads, cupboards, and benches or seats were common now. Over 150 bed quilts had been made in the previous eighteen months. Some women were raising chickens, and nearly half the families had cows. 31 It should perhaps be mentioned that the Indians did not receive patents for these allotments. Instead, they were given certificates which stated that the United States would hold the title in trust for the holder and his heirs so long as they continued to occupy the land. It was specified that these certificates conferred no right except that of possession; further legislation by Congress would be required to convey a fee simple title. 32 The decade of the 1870's witnessed a gradual decline in the numbers of the Santees. From 974 in 1870, the population dwindled to 791 four years later and to 736 by 1879. 33 The most important single event among many that conspired to bring about this decline was a devastating smallpox epidemic in 1873. About the middle of August a Santee prostitute returned from Fort Randall with a case of what the agency physician diagnosed as syphilis. A scattering of other cases appeared in following weeks, but not until September 25 was the disease recognized as smallpox. By that time it was out of control and the physician himself was down with it. In response to an appeal from the agent, Joseph Webster, the Indian Office sent a special agent to take over and employed a Yankton physician, who hurriedly erected a crude hospital and vaccinated everyone he could. By mid-December the epidemic had run its course, after causing at least 7 deaths out of 150 cases. The effects of the outbreak were similar to those accompanying the great ____________________ 30 S. M. Janney to Parker, February 8, March 11, and May 31, 1870, ibid.; S. M. Janney to Parker, February 21, 1871; A. M. Janney to S. M. Janney, May 1 and July 5, 1871, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1870, p. 227. 31 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1871, pp. 441-443. 32 Sample certificate (no date), NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. 33 A. M. Janney to S. M. Janney, August 20, 1870, NARS, RG 75, LR; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1874, p. 36; 1879, p. 236. -166- plagues of the past. People fled their homes and camped in isolated places, or else turned the sick out of doors and left them to die in the bushes. Many fled the reservation entirely and never returned. 34 Thus the Santee population was considerably reduced both through the deaths themselves and through the panic-stricken flight of many who did not catch the disease. Despite this outbreak and repeated crop failures, which also caused many departures from the reservation, the population did not diminish fast enough to suit the white population, now filling up the surrounding country. In 1871 a Niobrara merchant wrote Senator P. W. Hitchthingy demanding the restoration to the market of the Santee Reservation. "The Counties below are pretty well settled up," he wrote, " most of the good Land that is not occupied by settlers is in the hands of speculators, the emmigration to our County has been good this year and I think next year all the Land will be taken by actual settlers and if you will be kind enough to get those Santee Indians out of Nebraska, the emmigration will be much larger yet." He claimed, with some exaggeration, that the reservation constituted the best part of the county. 35 When the town of Niobrara acquired a newspaper, it served as a medium of expression for those who wished to have the Indians removed. Edwin A. Fry, the spitfire editor of the Niobrara Pioneer, argued that the Indians were kept there in order to furnish jobs for the agency employees, who "generally see that their red charge get paid for loafing." 36 In the next years hostility to the Sioux, following the Battle of the Little Big Horn and other conflicts, was extended to the Santees, although no one could by that time have taken very seriously any talk of an uprising by them. When removal of the Poncas to Indian Territory was broached in 1877, local sentiment demanded that the Santees accompany them, and an effort was made in Congress to include them in the Ponca removal bill. It was true, said the Pioneer, that they dressed as white men, but this was at government expense, as was their farming. When the Poncas were removed, there was some agitation to have the ____________________ 34 Dr. George Roberts to Commissioner Edward P. Smith, November 6, 1873; White to E. P. Smith, December 22, 1873, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. 35 H. Westermann to Senator P. W. Hitchthingy, November 3, 1871, ibid. Westermann was later said to be a contender for the post of Santee agent, to the dismay of the Indians, who got up a petition protesting against his appointment, on grounds that he was a drunkard, "a man who defies God," and an Indian-hater. "For ten years he has been working to drive off the Santee people from this land," said the petition. See Petition to Commissioner Hiram Price, March 14, 1882, ibid. 36 Niobrara (Nebr.) Pioneer, October 20, 1874. -167-
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 15:57:33 GMT -5
Santees placed on the old Ponca Reservation as a buffer between the Teton Sioux and the white settlements. When all these efforts failed, the tactics were changed to a demand that the Indians be allotted lands in severalty, without restrictions. "If the Santee Indians would consent to abandon their tribal relations and receiving government aid, we apprehend that no one would object to their locating in our country," wrote editor Fry--meaning, of course, that their lands would soon find their way into white possession. 37 Despite the sense of insecurity this constant agitation for removal engendered in the minds of the Santees, there was fairly steady progress toward adoption of the white man's way in the 1870's. Perhaps the most significant evidence of change was the increasing pressure during the decade for abandonment of the old political system with its chiefs, and the substitution of an elective system patterned after that of the white community. Growing out of the experience with the Hazelwood Republic on the old reservation in Minnesota, and encouraged strongly by the American Board missionaries, this movement began to manifest itself in 1873, although there had been tentative moves in that direction before the Flandreau exodus four years earlier. A petition from the Indians requesting the change was prepared in August, 1873, misplaced during the smallpox epidemic, and recovered the next spring, at which time it was forwarded to the Secretary of the Interior. Noting that there was opposition from elements of the tribe, Secretary Delano recommended taking no action until the Indians had discussed the matter in council and determined the will of the majority. 38 The proposal was presented to the Indians for a vote in June, 1874, and defeated by a slender margin. Agent Webster thought that the republican element was growing in strength and that the Indians should be allowed to work the matter out among themselves. 39 When the subject came up again the next February, the hereditary chiefs, most of whom were old men, presented a petition in which they charged that they could not legally be removed without an act of Congress "at the behest of a mean sentiment, attractive to all young and half-enlightened people, 'that the right of suffrage brings always prosperity.'" Behind the chiefs in promoting this Tory point of view was the Episcopal missionary, Hinman, then as usual at odds with the American Board ____________________ 37 Ibid., February 15, 1877; May 31, 1878; and February 28, 1879. 38 Petition to Commissioner E. P. Smith, August 27, 1873; Webster to E. P. Smith, March 12, 1874; Secretary of Interior Columbus Delano to E. P. Smith, March 28, 1874, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Niobrara Pioneer, April 26, 1878. 39 Webster to E. P. Smith, June 16, 1874, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. -168- people. In reply, the advocates of an elective system, supported by the latter faction, presented a petition pointing out that if the Indians were to adopt white ways, the institution of the chieftainship would have to go. 40 The movement for elective officers received a stimulus from the death of the head chief, Wabasha, on April 23, 1876. By that time even Hinman had come around to the point of view that perhaps the Santees had outgrown the chieftainship, especially since the chiefs and headmen exerted little influence over the tribe. He suggested that another election be held to determine the future political pattern of the Santees. If they should decide upon an elective system, let the reservation be divided into four districts, with two councilors from each, to hold office for two years. 41 With the missionaries in substantial agreement on the policy to be adopted, the principal obstacles to another election had been removed. When the election was finally held, on January 22, 1878, all seventy-four votes cast favored the abolition of the old system. There were another forty-one eligible voters, ten of whom were also in favor of a change, thought the agent. The pattern proposed by Hinman was followed in the subsequent election for councilmen. Most of those elected were of the "progressive" faction, but Napoleon Wabasha, son of the late chief, was returned from his district. 42 Although the actual power wielded by the council was negligible, the peaceful adoption of the elective system was evidence of the transformation that was taking place among the Santees. The Indians' relatively rapid acceptance of the white man's political methods was not accompanied by comparable progress toward economic self-sufficiency, despite the best efforts of the successive agents. Perhaps the most serious hindrance to their attempts was the region's susceptibility to drought, grasshopper infestation, and other obstacles to successful agriculture. During the early and middle seventies, years of passably good crops alternated with years of partial or total crop failure. 43 Although conditions toward the end of the decade were better, drought was to return in the 1880's. ____________________ 40 Webster to E. P. Smith, February 27 and June 5, 1875; Petition from Chiefs to E. P. Smith, February 19, 1875, ibid. 41 Hinman to Commissioner John Q. Smith, January 16, 1877; Charles Searing to J. Q. Smith, January 8, 1877, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies. 42 Isaiah Lightner to Commissioner Ezra A. Hayt, January 23 and April 20, 1878, ibid.; Niobrara Pioneer, April 26, 1878. 43 A. M. Janney to Parker, February 21, 1871; Webster to E. P. Smith, June 19, 1874; Webster to White, July 17, 1874, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1871, pp. 442-443; 1872, p. 217; 1873, p. 188; 1874, p. 208; 1875, p. 323; 1876, p. 100. -169- Convinced that self-sufficiency could be attained if only the Indians would work harder, the Indian Office did its best to encourage them to greater exertions; but it was too far from the scene to time its inducements to the vagaries of the weather. The 1868 treaty had provided for prizes to be awarded to the farmers raising the best crops. Offered at Santee in 1870, they went to two men, both past sixty; no mention was made of the premiums in later years. 44 Another type of stimulus, used repeatedly, was the threat to withdraw rations. But the Indians could hardly be blamed if grasshoppers took their crops, and the government was always prepared, if sometimes tardily, to provide the necessities in such cases. All through the seventies there was talk of reducing or eliminating rations altogether. In 1873--a good year--the Indians received with equanimity the news that their subsistence would be discontinued after the next fiscal year. But after the almost total failure of crops the following summer, missionary Alfred L. Riggs wrote the commissioner that if this policy were carried out, there would be great distress and some Indians would wander off, perhaps permanently. 45 In view of the predicament the Indians were in, the issue of rations was reinstated. Nevertheless, the agent proposed to continue a policy, begun in 1874, by which all able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five were required to work for any rations they received. The terms were modified at the beginning of 1876 to include work on their own allotments. 46 The principal crop on the Santee Reservation was wheat. Wheatraising began on a significant scale in 1876, when 166 acres were sown, and the agent requested a smaller quantity of wheat in his quarterly estimates for subsistence. The acreage increased rapidly, until in 1879 more than 1,200 acres were sown. Threshing machines, reapers, and cradles became important articles in the agent's requests beginning in ____________________ 44 A. M. Janney to Parker, February 21, 1871, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, II, 1002. 45 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1873, p. 188; Alfred L. Riggs to E. P. Smith, August 7, 1874, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. The food given the Indians was no more than enough to sustain life. In the fall of 1874, for example, each individual received a weekly ration amounting to 4 1/2 pounds of beef, 3 1/2 pounds of flour, 5 1/2 ounces of pork, 3 ounces of sugar, and 1 1/2 ounces of coffee, plus 8/13 ounce of soap and 1/2 ounce of tobacco. The last four items were issued only once per quarter. The usual practice was to give each head of family a ration ticket, with the number of rations he was entitled to, at the start of each quarter. These were presented at the agency warehouse each Saturday. See Webster to White, December 17, 1873, and Webster to E. P. Smith, November 6, 1874, ibid. 46 Searing to J. Q. Smith, December 15, 1875, ibid. -170- 1876. He did not always get what he asked for, but in 1877 three reapers were at work in the fields, and two years later there were thirteen. The increase in other machinery was equally impressive. By the end of the decade sixteen horse rakes and thirteen mowing machines were in operation. 47 All this activity on the reservation, however, did not by any stretch of the imagination mean that the Santees were self-sufficient. There was probably a measure of justice in the Pioneer's charges that government employees were doing their work for them. Intermittent drought and grasshopper invasions were not the only reasons for the failure of the Santees to become self-supporting. As has always been the case in the management of Indian affairs, the effort in their behalf was subject to frequent interruptions and changes of direction. For one thing, the agency changed hands more often than was desirable. Webster, who had taken over from Janney in 1871, remained only until 1875 and was under attack during much of his term for displaying a lack of energy. Upon his resignation, Charles H. Searing, who had previously been steward at the agency school, took over and held the office for less than two years. Then Isaiah Lightner was nominated for the post, but because his nomination was not acted upon by the Senate, he had to be content with the position of "farmer-in-charge" for about a year, under the jurisdiction of the Yankton agent, John G. Gassman. Conditions at the agency suffered a regression during this interregnum, for Gassman, according to a later special agent, on the first day of his administration, "placed his hand improperly into the U.S. Treasury" and undermined the morale of his employees by his practices. Gassman was removed after a few months and another agent appointed at Yankton. Shortly afterward Lightner's appointment as agent was confirmed, and affairs at the Santee agency began to run more smoothly. 48 All the Santee agents during the seventies were Quakers, apparently hard-working, conscientious men, at least in so far as their correspondence and the absence of evidence to the contrary can furnish a key to their character. ____________________ 47 Searing to J. O. Smith, April 26 and May 1, 1876, ibid.; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1877, p. 147; 1879, pp. 104-105. 48 A. M. Janney to S. M. Janney, July 5, 1871; S. M. Janney to Parker, July 11, 1871; William Dorsey to Parker, June 20, 1871; White to Webster, May 29, 1874; B. R. Cowen, Acting Secretary of Interior, to E. P. Smith, August 12, 1875; Searing to E. P. Smith, October 6, 1875, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Lightner to J. Q. Smith, May 1, 1877; White to Hayt, December 8, 1878; John W. Douglas to Hayt, July 2, 1878; White to B. Rush Roberts, October 11, 1877, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies. -171- Another reason for the lack of continuity on the reservation was the vulnerability of the Indian Office itself, which was politically controlled and had to respond to the same pressures as other government agencies. The panic of 1873 brought a general retrenchment that was bound to affect the Santee agency in time. Agent Searing complained in 1876 that the "sweeping reduction in the employé force" had produced unfortunate effects at Santee. There was no money to pay the police force, for example, and their services, which had become quite valuable, had had to be dispensed with. During that summer the gristmill was idle and the various shops closed most of the time owing to a lack of men to operate them. 49 Janney's white elephant, the gristmill, was a source of much annoyance and may have played a role in delaying the agricultural progress of the Santees. At times when it was idle due to low water or a washout at the dam, the agent had to contract for flour at a price much higher than that charged for wheat. About the most that could be said for the mill was that the constant need for repairs provided employment for a number of Indians and thus enabled them to collect rations. 50 Yet despite all these handicaps there was progress in the direction desired by the men who formulated and executed Indian policy. Not only were the Santees cultivating more land each year, but they were adopting a good many of the customs and conveniences of white men. Houses were built; wagons, plows, harrows, and other implements were issued; and some Indians were encouraged to build up cattle herds. As early as 1873, Webster submitted a list of forty-eight men who could be trusted to take care of cows. That year the carpenter and his apprentices were kept busy making door and window frames, cupboards, benches, tables, and chests; about half the houses then boasted some or all of these conveniences. 51 For a time a matron was provided by the Society of Friends to visit the Indian women in their homes and instruct them in such household arts as soapmaking. The epidemic of 1873 may have had something to do with the emphasis on soap in the next year or so, as it undoubtedly did with the effort to substitute shingles for dirt roofs, and board floors for the bare earth. By 1877, 50 of the 153 houses had shingle roofs, and most of them had board floors. By ____________________ 49 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1878, p. 100. 50 Edw. C. Kemble, U.S. Indian Inspector, to J. Q. Smith, January 22, 1877, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies. 51 Webster to White, June 2, 1873, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1873, p. 189. -172- that time the men were reported to have adopted white man's dress in full, the women partially. 52 Another evidence of progress was that Indians were taking over an increasing proportion of the skilled and semiskilled labor at the agency. In 1875 the miller had an Indian apprentice, and another was being taught to run the steam engine at the sawmill. Three years later the blacksmith shop and gristmill were operated entirely by Indians, and another served as office clerk. As a consequence, the expenses for white labor had fallen from $9,760 in 1874 to $4,020 in 1878. 53 In his official report for 1879, Agent Lightner summed up the progress achieved by the Santees in the thirteen years they had been in Nebraska: A few years ago it was necessary for a white man to be with them to give directions in plowing, sowing, and caring for the crops; now they do their own plowing, planting, sowing, reaping, gathering, and threshing without the aid of a white man, and they are as capable of taking care of their machinery as many white people. He cited the nearly 2,000 acres planted that year, the 1,300 tons of hay put up, the 71,000 feet of cottonwood lumber cut, and the 8,000 bushels of wheat ground at the mill as evidences of their advancement. (The wheat had been purchased from white men, but for the season then just ending the Indians would have a surplus from their own crop.) The Indians, said Lightner, "look well as to where their pay is to come from for work," but they would work at the mill without pay. There was no loafing around the store, the agency was quiet at night, and doors could be left unlocked. About the only complaints he had were that some of the Indian couples lived together without benefit of marriage and that the inevitable designing whites were still trying to drive the Santees from their land. Later that fall, when he talked with the Indians on the subject of ending the weekly issue of rations, he told them that they would have to become self-supporting before they could become citizens. To this ultimatum they suggested that the issue be reduced to once every two weeks, which "would make them half citizens." 54 ____________________ 52 Webster to E. P. Smith, April 23 and May 8, 1874, and January 7, 1875; A. L. Riggs to E. P. Smith, September 25, 1875, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1874, p. 208; 1877, p. 147. 53 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1875, p. 232; 1878, p. 100. 54 Ibid., 1879, pp. 104-105 ; Lightner to Hayt, October 7, 1879, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies. -173- That is what the Santee Sioux were at the end of the decade of the seventies: half-citizens. In their adoption of the externals of white customs, they were well in advance of their relatives in Dakota Territory (except for the Flandreau colony) and probably living much like white pioneers on the Great Plains at the same period. In their economic thinking, particularly as concerned the relative merits of self-reliance and dependence on the government, they had quite some distance to go before their attitudes corresponded to those of the pioneers. In their religious and educational progress, they were a mixture of aboriginal and European elements, the proportions varying from individual to individual in a manner bewildering to white observers. All things considered, the Santees had come a long way since the misery of Crow Creek. In terms of assimilation to white culture, they had advanced far since their days in Minnesota; in terms of the integrity of their own culture, they had declined even more conspicuously.
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 15:58:04 GMT -5
-174- CHAPTER 9 The Quiet Decades By COMPARISON with the agencies for the wild Sioux to the northwest, the Santee Agency had a remarkably placid history during the last three decades of the nineteenth century. There were no periodic outbreaks of violence, no frightened appeals by the agent for military protection, no mass flights from the reservation by the Indians. Instead, there were the singing of hymns, the daily routine of the classrooms, the seasonal round of planting and harvest. The contrast was so great that George Hyde, historian of the Oglalas and Brulés, was led to say of the Santees, with considerable exaggeration, that in 1870, when Spotted Tail visited them, "They had placed themselves absolutely under the control of their missionaries, and they had little thought for anything in the world beyond piety." 1 To the extent that this generalization has any truth to it, the piety and docility of the Santees were due largely to the activities of the missionaries who had worked among them on the reservation in Minnesota, during the traumatic period of exile, and since their settlement in Nebraska. John P. Williamson and Samuel D. Hinman followed the Indians down from Crow Creek in the spring of 1866. The American Board missionaries attempted, without much success, to conduct school in tents that summer at the Niobrara townsite, and then moved in the fall ____________________ 1 George E. Hyde, Spotted Tail's Folk ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), p. 167. -175- to Bazile Creek, where they remained until 1868. When they moved to Breckenridge, that spring, they began their work quite modestly, in a long log house used as a combined church and school. 2 The Episcopal mission started more ambitiously, with substantial buildings at Breckenridge in 1867, including a church that Agent Stone said would be the finest in Nebraska west of Omaha. The next year Hinman began work on a school, to cost $9,000, and followed it in 1869 with an addition to be used as a hospital. A tornado struck in June, 1870, however, and destroyed nearly everything. Although the mission was rebuilt in the next few years, its progress was considerably interrupted by this disaster. 3 Meanwhile the American Board people entertained larger ambitions than their initial efforts suggested. Williamson moved to the Yankton reservation in 1869 but was replaced the next year by Alfred L. Riggs, son of the Hazelwood missionary. Riggs' plan was to establish at Santee "a normal academy for the training of native teachers." Within a few months of his arrival a building program had been inaugurated, and by the winter of 1870-1871 the "Santee Normal Training-School" had an enrollment of 111 and an average attendance of 69. Although the great bulk of the enrollment in the early years was composed of day students from the immediate vicinity, even in that first year 13 came from other Sioux communities, mainly from Flandreau. By 1873 both the American Board and the Episcopalians had extended their operations and were reaching at least some of the children in outlying parts of the reservation with day schools. 4 Despite the promise held out by the denominational schools, the successive agents continued to recommend the establishment of a government manual labor school at the Santee agency. Their reasons are readily explainable in terms of traditional American notions about the separation of church and state and of the then current beliefs about the best way to lead the Indians to civilization. Although Indian education ____________________ 2 Winifred W. Barton, John P. Williamson, a Brother to the Sioux ( Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1919), p. 109; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1867, p. 284; 1868, p. 248; Stephen R. Riggs, Mary and 1: Forty Years with Sioux ( Boston: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 1880), p. 234; Mary Buel Riggs, Early Days at Santee ( Santee: Santee Normal Training School Press, 1928), p. 9. 3 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1869, pp. 341-342; 1870, pp. 234, 240; 1871, pp. 443-445; James M. Stone to Hampton B. Denman, January 31, 1868; Denman to Nathaniel G. Taylor, June 12, 1868; Asa M. Janney to Ely S. Parker, June 2, 1870, NARS, RG 75, LR. 4 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1870, pp. 234, 240; 1871, pp. 443-445; 1874, pp. 36-37; Mary B. Riggs, Early Days at Santee, p. 9. -176- had been carried on exclusively by churches and missionary societies up to about 1860, government-operated schools gained in popularity after the Civil War, and eventually government support was withdrawn from the mission schools. 5 Besides the widespread feeling that education, for Indians as for white children, was primarily the business of the state, there was a strong prejudice among Indian Bureau officials against conducting any schooling in the Indians' native language. Agent Janney, who first began agitating for an industrial school in 1871, said that although the mission schools, which taught in Dakota, might be doing a satisfactory job of preparing their graduates to become missionaries to their people, they were not giving the Indians the kind of education needed to fit them for eventual citizenship. So long as they were educated in their native tongue, said Janney, they were still Indians. And, as everyone knew, the primary aim of our Indian policy was to transform Indians into white men. In vain did Riggs point out that "education is more than language, and must use a medium that is understood. We cannot afford to wait for our scholars to know the English language before we begin their education." 6 Not until 1934 did the Indian Bureau finally recognize that the eradication of the Indian's native language was not necessary to his education and initiate a policy that aimed at giving the student a functional command of English without depriving him of the tongue of his ancestors. Janney resigned his position as agent before any concrete moves toward setting up an industrial school were taken, but his successor, Webster, pushed the project to completion. Opened in 1874, with thirty-six pupils and three teachers, the school seems to have been operated with reasonable success until 1877, when the Yankton agent briefly placed in charge at Santee nearly sabotaged it by first recommending that it be turned over to the Episcopal Church and then closing it at the end of the fiscal year. 7 It survived this blow, however, and, although its enrollment was down to twenty-five when Gassman closed it, by late in the next year it had increased to the point that ____________________ 5 Hildegard Thompson, "Education Among American Indians: Institutional Aspects," American Academy of Political and Social Science Annals, CCCXI ( May 1957), 96-97. 6 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1871, p. 442; Joseph Webster to Barclay White, December 6, 1872; Alfred L. Riggs to Ezra A. Hayt, December 22, 1877, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Sioux Agency. 7 Webster to White, December 6, 1872; White to Acting Commissioner H. R. Clum, February 3, 1873; White to B. Rush Roberts, October 11, 1877, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Sioux Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1874, pp. 36, 208-209. -177- another teacher was needed. As the term "manual labor" suggests, much of the work carried on at the school was vocational, chiefly agricultural, in nature. In 1878 twenty-three acres were cultivated, a figure which increased year by year. 8 Meanwhile, the mission schools were also expanding. The Episcopal mission was operating two day schools by 1875, one in connection with the Church of the Blessed Redeemer on East Bazile Creek (now called Howe Creek), the other at Wabasha's village, near where the Church of the Holy Faith was later erected. The American Board people were also operating a district school at their Bazile Creek outstation near the gristmill. All these schools were conducted by native teachers. The Normal Training School then had an enrollment of eighty-two, still drawn mostly from the immediate locality. A small press had been put into operation in 1871, and four years later the Iapi Oaye, or Word Carrier, a bilingual monthly periodical, was being issued in an edition of twelve hundred. A number of books of the Bible had been published, along with textbooks for use locally and in other schools among the Sioux. 9 Agent Lightner reported in 1877 that the agency was becoming a center of education for all the Sioux. During the previous winter the enrollment at the Normal School included two men from Flandreau, seven from the Cheyenne River Agency, and six men and seven women from the Yankton Agency. Altogether, forty-nine students, including those from remote portions of the Santee Reservation, were boarded at the residence halls. By this time the achievement of the school was impressive enough to draw praise from even so hardened a skeptic as editor Fry of the Niobrara Pioneer, who visited it in February, 1878. After describing the buildings and the service he attended, he concluded his article with what was, for him, high praise: "We spent a very pleasant day and came away convinced that many of the Indians we saw at the Mission were well along in civilized life." 10 Although the educational work was the missionaries' most conspicuous achievement, they were at least equally concerned with the spiritual growth of their Indian charges. As during the reservation days in ____________________ 10 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1877, pp. 147-148; Stephen R. Riggs to Edward P. Smith, August 5, 1873, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Sioux Agency; Niobrara Pioneer, February 8, 1878. 8 White to Hayt, December 8, 1878; Roberts to Hayt, November 19, 1878, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1878, p. 99. 9 Samuel D. Hinman to Webster, April 3, 1875, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Sioux Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1875, pp. 323-324. -178- Minnesota, they felt that the two aspects of their work should go hand in hand. Hence besides their academic training, which had strong religious overtones, they conducted church services of various kinds. The Santees, if not quite so fanatically pious as they looked to Spotted Tail and his pagans, were assuredly "praying Indians" by this time. The missionaries tried to inculcate in them the same sense of stewardship and self-reliance that their clerical counterparts serving white congregations tried to stimulate. To keep the people from becoming beggars, a weekly collection was taken almost from the beginning of the American Board's mission work at Santee. Despite the protest that they were all poor, the Indians managed to scrape together $44.47 in pennies in the first eight months of 1871. By 1875, when their circumstances were somewhat improved, they had contributed during the previous year $65.20 for pastoral support, $23.04 for relief of the poor and sick, and $7.48 for missions elsewhere. 11 Among the less savory aspects of mission work among the Santees was the sharp sectarian rivalry between the American Board and the Episcopal Church. The complex and enigmatic personality of Samuel D. Hinman seems to have been one of the catalysts that precipitated this unseemly quarrel. A native of Connecticut, he had come as an orphan to Bishop Whipple's divinity school in 1859. His devotion to the Indians, both on the old reservation and during the months following the uprising, had confirmed the bishop's faith in him. He seems to have possessed certain traits of temperament, however, that made it impossible for him to work in harmony with ministers of other denominations. 12 Although government officials tried to stay clear of the controversy, they were inevitably drawn in. In defending Agent Webster against charges of favoritism by one of the religious bodies, Superintendent White described the situation at the agency with gentle sarcasm: Such is the zeal of said missionaries for the advancement of the Christian religion among the heathen . . . that a difficulty seems to have arisen between them, and it is notorious in the tribe that the missionaries themselves, have of late years, not been upon terms of ordinary civility and courtesy with each other. 13 As if this were not enough, Hinman was investigated by his own church ____________________ 11 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1871, p. 444; 1875, pp. 323-324. 12 Henry B. Whipple, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate ( New York: Macmillan Co., 1899), pp. 61-62. 13 White to William Dorsey, May 4,1874, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. -179- authorities on charges of "gross immorality, misconduct and the dishonest and unfaithful use of money entrusted to him for the work of the mission," found guilty, and expelled from the reservation. When he tried to return and claim his property (which term he apparently construed to cover the mission property), there was actual violence, with armed white men, half drunk, coming from Niobrara to espouse either Hinman's cause or that of his adversaries. The situation finally quieted down in September of 1880, but Agent Lightner described the Indians as having been appreciably "unsettled" by the whole business. 14 As on other reservations occupied by relatively acculturated Indians, the biggest event at Santee in the last two decades of the century was the allotment of lands and the opening of the reservation to white settlement. But whereas this momentous event took place on most reservations after the passage of the General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887, allotments at Santee preceded the Dawes Act by two years. Many of the original allotments made by Janney in 1870 and 1871 were later canceled because of the death or departure from the reservation of the allotees, and those of people who remained were later increased to 160 acres, wherever possible, to conform to the terms of the 1868 treaty. Although a number of the Santees met the requirements of that treaty in regard to improvements made and amount of land brought under cultivation, the years were allowed to pass without any action toward issuing patents to them. The delay was due partly to some uncertainty concerning whether the lands allotted should be inalienable and, if so, for how long. By 1877, Lightner believed that the Indians were ready to become citizens and take their lands in severalty, but he did not think that government guardianship should be withdrawn or that the reservation should be thrown open to white settlement. 15 In 1881, Congress passed a bill that provided a precedent for a policy on the Santee allotments. The important provision of this legislation, which concerned the Wisconsin Winnebagos, was a twenty-year inalienability clause. Lightner thought that it should open the way to the ____________________ 14 Niobrara Pioneer, March 1, July 28, 1877, and June 7 and July 14, 1878; Arnoux, Ritch & Woodford (counsel for Hinman) to Commissioner Roland E. Trowbridge, June 8, 1880; Isaiah Lightner to Trowbridge, June 24 and 28, 1880; William W. Fowler to Trowbridge, October 1, 1880; William H. Hare to Trowbridge, August 2, 1880, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies. Hinman made several later attempts to regain "his" property, without success. 15 Acting Secretary of Interior M. H. Smith to E. P. Smith, August 21, 1874; Webster to E. P. Smith, August 5, 1874, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Charles Searing to John Q. Smith, August 9, 1876, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1877, pp. 147-148. -180- issuance of patents to the Santees. 16 Nothing was done until late the next year, however, when a Sioux commission visited the agency. Lightner had prepared the way by calling a council late in October, at which the Indians expressed a desire that patents be issued but also indicated a reluctance to allow any part of the reservation to be opened to white settlement. The old fear of being moved somewhere else still troubled them. When the commission arrived, in November, the Santees' assent was obtained to an agreement substantially embodied in the Indian appropriations act approved the next March 1. The relevant provisions of the act stated that patents issued under the terms of the 1868 treaty "shall be of legal effect," the United States to hold the land in trust for twenty-five years. 17 The Indians immediately began applying for patents, and by August, 1884, Lightner reported that application papers had been given to 127 landowners. No patents had yet been received, however, to the annoyance of the agent, who wanted them issued promptly so that the Indians could "come under the laws of the land and could vote--(for Blaine and Logan)." 18 Blaine and Logan did not win the election, and the lame duck administration of Chester A. Arthur received credit for opening the Santee Reservation to white settlement, by means of an executive order dated February 9, 1885, which specified that all lands remaining unalloted and unselected by April 15 should on that date be restored to the public domain and be made subject to settlement and entry on May 15. Immediately there came a protest from the white people of Knox County, who feared that not enough of the reservation would be left after Lightner had finished alloting lands. They objected especially to the allotment of 80-acre tracts to women and children under the terms of the act of March 3, 1863, in addition to the 160acre tracts on which patents were then to be issued. Fortunately for the Indians, they had a friend in Alfred L. Riggs, who sent off a series of letters to influential men in and out of the government, pointing out that to limit allotments to the 160-acre homesteads would leave many Santees with no land at all. The smaller allotments were made, though certificates rather than patents were issued to the recipients. 19 ____________________ 16 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1882, p. 117; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXI, 317. 17 Robert S. Gardner to Commissioner Hiram Price, July 3, 1882; Lightner to Price, November 8 and 22, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXII, 444. 18 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1884, p. 122. 19 Charles J. Kappler, comp. and ed., Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, I ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), 864; A. L. Riggs to M. E. Strieby -181-
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 15:58:38 GMT -5
After some delay, owing to a general relocation of families since the allotment made in the later 1870's, the process of assigning homesteads was completed before the deadline set by Arthur's executive order. The Santees now held 71,784-56 acres, plus 1,310.7 acres reserved for agency, school, and missionary use; 42, 160.56 acres were opened to settlement. By the time of Lightner's annual report for 1885, white farmers were scattered about the reservation, taking up land and putting up buildings. The agent thought that, on the whole, they were a good class of people, from association with whom the Indians stood to benefit. Of the 210 allotments made under the 1868 treaty, 132 of the allotees had complied with the terms of that treaty so as to be entitled to patents. Further legislation needed before patents could be authorized on the 485 smaller allotments was not forthcoming until 1898. 20 All was not well, however. White men began meddling in the Santees' affairs even before allotment had been completed. Some tried to determine the Indians' selections so as to be able to rent or run cattle on Indian lands adjacent to their own. Others began exerting pressure on the Indians to request that the twenty-five-year clause be waived. A petition bearing fifty-four signatures of Indians and asking for repeal of this clause was submitted to the commissioner in April, 1886. Denounced by the agent as an attempt by white men to get the Indians' lands, it presumably received no consideration at the Indian Office. 21 The Santees were better prepared for allotment than many other Indian groups, on whom it was virtually forced after the passage of the Dawes Act. They had been farming, after a fashion, for many years, and were less dependent on the rations issued to them than their Sioux relatives west of the Missouri in Dakota Territory. Lightner's plan to issue rations every two weeks had worked a hardship on the old and in- ____________________ (Corresponding Secretary of the American Missionary Association), March 9, 1885; Senator Charles F. Manderson to Commissioner John D. C. Atkins, March 22, 1885; petition from citizens of Knox County to Commissioner of Indian Affairs (undated, received April 10, 1885), NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1885, p. 136. 20 Lightner to Atkins, April 14, 1885, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1885, pp. lxiv, 136; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXX, 583. 21 Lightner to Atkins, May 27, 1885; Charles Hill to Atkins, April 17, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1886, p. 189. In 1886 a rumor was being circulated among the Indians that if they could get the restrictive clause repealed, they could buy lands at their old homes in Minnesota-a story to which some credence was lent by the purchase that year of lands for Sioux who had been living in Minnesota. See Chapter 13. -182- firm and had been abandoned, but he continued to press steadily for a reduction. There were problems, however. After he had divided the tribe into those who were self-supporting and those who still required rations, he began to wonder about the wisdom of such discrimination. His somewhat ungrammatical summary of his thinking on the subject expressed the dilemma faced by any conscientious Indian agent during that period: Now then here is A and B living side by side each have had the same care extended over them and because A has went to work and done as we wished him to do and been a good Indian and raised some wheat for sale you say stop his rations but B, because he has been careless and lazy you say feed him as I said I wish to advocate justice and nothing more and to stop the rations on the good ones and feed the bad ones would not in my judgement be justice. . . . 22 Despite his qualms, this was roughly the policy adopted in the early 1880's. But in 1883, Lightner was able to report that the issue of rations had "quite recently" been discontinued except to school children and about a hundred old and infirm persons. This policy had its drawbacks, however, in that those still receiving rations were sharing them with their relatives. Lightner thought an almshouse the proper solution to the problem, but none was ever provided. 23 The discontinuance of rations was symptomatic of a continuing improvement in the condition of the Santees during the early eighties. The amount of land under cultivation increased steadily until 1887, when it began to level off as a result of a succession of droughts. As early as 1880, 7,000 bushels of wheat were raised, 2,000 bushels of oats, and 3,000 bushels of corn. The heavy emphasis on wheat led, as elsewhere, to soil exhaustion and crop failures. By 1887 the acreage sown to wheat had dropped to little more than a quarter of the land under cultivation. 24 The amount of machinery also increased from year to year. By 1884 farming operations were conducted with the aid of 184 wagons, 134 cross-plows, 75 breaking plows, 28 mowing machines, 22 horserakes,10 reaping machines, and 3 threshing machines. The machinery ____________________ 22 Lightner to Hayt, February 4, 1880; Lightner to Trowbridge, March 20, 1880, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1883, p. 107. 23 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1881, p. 127 ; 1883, p. 107 ; 1885, p. 137 - 24 Ibid., 1880, pp. 121 - 122 ; 1883, p. 107 ; 1885, p. 137 ; 1887, p. 154 ; Lightner to Price, August 9, 1881, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. -183- was used by too many people, not all of whom were careful of it, however, and some of the mowing machines had been in use since 1868. Another evidence of progress was the gradual assumption by the Indians of the management of most work at the agency. In 1883, Santees were serving as blacksmiths, issue clerk, cattle herder, miller, harnessmaker, and brickmaker. Except for the physician and one clerk, all employees were Indians by 1888. "We do not inquire if the Indians will work," said Lightner, "for we know that by far the majority of them will work, and when we have it to be done, we ask, and the necessary labor is performed." The Indians built their own houses, drilled wells, and planted shade and fruit trees on their homesteads. The police force was revived during this period, and in 1884 a court of Indian offenses was instituted. Both the police force and the court were eliminated about 1891, to the regret of the agent, who claimed that drunkenness and gambling increased afterward. 26 Despite the unmistakable evidence of advance toward civilization on the part of the Santees, there was a continuing need for an agency to supervise their affairs. In fact, the agency plant grew more impressive during the eighties. In 1881 it consisted of a council house or office, two warehouses, a machine house, a sawmill, a smokehouse, an icehouse, a jail, a physician's office, a harness shop, two school buildings, three workshops, a trader's house and store, and six houses for employees; there were in addition two granaries, a gristmill, and a dwelling ten miles from the agency. The mill at Bazile Creek was finally abandoned in 1883 and the machinery moved to a new building erected at the agency, where it was powered by steam until 1891, when water from an artesian well was put to work turning its machinery. During the last twenty years of the century, other agency buildings were improved, log structures replaced by frame, or new roofs put on. 27 Lightner's long tenure as agent came to an end in 1885, perhaps as a consequence of his bold advocacy of the Republican ticket the previous year, and he was replaced by Charles Hill, formerly superintendent at the government school. Both men were investigated as a result of complaints by Indians and employees, but no evidence of dishonesty on the part of either was discovered. Like many other Indian agents of the ____________________ 26 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1884, p. 122; 1888, p. 172. 26 Ibid., 1880, p. 122 ; 1883, p. 108 ; 1881, p. 127 ; 1884, p. 124 ; 1887, p. 155 ; 1888, p. 172; 1880, p. 145 ; 1891, p. 295. 27 Ibid., 1881, p. 127 ; 1883, p. 108 ; 1891, p. 294 ; Lightner to Price, September 5, 1882, and September 28, 1883, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. -184- time, they were unwilling to brook any opposition to their will from the Indians, and both seem to have employed physical violence against Indians who refused to submit to their authority. In later years Lightner served on the Philanthropic Committee of the Illinois Yearly Meeting of Friends, making Indian affairs his special concern. He settled at Monroe, Nebraska, only eight miles from the government Indian school at Genoa, in which he took a continuing interest. 28 Hill's successor in 1890 was James E. Helms, a young man who speedily got himself into difficulty with the Episcopal missionary and others. Although he was investigated, he was let off with "a very pointed message of reproof and counsel" by his superiors. Helms was succeeded in 1894 by Joseph Clements, who served without particular distinction through a trying period at Santee and was followed in 1898 by Henry C. Baird, a rather typical Indian agent of the old school who alienated Indians and white employees alike by his domineering manner. 29 It is probably fair to say that none of these men, except Lightner, the last Quaker to serve as agent, left any significant impress on the Santees. The power of an agent to do either good or harm had been much circumscribed since the days of Lawrence Taliaferro, when only the presence of the military provided any effective restraint on his actions. Exercising a limited jurisdiction over a fairly articulate Indian population living in close proximity to missionaries with powerful outside backing, and hemmed in by a white community that kept them under constant surveillance, the agents at Santee in the last two decades of the nineteenth century were mere functionaries of the Indian Bureau, already on their way to becoming anachronisms. Increasingly as the nineteenth century drew to a close, the primary instrument of government policy toward the Indians came to be the school. The government school at Santee had a checkered career during the 1880's and 1890's, plagued by fires and by frequent changes of administration. In its early years it was under the immediate direction ____________________ 28 Lightner to Atkins, December 1, 1885; Hill to Atkins, December 1, 1885; Gardner to Price, July 3, 1882; Petition of Indians to Price, January 30, 1884, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Petition of Chiefs to Commissioner, January 6, 1880; Lightner to Hayt, January 22, 1880, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies; Friends' Intelligencer, LXXX ( March 31, 1923), 231. 29 Marie L. H. Steer to Commissioner Thomas J. Morgan, November 17, 1891; J. A. Leonard to Morgan, December 26, 1891; President Grover Cleveland to James E. Helms, January 8, 1894; Joseph Clements to Commissioner Daniel M. Browning, March 15, 1894; Clements to Commissioner William A. Jones, October 2, 1897; Henry C. Baird to Jones, March 5, 1898, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. -185- of the agent and was staffed, like the agency itself, by members of the Society of Friends; but after the creation in 1882 of the post of Superintendent of Indian Schools, a local superintendent was appointed, and regular government appointees occupied the teaching positions. Congress annually appropriated $3,000 for its operation, a sum described by the agents as inadequate. 30 Despite a declining general population, enrollment at the school continued to hold its own or sometimes even increase. Listed as having a capacity of 45, it had a total enrollment in 1884 of 84. Although the average daily attendance was much less, congestion was severe, especially after each of the successive fires. A special agent who visited in June, 1888, found 36 girls occupying a single sleeping room, three or four to a bed; much the same conditions existed among the boys. A new school was built, steam heated in order to minimize the danger of fire, and on June 22, 1889, it was formally opened. Its capacity of 100 was almost immediately exceeded, and 120 children were crowded in. By 1891 the number of students had increased to 142, as pressure was brought upon parents who neglected sending their children to school. 31 In the 1890's clashes between the superintendent and the agent were chronic, and between March, 1895, and February, 1896, a series of four fires, two of which were deliberately set by students, practically destroyed the school. In 1897 a $17,700 brick building, complete with hot and cold water in the lavatories and showers, was erected to replace those recently burned. At the end of the century the Santee Industrial School consisted of the two-story brick building, containing boys' and girls' dormitories, a kitchen, a dining room, a playroom, lavatories, and teachers' quarters, and a two-room frame structure valued at $600. 32 The Santee Industrial School was probably operated in much the same way as other Indian boarding schools of the period. To counteract the tendency of the children to come and go as they pleased, a stern regimen was imposed, which no doubt aggravated their dissatisfaction with school life. The published reports of the various superintendents reveal a strong concern for efficient operation but little or no sympathy for Indian children. On the other hand, there is no doubt that most ____________________ 30 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1880, p. 103; 1883, p. 109; 1885, p. lxx; 1874, p. 209. 31 Ibid., 1884, p. 123; 1888, pp. 174-175; 1889, p. 244. 32 Charles D. Rakestraw, Supervisor of Indian Schools, to W. N. Hailmann, February 27, 1896; Clements to D. M. Browning, August 7 and December 26, 1896; Baird to Jones, June 3, 1899, August 24, 1899, and May 24, 1898, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1896, p. 204; 1897, p. 184. -186- of the students found the physical conditions of school life more comfortable, particularly after the brick building was finished, than life in the ill-heated log houses in which most of their families lived. Whether this comparative luxury compensated for the rigid discipline imposed by the school authorities and the absence of parental affection is another question. While the Santee Industrial School was running its hectic course, the mission schools were proceeding steadily with their work. The Episcopal Church ran three day schools and a girls' boarding school for a number of years, and about 1882 opened Hope School, a small institution for boys across the river at Springfield, Dakota Territory. After the burning of the mission buildings at Santee in 1884, the girls' school, called St. Mary's, was closed and re-established the following year at Springfield. These church schools were later consolidated and at the beginning of 1896 rented to the government, which conducted the combined institution as a school for about fifty boys. 33 The Santee Normal Training School reached its high point in the 1890's, when it became in reality what its founder had envisioned it as being: a center of education for all the Sioux. Although Asa Janney wrote in 1871 that neither of the mission schools expected or desired government aid, requests for aid in the form of rations to nonresident scholars soon began reaching the commissioner; and in 1879, Riggs asked for a subsidy in the form of tuition payments of $20 per quarter per student. Knowing the commissioner's prejudice against teaching in Dakota, he requested support only in proportion to the amount of English taught. An agreement was entered into on September 21, 1880, for the support through tuition payments of an average of thirty pupils, and it was renewed the following year. 34 For more than a decade government aid in this form was extended to the school. In the early years the total amount was a modest sum--$2,271 in 1883--but it rose year by year, averaging over $12,000 annually from 1886 to 1893 and contributing importantly to the institutional budget. Although the support received from religious societies usually amounted to more than that amount, there were years in which the government contributed ____________________ 33 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1878, p. 99; 1879, p. 105 ; 1882, p. 115 ; 1884, p. 123 ; 1885, p. 138 ; 1887, p. 156 ; 1895, p. 206 ; 1896, pp. 203 - 204. 34 A. M. Janney to S. M. Janney, February 1, 1871; A. L. Riggs to E. P. Smith, August 5, 1873; John O. Means, Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, to Price, August 25, 1881, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; S. R. Rigga to Hayt, January 24, 1879, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies. -187- more than half of the total budget of the school, including rations issued. 35 Government subsidies were far from an unmixed blessing, however, for with aid came the threat of control. Santee Normal's most vulnerable point was its use of the Dakota language in its teaching, and Riggs was constantly obliged to defend the practice to each new commissioner. He managed to keep the anti-vernacular forces at bay for a time, but an uneasy peace reigned, interrupted frequently by grumblings from the Indian Office. In 1880 the Bureau adopted a regulation requiring the exclusive use of English but providing a loophole that permitted Santee Normal to continue its operations as before, but followed it in 1884 with a more stringent ruling and a threat to withdraw government support from any school using the vernacular. 36 The real blow came in 1886, when Commissioner John D. C. Atkins issued this peremptory order: "In all schools conducted by missionary organizations it is required that all instructions shall be given in the English language." In another order, dated February 2, 1887, Atkins went on to say: "The instruction of the Indians in the vernacular is not only of no use to them, but is detrimental to the cause of their education and civilization, and no school will be permitted on the reservation in which the English language is not exclusively taught." 37 When these instructions reached Riggs, he complied, but with great reluctance. In his official report he pointed out that in the normal department of the school the use of Dakota was "indispensable to the best instruction.""Things, not names," he said, "are what the true teacher must grasp; then names come afterwards." The theological classes had had to be suspended, he said, as the instruction had been almost entirely in Dakota, and the training of interpreters had likewise been terminated by the commissioner's order. Pointing out that the Santee Normal Training School represented "the high water mark of Indian advance more than any other school in the country," he reviewed its history and described its impressive physical plant, concluding: "And now this is to be dismembered and eviscerated by the order of the Government." 38 Complaints from Riggs and other missionaries drew from Commis- ____________________ 35 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1883, p. 245; 1884, p. 123 ; 1885, p. 138 ; 1886, p. 193 ; 1887, p. 318 ; 1888, p. 377 ; 1889, p. 391 ; 1890, p. 329 ; 1891, pt. 2, p. 16 ; 1892, p. 771; 1893, p. 626. 36 Ibid., 1887, pp. xx-xxi. 37 Ibid., 1887, p. xxii. 38 Ibid., 1887, p. 162. -188- sioner Atkins a lengthy defense in his next annual report. Seeking precedents for his position, he noted that the peace commission of 1868 had advocated the establishment of schools for the Indians in which "their barbarous dialect should be blotted out and the English language substituted," and mentioned the regulations and orders of 1880 and 1884. In his own report of the previous year he had said: "The English language as taught in America is good enough for her people of all races." Now he appealed to patriotic impulses for support. "Every nation is jealous of its own language," he wrote, "and no nation ought to be more so than ours, which approaches nearer than any other nationality to the perfect protection of its people." 39 The possibility that the Indian nations might also be jealous of their own languages seems not to have crossed his mind. The literal application of Atkins' order might conceivably have included a ban on religious services in an Indian language. Although the Indian Bureau denied any such intent, some officials took it upon themselves privately to attack the practice of vernacular services. A special agent who visited Santee in 1888 questioned the propriety of prayers at the school delivered in the native language. He wrote: "It may be none of my business to invade the Sanctum Sanctorum, where infallibility is supposed to exist, or to make any remarks on this subject. I think the English vernacular is good enough for the Indians and more acceptable to the Deity than the Choctaw harangue delivered this morning." He thought that it would be best for the Indians to "forget their native habits with their native tongue as well, as soon as possible." 40 The flippancy of his comments, made in an official report, only underscores the basic lack of understanding of the Indian and the hopeless ethnocentrism of white Americans of the time. The financial support given the Santee Normal Training School by the government was too valuable to surrender at once, and Riggs submitted to the commissioner's order, though continuing to plead for its repeal. Finally, however, the strain of trying to accommodate the school's work to the demands of the government proved disproportionate to the benefits received, and in 1893 the government contract was terminated. 41 Santee Normal Training School had expanded greatly ____________________ 39 Ibid., 1887, pp. xx-xxii. 40 Hill to Atkins, December 27, 1887; W. H. Tallmadge to Acting Commissioner A. B. Upshaw, June 20, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1888, p. xvii. 41 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1894 pp. 194, 198. Perhaps Riggs saw the handwriting on the wall when he read Commissioner Morgan's report in 1891. Morgan expressed the hope that the day was not far off when the government would take sole -189-
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during the years it received government assistance, but the loss of that support did not mean the end of the school. In 1883 it had been turned over by the A.B.C.F.M. to the American Missionary Association, a Congregational body, which operated it until the fourth decade of the twentieth century. 42 As conditions changed among the plains tribes, its function was altered, and it ceased to be exactly what it was in the 1880's and 1890's: a torch shedding its light throughout the Sioux country, working to build up a cadre of educated Sioux capable of extending its influence to other reservations. If Sioux outnumber Indians of any other tribe in a recent biographical dictionary of prominent Indians, part of the credit must go to the Santee Normal Training School, where some of them received their education. 43 Important though the educational history of the Santee Reservation is, it does not tell the whole story of the Santee people in the last years of the nineteenth century. To approach completeness, it is necessary to consider some of the problems that confronted the Indians and their agents in those years. Generally speaking, there were three categories of problems at Santee, as the agents saw the situation: those blamable to the vagaries of nature, those resulting from the persistence of old habits among the Indians, and those created by allotment and citizenship. Except for a great flood in 1881, which forced the town of Niobrara to move to a new site, most of the difficulties caused by weather and climate had to do with drought. After a series of fairly good seasons in the early eighties, a cycle of drought began in 1886 and continued for the next decade, with only occasional years of normal rainfall. By 1893 the agent referred to it as the "never failing drought." 44 White farmers in the surrounding area were hit as hard as the Indians, of course, but, ____________________ charge of Indian education. Public support for sectarian schools he found "contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution" and "utterly repugnant to our American institutions and our American history. . . ." Beginning in 1896, Congress started gradually reducing the annual appropriations for denominational schools, until 1900, when it appropriated only 15 per cent of the amount provided in 1895, "this being the final appropriation for contract schools." See ibid., 1891, p. 68 ; 1895, p. 10 ; 1896, p. 14 ; 1897, p. 13 ; 1898, p. 15 ; 1899, p. 16 ; 1900, p. 24. 42 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1883, p. 108. 43 Marion E. Gridley, ed., Indians of Today ( 3d ed.; Chicago: The Council Fire, 1960), lists twenty Sioux, as compared to seventeen Cherokees, who form the second largest tribal representation. An earlier edition ( 1947) lists fourteen Sioux, ten Cherokees. 44 Lightner to Trowbridge, April 1, 1881, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1881, p. 127; 1886, p. 190 ; 1893, p. 199. -190- as someone has said, they could usually return to the "wife's folks back east," while the Indians had nowhere to go. The situation became so serious that in 1893 the councilmen requested a return to the issuance of rations, after a decade of at least nominal self-support. The next year Agent Clements called attention to the "miserable, starving condition of many of the Indians under my charge." 45 Conditions were better in 1895 and 1896, but the next year drought struck again, as it did to some extent in 1898. The fact was, though the Indian Bureau refused to admit it, that the Santee Reservation (what was left of it) was incapable of supporting the number of people then living on it, given the climatic conditions of the region. The land was better suited to the range cattle industry, but allotment in severalty had so broken up the Indians' holdings that cattle could not be run over large expanses of territory. The problems arising from the survival of the old culture were not so serious as the agents thought they were, but some of them did constitute hindrances to the drive to make the Santees self-sufficient. The successive agents expended a great deal of ink and energy inveighing against the Indian dances, partly because they were seen as remnants of the barbarous past but mainly because they involved gift-giving on a large scale. Although Lightner reported in the early eighties that they had been entirely abandoned, this was only wishful thinking on his part. He permitted dances on Christmas, New Year's, and the Fourth of July because he saw them merely as social affairs at which the participants no longer recited brave deeds of the warlike past, but collected money for charity. 46 Unfortunately, the charitable intent of the dances tended to get out of control, especially when it took the form of generosity toward visiting tribes. When a party of Winnebagos paid a friendly call on their Santee friends in 1881, they put on a dance, in defiance of Lightner's orders, and took home eleven or twelve horses donated by their hosts. The agent, his authority flouted in the presence of his own Indians, was infuriated and wrote the commissioner: "I do not object to the giving so much as the manner in which the present was made, at a dance which they knew I had forbidden. . . ." 47 The same thing happened in 1890, much to the mortification of Agent Helms, who asked for authority to ____________________ 45 Santee Councilmen and James Garvie to Secretary of Interior Hoke Smith, September 5, 1893; Clements to D. M. Browning, June 22, 1894, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. 46 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1882, p. 115; 1885, p. 137. 47 Lightner to Price, August 22, 1881, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. -191- withhold annuities from the Indians who had given away their horses and other property. In 1893 it was said that eighty-five horses and ponies, in addition to other stock, had been given away to a party of some 250 Winnebagos. 48 Although the official attitude was one of opposition to these survivals of old custom, at times the Indian Office was more lenient than the local agent. When Helms tried to stop the dancing in 1893, someone he characterized as a "half-breed agitator" telegraphed the Washington officials that the men who had served as scouts wanted to celebrate Cleveland's election. A department letter in reply said that as long as they violated no laws, there should be no interference. Helms sputtered about the harm done by the dances in delaying acculturation, but apparently did not interfere with them. By then they had become sufficiently exotic that white people in the surrounding towns were willing to pay to watch them. Riggs objected strongly, saying that the revival of "heathen war dances, as shows to gratify the white people, is a practice that works great damage." 49 Despite official proscription, this aspect of the traditional culture managed to persist down to the end of the century and beyond. It should perhaps be mentioned that the Santee Sioux appear never to have adopted the sun dance, which occupied a central position in the ceremonial life of the true plains tribes. Nor do they seem to have been affected by the ghost dance mania that caused so much unrest among the Tetons about 1890. At least there is no mention of it in the agents' correspondence from that period, except in reference to other groups. The dances indulged in by the Santees may have had their origin in the aboriginal religion and in the practice of war, but by the last decades of the century they had been shorn of most of their earlier significance and had become primarily social in function. They were not, of course, any more acceptable to the missionaries and government officials on that account. The agents also objected to the tendency of some of the Santees to go on periodic visits to other agencies. Usually these visits had no purpose other than pure sociability, but at times they took on a religious coloration, as when an Episcopal convocation was held at Rosebud in 1880. Lightner, who had no quarrel with the Episcopalians, objected to the Indians' absence for three weeks just at the time when they should have ____________________ 48 Helms to Morgan, November 24, 1890.; ibid.; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1893, p. 202. 49 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1893, p. 202; 1895, p. 204 ; 1889, p. 248. -192- been breaking new land and taking care of their wheat. Experience had shown, he said, that their cattle often got into the grain when the people were away from home. 50 Besides such brief visits and convocations, there was a certain amount of moving back and forth between Santee and the Minnesota colonies, and between Santee and Flandreau, depending on where benefits were currently being received. It is no accident that the biggest gains in the Santee population occurred when lands were being allotted and when cash payments were being made there, while the biggest losses in the eighties and nineties coincided with the distribution of land and other benefits to the Minnesota Sioux. 51 Some of the agents found sinister overtones in perfectly innocent Indian customs--customs which in some cases existed among white frontiersmen as well as among Indians. For example, Helms reported in 1891 that the Santee farmers had a tendency to form "bees" to do jobs most expeditiously managed by several people. He was encouraged, however, to think that the practice was on the wane. 52 In other respects, too, when the Santees behaved much like the typical wasteful frontier farmer, their actions were denounced as characteristically Indian. One agent complained that they bought farm machinery on credit, then left it outdoors to be ruined by rain and snow. Sometimes stock that had been issued to them was sold or neglected, and during the worst of the drought years they ate their hogs as fast as they were issued. When stallions were bought, the Indians sold the colts to white men or traded them for ponies. The limited amount of timber on the reservation had been used so prodigally that by 1892 there was little fuel left. 53 The allotment of lands, the issuance of patents, and the entry into full-fledged citizenship created difficulties for the Santees and their agents not foreseen by those who imagined that the Indian problem would be solved once the Indian became a landowner and a citizen. On one level there was the question of who was responsible for the roads and ____________________ 50 Lightner to Trowbridge, May 17, 1880, NARS, RG 75, LR, Nebraska Agencies. 51 The largest gains registered in any one year came in 1886 (gain of 44), when allotment was being completed; in 1893 gain of 45), when a substantial payment had just been made; and in 1898 (gain of 30), when another payment was made. The greatest loss came in 1887 (loss of 18), just after lands had been purchased for the Sioux in Minnesota. See Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1885, p. 135; 1886, p. 189 ; 1887, p. 156 ; 1888, p. 170 ; 1892, p. 311 ; 1893, p. 198 ; 1897, p. 183 ; 1898, p. 332. 52 Ibid., 1891, p. 293. 53 Ibid., 1895, p. 204; 1884, p. 121; 1890, p. 141; 1892, p. 311.
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-193- bridges in what had formerly been the Santee Reservation. In 1894, Helms wrote that since no tax could be levied on Indian lands and the poll tax could not be collected, it was impossible to keep the roads fit for travel. 54 The problem was eventually solved, after a fashion, by the gradual passing of Indian lands into white possession and the consequent increase in the tax base, but it remained to perplex agents and county officials until well into the twentieth century. Citizenship brought other, more serious problems. Helms wrote in 1892 that the Santees "vote, pay some taxes, . . . electioneer, and many of them drink whisky." Their voting was an advantage to them, in that it made them more desirable neighbors when an important election rolled around, and some took to politics in a small way. By the early 1890's two Santees were on the county board and worked to see that the agency got its share of the county road and bridge fund. A. J. ("Joseph") Campbell served as county coroner for a time. 55 If this participation in the political life of the community was seen as largely beneficial, the freedom to drink whiskey was not. With the coming of allotment, old laws regarding the introduction of whiskey into the "Indian country" became obsolete and were not immediately replaced by laws adapted to the new conditions. In the meantime (and afterward) the liquor problem gave much concern to the agents and missionaries. A temperance society was organized early in 1887, but its membership was so small that it probably had little influence on the Santees. In 1889, when the court of Indian offenses was functioning, twenty-one out of thirty-eight cases heard during the year were for drunkenness. 56 White men received much of the blame for the situation. Besides providing the Indians with liquor (for which there were many prosecutions in the later 1890's), they set anything but a good example, according to the Episcopal missionary. Agent Helms was charged with, among other offenses, bringing liquor to the agency and allowing what he did not himself consume to fall into the hands of the Indians. The agent who followed him attributed the drinking problem to the fact that the Indians considered themselves citizens, with the same rights as white people. The county was unwilling to take costly action, since the Indians paid few taxes and there was a general feeling that they were the respon- ____________________ 54 Helms to D. M. Browning (no date, received February 19, 1894), NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. 55 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1892, p. 312; 1887, p. 154 ; Hill to Atkins, June 5, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. 56 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1888, p. 173; 1889, p. 243. -194- sibility of the federal government. When liquor sellers were indicted, they sometimes pleaded guilty, were fined a dollar each, and were "sent home to repeat the work of debauchery." Some even charged that the liquor law was unconstitutional and threatened to carry their cases to the Supreme Court if necessary. 57 As long as there was no effective way of preventing white men from selling liquor to the Indians, the problem of drinking could not be solved. A different type of problem growing out of allotment was that of the children born since the reservation had been opened. As early as 1888 nearly a hundred children had been born since the land was allotted and were without hope of receiving farms when they reached maturity. On March 2 of the following year Congress passed a bill containing a provision that Santees who had not received allotments in 1885 should be entitled to farms of from 40 to 160 acres, on their reservation. Since there was no land available there, the provision remained a dead letter and was modified in 1891 by an appropriation of $32,000 for the purchase of lands elsewhere for those, mostly children, who had missed out on the earlier allotment. No such purchases were made, and the following year a clause was inserted in the Indian appropriations act permitting the payment in cash of this sum, together with the proceeds from the sale of the old Minnesota reservation. Payment of the latter sum was made in December of the same year, and the rest was paid in 1893. Besides the $32,000, the Santees received $34.93 per capita from the sale of the old reservation, and some of them were paid additional sums from an appropriation made for the benefit of scouts and their heirs. 58 The money came at a good time, in the midst of the drought years, but unfortunately it was not all spent as wisely as it might have been. Furthermore, the expectation of more such windfalls did irreparable damage to such habits of prudence, thrift, and industry as the Santees had acquired since 1866. The Episcopal missionary wrote in 1896: "Most if not all of what they expect is disposed of by credit at the stores long before it is received, and much is spent in rioting and drunkenness when obtained." The agents agreed that farming had fallen off, and habits of indolence had become prevalent. In 1896, Congress amended ____________________ 57 Ibid., 1888, p. 177; 1896, p. 202; 1897, p. 185. James J. Janney to Morgan, February 10, 1891; Steer to Morgan, November 17, 1891; Clements to D. M. Browning, March 16, 1894, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. 58 Hill to Atkins, April 6, 1888; Helms to Morgan, December 2, 1892, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1893, p. 200; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXV, 890, XXVI, 720-721, XXVII, 145. -195- the act of March 2, 1889, so as to provide further benefits to the Santees. This legislation brought another payment, which, together with additional payments of interest on funds in the Treasury, made the Santees temporarily richer by $89,015.75 in cash, plus 18,499.13 in stock and farm implements. 59 Besides all the cash payments, the Santees were enjoying another kind of unearned income in the 1890's. Soon after allotment they discovered that they could make more money with less work by leasing part of their lands to white farmers than by trying to farm them by themselves. Abuses soon crept in. A farmer might lease an eighty-acre tract and then let his cattle roam far beyond the confines of that unfenced unit. As the years passed, the practice of leasing became more widespread and the abuses more flagrant. The early leases were entirely unofficial, based on mere oral agreements, but in time the Indian Office began making legal contracts with farmers and stock raisers, in the hope of thereby exercising some control over the manner in which the land was used. Most of the agents opposed leasing, on the ground that it contributed to the laziness of the Indian and postponed indefinitely the day when he would be truly self-supporting. 60 From a purely economic point of view, however, it was probably the best arrangement that could have been made for the use of lands like those on the Santee Reservation. Only a farmer or rancher with access to large amounts of land could hope to make a success of his operations in an area with so unpredictable a climate. To one who had watched the course of events since 1866, the condition of the Santees at the turn of the century was anything but encouraging. True, their numbers had been increasing steadily since 1879, until the population had risen from 736 in that year to 1,019 in 1898-about the same number who had come down from Crow Creek and up from Davenport thirty-two years earlier. Educationally they had progressed far in those years. Not only did they enjoy the facilities of the Santee Normal Training School and the Santee Industrial School, but by the middle nineties contracts were being made with school districts in Knox County, and Santee children were sharing classrooms with white children. But they were as far as ever from self-sufficiency and in many respects were retrograding. Worst of all, the Indian Bureau and ____________________ 59 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1896, p. 205; 1897, p. 184. 60 Helms to Morgan, July 19, 1892, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1894, p. 193; 1896, pp. 41, 202 ; 1898, p. 332 ; 1900, p. 280. -196-
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other government agencies seemed unaware that earlier hopes had not been realized. In 1894 the House subcommittee on Indian affairs was considering abandoning the Santee agency, presumably because the Indians were thought to be almost assimilated and able to look out for themselves. 61 Fortunately, the agency was not discontinued then, or for more than twenty years afterward, but the fact that abandonment was being considered was an augury of things to come. At the end of the nineteenth century the belief was widespread that the Indian problem was nearly solved. Indian wars were a thing of the past, many reservations had been allotted, and the Indians were decreasing in numbers. Government responsibility in the future toward those who remained was thought to be primarily a matter of education. The mass of the American people were busy with other concerns, including their newly acquired overseas empire, and they did not wish to be reminded that Indians still lagged behind the rest of the population in education, in health, and in their economic and social condition. If the Indians were ready to be "turned loose," as a later generation expressed the abdication of public responsibility for their welfare, the Santees should have been as ready as any. This notion probably underlay the talk of closing down the agency. As elsewhere, however, such talk reflected more a wish to be rid of the Indian problem than any actual readiness of the Indians to get along without government help and guidance. Although the most serviceable features of the Santees' culture had been successfully beaten out of them, what had been acquired from the white man's culture was insufficient to compensate for the loss. The residue of the old culture, much of it an economic liability, together with the legacy of more than a half-century of exploitation and robbery by the white man, left the Santees unprepared to confront the twentieth century on a basis of equality with white Americans. ____________________
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:04:14 GMT -5
61 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1895, p. 204; 1898, p. 332 ; Joseph Hollman to D. M. Browning, April 10, 1894, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. -197- CHAPTER 10 The Fate of the Upper Sioux WHILE THE main body of the lower Sioux were adjusting to reservation life on the Great Plains, a parallel course was being followed by the upper bands, in a somewhat more northerly setting. In the closing days of the Sioux Uprising, most of the Sissetons and Wahpetons, though largely innocent of participation in the massacres, fled before the advancing military force under General Sibley and scattered over the plains of Dakota Territory. For the next few years they led a nomadic life, wishing to re-establish themselves in the good graces of the white man's government but fearing to give themselves up. Gradually, however, the bulk of them gathered on the Coteau des Prairies, just west of the Lake Traverse--Big Stone Lake area, where in the fall of 1864 the army established Fort Wadsworth, partly for their benefit but chiefly to protect the frontier. Some Dakota politicians, notably Walter A. Burleigh and Governor Newton Edmunds, tried to have them removed to Crow Creek. Failing in this effort, Edmunds, at least, came around finally to advocating that they be given a reservation on the Coteau and restored to treaty relationships with the government. 1 After two inconclusive attempts to negotiate with those bands had been made in 1864 and 1866, Benjamin Thompson, who had been serving with the commission to appraise the former reservation lands in __ 1 Clark W. Thompson to William P. Dole, January 14, 1865; Walter A. Burleigh to Dennis N. Cooley, July 23, 1865; Newton Edmunds to Cooley, August 7, 1865, NARS, RG 75, LR; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, p. 180. -198- Minnesota, took the initiative late in the latter year and proposed bringing a hand-picked delegation to Washington to make a treaty. Thompson argued that these people had been friendly in 1862, had saved many white captives, and would prove a useful buffer between the white settlements and the wilder Indians to the west. His recommendation was endorsed by General Sibley, who also urged that Joseph R. Brown be given a role in the negotiations. Commissioner Bogy was sufficiently impressed by his arguments to instruct Thompson to bring a delegation, not to exceed twenty-one men, to Washington in January and to associate himself with Brown in the enterprise. 2 The delegation was brought to Washington as requested and on February 19, 1867, signed a treaty including pretty much the same terms as the one that had been rejected the previous summer. As finally concluded and amended by the Senate, it provided for two reservations, one a wedge-shaped piece of land between Lake Traverse and Fort Wadsworth, its apex at Lake Kampeska (near present Watertown, South Dakota) and its base along, but not parallel to, the later South Dakota-North Dakota boundary. The other reservation, which will be discussed in the next chapter, was a tract extending south from Devils Lake. The most interesting provisions of the treaty were those designed to encourage the civilization of the Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux. In line with Brown's thinking during his term as Sioux agent, they called for the allotment of the reservations into 160-acre tracts, the owners to receive inalienable patents after five years if they had brought under cultivation at least 50 acres. Furthermore, no goods, provisions, etc., were to be issued except in return for labor performed or produce delivered (the aged and infirm were exempted from this provision), and no trade in furs was to be permitted. Despite Brown's most strenuous efforts, he was unable to incorporate into the treaty a restoration of the tribe's annuities. 3 Certain other provisions, specifying the amount of money to be expended each year for the benefit of the Indians and allowing the payment of traders' debts to a certain sum, were stricken out by the Senate, which chose instead to leave the expenditures to the discretion of the ____ 2 Joseph R. Brown to Dole, January 31, 1864; Benjamin Thompson to Lewis V. Bogy, November 19, 1366; Henry H. Sibley to Alexander Ramsey, December 14, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR; Cooley to Sibley, March 19 and April 25, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LS; Bogy to Benjamin Thompson, December 20 and 22, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LS; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1866, pp. 180, 227, 240. 3 J. R. Brown to Bogy, February 4, 1867, NARS, RG 75, LR; Charles J. Kappler, comp. and ed., Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, I I ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), 957-959. -199-
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Secretary of the Interior and omitted all reference to traders' debts. The treaty thus amended was approved by the Indians on April 22 and proclaimed May 2.4 Signing as head chief of the Sissetons and Wahpetons was Gabriel Renville, nephew of the illustrious Joseph Renville and a relative by marriage of Joseph R. Brown. Scarlet Plume signed as chief of the Sissetons, but most of the other hereditary chiefs, such as Standing Buffalo, were still roaming the prairies and had no share in the treaty. Their nonparticipation, as well as that of several of the leading "farmer Indians" from the old reservation days, was unfortunate in that it caused a split which contributed to the extreme factionalism that later plagued the Sisseton-Wahpeton group. 5 Benjamin Thompson was appointed agent shortly after the treaty was ratified and assumed his duties that summer. Even before his arrival, there had been efforts by the government to aid these Sioux in their farming endeavors. Beginning in 1865 the government had attempted to provide them with hoes and other articles, but some of the purchases never reached them, and grasshoppers and drought rendered their efforts at farming ineffectual. By the fall of 1866 they were in such a state of destitution that they were kept alive only by the timely issuance of some soldiers' rations from Fort Wadsworth that had been condemned as unfit for human consumption. 6 The next spring they received garden and field seeds, which they dutifully planted with the aid of hoes and pointed sticks. Much of the crop was again destroyed by grasshoppers, but they managed to raise 120 bushels of potatoes and 230 bushels of corn. This was not enough to tide them over the winter, however, and once more they hovered on the brink of starvation while efforts to provide them with emergency supplies were hampered by the usual bureaucratic red tape and slowness of communication between Washington and the remote frontier post. Eventually assistance in the form of more condemned rations and some agricultural implements was sent. 7 ____________________ 4 Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, II, 958-959; U.S. Statutes at Large, XV, 505-511. 5 U.S. Statutes at Large, XV, 511; Henry B. Whipple to Ely S. Parker, August 24, 1869, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency. 6 C. G. Wykoff, Chief Clerk, Northern Superintendency, to Dole, May 22, 1865; Sibley to Ramsey, December 14, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR; Colonel S. B. Hayman, commanding at Fort Wadsworth, to Lieutenant Colonel Smith, Acting Assistant Adjutant General, Department of Dakotah, November 21, 1866, NARS, RG 75, LR, Northern Superintendency; Charles H. Mix to Nathaniel G. Taylor, July 10 and August 10, 1867, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency. 7 Mix to N. G. Taylor, July 10, 1867; Benjamin Thompson to N. G. Taylor, March30, 1868 -200- The plight of the upper Sioux was extremely serious at this time. Since one of the objects of making a treaty was to keep them from indiscriminate roving, they were expected to remain on their reservation at all times and ran the risk of being treated as hostile if they strayed outside its boundaries. Because the game in the locality was not nearly enough to supply their needs, they were largely dependent on such provisions as were issued by the commanding officer at Fort Wadsworth or by the designated agents of the Indian Bureau. As other members of their tribe had discovered, however, they had a powerful friend in Bishop Henry B. Whipple, who now argued so eloquently in their behalf that he not only persuaded Congress in 1868 to appropriate $30,000 for their benefit but inadvertently saddled himself with the responsibility of expending the sum. 8 The language of the appropriations act created an awkward situation in which the money to be used for the Indians was not subject to the control of the Indian Bureau, which could do no more than provide Bishop Whipple with suggestions in response to his inquiries. Agent Thompson, who was nominally in charge of the Indians although he spent very little time on the reservation, had no funds at his disposal and repeatedly asked that some be provided out of the proceeds of the sale of the old reservation. Bishop Whipple, who was unable to carry out the terms of the congressional directive in person and who seems not to have wished to entrust the execution of his charge to Thompson, turned over the task of actually purchasing and delivering provisions, clothing, farm implements, and seed for the Indians to his old friend and family physician, Dr. Jared W. Daniels, one-time physician on the old Sioux reservation. When Daniels arrived at Fort Wadsworth in October, 1868, he found the Indians in great need and immediately began issuing a pound of food per day, once a month, plus sugar, coffee, and tobacco to those who paid for it with work. He also provided axes and plows and, to those who had hay, cattle as well. The next spring he started the Indians breaking land, with hoes if necessary, and beginning April 1 he had a farmer visit each dwelling to keep a record of work done. 9 Bishop Whipple himself visited the reservation in the late fall of 1868 ____________________ 30, 1868, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1867, p. 245; 1868, pp. 194-195; U.S. Statutes at Large, XV, 217. 8 U.S. Statutes at Large, XV, 217; Whipple to Parker, August 24, 1869, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1869, pp. 326-330. 9 Benjamin Thompson to N. G. Taylor, August 19, 1868; Whipple to Bogy, August 19, 1868, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1869, pp. 320-321. -201-
and was so appalled by the destitution he found that he decided to ignore the provision of the 1867 treaty and issue food and clothing to those in greatest need, without regard to whether they had worked or not. Brown and Thompson both opposed this practice. Thompson complained that These indiscriminate issues, although relieving their necessities at the time, lead to evils by encouraging the idle to hang around the post, and if encouraged will certainly retard if not entirely prevent the success of the auspicious commencement under the treaty on this reservation. It is not to be expected that Indians, any more than white men, will work from choice if they can obtain a living without doing so. . . . 10 An element of professional jealousy may have entered into this criticism, for Thompson was acutely sensitive to the ambiguity of his position and became more so when, in March, 1869, Congress appropriated $60,000 for the Sisseton and Wahpeton Sioux and again placed its disbursement entirely in the hands of Bishop Whipple. The awkwardness was resolved, after a fashion, by the appointment the next month of Daniels as agent, but it was several months before Thompson could be persuaded to turn over the government property to him. 11 Thompson had accomplished some good during his term as agent. He had induced many families to select farms and begin improvements, and he had built houses for 150 families. Handicapped by a lack of funds, he had nevertheless broken about 550 acres of land, including 50 acres plowed by the Indians themselves and a hundred acres broken with hoes. Under Daniels' direction, the work of establishing the upper Sioux on their reservation continued at an accelerated pace. Dissatisfied with Thompson's practice of residing alternately at Fort Wadsworth and in Brown's house at Lake Traverse, he invited the chiefs and headmen to choose an agency site. At the location they selected, about nine miles south of the present town of Sisseton, he had a warehouse, an agency office, a boarding house, and an interpreter's house built, all of logs and costing only $2, 100. By the fall of 1869 about 160 families had taken farms, widely scattered about the reservation.12 ____________________ 10 Whipple to N. G. Taylor, December 10, 1868, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1868, p. 195. 11 U.S. Statutes at Large, XV, 315; N. G. Taylor to Jared W. Daniels, April 22, 1869; Parker to Benjamin Thompson, July 13, 1869; Acting Commissioner W. F. Cady to Whipple, September 25, 1869, NARS, RG 75, LS; Whipple to Parker, August 24, 1869, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency. 12 Benjamin Thompson to N. G. Taylor, December 23, 1868, and April 12, 1869; -202-
· Title: History of the Santee Sioux: United States Indian Policy on Trial · Publisher: University of Nebraska Press · Publication Date: 1993 · Page No: * The number of Indians on the reservation, variously estimated at the time of the treaty, fluctuated considerably in the early years. Thompson reported a population of 1,637 in 1868, but the next year he counted only 1,164. Daniels found 1,498 in 1870, and there were just two fewer in 1872. By the next year the number had increased to 1,540 and in 1874 to 1,677.13 The probability is that people kept drifting in from the plains as the news reached them that they need not remain pariahs any longer. As fast as they arrived, they were encouraged to take up farms, send their children to school, and generally accommodate themselves to the government's beneficent intentions. In their slow progress toward civilization the Sissetons and Wahpetons were subjected to the influence of missionaries almost from the beginning of their life on the new reservation. Stephen R. Riggs and Thomas S. Williamson, who had been their spiritual mentors on the old reservation, promptly took up the work again in the new location. The Indians themselves, some of them ordained ministers, played an active part in re-establishing the missionary activity. After holding services in homes for some time, Daniel Renville and a number of others early in 1869 petitioned Agent Thompson for assistance in building a church. In the summer of 1870, Riggs began building a church and school to be named "Good Will." When Gabriel Renville questioned his authority to build, he wrote to the Interior Department for instructions. Although ordered to suspend operations until it was decided which denomination was to have charge of the agency, he went ahead with the building and later received authorization to do so. Daniel Renville became pastor of the church, and late in the fall of 1870 a school was opened under the direction of Wyllys K. Morris, Riggs' son-in-law. As on the old reservation, teaching was conducted in both English and Dakota. Another church was built at Ascension and John B. Renville, a native clergyman, placed in charge. 14 Thereafter mission work grew year by year, even though Williamson remained only a short time and Riggs spent only the summer months at Sisseton. All significant missionary activity among the upper Sioux, both ____________________ Benjamin Thompson to Parker, June 30, 1869, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1869, pp. 321-323. 13 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1868, p. 194; 1869, p. 324; 1870, p. 225; 1873, p. 226; 1872, p. 255; 1874, p. 254. Daniels counted 1,613 in 1869, but 321 of those belonged at Devils Lake. Still, his figure is substantially higher than Thompson's. 14 Stephen R. Riggs, Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux ( Boston: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 1880), pp. 254, 258-259, 261-263; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1869, pp. 322, 325. -203- before the uprising and afterward, had been conducted by the American Board, which was at that time under Presbyterian control. Hence it was natural that when President Grant distributed the various agencies among the different denominations, the Sisseton agency should come under the control of the American Board. Daniels was an Episcopalian, and although he was well liked by the Indians and apparently effective as an agent, control of the agency by the American Board necessitated his replacement by a Presbyterian. The man selected for the post was Moses N. Adams, who had been a missionary at Traverse des Sioux before the treaties of 1851. The choice was an unfortunate one from the standpoint of harmony on the reservation, for it exacerbated the factionalism already existing and led to a period of nearly continuous strife between the opposing forces. From Adams' arrival at the agency in December, 1871, until his departure in 1875, charges and countercharges were exchanged, and there was acute dissatisfaction leading on occasion to violence, which in turn resulted in retaliation by the agent. Because this period of contention almost certainly contributed to the ultimate failure of the civilizing experiment at Sisseton, it warrants more attention than such squabbles usually do. The conflict was between the "church party," made up of those Indians who had been most strongly under missionary influence on the old reservation and who often surpassed their teachers in moralistic rigidity, and the "scout party," headed by Gabriel Renville, who preserved many of the "heathen" customs, such as polygamy and dancing, and paid little attention to Christian observances. The dichotomy was not simply between civilization and anti-civilization factions, for Renville and some of his followers were the most progressive farmers on the reservation, and they accused some of the ministers belonging to the other group of devoting so much time to their spiritual duties that they neglected their farms. Generally, however, the least progressive members of the tribe tended to side with Renville in his disputes with the agent, with the result that he was tarred with the same brush so far as Adams was concerned. 15 Shortly after Adams took over as agent, the chiefs and headmen charged in a petition that he had made indiscriminate issues of supplies instead of adhering to the terms of the treaty and had thereby weakened the incentive to labor which the treaty had been intended to provide. ____________________ 15 Everett W. Sterling, "Moses N. Adams: A Missionary as Indian Agent," Minnesota History, XXXV ( December 1956), 167-168; Gabriel Renville, et al., to Sibley, May 2, 1871, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency. -204-
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:05:12 GMT -5
They accused him of conspiring with Riggs to "feed their flock of idlers," i.e., the native ministers, who were of course expected to farm like their parishioners. Adams dismissed the charges as reflecting personal animosity toward him. Matters took a more serious turn late in 1873, when a self-constituted police force tried to drive two native ministers off the reservation by seizing their oxen, wagons, plows, and other equipment issued by the government and turning these items over to the agency for reissue to more deserving members of the tribe. With assistance reluctantly provided by the garrison at Fort Wadsworth, Adams took two of the leaders into custody and then removed Gabriel Renville, the two culprits, and another man from the "executive board" that he had set up, and replaced them with members of the church faction. 16 Apparently thinking the battle won, Adams then proposed a new system of government for the reservation. The rules and regulations included in his plan reveal much about the man's mentality and the attitude with which he approached his duties as Indian agent. One stipulation was that "ample provision should be made for them . . . guaranteeing to each one protection in the liberty to worship and serve God, according to the dictates of his own conscience." But this expression of religious freedom was followed immediately by the sentence "All idolatrous and pagan worship and service should be forbidden with suitable penalty attached." When he had been on the job less than a year, Adams wrote the commissioner that changing the Indians' ways would be difficult, "for in all the work of educating and elevating this people, socially and morally, we encounter their native and peculiar habits; their ignorance and prejudice, and their amazing slowness to believe and do what is right." 17 Adams' stern measures did not silence the discontent of the scout party, who got up another petition and finally brought about an investigation of affairs at the agency in 1874. The upshot was the formal censure of the agent, who had by this time alienated even Riggs by his autocratic and sometimes violent methods. Before his replacement in the spring of 1875, Adams got in a few Parthian shots, accusing the ____ 16 Chiefs and Head Men to Great Father, February 7, 1872; Moses N. Adams to Commissioner Francis A. Walker, April 3,1872; Adams to Edward P. Smith, December 15, 17, 18, 23, and 26, 1873, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Sterling, "Moses N. Adams: A Missionary as Indian Agent," pp. 171-173. 17 Adams to E. P. Smith, January 28, 1874; Adams to Walker, April 3, 1872, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Sterling, "Moses N. Adams: A Missionary as Indian Agent," pp. 169-170. -205- government inspector, E. C. Kemble, of having "covered the Cross of Christ with shame among the pagan portion of this people" by saying that the agent was not there as a minister and should not interfere with the feasting and dancing. Kemble had called the scout party "the most industrious, enterprising and prosperous members of the tribe" (which they probably were); Adams replied, irrelevantly, that they were "largely pagans, polygamists, bigamists and drummers who, almost to a man, retain many of their old heathen habits and customs." 18 Despite the contention between rival factions during Adams' tenure as agent, some progress was made on the reservation, notably in education. As early as 1869 four buildings erected by the Indians were in use as schools. Although Adams doubted the value of such scattered institutions and wanted a manual labor school, he had to be content with day schools for his first two years as agent. By the fall of 1872 two brick schools were completed to house classes previously conducted in homes and churches, and soon afterward the church building at Ascension was taken over by the government as a school. Two more district schools were built in 1874. These schools seem not to have been very successful in their early years. Adams' successor, John G. Hamilton, remarked of the educational system on the reservation that "results are hardly commensurate with the amount of money expended." Dissenting from Adams' view that all five of the schools should be taught the year around, he operated them for only four and a half months. Later they were largely abandoned because of irregular and unsatisfactory attendance and general indifference on the part of the Indians. Daniels had observed much earlier that the novelty of school wore off after about two months. 19 Adams wanted a central institution to train native teachers for the outlying schools, much as Santee Normal Training School was doing. His first request was turned down by the Indian Bureau, but in 1873 he was authorized to begin construction on a manual labor school. Although not entirely finished, it was opened that fall with an enrollment of eighteen girls. It was a small operation for a number of years, kept ____ 18 Adams to E. P. Smith, February 14, 1874, and March 20, 1875; Dr. George H. Hawes to E. P. Smith, November 2, 1874, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Sterling, "Moses N. Adams: A Missionary as Indian Agent," p. 175. 19 Adams to Walker, February 26 and May 18, 1872, and January 24, 1873; Adams to E. P. Smith, March 29, 1873; John G. Hamilton to E. P. Smith, June 23, 1875, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1869, p. 321; 1871, p. 531; 1872, p. 256; 1873, p. 226; 1874, p. 256; 1875, p. 252; 1876, p. 37; 1878, pp. 41-42. -206- open for only nine months a year during Hamilton's term of office. 20 Besides the government schools, the Sissetons also had the facilities of one or more mission schools, which, though they never acquired the importance of those at Santee, supplemented the government schools for a time. In 1876, for example, the mission school was in session longer than the district schools, and two years later both the Good Will and the Ascension mission schools were in operation for ten months. In that year the American Board spent $2,510 for its work on the Sisseton Reservation. 21 When the Sisseton Reservation was established, the land surrounding it was as yet unceded by the Indians. Although their claim to some eight million acres in the eastern part of Dakota Territory was considered somewhat shadowy, the language of the 1867 treaty implied that such a claim existed. As the tide of settlement began to sweep into the area, pressure for its cession grew, until in 1872 Congress instructed the Secretary of the Interior to examine and report on any claim the Sissetons and Wahpetons might have to that region and, if their claim was found to be valid, what compensation, if any, should be made to them for the extinguishment of their title. Agents Adams and William Forbes, of the Devils Lake Reservation, and James Smith were appointed commissioners to investigate the matter. Their instructions specified that, although the act of Congress contemplated payment, because these lands were "not only of no advantage to the Indians, but positively mischievous, as tending to keep alive their savage habits and traditions, the consideration if any thus to be paid ought to be very moderate." The consent of the Indians was not required, but it was deemed expedient that they should voluntarily and freely accept relinquishment of their claim. 22 The council held with the chiefs and headmen of the Sissetons and Wahpetons was not altogether a love feast, but the Indians had learned by then that whatever terms the white man chose to offer them might as well be accepted. Hence they put up only token opposition to the offer of ten cents an acre, to be paid in ten annual installments of &80,000 each. Smith pretended that this sum was really more than the lands were worth to the Indians, but Adams and Forbes more frankly advised ____
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Post by mdenney on Mar 4, 2007 16:05:45 GMT -5
20 Adams to Walker, February 26, 1872, and January 24 and March 29, 1873, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1872, p. 256; 1873, p. 226; 1874, p. 256; 1876, p. 37. 21 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1876, p. 37; 1878, pp. 41, 43. 22 U.S. Statutes at Large, XVII, 281; Walker to William Forbes and Adams, July 19, 1872, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency. -207- the Indians to accept it as the best they could get. The agreement signed in September, 1872, contained nine paragraphs, of which Congress later struck out all but the first two, which provided for the cession and the amount of compensation. These sweeping amendments were agreed to as a matter of course in May, 1873, and the last claims of the Sisseton-WahpetonSioux, except for the two reservations, were done away with for a ridiculously low price. 23 About the most that could be said for the agreement was that it provided, for the next ten years, a badly needed source of revenue for the Indians. The treaty of 1867 had been, in its amended form, deliberately vague as to the amount of money to be expended for these people, and appropriations were always subject to the exigencies of the budget. Following the panic of 1873, for example, appropriations for the Indian Service generally were cut drastically. Theoretically the Sissetons and Wahpetons were entitled to benefits from the sale of the old reservation in Minnesota, but the sums realized from that source were usually tied up in one way or another so that practically none of the money reached the Indians until the 1890's. Hence the pittance they received for the cession of their lands in eastern Dakota gave their agent something to work with for a decade, at the end of which time they were expected to have become entirely self-supporting. Although the Sissetons had begun locating on farms during Thompson's term as agent, no thoroughgoing survey of the reservation was made at that time. Consequently people had settled pretty much where they pleased, without regard to whether their farms were susceptible to description in the customary surveyor's terms. By 1874, "all sorts of difficulties had grown out of local contentions about timber, land, &c," as Adams commented. The next year C. C. Royce was sent out by the Interior Department to survey the Indians' claims preparatory to issuing certificates of allotment. Royce also found "numerous and very vexatious disputes" among the Indians as to the boundaries of their claims. In many cases they had settled too close together to permit the assignment of, 160-acre tracts to each family without requiring some to move. 24 ____ 23 Proceedings of Council, September 18, 1872; Adams to Walker, September 19, 1872, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1872, pp. 118-123; U.S. Statutes at Large, XVIII, 167. 24 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1874, p. 257; 1875, p. 253; Secretary of Interior Columbus Delano to E. P. Smith, April 23 and May 10, 1875; C. C. Royce to E. P. Smith, June 14 and September 25, 1875; Acting Secretary of Interior B. R. Cowen to E. P. Smith, October 1, 1875, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency. -208- In making the allotments Royce was guided by a principle necessitated by the nature of the country embraced in the reservation. Most of the timber, highly prized by the Indians, was located in the coulees along the eastern slope of the Coteau, whereas the best farm land lay well to the east, beyond a rather sterile strip at the base of the Coteau. Thompson had recognized this problem and in 1868 had recommended that each family be given forty acres of timber in one piece and the remainder of his quarter section in another tract. Royce followed that principle in making the allotments in 1875, with the result that most of the Indians had two pieces of land, rather widely separated. If the homesteads had been situated on the tracts of good agricultural land, no difficulty would have ensued; but the Indians, regarding the availability of timber more highly than the quality of the soil, had settled mostly in the coulees. Years later, when they had received patents, they found it convenient to lease their farmland and practice a kind of subsistence agriculture on the remote timber claims where they lived.25 Despite a rapid turnover in agents and slow progress in farming, life on the Sisseton Reservation during the 1870's had an appearance of stability. In accordance with the terms of the 1867 treaty, rations, clothing, stock, and farm implements were issued only in return for labor performed. The labor might include hauling supplies from the nearest railroad terminus ( Morris, Minnesota, until 1876, when a road was surveyed to Herman, a few miles nearer) or construction work around the agency, but there was not enough work of this kind for the number of men who needed to draw rations. Consequently, the practice was adopted early and long continued of including work on one's own claim. The men were paid, not in cash but in credit, at a rate comparable to the going rate for labor outside the reservation. Breaking new sod was worth five dollars an acre, ordinary plowing, three dollars an acre. The transportation of supplies by ox team from Herman paid twenty dollars. 26 Keeping track of the amount of work done by each man involved a tremendous amount of bookkeeping on the part of the agent and his clerk. An account of every man's work was kept in a set of "Indian ____ 26 Benjamin Thompson to N. G. Taylor, July 11, 1868; Royce to E. P. Smith, September 25, 1875, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1900, p. 385. 26 Hamilton to John Q. Smith, February 14, May 15, and July 28, 1876; Edward H. C. Hooper to Ezra A. Hayt, May 13, 1878, NARS, RG 75, LR, Sisseton Agency; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1871, p. 532; 1870, p. 226. -209- books"; the transactions covered an average of over 250 pages of ordinary ten-quire journal pages. Goods were issued by the storekeeper on requisitions signed by the agent or the clerk. The storekeeper kept a ledger showing the amount of goods received and issued and posted it weekly. Supplies were issued monthly in this fashion to more than four hundred individuals. In addition, Indians whose credit was notably good or who brought in produce for sale were allowed to draw on the warehouse at any time, even though this procedure placed an additional burden on the storekeeper. Ironically, the further the Indians advanced--that is, the more labor they performed--the more work devolved upon the agency employees. Issuing weekly rations to "wild" Indians at the agencies west of the Missouri was relatively simple compared to the task at Sisseton. 27 There were a good many Indians, of course, who contributed little or nothing to their own support. These people, who constituted the "poor list" as distinguished from the "working list," made up a remarkably large proportion of the tribe. In 1872, for example, they numbered 660 out of a total of 1,496. Some of them were doing a little farming, but many were the elderly, the infirm, and the incompetent. During the decade their numbers diminished, as more and more families located on farms and thus qualified for inclusion on the "working list." 28 In many respects, the history of the Sisseton Reservation during the last three decades of the nineteenth century parallels that of the Santee Reservation. At both places efforts were made to render the Indians economically self-sufficient, and on both reservations those efforts were hampered by drought and grasshopper plagues, by the Indians' uneven co-operation with their agents, and by the uncertainty and instability of the government's policy toward them. Some circumstances at Sisseton were peculiar to that reservation, however. Because the reservation was nearly nine times the size of the Santee Reservation as finally constituted, the Indians were scattered more widely and the agents had more difficulty keeping track of them. Located as it was in country not yet settled, it did not for several years include all the Indians nominally attached to the agency. Some continued to plant on Big Stone Lake, with the tacit permission of the agent, until at least 1870; another band, who practiced little or no agriculture, remained west of the reservation until the death of their chief, Big Eagle Feather, in 1873; still another ____
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