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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 0:52:13 GMT -5
History of the Santee Sioux United States Indian Policy on Trial by ROY W. MEYER Revised Edition Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Meyer, Roy Willard, 1925-- History of the Santee Sioux: United States Indian Policy on trial / by Roy W. Meyer.--Rev. ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.Santee Indians--History. 2. Santee Indians--Government relations. I. Title. Preface to the Revised Edition During the quarter-century since the original publication of this book, tremendous changes have occurred on the Santee Sioux reservations. The dreary, poverty-stricken rural ghettos have largely given way to neat, busy communities whose residents take pride in them and, in some cases, offer tours to visitors. This transformation has resulted partly, though not entirely, from an unlikely development, the advent of commercial gaming on Indian reservations. If the lives and homes of the Indians have changed, so have nonIndian attitudes toward them, for reasons that have little or nothing to do with gambling casinos. There is a greater sensitivity toward cultures different from the dominant society. This sensitivity is revealed, not merely in superficial ways, such as calling Indians "Native Americans"--substituting one misnomer for another--but in a widespread interest in and respect for the traditional beliefs and practices of the Indian people. Acceptance has replaced mere tolerance. If the book had been written in the 1990s rather than the 1960s, these changed attitudes would probably have been reflected in the text. Perhaps I would have used the name "Dakota," which many-though not all--of the Santees prefer, rather than "Sioux," despite the convenience of the more widely recognized designation, still generally used by the United States government. And I might have found a more felicitous title for Chapter 3, though "Civilizing the Sioux" was intended ironically. But the changes here have been largely limited to the addition of an epilogue bringing up to date, however sketchily, the recent history of the Santee Sioux people. The rest of the book will have to rest on whatever merits it originally possessed. -v- Preface WHEN WHITE Americans began penetrating the homeland of the Sioux Indians, they found those people divided into seven subtribes. Along the Mississippi and the lower Minnesota rivers were the villages of the Mdewakantons; inland, hunting mainly along the upper Cannon River, the Blue Earth, and west to the Des Moines, were the Wahpekutes; on both sides of the Minnesota and in the vicinity of the lakes that today separate Minnesota and South Dakota were the Sissetons and Wahpetons; between there and the Missouri roamed the Yanktons and Yanktonais, who spoke a dialect slightly different from that of the four eastern subtribes; and west of the Missouri were the Tetons, accounting for more than half the Sioux population and divided into seven bands, some of them large enough to be considered subtribes. To the Yanktons and Yanktonais, the people living east of them were the Issati, or Santees. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, most white contacts were with the Santees, and especially with the Mdewakantons, whose permanent villages along the great rivers became well known to travelers visiting the upper Mississippi region. It was these people who fought the whites in the great Sioux Uprising of 1862. Hence it is not surprising that the literature about the Santee Sioux is voluminous for the period up to the 1860's. After the uprising, however, and the expulsion of the Santee Sioux from Minnesota, the attention of historians was diverted to the more spectacular Teton Sioux--the Oglalas, the Hunkpapas, the Brulés, and the rest, with their leaders Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, Gall, and Spotted Tail. Thus we have the excellent books of George E. Hyde, Robert Utley The Last Days of the Sioux Nation, Royal B. Hassrick The Sioux: Life and Customs of a Warrior Society, James C. Olson Red Cloud and the Sioux Problem, and a wealth of other writings. Contrary to what this shift in historical emphasis might suggest, the Santee Sioux did not disappear after 1862. They merely exchanged their old homes in Minnesota for new and less satisfactory ones beyond the western boundaries of that state, and there they endured the dreary monotony of reservation life for the rest of the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth. Although their history after 1862 contains less drama and excitement than the earlier period, when painters, authors, and just plain tourists sought the upper Mississippi and recorded what they found, it does not deserve the oblivion into which it has been allowed to fall. If for no other reason, it is a story that needs to be told for the light it can shed on our Indian policy in the past century. The Santees were in some respects quite different from their brethren on the Great Plains, and at the time of their expulsion from Minnesota they had traveled much farther on the road toward acculturation than had those western Sioux when the latter were first induced to gather near agencies in 1869. The story of the Santees during the last thirty years of the nineteenth century therefore contrasts sharply with that of the Tetons in the same period. The first six chapters of this book deal with the Santee Sioux as subtribes, or bands, with emphasis on the Mdewakantons, since the information on them is relatively more copious than on the other three. From 1863 on, however, the reservation rather than the tribal division became the functional unit in relations between the United States government and the Santees, and so they are discussed reservation by reservation. Those of the Mdewakantons and Wahpekutes--the lower Sioux--who surrendered or were captured wound up on the Santee Reservation in Nebraska, from which a few courageous souls later fled, some to the valley of the Big Sioux River near Flandreau, South Dakota, others to their old homes in Minnesota. The Sissetons and Wahpetons, known as the upper Sioux, were placed on the Sisseton Reservation in northeastern South Dakota and on the Devils Lake Reservation in North Dakota. A few Sioux remained in Minnesota and became the nucleus of the colonies that formed as people from the Santee Reservation returned. Not all the Santee Sioux who fled Minnesota in 1862 are accounted for in the foregoing list of reservations and settlements, however. Some joined the western Sioux and were absorbed by them; others settled on what became the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana and ultimately disappeared into the population of Tetons, Yanktons, and Assiniboins; still others crossed the Canadian border and never returned, their descendants today remaining on small reserves in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. None of these groups were numerous, and none receive more than passing mention in this book. A more numerous body to which this book gives only casual treatment consists of those Santees who have left -viii- -vii- their reservations in comparatively recent years and found homes in towns and cities, either as members of expatriate Indian colonies or as a nearly indistinguishable part of the general population. Although studies of such migrated Indians are extremely valuable, it would be difficult and not very helpful to segregate the Sioux from other Indians who have taken the great plunge. Consequently, their history, in so far as it can be said to have any independent existence, is left to other investigators.
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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:04:53 GMT -5
Two points need to be made, lest this book be accused of failing to do certain things which it does not attempt to do. In the first place, it is history, not ethnology. Although some treatment of a group's culture cannot be avoided when the group written about is culturally different from that of the author and the reader, such ventures outside the proper realm of the historian are distinctly subordinated here. The observations and opinions of early white visitors to the Santee Sioux are cited where they seem appropriate, but no attempt at culture reconstruction or sociological analysis of the present culture of the Santee Sioux is made. This leads to a second point. Despite the obvious advantages of a book about Indians written from the "inside," this one is quite frankly written from the "outside." History is based largely on written records, and most of the records from which the history of the Santee Sioux must be reconstructed were kept by white men. The chief sources used in the preparation of this book were government documents, both published and manuscript; contemporary newspapers; books and articles, both primary and secondary; and the private papers of missionaries and others who worked with the Indians. Interviews have been of value in straightening out some perplexing details in the recent history of the Santee groups, but I have made no attempt to "correct" the received version of events in the nineteenth century by recourse to oral traditions as expressed by present-day Indians. Every book ought to be equipped with a few operating instructions to enable the reader to derive the maximum benefit from it with the least amount of effort. A few matters of terminology and spelling may call for explanation. Though it is well known by now that the Sioux are really the Dakotas, the long adherence by the government to the former name has led to its almost universal acceptance, even by the people it designates. I have therefore thought it best to use the familiar name, and to reserve "Dakota" for the language, although there are reputable books that speak of the "Sioux" language, and many anthropologists use "Dakota" exclusively for both the tribe and the language. -ix- The spelling of familiar Dakota names usually follows the most widely used form. Thus the spellings "Wabasha" and "Shakopee" are used, though they are not particularly accurate renditions of the orignal pronunciation. An exception to the rule is the name of the band led by a succession of chiefs called Little Crow. In order to approximate more nearly the correct pronunciation, I have elected to spell it "Kapozha" rather than the more usual "Kaposia" or the less familiar "Kapoja." Names which are too unfamiliar to have any established spelling are given as they (or their component parts) are spelled in the Riggs grammar and dictionary, published in 1852. Following the precedent not only of such historians as George Hyde and James C. Olson, but of anthropologists like E. Adamson Hoebel, I have used the customary English plurals for the names of Indian tribes and subtribes. Down through the years the department of government charged with the management of Indian affairs has functioned under two slightly varying names. It was originally established in 1824 as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and that is the title it officially bears today. For most of its history, however, it was generally known as the Office of Indian Affairs. The two names are here used interchangeably. The term "Indian Service" is occasionally used, with much the same significance. Acknowledgments are due many people for their help in the making of this book. My thanks go first to the personnel of the National Archives, especially Miss Jane F. Smith, Director of the Social and Economic Branch, Office of Civil Archives, who helped me track down several elusive items. Assistance also came from the staffs of the state historical societies of Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Several county officials, particularly registers of deeds and welfare officers, have made valuable contributions. Mr. Edwin D. Bronner, Curator of the Quaker Collection at Haverford College, provided me with copies of unpublished manuscripts containing information on certain Indian agents who were members of the Society of Friends. The maps were drawn by Mr. Richard W. Piepenburg, Mankato State College geography student. Any detectable bias in favor of the Bureau of Indian Affairs may be due to the unfailing and even enthusiastic co-operation I have received from Bureau officials, notably agency superintendents, who have given their time to answering my questions about the present condition of the various Santee groups. Miss Evelyn Robeson, Records Officer at the Bureau's Central Office in Washington, aided me in the use of current -x-
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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:05:24 GMT -5
records. My thanks go also to the many members of the Indian communities, tribal council officers and others, who have provided me with another vantage point from which to view the Santee Sioux of today. Finally, my heaviest debt is owed to the American Association for State and Local History, from which I received a grant-in-aid in 1963 for this project. ROY W. MEYER -xi- Contents PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION v
PREFACE vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS xvi
1 THE EUROPEAN MEETS THE SIOUX 1
2 THE AMERICANS MOVE IN 24
3 CIVILIZING THE SIOUX 48
4 THE MONSTROUS CONSPIRACY 72
5 RESERVATION DAYS 88
6 CATASTROPHE 109
7 EXILE 133
8 RECOVERY AT NIOBRARA 155
9 THE QUIET DECADES 175
10 THE FATE OF THE UPPER SIOUX 198
11 THE DEVILS LAKE RESERVATION 220
12 THE FLANDREAU COLONY 242
13 THOSE WHO STAYED 258
14 UP FROM OBLIVION 273
15 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: SANTEE 294
16 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: SISSETON AND DEVILS LAKE 317
17 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: FLANDREAU AND THE MINNESOTA SIOUX 337
18 THE SANTEE SIOUX AND THE INDIAN PROBLEM 358
EPILOGUE 373
APPENDIX: TREATIES WITH THE SANTEE SIOUX 407
BILIOGRAPHY/ADDENDUM 437
INDEX 453
-xiii- List of Illustrations and Maps Dahcotah Encampment following page 108
View of the Prairie du Chien Treaty Field
Lawrence Taliaferro
Samuel W. Pond
Stephen Return Riggs
Signing of the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux
Sioux Delegates to Washington
Physician's House, Upper Sioux Agency
Chief Little Crow (Taoyateduta)
Execution of Thirty-eight Sioux
Bishop Henry B. Whipple following page 228
Pilgrim Congregational Church, Santee Agency
Boys' Junior Endeavor, Santee Normal Training School
Gabriel Renville (Ti-wakan)
Fort Totten
Payment to Minnesota Mdewakantons
Joseph La Framboise and a Group of Sioux at the Sisseton Agency
Fort Totten Indian School Band
Bishop Whipple School, Lower Sioux Indian
Community following page 322
Sioux Family and Tipi
Traders' Stores and Unused Agency Building, Santee Agency
Santee Sioux Dangers, Santee Agency
-xv- Dance at Dedication of Lower Sioux Community Building
Old Agency Day School and Community Building, Sisseton Reservation
Encampment on the Big Sioux River at Flandreau "Siouxtennial"
Indian Farm and Typical Devils Lake Reservation Landscape
Land of the Santee Sioux v -ix
Locations of the Santee Sioux, ca. 1800-1851 following page 42
Sioux Uprising Sites following page 120
Santee Reservation following page 164
Sisseton Reservation following page 202
Devils Lake Reservation following page 224
Reservations and Communities Settled After 1869 in Minnesota and South Dakota following page 274
-xvi-
History of the Santee Sioux -xvii-
· Title: History of the Santee Sioux: United States Indian Policy on Trial · Publisher: University of Nebraska Press · Publication Date: 1993 · Page No: xviii
· Title: History of the Santee Sioux: United States Indian Policy on Trial · Publisher: University of Nebraska Press · Publication Date: 1993 · Page No: xix CHAPTER 1 The European Meets the Sioux ONE OF THE great historic confrontations between European man and the American Indian occurred in the early spring of 1660. The scene was a "rendezvous" in what is now northwestern Wisconsin or, possibly, eastern Minnesota. The principals were, on the one hand, two French explorers, Pierre Esprit Radisson and Médard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers; and on the other, the chiefs and braves of the Santee Sioux. Radisson and Groseilliers had arrived the previous fall at Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior, and then traveled inland to an Indian village, probably on Lac Court Oreille, near modern Hayward, Wisconsin. After spending a miserable winter of near-starvation, surrounded by a multitude of Indians, many of whom did starve, the explorers revived somewhat with the approach of spring and better hunting. 1 When conditions had begun to improve, the Frenchmen were visited by eight ambassadors from the Sioux, each with two wives laden with wild rice, corn, and other grains. The food, offered to the hungry party, was welcome, but, as Radisson remarks somewhat ungraciously, would have been more so " if they had brought it a month or two before" (p. 207 ). Anticipating the ceremonies at the Feast of the Dead a ____________________ 1 Pierre Esprit Radisson, Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson, ed. by Gideon Scull ( New York: Peter Smith, 1943), pp. 201-206. -1- short time later, these emissaries greased the visitors' feet and legs and replaced their clothing with buffalo and beaver robes; then they wept copiously and smoked the calumet with the strangers. Radisson's description of the calumet leaves no doubt that it was the catlinite pipe that became so familiar to later explorers. Of red stone, as big as a fist and as long as a hand, it had a reed five feet long and as thick as a man's thumb. Tied to it was a cluster of eagle tail feathers, painted in several colors and arranged so as to open like a fan. Feathers of ducks and other birds were also attached to it. The Frenchmen, who enjoyed the status of "demi-gods," could not resist showing their superiority to their guests. Since the Indians, at the end of the smoking ceremony, had thrown tobacco into the fire, the whites decided to dispose of some gunpowder in the same fashion, to show how much more powerful their "tobacco" was. Unfortunately, it "had more strenght [sic] then we thought," and the Indians scattered "without any further delay" and without looking for the door. When Radisson and Groseilliers had, with some difficulty, calmed the Indians' fears enough to resume the council, they feasted for eight days (pp. 207 - 209 ). The meeting just described was only a prelude to the real confrontation, the Feast of the Dead, which took place a few days later at a previously arranged site. Among the eighteen nations that assembled, easily the most spectacular were the Sioux. They first sent an advance guard of thirty young men, who were followed the next day by the main body. In preparations for the distinguished company, the snow was cleared away from the area where the tipis would be erected, and boughs of trees were laid on the ground. The Indians arrived "with an incredible pomp," their feathers as prominent as jewels in an assemblage of European royalty. First came the young warriors, their faces painted several colors, their hair burned off except for a tuft, which was ornamented with "some small pearles or some Turkey [turquoise?] stones . . ." (pp. 209 - 211 ). This tuft was made to stand erect by saturating it with bear's grease mixed with reddish earth. The warriors were dressed in light deerskin robes, "stokens" (leggings) embroidered with porcupine quills, moccasins decorated with a piece of buffalo hide that trailed more than a foot and a half behind them, and white robes made of painted beaver skins. Their weapons were "swords" and knives a foot and a half long, hatchets "very ingeniously done," wooden clubs, and bows and arrows; apparently they also carried some kind of shield "uppon which weare represented all manner of figures, according to their knowledge, as of the sun and moone, of terrestriall beasts, about -2-
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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:05:54 GMT -5
its feathers very artificaly painted" (pp. 211 - 212 ). After the braves came the elders, "with great gravitie and modestie," wearing buffalo robes that swept the ground. Each one carried a calumet and a medicine pouch. Unlike the young braves, their faces were not painted, but their hair was dressed in the same fashion. Behind them came the women loaded with the tipis, which they erected in less than half an hour (pp. 212 - 213 ). At the first council the Sioux chiefs offered presents to the French, under whose protection they expressly placed themselves. They further solicited a visit from these powerful strangers, "having by their means destroyed their Ennemyes abroad & neere." So eager were the Indians to receive the French ("being wee kept them alive by our marchandises," Radisson says) that they claimed to have cut down trees, built bridges, and otherwise paved the way to their villages. The speech was concluded with a request for firearms--a thunder, as the Indians expressed it (pp. 213 - 214 ). Allowing for the hyperbole commonly found in Indian oratory and for some exaggeration by Radisson when he recalled the episode several years later, the speech suggests at least two facts about the relationship between the Sioux and the Europeans. In the first place, the Indians were evidently already to some degree dependent on European goods, obtained presumably through intermediaries. It is clear also, despite the naive terror shown by the ambassadors at the exploding gunpowder, that they were sufficiently familiar with firearms to know their value and to wish to obtain them. The only enemies they mentioned by name, the Crees, had probably already received firearms and used them in wars against the Sioux. Besides these diplomatic negotiations, the Feast of the Dead included much reciprocal gift-giving, at which the Frenchmen showed a sure instinct for the Indian love of ritual, and, of course, feasting, with wild rice the principal dish. To demonstrate their capability of defending the Sioux, the explorers shot off their "artillery"--twelve guns. Having got good results earlier, they repeated their stunt of throwing powder into the fire--with what effect Radisson does not say (pp. 215 - 217 ). According to Radisson, he later made two trips, one to the Crees on a peacemaking mission, accompanied by about fifty Sioux, and another to the "nation of the beefe," or prairie Sioux, in fulfillment of a promise made at the Feast of the Dead (pp. 217 - 220 ). The first of these was probably no more effectual than many later efforts by Europeans to stop intertribal warfare, though Radisson apparently imagined that the -3- ostentation of friendship--dances and games joined in by both tribes-meant that peace had been established. No doubt the two enemies had a good opportunity to size each other up in anticipation of the next attack by one tribe or the other. Radisson's account of the second expedition is so circumstantial, despite his claim to have lived among the prairie Sioux for six weeks, that doubt has been cast on the validity of the whole story. Nearly all of what he says about the manners and customs of these people could have been taken from the Jesuit Relations or obtained at second hand elsewhere. Whatever the source of Radisson's information, the record he left is invaluable as an early description of the Sioux. His biographer says of his account of the Feast of the Dead that "probably there is nowhere any better account than here of Indian customs before the natives had been influenced by white men's ways and goods." 2 Besides what he actually saw, Radisson reported, accurately, what he heard about such characteristic activities as harvesting wild rice: "Two takes a boat and two sticks, by which they gett the eare downe and gett the corne out of it. Their boat being full, they bring it to a fitt place to dry it, and that is their food for the most part of the winter, and doe dress it thus: for each man a handfull of that they putt in the pott, that swells so much that it can suffice a man." The prairie Sioux, he said, were polygamous, and unmarried girls had "all maner of freedome, but are forced to marry when they come to the age." Once married, they were expected to remain faithful; adultery was punished by cutting off the nose and sometimes the crown of the head. 3 Along with much that has to be dismissed as fabulous, Radisson provides a body of ethnological information from which inferences may be made. Possessed of a sense of humor and not so hopelessly blinded by his own ethnocentrism as some later observers were, he saw the Sioux as human beings whose customs were strange to him but who were people with whom he could establish a man-to-man relationship. We can only speculate as to what the Sioux thought of the strangers with the formidable weapons. Though probably not so awed as Radisson thought, they undoubtedly recognized the technological superiority of the European weapons and tools and quite likely saw their visitors as a new resource to exploit. If such exploitation required flattery and even abasement, they were willing to pay that price. Once the first shock had ____________________ 2 Grace Lee Nute, Caesars of the Wilderness ( New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1943), p. 64. 3 Radisson, Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson, pp. 215-220. -4- worn off, they were probably more amused than angered by the exploding gunpowder trick and were willing to humor the white men if it pleased them to play it a second time. After all, the practical jokes of the Sioux, as reported by later observers, were neither subtle nor kindly. The Sioux did not break suddenly upon the world of European knowledge at that momentous conclave in the spring of 1660. Their name, at least, had been known for two decades. The Jesuit Relation of 1640 includes it among the names collected by J ean Nicolet on his visit to the Winnebagos at Green Bay a few years earlier. The earliest spelling, recorded there, was "Naduesiu," a variant of the Algonquian "Nadouess-iw": a diminutive of snakes, adders, and, by extension, enemies, the term applied to them by the Chippewas. This was shortened by the French later in the century to "Scioux" and then to "Sioux." 4 As the Jesuits extended their missionary activities westward, more rumors about the Sioux came from the vast forested wilderness. They were reported to till the soil and harvest corn and tobacco. Because of their constant wars with the Crees and other tribes, the Sioux were said to have larger villages in a better state of defense than those of the Hurons, who were well known to the missionaries. The language differed from those of the various Algonquian tribes and from the Iroquoian dialect spoken by the Hurons. 5 The reports brought back by Radisson and Groseilliers were incorporated into the Relation of 1659-1660. Their diplomatic negotiations were seen as opening the way for missionary activity among the Sioux, a prospect that called for additional information about them. As more reports filtered through to the missionaries, a picture, not entirely consistent, of the Sioux began to emerge. They were a warlike nation, it was agreed, although they had "no other arms . . . than the bow and the club." Father Claude Allouez, who visited the Lake Superior region late in 1665, reported that their agriculture was limited to tobacco and that they lived mostly on a kind of "marsh rye" which they harvested toward the close of summer in the small lakes that dotted their country. They lived in "cabins" which were not "covered with bark, but with Deerskins, carefully dressed, and sewed together with such skill that the cold does not enter." 6 ____________________ 4 Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents ( New York: Pageant Book Co., 1959), XVIII, 231, 233. 5 Ibid., XXIII, 225, 227. 6 Ibid., XLVI, 69 ; L, 279; LI, 53. -5- The famous missionary-explorer Father Jacques Marquette contributed to the emerging picture of the Sioux by calling them "the Iroquois of this country . . . but less perfidious than they, and who never attack until they have been attacked. . . ." This early view of the Sioux as morally superior to the Iroquois and Algonquins occurs as a persistent theme in the writings of the Jesuits. They were said to far exceed the other tribes in magnanimity, "being often content with the glory of winning a victory, and sending back free and uninjured the prisoners taken by them in battle." 7 Such sweeping generalizations about particular tribes are frequently encountered in the writings of early travelers, and there is a temptation to dismiss them as gross oversimplifications. Yet this favorable picture of the Sioux occurs so frequently, and is expressed independently by so many observers, that one wonders if there was not something to it. The first white men to visit the Santee Sioux in their principal center near Mille Lacs Lake were Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Luth, and Father Louis Hennepin, a Recollet missionary. Du Luth, who planted the French flag in the Sioux village of Izatys on July 2, 1679, left only a brief, soldierly statement of his achievement; but Hennepin wrote extensively--and, one suspects, imaginatively--of his experiences among the Sioux. 8 Taken prisoner by a war party on the Mississippi in April, 1680, Hennepin and his two companions were conducted to Izatys, held there about three months, and then taken back down the great river to the mouth of the St. Croix, where Du Luth met them and obtained their release. Despite his intermittent anxiety over his fate, Hennepin took advantage of what was really an unexcelled opportunity to study the Sioux customs, language, religion, and whole way of life, and left for posterity a description of these people as they were in essentially their aboriginal state. His account has much the same value as the writings of Captain John Smith about the Virginia Indians. Both men were shrewd observers, both necessarily interpreted what they saw in terms of their own culture, and neither was entirely veracious when an opportunity to glorify self came along. The picture Hennepin gives of the Sioux shows them to have been dependent almost wholly on hunting, fishing, and wild-rice gathering. Arriving at their village in the lean season, the white men were fed scanty rations; "a little wild rice or some smoked fish eggs which they ____________________ 7 Ibid., LIV, 191 ; LV, 171. 8 Appendix to Louis Hennepin, A Description of Louisiana, ed. by John Gilmary Shea ( New York: John Gilmary Shea, 1880), pp. 374-375. -6-
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[the Indians] cooked in water in earthen pots" was offered them only five or six times a week. On the way up the river, and again on the return trip, the warriors hunted buffalo, driving them off the bluffs and into the river, where they could more easily be killed. On one of these hunts Hennepin encountered the institution of the "soldiers' lodge"-the tribal police force whose duty it was to maintain order and punish any hunters who pushed ahead of the main body. When he saw the tipis of such offenders pulled down and their meat confiscated, he thought at first that they were enemies, but a self-appointed mentor explained to him the need for rigid discipline on the hunt. 9 More than a century and a half later, Henry Hastings Sibley, on a hunt with the Indians, was to be threatened with much the same punishment for a similar offense. Although he does not positively say so, Hennepin implies that the Sioux were nonagricultural. During his stay at their village, he planted some tobacco and vegetable seeds that he had brought with him; but upon his return in August with Du Luth, he found that the Indians, though professing an interest in the experiment, refused to use the products. 10 Some of Hennepin's observations merely confirm those of earlier sources. Like Radisson, he noted the favorite Sioux trick of weeping; Aquipaguetin, the chief of the party that took him prisoner, wept copiously in hopes of inducing his companions to consent to killing the white men. Upon arriving at Izatys, where a friendlier chief, Ouasicoudé, took charge of them, their feet and legs were greased in the manner described by Radisson. Earlier observers had commented on the Sioux enthusiasm for dancing. Hennepin had plenty of opportunities to verify the report, for on the way up the Mississippi the young braves danced until midnight every night. Once, when Aquipaguetin had killed a fat bear, he held a feast, after which all the warriors danced: ____________________ 10 Ibid., pp. 108, 124. Lloyd A. Wilford, who excavated mounds in the Mille Lacs area in 1941, identifies Hennepin's Sioux with the late Woodland culture, which is characterized by a very limited agriculture, sometimes confined to tobacco. Although there is no historical record that the Sioux built mounds, Wilford credits them with building the mounds near Mille Lacs Lake. These mounds contained no mortuary offerings or other objects of human manufacture except for debris found on village sites. See Wilford, "The Prehistoric Indians of Minnesota," Minnesota History, XXV ( June 1944), 153-157; and "The Prehistoric Indians of Minnesota: The Mille Lacs Aspect," Minnesota History, XXV ( December 1944), 329-341. 9 Marion E. Cross, ed., Father Louis Hennepin's Description of Louisiana ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1938), pp. 101-102, 108, 118. -7- Their faces and bodies were smeared with paint, each warrior being painted with the symbol of some animal appropriate to his family or selected by his own fancy. Some had their hair short, full of bear grease, and decorated with red and white feathers. Others sprinkled their heads with the down of birds, which clung to the grease. They all danced with their hands on their hips, striking the soles of their feet upon the ground so hard that they left footprints. 11 Hennepin confirmed the earlier characterization of the Sioux as morally superior to the other tribes familiar to the French. They were equal in bravery to the Iroquois, he said, adding that "they also make all the surrounding tribes tremble even though they have only the bow and arrow. These Indians run faster than the Iroquois but they are not so brutal and do not eat the flesh of their enemies, being content to burn them" (p. 165 ). There is some doubt as to whether the Sioux did, in fact, burn their enemies; at this stage of their history they are usually not charged with torturing captives. Father Joseph Marest, who visited them in 1687 and 1689, reported that they "did not wreak on their prisoners those horrors which disgrace most of the other nations on this continent. . . ." 12 To a greater extent than is true of Radisson's rather straightforward account, Hennepin's story is marred by the intrusion of the author's ego. One is inclined to be repelled by Hennepin's evident satisfaction at the death of a child soon after he had baptized it and to be suspicious of a man who claimed, during the reign of Louis XIV, that "Louis" was the Dakota word for "sun." Yet Hennepin is probably truthful in claiming to have earned the Indians' good will by curing some of their ailments, and he clearly learned something of their language. Manza Ouckange, the Indians' term for firearms, is too close to maza wakan-mysterious (i.e., powerful) metal--to be mere coincidence. He did not begin to understand his hosts' religion, but he noted that Aquipaguetin carried with him the bones of an important dead relative wrapped in dressed skins decorated with red and black porcupine quills. 13 With all his self-importance and his inevitable ethnocentrism, Hennepin is still one of the most valuable sources of information on the early Sioux. It was to be some time before another European would take the trouble to describe their manners in as much detail. There ____________________ 11 Cross, Description of Louisiana, pp. 97, 99-101, 107, 111. 12 Pierre F. X. Charlevoix, History and General Description of New France, trans. by John Gilmary Shea ( New York: John Gilmary Shea, 1866- 1872), III, 32-33. 13 Cross, Description of Louisiana, pp. 98, 100-101, 109, 112-113. -8- were, however, others who had the opportunity. The French contact opened by Du Luth was maintained intermittently for the rest of the period of French dominion in the lakes region, and the Sioux were repeatedly visited by traders, missionaries, and military men pursuing their respective occupations. One of the traders, Nicholas Perrot, who also served as commandant in the upper Mississippi region, in 1686 established a fort on the east shore of Lake Pepin and on May 8, 1689, proclaimed French sovereignty over the entire area occupied by the Sioux. Although much of his information was obtained at second hand, it has considerable value. He told, for example, about the friction that developed between the Sioux and a group of Hurons and Ottawas who fled west to escape the Iroquois and settled about 1656 on Isle Pelée, in the Mississippi (supposed to be Prairie Island, above Red Wing). The Sioux received them hospitably and even behaved obsequiously in the hope of getting hatchets, knives, and other European goods from them. Mistaking their manner for a sign of weakness, the intruders treated the Sioux contemptuously, with the result that the latter rose up and drove the eastern Indians out of their country. 14 Another anecdote told by Perrot is that of the Huron war party that attempted to penetrate to the heart of the Sioux country and met disaster there. Perrot describes the country as "nothing but lakes and marshes, full of wild oats; these are separated from one another by narrow tongues of land, which extend from one lake to another not more than thirty of forty paces at most, and sometimes five or six, or a little more." Living in small villages of five or six families, near enough together to be able to help one another if attacked, the Sioux were able to assemble three thousand warriors to oppose a hundred Hurons, who became lost in the marshes. Unable to find the attackers but knowing they were in the wild-rice beds, the Sioux stretched the nets they used to catch beaver across the narrow tongues of land and attached trade bells to them. When the Hurons tried to crawl out of their refuge, they set the bells to ringing and were promptly captured. In keeping with Sioux notions of humanity, some of the prisoners were shot to death (not tortured) by young boys, and the rest, after witnessing the slaughter, were sent home. 15 ____________________ 14 Emma Helen Blair, ed., The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes ( Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1911), I, 159-164; Newton H. Winchell , The Aborigines of Minnesota ( St. Paul: Pioneer Co., 1911), p. 526. 15 Blair, Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi, I, 166-168, 170. These events are supposed to have occurred about 1662 or 1663. -9- By the late seventeenth century the Sioux were being caught up in the power struggle between France and England for control of North America. One of the instruments of French policy was Pierre Charles Le Sueur, who had been present at Perrot's proclamation. In 1695 he established a fort on Prairie Island in the Mississippi, and in July of that year escorted a Sioux chief, Tioscaté, and a Chippewa chief, Chingouabé, to a conference at Montreal. Tioscaté, described as "the first of his nation who has seen Canada," showed by his behavior that a Sioux was not at all inhibited by alien surroundings from putting on a good show. Charlevoix, the historian of New France, describes the performance: While de Frontenac [the governor] was giving orders to the Indians who had accompanied him, a Siou chief approached him with a very sad air, laid his hands on his knees, and with streaming eyes, begged him to take pity on him; that all the other nations had their Father, and that he alone was like a forsaken child. He then spread out a beaver skin on which he arranged twentytwo arrows, and taking them one after another, he named for each a village of his nation and asked the general to take them all under his protection. 16 Whatever the results of this appeal were (and Charlevoix implies that there were none), Tioscaté did not live to tell the folks back home of what he had seen in the metropolis of New France. Still in Montreal, he fell ill the following winter and died after thirty-three days of suffering. 17 In 1700 Le Sueur returned to the Sioux country and established a fort, called Fort L'Huillier, a few miles above the mouth of the Blue Earth River, where he believed there was a large deposit of copper. Nothing came of the mining enterprise, but Le Sueur left a record of his winter among the Sioux that sheds some light on their condition and tribal organization at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Hennepin had attempted to list the subdivisions of the Sioux nation and had come up with some names recognizable as those of certain of the historic subtribes. His "Tinthonha or men of the prairie" are clearly the Tetons, who had evidently already left their marsh-andforest home and become nomadic buffalo hunters. The "Oudebathon" are probably the Wahpetons, and the "Chongaskethon" somewhat less certainly the Sissetons. The people Hennepin called "Issati" prob- ____________________ 16 "The French Regime in Wisconsin, 1634-1727," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVI ( 1902), 177-178 (excerpt from La Harpe, Journal Historique de l'établissement des Fronçais à la Louisiane); Charlevoix, History of New France, IV, 272. 17 "The French Regime in Wisconsin, 1634-1727", p. 178. -10-
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ably included the Mdewakantons and perhaps the Wahpekutes. His other names are not readily identifiable with the historic groups. Le Sueur brought somewhat more order to this classification, though he also introduced some new and unrecognizable names. His most important contribution was to divide the nation into "Scioux of the West," in whose country the fort was built, and "Scioux of the East," (i.e., east of the Mississippi), with whom he wished to trade. The latter included not only Hennepin's Oudebathons and Chongaskethons, but also a group called the "Mendeouacantons"--obviously the Mdewakantons. Not much is said about the respective locations of these subtribes, but there is a suggestion that one group was already living around the mouth of the Minnesota River. 18 Le Sueur gives no indication that any of the Sioux in the year 1700 depended on agriculture. In fact, one of his objectives was to reduce intertribal warfare, which was injurious to French trade, by making farmers out of the Indians. Believing, as he said, that it was "not possible to subdue the Scioux or to hinder them from going to war, unless it be by inducing them to cultivate the ground," he proposed that they form a sedentary village around the fort. 19 This earliest of many efforts to transform the Sioux into farmers was, like most of its successors, a total failure. Though the Indians apparently agreed to Le Sueur's proposal as the only means of obtaining French goods, on which he represented them as being heavily dependent, before they could have fulfilled their promise, Le Sueur had left the region (in the spring of 1701); and about a year later the garrison that stayed behind abandoned the fort in the face of attacks by the Foxes and Mascoutens. 20 Despite their growing dependence on European goods, the Sioux appear less often in French records in the first half of the eighteenth ____________________ 18 Cross, Description of Louisiana, p. 92; "Le Sueur, The Explorer of the Minnesota River," Minnesota Historical Collections, I ( 1850- 1856), 208, 266-271. Early in the twentieth century Newton H. Winchell tried to reconstruct the aboriginal geography of Minnesota and prepared a map, based on history and tradition, to show the distribution of the Sioux in Hennepin's day. Winchell placed the Mdewakantons in the Mille Lacs area and to the east, the Wahpetons north and west of Mille Lacs Lake, the Sissetons north of Cass and Winnibigoshish lakes, the Yanktons in two groups, one between Leech Lake and the Red River, the other in the Pipestone area, and the Tetons around Big Stone Lake and Lake Traverse. No attempt was made to show the locations of the Wahpekutes or the Yanktonais. See Winchell, Aborigins of Minnesota, p. 68. 19 "Le Sueur, The Explorer of the Minnesota River," p. 273. 20 Ibid., pp. 273-274 ; Edward D. Neill, "Relation of M. Penicaut," Minnesota Historical Collection, III ( 1870- 1880), 10-11. -11- century than in the last forty years of the seventeenth. To the extent that they were taken notice of at all, they were seen as mere pawns in the imperial designs of the French government. As early as 1701, D'Iberville, governor of Louisiana and Le Sueur's brother-in-law, wrote a memorial on the Mississippi valley in which he set forth his theories on the management of Indian affairs. He saw the Sioux as essentially useless to the French if they stayed in their own country, and proposed resettling them on the Missouri River, where they would be more accessible from the lower Mississippi and less accessible to the traders of the Hudson's Bay Company. He opposed giving presents to the Indians; instead, he said, "When they come to us, it will be necessary to bring them in subjection, make them no presents, and compel them to do what we wish, as if they were Frenchmen." 21 Although D'Iberville's scheme of resettling the Sioux was not carried out during the French period, doubtless the kind of cold-blooded calculation it manifested was present in the policies that were actually followed by the French. The period was one of intensified intertribal warfare, and such hostile nations as the Foxes kept the normal trade routes unsafe if not absolutely closed. In order to dominate the western trade, the French needed to establish and maintain a fortified post in the Sioux country. Perrot had built at least two short-lived forts late in the seventeenth century, and in 1727 Fort Beauharnois was erected on the west shore of Lake Pepin, near the present town of Frontenac, Minnesota. The Foxes made this post untenable, however, and it was evacuated within a couple of years, to be rebuilt later and finally abandoned again during the French and Indian War. 22 French contacts with the Sioux during the first half of the eighteenth century were extensive enough to permit a few more observations concerning their culture and the first passably accurate estimate of their numbers. Le Sueur had estimated the Sioux population at 4,000 families--a mere guess based upon unknown information. In 1736 a census, said to have reflected the opinion of voyageurs, credited them with 2,300 men, or roughly 8,000 to 10,000 people. The vast majority of them were classified as Sioux of the prairies, which here probably included all but the Mdewakantons. 23 Both Pierre Boucher, the com- ____________________ 21 Quoted in Edward D. Neill, The History of Minnesota ( Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1858), p. 174. 22 Louise Phelps Kellogg, "Fort Beauharnois," Minnesota History, VIII ( September 1927), 243-244; "The French Regime in Wisconsin, 1727-1748," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVII ( 1906), 7 - 9, 22 - 26, 264. 23 "The French Regime in Wisconsin, 1727-1748," pp. 247 - 248. -12- mandant at the first Fort Beauharnois, and a priest who accompanied him, Father Michel Guignas, testified to the intelligence, courage, and physical prowess of the Sioux, but they also noted a propensity toward thievery, a characteristic frequently mentioned in the early nineteenth century. Suggestive of a change taking place in their methods of hunting and waging war is Boucher's statement that "although they have had firearms but a short time, they can use them perfectly well." 24 So far as the Santee Sioux were concerned, the most important event of the eighteenth century was their expulsion by the Chippewas from their traditional homes around Mille Lacs Lake. Such scanty evidence as there is suggests that the wars between these tribes did not begin until after the visit by Tioscaté and Chingouabé to Montreal in 1695. Chippewa tradition, as recorded by William W. Warren, attributes the outbreak of hostilities to private quarrels, but it is more likely that the Chippewas, moving westward along the south shore of Lake Superior and armed with firearms obtained through trade, developed expansionist ambitions similar to those displayed earlier by the Hurons and Ottawas. Being far more numerous than those eastern tribes and probably better armed, the Chippewas succeeded where the others had failed. The Sioux had been gradually moving out onto the prairies since before Hennepin's visit and very likely had only a few small bands left in their old territory. The population estimate made in 1736 indicated only three hundred men belonging to the Sioux of the lakes. Later missionaries were to claim that the attraction of traders operating around the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers was as important a motive as Chippewa pressure in causing the remnants of the Sioux to abandon their old haunts. 25 Whatever the underlying causes, the Sioux did leave the Mille Lacs area, and their departure was at least hastened by their defeat in the three-day battle of Kathio (a misreading of "Izatys" on a manuscript), which is supposed to have taken place about 1750. Warren provides the only detailed account of the battle, and the traditions on which his story is based contain so many discrepancies of fact that one hesitates to accept any of it. According to Warren, the Sioux lived in three earthlodge villages, of which the second and largest was captured by the stratagem of throwing bags of gunpowder through the smoke holes of the lodges. The siege tactics employed by the Chippewas on this ____________________ 24 Ibid., pp. 27-28, 56-57. 25 William W. Warren, "History of the Ojibway Nation," Minnesota Historical Collections, V ( 1885), 1 57)-1 59); Neill, History of Minnesota, p. 206. -13-
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occasion are so unlike the usual pattern of Indian warfare as to have given rise to the theory that French strategy and possibly French soldiers were involved. 26 Though much remains obscure about the battle of Kathio, its effects were of immense significance to the Santee Sioux. The battle is the most readily identifiable event in the process by which they were transformed from a typical tribe of the Eastern Woodlands culture to a people at least on the margin of the Plains Indian culture, to which the western Sioux became thoroughgoing converts. In the years that followed, other traditional Sioux villages on Sandy, Cass, Winnibigoshish, Leech, and Red lakes were taken by the Chippewas. Although the Sioux made at least one serious attempt to recover their lost territories in 1768, the failure of the campaign apparently discouraged them from repeating it. After this, as Doane Robinson says, they accepted the finality of the Chippewa conquest, and their attacks became mere raiding expeditions, designed to provide scalps and military experience in keeping with Sioux tradition. 27 Expulsion from their northern homes deprived the Sioux of none of the arrogance they had begun to display earlier in the century. Late in the French and Indian War a party of twelve braves appeared before the British commander at Green Bay, Lieutenant James Gorrell, who had been sent to take over the French forts in that region. They told Gorrell that "if ever the Chippewas or any other Indians wished to obstruct the passage of the traders coming up, to send them word, and they would come and put them off from the face of the earth, as all Indians were their slaves or dogs." Gorrell was much impressed by what he saw and heard of the Sioux and wrote: It is certainly the greatest nation of Indians ever yet found. Not above two thousand of them were ever armed with fire-arms, the rest depending entirely on bows and arrows and darts, which they use with more skill than any other Indian nation in North America. They can shoot the wildest and largest beasts in the woods, at seventy or one hundred yards distance. They are remarkable for their dancing; the other nations take the fashion from them. It is said they keep regular guards in their chief town or metropolis, relieving once in twenty-four hours, and are always alert. 28 How much of his admiration derived from an objective evaluation of ____________________ 26 Warren, "History of the Ojibway Nation," pp. 159-161. 27 Ibid., pp. 176-178, 183, 185, 222-231 ; Doane Robinson, A History of the Dakota or Sioux Indians ( Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, 1956), p. 67. 28 "Lieut. James Gorrell's Journal," Wisconsin Historical Collections, I ( 1855), 36 -3 7. -14- the merits of the Sioux and how much from their own boasts is not apparent. After the war, British replaced French explorers, and the Sioux were exposed to contacts with a different European power. The first English explorer to leave a record of his adventures was Captain Jonathan Carver, who, after service in the war, undertook an expedition with the authorization of his immediate superior, Major Robert Rogers, though without any official sanction from higher authority. He entered the Sioux country late in 1766, after a trip from Mackinac along the FoxWisconsin route and up the Mississippi. He first examined the region around St. Anthony Falls and above that point, and then, late in November, began ascending the St. Peter's, or Minnesota, River. After wintering with a band of prairie Sioux (possibly Wahpetons) and learning their language "perfectly," he headed down the river in the spring, stopping near the mouth to harangue the Indians, and then continued his explorations outside the region dominated by the Sioux. 29 The mendacity of which Hennepin and others have been accused is particularly noteworthy in Carver, and renders almost everything he says at least suspect. A large section of his account of his travels, concerned with the customs and manners of the Indians, was plagiarized from earlier sources, some of which were themselves fabricated in large part; and, like Hennepin, Carver usually fails to distinguish one tribe from another. Even the story of his travels is of questionable veracity, particularly his claim to have gone two hundred miles up the Minnesota. Peter Pond, who made the trip less than a decade later, thought Carver had ascended the river only about fourteen miles. 30 Likewise, his claim to having been made a chief of the Sioux may be seriously questioned, as may many other details in his account, such as his finding the Minnesota open at a season when the Mississippi was already obstructed by ice. Still, if used with due caution, Carver's narrative may provide some accurate information on the condition of the Sioux between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. Carver divided the "Naudowessies," as he called them, into the "River Bands" and the "Prairie Bands." The former, whom he found living along the St. Croix, consisted of the Nehogatawonahs, the ____________________ 29 Jonathan Carver, Three Years Travels Through the Interior Parts of North America ( Philadelphia: Key and Simpson, 1796), pp. 37-54; William W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, I ( St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1956), pp. 53-58. 30 "The British Regime in Wisconsin--1760-1800," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVIII ( 1908), 340. -15- Mawtawbauntowahs, and the Shahsweentowahs--names that bear little resemblance to those of bands elsewhere reported, although the second may have been the Mdewakantons and the third possibly the Sissetons. The Sioux of the plains comprised the Wawpeentowahs (Wahpetons), the Tintons (Tetons), the Afrahcootahs (perhaps the Wahpekutes), the Mawhaws (Omahas), the Schians (Cheyennes), the Chianese, the Chongousceton, and the Waddapawjestin. The Assiniboins had constituted a twelfth band but had separated from the rest at some remote time in the past. The total manpower of the Sioux (including presumably the Omahas and Cheyennes) was given by Carver as two thousand warriors, of whom only four hundred belonged to the river bands. 31 Whether from his reading or from his experiences, Carver assembled quite a collection of miscellaneous facts about the Sioux and other Indians. His observations on their material culture are probably more reliable than those on their religion and social organization. He described both their skin tents and their bark huts, the latter apparently similar to those of the Algonquian peoples. Although long in contact with European traders, they still made household vessels of a black clay or stone and bowls and dishes of the knotty excrescences of maple or other wood. He noted especially the daggers used by the Sioux, made originally of flint or bone but now of iron. He described them as ten inches long and three inches broad at the handle and remarked that they were worn only by the principal chiefs. Like other tribes in this part of the country, the Sioux now had trade knives and steels to strike fire with. Carver of course noticed the catlinite pipes and, like other explorers, erroneously located the place of origin of the material in a mountain high on the so-called Marble River, a branch of the Minnesota. He was surprised to find the inland tribes wearing sea shells as ornaments, and he thought it worthy of remark that their moccasins were decorated with pieces of brass or tin attached to leather strings an inch long, which made "a cheerful tinkling noise either when they walk or dance." 32 Carver's observations on the customs and manners of the Sioux contain little new information, despite his avowed purpose of rectifying earlier accounts, which he said had been based on tribes already strongly influenced by European culture. Nor do his remarks on the Dakota language prove very useful. He did compile a vocabulary of the ____________________ 31 Carver, Three Years Travels, pp. 37, 50. 32 Ibid., pp. 63-64, 145-150. -16- "Naudowessie" language containing many words that resemble those in later Dakota lexicons. Tatanka (bison) he records as tawtongo; tanka (great or big) appears as tongo; maza (iron) is muzah; and his wakon, recorded earlier by Hennepin, is an alternative spelling of the word that usually appears as wakan. 33 Every European heard the Indian languages in his own way, and recorded them in the orthography familiar to him; Carver's recording of Dakota is accurate enough to exonerate him from the charge of imposture in this respect, however much he may have exaggerated his own command of the language. It is fortunate that the next English-speaking visitor to the Sioux who kept a journal of his adventures did not try to compile a vocabulary, for his spelling was too bizarre to afford much indication of how a word was supposed to be pronounced. This was Peter Pond, who made a trading expedition into the Sioux country in 1773-1775. Despite extensive travels and a variety of adventures, Pond looked upon all he saw with the unwearied interest of a novice, noting all manner of detail about the countryside and its white and red inhabitants. He and two other traders set out in October from Prairie du Chien for the St. Peter's River. Shrewd businessmen, they took a practical view of the Sioux and "went on Sloley to Leat the Nottawaseas Git Into the Plain that we Mite not be trubeld with them for Creadit as thay are Bad Pay Marsters." 34 Most of the trading took place from January onward and yielded Pond a good profit after he learned from a competing Frenchman to attract trade by leaving a few trinkets around for the Indians to steal. It was not an exciting winter--"Well thare was not Eney thing Extrodnerey Hapend Dureing the Winter," he says--and not until the following winter did his contacts with the Sioux become close enough to impel him to describe them in detail. 35 Instead of staying at the post he had established the previous year, Pond, at the request of the Indians, followed the river about two hundred miles upstream and set up shop among a band of Yanktons. Upon arriving, he was accorded the standard reception. After his goods had been hauled up from the river, the calumet was passed around and pointed toward the four cardinal points, up, and down; then Pond's shoes were taken off and moccasins substituted, and he was carried on a blanket to the encampment, where he was subjected to the customary weeping ritual, though apparently without tears. An old man fed him ____________________ 33 Ibid., pp. 288-292. 34 The British Regime in Wisconsin, p. 339. 35 Ibid., p. 340. -17- three spoonfuls of a soup concocted of corn meal and meat boiled in three brass kettles in the middle of the lodge. After this he was given a bark dish and a buffalo-horn spoon and invited to fall to. Not knowing that he would receive the same hospitality at two more lodges, he ate "Hartey" of the brew. After the third round, the trading began, under the stern surveillance of the chiefs, who saw to it that the proceeding went on in an orderly manner. Pond's narrative breaks off at the approach of spring, 1775, before his departure from the Indian country. Although he does not greatly enlarge our knowledge of the Santee Sioux on the eve of the American Revolution, he does mention that those living near the mouth of the Minnesota River "Rase Plentey of Corn for thare one [own] Concumtion," indicating that the agricultural tradition had not perished with the exodus from the Mille Lacs region, or else had been revived in the new location.36 The spring when Pond left his improvised trading post saw the battles of Lexington and Concord. Soon the Indians of the Northwest were involved in another of the white man's wars. The loyalty, or at least the benevolent neutrality, of the Sioux and their neighbors was sought by both sides, but the British had the odds in their favor. Perhaps some of the Indians realized that the British government had tried since 1763 to prevent occupation by white settlers of the Indian country west of the Appalachians, and that the colonials had negated those efforts by pouring across the mountains. More likely, the British simply had a
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betterorganized Indian policy and administrators with greater experience, and were in a position to do more for the Indians than the colonials could. Among the allies the British attracted to their flag were the Sioux, under the leadership of Wabasha, a Mdewakanton chief who seems to have exerted wide influence. His name, spelled "Ouabachas" by the French, appears as early as 1740, when he and another chief met the French commandant at Lake Pepin, Paul Marin, on the Rock River, in present-day Illinois, and apologized for killing some Ottawas. Although he seems to have been implicated in the murder of a Frenchman in the Illinois country in 1736, twenty years later he went to Montreal to offer himself as a vicarious sacrifice for a tribesman who had killed an English trader and then escaped while being taken there for punishment. 37 ____________________ 36 Ibid., pp. 350, 352. 37 "The French Regime in Wisconsin, 1727-1748," pp. 323, 402, 420; Neill, History of Minnesota, pp. 225-228; Winchell, Aborigines of Minnesota, pp. 540-541. -18- This was the man who now firmly allied himself with the British and who earned their respect by his behavior during the war. LieutenantGovernor Patrick Sinclair was struck by the military prowess of the Sioux, whom he described as "a warlike people undebauched, under the authority of a chief named Wabasha of very singular & uncommon abilities, who can raise 200 men with case, accustomed to all the attention and obedience required by discipline." 38 When Wabasha visited Mackinac in July 1779, he was accorded a special artillery salute, in which live ammunition was used in order to accustom the Indians to large firearms. Some Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Chippewas were present, "and great was their astonishment when they beheld balls discharged from the cannons of the fort flying over the canoes, and the Dahkotah braves lifting their paddles as if to strike them, and crying out, 'Taya! taya!'" 39 ColonelArent Schuyler de Peyster, who had an unfortunate penchant for writing extemporaneous verse, commemorated the occasion with a piece of wretched doggerel that purported to be a tribute to Wabasha: Hail to the chief! who his buffalo's back straddles, When in his own country, far, far, from this fort; Whose brave young canoe-men, here hold up their paddles, In hopes, that the whizzing balls, may give them sport. Hail to great Wapashaw! He comes, beat drums, the Scioux chief comes. They now strain their nerves till the canoe runs bounding, As swift as the Solen goose skims o'er the wave, While on the lake's border, a guard is surrounding A space, where to land the Scioux so brave. Hail! to great Wapashaw! Soldiers! your triggers draw! Guard! wave the colours, and give him the drum. Choctaw and Chickasaw, Whoop for great Wapashaw; Raise the portcullis, the King's friend is come. 40 Despite this comic-opera touch, Wabasha's potential contribution to the war was taken seriously by the British. Although the Sioux played ____________________ 38 "Papers from the Canadian Archives, 1778-1783," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XI ( 1888), 145. 39 Neill, History of Minnesota, p. 228. 40 Ibid., p. 229. -19- a less important role than expected, they took some part in the war along the central Mississippi and earned warm praise from a British officer, Lieutenant Charles F. Phillips, who wrote that General Wabasha was well contented with his commission & believe me his Warriours are nothing inferior to regular Troops in regard to Discipline in their own way, it being their first & principle care to examine their arms in the morning, by drawing & drying their Powder and always fresh loaded at Sun Sett-- 41 Wabasha's British loyalties, to which the commission he held was a testimonial, did not prevent him from accepting the outcome of the war with equanimity. When the end of the war was announced to the Indians at Prairie du Chien in 1783, Wabasha replied with what Newton H. Winchell calls "some ambiguous words": My father, I am content that the great chiefs on the other side of the greatest lake are for making peace. . . . My English father, you give us pleasure to have come upon our ground; our heart is joyful and content. It is you give us light. We will be quiet. 42 Except for the reports of explorers and isolated comments by military officers, our picture of the Santee Sioux at the end of the eighteenth century must be based to a considerable extent on conjecture. After a century and a half of European contact, their material culture had been markedly altered. Steel weapons and tools had largely replaced those of bone and stone which the early explorers had found them using. They still made many household utensils of wood and bark, however. They had almost certainly given up the manufacture of pottery, since Peter Pond found even the rather remote Yanktons using brass kettles in 1774; and the use of skins had partially given way to European cloth and the trader's blanket. Dependent though the Indians had become on materials of European manufacture for their everyday life, their religion and social organization were largely unchanged at the end of the eighteenth century. Descriptions of their customs and manners dating from the fourth and fifth decades of the nineteenth century bear a remarkable similarity to those by eighteenth- and even seventeenthcentury observers. The geographical location and political organization of the Santee ____________________ 41 "Papers from the Canadian Archives, 1767-1814," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XII ( 1892), 49. 42 Winchell, Aborigines of Minnesota, p. 542. -20- bands were at this time gradually emerging from the state of flux that had characterized them since the expulsion from Mille Lacs and were settling into the pattern they retained until the beginning of the reservation period. It is not possible to reconstruct the successive settlements of the migrating Sioux with precise accuracy, but some reasonably sound conjectures may be offered. After leaving the northern lake area, the various Santee bands moved southward. Very likely the Sissetons and Wahpetons went first, moving into the Minnesota valley and onto the plains, where they adopted some features of the material culture of the true plains tribes that had preceded them westward. After the battle of Kathio those who had remained in the old homelands fled south. The Wahpekutes, who may have split off after the expulsion, became nomadic, with no permanent villages; but the Mdewakantons continued their village life in the new surroundings. Although it has been claimed that they lived for a time in a single village near the mouth of the Minnesota, the numbers ascribed to them later make it seem improbable that this arrangement lasted long. More likely, they soon scattered to a number of sites, which they may have occupied only temporarily at first, and which did not become permanent villages until about 1800 or later. It is said that there were no villages on the Mississippi below the mouth of the St. Croix until after 1783. 43 Sometime between then and 1805, Wabasha's band moved down the great river to a point near the mouth of the Upper Iowa River. It was probably about this time that the Khemnichan, or Red Wing, band moved down the river to the site of the present city named for their chief. When the Wabasha band moved, a portion of the village remained and formed the nucleus of a new band. This was the pattern followed earlier and later: a subchief might take a few of his followers and establish a new village, or the principal chief might leave without taking all the members of his band along. In this way the historic villages of the Mdewakanton Sioux were formed. In attempting to picture the Santee Sioux in 1800, we should envision them as nomadic hunters much of the year. Although the Mdewakantons and some of the Sissetons and Wahpetons had permanent villages of bark houses, they lived there only during part of the spring and summer, when they were planting or harvesting their meager corn
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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:12:34 GMT -5
43 Neill, History of Minnesota, p. 231; "Memoir of the Sioux," trans. by John H. Ames and ed. by Edward D. Neill, Macalester College Contributions, First Series, No. 10 ( 1890), p. 226. -21- crops. Once the corn was planted, they had to spend most of their time searching for food to tide them over until harvest. They fished in nearby lakes and streams; hunted deer or waterfowl when there were any to be had; and gathered berries, plums, and a variety of roots and tubers, such as the wild turnip, the mdo (which resembled the sweet potato), and the psincha and psinchincha, which were found at the bottom of shallow lakes. 44 When the corn was ready to eat, the greater part of it was boiled and consumed immediately. Some was allowed to ripen, dried and shelled, and stored underground in bark barrels for use in the winter. When the corn had been harvested, the Indians left their villages, most of the men to take part in the fall muskrat hunt, the women and some of the men to gather wild rice. In October the deer hunt began, the most important hunt of the year. Assembling their household goods and their skin tipis, the entire population left their villages for a three-month search for deer and any other game, such as elk or bear, that they could find. Hampered by their impedimenta and by the meat they obtained, they moved only short distances and remained camped in one spot for several days or weeks. A strict division of labor was followed: the men did the hunting, and the women did nearly all the other work. If the hunt was successful, in January the band returned to their village or settled down in a sheltered spot and lived comfortably for a couple of months off the venison they had killed, supplemented by whatever corn they had preserved from the previous summer's crop. About the beginning of March the men set out on the spring muskrat hunt, which was more important than the fall hunt because the fur was better then. The animals were trapped, shot, or speared, and while the weather was cold the flesh was eaten. The women meanwhile tapped maple trees and boiled down the sap for sugar. With the band's return from these missions, the yearly cycle began once more. ____________________ 44 Samuel W. Pond, "The Dakotas or Sioux in Minnesota as They Were in 1834," Minnesota Historical Collections, XII ( 1905- 1908), 342 - 346 and passim. The picture of life among the Sioux given in the following paragraphs is drawn principally from this source, whose 183 pages provide the most detailed and probably most reliable description that we have of the Sioux in the early nineteenth century. Largely free of the ethnocentrism that one might expect, it attempts to show the Sioux as he really was, a human being neither better nor worse than the European at a similar stage of his cultural development. Except for somewhat greater dependence on the fur traders, the condition of the Sioux in 1834 was probably not significantly changed from what it had been at the end of the eighteenth century. Some information has also been drawn from Edward D. Neill, "Dakota Land and Dakota Life," Minnesota Historical Collections, I ( 1850- 1856.), 205 - 240. -22- There were, of course, variations in this cycle, particularly among the more westerly Sissetons and Wahpetons, who participated in the annual buffalo hunt on the prairies. Some of the skins and robes obtained on those hunts were traded to the semisedentary bands for goods received in payment for furs. Even the western bands, however, came east to the Big Woods to hunt deer. It is evident from the pattern of life followed by the Santee Sioux that theirs was still essentially a woodland culture. They hunted deer and other timber game, they depended partly on fishing, they gathered wild rice, they still used the canoe (though by 1800 their canoes were made of hollowed-out logs rather than birchbark, as in Hennepin's day), and horses were owned by only a minority of families, at least among the Mdewakantons. The transition to the plains culture that had been accomplished by the Tetons, Yanktons, and Yanktonais was only begun among the Santees. Nevertheless, changes had taken place in Santee society since Hennepin's day. The four eastern bands had made a successful adjustment to their new surroundings, which they had in considerable measure chosen for themselves. Though their life was no doubt a "perpetual, unceasing struggle for existence," as Samuel W. Pond described it, 45 it had always been so. The influence of white culture was evident mainly in the form of tools, weapons, and utensils, which contributed to greater proficiency in hunting and to an improved standard of living. If white contact had also made the Santees more dependent on the trade system, the integrity of their culture was largely intact. They had no notion that they were on the verge of enormously increased white contact, which would produce massive changes in their way of life and ultimately shatter their whole culture. ____________________ 45 P ond, "The Dakotas or Sioux . . . in 1834," p. 373. -23- CHAPTER 2 The Americans Move In OFFICIAL RELATIONS between the Santee Sioux and the United States government began with the expedition of Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike to the upper Mississippi in 1805-1806. Expressed in general terms, Pike's mission was to establish United States sovereignty over the territory, where British traders continued to operate much as they had before the Revolution. Recognizing that control over the area would not be achieved without a military presence, the government planned to establish military posts in the upper valley. Pike was to obtain cessions of land from the Indians to be used for this purpose. In addition, he was to lay the groundwork for a series of "factories," or governmentoperated trading posts which would furnish the Indians with their needs at lower cost than the commercial traders. Finally, Pike was to make peace between the Sioux and the Chippewas, a formidable task at which he proved no more successful than Du Luth, Le Sueur, or Carver, each of whom had in turn tried to end the incessant warfare between the tribes. 1 On his way up the Mississippi in the fall of 1805, the young officer stopped at the mouth of the Upper Iowa River for a council with Wabasha, son of the "great Wapashaw" so much admired by the ____________________ 1 William W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, I ( St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1956), p. 91. -24- British during the Revolution, and near the mouth of the Cannon River for a similar conference with Tatankamani, the Red Wing chief, described by Pike as the second war chief of the nation. The most important council, however, was held September 23 at a village about nine miles up the Minnesota River from the future site of Fort Snelling. 2 Because this conference produced the first treaty between the United States and the Sioux Indians, it has considerable historical importance, despite certain irregularities about the manner in which the treaty was made and in its subsequent history. Pike constructed from his sails a bower or shade which only the high contracting parties were permitted to enter. At noon the council began with a speech by Pike in which he stated the purposes of his expedition and requested the cession of two vaguely described tracts of land, one at the mouth of the St. Croix, the other at the junction of the Minnesota and the Mississippi. Seven "chiefs" (probably not all were so recognized) were present, of whom only two signed the treaty, and they with much reluctance, for they thought their word of honor should be enough. Looked at objectively, the treaty was such as to give them good reason for hesitation, if they comprehended at all what they were doing. They ceded about 100,000 acres, according to Pike's estimate, valued by him at $200,000, but no specific sum was named in the treaty as compensation. They received $200 worth of presents and some liquor on the spot; and when the Senate later approved the treaty, the blank left by Pike was filled in with the figure of $2,000--far short of even Pike's modest estimate of the value of the land ceded. 3 Indians were often defrauded in treaties, but rarely did any group allow themselves to be so grossly imposed upon as the signatories to this treaty were. Who were the men with whom this agreement was negotiated? Most of them have been identified. Of the two signers, one was Little Crow, chief of the Kapozha band, whose village was then located on the east bank of the Mississippi, fourteen miles below the mouth of the Minnesota; the other was Way Ago Enagee, elsewhere referred to by Pike as "Le Fils de Pinchow." Though the identification is not positive, the latter was probably the son of a French trader whom Lieutenant Gorrell called "Pennenshaw" but who is usually known as Pinichon. Some writers make him chief of the remnant left behind when Wabasha and most of his band migrated down the Mississippi. He is also identified as
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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:14:13 GMT -5
2 Elliott Coues, ed., The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike ( New York: Francis P. Harper, 1895), I, 43 - 48, 66 - 68, 82. 3 Ibid., pp. 83 - 84. -25- the father of the later chief Good Road. Those who were present but did not sign were "Le Boeuf que Marche" (Walking Buffalo, or Tatankamani), "Le Demi Douzen" (Six, or Shakopee), "Le Original Leve" (correctly spelled "L'Orignal Levé," Rising Moose, usually identified with Tamaha, a member of the Red Wing band), and two men of whom nothing can be said with certainty, "Le Grand Partisan" and "Le Beccasse." 4 Identification of these men is not merely an exercise in ingenuity. Since the treaty made with them was taken by the United States as representing the will of the Sioux nation, one may have a legitimate curiosity to determine what proportion of that people were actually represented. The seven "chiefs" who counciled with Pike were evidently all Mdewakantons. They may have represented three of the four villages or bands into which that subtribe seems then to have been divided, but the two actual signers cannot have represented more than two villages. If those two villages contained half the population credited by Pike to the Mdewakantons (2,105), they had about 525 inhabitants each. It was highhanded, to say the least, for two chiefs, speaking for slightly more than a thousand people, to cede a portion of valuable land (if they knew what they were doing) in the name of the entire Sioux nation, which Pike considered to have a total population of 21,675. 5 And for the United States government, which certainly did know what it was doing, to take this purported cession at face value, as it did when the Senate ratified the treaty, was disingenuous, if not downright dishonest. After a winter among the Chippewas and the English traders, Pike returned to the Sioux in April, 1806. He immediately called another council, mainly to convey to the Sioux the results of his efforts to induce the Chippewas to make peace with their traditional enemies. About forty chiefs of the Sissetons, Wahpetons, and Mdewakantons were pres- ____________________ 4 Ibid., pp. 86 - 89 n. Coues' identifications are based on those provided by Thomas Foster in an earlier edition of Pike Expeditions, found in Minnesota Historical Collections, I ( 1850- 1856), 312 - 313. There is a possibility that "Le Beccasse" or "Le Boucasse" was a Wahpekute, better known under the traditional name of Wah-kan-tah-pay and living in 1825 about five miles below the later site of Le Sueur. See Foster, p. 312. William J. Snelling includes a story about the trader Pinichon in his Tales of the Northwest ( 1830), a collection which, though published as fiction, is probably as reliable a source of fact as most of the early travel narratives. 5 Coues, Expeditions of Zebulon M. Pike, I, 346. Coues devotes some seven pages of notes to pointing out the deficiencies in the treaty. His objections are summarized in Folwell, A History of Minnesota, I, 94. -26- ent, in addition to more than five hundred tribesmen who had gathered for the festivities. Although handicapped by incompetent interpreters and the opposition of a few of the Indians to any reconciliation with the Chippewas, Pike managed to communicate the essential parts of his message. His mission completed, he started on his way downriver, stopping briefly at Kapozha and at the villages of Tatankamani and Wabasha. 6 How much was accomplished by Pike toward gaining the allegiance of the Sioux is questionable. As will be seen, nearly all of them fought on the British side in the War of 1812, and Pike's visit does not seem to have had much of a deterrent effect on the activities of the English traders. But the voyage did add to the sum of geographical information on the upper Mississippi and to our knowledge of the Sioux in 18051806. Besides the three Mdewakanton villages on the Mississippi, there was the one on the Minnesota at which the grand council was held. The "Minowa Kantongs," as Pike called them, were described as the only Sioux who used canoes, built log huts, or cultivated vegetables. Of the last, Pike was not certain, for although they were said to raise a small amount of corn and beans, he saw none of either on his visit. Wild rice, which they used for bread, was available in sufficient quantities to last them all winter, supplemented by the animals they could kill. They were by now well supplied with firearms, but this fact did not entitle them to any superior position in the eyes of the other bands. 7 The Wahpekutes, who impressed Pike as the "most stupid and inactive of all the Sioux," were said to be a band of vagabonds recruited from the refugees of the other bands, expelled for their misdeeds. They numbered only about 270 and roamed widely, with some tendency to concentrate around the headwaters of the Des Moines River. The Wahpetons, who numbered 1,060, had their base on the lower Minnesota River but hunted widely. The Sissetons, some 1,110 strong, were situated on the upper Minnesota, as far up as Big Stone Lake. 8 The center of trade for all these bands was Michilimackinac, except for the Wahpekutes, who traded principally at Prairie du Chien. Pike estimated the value of the Indians' annual consumption of merchandise at $13,500 for the Mdewakantons, $12,500 for the Sissetons, $6,000 for the Wahpetons, and $2,000 for the Wahpekutes. Their annual return in peltries was given as 230, 160, 115, and 50 packs, respectively, for the four ____________________ 6 Coues, Expeditions of Zebulon M. Pike, I, 197 - 206. 7 Ibid., pp. 342, 344. 8 Ibid., pp. 344, 346 - 347. -27- bands. 9 This sort of statistical information was, of course, designed to be used by those in charge of establishing the government factories. Pike was a soldier, and although he saw fit to publish the journal of his expedition, he wasted few words on the culture of the Indians he saw. Aside from his accounts of a dance at Wabasha's village and a lacrosse game at Prairie du Chien, some remarks on a scaffold burial he saw near Kapozha, and a few scattered observations on the ritual of holding councils, he told little about the customs or manners of the Sioux. In the performance of his duties he collected the kind of information he deemed would be of most value to his superiors. If this is less exciting reading than Carver's narrative, it has the advantage of being trustworthy, within the limits imposed by the brevity of Pike's stay in the Sioux country. And the expedition is itself an important milestone in the history of the eastern Sioux. When the War of 1812 broke out, the Sioux, like the other Indians of the Northwest, rallied to the British side with a near-unanimity that showed the inefficacy of Pike's attempt to establish American sovereignty over these tribes. The reasons were much the same as those which governed their actions in the Revolution: the British held the trump cards and played them better. One of the most active instruments of British policy was a trader named Robert Dickson, who, even before the formal declaration of war, held a conference of some 300 Indians belonging to various tribes to sound them out and to show them the advantages of adherence to the British. Wabasha and Little Crow, among others, made speeches in which they reported that "they had been amused for some time by bad birds, but that they lived by the English traders and would adhere to the English." 10 Dickson arrived about July 1, 1812, at Mackinac with a force of about 130 Sioux, Winnebagos, and Menominees who played a part in the swift capture of that American outpost. At the beginning of 1813 he was appointed agent and superintendent for the Indians west of the Mississippi, and the next June he brought a force of over 600 warriors, including 97 Sioux, to Mackinac. 11 It should not be supposed that the Sioux, who rarely held to one purpose very long in their own wars, remained unswervingly committed to the British cause in the sense that regular troops, subject to military dis- ____________________ 10 Ernest Alexander Cruikshank, "Robert Dickson, the Indian Trader," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XII ( 1892), 140. 11 Ibid., pp. 141-142, 146. 9 Ibid., pp. 346-347. -28- cipline, would have done. When an opportunity to wage war on the Chippewas came along, there were always parties of warriors ready to disregard the wishes of their chiefs and to allow themselves to be diverted from the campaigns for which those chiefs had promised their services. This was especially true toward the end of the war. During the winter of 1813-1814 the Sioux and Chippewas were fighting, and it was reported that many western Indians had gone over to the Americans. Although Doane Robinson says that Wabasha's loyalty was called into question and that the other Mdewakanton chiefs stuck by their alliance, contemporaneous documents convey the impression that the Red Wing chief, Tatankamani, was the main source of anxiety to the British. 12 Toward the end of the war at least one renegade band seems to have deserted the British completely. This was a group called the Gens de la Feuille Tiré, or Fire-Leaf band, who had supposedly withdrawn from Wabasha's band. (Actually they were Wahpekutes and are so designated by Pike.) The trader Joseph Rolette had contracted to supply provisions to the British garrison at Fort McKay (Prairie du Chien); and when he found himself unable to fulfill the terms of his contract, he entered into unauthorized dealings with this band. When two of his men were killed by members of the Fire-Leaf band, which "had been publickly declared Americans," the incident was blown into a cause célèbre and ultimately led to a court-martial for Rolette and execution for an Indian found guilty of the murders. 13 ____________________ 12 Ibid., p. 150; "Dickson and Grignon Papers--1812-1815," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XI ( 1888), 276, 286; Doane Robinson, A History of the Dakota or Sioux Indians ( Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, 1956), pp. 87-88. Louis Grignon wrote Dickson in October, 1813, that "the Sioux have exhibited great discontent, particuarly the son of L'elle rouge [L'Aile Rouge, or Red Wing], but I think from the speech of Petit Corbeaux, who I believe is the best disposed, that the least may be expected. L'elle rouge is for whipping the Sauteaux [Chippewas]." And the following January, Dickson wrote from Lake Winnebago that "the Sioux have behaved like the villains as they are, they must soon suffer for their villainy," adding that "the Ail Rouge is at the bottom of this & got the Sauteux killed on purpose to prevent any Siouxs coming this way." The genealogy of the Red Wings presents more than the usual number of problems, but Tatankamani appears to be the son of Whoo-pa-doo-ta or Hoo-pahoo-sha, the original Red Wing, who took part in the conspiracy of Pontiac. He may have been born about 1759, and he died in 1829. His successor, Wacouta, is probably not the "young Red Wing" described as a beggar by Forsyth. Wacouta is variously referred to as the son, the stepson, and the nephew of Tatankamani, and one story has it that his mother was the daughter of an English trader. See History of Goodhue County (Red Wing: Wood, Alley and Co., 1878), pp. 414-415. 13 "The Bulger Papers," Wisconsin Historical Collections, XIII ( 1895), 23, 36 - 37, 47, 49, 50 - 51. Rolette was cleared by the court-martial. -29- When news of the Treaty of Ghent reached the upper Mississippi in the spring of 1815, the British found themselves in an embarrassing position, for they had made numerous promises to the Indians which the terms now agreed upon made it impossible for them to fulfill. In the last months of the war, the British authorities had tried to impress upon the Indians that the war was now being fought exclusively for their benefit, all other causes for hostilities between England and the Americans having been settled. When the war's end left the western country and Indian relations there on much the same footing as before, some of the Indians felt that they had been sold out by their quondam allies and benefactors. Some of this feeling of betrayal appears in speeches made at the great conference of western Indians called by the British in 1816 on Drummond Island. Although the minutes of the council, as reported by Doane Robinson, have Wabasha and Little Crow protesting only mildly over the separate peace made by the British, the Indians' recollections in later years represent the two chiefs as spurning the British presents and accusing the givers of betrayal. Little Crow is supposed to have said: After we have fought for you, endured many hardships, lost some of our people, and awakened the vengeance of our powerful neighbours, you make a peace for yourselves and leave us to obtain such terms as we can! You no longer need our services, and offer us these goods as a compensation for having deserted us. But no! We will not take them; we hold them and yourselves in equal contempt! 14 The termination of the "second war of independence" left the United States in a somewhat improved position with regard to Indian affairs, a posture which the government took advantage of by negotiating a series of "peace and friendship" treaties with the various Indian tribes that had served the British during the war. Two such treaties were made with the eastern Sioux bands at Portage des Sioux, on the Mississippi above St. Louis, in the summer of 1815. Both dated July 19, they were signed by chiefs and headmen of the "Sioux of the Lakes" and the "Sioux of St. Peter's River," respectively. Their content is identical, consisting largely of pledges of friendship to the United ____________________ 14 Edward D. Neill, The History of Minnesota ( Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1858), pp. 292-293; Robinson, History of the Dakota, pp. 98-99. See also Thomas L. McKenney and James Hall, The Indian Tribes of North America, ed. by Frederick Webb Hodge ( Edinburgh: J. Grant, 1933), I, 126, which may be Robinson's ultimate source.
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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:15:05 GMT -5
States on the one hand and what amounted to acts of oblivion regarding past behavior on the other. A name recognizable as that of Tatankamani appears on the first, but those of Little Crow, Wabasha, and Shakopee are all conspicuously missing; apparently the latter chiefs had not entirely reconciled themselves to the new order. 15 Although Pike's treaty with the Sioux had been ratified by the Senate in 1808, no further action had ever been taken, either to establish a fort on the upper river or to pay the Indians the $2,000 the Senate saw fit to offer them. The experience of the late war, however, had demonstrated the hazards incurred by the failure to bring the Indians of that region under the effective control and supervision of the United States. In 1816, therefore, plans were formulated by the War Department for a system of military posts in the remote northwestern country, and the following year Major Stephen H. Long was sent up the river in a six-oared skiff to investigate further the sites purchased by Pike more than a decade earlier. Long's journal, like Pike's, is more useful for the information it gives about the locations of the Sioux villages than for what it reveals about their culture. After meeting a small war party on the Mississippi above Prairie du Chien, Long reached Wabasha's village on July 12. It was now situated on the Prairie aux Ailes, the later site of the city of Winona, and was almost deserted at the time of Long's visit, the chief and most of his people being absent on a hunting expedition. Here the party took on a passenger, a loquacious subchief named Wazzacoota (cf. Hennepin's Ouasicoudé) who regaled them with stories, including the tale of the maiden who leaped from a cliff rather than marry a man not of her choice. 16 Already current in Pike's day, this legend later acquired its definitive form in William J. Snelling Tales of Me Northwest ( 1830). Long also visited the Red Wing band, at that time divided into two villages, one at the site above Lake Pepin, the other, probably temporary, at Sandy Point, where Fort Beauharnois had once stood. Farther upstream his party passed Little Crow's village, comprising ____________________ 15 Charles J. Kappler, comp. and ed., Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, II ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), 113, 114. Another treaty was negotiated June 1, 1816, with "eight bands of the Siouxs, composing the three tribes called the Siouxs of the Leaf, the Siouxs of the Broad Leaf, and the Siouxs who shoot in the Pine Tops." Red Wing ("Tatangamarnee") signed this treaty also. See Kappler, Indian Affairs, II, 128 - 129. 16 "Up the Mississippi in a Six-Oared Skiff in 1817," Minnesota Historical Collections, II ( 1889), 22 - 25. -31- fourteen cabins, and across from it a burying ground containing two scaffolds in an enclosure. Long was not displeased to find this village temporarily deserted, for its inhabitants were said to be the most notorious beggars among the Sioux of the Mississippi. He noted that one cabin had loopholes and was so situated as to bring the opposite bank within musket shot, from which he concluded that Little Crow was a sort of robber baron. 17 Long did not go up the Minnesota and only remarked that there were three considerable villages up that river, nor did he give much information on the villages he did visit. Interestingly, in view of the role played by the Sioux in the recent war, wherever Long stopped the Indians raised an American flag to show their loyalty. The fact that Wabasha's village had changed location since 1805 is also of some interest. Since the bark-covered cabins had to be replaced fairly often, it is not surprising that new ones were occasionally erected on a new site. In time, and especially after the Sioux had come more immediately under the surveillance of the United States government, the Mdewakanton bands settled more or less permanently at the locations where the Pond brothers found them in 1834. The information collected by Major Long was added to that gathered by Pike, and the peninsula between the Mississippi and the Minnesota was finally selected as the site of the new military post on the upper river. In the summer of 1819 Major Thomas Forsyth, an experienced Indian agent, was sent up from St. Louis with provisions for the fort soon to be erected and with about $2,000 worth of goods for the Indians, who were somewhat tardily to be paid for the cessions made to Pike. From Prairie du Chien he accompanied Lieutenant Colonel Henry Leavenworth, who was to establish the fort. On his way up the river and at the conferences held with the various bands, Forsyth had extensive opportunities to observe the Sioux; and he, like his predecessors, recorded his discoveries and impressions in a journal. 18 Forsyth noted that the habit of begging had become firmly entrenched by this time. The younger Red Wing met him at Prairie du Chien and issued a piteous appeal for goods to assuage his grief over the loss of one of his men to the Chippewas. When this importunate beggar left, he was followed by his father, whose mission was much the same. Forsyth decided to make what use he could of the old chief, however, by ____________________ 17 Ibid., pp. 26-27, 30-31. 18 Thomas Forsyth, "Journal of a Voyage from St. Louis to the Falls of St. Anthony, in 1819," Wisconsin Historical Collections, VI ( 1872), 188-189. -32- quizzing him about the notorious Carver grant, a large cession of lands in present-day Wisconsin and Minnesota which two Sioux chiefs had supposedly made to Carver. The chief said he remembered hearing his father say that certain lands east of the Mississippi had been given to an Englishman but had no recollection of the transaction himself. Since he seemed reluctant to say more on the subject, Forsyth did not press him for further information (pp. 197 - 199 ). On August 10, two days after leaving Prairie du Chien, Forsyth's party stopped briefly with "the Bourgne, or One-Eyed Sioux," whose village was said to be on the Upper Iowa River and who had "placed themselves on the banks of the Mississippi to be in readiness to receive anything we might have to give them." Forsyth says he gave them a little powder and "milk," i.e., whiskey, "they agreeing with me that it was better to give the blankets, etc., to the Indians above, as they were most in want" (pp. 201 - 202 ). The subchief whose heirarchy of values led him to rate whiskey above blankets was none other than L'Orignal Levé, also known as Tamaha, one of the two of his nation who had served on the American side in the War of 1812. According to fairly reliable sources, he was sent by General William Clark on a mission to the Missouri River Sioux and upon his return to Prairie du Chien was imprisoned by Dickson, who was unable to extract any information from him and finally released him. A story more on the fringes of legend has it that when the British set fire to Fort McKay after evacuating it in 1815, Tamaha rushed into the flames and rescued an American flag and an American medal (p. 201 n.). He lived until 1860 and is said to have been a familiar figure to early settlers in the Wabasha vicinity. Upon reaching Wabasha's village, Forsyth delivered the first in a series of speeches explaining the benefits to the Indians of having a fort at the proposed site. It would be a place for them to trade as well as a place where they might have blacksmithing done. Their enemies would not dare attack them in the vicinity of the fort, and they must of course observe similar restraint in respect to the Chippewas. He asked the Indians to guarantee freedom of passage on the river to American vessels and warned them not to be led astray by the "bad birds" from the north--an indication that the influence of British traders was still great. Like Long, he praised Wabasha, and he also had good things to say about Little Crow, whom he found "a steady, generous and independent Indian; [who] acknowledged the sale of the land at the mouth of the St. Peter's river to the United States, and said he had been looking every year since the sale for the troops to build a fort, and was -33- happy now to see us all, as the Sioux would now have their Father with them" (pp. 202-204, 217). Forsyth conferred with several other chiefs in the performance of his mission. On August 24, while his party was in the vicinity of Kapozha, men whom he called Pinichon and White Bustard arrived with their followers; and the next day "Six" (Shakopee), Arrow, and Killiew joined them. All were from up the Minnesota; White Bustard's village was four miles upstream, Pinichon's two miles above that, Shakopee's thirty miles up, and Arrow's and Killiew's fifty-four and sixty miles up, respectively (pp. 205 - 206 ). Thus Forsyth, unlike Long, had dealings with the Wahpetons and Sissetons and probably with the Wahpekutes, as well as with the Mdewakantons. He told these chiefs the same things he had told Wabasha and doled out goods to them, giving preference to those nearest the fort soon to be built. The only one he singled out in his journal is Shakopee, whom he did not like. He wrote: "I by no means liked the countenance of
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Mr. Six, nor did I like his talk; I gave them the remainder of my goods, yet the Six wanted more. . . . I found on inquiring that Mr. Six is a good-for-nothing fellow, and rather gives bad counsel to his young men than otherwise" (p. 206 ). Forsyth's general opinion of the Sioux was not high. He noted that early travelers, such as Hennepin, had praised their hospitality, generosity, and freedom from guile, but he found them "much altered" by 1819. He attributed their degeneration entirely to "their too great intercourse with those whom we call civilized people. . . ." Whatever they may have been, the Sioux were now "actually a poor, indolent, beggarly drunken set of Indians and cowards." He saw nothing of the "genuine Indian" in them, none of the independence and "enterprising character as hunters or warriors" that had been associated with the race (pp. 212 - 213 ). Considering that Henry H. Sibley and Samuel W. Pond dated the beginning of the decline among the Sioux from 1837, when they began receiving annuities, it is noteworthy that Forsyth thought the process already under way nearly two decades earlier. It is only fair to point out, however, that Forsyth saw the countryside through which he passed as "a mountainous, broken, rocky and sterile country, not fit for either man or beast to live in," which he wondered why Carver would want to buy (p. 211 ). Perhaps his view of the Indians was as wide of the mark as his estimate of the rich valley of the upper Mississippi. Forsyth had opinions also on two matters of importance to his government: the influence of the British traders and the relations between the -34- Sioux and the Chippewas. He attributed the greater success of the British to the superiority of their goods and to their more careful selection of agents. Before a man was appointed agent, he was expected to be familiar with at least one Indian language, and hence it was to be presumed that he would know something of the Indians themselves. Although all the goods sold to the Indians were of British manufacture, the Americans, intent on making money, dealt in only the cheaper and inferior quality goods. Forsyth thought that our relations with the Indians would benefit by the application of the golden rule in treating with them, and he advocated a return to William Penn's policy of honest dealing with the Indians. As to intertribal warfare, he began with the supposition that it was bad but was persuaded by Little Crow's reasoning that for the Sioux, at least, it afforded more benefits than a treaty of peace would bring. At a cost of one or two men a year, the chief said, the Sioux were able to hold their hunting grounds east of the Mississippi, whereas peace between the tribes would permit the Chippewas to extend their domain clear down to the east bank of the river (pp. 213-214). The establishment of a military post at the mouth of the Minnesota in the late summer of 1819 was an event of great significance to the Indians living in that vicinity. At first called Fort St. Anthony, the post was renamed Fort Snelling in 1825 in honor of the man who became its commander in 1820, Colonel Josiah Snelling. 19 Although its garrison was small in the early years, its situation, on the bluffs overlooking the junction of the two rivers, made it virtually impregnable to Indian assault, had any been attempted. To the Indians the most important personality associated with Fort Snelling was not its commandant but the United States Indian agent who made it his headquarters. Commanding officers came and went, but for nearly twenty years Indian affairs in the upper Mississippi region were conducted by one man, Major Lawrence Taliaferro. From his arrival, probably in the early summer of 1820, to his resignation at the end of 1839, he represented the Great Father in Washington to the Sioux people. Taliaferro was a strong personality, possessed in ample measure of the qualities of firmness and integrity--William Watts Folwell calls him "incorruptible." His view of the Indian question was enlightened for his day, and he unquestionably discharged his duties with fidelity and forcefulness. At the same time, it is impossible, in reading his voluminous ____________________ 19 Marcus Hansen, Old Fort Snelling ( Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, 1958), pp. 29 - 30. -35- papers--he was a compulsive letter-writer and journal-keeper--to avoid being struck by his colossal egotism, amounting at times to a messiah complex. He saw himself as fighting, singlehandedly, a twentyyear war against the "malefic" designs of the fur traders, who were out to exploit the Indians and defraud the government. His dependence on the military post (he had no council house in which to meet the Indians until 1823, no dwelling for himself until 1828) increased his sense of insecurity and loneliness. Nor were his relations with the military always the most harmonious. Before taking up his post, he had been instructed by Secretary of War John C. Calhoun that "it is of the first importance that, at such remote posts, there should be a perfect understanding between the Officers, civil and military, stationed there to give energy and effect to their operations." 20 But there were clashes almost from the first. Despite these handicaps and a constitutional weakness that obliged him to spend many of his winters away from his post, however, he discharged his duties so well that he was reappointed to the St. Peter's Agency under every administration from James Monroe's to Martin Van Buren's. Taliaferro's aims were essentially those of his government: to gain and hold recognition by the Indians of United States sovereignty over the country they occupied, to protect the Indians from the baneful influence of the fur traders, to stop intertribal warfare, and to conduct his charges along the road toward civilization. The last of these is best dealt with in the next chapter, for it was only with the advent of missionaries that much was accomplished toward civilizing the Sioux, but the other objectives occupied Taliaferro throughout his long term of service. The outcome of the War of 1812 had not induced the Indians automatically to shift their allegiance from England to the United States. Many of the fur traders, especially those in the employ of the American Fur Company, were British in sympathies, even though required by a law passed in 1816 to be American citizens. To wean the Indians away from their British ties, Taliaferro encouraged remote bands to visit the ____________________ 20 Clarence E. Carter, comp. and ed., The Territorial Papers of the United States, XV ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1951), 577. The following statement, made in an autobiographical sketch written at the age of seventy, is characteristic of Taliaferro: "In the midst of many perplexities, single-handed and alone, the Agent was consoled by many testimonials of well-done, good and faithful servant." See AutoBiography of Maj. Lawrence Taliaferro, Minnesota Historical Collections, VI ( 1894), 212. Similar remarks are found throughout his correspondence and his journals, particularly in his later, bitterer years. -36-
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agency and to hold councils there, at which he would collect all the British medals and flags he could, substitute equivalent symbols of American sovereignty, and also distribute a great number of useful articles such as axes, awls, beads, blankets, combs, shotguns, hats, hoes, knives, plumes, needles, and shifts--much the same sort of goods as the traders were dispensing in exchange for the Indians' valuable furs. In addition, he sometimes gave the chiefs powder, lead, tobacco, and even whiskey, though he was aware of the dangers involved in giving liquor to Indians. For the first two or three years of Taliaferro's tenure as agent, such gift-giving cost the government at least $1,200 annually, over and above ordinary aid furnished to the needy. Later it was greatly reduced. The distribution of provisions does not at this time appear to have been necessary, since game was still to be found, but in later years flour, beef, and other food became important items on the agent's list. 21 The occasion for the giving out of presents was normally a council, which might be either a spontaneous visit to the agency by a band from the hinterland or a formal conference called by the agent, perhaps to adjudicate a difference between Indians of the same band or between separate tribes. A council was an extremely formal occasion, made even more so by the need to conduct all business through an interpreter. There is no evidence that Taliaferro learned enough of the Dakota language to converse fluently with the Indians in that tongue. His interpreter during almost his entire term of service was Scott Campbell, the mixed-blood son of the trader Colin Campbell. Young Campbell had spent his childhood among the Indians and was discovered by Lewis and Clark on their trip up the Missouri in 1805. Sent into white society to be educated, he acquired a good command of English and was thus qualified, by education at least, for the interpreter's job that he held for so many years. Whether he was qualified by temperament for his sensitive job may be questioned. The Reverend Samuel W. Pond, whose acquaintance with Campbell began in 1834, thought him inclined to soften harsh statements in interpreting them and even to distort or suppress unpleasant remarks so as to avoid ill feeling. 22 In his later years Campbell's tendency toward intemperance ____________________ 21 "Auto-Biography of Maj. Lawrence Taliaferro," pp. 200, 205; Taliaferro Journal, June 2 and 7, and September 4, 1821; June 3, 1829; undated entries, MS., Minnesota Historical Society. 22 Samuel W. Pond, "The Dakotas or Sioux in Minnesota as They Were in 1834," Minnesota Historical Collections, XII ( 1905- 1908), 339-341. Campbell must have taken -37- got the better of him and was finally responsible for his discharge by Taliaferro's successor. Taliaferro did not deceive himself about the success of his efforts to win the allegiance of the Indians. As late as 1827 he wrote to his superior, General William Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs at St. Louis, that in the event of war between the two countries, every tribe under his jurisdiction would take the British side. Although he thought he had made a good impression on the Indians, he confessed, "I have not the slightest confidence in any professions of friendship or attachment which they may demonstrate either in regard to the United States or myself individually." 23 Fortunately, no British-American war broke out, and the loyalties of the Sioux were never put to the test. Among Taliaferro's most difficult tasks, which neither he nor any of his successors ever really accomplished, was to effect a lasting peace between the Sioux and the Chippewas. Although in his first seven years he brought the tribes together at ten councils, the age-old enmity seems to have been only temporarily quenched each time, to break forth with renewed fury before many months had passed. He did what he could to keep his Indians from being reminded of the feud. Once when a couple of Sioux chiefs visited the agency, they noticed a pipe hanging on the wall and remarked that the hair on it had been taken from a Sisseton killed by the Chippewas the previous summer. Taliaferro promptly removed the object, saying that no such pipe would be allowed in the council room. 24 Having convinced himself that peace could be achieved by setting up a geographical line of separation between the two tribes, in 1823 he proposed that they should both send delegates to Washington to negotiate ____________________ the interpreter's job quite early in Taliaferro's term, and he seems to have enjoyed the confidence of the agent--so much so that during one of Taliaferro's winter furloughs, the commanding officer at Fort Snelling, nominally in charge of the agency, complained that Taliaferro was circumventing the proper chain of command by sending instructions directly to Campbell. 23 Lawrence Taliaferro to Superintendent William Clark, October 7, 1827, NARS, RG 75, LR, St. Peter's Agency. All National Archives material cited in this book is from Record Group 75. Microfilm copies have been used for correspondence up to 1881. Letters Received from the St. Peter's Agency, Santee Sioux Agency, Flandreau Special Agency, Minnesota Superintendency, and Northern Superintendency, as well as all Letters Sent (all on microfilm) are in the possession of the Mankato State College library; other microfilm correspondence is in the possession of the author. Unless the agency is specified, the St. Peter's Agency is meant. 24 Abstract of Councils Between Chippewas and Sioux, accompanying Taliaferro to Clark, May 25, 1829, NARS, RG 75, LR; Taliaferro Journal, September 20, 1821. -38- a settlement and draw up a line. The following year he took a party of Sioux, Chippewas, and Menominees on the first of a series of trips to Washington, one purpose of which was to give them a chance to see something of the white man's strength and numbers. Traders at Prairie du Chien frightened some members of the party into dropping out there, and another took flight when the steamboat was on the Ohio River; but the rest made the trip and returned by way of New York and the Great Lakes. Although no treaty was signed, the groundwork was laid for a great intertribal council at Prairie du Chien the next year.25 The first Prairie du Chien conference was a spectacular performance, whatever may be said of its consequences. Great numbers of Indians from the Sioux, Chippewa, Menominee, Winnebago, Sac and Fox, Iowa, Potawatomi, and Ottawa tribes assembled early in August, to be wined and dined by officials of the United States government and (it was hoped) to negotiate a general settlement that would put an end to the intertribal wars that were costing them so many of their best men and interfering with the orderly management of Indian affairs by the government. Taliaferro has left a graphic picture of the theatrical entry of his 385 Sioux and Chippewas: There was a halt before entering the town, at the "Painted Rock," where, after attending to their toilet and appointment of soldiers to dress the columns of boats, the grand entry was made with drums beating, many flags flying, with incessant discharges of small
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arms. All Prairie du Chien was drawn out, with other delegations already arrived, to witness the display and landing of this ferocious looking body of true savages. 26 Although liquor was liberally dispensed, not all of it found its way down the throats of the Indians. To counter the charge that they were niggardly in comparison with the British, the American officials, it is said, hauled out two kegs of whiskey, broke them open, and poured the contents out onto the ground. According to an account attributed to William J. Snelling, son of Colonel Josiah Snelling, the Indians were much offended by this waste. One chief, identified only as "old ____________________ 26 Taliaferro Journal, July 1823; "Auto-Biography of Maj. Lawrence Taliaferro," pp. 203-205. The proposal was evidently made at a council held in June, for the Long expedition which paused briefly at Wabasha's village late that month found the chief looking forward to the trip. See William H. Keating, Narrative of an Expedition to the Sources of St. Peter's River ( Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, 1959), p. 282. 26 Auto-Biography of Maj. Lawrence Taliaferro, p. 206. -39- Wakhpakootay," is supposed to have remarked with real grief, "There was enough to have kept me drunk all the days of my life." 27 At the council speeches were made by spokesmen of the various tribes, proclaiming their distaste for war and their fervent hope that peace would be established for all time. Wabasha and Tatankamani, Little Crow and Shakopee all offered their contributions toward the general sense of well-being and fellowship. The naive notion that a mere arbitrary line set up at such a conference would be honored by the tribes concerned seems to have been accepted without question by the American officials who called the council. Some of the Indians tried to warn them that aboriginal concepts of land ownership were different. Caramonee, a Winnebago chief, stated the customs of his race: The lands I claim are mine and the nations here know it is not only claimed by us but by our Brothers the Sacs and Foxes, Menominees, Iowas, Mahas, and Sioux. They have held it in common. It would be difficult to divide it. It belongs as much to one as the other. . . . My Fathers I did not know that any of my relations had any particular lands. It is true everyone owns his own lodge and the ground he may cultivate. I had thought the Rivers were the common property of all Red Skins and not used exclusively by any particular nation. 28 Despite such words of caution, a dividing line was designated between the lands of the Sac and Fox tribe and those of the Sioux, running across northern Iowa, and another drawn on the map to separate the Sioux from the Chippewas. The latter began on the Mississippi in present southwestern Wisconsin, at the mouth of the Black River, crossed the Chippewa and the St. Croix well upstream, and continued on across what is now central Minnesota to the Red River of the North, opposite the mouth of the Goose River. 29 Although the great council at Prairie du Chien began festively for the Indians, it ended tragically for some of them. Several of Taliaferro's delegation died on their way home, supposedly from drinking a concoction of whiskey and sugar that had been served them. A rumor ____________________ 27 [ William J. Snelling], "Running the Gauntlet," Minnesota Historical Collections, I ( 1850- 1856), 361-362. The same story is told, with minor differences in detail, in another account supposed to have been written by Snelling, "Early Days at Prairie du Chien," Wisconsin Historical Collections, V ( 1868), 124. 28 "Journal of Proceedings at Prairie du Chien," August 6, 8, and 9, 1825 (photostatic copy in Minnesota Historical Society). 29 Kappler, Indian Affairs, II, 250-251. -40- spread that the white men had deliberately tried to poison them. Although scouting this report, the younger Snelling predicted that many of the Sioux would continue to believe it for the rest of their lives. 30 He might have guessed that they would pass it on to their children, and the ugly rumor would survive as oral tradition among the Santee Sioux for well over a century after the treaty. In the 1960's elderly people were still telling this story, sometimes confusing it with the treatment given the men imprisoned at Davenport after the Uprising of 1862, and speaking of it as if it were something that had happened in their own lifetimes. The treaty was also a failure in the larger sense that it did not accomplish what it was intended to. The Sioux-Chippewa line was not surveyed until 1835, and then the Indians (supposedly the Chippewas) pulled up the stakes as soon as they were planted. In any case, no respect was paid to the line by either side when it suited their interest to cross it. There may have been some temporary reduction in the number of raids made by one tribe on the other, but within a year or two hostilities were in full swing again. In the summer of 1827 a small group of Sioux treacherously attacked a party of visiting Chippewas almost under the walls of Fort Snelling. Regarding this act as flagrant disregard of the American flag, the commandant seized several hostages and held them until the culprits were delivered up. The latter were then turned over to the Chippewas, who forced them to "run the gauntlet," a form of punishment tantamount to death. From this time on, raids and counterraids were the dominant feature of relations between the two tribes. 31 The story of the Santee Sioux in the 1820'S is not entirely one of warfare with the Chippewas. In the discharge of his responsibilities, Taliaferro felt obliged to battle constantly with the traders, not only those whom he considered agents of the British but the whole fraternity, whose most serious offense was the sale of whiskey to the Indians. Early in 1822 he charged that the Lac qui Parle trader, Joseph Renville, ____________________ 30 Taliaferro Journal, August 23 and September 19, 1825; [ Snelling?], "Early Days at Prairie du Chien," p. 124. 31 Taliaferro to Clark, September 2, 1835, NARS, RG 75, LR; Taliaferro Journal, June 1, 1827; [ Snelling], "Running the Gauntlet," pp. 362, 365-370; Charlotte O. Van Cleve , "A Reminiscence of Ft. Snelling," Minnesota Historical Collections, III ( 1870- 1880), 79-81; Ann Adams, "Early Days at Red River Settlement and Fort Snelling," Minnesota Historical Collections, VI ( 1894), 109-110. See also Colonel Josiah Snelling to Henry Atkinson, May 31, 1827, in Carter, Territorial Papers, XI ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1943), 1082-1083. -41- besides flying the British flag just prior to 1822, had been selling liquor. In fact, Taliaferro recorded in his journal that "ardent spirits compose his principal article of his trade." He found Renville and his Columbia Fur Company less offensive, however, than the agents of the American Fur Company, whom he characterized as "men of mean principles and low origin--consequently are jealous--evil disposed and great vagabonds." 32 His especial bête noire was Joseph Rolette--" this beast of the Creation," as he once called him--the company's agent at Prairie du Chien, with whom he carried on a running feud during nearly his entire period as agent. He alleged that Rolette, related to Wabasha by marriage, had that chief under his influence and was responsible, through his sale of liquor to the band, for attacks on the Chippewas in 1829. Rolette in turn charged that Taliaferro had permitted a naturalized American named Laidlaw, a partner in the Columbia Fur Company, to distribute agency liquor to the Indians at Traverse des Sioux in order to promote the interests of that company. When in 1825 Taliaferro designated seventeen sites for trading posts within his jurisdiction, to be divided between the two competing companies, Rolette and his cohorts objected on the grounds that some of the forts were unnecessary and that their number gave the Indians too good a chance to lounge around them instead of hunting. 33 Thus the war of charges and countercharges went on. Taliaferro may have exceeded his authority in designating so specifically the locations of the proposed trading posts, as he later did in suspending the traders' privilege of bringing liquor into the Indian country for their boatmen. They were permitted under the law to bring in one gallon per month for each boatman in their employ. Taliaferro charged that the men never saw more than a third of this, and even that "escaped" at a price of eight to sixteen dollars a gallon. So in August, 1830, he issued a circular forbidding the introduction of whiskey or high wines under this pretext. His action was not supported by higher authority, although General Clark conceded that Taliaferro's reasons were good. 34 ____________________ 32 Taliaferro Journal, January 12, 1822, and March 27, 1826. 33 Ibid., September 26, 1829, and October 22, 1830; Joseph Rolette to Lewis Cass, November 15, 1826, and to Clark, June 27, 1826; undated document in Indian Office files, accompanied by affidavit from Alexander Faribault, June 26, 1826, and Joseph Laframboise (undated), NARS, RG 75, LR. Faribault and Laframboise were in the employ of Rolette, whose hand is evident in the main document. 34 Taliaferro to Clark, August 17, 1830; Clark to Secretary of War, September 22, 1830, NARS, RG 75, LR. -42-
· Title: History of the Santee Sioux: United States Indian Policy on Trial · Publisher: University of Nebraska Press · Publication Date: 1993 · Page No: * Although Taliaferro complained of the remoteness of his post in the 1820's, its isolation was rapidly being broken down, together with what remained of the insulation from the white man's world that the Sioux had enjoyed up to then. Three visitors to the upper Mississippi region in the early 1820's left detailed accounts of their experiences. The first was Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who appeared in the summer of 1820 in the capacity of geologist and mineralogist for an expedition led by Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan Territory. Although the trip through the Sioux country was only incidental to Cass' primary purpose, the party did stop at the St. Peter's Agency long enough to help negotiate a treaty of peace between the Sioux and the Chippewas. The council was so poorly attended by the Indians and they
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manifested such indifference toward its objective that even Schoolcraft doubted that the peace would last. 35 The treaty concluded, the party proceeded down the Mississippi to the villages of Little Crow, Red Wing, and Wabasha. Either Schoolcraft had not yet developed the ethnological bent that later led him to attempt an exhaustive study of American Indian cultures, or else he thought the Sioux less interesting than the Chippewas among whom he had been living, for his observations on these villages contain little that is not found in greater detail elsewhere. He seems to have been somewhat confused as to the divisions of the Sioux. His list includes both "Minokantongs" and "Mendewacantongs," of which the former are the Mdewakantons whom he visited; the Mendewacantongs" he lumps with the Wahpekutes and locates vaguely south of the Minnesota River. 36 Three years after Schoolcraft's visit, the silence of the upper Mississippi was broken by the shrill whistle of the first steamboat to penetrate that far into the wilderness, the Virginia, which on May 10, 1823, arrived at Fort Snelling. Welcome as it no doubt was to the garrison, it spread astonishment and consternation among the Indians, whose previous experience with the white man's boats had been limited to skiffs and keelboats, both powered by human muscle and not radically different from their own canoes. 37 Aboard the Virginia was an Italian ____________________ 35 Henry R. Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels Through the Northwestern Regions of the United States, ed. by Mentor L. Williams ( East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1953), pp. 199-200. 36 Ibid., pp. 202, 209-210, 212, 218. 37 William J. Petersen, Steamboating on the Upper Mississippi ( Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa, 1937), p. 105. -43- nobleman, Count Giacomo Constantino Beltrami, who dreamed of following in the footsteps of Marco Polo, Columbus, Cabot, and Vespucci and making some discoveries of his own. Though a romantic in his response to nature, Beltrami treated everything American with derision, including the aborigines, who appear in his account merely as amusing curiosities. Red Wing, for example, is described as "an old man of hideous aspect, bent under the weight of years and atrocities," and a beggar withal. 38 On the whole, Beltrami does not add materially to our knowledge of the Sioux, but he provides an unusual vantage point from which to view them. Later on, when the trip up the Mississippi became a fashionable tour, his point of view became commonplace as genteel eastern ladies caught their first glimpses of the savage in his poverty and degradation. Much more important than Beltrami's was the well-planned, wellexecuted expedition of Major Stephen H. Long in 1823, which passed up the Mississippi, followed the Minnesota to its source, then descended the Red River to the forty-ninth parallel, and returned by way of the international boundary to Lake Superior. In keeping with the aim of obtaining and recording scientific information on the native peoples along the route, the expedition's chronicler, William H. Keating, left a detailed description of the Sioux. The party first passed a small village of five lodges, evidently a remnant of Wabasha's village, a few miles above the Upper Iowa River, and two days later reached the main village. Even at the smaller outpost they saw about two acres of corn. 39 At the Red Wing village an American flag was hoisted over the chief's cabin, and the visitors were invited to hold a council. Upon entering the lodge, they seated themselves on two bed frames for the smoking of the calumet and the inevitable speech-making. Presents of tobacco, powder, and shot were given, but the chief wondered if he and his warriors might have a little of their "Great Father's milk" to assuage their grief over the recent loss of friends and relatives in war with the Chippewas. When Major Long told them he had no whiskey along and pointed out that it was bad for people, the chief agreed but seemed regretful (pp. 259 - 261, 270 ). In general, Keating's names for the various bands he encountered tally well with later accounts by reliable witnesses. He refers to the two villages of Wabasha as constituting the Keoxa band (usually spelled ____________________ 38 J. C. Beltrami, A Pilgrimage in America ( Chicago: Quadrangle Books, Inc., 1962), 186-187. 39 Keating, Narrative of an Expedition, p. 255. -44-
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"Kiyuksa"), to Red Wing's band as Eanbosandata, and to Little Crow's as Kapoja. Near the last village the party stopped for a time at an Indian cemetery consisting of several scaffolds holding coffins; "sometimes a trunk (purchased from a trader), at other times a blanket, or a roll of bark, conceals the body of the deceased." There were also several graves in which bones had been deposited after the flesh had decayed or been eaten by birds of prey. The village itself consisted of houses "formed by upright flattened posts, implanted in the ground, without any interval, except here and there some small loopholes for defence; these same posts support the roof, which presents a surface of bark." Before and behind each house was a scaffold used for drying corn, pumpkins, and other vegetables (p. 299 ). Four Mdewakanton villages were passed on the Minnesota River. The first, which Keating called Oanoska, was presided over by Wamdetanka (Big Eagle), formerly dependent on Little Crow. This was what is usually known as Black Dog's village, located some three to five miles from the mouth of the St. Peter's, on the right bank. About seven miles farther upstream, also on the right bank, Long's party reached Tetankatane, or the Old Village, supposedly the center from which the Mdewakantons dispersed after their expulsion from the Mille Lacs region. It had been ruled by Wabasha's father before his removal to the Upper Iowa, and is the one referred to as Pinichon's village and later as Good Road's village. The next village was Taoapa, Shakopee's village, thirty miles up the river and on the left bank, consisting of fifteen large bark lodges and having a population of about three hundred, or about the same as Kapozha or Kiyuksa. The lodges and cornfields were in good order, arranged along the river, and there were the customary drying scaffolds, on which the explorers were told the Indians slept on very hot nights. One more Mdewakanton village, called Weakaote, was seen some six miles above the Little Rapids (near modern Le Sueur), a hamlet of two lodges and the ruins of a third. Later the party encountered the chief of the village, and were told that the Indians living there planned to move farther up the river (pp. 339 348, 401 - 402 ). Except for Weakaote, the Mdewakanton villages reported by Keating are those which later white settlers found, in approximately the same locations. Some split-offs took place later, but in general the semisedentary Santees appear to have been settled in more or less permanent villages by this time. This was not, of course, true of the Wahpekutes, whose usual hunting grounds are given by Keating, although it does -45- not appear that he actually saw many of them. According to Joseph Renville, who had joined the party as guide and interpreter at Fort Snelling, the Wahpekutes had the reputation among the other Indians of being a lawless band. They were said to live principally near the headwaters of the Cannon and Blue Earth rivers. Some of the Sissetons rendezvoused near the mouth of the Blue Earth, but a division of their people called the Kahra hunted mostly in the Lake Traverse-Red River area. The Wahpetons were found mainly near the headwaters of the Minnesota. Keating, relying on Renville's estimates, gave the population of the Mdewakantons as 1,500, of the Wahpekutes as 800, of the Sissetons as 2,500, and of the Wahpetons as 900. Adding to this 2,000 Yanktons, 5,200 Yanktonais, 14,400 Tetons, and 800 stragglers of one kind or another, he arrived at a total of 28, 100 for the entire Dakota nation (pp. 396, 402 - 403 ). Despite some over- and underestimates for particular bands, this is probably as reliable a figure as was offered before the Sioux began receiving annuities and census rolls were prepared. Like other visitors, Keating had views of his own on the Sioux and their prospects. He saw them as a "noble ruin," no longer meeting at a common council fire, no longer going on the warpath in armies (as he supposed they had once done) but only in small bands of marauders. He postulated a golden age which had passed: "When they lighted the common calumet at the General Council Fire, it was always among the Mende Wahkanton, who then resided near Spirit Lake [Mille Lacs], and who were considered as the oldest band of the nation, their chiefs being of longer standing than those of the other tribes. . ." (pp. 442 443 ). Despite some hopeful signs among the agricultural bands, he felt that the Sioux had been corrupted by the white man. He thought that "the occasional supplies of these articles which they receive from the Indian agents and officers of our government, whenever they are in want of food, no doubt tend to encourage their lazy habits." Colonel Snelling, it was said, had once offered a chief the use of a plow and someone to teach him how to use it, so that his people might raise potatoes. The chief thought the proposition over, then replied that he would be a fool to accept it, as "his father always supplied him with provisions, as often as he was in need of them" (pp. 439 - 440 ). The Sioux may have seemed a "noble ruin" to Keating in 1823, but their deterioration still had a long way to go. If the occasional distribution of goods by Taliaferro was so injurious as Keating supposed, how much more so were the annuities provided by later treaties, which Sibley saw as the real beginning of the Indians' decline. Taliaferro was -46- not blind to the dangerous potentialities of the annuity system, but he wished to see that his charges received the best possible bargain, and he apparently thought that his efforts to promote agriculture among them would offset the debilitating effects of gratuities from the government. In this supposition he was wrong, as the second decade of his tenure at the St. Peter's Agency demonstrated. -47- CHAPTER 3 Civilizing the Sioux AS THE third decade of the nineteenth century ended, the Santee Sioux were entering a period of crisis that was to last thirty years and end in catastrophe. In all probability none of them recognized the symptoms for what they were, although the signs of change were already evident. There were more white men in their country than ever before--the soldiers even had a fort in the heart of the Santees' territory--and steamboats were coming up the river with increasing frequency. But much of the old culture was still intact. The changes that had taken place within the memory of a man were largely accessions from the white man's world, many of which made life more comfortable and more interesting. One change, however, that was alarming to Indian and white alike was the depletion of game. Schoolcraft had noted as early as 1820 that the nearest bison in abundance were a two days' journey west of the Mississippi River villages; in Hennepin's day they had roamed the prairies immediately back from the river. The smaller game was also disappearing from the vicinity of the Indian settlements. Keating mentions the almost total absence of game of any kind on the Minnesota River in 1823. 1 Under these conditions, and with agriculture a ____________________ 1 Henry R. Schoolcraft, Narrative Journal of Travels Through the Northwestern Regions of the United States, ed. by Mentor L. Williams ( East Lansing: Michigan State University -48-
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negligible source of food, the Sioux were often hungry a good part of the year. The occasional handouts of provisions were not nearly enough to meet the needs of the recipients. In Taliaferro's view, the solution was for the Indians to expand their meager farming and eventually become self-supporting. Whenever he held a council, he tried to impress on them the advantages of agriculture. He was much encouraged when, in his second summer at St. Peter's, the chief Black Dog remarked that every day he saw the whites plowing and wished that he had someone to show his people how to cultivate the soil in this fashion. 2 Apparently this wish led to no concrete results, but in the winter of 1828-1829 nature came to the agent's aid. During that severe winter the occupants of at least thirty lodges starved to death because of the shortage of game. Taliaferro had no supplies with which to help them, and he had been "compelled to be the witness of scenes the most unpleasant." The victims of this starving period were the nomadic Sioux from the upper Minnesota, but the Mdewakantons were also affected. The next spring they all left their villages in search of food of any kind. 3 This was the psychological moment for Taliaferro to press his agricultural schemes. An Indian named Mahpiya Wichasta, or Cloud Man, had been one of those who nearly starved on the prairie the previous winter, and he had at that time made a resolution to give farming a try if he lived through the ordeal. Together with one Kee-e-he-ie (He That Flies), father-in-law of the interpreter-farmer Philander Prescott, Cloud Man took the great step in the summer of 1829. Taliaferro sent out a soldier from the fort and two yoke of oxen, under Prescott's supervision, and they plowed for about a month in the vicinity of Lake Calhoun. Few Indians ventured out the first year, but the second year more came than there was work for, and some had to dig with hoes. The agent hired men to collect materials for a log village and for a building to protect the property of such Indians as "might submit to become cultivators of the soil." 4 ____________________ Press, 1953), p. 212; William H. Keating, Narrative of an Expedition to the Sources of St. Peter's River ( Minneapolis: Ross and Haines, 1959), pp. 302-303. 2 Taliaferro Journal, September 26, 1821. 3 Lawrence Taliaferro to William Clark, February 28, 1829, NARS, RG 75, LR; Taliaferro Journal, June 21, 1829. 4 Samuel W. Pond, "The Dakotas or Sioux in Minnesota as They Were in 1834," Minnesota Historical Colltctions, XII ( 1905- 1908), 326; Philander Prescott, "Autobiography and Reminiscences of Philander Prescott," in Minnesota Historical Collections, VI ( 1894), 482; Taliaferro to Secretary of War J ohn H. Eaton, February 23, 1830, -49- Taliaferro took considerable pride in his experiment, which he named "Eatonville" after Jackson's Secretary of War. While in Washington early in 1830 he wrote to Eaton that the President had expressed a willingness to further the experiment; the agent thought that six or eight hundred dollars taken from the Indian civilization fund would "mature what has happily been begun. . . ." 5 His journal records frequent rides out to Eatonville, which was only six miles from Fort Snelling. Prescott was superintending work at the colony the next summer and, so far as he could, financing it out of his own pocket. When Taliaferro visited the village early in September, he found the Indians busy shucking and tying up their corn; as soon as they had finished collecting wild rice, they would dig their potatoes. Taliaferro instructed the women to save seed from the melons, squash, pumpkins, beans, peas, onions, cabbages, and other vegetables. 6 The Eatonville colony did not effect a revolution in the economy of the Sioux, and it eventually had to be abandoned because of its vulnerability to Chippewa attacks; but it demonstrated to Taliaferro's satisfaction that the Sioux could be taught to farm in a manner approximating that of white frontiersmen. The project of civilizing the Sioux received a financial boost from a treaty negotiated in 1830 with the Sioux and several other tribes, who gathered at Prairie du Chien that July. Although the primary purpose of this treaty was to stop raids by the Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes into each other's territory, certain land cessions agreed to by the tribes involved payment. The Sioux ceded a twenty-mile-wide strip of land on their side of the dividing line set up in 1825, the Sacs and Foxes ceding a similar strip on their side. This forty-mile-wide "neutral strip" only aggravated relations between the tribes by tempting hunters from each to intrude upon it, but the land cession was compensated for by the government in the form of a $2,000 annuity to be paid for ten years in money, merchandise, or animals, at the chiefs' option. In addition, for the same period "and as long thereafter as the President of the United States may think necessary and proper," they were to be provided with ____________________ NARS, RG 75, LR. Prescott was confused as to the year this experiment started, for he mentions that during the first year he and his crew cut a large number of tamarack logs for use in rebuilding the agency council house. It did not burn until August, 1830, and entries in Taliaferro Journal for 1829 make it clear that the Eatonville project was under way by the end of that summer. See also The Recollections of Philander Prescott: Frontiersman of the Old Northwest, ed. by Donald Dean Parker ( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), pp. 126-129. 5 Taliaferro to Eaton, February 23, 1830, NARS, RG 75, LR. 6 Taliaferro Journal, August 24 and September 4, 1830. In the last entry he says the colony was established August 15, 1829. -50- one blacksmith and the necessary tools, agricultural implements, and iron and steel to the amount of $700. An education fund was also set up, of which the Sioux were to receive benefits to the amount of $500 annually. The signers of this treaty included twenty-six Mdewakantons, nine Wahpekutes, and two Sissetons; no Wahpetons signed. Besides names recognizable as those of Wabasha, Little Crow, and Big Eagle, the chiefs who signed included Wacouta, or the Shooter, who had succeeded Tatankamani as chief of the Red Wing band in 1829; Wakinyan Tanka, or Big Thunder, soon to become chief at Kapozha; and Tachunk Washtay, or Good Road, the next chief of the old Pinichon village. 7 The annuities provided by the 1830 treaty were too small to have much effect, good or bad, on the Santee Sioux, but the blacksmith shop was a convenience for some. For years the bands near the agency had been having their work done by the agency smith; but because that location was inconvenient for Wabasha's band, now more than twice as large as any of the others, Taliaferro decided to place the new blacksmith shop at the Kettle Hills, just below the Kiyuksa village. 8 Although most of the dividing line between the Sioux and the Sac and Fox tribes was surveyed in 1832 and 1833, neither it nor the neutral strip through which it ran had any effect on the perennial warfare between the two tribes. In any case, during the Black Hawk War in 1832, some of the Sioux had a chance to vent their hatred of their enemies without incurring the displeasure of the government. Wabasha's band was invited to join the military and played a brief and inglorious role in the later stages of the campaign. After Black Hawk and his warriors had been pretty well beaten, Wabasha's braves fell upon a band of a hundred or so fugitives, half-starved and nearly defenseless, and slaughtered at least sixty-eight of them, including many women and children. 9 Retaliation was inevitable as soon as the Sacs and Foxes were somewhat recovered, and raiding back and forth continued for at least another decade. If Taliaferro met with no success in his attempts to halt intertribal ____________________ 7 Charles. J. Kappler, comp. and ed., Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, II ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), 305-309. For the report of Tatankamani's death, see the Taliaferro Journal, June 1829. 8 Taliaferro to Clark, September 1, 1834, NARS, RG 75, LR; Taliaferro journal, July 16, August 24 and 28, 1831. 9 Clark to Commissioner Elbert Herring, January 24, 1834, and. July 5, 1833; Clark to Herring, July 21, 1833; A. S. Hughes to Clark, December 31, 1833, NARS, RG 75, LR; William T. Hagan, The Sac and Fox Indians ( Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), pp. 191-192. -51- warfare, he could take some comfort from the slow but substantial success of his Eatonville experiment, which in six years grew from two families to forty-five. So encouraging were the prospects that the agent wrote Superintendent Clark in 1833 that he could use two instructors in farming for the Sioux, who were "in a most destitute condition from the great and increasing scarcity of game." The next year he presented a more formal request to Indian Commissioner Elbert Herring. Since the education fund provided by the 1830 treaty had never been spent, he asked that it now be used to employ two men of "respectable character to instruct [the Indians] in the art of cultivating the soil." 10 Taliaferro had two men in mind when he made this request. That spring Gideon H. and Samuel W. Pond, young "volunteer missionaries" unconnected with any organized society, had come up the river to Fort Snelling with the intention of working among the Sioux. They were welcomed by Taliaferro and almost at once given an opportunity to show what they could do. The agent had always held that Indians must be civilized before being Christianized, but he had no objection to combining the two operations, as the Ponds proposed to do. They were given a place to live at the Lake Calhoun settlement, where about a year later they were joined by Thomas S. Williamson, Alexander G. Huggins, and their families, together with a sister of Mrs. Williamson. Bearing somewhat stronger credentials than the Ponds, they had been sent out by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Soon after their arrival Jedediah D. Stevens, who had made a preliminary visit to the agency in 1829, followed with his family. 11 Thus within a comparatively short time, the Santee Sioux, hitherto without missionaries, were virtually inundated with them. Some rivalries developed at once, but a real impasse was avoided when Williamson accepted Joseph Renville's invitation to settle at his trading post on Lac qui Parle, near the headwaters of the Minnesota River. Gideon Pond joined him there the next spring. Stevens located at Lake Harriet, near the Eatonville colony, where Samuel Pond joined him in the spring of 1837, after being ordained the previous winter. That spring another missionary, Stephen Return Riggs, and his ____________________ 10 Taliaferro Journal, August 8, 1835; Taliaferro to Clark, August 2, 1833, and Taliaferro to Herring, July 23, 1834, NARS, RG 75, LR. 11 Stephen R. Riggs, "Protestant Missions in the Northwest," Minnesota Historical Collections, VI ( 1894), 126-127; Riggs, "The Dakota Mission," Minnesota Historical Collections, III ( 1870- 1880), 115-117. -52-
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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:21:30 GMT -5
wife came to the Sioux country and settled at Lac qui Parle, which became the most successful of the numerous missionary efforts in the next two decades. 12 "Successful" is here a relative term. None of these mission stations accomplished much toward Christianizing the Indians before the reservation period of the fifties, and it was not until the morale of the Sioux was shattered by the aftermath of the Uprising in 1862 that wholesale conversions were made. For the missionaries those first years must have been extremely frustrating. The Lake Calhoun people were docile enough, and they were farming industriously, but they felt no desire to adopt the religion so assiduously preached by the white men who lived among them. At Lac qui Parle the support of Renville, who commanded great influence among the Indians, enabled the missionaries to gather a small congregation, made up almost entirely of women and mixedbloods at first but eventually including a few men. But here too the work was slow and unrewarding. 13 One of the most significant contributions of the missionaries was the reduction of the Dakota language to writing and the publication of books in that tongue. White men as far back as Hennepin had been compiling Dakota vocabularies, but nothing really systematic was done until the missionaries began their work. Their motive was not mere curiosity, of course, but a need to present their message in a form the Indians could understand. As Protestants, they regarded the use of the Bible in the vernacular as central to their task. Possessed of considerable linguistic ability, they availed themselves of such knowledge as had been accumulated by officers at Fort Snelling and others who had interested themselves in the Dakota language, and gradually acquired a knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary sufficient to enable them to translate portions of the Bible. Once books began to appear in Dakota, the missionaries' task of teaching the Indians to read and write was made easier. After they had been at work a little more than fifteen years, Riggs edited and the Smithsonian Institution published a monumental Grammar and Dictionary of the Dakota Language, which to a considerable degree fixed the written form of the language. From the very beginning the missionaries regarded the use of Dakota as a temporary expedient. They were convinced that its days as a living language were numbered, and in his introduction to the Grammar Riggs justified the project partly ____________________ 12 Riggs, "Protestant Missions in the Northwest," pp. 128-129. 13 Ibid., p. 130 ; Riggs, "The Dakota Mission," p. 118. -53- on the grounds that the work might prove useful to future philologists after the language itself had died out. 14 During the years that Taliaferro was agent for the Sioux of the Mississippi, the conduct of Indian affairs was gradually being systematized, and a definite Indian department was taking shape within the War Department. When Taliaferro was first appointed in 1819, neither his duties nor the limits of his jurisdiction had been clearly defined. As time passed, however, many of the ambiguities of his position were resolved, along with those of other Indian agents. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1824, but it was not until 1832 that a commissioner was appointed. Two years later a massive revamping and codification of practices and policies was incorporated in the legislation collectively known as the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834, which superseded a series of congressional acts dating back to 1793. The new legislation grew partly out of recommendations submitted several years earlier by Lewis Cass and William Clark, recommendations which in turn may have reflected Taliaferro's experiences with traders, the introduction of liquor, intertribal warfare, and other matters relating to Indian affairs. Among other things, these laws increased the agents' discretionary authority in dealing with the whiskey traffic and the licensing of traders. 15 Among the provisions of the new law was one amplifying earlier legislation dealing with Indian depredations on property owned by whites. This should not have been a serious problem at the St. Peter's Agency, since theoretically the only white people in the vicinity were government employees (including the Fort Snelling garrison), traders, and their families. As a matter of fact, however, there were squatters on the military reserve, chiefly refugees from the Earl of Selkirk's ill-fated Red River colony, and a number of mixed-bloods whose ties with the Indians kept them close to the Sioux villages. Members of all these groups had livestock, and it was inevitable that the Indians, whose legitimate hunting opportunities were diminishing, should occasionally kill a pig or an ox belonging to one of the whites, especially in the seasons of greatest hunger. Almost as soon as the new laws became known, depredations claims began coming in to the agent for his approval. It ____________________ 14 Riggs, "The Dakota Mission," pp. 120-124; Pond, "The Dakotas or Sioux . . . in 1834," p. 340; William W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, I ( St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1956), pp. 199-200, 203. 15 Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in the Formative Years ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 50, 59-60, 252, 266-267; U.S. Statutes at Large, IV, 729-732. -54- was difficult for the claimants to obtain evidence that would stand legal scrutiny, since the Indians would rarely admit having destroyed any livestock. Consequently most such claims, at least in the early years, came to a dead end before ever reaching the Indian Office, which was extremely cautious about honoring those that did pass local inspection. 16 Another problem aggravated by the presence of the settlers was the introduction of whiskey among the Indians and among the soldiers at Fort Snelling. Neither Taliaferro nor Major John Bliss, commander at the fort from 1833 to 1836, really wanted to expel the settlers, though they wished to discourage further immigration and to have those who tried to sell liquor removed. Taliaferro recognized that there would be occasional conflicts when whites and Indians were in close proximity but took the view that those who behaved themselves might as well be allowed to stay. 17 Taliaferro's long tenure in office gave him a knowledge of his Indians and continuity enjoyed by few agents then or afterward. By the middle thirties he could look back over the years of his service and see what changes had taken place in the Indians over whom he exercised jurisdiction. What he saw did not please him. Despite his high hopes, the treaty of 1830 had not accomplished what it had been expected to, and the material and moral condition of the Santee Sioux was getting worse with each passing year. The answer, it seemed to the agent, lay in another treaty, by which the Indians could cede lands they no longer needed--specifically, those east of the Mississippi--and receive in return benefits that would set them on the road to civilization and security. Apart from the advantages such a cession would bring to the ____________________ 16 Statement of Jacob Falstrom, dated August 27, 1834; Remarks by Chiefs at Payment, July 2, 1835; Affidavit dated June 5, 1835, signed by Taliaferro, John Bliss, et al., NARS, RG 75, LR. Falstrom claimed to have lost an ox to the Indians. J. B. Faribault swore that the Indians of Little Crow's band had killed fifteen hogs, a horse, and a bull, that those of Shakopee's band had killed thirty-five hogs and pigs, two horses, and a bull, and that Black Dog's band had killed nineteen hogs and a horse. Some of these losses, having been incurred in 1831, were rendered uncollectable under the law of 1834, which set a three-year limitation on claims. The Indians admitted killing thirteen of Faribault's pigs but denied all the other charges. They also claimed that white men had killed two of their horses. The commission that examined the evidence concluded that, except for the thirteen pigs, none of the claims could be allowed in as much as it was impossible to prove any particular band of Indians guilty. 17 Bliss to Clark, April 30, 1835; Bliss to Lewis Cass, April 30, 1836; Taliaferro to Bliss, April 22, 1836, NARS, RG 75, LR. -55- Indians, it would satisfy the growing pressure for the opening up to exploitation of the timber resources in what is now western Wisconsin and east-central Minnesota. Taliaferro hoped that it would also reduce the chance of collisions between the Chippewas and the Mississippi bands of Sioux. 18 A detailed proposal for a treaty was submitted to Superintendent Clark in 1836, but it received a cool reception from both Clark and Commissioner Herring. Later in the year, however, the St. Peter's Agency was transferred to the jurisdiction of Governor Henry Dodge of Wisconsin Territory, who looked upon it with more enthusiasm, as did the new Indian Commissioner, Carey A. Harris. 19 The only opposition to such a treaty seemed to come from the fur traders, whose prosperity depended on keeping the status quo in Indian affairs. Taliaferro knew that they could be reconciled to a treaty if they stood to gain by it through a stipulation that part of the price paid by the government would go directly to them as payment for uncollected debts owed them by the Indians. But he also knew that such an arrangement with the traders would either increase the cost to the government or diminish the benefits received by the Indians, or both; and in any case he was opposed to any strategy that would be advantageous to the traders. The treaty that was finally hammered out and imposed on the Indians was partly a victory for Taliaferro, partly a victory for the traders. In the summer of 1837 the agent was instructed to arrange for a delegation of Sioux to go to Washington and there negotiate a peace settlement with a delegation of Sacs and Foxes. The twenty-six Sioux that he managed to round up seem to have been under the impression that this was the sole purpose of the trip, but when the Sacs and Foxes failed to appear, a treaty drawn up before they ever left the agency was signed, providing for the cession of the lands east of the Mississippi and the islands in that river. 20 Taliaferro and his party left the agency August 18, went down the Mississippi and up the Ohio by steamboat as far as Pittsburgh, thence to Philadelphia and on to Washington by a combination of canal, railroad, and stagecoach. They arrived in the capital September 15 and were taken to the Globe Hotel, where they stayed for the next twentyfour days. The twenty-six Indians were housed and fed for a total cost ____________________ 18 Taliaferro to Clark, May 15, 1836, ibid. 19 Clark to Herring, June 9, 1836; Taliaferro to Governor Henry Dodge, November 30, 1836; Dodge to Commissioner Carey A. Harris, April 18, 1837, ibid. 20 Taliaferro to Dodge, August 2 and 21, 1837, ibid.; "Auto-Biography of Maj. Lawrence Taliaferro," Minnesota Historical Collections, VI ( 1894), 217-219. -56- of $640; Taliaferro and the interpreters were charged slightly higher rates. Presumably an effort was made to impress the Indians with the splendor and might of the white man's civilization, but no details of their entertainment appear in Taliaferro's correspondence. Six had their portraits painted (any smaller number would lead to ill feeling, the agent said), and all were given medals, some of which were stolen on the way home. The return trip began October 9 and took about a month. As on the way east, many of the Indians were ill, owing to the change of water and diet, but all made it back safely, despite a boiler explosion on board the Rolla below Rock Island. 21 All manner of impediments had been placed in Taliaferro's way before, during, and after the trip. In the first place, many of the Sioux were reluctant to go because there had been an attack by the Sacs and Foxes just before their departure. Then the traders made a strenuous effort to prevent the delegation from going (after failing to write into the preliminary draft of the treaty all the provisions they wished to see in it) and interfered again at Prairie du Chien. Taliaferro was obliged to give the Indians presents to the amount of $1,200 before they would consent to move. Several traders accompanied the delegation, and others followed it. While in Washington the Indians were subjected to various pressures, of which perhaps the most pernicious was that of one Samuel C. Stambaugh, sutler at Fort Snelling and a sort of professional meddler, who succeeded in alienating some of the Indians from their agent, apparently in hopes of supplanting him. Taliaferro had previously objected to Stambaugh's being in on the negotiations, but he was unable to prevent his coming along. The interference of Stambaugh and the traders of course infuriated Taliaferro. In a note to James Maher, proprietor of the Globe Hotel, thanking him for the hospitality extended to the delegation, he apologized for his hasty departure, saying that he had "had many rascals to deal with." Stambaugh later had the effrontery to submit to the Indian Office a bill for his hotel expenses while in Washington. 22 ____________________ 21 Taliaferro to Captain Martin Scott, August 16, 1837; Taliaferro to Dodge, August 20 and 21, November 4, 1837; Taliaferro to Harris, September 5 and 8, n.d. [written in Washington], November 10, 1837; Bill for housing and feeding Indians, signed by James Maher (undated), NARS, RG 75, LR; "Auto-Biography of Maj. Lawrence Taliaferro," pp. 217-219. For a lively description of the typical treatment accorded Indian delegations visiting Washington, see Katharine C. Turner, Red Men Calling on the Great White Father (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1951). 22 Taliaferro to Dodge, August 21, 1837; Taliaferro to Harris, September 8 and n.d., 1837; Taliaferro to James Maher, October 11, 1837; Samuel C. Stambaugh to Secretary of War Joel R. Poinsett, February 23, 1838, NARS, RG 75, LR. Stambaugh -57-
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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:22:21 GMT -5
Considering its immense importance in the history of the Sioux, the treaty itself was brief. In return for the lands ceded, the United States promised to invest the sum of $300,000 and to pay to the chiefs and braves annually forever an income of not less than five per cent, "a portion of said interest, not exceeding one third, to be applied in such manner as the President may direct" (an "education fund" that was to cause trouble later), the rest to be paid in specie or in goods, as the Indians might specify. The relatives and friends of the tribe having not less than one quarter Indian blood were to receive a sum of $110,000, and the traders were to receive $90,000 in payment of the just debts of the tribe. Further, an annuity of $10,000 in goods was to be paid for twenty years and $8,250 spent annually during the same period for the purchase of medicines, agricultural implements and stock, and for the support of a physician, farmers, and blacksmiths, and for "other beneficial objects." In order to get the civilization program under way, upon ratification of the treaty $10,000 was to be spent for the immediate purchase of agricultural implements, cattle, and mechanics' tools. For twenty years the Indians were to receive provisions to the amount of $5,500 annually. Finally, they were to be paid $6,000 in goods upon their arrival at St. Louis on their way home. The twenty-one signers of the treaty, all Mdewakantons, included most of the chiefs and headmen whose names appeared on the treaty of 1830, with the exception of Little Crow and Wabasha, who had died, the latter in a smallpox epidemic that had carried off much of his band in 1836. 23 Once back on their home ground, the Indians, traders, and others settled down to await ratification of the treaty. One of the weaknesses of the constitutional requirement that treaties be ratified by the Senate was the long delay that always intervened between the signing of a ____________________ asked $275 for hotel expenses and $140 for other expenses on the way. The St. Peter's Agency file for 1837 includes two undated letters to the Secretary of War, purporting to be from the chiefs but in Stambaugh's handwriting. One of them bears the notation by Taliaferro: "This paper is in Col. Stambaugh's own hand writing. Will go to show to the Dept. my objections to him generally." 23 Kappler, Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, II, 493-494. Two treaties had been made in 1836 by which the eastern Sioux relinquished their shadowy claim to lands in southwestern Iowa and northwestern Missouri. On September 10 the "Lower Mdewakantons " (Wabasha's band) entered into such a treaty, for which they received $400, and on November 30 an identical treaty was made with the Wahpekutes, Sissetons, and "Upper Mdewakantons" (the other bands), who received $550 in goods. These treaties were of negligible importance to the bands concerned. See ibid., II, 466-467, 481-482. -58- treaty and the beginning of the benefits it granted. In this case nearly nine months elapsed between the signing and the formal proclamation, and of course there was an additional delay before the promised annuities could begin arriving at the agency. It was a period of much anxiety. At the agency (from which Taliaferro was, as usual, absent most of the winter) hunger and unrest created a tense situation. Upon his return, he found that the nervousness and suspicion of the Indians had increased and that they were venting their feelings in violence. The son of the trader Provençalle had been killed and Joseph R. Brown wounded by angry Indians, and as a result the American Fur Company had withdrawn its trade from the Sioux. Together with the failure of the winter hunt, this deprivation contributed to a mood of reckless desperation among the Indians. As the weeks passed without news of ratification, Taliaferro's letters to his superiors became increasingly shrill, almost hysterical in tone. "Give me something satisfactory by which the feelings of the Indians may be calmed--otherwise I shall not deem my residence here safe among them--and of consequence must . . . leave the Agency," he begged, adding by way of defense, "What mortal man could do--has been done, and will continue to be done to keep my miserable, and starving people quiet until we hear from you." News of the ratification must have come shortly after this, for Taliaferro's letters were calmer a month later. 24 The Indians still had a while to wait before receiving any tangible benefits from the treaty, and when these came they were far from satisfactory. The first annuities, distributed in October, created much ill feeling among the Indians, who claimed that the goods were both insufficient in quantity and inferior in quality. Only by promising that there would be an improvement the next year and that the annuities would arrive by June 1--a promise he was later to regret--was Taliaferro able to persuade the Indians to accept the goods. 25 Implementing the treaty of 1837 presented several challenges for the agent. He decided to avoid ill feeling among the bands by hiring a farmer for each village if he could find that many who would work for the low salaries specified in the Indian Intercourse Act of 1834. He met ____________________ 24 Scott Campbell to Taliaferro, February 13, 1838; Taliaferro to Harris, February 21, June 5, and June 28, 1838; Taliaferro to Dodge, July 31, 1838, NARS, RG 75, LR. Campbell, Taliaferro's mixed-blood interpreter, was left in charge of the agency during the winter. In the letter cited he asked if Taliaferro had any news of the treaty: "Here I learn nothing but the blabbering of indian traders & other Idiots," he wrote. 25 Taliaferro to Poinsett, August 27, 1839, ibid. -59- this problem by placing the missionaries, who received most of their support from their respective religious societies, on the payroll as farmers. Besides the stations previously mentioned, two Swiss missionaries, Samuel Denton and Daniel Gavin, were located at the Red Wing village; and a Methodist mission under Thomas W. Pope was working with little success at Kapozha. Denton, Samuel Pond, and Pope were hired in the fall of 1838, and the next year Stevens, formerly at Lake Harriet, was appointed farmer at Wabasha's village. The other three bands were supplied with men not connected with the mission stations. 26 Although blacksmiths were also hard to get at the salaries the Indian Office was willing to pay, Taliaferro filled this need late in 1838. 27 The accomplishments of the blacksmiths and farmers were not notable during the remainder of Taliaferro's term as agent, but they became fixtures on the local scene in the next decade and did something to prepare the Indians for the reservation period. So far as the Indians were concerned, the treaty of 1837 solved few of the problems it was intended to solve, and it created some new ones. Besides postponing the day when they would become self-supporting, the Indians' growing dependence on annuities made for a decidedly uncomfortable situation when they arrived late, as they usually did. Payment in money proved disadvantageous to the Indians because the traders simply marked up their prices and extracted that much more for their goods. The "education fund," as it was called, proved an especially sore spot. When the Indians did not receive the $5,000 that the treaty had specified was to be supplied as the President might direct, they complained at the first payment. 28 Later, either on their own initiative or at the suggestion of the traders, they concluded that this fund was being secretly paid to the missionaries and that if they could somehow sabotage the schools, the money would be paid to them. Yet another unfortunate effect of the treaty, which surely Taliaferro must have foreseen, was that the east bank of the Mississippi was soon lined with whiskey sellers. Though unable to enter the Indian country, they were in no way prevented from selling to any Indians who chose ____________________ 26 Taliaferro to Dodge, September 10, 1838; Dodge to Harris, October 16, 1838; Taliaferro to Governor Robert Lucas, May 24 and June 5, 1839, ibid.; 25th Cong., 3rd Sess., H. Doc. 103, pp. 14, 16, 18. Samuel Pond gave it as his opinion that the position of farmer was regarded as a sinecure and that most of the men so employed hired out their plowing and did little work themselves. See Folwell, History of Minnesota, I, 197 n. 27 Taliaferro to Dodge, September 10, 1838, NARS, RG 75, LR. 28 Remarks of chiefs at annuity payment, October 17, 1838, ibid. -60- to cross the river into their old hunting grounds. This problem became increasingly serious as the hamlet of St. Paul came into being in the forties, for it consisted chiefly of groggeries in its early years. All these unanticipated results of the treaty made Taliaferro's position a veritable hornet's nest during his last year at the St. Peter's Agency. As if these troubles were not enough, the continuing warfare between the Sioux and the Chippewas reached a crescendo in 1839. There had been minor clashes in 1835 and 1836 and a bigger one in April, 1838, when a party of Chippewas appeared in the Sioux country, were hospitably entertained by a small hunting party, and then murdered nearly all of their hosts. An unsuccessful attempt at retaliation was made a few months later, but the real explosion came in the summer of 1839, when a close relative of Cloud Man was killed and the Sioux took terrible revenge on several bands of Chippewas who had come to Fort Snelling in the mistaken belief that their annuities would be paid there. Following their enemies toward their homes, the Kapozha and Minnesota River Mdewakantons fell upon them and killed nearly a hundred, while losing twenty-three of their own men. Folwell is probably right in saying that this outbreak "much weakened Major Taliaferro's confidence in his ability to control his red children by fine words and fair treatment." 29 He was having even more serious troubles that summer. Although five steamboats had come up the river by June 3, the annuities, which he had promised the Indians would be there by June 1, had not arrived. By July 12 they had still not arrived, nor had the funds to pay the farmers and other employees. Shortly afterward part of the goods and provisions came, but there was still no money to pay the employees, and the blacksmith shops were idle for want of materials. Once more Taliaferro began to bombard the Indian Office with anxious appeals, climaxing the barrage with a letter of resignation. His officially stated reason was poor health, dating back to his service on the Niagara frontier in 1814, but in a letter to Secretary of War Joel R. Poinsett a few weeks later he made it clear that he had other reasons. Deprived of the means of holding the Indians' faith in him and threatened with assassination, he saw no course but to resign. 30 ____________________ 29 Thomas S. Williamson to Taliaferro, April 28, 1838, ibid.; Samuel W. Pond, "Indian Warfare in Minnesota," Minnesota Historical Collections, III ( 1870- 1880), 131 - 133. This incident is given extended treatment in Folwell, History of Minnesota, I, 154 - 158. Folwell account is based on the Taliaferro Journal, among other sources, and differs in some details from Pond. 30 Taliaferro to Lucas, June 3 and July 12, 1839; Taliaferro to Commissioner THartley Crawford. -61-
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Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:23:09 GMT -5
Although Taliaferro's letter of resignation was so phrased as to leave the door open for its rejection (he had been given another four-year appointment in April), his remarks in a letter written after he had left the agency suggest that he was only too happy to be back at his home in Bedford, Pennsylvania. He wrote Commissioner T. Hartley Crawford that he was "most happy to be relieved from a Post, and Country, which must from the nature, and designs of a certain class of Mongrels . . . produce ere long a North Western Indian War." 31 Thus, on a note of savage bitterness, ended Lawrence Taliaferro's twenty years of service to the Santee Sioux. Taliaferro had reason to be bitter. For nearly twenty years he had exerted himself to make the Sioux an agricultural people, but not until the last year of his service as agent did he have the funds to begin the project on a large scale, and then he was too harried to make adequate use of the opportunity. Ironically, it was his successors who received credit for whatever small success was finally achieved in the endeavors for which he had prepared the ground. His immediate successor, Amos J. Bruce, was a less aggressive man, and perhaps as a consequence his eight years as agent were more tranquil than Taliaferro's last two. He got on well with Taliaferro's old enemies, the traders--perhaps too well. There was less trouble with the Chippewas in the forties, and Bruce had more weapons at his disposal in dealing with such conflicts as there were. He was also aided by somewhat greater punctuality in the delivery of annuity provisions, although the money annuities and sometimes the funds for running the agency continued to arrive late. Bruce's chief task was to persuade the Sioux to become farmers in the fashion of frontier whites so that they would no longer have to depend so heavily on the chase. The Indians' cultural crisis was primarily economic, as Taliaferro had recognized. Although the missionaries' preoccupation with saving souls led them unwittingly to introduce new sources of conflict, their efforts to induce the Indians to farm made them useful instruments in the agent's civilization scheme. Less can be said of the other tools he had to work with. Then as later, the Indian Bureau had to carry out its assigned task with imperfect materials. ____________________ Hartley Crawford, July 15, 1839; Taliaferro to Poinsett, July 16 and August 27, 1839, NARS, RG 75, LR. A postscript to his letter of resignation says: "I have the sad consolation of leaving after twenty seven years the public service as poor as when I first entered --the only evidence of my integrity. Will Schoolcraft, and some one or two others believe this? from the oldest agent in the Dept." 31 Taliaferro to Crawford, December 12, 1839, ibid. -62- Bruce himself was a political appointee, and the people who worked for him were by and large animated by no burning zeal to help the Indians. Many of the government farmers, especially, were time-servers, some utterly incompetent. 32 Even had these men been better qualified for their jobs, they would have been up against formidable obstacles. The semisedentary Mdewakantons practiced what was essentially a hoe culture, and their opposition to the use of the plow was not merely laziness but an actual religious objection, based on the notion that plowing would injure their fields. Besides, working in the fields was women's work, scorned by men who had been trained to be hunters and warriors. Despite occasional breakthroughs, such as when Cloud Man or the Sisseton chief Mazasha put their hands to the plow, practically all the farming was left to the women or the white employees. And when work oxen were issued to the Indians, they were as likely as not to be killed for food. 33 Even if the Indians did show some industry, there was always a chance that a flood or drought would wipe out their crops. Flood damage was restricted to the villages on the lower Minnesota and occurred only infrequently. For the Indians living near the headwaters of that river, however, drought came often enough to cause them real hardship. The people living at Lac qui Parle, Lake Traverse, and Big Stone Lake, who were not parties to the treaty of 1837 and whose annuities under the earlier treaty expired in 1840, were repeatedly described as destitute and starving. 34 ____________________ 32 Amos J. Bruce to Representative John Miller, February 19, 1840; Bruce to Crawford, September 15, 1842, ibid. Stevens, the erstwhile missionary who had been appointed farmer at Wabasha's village, failed even to maintain a residence there but instead built himself a house some eight or ten miles away, on the Wisconsin side of the river. Bruce discharged him. There was a high rate of turnover among the government farmers, even under Bruce's mild regime, and his successor fired the entire lot. 33 Bruce to Lucas, November 11, 1840; Robert Hopkins and Alexander Huggins to Superintendent Thomas H. Harvey, September 29, 1848, ibid. 34 Governor John Chambers to Crawford, November 22, 1842; Bruce to Crawford, December 13, 1842; Crawford to Secretary of War John C. Spencer, October 7, 1842; Joseph R. Brown to Bruce, September 1, 1846; Bruce to Governor James Clarke, September 12, 1846; Clarke to Commissioner William Medill, October 5, 1846, ibid. Bruce reported in the spring of 1843 that the traders, missionaries, and the Fort Snelling garrison had rendered assistance to the destitute Indians. The squaws and children were admitted to the fort briefly every day to collect table scraps. Sibley had sent sixty bushels of corn to the band at the Little Rapids, along with some pork furnished by the officers at the fort. Bruce hoped "to keep life in most of them" until the ducks and geese arrived. See Bruce to Chambers, April 3, 1843, ibid. It is noteworthy that by this time the Sissetons and Wahpetons had to some extent adopted agriculture. -63- Because of all these hindrances, progress in making farmers out of the Sioux was extremely slow. In his last annual report Taliaferro spoke of the government's efforts in their behalf and provided statistics to show that some progress was being made. Yet he was not optimistic about the prospects. The Indians' habits of indolence and their "total disregard and want of knowledge of the value and uses of time and property" seemed to militate against any rapid progress toward selfsufficiency. 35 Seven years later Bruce, perhaps with Taliaferro's report before him, mentioned the same characteristics, which in his eyes almost forbade "any hope of their improvement, either in morals or intellect." Three years later Philander Prescott, now head farmer for the several bands, reported little progress, except among the Red Wing band, which appeared more willing than the others to adopt the customs of white men. The total acreage under cultivation was still small, and the plowing was still being done almost entirely by the government farmers. 36 In comparison with the massive revolution that the Indian Office and its agents had hoped to effect, the farming done by the Sioux prior to the reservation period of 1853-1862 was negligible. This short-range view led the agent in 1848 to complain despairingly that the $4,200 a year that the farming enterprise had been costing was more than it would have cost the government to buy as much corn as the Indians raised. 37 If there had been anyone around who realized how slow and halting any culture change necessarily is, he might have felt that quite a bit had been accomplished in the decade of the 1840's. At the same time that the agent and his employees were trying to transform the Sioux into farmers, the missionaries were teaching them to read and write. The missionary activities begun in the middle thirties expanded greatly in the next decade. Besides the remote Lac qui Parle station, which went on steadily with its work in the face of mounting difficulties, new missions were started and old ones moved to new sites. After the savage outbreak of war between the Sioux and the Chippewas in 1839, the Lake Calhoun village was abandoned out of fear of retaliation, and the band moved to a more protected site on the Minnesota River. In 1843 the Ponds rejoined Cloud Man's people there, and a few years later Samuel Pond accepted an invitation to open ____________________ 35 26th Cong., 1st Sess., S. Doc. 126, p. 494. 36 29th Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 4, p. 245; 31st Cong., 1st Sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, pp. 1054-1055. 37 30th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Doc. 1, pp. 474-475. -64- a school at Shakopee's village, now on the right bank of the Minnesota. 38 A newstation was opened in 1843 by Riggs and others at Traverse des Sioux, where Mazasha's small Sisseton band lived. Some of these people were hostile to the missionaries and persecuted them, while others were friendly enough, if incurably mendicant, and made occasional gestures in the direction of farming. The Methodist mission struggled along for a time but was finally abandoned in 1842. The Swiss mission at Red Wing was given up in 1846 and replaced two years later by an American Board mission, which sent John F. Aiton there. Aiton and Joseph W. Hancock, who arrived the following year, attempted to revive the school conducted earlier by Gavin and Denton. Although the chief, Wacouta, is uniformly described as a man of high character, friendly and co-operative toward the whites, the Indians' indifference to education and their habit of being away hunting a large part of the year made this school no more of a success than the others. 39 Ironically, the biggest obstacle to the success of these mission schools was the education fund provided by the treaty of 1837. Although the Indian Office sent the money along each year with the rest of the annuities, no instructions for its disbursement ever accompanied it. Each year Bruce would ask for instructions, and then, receiving none, he would deposit the money in the Bank of Missouri at St. Louis. The only part of the fund he ever used was the sum of $500 given to the Methodist mission in 1841. 40 The Indians, who were acquiring a certain degree of sophistication where money matters were concerned, were understandably puzzled by the nonappearance of this portion of the annuity they were supposed to receive under the terms of the treaty. They apparently got wind of the $500 turned over to the Methodist mission and concluded that the rest of it was going to the other missionaries. Obviously, the way to get what was coming to them was to sabotage the schools and force them to close. ____________________ 38 Riggs, "Protestant Missions in the Northwest," p. 131; "The Dakota Mission," pp. 120, 123. 39 Riggs, "The Dakota Mission," p. 121; Riggs, Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux ( Boston: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 1880), p. 100 ; 28th Cong., 1st Sess., S. Doc. 1, pp. 354-355; Thomas S. Williamson to Harvey, August 15, 1848, NARS, RG 75, LR; 31st Cong., 1st Sess., S. Ex. Doc. 1, p. 1064; [ Joseph W. Hancock], Goodhue County, Minnessota, Past and Present ( Red Wing: Red Wing Printing Co., 1893), p. 50. Hancock stayed at Red Wing after the Indians left and became a prominent citizen and the holder of several county offices. 40 Bruce to Chambers, May 24, 1841; Bruce to Crawford, August 15, September 1, and October 31, 1841, and July 5, 1843, NARS, RG 75, LR. -65- When the Ponds reopened their school at Oak Grove, Cloud Man's new village, and the Traverse des Sioux station was started, they and the older schools suffered from the opposition of many of the Indians, including the influential chiefs. The trouble seems to have started in 1843, appearing first in the villages nearest Prairie du Chien and gradually moving up the Mississippi and the Minnesota, so that by the end of the summer it had reached even the remote Lac qui Parle post, whose Indians had no direct interest in the education fund. Here children were ordered to stay out of school, and those who defied the order had their clothes cut to shreds by members of the soldiers' lodge. The missionaries' cattle were killed and their lives threatened. So serious did the harassment become that when Bruce invited him, in 1846, to start a school at Kapozha, Williamson eagerly embraced the opportunity to leave Lac qui Parle. 41 Williamson tended, like his fellows, to interpret their difficulties in spiritual terms. "God seems to have withdrawn his spirit and it is hard to interest the people in learning anything good," he complained, recalling that a few years earlier "numbers here [at Lac qui Parle] were inquiring what they must do to be saved." 42 Yet he understood very clearly the practical reasons for the difficulties he and his fellow missionaries were experiencing and had concrete proposals for remedying the situation. Like most of those who interested themselves in Indian education during the nineteenth century, he believed that the children should be separated from their parents as early as possible. By way of apology for the poor attendance at the Kapozha school, he insisted that an Indian village was no place to teach children to work or to speak English, "in sight of their relatives who think it disgraceful to do either and are spending most of their time in gaming ball playing swimming and other amusements." To overcome such evil influences, he proposed a manual labor boarding school, to be supported jointly by the government and the American Board. 43 But before he could impress his ideas on the policymakers in Washington, the Sioux had been removed from Kapozha and their other traditional villages. The decade of the forties, like the previous one, was largely a period ____________________ 41 28th Gong., 1st Sess., S. Doc. 1, pp. 354-355, 377-378; 29th Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 4, p. 313; Williamson to Bruce, June 30 and August 12, 1846, NARS, RG 75, LR. 42 Williamson to Bruce, June 30, 1846, NARS, RG 75, LR. 43 Williamson to Medill, October 19, 1847; Williamson to Harvey, August 15, 1848; Williamson to Commissioner Orlando Brown, February 26, 1850, ibid. -66- of failure and frustration for the missions. They recorded a few conversions, taught a few people to read and write, and possibly created in the minds of the Indians a more favorable image of the white man than that produced by association with the traders, soldiers, and government officials. But in terms of their primary purpose they accomplished little. Samuel Pond was reporting objective fact when he wrote, many years later, "Before the outbreak of 1862 I saw very few Dakotas who seemed to give evidence of piety. A few at Oak Grove, a few at Lac Qui Parle, and that was all." 44 With the advantage of hindsight, the missionaries were later to speak of this as a period of sowing, the fruits of which were to appear later. Perhaps they were right, but at the end of the forties no fruition was in evidence. Besides the mismanagement of the education fund and the cultural inertia that led the Indians to reject the efforts to make farmers of them, there were other obstacles to the work of the agents and missionaries, one of which was the failure of the government to fulfill its promises. When Governor James D. Doty of Wisconsin territory was negotiating with the Sioux for the cession of their lands in 1841, he listened sympathetically to their complaints of deficiencies in the annuity payments made up to that time. The Indians told Doty that they had no doubt that the Great Father had started their things on the way to them, "but after they leave Washington the road is very long and some of the boxes get holes in them . . . and their dollars and goods drop out." 45 When the annuity goods and provisions did arrive, they often were not what the Indians wanted or what the agent had requested. Bruce always sent in specific requisitions for articles the Indians could use, but the contractors had their own notions of what they would furnish, and the anuity goods sometimes contained screw augers, knives and forks, pewter teaspoons, and other items for which the Indians had little use and less desire. 46 ____________________ 44 Samuel W. Pond Jr., Two Volunteer Missionaries Among the Dakotas ( Boston and Chicago: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society, 1893), p. 219 ; S. W. Pond Narrative, I, 82 (cited by Folwell, History of Minnesota, I, 212). 45 James D. Doty to President John Tyler, August 13, 1841, NARS, RG 75, LR. 46 Bruce to Lucas, October 6, 1840; Bruce to Chambers, September 15, 1842, ibid. Bruce's first requisition included three hundred guns, with appropriate quantities of lead, powder, powder horns, flints, and the like; four thousand pounds of tobacco; fifty pounds of thread; 330 blankets of various colors and sizes; cloth handkerchiefs; yarn; a hundred dozen scalping knives (while he tried to keep the Indians at peace); fifty looking glasses; combs; tin pans; kettles; squaw axes; ribbon; vermilion; scissors; and other items to the amount of $10,000 as well as $700 worth of agricultural im0plements and work oxen, harnesses, etc. -67-
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