|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:57:57 GMT -5
· Title: History of the Santee Sioux: United States Indian Policy on Trial · Publisher: University of Nebraska Press · Publication Date: 1993 · Page No: * as Bishop Whipple and General Sibley, noticed their plight, however, and continued their long campaign to right the wrongs the Indians had suffered. The Indians had new friends, too, such as Representative Horace B. Strait of Shakopee, who in 1884 engineered through Congress an appropriation for their benefit. 3 The Indian appropriations act for 1885, passed July 4, 1884, contained a short paragraph under the section headed "Sioux of Different Tribes, Including Santee Sioux of Nebraska," providing the sum of $10,000 for "the purchase of stock for the Medewakanton band of Sioux Indians, in the State of Minnesota, and other articles necessary for their civilization and education, and to enable them to become selfsupporting. . . ." An amendment approved March 3, 1885, provided that the Secretary of the Interior might disburse the money "for agricultural implements, lands, or cash," as in his judgment might seem best, and that $720 should be expended to pay a practical farmer to teach the Indians agriculture. The appropriation was intended to benefit only those Sioux who had been uniformly friendly to the whites during the uprising and had therefore found themselves unwelcome with the rest of the tribe. This restriction was eventually found unworkable, but for a time at least lip service was paid to it. 4 When this innocuous piece of legislation was passed by Congress, there was no intention to provide reservations for the Minnesota Mdewakantons or to return them to a wardship status, for that was precisely what they had just left. Yet when money is appropriated, someone must be appointed to disburse it, and this implies a government agent. Once an agent is appointed, he is soon making many of the Indians' decisions. If land is to be purchased and the Indians are at a disadvantage in buying it from white owners, a government agent is needed to make the purchases. And if the Indians prove themselves unable to hold onto the land, it must be placed in a restricted status, under government trusteeship. Hence, although the present-day Minnesota Sioux are technically correct in saying that their people ____________________ 3 Surprisingly few facts have been discovered concerning the preliminaries that must have led to this appropriation. The Shakopee Argus, July 24, 1884, credits Strait with the insertion of the item in the Indian appropriations act. 4 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXIII, 87, 375; Robert B. Henton to Commissioner John H. Oberly, December 31, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR. The directive from the Indian Office specified that the appropriations were intended "for the benefit of those of the Mdewakanton Band, who remained faithful to the whites during the outbreak of 1862-3, and thereby incurred the enmity of other Indians, and for the descendants of those friendly Indians."
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:58:35 GMT -5
-275- were pioneers in the same sense as the white squatters of an earlier period, it is none the less equally true that their settlements soon became Indian reservations, except for fee patented land, and have remained so. Preparatory to distributing the appropriation, the Indian Bureau designated Walter S. McLeod, mixed-blood son of the trader Martin McLeod, to conduct a census of the Indians and determine their most pressing needs. In order to prevent a rush into Minnesota by Indians from Dakota and Nebraska wishing to share in the largess, the act was made applicable only to those who were residents of the state on October 1, 1883. 5 With the assistance of Good Thunder, Phillip Chaska of Mendota, and John C. Wakeman of Grey Cloud Island, McLeod prepared a census roll containing the information on the location and numbers of Sioux in Minnesota given earlier in this chapter. According to McLeod and the Reverend William C. Pope, Episcopal rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in St. Paul, they were most in need of land and houses; some already in possession of farms wanted teams, cows, harness, stoves, or wagons. They also needed clothing for their children who were attending white schools. McLeod said they objected to being paid like annuity Indians and suggested that half the money be given them in cash to use as they saw fit. Bishop Whipple was not so confident of their ability to handle money wisely; he thought they should be paid a specified sum monthly if the money was to be used for rations. 6 Before the payment was made, there was disagreement over whether mixed-bloods should share. Commissioner Hiram Price was prepared to include them in the payment, but McLeod argued that their inclusion would make each person's share so small that it would scarcely buy a spelling book. Besides, it was his understanding that the appropriation had not been intended to apply to mixed-bloods, but only to full-bloods who desired to "assimilate with the population generally in dress, habits, custom and association in society. . . ." 7 McLeod's wishes were allowed to prevail this time, but the problem remained to ____________________ 5 Horace B. Strait to Hiram Price, July 19, 1884; Secretary of Interior William Teller to Price, February 26, 1885; Walter S. McLeod to Price, August 21, 1884; Strait to Price, March 21, 1885, NARS, RG 75, LR. 6 McLeod to Price, August 21, 1884; Henry B. Whipple to Strait, August 28, 1884; William C. Pope to Price, December 9, 1884, accompanying list of "Wants of Minnesota Dacotahs," NARS, RG 75, LR. 7 Strait to Price, September 5, 1884; McLeod to Price, September 15, 1884, NARS, RG 75, LR. -276- vex disbursing agents in the future, for the great majority of the Sioux in Minnesota were of mixed blood, and there was no reliable way to discriminate among people with varying degrees of Indian ancestry. The payment, consisting of cash and articles deemed of use to the Indians, was made in April, 1885, at Shakopee, by W. H. Robb, a bonded employee of the Indian Bureau appointed for the purpose. As the first payment to the Mdewakanton Sioux since 1861, it was a memorable occasion. Some of the descendants of those who participated still retain photographs taken then, showing the Indians in full tribal regalia. The Scott County Argus reported on March 19 that Shakopee had been full of Indians the previous Thursday and Friday. "They kept coming from every direction until about four hundred aboriginees were among us," the paper said. This gathering was for the purpose of enrolling; the actual payment came a few weeks later, after the rolls had been carefully examined to see that no unauthorized persons shared in the distribution. Each applicant was subjected to a rigid examination in the presence of the rest of his band. The payment was completed by April 15, and all the Indians dispersed to their homes. 8 Later in the year a detailed statement of how the cash portion of the payment had been spent was submitted to the Indian Office, signed by Wakeman, Chaska, and Charles Lawrence and endorsed by Sibley and Reverend Pope. Most of it was used to buy land or to make further payments on land already purchased. A group of Wabasha citizens wrote the commissioner that the Indians there had spent their share wisely and that another like appropriation would be useful in helping them to be self-sufficient. 9 There were, of course, some dissident voices. The Reverend Samuel D. Hinman, who had joined the Birch Coulee colony, wrote the next year that after the payment a dance had been held at Mendota at which the old heathen practice of sacrifice was revived-only now they sacrificed "one keg of beer or two." For weeks thereafter it was "one grand carouse," he wrote. The Indians drank to the new President, Grover Cleveland, "a democrat, the party which treated with us of old and gave us money to buy whiskey and beer." 10 Another ____________________ 10 Samuel D. Hinman to Whipple, September 3, 1886, ibid. If Hinman's rendition of the toast to Cleveland is accurate, it is not clear what incident the Indians were referring to. The treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota in 1851 and the Doty 8 Scott County Argus (Shakopee), March 19, 1885; Strait to Price, March 21, 1885; W. H. Robb to Atkins, April 15 and 16, 1885, NARS, RG 75, LR. 9 John Wakeman, Phillip Chaska, and Charles Lawrence to Atkins, November 27, 1885; Citizens of Wabasha to Atkins, October 3, 1885, NARS, RG 75, LR. -277- kind of protest came from the Indians living at Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, who had been excluded from the payment on the ground that they were not residents of Minnesota. Five days after the business at Shakopee was over, a white resident of Maiden Rock wrote the commissioner on behalf of John and Jacob Walker, who had been refused payment, and a year later Felix Rock wrote in behalf of "those Indians in and about Red Wing and those who did not get their share of the appropriation in 1884." If there was to be another $10,000, he thought they should get an extra allowance. 11 Since the Walkers, who had left Santee in the seventies, later lived at Prairie Island, it seems likely that they moved there about this time in order to qualify for the next payment. The rumor of a second appropriation was well founded, for on May 15, 1886, Congress authorized another $10,000 for the Minnesota Mdewakantons. The need for another distribution of money was increased by the presence of a growing number of Sioux in Minnesota. Good Thunder had been making satisfactory progress in paying for his farm and raised enough food for his own needs in 1885, but the influx of newcomers was "eating him up," as Special Agent Benjamin W. Thompson wrote at the end of the year. By this time there was an encampment of Flandreau people a mile or two east of Good Thunder's farm, and others were scattered around in the woods near the river. Some Sissetons from the Brown Earth settlement had been so excited by the promises of two or three agitators that they had left their farms, on which there was a five-year restriction, and made pretended sales for a yoke of cattle, in hopes of becoming Mdewakantons and sharing in the benefits now coming to the Minnesota Sioux. 12 The language of the 1886 appropriation bill was identical with that of the earlier one, as amended, giving considerable latitude to the Secretary of the Interior in the expenditure of the money. Believing that the Indians' most immediate need was for farms, Bishop Whipple recommended that the greater part of the fund be spent to purchase ____________________ treaties in 1841 (at all of which liquor was consumed) were negotiated under Whig administrations. The 1837 and 1858 treaties were made with small delegations brought to Washington, and it is unlikely that much drinking went on then. The beneficiaries of the 1885 payment could have had but dim recollections of the Prairie du Chien treaties of 1825 and 1830. 11 A. Cook to Atkins, April 21, 1885; Felix Rock to Atkins, April 26, 1886, ibid. Rock (or Rocque), a promising young mixed-blood, died at Prairie Island in 1888, at the age of 29. 12 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXIV, 39; Benjamin Thompson to Atkins, December 31, 1885, and January 2, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR. -
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 1:59:47 GMT -5
278- land in the Birch Coulee area. Although he recommended Strait as a good man to negotiate for it, the Indian Office decided to employ McLeod, already serving as farmer and general handyman. He was formally commissioned as farmer and special disbursing agent on October 16, 1886, his earlier commission having expired the previous month. 13 McLeod recommended that all purchases be made at Birch Coulee, Shakopee, and Prairie Island, the last site to be used for all the Indians not residing at the other two or willing to move there. Beginning in April, 1887, he bought seven small tracts, aggregating nearly 330 acres, plus a ten-acre plot at Hastings. The largest block, 147 acres, was bought at Birch Coulee, part of it from Charles Lawrence, who was having difficulty paying for the land he had bought earlier. Two adjacent tracts totaling 98 acres were purchased in Scott County, not far from the village of Prior Lake. Nearly half of that area belonged to John Bluestone, on whose land many of the Shakopee group were living. Nearly 85 acres were purchased on Prairie Island in Goodhue County. Altogether, these purchases accounted for more than $4,100 of the appropriation. McLeod also spent $549.17 in paying off mortgages on the land belonging to Good Thunder and Charles Lawrence. 14 Together with some 447 acres previously owned by the Indians, these purchases gave the Minnesota Mdewakantons a small but not insignificant land base, enough for them to practice a subsistence agriculture of sorts. The land was divided into small tracts ranging from three to fifteen acres and deeded to individual Indians in fee simple, without restrictions. At Prairie Island, for example, the principal eighty-acre unit was divided into eleven narrow strips a half-mile in length and ranging from six to nine rods wide. The next step was to provide houses for the Indians. Six had been built on Prairie Island by the next December, apparently strung out along one end of the land purchase, and it was understood then that six more would be built. Most of the fourteen families living there at that time occupied tipis. Similar conditions existed at the other colonies, although McLeod had reported in August, 1886, that there were then thirty-seven frame and four log houses among the Minnesota Sioux. 15 _____ 13 Whipple to Atkins, July 5, 1886; McLeod to Atkins, September 2, 1886; Commission dated October 16, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR. 14 McLeod to Atkins, September 2, 1886, and November 28, 1887, ibid.; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, pp. 111, 178-179. 15 McLeod to Atkins, August 11, 1886; Hastings H. Hart to Atkins, December 10, 1887, NARS, RG 75, LR; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, pp. 178-179. -279- Bishop Whipple's intention was to establish a single Indian community at Birch Coulee, under the auspices of the Episcopal Church, and he regretted the purchases made at other points. Late in 1887 he wrote Representative John L. Macdonald, Strait's successor, reviewing the accomplishments of the two earlier appropriations and requesting another, of $20,000, of which $1,000 should be earmarked for a school, complete with furniture, books, and other equipment. The earlier appropriations had largely failed, he said, because much of the land had been bought in places that were unsuitable for farming. With the larger sum now proposed, used exclusively to build up the Birch Coulee settlement, he believed it would be possible to "remove all of these scattered Sioux and have a model Christian village." 16 As might be expected, Hinman strongly endorsed this view. He wrote his bishop that the Indians at Faribault, Mendota, and Birch Coulee were doing reasonably well but that the others were living like vagabonds, "drinking and eating what their women earn--by work, or begging or bylines of shame." The Prairie Island group was especially distasteful to him. He accused them of being the chief offenders in putting on the old heathen dances, "for purposes of gain, at the time of the Winter Carnival and Ice Palace at St. Paul." The affair lasted only ten days, but the participants spent at least three months preparing for it and much longer recovering afterward. He charged that they spent thirty dollars per person for "finery and dissipation" and then begged the rest of the year. He added that they were not wanted at Birch Coulee and should be deprived of any share in the benefits enjoyed by their more industrious brethren. 17 The Whipple-Hinman view carried considerable weight, but it was partially offset by other friends of the Sioux, such as Francis Talbot of Wabasha, who argued that the Indians were attached to their old homes and should not be forced to move to Birch Coulee. 18 The next legislation in behalf of the Minnesota Mdewakantons, which became law on June 29, 1888, reflected Whipple's wishes in large part, although it did not require the beneficiaries to join the Birch Coulee colony. Out of the $2,000 appropriated, $1,000 was to go, as he had requested, to build a school "at the most suitable location." The expenditure of the rest was again to be at the discretion of the Secretary ______ 16 50th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 228, pp. 2-3. 17 Hinman to Whipple, September 3 and December 31, 1886, and October 23, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR. 18 Francis Talbot to Representative Thomas Wilson, April 5, 1888, ibid. Talbot's view was concurred in by the Reverend J. C. Birch, rector of Grace Episcopal church in Wabasha, and other citizens, whose supporting statements were submitted, along with Talbot's letter, to Commissioner Atkins on April 19, 1888. -280- of the Interior. Perhaps the most important new provision contained in this bill was that setting May 20, 1886, rather than October 1, 1883, as the date by which all who were entitled to benefit must have been living in Minnesota; it was also specified that they must have severed their tribal relations. 19 McLeod's commission expired in the fall of 1888, and he was replaced by Robert B. Henton, a long-time acquaintance of the Minnesota Sioux, strongly recommended by Bishop Whipple, who had been lukewarm about McLeod. Henton had lived near the old agency before the uprising--one of his sons had been born on the third day of the outbreak--and he had later become a businessman in Morton and owner of most of the townsite. Soon after his appointment he made a thorough investigation of conditions among the Indians under his charge and submitted some recommendations to the Indian Office. He found that important changes in their population distribution had taken place since the census of 1883. The Birch Coulee settlement was now the largest, with eighty-six people; that near Prior Lake was second, with sixty-two. These groups and the three families at Hastings and the two at Bloomington he considered to be well situated and permanent, even though they all needed more land. The few at Faribault were about to move to Birch Coulee. 20 The rest were badly situated, and Henton thought they would have to be removed. Mendota and Grey Cloud Island, each of which now had only eleven Indian residents, were mere squatters' camps and should not be allowed to continue, since land could not be bought there except at prices too high for the limited appropriation. The Wabasha location, where seven families now lived, was unsuitable for farming; most of the people lived in town, anyway. Prairie Island, now the third largest colony, with forty-six inhabitants, was reserved for Henton's severest condemnation. Though a good location on the ground of its seclusion, it was otherwise unfortunate, for it had no hay or timber, and the land was unsuitable for farming. Local whites encouraged the Indians to stay in the hope of selling land to them, and the county poor fund aided them "liberally" to the extent of one to three dollars doled out weekly per family. "It seems necessary that these should be removed ______ 19 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXV, 228-229. 20 Secretary of Interior William F. Vilas to Oberly, November 19, 1888; Henton to Oberly, December 31, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR; Morton Enterprise, November 4, 1898. After McLeod's appointment late in 1886, Hinman wrote Whipple: "He has entirely adopted our views, and we wish to withdraw all opposition to him." Hinman described him as a Democrat, not a Christian but not an opponent of Christianity. See Hinman to Whipple, December 31, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR. -281- elsewhere," he wrote. "They must select a new location or stop asking aid from the County poor fund." Elsewhere the Indians were poor but self-reliant; those at Prairie Island seemed to be "complaisant beggars" who brought themselves into continual disrepute. Though it would be impossible to sell the land except at a loss, he suggested inducing as many as possible to leave and dividing their holdings among those who stayed. No more purchases should be made there. 21 Despite Henton's convictions, supported by Bishop Whipple, when he came to making more land purchases, he was obliged to include not only the despised Prairie Island site but also Wabasha, where no land had previously been bought. His position and that of Bishop Whipple were further undercut by a proviso in the appropriations act of March 2, 1889, which specified that "as far as practicable lands for said Indians shall be purchased in such locality as each Indian desires, and none of said Indians shall be required to remove from where he now resides and to any locality or land against his will." About all the comfort the Birch Coulee advocates could take from this bill was that it earmarked $1,000 more for the completion of the school. Another $8,000 was appropriated on August 19, 1890, with the specification that $2,000 of it was to be expended for the Prairie Island settlement--the only time any of the Sioux colonies were mentioned by name in such a bill. This provision virtually ended Bishop Whipple's dream of concentrating all the scattered. Sioux at Birch Coulee. 22 The actual purchase of land under these appropriations began in April, 1889, when slightly over 650 acres were bought adjoining the earlier purchases in the Birch Coulee vicinity. The next month Henton bought 40 acres at Hastings for five families and 120 acres at Prairie Island. He would have preferred removing the eleven families at the latter site, but, as he wrote, "These Indians are of the Red Wing or Wacoute band and this is their old home, therefore though the soil is poor they are loth to leave it and we have no means of compelling their removal." There was a school adjacent to the settlement there, and the Indians went to church in Red Wing. Fortunately, the white neighbor from whom the land was bought was a "young, industrious Swede with a family, who is their friend and aids them in every way by advise and example." 23 Under the provisions of the appropriations made in 1889 and 1890, Henton also bought 110.24 acres of Mississippi River bottom- _______ 21 Henton to Oberly, December 31, 1888, NARS, RG 75, LR. 22 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXV, 992-993; XXVI, 349. 23 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, pp. 110-111; Henton to Oberly, April 8 and 9, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR. This "young Swede." A. A. Johnson, -282- land near Wabasha, of no value as farm land but of use as camping grounds to the Indians, who obtained most of their living from the river. He added to the previous holdings in Scott County by purchasing nearly 170 acres near Prior Lake and rounded out the tract at Birch Coulee by another 99 acres, 9 of which were bought from Samuel Taopi for use as a site for the new school. 24 Henton made one important innovation in these land purchases. Before he began buying up lands, he discovered that of the tracts previously bought and deeded directly to the Indians, one had been sold, two mortgaged, and several denuded of timber. He thought that future purchases should be retained by the government, at least until it could be determined which Indians were reliable. 25 His policy was followed in the later purchases, with the result that all of this land, except for the tracts at Wabasha and Hastings, is still in Indian possession, whereas most of the earlier purchases had slipped out of the Indians' hands by 1900. The few that they still clung to by the early 1930's were so encumbered with mortgages and unpaid taxes that the government at that time tried to buy up as many as possible for incorporation into the tracts still held in federal ownership. Although Henton spent $16,581.42 for land, and $2,000 went to complete and furnish the school at Birch Coulee, a considerable part of the various appropriations was used for other purposes, ranging from the purchase of cattle and machinery for Indians seriously attempting to farm, to food and clothing for the aged and indigent. Henton period. ically submitted detailed statements of his expenditures which provide a good picture of what the government was trying to do for the Minnesota Sioux. In 1890, for example, he spent $1,568 at Prairie Island, $900 of which went for three teams and sets of harness, $150 for three wagons, $30 for two plows, $15 for three cultivators, $50 for a mower, $23 for a rake, and $400 for twenty acres of timber, a purchase that was never consummated. At the same time he spent $987 at Birch Coulee, $3,712 at Prior Lake, $970 at Bloomington (including a land purchase which did not go through), $728 at Wabasha, and $378 at Hastings. 26 ______ later wrote of the Indians that "the most of them are industrious. And I think would make good farmers if they had a start." See A. A. Johnson to Commissioner Thomas J. Morgan, February 26, 1890, NARS, RG 75, LR. 24 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, pp. 110-111; Henton to Oberly, April 7 and 12, May 15, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR. 25 Henton to Oberly, March 5, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR. 26 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1891, Part 1, p. 111; Henton to Morgan, May 1 and October 29, 1890, NARS, RG 75, LR. -283- Later the same year he submitted another statement, which included $713 for aid--principally food and clothing--to a few of the older people at Prairie Island, Hastings, and Wabasha. Out of the $8,000 appropriated that year, he proposed to spend only $500 on aid to the old and infirm, mainly several women ranging in age from seventy to ninety who had no particular homes but lived irregularly with various families. The Birch Coulee settlement required no such assistance that year, but the other groups all had some members who were destitute. 27 The next summer Henton delivered two teams of horses, three wagons, four harrows, four plows, and ten cows to the Indians there and a similar quantity to the Prior Lake colony. 28 White attitudes toward these little Indian settlements varied widely. Although it may have been true, as Henton charged, that some whites encouraged the Indians to stay in hopes of selling unproductive land to the government, the general feeling toward them seems to have been unfriendly. In May, 1889, a group of local farmers met in a rural school near the Birch Coulee community to protest against the presence of the Indians in the locality. Although the resentment was ostensibly directed mainly at the exemption of the Indians' lands from taxation (those recently purchased and held in government ownership), a newspaper report in the Redwood Falls paper said that the "farmers living in this locality do not regard them in any respect as desirable neighbors." One of the speakers at the May 7 meeting argued that the first Indians to return should have been ordered away; but since that had not been done, the only course was to "employ the best means at hand to get rid of an element of society we do not want." A petition was drawn up for presentation to Congressman John Lind. The Reverend Nathan N. Gilbert, an official of the Episcopal Church, wrote the commissioner that the best people in Redwood County did not sympathize with this movement, which, however, should be watched in order "to check it at the outset." 29 Opposition to the Prairie Island people stemmed mostly from the drain their chronic poverty produced on the county poor fund. The county officials wished some other agency to accept responsibility for them; and, after learning from the State Board of Corrections and Charities that the Indians were legally a charge on the county, they _____ 27 Henton to Morgan, October 29 and November 11, 1890, NARS, RG 75, LR. 28 Morton Enterprise, June 5, 1891. 29 Redwood Reveille, May 8, 1889; St. Paul Pioneer Press, May 9, 1889; Nathan N. Gilbert to Morgan, May 11, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR. -284- began corresponding with the Indian Office. A Red Wing newspaper reported late in 1887 that they had received from one to three hundred dollars a year from the poor fund and urged that they be sent to their proper reservation. Despite efforts by the government to come to their assistance, they remained a burden on the county. In 1891, Henton reported the complaint of the Goodhue County Board of Commissioners that the Indians there were constantly calling for aid. 30 It is impossible to determine how much of the opposition to the Indian colonies was due to the stated reasons and how much to the latent hostility to Indians left over from the days of '62. The phrase "dirty redskins" continued to be used in weekly newspapers, without quotation marks and without humorous intent, for many years after the uprising. As late as 1893, when the Minnesota Board of World's Fair Managers issued a booklet titled Minnesota: A Brief Sketch of Its History, Resources and Advantages, the Red Wing Daily Republican commented that there was too much about the Indian in it. "We cannot believe it desirable to associate the thought of the Indian with the current idea of the Minnesota of today," observed the editor. 31 If the more articulate and presumably better educated members of the community looked upon Indians in general as outcasts, there is every reason to suppose that the mass of the white population at least shared this attitude and probably went much further in anti-Indian sentiment. Objection to government recognition of the Sioux in Minnesota came from another source: the agents and missionaries on the Santee Reservation. In 1886, Alfred L. Riggs wrote Commissioner Atkins that aid given these renegades would only create ferment among the Santees. He charged that there was a movement afoot among certain white men and Indians to re-establish the Redwood agency and that some of the Indians expected to recover the annuities forfeited in 1863 and the old tribal organization that had been broken up at Santee by majority vote. If assistance were given them, it would be a "premium upon laziness, a step backward towards barbarism, and encouragement to idle dreams," he wrote; and if the dream of re-establishing the agency should be realized, it would "establish a perpetual Indian community in the heart of civilization." 32 Agent Hill added his voice to the chorus ______ 30 Hart to Atkins, December 10, 1887; Henton to Morgan, March 16, 1891, ibid.; Red Wing Argus, December 22, 1887; Goodhue County Board of Commissioners, "Proceedings," 1888, pp. 128, 131. 31 Red Wing Daily Republican, September 11, 1893. 32 Alfred L. Riggs to Atkins, April 29, 1886, NARS, RG 75, LR. -285-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:00:48 GMT -5
in 1888, complaining that the conduct of the Minnesota Sioux in holding the old pagan dances was having a disquieting effect on the Santees, some of whom had gone to West St. Paul the previous winter to take part in the festivities there. Though credited with breaking away from the reservation and becoming self-supporting, the Minnesota Sioux were actually more uncivilized than many of the Santees, as evidenced by this reversion to barbarism. He called their conduct "quite disgraceful" and reported that "a few of the least progressive" at his agency had been induced to leave their homes on visits to their relatives in Minnesota. 33 If the whites had objections to the presence of the Indians, the latter had complaints of their own. There were essentially three groups who felt themselves discriminated against in the distribution of benefits under the various appropriations: those who lived at Mendota, Grey Cloud Island, Bloomington, and other points at which no land was purchased and who therefore derived no benefit from land purchases; those who were excluded on the ground that they were mixed-bloods; and those who arrived in Minnesota after the May 20, 1886, deadline. The first two groups were made up to a considerable extent of the same individuals, people who had lived in and around the Twin Cities, regarding themselves and being regarded, not as Indians, but as members of the general population. Even those who qualified as Indians could not benefit substantially from the appropriations unless they moved to one of the settlements where land had been purchased. Henton believed that pressure should be brought on them by withholding food and clothing in order to persuade them to move. 34 Since the line between mixed-bloods and full-bloods was never precisely determinable, the former were gradually admitted to participation in the benefits enjoyed by their Indian relatives. Henry Belland, Jr., writing under the name of Tewasdakeduta, asked early in 1891 that they be paid in provisions in such amounts as would assure equality among them and their Indian relatives who had received land and stock. By July, 1892, clothing and food had been distributed to 132 mixed-bloods, most of whom supported themselves by day labor; more names were later added to the list, and there were many others who expressed no wish to participate. 35 Henton was always opposed to per- ____________________ 33 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1888, p. 173. 34 Henton to Morgan, July 24, 1889, NARS, RG 75, LR. 35 Tewasdakeduta [Henry Belland, Jr.] to Secretary of Interior John W. Noble, March 26, 1891; Henton to Morgan, July 24, 1892, and February 14 and March 3, 1893, ibid. -286- mitting mixed-bloods to share, arguing that the 198 full-bloods objected to sharing the small appropriations with the 722 mixed-bloods who were on his census roll by 1898. He believed that at least the payments should be restricted to full-bloods, half-bloods, and minor children of the latter. 36 Complaints also came from members of the outlying communities who charged that Hinman dominated Henton and was trying to exclude from the appropriations all those who refused to move to Birch Coulee. The Reverend John Eastman, one of the spokesmen for the dissatisfied element, wrote that only Hinman's friends received any benefits. Henton denied these charges and said that delays in consummating the land purchases had created suspicion among the Indians.37 There is no doubt, however, that Hinman wished to concentrate the Indians at Birch Coulee, and he may have let fall some remarks that sounded like threats. Hinman's zeal for his church also left him open to accusations of another kind of discrimination. Complaints came from Big Eagle, John and Moses Wakeman, and several others who had come to Minnesota from Flandreau after the 1886 deadline. They were Presbyterians, Eastman an ordained minister of that faith. Henton's refusal to admit them to benefits or to assign them land was seen as an effort by Hinman to discriminate against anyone who did not join the Episcopal Church. Henton denied the charge, claimed that Big Eagle and the Wakemans had been hostile in 1862, and expressed the opinion that they were trying to break up the settlement, which they were unable to control. 38 Whatever the truth of these charges and countercharges, the little Sioux colonies were already rent with factionalism, an evil that has persisted ever since. The Birch Coulee settlement, if it did not realize all of Bishop Whipple's hopes for it, did achieve a measure of prosperity and stability beyond any of the other Sioux communities in Minnesota. Hence its early history deserves separate consideration. As we have seen, its population grew rapidly after Good Thunder had established himself there in 1883. By the end of 1885 there were sixteen tipis, fifty-four souls, in the vicinity. That year Hinman, fresh from his unhappy ____________________
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:03:09 GMT -5
36 Henton to Commissioner William A. Jones, January 13, 1898, ibid. 37 John L. Macdonald to Oberly, January 27 and February 9, 1889; David Wells to Morgan, February 21, 1890; John Eastman to Morgan, March 12, 1890; Henton to Oberly, February 26, 1889; Henton to Morgan, March 4, 1890, ibid. 38 Henton to Morgan, February 26 and March 15, 1889, ibid. In view of Hinman's record at Santee, there may have been some substance to the charges made against him now. -287- experience at Santee, visited the growing community. At the request of Bishop Whipple, he returned in the spring of 1886 to resume the mission work that had been broken off by the uprising nearly twenty-four years earlier. Good Thunder offered the church twenty acres of his land, on condition that a house of worship be erected there. The offer was promptly accepted, and by the end of 1887 the bishop was able to report that he had built "a mission house with a room attached large enough for worship." 39 This structure proved inadequate to the needs of the flock, and in 1889, after the Faribault group had moved to Birch Coulee, a stone church was begun. Although the site was not the same as that of the church almost completed in 1862, the stone that remained from the old building was used in the construction of the new one. At the laying of the cornerstone, on August 27, 1889, Good Thunder brought a written request from the Indians that the church be named St. Cornelia's, in honor of the wife of their beloved bishop. 40 The consecration of St. Cornelia's, on July 15, 1891, was a major event in the history of the little Indian community. Bishop Whipple opened the service by leading the procession and reading a part of the liturgy in Dakota. The lesson was then read by Napoleon Wabasha, who had settled at Birch Coulee too late to benefit from the various appropriations and who had recently been made lay reader to give him some employment. At the regular morning service Bishop Whipple told how, thirty-three years earlier, Taopi, Good Thunder, and Wabasha had requested him to send a missionary to the lower Sioux, and he had sent Hinman. He then reviewed the more recent history of the congregation, with special emphasis on Good Thunder's contribution. 41 Hinman was not present at this dedication, for he had died on March 24, _____ 39 Whipple to Atkins, December 11, 1885, ibid.; George W. Tanner, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota 1857-1907 ( St. Paul: Published by the Committee, 1909), p. 404; Henry B. Whipple, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate ( New York: Macmillan Co., 1899), pp. 181-182; Morton Enterprise, February 27, 1936; Redwood County Register of Deeds, Deed Record 19, p. 66. The indenture for the transfer of Good Thunder's twenty acres is dated August 7, 1889, but the transfer had presumably been made two years earlier and not recorded until then. It conveys the tract from Good Thunder and Sarah Good Thunder to "Rt. Rev.Henry B. Whipple, Episcopal Bishop of Minnesota, and his successors in office in Trust for to be used as a site for church, Parsonage, School and Burial Grounds for the Mdewa[ka]nton Sioux Dakota Indians of Minnesota." A consideration of one dollar was given, as in the case of the nine acres bought from Taopi for a school site. 40 Tanner, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota, p. 404; Whipple, Lights and Shadows, p. 182; Faribault Democrat, June 6, 1890. 41 Morton Enterprise, July 24, 1891. -288- 1890. For a number of years after his death the little stone church was served by the rector at Redwood Falls. Then, in 1899, Henry Whipple St. Clair was made deacon and placed in charge of the church. In 1904 he was ordained to the priesthood. Of Sioux blood himself, he was the son of the Reverend George Whipple St. Clair, the first of his people to be ordained by Bishop Whipple. 42 Bishop Whipple was responsible also for the other institution started in the little village about this time. It was at his behest that the 1888 appropriations act had contained a provision for a school. Though he seems to have hoped that the school would be placed under the management of the Episcopal Church, it came to be conducted as a day school by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. When bids were let for its construction, they all exceeded the $2,000 limit set by Congress, and the size of the building had to be reduced. It was finally built, however, and was ready for use by the spring of 1891. The first teacher was Robert H. C. Hinman, son of the missionary, who had charge of it for nearly thirty years. 43 With the advantage of better soil than the other Sioux communities had, Birch Coulee prospered more than they did. In 1894, when dry weather had virtually destroyed the crops on the sandy soil of Prairie Island, Henton was able to report that the people at Birch Coulee were doing well. He added that they were more industrious than the people of the other localities; "Many of their homes are indications of refinement and thrift," he remarked. Although their principal reliance was on agriculture, lace-making was introduced in the nineties as a means by which the women could find useful employment and supplement the meager income from farming. The idea originated with Miss Sibyl Carter while on a trip to Japan. She first introduced it on the White Earth Reservation in 1886 and then persuaded Bishop Whipple's niece, Miss Susan Salisbury, to teach the Sioux women at Birch Coulee the art. It caught on well, and soon they were turning out some pieces of fine workmanship. 44 The gradual improvement in the material condition of the Minnesota ______ 42 Tanner, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota, pp. 404-405; Whipple , Lights and Shadows, p. 176. 43 Whipple to Atkins, July 6, 1886; Henton to Morgan, December 6 and 20, 1890, NARS, RG 75, LR; 50th Cong., 1st Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 228, p. 3; 50th Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Ex. Doc. 61, p. 3; Morton Enterprise, June 26, 1891; Pioneer Press, June 24, 1891. 44 Henton to Daniel M. Browning, February 21, 1894, NARS, RG 75, LR; Morton Enterprise, September 23, 1892; Tanner, Fifty Years of Church Work in the Diocese of Minnesota, pp. 406-407. -
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:03:32 GMT -5
289- Sioux was more apparent at Birch Coulee than it was at the other colonies, but everywhere they gradually came to be accepted by the white community. References to them in newspapers, though often condescending and patronizing, lack the asperity and undisguised contempt of earlier years. Their activities are mentioned, not in quite the same tone as those of the whites, but with the implied assumption that these activities would interest the general public. The Morton Enterprise might report the result of a baseball game between the local Indians and a team from Wabasha (won by the latter, despite partial umpiring by a local merchant) or might mention an exchange of visits between the Birch Coulee Sioux and those of the Sisseton Reservation. On their return from one such trip, the local group brought back thirty-three head of ponies and several cattle. As if to demonstrate their assimilation, in 1897 the Birch Coulee men organized a brass band and toured the countryside, giving concerts in various towns.45 The Prairie Island people were more noteworthy for such distinctively Indian activities as pow-wows held in the traditional manner. Early in 1887, when they had been there only a year or two, they played host to a traveling company of Winnebago and Omaha dancers. In 1892 (and probably on many other occasions) they presented war dances in a tent as part of the Fourth of July celebration in Red Wing. 46 Here and elsewhere the Indians made and sold moccasins, catlinite pipes, drums, and similar articles to supplement their income. Not all of the activities they indulged in were approved by the church, which continued to exercise a close surveillance over them. The old prejudice against Indian dances, even though they might be quite devoid of religious significance now, remained strong, however much appeal the dances might have to the general public. And certainly the church did not approve of the considerable amount of drinking that went on, even at Birch Coulee, despite federal and state regulations forbidding the sale of liquor to Indians. Newspaper reports of drunkenness are too numerous to be dismissed merely as isolated cases blown up out of proportion for journalistic purposes. 47 Economically, the condition of the Minnesota Sioux worsened during the early 1890's. This deterioration was due in large part to the poor quality of the land purchased at most of the colonies, aggravated by several years of drought. The Indian Office received an increasing _____ 45 Morton Enterprise, June 19 and July 31, 1891, and May 7, 1897. 46 Red Wing Daily Republican, February 17, 1887, June 29 and July 5, 1892. 47 Morton Enterprise, September 11 and 18, 1891.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:04:04 GMT -5
-290- number of letters telling of "destitution" among these people as the $60,000 appropriated between 1884 and 1890 gradually dried up, and local newspapers contained a discouraging number of items like one in the Hastings Democrat early in 1895, telling of the death of a woman from starvation at Prairie Island. The newspaper commented that almost all of the Indians in the locality were in want of the necessities of life; one family had lost two pigs and thirty chickens because they had nothing to feed the animals. Calling for charity, the paper pointed out that the Indians "cannot make their wants known, and they don't know how to work, and could not obtain employment if they did." 48 In response to the situation confronting the Minnesota Sioux, Congress in 1895 resumed the practice of appropriating funds for their benefit. Then and for the four following years the sum of $5,000 was appropriated annually for the "temporary support and civilization of Sioux, Medawakanton Band, in Minnesota." 49 There is no indication that these small gratuities did more than relieve the counties of part of the burden of keeping the Indians alive. When Special Agent James McLaughlin toured the Sioux communities in 1899, he found poverty everywhere except at Birch Coulee and recommended that the lands elsewhere be disposed of, since the Indians were unable to make use of them. After talking with Episcopal Rector C. C. Rollit, of Red Wing, he concluded that the Prairie Island people were "neither thrifty nor industrious, and were it not for the aid given them by Mr. Rollit at intervals, there would be considerable want among them at times." The county was willing to bury them at public expense but had no funds to give them medical assistance. 50 The immediate reason for McLaughlin's visit was the resignation in the summer of 1898 of Robert B. Henton as special disbursing agent. With Henton's resignation the question arose whether the services of an agent were any longer needed for the Minnesota Sioux. Except for ____ 48 Michael McHugh to Secretary of Interior Hoke Smith, August 8, 1893; Henton to Hoke Smith, January 11, 1894; Henton to Representative O. M. Hall, February 22, 1894, NARS, RG 75, LR; Hastings Democrat, quoted in Red Wing Daily Republican, February 13, 1895. McHugh claimed to have originated the idea of asking government help for the Minnesota Sioux and said that he was spending two or three dollars a week helping those in and around Hastings. He also asked to be appointed agent. Hall, a native of Red Wing, endorsed Henton's request for an appropriation, saying that he knew of the destitution of those Indians living between Red Wing and Hastings. 49 U.S. Statutes at Large, XXVIII, 873, 892; XXIX, 338; XXX, 78, 144, 586, 938. 50 James McLaughlin to Secretary of Interior E. A. Hitchcock, March 17, 1899; McLaughlin to Jones, March 17, 1 89)9, NARS, RG 75, LR. -291- those at Birch Coulee, they all opposed the appointment of another agent and wanted a straight cash payment. On the recommendation of the Reverend W. H. Knowlton of Redwood Falls and Representative J. T. McCleary, a local man, George L. Evans, was appointed in 1899. His term of service was brief. The last appropriation was made on March 1 of that year, and in June, 1900, Evans was notified that his services would no longer be needed after the end of the fiscal year. 51 Thus ended the first stage of the history of the Minnesota Sioux following their return from exile. Although only sixteen years had passed since their recognition by the Indian Office and by Congress, certain important changes had come over them in that brief period. In 1884 they were unwelcome vagabonds, with no legal title to the lands they occupied, except for that which had been purchased with their own money; by 1900 most of them were established on land bought for them by the government, most of it securely held in government ownership. The location of their settlements had changed considerably, too. Since the younger, more ambitious people tended to gravitate to the places where land was available, the settlements near the Twin Cities had dwindled away until they were occupied only by the elderly, who were cared for by local churches and relief agencies. Thus Mendota, Grey Cloud Island, and Bloomington had been virtually abandoned by the turn of the century. Furthermore, the people assigned plots of land at Wabasha had not chosen to occupy them but had mostly moved to Prairie Island or one of the other colonies, and the Hastings group dwindled to one woman, who finally consented to have the land there sold to the state of Minnesota. To all practical purposes, therefore, by 1900 the Minnesota Mdewakantons were concentrated at three points: Birch Coulee, Prairie Island, and Prior Lake. 52 As the twentieth century dawned, the Minnesota Sioux were far from the self-sufficiency that Bishop Whipple had thought they would ______ 51 Morton Enterprise, August 19 and November 4, 1898; McLaughlin to Jones, March 17, 1899; W. H. Knowlton to Jones, January 27, 1899; George L. Evans to Jones, June 20, 1900, NARS, RG 75, LR. Henton, who died shortly after his resignation, had served under two Democratic and two Republican administrations and had always been reappointed even though local Republicans applied for the post during the Harrison and McKinley administrations. 52 J. F. Jacobson to Representative C. R. Davis, January 14, 1906; Emma Judson to Commissioner Francis E. Leupp, May 8, 1906; Acting Secretary of Interior Thomas Ryan to Commissioner of the General Land Office, August 27, 1906, NARS, RG 75, LR; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXXIV, 78. -292- achieve if the government would give them a helping hand. Perhaps they were no better off than they would have been if they had remained on their reservations in Nebraska and South Dakota. But they had satisfied the homing instinct that made them restless on those reservations, and they had established permanent communities which, small though they were, stood as authentic survivals of the Sioux people in their ancient homeland. -293- CHAPTER 15 The Twentieth Century: Santee THE HISTORY of the Santee Sioux in the twentieth century can be understood only against the background of the general trend of Indian affairs during the period. The policies pursued by the Indian Bureau during the first quarter of the century were essentially a continuation of those followed in the last decade of the previous century. The Dawes Act had come as the culmination of a long period of reform agitation, and it was hard for those in charge of Indian policy to admit that allotment had been a failure. The continuing attrition of the Indians' land base was not seen as a misfortune so long as Bureau officials and the American public persisted in the assumption, contradicted by the census returns, that the Indian was a vanishing race. As one recent writer has commented, "Authorities responsible for policy continued to refer to a diminishing population long after the growth curve had turned upward." 1 And in the face of what should have been convincing evidence that the Indian was far from self-sufficiency, the Bureau gradually withdrew its services to tribes that seemed relatively far along in the acculturation process. The first real indication of an approaching change in government policy came in 1926, when Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work asked ______ 1 D'Arcy McNickle, The Indian Tribes of the United Slates: Ethnic and Cultural Survival ( London: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 53. -
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:04:38 GMT -5
294- the Institute for Government Research, a privately endowed foundation, to carry out an economic and social survey of conditions among the American Indians. Two years later the survey staff submitted a statement of its findings, usually called the Meriam Report after Lewis Meriam, who served as technical director. The Meriam Report was an eye-opener to those who had supposed that the Indian problem was solved or well on the way to solution. It described the economic plight of the Indian in sober prose, backed by statistics, and emphasized the failure of allotment. It offered specific recommendations for the reform of Indian policy--recommendations that amounted to a repudiation of the time-honored thesis that the Indians must ultimately be totally assimilated to the larger society. Charles J. Rhoads, who became commissioner in 1929, and his assistant commissioner, Henry Scattergood, made some policy changes in line with the Meriam Report's recommendations, but there was no major change of direction until the appointment in 1933 of John Collier as commissioner under the Roosevelt administration. Collier's approach, embodied in the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, proposed not merely to stop the loss of Indian lands but to recover some of what had been already lost. Instead of being told to "hurry up and get assimilated" and to give up the remnants of their culture, Indians were encouraged to preserve what they had left. And they were given an opportunity to organize as legal entities and draw up constitutions for effective tribal government. In addition to substantive changes in policy, the Collier program brought to the management of Indian affairs a missionary fervor not heretofore seen in the twentieth century. In Indian policy, as in other areas of American life, the Depression shook old beliefs and made innovation easier than in normal times. Although Collier remained commissioner until 1945 and his basic philosophy was shared by his immediate successor, William A. Brophy, the vigor and much of the effectiveness of his program were lost with the coming of World War II and the diversion of the national energies to other purposes. 2 After the war a mood of retrenchment in the country, and especially in Congress, led to efforts to reduce expenditures in the Indian Service and, indeed, to abolish the Bureau altogether. Reflecting a sense of frustration at the failure of government policy to accomplish its purpose of incorporating the Indian into the fabric of American life, Congress in 1953 passed House Concurrent Resolution 108, which called on the government, "at the earliest possible time," to get out of ______ 2 John Collier, From Every Zenith ( Denver: Alan Swallow, 1963), p. 369. -295- the Indian business. 3 The bywords of the 1950's came to be "termination" and "relocation "--the unilateral severance of Bureau services to individual tribes and the Bureau-sponsored movement of Indians from reservations to cities where more jobs were available. In the later 1950's the pendulum began to swing back in the other direction, after the policies of the previous few years had been repeatedly attacked and their deficiencies pointed out by responsible critics; and with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 the policy of termination was officially declared dead. Once again emphasis was placed on helping the reservation Indian to make a living where he was and on continuing Bureau services until a tribe considered itself ready to dispense with them. As in the Collier administration, the Indian was to play the major role in policy decisions on individual reservations. No sooner did the new approach begin to show results, however, than involvement in the Vietnam civil war brought a demand for cutbacks in domestic programs, and the call for termination began to be heard again. When Philleo Nash, the anthropologist appointed commissioner by President Kennedy, resigned in the spring of 1966, his successor, Robert L. Bennett, was subjected to close scrutiny by a Senate committee, which reportedly demanded, as a price for confirming his nomination, that he promise to speed up the withdrawal of the federal government from Indian affairs. 4 To the distress of Indians all across the country, termination, far from being dead, appeared by 1966 to be once more an extremely live issue. To a degree, the Santee Sioux have all been affected by the general course of Indian policy in the twentieth century, and their history has consisted in part of puzzled reactions to these increasingly frequent reversals of policy. Yet their responses have not been uniform. In fact, the interested observer is less likely to be struck by the common elements in their recent history than by the divergent courses followed by the various fragments of the Santee Sioux in the present century. On the Santee Reservation there was a gradual withdrawal of government services, marked by the closing of the agency in 1917. Although this group took advantage of the Indian Reorganization Act, a mass exodus followed in the 1940's and 1950's, amounting almost to abandonment of the reservation. At Sisseton and Devils Lake the dissipation ______ 3 McNickle, Indian Tribes of the United States, pp. 61-62. 4 New York Times, April 10, 1966. The Senate Interior Committee complained that there had been virtually no legislation in recent years to terminate federal control of Indian tribes. -296- of the Indians' land base went on for the first three decades of the century, and the failure of both groups to accept the IRA prevented proposed land purchases from materializing. Meanwhile, a growing population created an increasingly desperate situation. The Flandreau and Minnesota Sioux were largely neglected until the 1930's, but then their condition improved. The IRA was accepted by the Flandreau colony and by both Lower Sioux (Birch Coulee) and Prairie Island; extensive, though insufficient, land purchases were made, and a revival of community spirit occurred. Any discussion of the history of these groups in the twentieth century is bound to be sketchy, and any judgments rendered are inevitably inconclusive, since not all the returns are yet in. Even Santee, whose history a superficial observer might think finished, still retains much of its identity as an Indian community after more than seventy-five years of attempted assimilation, and probably will continue to do so for some time to come. Yet its history for the first thirty years of the century was largely one of decay and deterioration. One cause may have been that, judging from their official reports, the men placed in charge there lacked the evangelical zeal displayed by such men as Janney and Lightner in the 1870's. H. C. Baird, whose term of office carried over into the new century, was the last to bear the traditional title of agent. In keeping with the belief that the Indian Bureau's responsibility toward its wards was in the future to be primarily educational, the old-time agents were replaced early in the century by superintendents. Early in 1902, Wilbert E. Meagley was appointed superintendent of the Santee government school and was charged with all the duties "heretofore devolving upon the Indian agent at the Santee Agency as to agency matters. . . . " 5 After some delay, Meagley took office in February, 1903, and retained the position for more than six years. Although the school was closed in 1909, Meagley's successor, Frank E. McIntyre, kept the title of superintendent, as did the man who followed him in 1914, Charles E. Burton, who remained in charge of the agency until it was discontinued. 6 _____
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:05:03 GMT -5
5 Commissioner William A. Jones to Wilbert E. Meagley, January 27, 1902, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. 6 Jones to E. A. Hitchcock, December 24, 1902, ibid. Meagley's appointment was withdrawn when George W. Saunders was appointed. The Civil Service Commission did not approve Saunders appointment, however, and Meagley became superintendent early in 1903. See Meagley to Jones, February 24, 1903, ibid. -297- These first seventeen years of the twentieth century were marked by the loss of much of the Santees' remaining land and by the continued erosion of what was left of their culture. Both losses came about as a result of a combination of circumstances for which the Indians and the government shared culpability. The premature attempt to make farmers out of the Indians by legislative fiat through allotment was a failure from the beginning. The practice of leasing, well established by 1900, withstood official disapproval, and the Bureau was finally forced to accept it in order to exercise any measure of supervision over it. Besides collecting the rentals, so as to protect the Indian from dishonest whites, the agency deposited the money and paid it out only on authority from the Indian Office. Furthermore, a regulation was long in effect requiring every able-bodied Indian to reserve at least forty acres of his allotment for his own use. This rule was manifestly inappropriate at Santee, where much of the reservation was unsuited for farming and where few of the Indians had enough stock or equipment. Hence in 1902 it was modified to permit Indians whose allotments were rough and broken to lease their entire farms for grazing purposes. 7 Although leasing provided the Indians with some income, it was never enough to give them an adequate livelihood. A more serious problem was that of the loss of Indian land. This came about in two ways: through the sale of inherited and "non-competent" interests and through the issuance of patents. As the original allottees died, their allotments came into the possession of their legal heirs, who sometimes were quite numerous. Since ordinarily none of the heirs were financially equipped to buy out the others, the land thus inherited became "fractionated," i.e., the undivided property of several individuals. Subdividing the allotments was impracticable because it would have left the heirs with uneconomically small units. The solution usually resorted to was to sell the lands and divide the proceeds among the heirs. The same easy way out was taken with regard to allotments owned by people who, because of age or physical handicaps, were unable to farm them. Land sales under these two categories began before 1900 and continued until well into the third decade of the century. By 1904 eighty- _____ 7 George W. Saunders to Jones, September 9, 1902; Assistant Secretary of Interior Thomas Ryan to Jones, September 26, 1902, ibid. Leasing was first legalized by Congress in 1891, to the extent that allottees unable to use their allotments because of age or disability were permitted to lease them for a three-year period, under conditions prescribed by the Secretary of the Interior. See U.S. Statutes at Large, XXVI, 795. -298- five tracts had been sold, for a total of $95,895. From then until 1923 local newspapers frequently contained notices of prospective sales, with descriptions of the tracts offered and the names of the allottees. Some allotments were offered for sale repeatedly, since they were virtually worthless, even for grazing purposes. The Indian Office did all it could to encourage buyers. In 1910 regulations were changed so that only 15 per cent of the price needed to be paid at once; another 10 per cent was to be paid when the legal papers were signed, and 25 per cent would be paid yearly thereafter. 8 Most of the sales were to land dealers rather than to individual farmers or ranchers. Examination of a marked reservation map shows that the tracts sold were widely scattered and followed no perceptible pattern. So the purchasers could not expect to block out large acreages. It made little difference, however, for cattle could be run on leased lands quite as conveniently as on purchased lands. A great part of the land lost by the Santees in the half-century following allotment was patented to individual owners and then sold. The issuance of patents began as soon as the twenty-five-year restrictive clause expired in 1910. A competency board was appointed to determine which Indians were qualified to receive patents and which would require a longer period of government guardianship. It was understood by local whites, and presumably by Bureau officials, that most of the patentees would promptly sell their lands. At least there was no hypocrisy in the Niobrara newspaper, which saw the competency hearings as offering "a considerable opening of lands to settlement since it will give the [Indians] first class patents to their lands." Recalling the efforts to have the Santees removed back in the 1870's, Edwin A. Fry, erstwhile editor of the Niobrara Pioneer, remarked that this end would shortly be realized. "As we begin to see things now, it will not be more than another dozen years before the Santee lands will have passed from their control and the white man in possession," he wrote. 9 The process did not move quite as swiftly as Fry expected. For one thing, the competency board displayed some sense of responsibility and did not classify all the Indians as competent. Enough were so classified, however, that many tracts of land promptly came into the market. Some of the allottees were living at Prairie Island or elsewhere in _____ 8 J. F. House, Supervisor of Indian Schools, to Jones, July 6, 1904, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Niobrara Tribune, December 22, 1910. At one sale in 1917, a total of $88,000 was realized. See the Niobrara Tribune, January 18, 1917. 9 Niobrara Tribune, November 10, 1910. -
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:05:27 GMT -5
299- Minnesota and had no interest in their lands other than a pecuniary one. A surprisingly small number of patents were issued annually-usually only three or four--but the lands were almost invariably sold. Interestingly, the superintendent was often less inclined to grant patents than the Indian Office. McIntyre asked authority to suspend recommendations on applications for patents, and when it was denied, he tried to delay the procedure as much as possible. 10 Technically, the Indian Bureau no longer exercised any supervision over an Indian once a patent had been issued to him, but in practice the distinction between wards and nonwards was shadowy. Often a man would receive a patent and sell his farm, but his wife would remain under guardianship, and both would continue to benefit from whatever meager services the government still offered her. Despite the attempt to represent the Santees as self-sustaining, they were still very far from that condition early in the twentieth century. Meagley pointed out in 1903 that the government then still employed for the Santees and Poncas "seven mechanics, an engineer, and a miller, supplying all necessary material for their work; two doctors with the necessary drugs have been furnished; large gratuities in the way of wagons, plows, harrows, mowers, harnesses, twine, etc., have been furnished. . . ." Yet, thought Meagley, the average Santee believed himself to be self-supporting. 11 The fact that the Indians were still to some extent beneficiaries of services not accorded the general population was often a source of resentment on the part of local whites. This feeling occasionally found expression in the newspapers, as when the Niobrara Tribune remarked that, although the Indians in the vicinity owned some good farms, "the shiftlessness and worthlessness prevalent among them [had] been a serious drawback to the town." The industrious ones were in a minority, said the paper, and those who had attended Carlisle, Haskell, or other Indian schools seemed not to have profited much from their training. The Indians had their complaints, too, though they less frequently found expression in print. Occasionally a letter might appear in the newspaper. One published in 1911 criticized "our white neigh- ______ 10 Meagley to Francis E. Leupp, July 25, 1906; Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1910, 1911, 1913, and 1916, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency. After 1906 the superintendents' reports were no longer published in the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, but they continued to be submitted, in typewritten form, and are preserved in the National Archives. Normally, they consist of a narrative and a statistical part, both of which come to be increasingly routine with the passage of the years. 11 Meagley to Jones, August 31, 1903, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:05:56 GMT -5
-300- bors, who are always ready to give us advice and who claim that they are doing so for our personal benefit," and wondered why, if they were such good neighbors, they attacked the superintendent. Why didn't they help fight the whiskey problem instead of contributing to it? Why didn't they want the Indians to attend school? The letter ended: "All that they do tell us is that we are thoroughly competent to handle our own affairs, boost us and endorse us for our patents to our allotments, but when our land is sold and the money spent, Where-Do-WeStand." 12 Besides the services afforded by the agency, the Santees received benefits of other kinds during the early 1900's. Until 1907 they continued to receive income from the "Sioux Fund "--the proceeds from the sale of the Great Sioux Reservation, in which the Santees had been adjudged to have an interest. About 160 of them also shared in the settlement of the Sisseton-Wahpeton claims case and received $154.70 each. The Sisseton-Wahpeton claims case has a long and tangled history, to which only passing attention can be paid here. It stemmed from the argument that the upper Sioux had not taken part in the Uprising of 1862 and should not have been deprived of their share of the annuities due them under the terms of the treaty of Traverse des Sioux. After being in and out of Congress many times, it was finally accepted and turned over to the Court of Claims. The case was settled in 1907, and payment made in 1909. 13 A few of the upper Sioux had surrendered in the fall of 1862 and had accompanied the lower Sioux to Crow Creek and thence to the Niobrara. There had also been some intermarriage and a certain amount of drifting back and forth between the Santee and Sisseton reservations. The Santees had their own claims case repeatedly before Congress. Though originating in a council held at Santee in 1884, the case received little attention until the 1890's, when two factions, one led by James Garvie, the other by John Eastman of Flandreau and former Santee Agent Charles Hill, later a banker in Springfield, South Dakota, joined forces and pressed their cause with vigor. In order to counter the government's claim that the 1868 treaty nullified all previous treaties, Garvie obtained testimony from the two surviving members of the ___ 12 Niobrara Tribune, January 29, 1914, and June 29, 1911. 13 Meagley to Commissioner Robert G. Valentine, October 27, 1906, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency; Niobrara Tribune, March 4, 1909. The Sisseton-Wahpeton claims case is discussed at length in William W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, II ( St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1961), 418-437. -301- delegation that signed the treaty to demonstrate that pressure was used to induce them to sign. 14 The Santee claims case finally passed Congress in 1917. The Indians claimed the sum of $2,468,878.40, after deducting the benefits received from the government. The government found other benefits, however, and revised the figures so that the Santees wound up owing a substantial sum! This led to further revision of the figures by their lawyers, with the result that the Santees were finally judged to be entitled to $386,597.89, less about 10 per cent to their lawyers. Payment was made in the winter of 1924. After thirty years of waiting, the Santees finally received $129.30 each. This was perhaps enough to justify the premature rejoicing of the Niobrara Tribune, which had commented, upon the passage of the bill in 1917, that "it looks good to the auto dealer and the merchant and the man who has anything to sell and who resides near Santee at the present time." It may also have staved off outright destitution for a time, though its effects must necessarily have been brief. 15 Despite the earnest endeavors of missionaries and Indian Bureau officials, the Indian culture had not been completely stamped out by the beginning of the twentieth century, as evidenced by the survival of the old dances. In 1901, the fiftieth anniversary of the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, some of the Santees held a celebration in honor of the chiefs who had signed those treaties. This became an annual event and included dancing by a handful of old men who had served as scouts in 1863 and 1864. In an effort to exercise some control over it, Superintendent McIntyre tried in 1910 to combine it with an Indian fair, but the only result was that for several years there were two such affairs. 16 ___ 14 Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 437-439; Niobrara Tribune, July 22 and 29, August 5 and 26, and September 2 and 9, 1920, August 3, 1922, April 12, 1923, and February 7, 1924. The account by Garvie in the Tribune, July 22 to September 9, 1920, is extremely detailed but should be read with caution, as the writer was the leader of one of the factions in contention for the honor of winning the case. 15 Folwell, History of Minnesota, II, 438-439; Niobrara Tribune, March 8, 1917, and February 7, 1924. 16 Niobrara Tribune, August 5, 1909, August 18, 1910, July 20 and 27 and August 10, 1911, September 12, 1912, and July 10, 1913; Edward H. Eastman and David Graham to Valentine, July 17, 1911; Frank E. McIntyre to Valentine, August 5 and 25, 1911, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency. A group calling itself "an Indian Committie organized for the purpose of management of celebration of the old Chief Made Wa Kan Ton" wrote the commissioner complaining of McIntyre's innovation. The phraseology led Indian Bureau officials to suppose that "Made Wa Kan Ton" was the -302-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:06:56 GMT -5
It is well to remember that the policy of discouraging or even forbidding these dances continued in force far into the twentieth century. Although professing to follow a "policy of persuasion," McIntyre actually forbade dancing by the old scouts at the fairs in 1913 and 1914 and thereby stirred up ill feeling. His successor, Burton, was more liberal. When he requested permission for the old men to dance for an hour, he was told by the assistant commissioner that there would be no objection provided the dances were held in the daytime only and no "immoral dances" were allowed. "No school children or young Indians of your reservation should be permitted to be spectators at these dances," the official wrote, "as the Office thinks it would be better to keep their ideas away from these old-time customs as much as possible." 17 How much of the impetus for these dances came from the Indians themselves and how much from white people is debatable. Certainly they were encouraged by the merchants of nearby towns for commercial purposes, and most of the spectators were whites. When the official celebration was merged with the fair, every effort was made by the superintendent to subordinate the distinctively Indian features to those that might be found at any county fair. For a few years the Indian Bureau furnished $200 in premiums, and one of the largest landowners on the former reservation offered another $105 by way of encouraging the Indians to exert themselves in agriculture. 18 Although the fair may have served in some degree as a means of hastening the acculturation process by satisfying the Indians' wish for a celebration of their own, it had certain features that displeased the superintendent, and it never succeeded in getting a monopoly on the reservation festivities. Some drinking inevitably accompanied it (though sometimes this was carried on mostly by whites), and the appearance of Winnebagos, Yanktons, and other tribes naturally required return visits by the Santees when those tribes held their fairs. As for unauthorized celebrations on patented land, the superintendents were uniformly opposed to them and did ____________________ name of a chief, and subsequent correspondence contains numerous references to this nonexistent chieftain. 17 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1911; Charles E. Burton to Commissioner Cato Sells, March 30, 1915; Assistant Commissioner E. B. Merritt to Burton, May 18, 1915, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency. 18 Niobrara Tribune, August 5, 1909, August 10 and 31 and September 28, 1911, September 12, 1912, and September 23, 1915; McIntyre to Valentine, August 25, 1911; Burton to Sells, March 26, 1915, and February 12, 1916, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency. -303- what they could to discourage Indians from attending them, though of course they had no direct control over them. 19 Although it might not seem evident from the close supervision still exercised by the superintendent over the personal affairs of the Indians, there was during this period a phased withdrawal of agency functions and Bureau services. Meagley closed down the gristmill in 1904, since it was costing far more to operate than the slight benefits warranted. 20 A month or so after McIntyre's arrival in the summer of 1909, he closed the boarding school. Since the plant was in poor shape and "not well thought of by the Indians," his action met with little opposition. The presence of the Santee Normal Training School and of a number of district schools on the reservation made the boarding school superfluous in the superintendent's eyes. As a matter of fact, however, the district schools did not provide an adequate substitute, chiefly because of hostility from whites. When a Bureau school official visited the reservation in 1916, he found the situation quite unsatisfactory. Since the teachers were not employed by the government, they felt no responsibility toward the Indian children. "The irregularity of attendance and the natural timidity of the Indian children rather annoy the teacher," he reported, "and, in most cases, no doubt, the teachers feel relieved when the Indians drop out." 21 Discontinuance of the agency, considered even before 1900, became apparently feasible in 1917, after both Nebraska and South Dakota had adopted prohibition ordinances, and one of the principal obstacles to freeing the Santees from supervision seemed to have been removed. A special agent sent to determine the advisability of closing the agency reported that of the 1, 173 Indians on the reservation, 734 were considered competent, and another 300 were probably so. Aside from 74 elderly, indigent, or diseased Indians, all could safely be released from ____________________ 19 McIntyre to Sells, October 9, 1914; B. J. Young to Valentine, August 3, 1911, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency; Niobrara Tribune, September 23, 1915. 20 Meagley to Jones, July 27, 1904; Meagley to Leupp, December 12, 1904, NARS, RG 75, LR, Santee Agency. 21 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1910; Sam B. Davis, Supervising Superintendent, to Sells, June 12, 1916, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency; Word Carrier, XXXVIII ( September-October, 1909), 3. The attendance problem was complicated by Nebraska law, which did not require children to attend school if they lived more than two miles away or did not have an open road to school; many of the Santees lived in isolated crooks and corners of the rugged country and did not have ready access to good roads or schools nearby. See Key Wolf, Day School Inspector, to House, May 6, 1922, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency. -304-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:07:22 GMT -5
guardianship; these exceptions could be placed under the Yankton Agency. Only 18,000 acres of land remained in Indian hands, and the quantity was diminishing steadily. 22 Commissioner Cato Sells, on the strength of this recommendation, advised the Secretary of the Interior that the agency be discontinued and all employees except the agency physician, the interpreter, the government farmer, and a single police private be discharged. The decision having been made, Superintendent Burton turned over the government property to Yankton superintendent A. W. Leech, and one September morning residents of the agency noticed that for the first time in many years the 7:50 work bell failed to ring. Local newspapers treated this event as evidence of the completion of the government's task with the Santees and complimented the Indians on their signal achievement. But an inspector who visited Santee the next year reported that more rations were issued there than at the Yankton Agency. 23 The agency plant, including the school, was not disposed of for nearly a decade, while the Bureau carried on unsuccessful negotiations with Knox County for the assumption by the county of responsibility for the aged and indigent. Meanwhile the buildings deteriorated and became a resort of bootleggers and a "loafing ground for worthless, shiftless Indians and whites of questionable character," as one Yankton superintendent reported. After several crimes had been committed in the vicinity, the superintendent called for the removal of the subagency that had been retained after 1917, in order to break up "this cesspool of inequity [sic]." The recommendation was carried out in 1926, when the government farmer was transferred to the old Ponca agency west of Niobrara, and the crumbling buildings were sold at auction. Except for the campus of the Santee Normal Training School and the Episcopal mission, the auction left the old Santee Agency a virtual ghost town. 24 ____________________ 22 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1917; H. S. Taylor to Sells, July 26, 1917, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency. 23 Sells to Secretary of Interior Frank K. Lane, August 6, 1917, ibid.; Superintendent's Annual Report, 1918; R. E. L. Newberne, Special Supervisor, to Sells, April 20, 1918, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency; Niobrara Tribune, September 13 and 20, 1917. 24 Burton to Sells, August 27, 1917, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency; Superintendent's Annual Report, 1919; H. W. Sipe to R. E. L. Daniel, March 27, 1925; Daniel to Commissioner Charles H. Burke, April 15, 1924, and March 1, 1926; Burke to Daniel, October 8, 1924; Hearing on matters relating to Santee reservation, Nebraska, before E. B. Merritt, Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs, March 30, 1926, Daniel to Burke, August 24, 1926, and August 11, 1927; H. M. Gillman, Jr., to Burke, June 181927, -305- Withdrawal of government services to the Santees was premature, but the Indians' complaints were dismissed as the natural reluctance of the recipients of unearned benefits to part with them. Superintendent Leech reported in 1921 that the Santees were "living in hopes of the United States placing them back on the ration roll again and supporting them in idleness after they have dissipated their means, which most of them have already done." Because neither Leech nor his successor, R. E. L. Daniel, appears to have had much sympathy for the Indians, one may legitimately question the objectivity of their evaluation of the situation at Santee. 25 The government got an inside look at conditions there from a source other than the superintendent in 1926, and the spectacle was not cheering. After receiving resolutions from the Knox County Board of Commissioners, the Niobrara Commercial Club and the village council, and the Santee Indian Mission, Representative Edgar Howard of Nebraska visited the reservation late that year, in connection with the disposition of the agency buildings, and reported that conditions were "deplorable beyond words." Because of drought, no corn had been harvested in the previous two years, and many of the people were destitute. Howard asked, not for a survey (which had been promised), but for an immediate issue of food. An issue of rations was promptly made, and an investigation was also ordered. District Superintendent ____________________ 1927; Merritt to Secretary of Interior Hubert Work, August 27, 1927, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency; Niobrara Tribune, February 21 and July 3, 1924, November 19, 1925, and November 4, 1926. About the time the agency was discontinued, an attempt was made to promote a land boom in the vicinity. The town of Santee was platted, a bank was organized, and there was even talk of getting a railroad. Not much came of this effort, and when the bank folded in 1926, the high hopes for a sizable town on the site of the old Indian agency collapsed. See the Niobrara Tribune, April 12 and 19, 1917, January 31, 1918, May 8, 1919, July 3, 1924, and July 1, 1926; Word Carrier, LV ( March-April 1926), 3. 25 A. W. Leech to Sells, March 21, 1921, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency. Stephen S. Jones, a Santee, characterized Daniel as "hard-boiled" and charged that he had ordered patents issued to allottees who wished their land to remain in restricted status. He had attempted to discharge the agency physician, Dr. George J. Frazier, also a Santee, but appeals from Frederick B. Riggs, superintendent of Santee Normal Training School, and others frustrated this intention. See Jones to John M. Green, March 6, 1930; Daniel to Burke, April 15, 1924; William Abraham and Joseph Johnson to Burke, January 11, 1926; Gillman to Burke, June 18, 1927, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency; Niobrara Tribune, February 4, 1926. Daniel was not Leech's immediate successor, but the two men who served as Yankton superintendent between these two had very brief terms. J. F. House was placed in charge April 1, 1922, and relieved the following June 30. Harvey K. Meyer was superintendent for a time in 1922 and 1923. -306- O. C. Upchurch of Pierre, accompanied by the agency physician, Dr. George J. Frazier, visited seventeen homes, met with members of the tribal council, and recommended immediate relief for needy families. Upchurch also reported that Daniel had tended to ignore the Indians pleas. "It is claimed," he said, "that he has a brash way of dealing with his charge and in some instances really [has] put a deaf ear to any pleas." Relief funds were made available for use at Santee, but this was a stopgap measure only and did not get at the roots of the problem. 26 The general economic depression that followed the stockmarket crash in 1929 brought the Santee situation to a crisis and precipitated the government back into the Indian business to a degree unanticipated in earlier years. Transfer of the welfare burden to Knox County worked only indifferently in normal times; the Depression found that county, like other units of local government all over the country, utterly incapable of meeting the welfare needs of its white population, let alone the Indians. It not only cut off poor relief, but sent a bill to the Department of the Interior for $9,011.20 for expenditures made for Indians between 1919 and 1932. The government took the position that to honor this requisition would be to set a precedent, and "we would find ourselves deeper in the Indian problem than we have been for many years." 27 On the Great Plains the situation was aggravated by drought. The crop in 1931 was the smallest ever known, everyone was in debt, and the Farmers Union elevator in Niobrara was going out of business because there was no grain to be shipped out and the farmers had no money to pay for grain that might be shipped in. 28 That summer a meeting was held at Santee to ask for government help to the destitute Indians before the arrival of cold weather. Some assistance was rendered by the Red Cross and by government agencies, largely in the form of direct relief. The distinction between wards and nonwards complicated the handling of benefits, since government appropriations were restricted to those in the former status. Like it or not, the government was deeper in the Indian problem than it had been for years. The Meriam Report had pointed out, before the Depression, that people unable to support themselves, whether Indian or non-Indian, were a social responsibility requiring help from some government ____________________ 26 Niobrara Tribune, November 18 and 25 and December 23, 1926. 27 Ibid., January 21 and February 11, 1932 ; Peyton Carter to Commissioner Charles J. Rhoads, February 24, 1933; Rhoads to Representative Edgar Howard, March 30, 1933, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency. 28 Niobrara Tribune, August 6, 1931. -307- agency--federal, state or local--or from private charities. In the Depression only the federal government, which had a long history of responsibility to the Indians, was big enough to cope with the problem. 29 The Santee Sioux accepted the Indian Reorganization Act by a vote of 260 to 27 at an election held November 17, 1934. In a way, it is rather surprising that they voted to accept the act, for they had been proceeding in the opposite direction so long that some major psychological reorientation must have been required of them. Furthermore, their recent experience with the Indian Bureau had not been pleasant. Their dissatisfaction with the successive Yankton superintendents was transferred to a new object when, in 1933, the Yankton Agency was abolished and the Santees were placed under the Winnebago Agency. Complaints against the Winnebago superintendent, Henry M. Tidwell, and members of his staff began reaching Representative Howard, including a telegram from the Knox County Board describing Tidwell as "absolutely incompetent" and demanding immediate relief for fifty destitute families. An investigation by the Indian Bureau substantiated the charges, and shortly thereafter Tidwell was replaced by Gabe E. Parker, a man of Choctaw descent and sympathetic to Collier's policies. 30 Aid to the Santees under the new administration did not, of course, await the appointment of Parker. Federal Emergency Relief Administration funds were made available in 1933, and many of the Indians were set to work building and improving roads that summer. Some were employed in an Indian Emergency Conservation Work project to develop a public campground on the old agency site. The new government farmer, James W. Brewer, encouraged the Indians to grow subsistence gardens, but no attempt was made at that time to get them back into the wheat and cattle business. They were encouraged, however, to devote some of the proceeds from their road work to the purchase of seed. Direct relief in the form of surplus mutton bought from the ____________________ 29 Ibid., August 6, 1931 ; Lewis Meriam et al., The Problem of Indian Administration ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928), pp. 89-93. 30 John D. Forsythe to Howard, March 19, 1934; Clyde W. Flinn to A. L. Hook, June 9, 1937, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency; Gillman to Commissioner John Collier, June 27, 1933, NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency; B. G. Courtright to Louis R. Glavis, Director of Investigations, March 22, 1934; Courtright to Collier, March 23, 1934; Ray Ovid Hall to Mary McGair, April 30, 1934, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency. A petition from Howard Redwing and others to Representative Howard, dated June 26, 1933 (NARS, RG 75, Yankton Agency), said that one family was so near starvation that they used as food some dead and partly decomposed chickens thrown onto a barn roof by whites. -308-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:07:45 GMT -5
Navajos, blankets, shoes, and other clothing was also furnished in 1933 and 1934. When about 130 cattle were issued in October, 1934, the Indians were given complete freedom to keep their cows or butcher them. 31 Important as these various forms of assistance were, they were in the final analysis palliative rather than remedial. The Santees could not achieve self-support by rebuilding roads or constructing a campground, and the land base remaining to them was insufficient for successful farming. The Meriam Report had stressed the Indians' dependence on agriculture in the future as in the past and had proposed methods to retain and make usable the land resources left to them. One of the objectives of the Indian Reorganization Act had been to permit tribes organized under its provisions to undertake land acquisition programs, the land thus acquired to remain in tribal ownership. In response to a circular from the Bureau in June, 1935, the Santee tribal council prepared recommendations for purchases which they felt would give their people an adequate land base. By this time they had only 3,132.29 acres left out of the amount allotted in 1885, plus about 1,800 acres of fee patent land, nearly all of which was encumbered with unpaid taxes and mortgages. The members of the council estimated that only 2,352 acres of this land was suitable for agriculture. The government farmer thought that out of 105 families only 3 had enough land to provide a cash income from farming, and only 15 had enough for subsistence needs; the remaining 87 families were, to all practical purposes, landless. 32 Land purchases made with IRA funds ultimately came to 3,368.54 acres, mostly in 1936 and 1937. This was far less than the Bureau had planned to buy and fell short of the Santees' needs, just as purchases for other tribes failed to meet their needs. Funds dried up with the coming of World War II and the diversion of appropriations to defense purposes. As late as the summer of 1940 the landless Santees were said to be "anxiously awaiting the acquisition of additional areas in order that further benefits to individuals, families, and the tribe might be realized." They have continued to wait ever since. Pending completion of ____________________ 31 Niobrara Tribune, July 20 and September 7 and 14, 1933; February 8, April 19, May 3, June 14, July 5, and October 11, 1934. 32 Meriam, The Problem of Indian Administration, p. 488; James W. Brewer to Gabe E. Parker, August 3, 1935; Resolution to Commissioner of Indian Affairs from David Frazier and Ulysses Redowl, September 24, 1936; Hook to J. M. Stewart, Director of Lands, March 24,1937, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency. -309- expected purchases, some twenty-five families were set up on leased, white-owned lands and furnished with livestock and farm equipment. Although they were said to be doing well in 1937, rentals on the land were taking a third of the profits. 33 Besides the purchase of land, several other measures were taken to improve the condition of the Santee Sioux. The Indian Reorganization Act had provided for a sum of $10,000,000 to be used for reimbursable loans to tribal groups. The principle of reimbursable loans was not new, but previous experience with it had been discouraging. More intelligently managed, it proved much more successful in the 1930's, although at Santee as elsewhere the amount of money available was never enough for the needs of the tribe. Rehabilitation funds were also obtained for construction of houses and farm buildings, a project that did much to improve living conditions among those families that were able to benefit. In line with the Collier administration's emphasis on encouraging community spirit, a "community self-help building" was completed in 1937, containing a large room with a capacity of nearly two hundred, a kitchen at the rear, and smaller rooms for sewing projects, committee meetings, or a tribal office; in a wing were spaces for weaving and other arts and crafts activities and a carpentry shop. 34 It is important to note that in all those projects the Indians themselves were consulted and did much of the planning. Though opposed to the withdrawal of government supervision, Commissioner Collier and his allies had no brief for paternalism. Everything was done to encourage the Indians to take the initiative, apparently with good results, for many of the ideas discussed by Indian Bureau officials came originally from the Indians themselves. Superintendent Parker reported after one meeting at Santee, concerned with a plan for subsistence garden plots for the old and needy: "It would do your heart good, as it certainly did mine, yesterday afternoon to sit through long hours of serious expectant ____________________ 33 82nd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2503, p. 62; Flinn to Hook, June 6, 1937; Fred H. Daiker to Thomas H. Kitto and David June 5 1940 Frazier , NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency. 34 Parker to Collier, February 24, 1936; Isaac Redowl to Parker, August 18, 1938; David Frazier et al., to Collier, October 15, 1936; Xavier Vigeant to William Whipple, December 22, 1938; Vigeant to Ralph Bristol, January 14, 1939; Samuel H. Thompson, Supervisor of Indian Education, to Collier, December 2, 1938, ibid.; Niobrara Tribune, July 2, 1936, and October 7 and 14, 1937. The community building was burned in the spring of 1965, after serving the Santee tribe more than twenty-seven years. -310- and profoundly appreciative attitudes and discussions of the members of the Santee Sioux Tribal Council." 35 The constitution and bylaws drawn up after acceptance of the IRA were designed to reflect the peculiar status of the Santees as Indians in an advanced stage of acculturation. For example, whereas many tribal constitutions gave the tribe jurisdiction over marriage and divorce practices, such a provision was omitted from the Santee constitution because these Indians "wanted to move in the direction of comprehensive State control over law and order and domestic relations rather than in the direction of tribal regulation of Indian custom marriages and Indian conduct." 36 After being approved by the Department of the Interior, the constitution and bylaws were accepted by the tribe, 28460, on February 29, 1936. The council elected that year proved a more effective instrument of community policy than the old rubber-stamp body that had been instituted late in the nineteenth century and had existed nominally since then. 37 Education was a central concern of the Collier administration, though at Santee it was distinctly subordinate, as a government activity, to other objectives, inasmuch as the reservation had long been incorporated into the county public school system. A specialist in Indian education visited six one-room schools and one two-room school in 1935 and found conditions markedly better than a similar tour of inspection nineteen years earlier had found them. Out of a total enrollment of 194 in those schools, 98 of the children were Indian. Their tuition was paid by the government. The rates varied from twenty-five to thirty cents a day at the smaller schools, and was forty cents at the two-room school, that at Santee village, where a lunch of soup, sandwiches, meat, fruit, doughnuts, and cocoa was served. Ten of the nineteen pupils there were Indians, all of whom attended regularly except for four from one family. The teachers all reported that the Indians did as well as the white children. In 1938 the same specialist found a great increase in enrollment, and a higher proportion of absenteeism among whites than among Indians. 38 ____________________ 35 Parker to Collier, June 24, 1937, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency. 36 Charlotte T. Westwood to Daiker, November 10, 1937, ibid. 37 Niobrara Tribune, March 12, 1936. Some of the superintendents considered the old council more of a nuisance than an aid to them. See Superintendent's Annual Report, 1910, NARS, RG 75, Santee Agency. 38 S. H. Thompson to Collier, January 29, 1935, and December 2, 1938, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency. -311- In the middle 1930's the Santee Normal Training School was still functioning, under the direction of Rudolph Hertz, who had succeeded Frederick B. Riggs, son of Alfred L. Riggs, in 1933. Its enrollment was down to seventy-four boarding pupils and seven day pupils, but it employed twenty people, including six teachers, all with college degrees. In the spring of 1936 it ceased its long service to Indian young people and was transformed the following autumn into an institution for adult education, designed chiefly to provide refresher courses to families engaged in missionary work. Its career in this capacity was brief, however, and in 1938 the American Missionary Association disposed of several of the buildings, which were promptly wrecked for the lumber. The tribal council leased the land and some of the remaining buildings for use as living quarters for families who had not been benefited by the housing program. 39 It would be pleasant to conclude this account of the Santee Reservation by reporting that the aims of the Collier administration were all achieved and the Indians placed in a position of economic security. Unfortunately, such was not the case. Just as the nation as a whole recovered very slowly from the effects of the Depression, so the Santees at the end of the 1930's were still far from self-sufficiency. Superintendent Parker was obliged to report in 1940 that the condition of all the Nebraska Indian groups was "one of almost total dependence upon Federal Government for work and direct relief; Agency allotments and WPA, Social Security, ADC, Old Age Assistance, NYA, and the like. . . ." He attributed the situation to more than ten years of drought and grasshopper infestations, livestock diseases, and lack of available employment for Indians off the reservation. 40 During World War II the situation was somewhat alleviated because of the availability of work in war plants and the temporary employment of many men in the armed services. judging from the census figures since 1940, many of the Santees who left the reservation during and after the war never returned. Between 1940 and 1960 there was a 65 per cent loss in the Indian population of the five townships that comprised the old Santee Reservation, as contrasted to a 13 per cent increase ____________________ 39 S. H. Thompson to Collier, January 29, 1935; lease dated May 1, 1939, between Board of Home Missions of the Congregational and Christian Churches and the Santee Tribe of Nebraska, ibid.; Niobrara Tribune, May 14, 1936, December 10, 1936, and June 30 and November 10, 1938. 40 Parker to Collier, August 13, 1940, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency. -312- between 1930 and 1940. 41 By 1960 there were only 317 Santees still living in the reservation area. In general and with many exceptions, it has been the most industrious and best-qualified who have left, with the result that the Indian Bureau and local agencies have continued to face many problems among those who have stayed behind. One may wonder why the Nebraska reservation, alone among those occupied by the Santee Sioux, has suffered so extreme a decline in its resident population. Although no definitive answer can be given, certain factors, cultural and geographical, may go far toward accounting for the phenomenon. Cultural variations probably affect the differential rates of population increase or decline on the respective reservations. The people at Sisseton and Devils Lake are less acculturated than those at the other reservations and hence less likely to leave home and try their wings in the white-dominated society of the cities. The more highly acculturated people at Flandreau and the Minnesota colonies have more employment opportunities in the reservation area or within commuting distance than do those on the Santee Reservation. Santee is the only Santee Indian community that does not have a fair-sized town within reasonable commuting distance. Niobrara, the only nearby town, had a population of 736 in the 1960 census, as contrasted to 3,218 for Sisseton, South Dakota (in addition to Watertown [14,077] and others near the Sisseton Reservation); 2,129 for Flandreau, South Dakota, with its Indian school employing a sizable staff; 6,299 for Devils Lake, North Dakota; 2,728 for Granite Falls, Minnesota; 4,285 for Redwood Falls, Minnesota; and 10,528 for Red Wing, Minnesota. 42 ____________________ 41 United States Census, 1930, Population, Vol. III, Pt. 2, p. 117; 1940, Vol. II, Pt. 4, p. 681; 1960, Pt. 298, pp. 60-61. The decennial census figures cannot be taken as entirely reliable. Only those who identify themselves as Indians are so classified, and it is possible that part of the increase in the 1930's reflects a greater willingness by some individuals to be regarded as Indians then. The figures given here are taken from the column headed "other," i.e., other than white or Negro. 42 As will be noted in Chapter 17, the Flandreau people have in fact abandoned their "reservation" and are living in the town. The marked population growth noted among most of the Santee Sioux groups in the United States has been paralleled by an even more spectacular increase among the descendants of the Santees who fled into British territory after the Uprising of 1862. The total population of the seven reserves in Manitoba and Saskatchewan occupied by those people grew from 830 in 1904 to 1,922 in 1964. See Dominion of Canada, Annual Report of the Department of Indian Affairs, 1904, Pt. II, pp. 76-79; and Traditional Linguistic and Cultural Affiliations of Canadian Indian Bands ( Ottawa: Indian Affairs Branch, Department of Citizenship and Immigration, 1964), pp. 25, 26, 27, 28. -313- Norfolk, Nebraska, with more than 13,000 people and a number of industries, is over seventy-five miles away--too far for convenient commuting but not too far to draw people permanently. Another factor is that conditions for successful agriculture are probably poorer at Santee than at any of the other locations. Though few Indians on any of the reservations do much farming, those at Santee may be indirectly affected in that they have a harder time making a living by leasing than the other groups do. At the same time that the reservation population was declining, the alienation of allotted land, halted during the 1930's, was resumed. Although the tribal land purchased with IRA funds has remained intact, the amount of allotted land dropped from 3,252 acres in 1936 to 3,012 in 1952 and to 2,563 in 1960. In the next five years the acreage held almost steady. 43 The land remaining in Indian possession is widely scattered over the old reservation area, though there is some concentration at Santee village and along the streams. Because the topography is sharply dissected by ravines and lightly timbered with deciduous trees and brush, the acreage left to the Indians is not well suited to agriculture, except for occasional patches of bottomland. The scattered tracts of upland prairie are not occupied by the Indians, but are leased to white operators. Even here the land is rolling; and the roads, built on section lines, dip and rise with such frequency as to give the motorist a feeling of riding a roller coaster. Much of the old reservation, both Indian-owned and white-owned, is used only for grazing or is simply wasteland. In the later 1940's and early 1950's, when there was much talk about "turning the Indians loose," it was inevitable that the Santee Sioux should be caught up in the controversy. Although they do not seem to have been among those most seriously considered for termination, the possibility was discussed. As on other reservations, there have been Indians at Santee who strongly favored such a move. They were usually either people who had themselves adapted successfully to white society and thought their tribesmen should do likewise, or people at the opposite extreme who resented the supervision of the Indian Bureau and wanted to be free to dispose of their land and spend the proceeds. ____________________ 43 Resolution to Commissioner, September 24, 1936, NARS, RG 75, Winnebago Agency; 82nd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2503, p. 70; United States Department of Interior, Reports, September 1960, United States Indian Population and Land: 1960, p. 16; interviews, July 9, 1962, with Mr. Llewellyn Kingsley, and July 20, 1965, with Mr. Alfred Dubray, successive superintendents, Winnebago Agency, Winnebago, Nebraska. -314- An early and unsuccessful move in the direction of termination was made in 1941, when several members of the tribal council went to Washington to seek "full citizenship" for the Santees. Again in 1948 the Niobrara Tribune carried a bitter attack on the Indian Bureau for not having brought the Indians out of poverty. Despite the "enormous salaries dished out to its many millions of employees," there were still Indians living in poverty. Perhaps, suggested the writer, the Indian Service was able to help the Indians only once every fifteen years. In any case, he concluded, "It is about time that an investigation be made but very secretly in order that not one stone shall be left unturned." 44 The Santees were generally opposed to termination, however, and their opposition, coupled with their poor economic status, kept the proposal from going beyond the talking stage when it was revived in the 1950's. The condition of the Santees in the mid- 1960's remains depressed in comparison with that of the non-Indian population in the same region. Few are trying to farm the small tracts they have left, and it is doubtful that those farms could be made economically productive, even if the needed capital were available. In Knox County, as elsewhere on the Great Plains, there has been a general decline in the rural population in the past few decades. Between 1930 and 1940, when the Indian population of the reservation area was increasing, the total reservation population declined by 23 per cent. And between 1940 and 1960, when the Indian population declined 65 per cent, the total population dropped by more than 73 per cent. 45 It may be presumed that where white farmers are unable to make a satisfactory living, Indians, with fewer advantages and more handicaps, will also be unable to do so. Though there has been talk of starting a concrete plant on the reservation, no capital for the purpose has been made available. The area appears to have no other natural resources, except for the recreational potential of Lewis and Clark Lake, the reservoir created by the Gavins Point Dam. Most of the shoreline is owned by the Army Corps of Engineers or by the state, however, and the Santee tribe is not in a position to profit, except indirectly, from the tourist trade. 46 ____________________ 44 83rd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2680, pp. 95-96, 483; Niobrara Tribune, February 6, 1941, and January 22, 1948. House Report 2680, containing information submitted by field officers of the Bureau in 1953, stated that except for the tribal lands and government, the Santees had "practically ceased to exist as a tribe" and recommended termination in a period not to exceed fifteen years. 45 See decennial census references in Note 41. 46 Interview with Mr. Dubray, July 20, 1965. The Santee tribe requested $10,000 for the development of recreational facilities, but according to a Bureau official, "the entire sum was dissipated to minor stands and service facilities located near the lake -315- Younger people continue to leave the area for urban centers, ranging from small nearby cities like Norfolk to distant metropolises like Los Angeles. Some of them have found a satisfactory place in American life; others may only have exchanged rural poverty for urban poverty. The resident population at Santee has continued to decline in recent years, dropping from 317 in 1960 to 299 in 1962, and it includes a high proportion of the elderly and unemployable. 47 In this respect, as in others, Santee resembles many other Indian reservations in the country. If the Santees are no worse off economically than most other Indians, this fact is small comfort to them--and slight balm to the conscience of the white man. ____________________ with unrealistic salary payments." See R. E. Miller, Acting Area Director, to Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs, July 18, 1961, Flandreau School Agency; correspondence in possession of Bureau of Indian Affairs Central Office, Washington, D.C. 47 United States Indian Population and Land: 960, p. 16; interview with Mr. Kingsley, July 9, 1962. -316-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:08:17 GMT -5
CHAPTER 16 The Twentieth Century: Sisseton and Devils Lake THE PRINCIPAL THEMES on the Sisseton and Devils Lake reservations during the first thirty years of this century were the rapid attrition of the Indians' land base, the disappearance of most of the externals of their aboriginal culture, and the gradual reduction of government services and supervision. Although these processes went on everywhere on allotted reservations, the pattern varied from one to another, depending on the degree of acculturation achieved before 1900, the nature and quality of the land on each reservation, the density of white settlement around and among the Indians, and the personalities of the various men who represented the Indian Bureau at each agency. Like the Santees, the Sissetons were vitally affected by two pieces of legislation passed in the first decade of the century: a provision in the Indian appropriations act of 1902 permitting the sale of inherited lands, and the Burke Act of 1906 authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to issue patents to any Indian thought competent to handle his own affairs. The sale of inherited lands began at once, and by the summer of 1903 more than two hundred tracts had been advertised and most of them sold. So prodigal were the Indians with the money received that in 1905 the Indian Office issued an order requiring that all funds -317- received from the sale of lands be deposited in banks and all checks on those deposits be approved by the agent. Although this order caused sales to fall off sharply for a few years, the total deposits by 1910 amounted to $271,441, which, at the average price of $14 per acre realized on the early sales, represented nearly), 20,000 acres. 1 In the next decade annual sales rose once more. In 1911 alone, nearly 5,000 acres of inherited lands were sold, together with more than 3,500 acres of land belonging to Indians judged " non-competent" by the criteria mentioned earlier (see p. 298 ). For the next several years it was unusual when sales from these two sources totaled less than 3,000 acres.2 Still, the Indians had started out with 300,000 acres; at that rate it would take nearly a century for all the lands to be lost. The Burke Act provided another means by which their lands might be diverted into the hands of the eagerly waiting white men. Between the passage of the act in May, 1906, and September 1, 1907, thirty-one applications for patents had been favorably acted upon, and the only reason there were not more was that the Sisseton agent and his clerks were so weighted down with paper work connected with farming and grazing leases and the sales of inherited and non-competent lands that they were unable to process the applications as fast as they were presented. This bottleneck was to some degree relieved in the following years. In 1911, for example, forty patents were issued, for a total of more than 3,500 acres. The next year the number was down, however, and it continued to decrease in subsequent years, mainly because the superintendents saw the iniquitous effects of issuing patents and did what they could to discourage it. As early as 1910, Superintendent S. E. Allen reported that 90 per cent of the fee patent land had been sold. 3 Despite such observations by men in a position to know the situation, the process of granting patents and selling inherited lands continued. In 1917, Commissioner Sells attempted to "liberalize" the issuance of patents by ordering them given to Indians regardless of the individual's wishes. He was frustrated in this policy, but not before more land had ____________________ 1 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1903, p. 321; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXXII, 275; XXXIV, 182. 2 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1904, p. 338; 1905, pp. 279, 347; 1907, p. 73; Superintendent Annual Reports, 1910, 1911, and 1912, NARS, RG 75, Sisseton Agency. 3 Ibid., 1907, p. 63; Superintendent Annual Reports, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, NARS, RG 75, Sisseton Agency. -318- been disposed of. 4 High land prices during World War I led to a renewal of large sales of inherited lands. An exceptionally large sale in 1919 made it possible to equip many of the Sissetons with good houses and outbuildings, but this ready money, together with high wages during the war, caused them to neglect their farming, so that when land prices fell and the agricultural depression of the 1920's settled over the Middle West, they were in a poorer position than ever and more dependent on a government less willing to help them. 5 As at Santee, of course, much of the land remaining in Indian hands was not actually used by them. Leasing began here early and soon developed into the principal source of regular income for a large proportion of the landowners. The Indians' logic was quite understandable. In a country where crop failure was a frequent occurrence, they preferred the security of a fixed, if small, payment to the risk of losing everything in a year of drought or grasshopper infestation. Leases negotiated through the agent brought them from twenty-five or forty cents an acre for grazing land to a dollar an acre for broken farm land. Together with what they raised in subsistence gardens or earned by day labor, it was enough to keep them alive, though not enough to enable them to live in anything approaching comfort. 6 Although a later superintendent thought the Indians made more off their lands by leasing than they could by farming, the effort to make farmers out of them did not cease during this period. Some cheerful statistics were provided by the superintendent in 1910, but by 1929 it was said that only about twenty-six Indians were really farming like white men; most of the rest had nothing but gardens and a few chickens. 7 This decline--and one does not have to take the earlier figures literally to accept the fact of a decline--occurred in spite of strenuous efforts by the government and its local representatives to get the Sissetons on their feet. The number of supervisory personnel was increased, a reimbursable loan plan was instituted, a five-year plan was inaugurated in the early 1920's, and stock was issued to Indian farmers. None of these experiments seems to have accomplished much, partly because of drought and economic depression, partly because the Indians did not ____________________ 4 Harold E. Fey and D'Arcy McNickle, Indians and Other Americans ( New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), p. 81. 5 Superintendent Annual Reports, 1922 and 1923, NARS, RG 75, Sisseton Agency. 6 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1903, p. 231; 1904, p. 338. 7 Superintendent Annual Reports, 1910, 1921, and 1929, NARS, RG 75, Sisseton Agency. -319- pay back the loans, partly because the government farmers were not retained. Other, more or less peripheral, measures to encourage farming among the Indians included the initiation of a reservation fair in 1911 and the organization of farmers' clubs in the 1920's. 8 Besides the climatic and economic obstacles to successful farming, the superintendents at Sisseton complained that their efforts were impeded by certain characteristics of the Indians, presumably survivals of the aboriginal culture. They objected to the persistence of the old dances, for the same reasons that their counterparts at Santee did, and they attempted, with partial success, to suppress them. Some of the superintendents thought that the Sisseton's collective ethical system militated against their success as farmers in an individualistic economy. So long as the successful ones were obliged to share the proceeds of their efforts with the rest of the tribe, there was little hope of progress, thought one. Some of the Indians were prodigal with what they raised. In spite of the superintendent's urging to save seed each year, they would sell the whole crop and then appear at the agency office the next spring asking for seed wheat, to be paid for out of the money on deposit there from land sales. Such a request placed the superintendent in an awkward position. Although he thought they should be taught to exercise more foresight, he also knew that if he refused to allow them to buy seed, they would not farm at all. 9 Not all of the habits and practices that prevented the Sissetons from becoming good farmers were distinctively Indian, however. Superintendent E. D. Mossman meant no compliment when he said that the Indians cared for their farm machinery the same as white men in that region, for he added that they let it stand out in all weather. "They have an idea that as soon as a mower has two or three guards broken, and sickle rusts," he remarked, "that instead of spending $5.00 for a new sickle or guards, they should purchase a new mower." 10 Nor was the drinking done by the Indians noticeably worse than that among white men. Since it was more difficult for them to obtain liquor, they resorted to some expedients that whites did not discover until prohibition. As early as 1914 they were buying Peruna and other patent medicines with a high alcohol content, as well as lemon and other extracts. Prohibition brought stills, mostly operated by white men who ____________________ 10 Ibid., 1915. 8 Ibid., 1910, 1911, 1913, 1915, 1916, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928, and 1929. 9 Ibid., 1915, 1917, 1918, and 1929. -320- sold to Indians quite as freely as to others. By that time the Indians (and whites) were drinking canned heat, body rub, hair tonic, and anything else that contained alcohol or a passable substitute. A favorite practice was to drive to a garage, have the car radiator filled with denatured alcohol, then drive home and drain the radiator. One superintendent wrote that in this way the Indians had "two and one-half gallons of intoxicant that will keep the family drunk for a week for less than $3.00." 11 Except for their willingness to sell moonshine to the Indians, lease their lands (illegally if possible), and buy up the farms of those who had been issued patents, the white people on and around the Sisseton Reservation were not inclined to have much to do with their Indian neighbors. Although the Indians were permitted to vote and to sit on juries, many whites were prejudiced against them as a race because of the laziness and shiftlessness of a few. As one superintendent remarked, "Many persons fail to observe the industrious Indian working in his field, but always see and remember the Indian loafing on the street corner or drunk in the ditch." 12 Here as elsewhere the tax-exempt status of Indian land was a source of resentment on the part of the white community, evidenced by the reluctance of local officials to prosecute cases involving crimes by or against Indians and also by their opposition to admitting Indian children into district schools. The fact that the Indians paid property and poll taxes did not impress their white neighbors, who were opposed to much intermingling of the races on other grounds. 13 The closing of the boarding school in 1919 and the removal of the agency into the town of Sisseton in 1923 conspired to encourage more contacts between Indians and whites. Yet the separation continued, despite the efforts of at least one superintendent to make local whites aware that the Indian was not a vanishing race but was "to live with the white man for all time to come. . . ." 14 To assign the blame for this de facto segregation exclusively to the white population would be to oversimplify the situation. No doubt there was discrimination on the part of the whites, as when the barbers in Browns Valley refused to shave Indians, but it does not wholly account for the continued separation of the races in a locality where they were geographically intermingled and where the Indians necessarily ____________________ 11 Ibid., 1914, 1915, 1917, 1923, 1924, and 1926. 12 Ibid., 1910 and 1913. 13 Ibid., 1915, 1917, and 1918. 14 Ibid., 1919, 1920, 1923, 1925, and 1926. -321- came into frequent contact with white businessmen. The Indians had their own churches and their own social and other organizations, and they were to a considerable extent indifferent to association with the whites. Those who did associate freely were mostly mixed-bloods of predominantly white ancestry. The Dakota language continued to be used as the daily medium of conversation, and the extreme irregularity of attendance at any school meant that as late as 1915 many young people were unable to speak English. When the attempt to Christianize the Indians was in full swing, one of the arguments was that a common religion would forge a bond between red man and white. Yet as religion manifested itself at Sisseton, the Christian churches contributed to the separation of the races. In 1911 all but one of the twelve churches on the reservation were served by native clergymen, who used the Dakota tongue almost exclusively. Their associations with churches off the reservation were confined largely to other native congregations. 15 Although the Indians remained in most cases a race apart, it cannot be said that they retained much of their aboriginal culture into the twentieth century, except for the Dakota language. Aside from a little beadwork, the superintendent in 1910 could report no native arts and crafts. The old dances, as we have seen, became less frequent as the years passed. They had long since lost their religious significance and had become merely a form of entertainment. Christian church organizations had usurped their former position, and most of the social activity on the reservation was connected with the churches and guild halls in the various neighborhoods. Something of the old collectivism may have persisted within these neighborhood groups, but any sense of tribal unity was dying out during this period. After a spell of factional dissension, the tribal council was voted out of existence in 1911. In the early 1920's a committee was appointed to look after the tribe's pending ____________________ 15 Ibid., 1911, 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1922. The denominational composition changed gradually after the Presbyterian monopoly was broken. By 1911 four of the twelve churches were Episcopal, and one was Catholic. One superintendent's observation in 1915 that the Presbyterians were less effective as missionaries than the other groups would seem to be borne out by the fact that by the middle of the century about 46 per cent of the Sissetons were Episcopalians, as against nearly 28 per cent Catholics and less than 25 per cent Presbyterians. A handful belonged to millennialist or pentecostal groups. Until 1912, however, the Presbyterians maintained the Good Will mission school, which supplemented the work of the government boarding school. See Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1911 and 1912, in ibid.; 83rd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2680, p. 147. The percentages are based on 1,813 Indians and do not include the entire reservation population. -322-
Bishop Whipple School, Lower Sioux Indian Community (Birch Coulee), built in 1891. Photograph taken in 1961
Sioux family and tipi, Prairie Island, 1902
Traders' stores, with unused agency building between them, Santee Agency, 1912
Santee Sioux dancers, Santee Agency, 1918
Dance at the dedication of the Lower Sioux community building, 1938
Old agency day school and community building, Sisseton Reservation. Photograph taken in 1965
Encampment on the Big Sioux River at the Flandreau "Siouxtennial," 1962
Indian farm and typical Devils Lake Reservation landscape. PhotoGraph taken in 1965
claims, but its powers were severely limited. In short, the Sisseton Sioux were neither a tribe nor a people, but merely an aggregation of families and individuals scattered over an expanse of country, separated from one another by members of a culture still alien to many of them, a culture which did not fully accept them and which many of them did not wish to participate in. 16 Events on the Devils Lake Reservation followed much the same course as at Sisseton during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Perhaps the most significant difference was that the "surplus" lands left after allotment were not disposed of until 1904, and the Indians enjoyed the benefits from the sale of the lands for the next ten years. James McLaughlin, serving as a special agent of the Indian Office, drew up an agreement in November, 1901, by the terms of which the Indians agreed to cede about 100,000 acres. The original agreement, providing that they should be paid a flat sum of $345,000, was amended by Congress so that the total amount paid would be determined by the price at which the lands were sold. In this form the agreement was ratified on April 27, 1904, and the greater part of the cession was opened to settlement the next September. 17 The price initially asked was $4.5 an acre, but the lands left unsold by 1907, mostly hilly and stony or else in small tracts, were made available at $2.50 an acre. Although the lands did not sell rapidly, their gradual sale provided a regular income for the Indians, since the proceeds were distributed in per capita payments. The last payments were made in 1914, after which the Devils Lake Indians were in much the same position financially as those at Sisseton. 18 Although beginning later, the sale of inherited land and the issuance of patents went on at Devils Lake as at Sisseton. Because of an unusually high mortality rate among allottees, land sales were proportionately more extensive than at Sisseton or Santee. In 1906, for example, ____________________ 16 Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1910, 1911, and 1923, NARS, RG 75, Sisseton Agency. 17 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 190 2, p. 263; 1904, p. 4; 1905, p. 279; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXXIII, 319-324. Available acreage figures are not consistent. The Annual Report for 1901 gives the "surplus" lands as 98,224 acres, whereas that for 1902 gives the figure as 110,576 acres. In 1904 it was listed as 104,000 acres. 18 Charles J. Kappler, comp. and ed., Indian Affairs, Laws and Treaties, I ( Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), 597-598; U.S. Statutes at Large, XXXIII, 2368-2372; XXXV, 2143; Superintendent's Annual Report, 1914, NARS, RG 75, Fort Totten Agency. -323- $51,212.53 was received from the sale of inherited lands, and the next year 3,253.61 acres went for $33,944.10. In 1912, $64,743.23 was realized from the sale of such lands, and three years later the superintendent reported, jubilantly, that the sale just completed had been the best in several years. 19 Clearly the process could not go on for many more years without leading to almost total loss of the Indians' land. Fortunately, by 1917 the agency was in the charge of a superintendent, Samual A. M. Young, who realized what was happening. "Extensive land sales help to give the appearance of prosperity," he wrote, "while an analysis of the situation shows that capital is daily being used up and not replaced." He believed that the inevitable end would be financial ruin and a return to the ration system. He asserted his intention of holding the line on future land sales, saying, "It is much easier to retain lands than it is to retain funds after they are placed to the credit of the Indian." 20 The issuance of patents seems at first not to have led to the sale of lands, but by 1912 the superintendent had to admit that some of the Indians who had been given patents were selling out. After the restrictions on the allotments at Devils Lake expired in 1918, the period of' inalienability was extended another ten years. Superintendent Young strongly recommended this action and even went so far as to utter heresy: "I am convinced that the Dawes Act and the Burke Act, held as being so great a boon to the Indians, have been very baneful in their effects." 21 Unfortunately, his views were not shared by, some of his successors. W. R. Beyer, who was superintendent in 1925, expressed the view that every young, able-bodied Indian who spoke English should be given a patent and cut off from government supervision. 22 The issuance of patents, together with the sale of inherited lands, went on throughout the 1920's and virtually tip to the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934. The Indians at Devils Lake were encouraged to farm for themselves by means of the same devices employed at Sisseton, and with no more success. Several years of drought, the temptation to lease lands, dwindling government assistance, and, after 1914, a lack of capital all con- ____________________ 19 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1901, p. 297; 1904. p. 267, 1906, p. 293; 1907. p. 73; Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1912 and 1915, NARS, RG 75, Fort Totten Agency. 20 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1917, NARS, RG 75, Fort Totten Agency. 21 Ibid., 1910, 1912, 1918. 22 Ibid., 1925. -324- tributed to the failure of this effort. For a time the agents tried to induce the Indians to make flax their principal crop, in imitation of the surrounding white farmers, but this venture into a one-crop economy failed because of soil exhaustion and competition from better-equipped white men. The reimbursable loan plan was tried at Devils Lake, first in 1915, when $8,000 was used for the purchase of seed grains, and then revived in the later 1920's as a means of supplying the Indians with cows and sheep. By that time, however, drought had been a regular visitor too long for any half-measures to accomplish much toward the Indians' rehabilitation. 23 Besides their chronic poverty--which was only increased during World War I as a result of the high cost of living--the Devils Lake Indians suffered more from disease than the Sisseton group. F. O. Getchell, their agent in 1901, attributed their susceptibility to pulmonary diseases to the shift from a healthy outdoor life to one spent largely indoors, in unventilated and overheated cabins. Most continued to live in log houses throughout the early 1900's, supplemented by tipis in the summer. The health situation was somewhat alleviated by the construction of a hospital in 1915, but many Indians were reluctant to use it. In World War I a dozen or more tried to volunteer but were rejected because of tuberculosis, trachoma, or other diseases. The Indians' poor health was given as one reason the whites were unwilling to send their children to the same schools as the Indian children. 24 Educationally, the Devils Lake reservation was better supplied than Sisseton. Although as late as 1921 only six children were in public schools, the Fort Totten Boarding School, including the Grey Nuns' department, provided facilities for most of the children, though under appallingly crowded conditions. In 1916 they were said to be crowded twelve to eighteen in a room, with just enough room between the beds for a small child to walk. Supervisor Otis B. Goodall remarked that "the condition of the air when they arise in the morning is easier imagined than described." Infection traveled swiftly under such conditions, especially with only six bathtubs for 120 boys and one roller towel serving for a week. 25 ____________________ 23 Ibid., 1910, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1904, p. 268. 24 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1901, p. 298; 1904, p. 268; Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1915 and 1918, NARS, RG 75, Fort Totten Agency. 25 Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1916 and 1925, NARS, RG 75, Fort Totten Agency. -325-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:09:19 GMT -5
The boarding school proper, located at the old military post, enrolled mostly children from other reservations, while the Grey Nuns' school accommodated the girls and younger boys from Devils Lake. A day school was opened in 1902 for the older boys, but the bonded superintendent who succeeded Agent Getchell two years later thought it unnecessary and apparently did away with it. The anomaly of a government school in which all but two of the employees were nuns struck one or two of the superintendents, and in about 1920 government support was withdrawn from the Grey Nuns'school, which thereafter was supported entirely by the Catholic Church. It burned late in 1926, and was rebuilt and reopened in 1929 as the Mission School of the Little Flower. By that time nearly forty children, mostly mixed-bloods whose parents lived on fee patent land, were enrolled in the public schools. 26 More of the old culture persisted at Devils Lake than at Sisseton. Besides the survival of the Dakota language, there were certain institutions such as a police force and a court of Indian offenses that tended to keep the Indians separate from the white community. In time the tribal court came to be used chiefly as a means of conciliation in family and neighborhood disputes, effective only if all parties accepted its nonmandatory decisions. Although as early as 1901 the Episcopal missionary was encouraging the Indians to take their cases to the local courts, the state and county authorities showed the same reluctance to act that we have noted at Sisseton. This refusal left a gap in the law-and-order system on the reservation, which was partly filled in 1920 when a federal judge in Fargo ruled that the state had jurisdiction in the case of the murder of one Indian by another. When the superintendent tried in 1920 to revive the institutions of the tribal judge and police force, outside groups threatened to bring suit against him on grounds that such a judge was illegal, and he abandoned the effort. 27 The survival of authentic aboriginal culture was much less in evidence than this persistence of group identity. Nevertheless, the old dances continued. Each of the four districts into which the reservation was divided had its own dance hall, where the ceremonies were carried on, mainly by older members of the tribe. Superintendent Young saw no harm in the dances and thought that any suppression would produce ____________________ 26 Ibid., 1918, 1927, and 1930; Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1903, p. 231; 1904, p.267; 1905, p. 280. 27 Com. of Indian Affairs, Annual Report, 1901, pp. 297-298; 1903, p. 230; Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1920 and 1929, NARS, RG 75, Fort Totten Agency. -326- resentment and thereby frustrate his exercise of a beneficial influence in other respects. Whatever other survivals of the old culture there were did not come to the notice of the agents and superintendents. One official reported in 1911 that, although beadwork and basketry were taught at the school, there were no native industries left among the Indians. 28 The Sioux of the Sisseton and Devils Lake reservations had reached approximately the same point by the end of the 1920's. As on the other reservations, the Depression revealed their true condition, which had been partially concealed behind a superficial appearance of progress. There was much tentative groping for a solution to the problem by all who were concerned in the matter. On the Sisseton Reservation it took the form of suggestions for meeting the heirship situation, which by the early 1930's had become so serious that at least 25,000 acres of land lay idle because potential lessees were unwilling to hunt up the scattered heirs whose signatures were needed on leases. With the land base down to less than 120,000 acres and the population up to 2,700, something had to be done, and soon. One superintendent suggested in 1932 that all inherited land be bought up by the government and divided into forty-acre tracts to be used as subsistence farms by young Indians who had no allotments of their own. If this was impossible, the only alternative he could offer was to sell all the inherited lands and close the agency. 29 The heirship problem was to become worse before any real attempt was made to improve it; and, pending basic reforms, there were other needs that had to be met. As at Santee, the first step was to provide jobs, through the various public works agencies, for Indians who would otherwise have required direct relief. Men were employed in building roads, repairing houses, clearing out and thinning woodlands to reduce the fire danger, and performing other tasks of a useful though not essential nature. Fred A. Baker, who became superintendent in 1933, regretted that the $92,000 used for this purpose by June 30, 1934, had not been expended for subsistence homesteads. As it was, he felt that the Indians were not really any better off than they had been before, whereas if they had been placed on subsistence homesteads they would ____________________ 28 Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1911 and 1917, NARS, RG 75, Fort Totten Agency. 29 Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1931 and 1932; Fred A. Baker to John Collier, February 12, 1934, NARS, RG 75, Sisseton Agency. Baker gives the figure of 68,000 acres lying idle. -
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:09:59 GMT -5
327- have received the same amount of employment and would have been "better fitted to make their way in life." 30 Baker was convinced that the Indians' future was bound up with the reservation and that efforts to aid them should be concentrated on helping them to become self-sustaining on the land they had left. He thought that if the idle land and that leased to whites could made available for use by the landless members of the tribe, there would be enough to go around without substantial additional purchases. To accomplish this, the government would have to provide a revolving reimbursable fund from which the lands could be purchased from the heirs. When his proposal was first broached to the Indians in February, 1934, at a council called to discuss the Collier administration's plans for Indian selfgovernment, it received a favorable vote of 81 to 45. But when they voted on acceptance of the Indian Reorganization Act, the result was a decisive rejection of the central feature of the Collier policy. 31 With the defeat of the IRA, Baker's plans for land purchases went out the window, and with them went the major hope for rehabilitating the Sisseton people. Why did the Sissetons reject the IRA? Baker provided the answer, or a good part of it, in the text of a proposal for a rehabilitation program prepared some time before the vote. Remarking that little sense of tribal unity survived among the Sissetons, he pointed out that individualism had become predominant, and "collective effort in a cooperative way has found but little place in the life of the Indians of this reservation." According to Baker, they took pride in their progress toward civilization, and in the fact that they were like white people; hence they had "little inclination to resume tribal government or tribal customs" and wished to continue in the path they had been following since before allotment. When an early draft of the Wheeler-Howard Act (IRA) was presented to them, they had "expressed themselves as deeply resenting the formation of Indian communities" as provided there. 32 So well had Joseph R. Brown, Moses N. Adams, and other agents--not to mention Henry L. Dawes--accomplished their task that the Sisseton Sioux were psychologically unable to accept the proffered hand of the government when it was finally extended in the spirit of co-operation and friendship rather than as the mailed fist of authority. ____________________ 30 Baker to Collier, February 17, 1934, NARS, RG 75, Sisseton Agency. 31 Baker to Collier, February 12, 1934; Superintendent's Annual Report, 19341935, in ibid. 32 "Rehabilitation Program for the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe of Indians, Sisseton Indian Agency, South Dakota, Fred A. Baker, Supt.," June 4, 1935, in ibid. -328- The course of events at Devils Lake resembled that at Sisseton. Work relief and the dole were the first forms of government assistance, but soon the superintendent, Orrin C. Gray, began to think in terms of subsistence homesteads, to be set up on submarginal land purchased for the purpose. Here, too, individualism had progressed far enough to make the outlook dim at best. Some of the Indians had qualms about the subsistence homestead idea, for they objected to paying for communal property that they might not use. The land situation was nearly as bad as at Sisseton, except that the population had not been growing so alarmingly. About two-thirds of the land originally allotted had been disposed of, and two-thirds of what was left was tied up in a complex heirship tangle. Less than 50,000 acres remained, and 10,000 of that was either entirely useless or rough grazing land. 33 Although a subsistence homestead program might provide a solution for a few families, clearly a massive land exchange and consolidation project was in order if the situation were really to be remedied. When the Devils Lake Indians voted on the IRA, on November 17, 1934, they rejected it, though not as decisively as the Sissetons. According to a member of the tribe who favored the act, anti-New Deal agitators had contributed to its defeat by spreading false rumors, "like no Indian will hold any property individually and the whole Act was a scheme to strip the Indians of whatever lands they have left and that they will be subject to forced labor and will be no better than convicts under government and such stuff." 34 Even though rejection of the IRA on both reservations frustrated the hope of a thoroughgoing land reform, much was done to help the Sisseton and Devils Lake people during the 1930's. At Sisseton the Indian Division of the Civilian Conservation Corps built roads and truck trails, constructed a dam near the old Good Will mission, developed springs, carried out a rodent control program, and developed two picnic and camping areas. The dam was used to impound water for a small ____________________ 33 Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1931 and 1932; Orrin C. Gray to Collier, February 7, 1934; Elna N. Smith to A. C. Cooley, October 27, 1934, NARS, RG 75, Fort Tottten Agency. 34 Louis DeWolf to Collier, n.d. (received January 22, 1936); Fred H. Daiker to DeWolf, February 18, 1936; Joseph Twobear to Collier, January 23, 1936, ibid. The vote showed 144 in favor, 233 opposed, and 144 eligible voters who did not participate. In its original form, the Wheeler-Howard Act specified that a majority of the eligible voters of a tribe had to vote against it for it to be rejected. Under this interpretation, the Devils Lake Indians were understood to have placed themselves under its provisions. But in 1935, Congress amended the act so as to require a majority of the votes cast for acceptance. This amendment barred Devils Lake from participation in the IRA.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:10:26 GMT -5
-329- irrigation project. A four-and-one-half-acre garden plot was irrigated, and ten houses were built, together with some outbuildings. At the site of the old boarding school a root cellar was constructed. When emphasis was placed on canning and preserving food for winter use, many Indian women used the cellar as a canning room. Later a community self-help building was erected for that purpose. All of these projects were designed both to give temporary employment to some of the men and to provide several families with part of their subsistence. 35 Housing was a major problem on the Sisseton Reservation. As late as 1936 there were 517 families on the reservation, living in fewer than 300 houses. It was common for as many as five families to be occupying one house, with perhaps ten people to a room. To alleviate the situation, Baker proposed the construction of 100 houses and repairs to 150 others. As with all the other projects deemed necessary at Sisseton, this one fell far short of the superintendent's wishes. Although about 85 houses were built or repaired between 1936 and 1940, some people were still living in tents at the end of the decade. 36 Health and education were two other major concerns on the Sisseton Reservation. In 1934 Baker listed construction of a thirty-five-bed hospital as the most immediate need of the people there; and in May, 1937, such a hospital was opened. So long as extreme congestion in living quarters remained the rule, however, the general health of the Sisseton people could not be radically improved. The effort to improve educational facilities for the Indians centered about the establishment of day schools. Baker and his successor, W. C. Smith, faced up to the fact that not enough children were attending the district schools, which had been located with reference to the convenience of the white farmers and not of the Indians. Although a great many went to Flandreau, Pipestone, or Wahpeton, or to mission schools, Baker and Smith did not see the off-reservation boarding school as the answer to local educational needs. After an experiment with day schools conducted in guild halls, in 1939 a day school was erected at Big Coulee, followed by another at Enemy Swim. Besides their primary function, they also served as community centers, since the dispersion of the Indians over a wide area made it impossible for all to use the community self-help building. 37 ____________________ 35 Baker to Collier, February 17, 1934; W. C. Smith to Collier, August 19, 1939; Charles L. Ellis to Collier, October 26, 1940, NARS, RG 75, Sisseton Agency. 36 "Rehabilitation Program," June 4, 1934; W. C. Smith to Collier, July 9, 1938; Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1936- 1937 and 1938- 1939, ibid. 37 "Rehabilitation Program," June 4, 1934; Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1936- 1937 and 1938- 1939, ibid. A day school was later built at Long Hollow, and the -330- Similar progress took place at Devils Lake. The central project there was the subsistence homestead plan, which got under way in April, 1936, with the construction of thirteen log houses on concrete foundations. The experiment began at an inauspicious time, for North Dakota was then in the throes of the worst drought in its history. The attempt to provide subsistence for thirteen families from the land proved unsuccessful, and the participants in the experiment became discouraged. Since there was not enough work available in the locality, they had to turn to "made" jobs with the agency. By the beginning of 1940 several of the original participants had left, most of them delinquent in their rent payments, and all but one of the remaining occupants of the houses were delinquent. 38 A few other developments at Devils Lake merit mention. The Fort Totten boarding school was closed in 1935 and reopened the same year as a preventorium school for children with tubercular tendencies. Two day schools were opened in outlying parts of the reservation in 1937 but later abandoned. About 140 children were attending public schools by the later 1930's, and about 150 were at the Little Flower mission. 39 A central canning kitchen and community sewing room was started in 1936, the former benefiting at least fifty families, the latter, about a hundred. Some effort was made to revive native arts and crafts. The principal handicraft project was the manufacture of moccasins, Indian dolls, and other articles out of buckskin decorated with beadwork designs. Eighteen workers, mainly women with families, were employed on this project. Road work under the CCC provided jobs for a number of men, and others were employed in repairing and painting the agency buildings. 40 In spite of all these measures taken by the Indian Bureau to improve the condition of the Sisseton and Devils Lake Indians, no fundamental ____________________ community self-help building was converted to use as a day school. Except for the one at Long Hollow, which was sold to the district, all the schools were still in operation by the Bureau in 1965. 38 E. N. Smith to Cooley, October 27, 1934; List of Homestead Assignees, January 8, 1940; James H. Hyde to Collier, January 8, 1941; Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1934, 1936, and 1938, NARS, RG 75, Fort Totten Agency. 39 Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1935, 1936, and 1937, ibid. 40 Gray to Collier, June 8, 1936; Superintendent's Annual Report, 1938, ibid. In 1938, a fairly typical year, the income from work relief amounted to $43,341.79; an additional sum of 54,566.99 was received from federal, state, and county relief, and $12,477.62 was received from leases, hay permits, grazing and trespass--a total of $110,346.30 for the year, in addition to surplus commodities distributed through the county welfare board and an undetermined but small amount of earned income from off-reservation employment.
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:11:01 GMT -5
-331- change could be effected without coming to grips with the land situation. Baker recognized from the start of his administration that the basic problem stemmed from the allotment of land in severalty. In his first annual report he denounced the allotment system, which he said had destroyed the economic unity of the land, made its use by livestock associations impossible, and deprived later generations of the landholdings to which they were entitled. The issuance of patents had brought about the loss of lands; the sale of inherited lands had further depleted the reservation resources; and the inheritance of allotted lands had produced endless confusion, destroyed the Indians' initiative, and fastened on them the leasing system. About 92 per cent of the land at Sisseton was in heirship status, most of it so fractionated as to be virtually useless to its owners or to anyone else. It was even difficult to make contracts for repairs to houses on allotments because of the time needed to track down all the heirs whose signatures were required. 41 The degree to which fractionation had progressed by the 1930's is almost incredible. An individual equity in a 160-acre farm might amount to as little as a 20-foot square. When Superintendent Smith was called upon to divide the wheat produced on an 80-acre tract, he found that the eleven Indians who owned the smallest equities would each receive 1,344 grains. The extreme case was that of the allotment of Akipa ( Joseph Renville), who had died in 1891 and whose land was now owned by more than 150 heirs. Probating the estate cost $2,400 and required more than 250 typewritten pages. If the land were sold at its appraised value, Arie Redearth's share would have been 1.6 cents. Rentals would have had to accumulate to $250 before she would be entitled to one cent in income; and since checks were not normally issued for less than a dollar, it was estimated that 1,600 years would have to elapse before sufficient funds would accumulate so that a check might be issued, assuming that the current rate of' rentals continued. Smith reported in 1937 that unless something was done shortly, the agency would have to buy larger adding machines to use in making the divisions of equities on rentals coming in; his clerk was then using 56,582,064,000 as a common denominator. 42 _____ 41 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1934- 1935; W. C. Smith to Baker, February 17, 1937; W. C. Smith to Collier, July 9, 1938, NARS, RG 75, Sisseton Agency. 42 Superintendent's Annual Reports, 1936- 1937 and 1938- 1939; W. C. Smith to Collier, April 30, 1937; Memorandum of Information relating to proposed legislation which would authorize the consolidation of the lands on the Sisseton Indian Reservation, North and South Dakota (accompanying letter from Secretary of Interior Harold L. Ickes to Representative Henry M. Jackson, Chairman, House Committee on Indian Affairs, n.d.), ibid. -332- Such figures as these are not evidence of wasted ingenuity on the part of the superintendent and his clerks. They dramatize the desperate situation that had evolved during a half-century of allotment, a situation made even worse by the fact that some fourteen or fifteen hundred Sissetons did not own even a fractional equity in an allotment and were absolutely landless. In 1937, Charles West, Acting Secretary of the Interior, wrote to Will Rogers, chairman of the House Committee on Indian Affairs, that, since the situation at Sisseton would be duplicated on other allotted reservations in ten or twenty years, action should be taken at once to make Sisseton a sort of pilot project, where a land consolidation and exchange program could be tried out. Bill after bill was introduced in Congress to effect this end, but each one either died in committee or was defeated in one house or the other. 43 After nearly a decade of the Collier administration, the Sisseton Reservation remained an economically depressed area. In 1942 the number of families on the reservation had risen to 591, two-thirds of whom had an annual income of less than $300. The next year more than 400 families had to be given some form of relief. The situation became especially acute in the winter of 1947-1948. Mission workers who visited the reservation in January found "near-famine conditions" prevailing. In one family consisting of a middle-aged couple (the husband ill), a daughter, and her two children, the only income was $30 a month from the wife's pension. Another household was found to have no food but coffee and a little flour. Mercy flights of food were made in March to aid destitute families isolated by storms. Two years later the relief situation was described as even worse. 44 The situation at Devils Lake was similar. Nearly 1,500 acres had been bought there and retained in government ownership, but the basic land problem was not solved. Apathy among the Indians made it difficult to get sufficient representation to elect a business council. The officers serving in 1938 were predominantly elderly--all but two were over sixty--and their discussions were carried on in Dakota, which Superintendent Gray did not understand. The very limited success of the subsistence homestead project left the Devils Lake people in not much ____ 43 Charles West to Will Rogers, November 24, 1937; William Zimmerman, Jr., to W. C. Smith, April 18, 1939; J. M. Stewart to Ross D. Davis, August 21, 1939; W. C. Smith to Collier, May 13, 1940, ibid. The first of the bills was H. R. 6047, introduced in Congress on March 31, 1937; H. R. 5451 followed two years later, and in April, 1945, H. R. 2947 was introduced. There were further attempts in the later 1940's and in the next decade. 44 Ickes to Jackson, n.d., ibid.; Sisseton Courier, January 22 and March 18, 1948; January 19 and 26, 1950. -333- better economic shape than the Sissetons on the eve of World War II. 45 The plight of these two reservations in the post-war period is suggested by the responses of the Indians and their superintendents to requests for information as to their readiness for termination. In a report prepared for Congress in 1953 many reservations were recommended for almost immediate termination, and usually the Indians were represented as favoring such action. Not so those at Sisseton and Devils Lake. The superintendent at Sisseton reported talking to scores of Indians and finding only one who wanted government supervision ended, and he was a man who had sold his land, had no income, and was generally regarded as incompetent. At Devils Lake the chief objection to termination was the extreme poverty of the group, growing in part out of the heirship problem. About 60 per cent of the trust land was in heirship status, and even the Bureau officials did not consider the Devils Lake people competent to manage their own affairs until that situation had been cleared up. 46 Conditions at Sisseton and Devils Lake have not improved appreciably in recent years, although some figures show a rise in average family income. Since there has been no exodus comparable to that at Santee, while the birth rate has remained high, the reservation population is still far in excess of available resources. The resident population at Sisseton in 1960 was 2,315; at Devils Lake, 1,463, and it has probably increased since then. Although the land situation lies at the root of the present problem, a land exchange and consolidation program would no longer solve the Indians' predicament. Recent economic changes in agriculture have rendered subsistence farming and small-scale commercial farming impracticable, and the Indians have neither the capital nor the training nor the inclination to compete with large white operators. 47 ____ 45 Superintendent's Annual Report, 1938, NARS, RG 75, Fort Totten Agency. 46 83rd Cong., 2nd Sess., H. Rpt. 2680, pp. 78, 85, 406 - 407, 431 - 432. Despite the attitude of the Indians, as reported by their superintendent, the Bureau's view was that a large majority of the Sissetons were competent to manage their own affairs, however reluctant they might be to do so. According to the report, they had come to regard the Bureau as a "combination foster-father, Santa Claus, and scapegoat." The views expressed in that House Report must be accepted only with great caution, however, for a definite attempt was made to represent the Indians as prepared for termination. So single-minded was this effort that it sometimes led to strange paradoxes, as in the following statement about a Utah Indian group: "Indian Peak Paiute Indians are not competent to manage their own affairs. The Indian Peak Paiute Band of Paiute Indians are ready for complete Bureau withdrawal . . ." (p. 87 ). 47 United States Department of Interior, Reports, September 1960, United States -334-
|
|
|
Post by denney on Jul 26, 2006 2:11:50 GMT -5
A social and economic survey of the Sisseton Reservation completed at the end of 1955 showed that the Indian lands could support only onefourth of the families then living on the reservation. Leasing had increased 30 per cent over the previous year, 50 per cent since 1952. In 1957 it was reported that 34 per cent of the Indians received no cash income from their land, another 30 per cent less than $100 a year. Only three farmers were regarded as successful. Many Indians had moved into the town of Sisseton, where relations between them and the non-Indian population were described as poor; the city auditor estimated that 85 to 90 per cent of arrests made there were of Indians. 48 Off-reservation employment offers little hope for these people, unless they move away from the vicinity, for there is not much industry in nearby towns. Most of the Indians with regular jobs work for the Indian Bureau or the Public Health Service; others derive some income from seasonal farm work. The great majority of families on both reservations receive welfare assistance at least part of the year. Since Roberts County, South Dakota, where most of the Sissetons live, refuses direct relief to Indians, the burden falls on the Bureau to provide what help it can. Other sources of welfare are Aid to Dependent Children, old-age assistance, Aid to the Totally Disabled, and veterans' pensions. 49 Relocation, in progress since the late 1940's, had removed 163 families from the Sisseton Reservation, at least temporarily, by April, 1957. Fourteen months later it was reported that 250 people had been relocated in the previous two years, but 50 of them had returned. On-thejob training and adult vocational education programs were instituted during the 1950's, and efforts were made to attract industry. 50 The Sisseton and Devils Lake reservations present a depressing spectacle to the visitor. Small log or frame shacks dot the countryside, most of them well back in the coulees at Sisseton, scattered over the wooded hills at Devils Lake. A housing project at Fort Totten in 1964 provided twenty new dwellings, and more are planned. Except for these, the only bright spots are the public buildings--the three day schools at Sisseton, the new central elementary school and the community hall at Fort Totten, a few of the churches on both reservations. Mere surface appearances may, of course, be deceptive, but at Sisseton and Devils Lake ____________________ Indian Population and Land: 1960, pp. 21, 25; interview with Mr. Wray P. Hughes, Superintendent, Sisseton Agency, July 26, 1965. 48 Sisseton Courier, December 22, 1955, January 19, 1956, and June 6, 1957. 49 Interview with Mr. Hughes, July 26, 1965. 50 Sisseton Courier, April 25, 1957, June 19, July 31, and December 25, 1958.
|
|