Chapter 5
Reservations Replace Removal

News of trauma inflicted upon the Wisconsin Chippewas as a result of the scheme to lure them to Sandy Lake aided the Indians in their opposition to removal. The intense lobbying effort on behalf of the Lake Superior Chippewas described earlier eventually proved successful. Early in June of 185 1, Indian Commissioner Lea informed Interior Secretary Alexander H. H. Stuart that citizens in Wisconsin and in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan strongly opposed the removal of the Chippewas. According to Lea:

When the extent of this order became known, communications from sources of the highest consideration-embracing petitions from the Legislature of Wisconsin and the citizens resident in the ceded country; letters from the Authorities of Missionary establishments, among the Chippewas of Lake Superior and other highly respectable individuals were received at this office-remonstrating in strong terms against the application of the order to these Indians.

In view of "the Weighty reasons" provided in the communications from prominent citizens received in the Indian Office-that the removal of the Lake Superior Chippewas was "not required by the interests of the citizens or Government of the United States, and would in its consequences in all probability be disastrous to the Indians"-Lea recommended in early June that the presidential order "be so modified as to permit such portions of those bands as may desire it to remain for the present in the country they now occupy" (Lea 1851a). Then, in late August of 1851, he announced the suspension of the order "until the final determination of the President, as to whether they (the Ojibwas) should be permitted to remain, or their removal resumed" (Treat 1851).

News of the suspension of the Removal Order encouraged newspaper editors from the Great Lakes region. An editorial from the Cleveland Herald reprinted in the East, for example, said the order was "uncalled for, useless, and abominable; and we are glad, for the sake of humanity and justice, that the Administration have resolved that for the present the edict shall not be enforced. We trust it may never be" (New York Times 1851b). Another widely circulated editorial from the Sault Ste. Marie Lake Superior News and Mining Journal claimed efforts to remove the Chippewas were unlike any other attempt to relocate an Indian people ever undertaken by the U. S. government.

We believe we express the conviction of the entire population of the Lake Superior country in regarding this removal as uncalled for by the best interests of the Government, the whites, or the Indians, This is not a case of removal like any other that has taken place in this country. Generally, there has been some show of reason for this painful resort .... But it is far different in the case of the Chippewas. They occupy a remote portion of the country ... that would not, in all probability, have been settled for a

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hundred years to come, had it not been for the rich deposits of minerals lately discovered in its rocky hills.

From time immemorial this people have occupied the northern region, and have become acclimated to its cold and rigorous climate; and by hunting and fishing, and the cultivation of their small patches of soil, they have lived comfortably and contentedly, causing little or no trouble to the United States and their neighbors. Until their little fields are needed for the accommodation of their white brethren, why should they be driven to strange places, a prey to the designs of their worst enemies {the Sioux}? They can live comfortably where they now are, but they will starve to death, as hundreds did last winter, in the miserable region {in Minnesota) to which the Government would remove them.

Unlike Indians affected by other instances of government-sponsored Indian removal efforts, asserted the Sault Ste. Marie editor, the Chippewas were not an impediment to "the tide of civilization constantly sweeping in from the East." In the East, the editor of the New York Times agreed with and reprinted this assessment (New York Times 1851b).

Despite the positive public reaction to Commissioner Lea's temporary suspension of the Removal Order, Governor Ramsey and newly promoted Agent Watrous(39) continued their efforts to entice the Indians to emigrate from Wisconsin. They insisted that annuity payments and educational funds be paid only in Minnesota. In addition, Watrous recommended that a company of infantry be dispatched to La Pointe to assist in promoting "a general removal" (Watrous 1851, 1852a, b, 48; Hall 1852a; Clifton 1987, 26-27). Ramsey informed Washington officials that the best way to handle Chippewa "stragglers" in Wisconsin was to follow "a rigid adherence ... to the rule of paying annuities to those only who remove to, and remain in, their proper country" (Ramsey 1851, 163; 1852, 44).

In late November of 1851 after issuing his temporary suspension of the Removal Order, Indian Commissioner Lea came to the support of Ramsey and Watrous. After reading their reports in preparation for his own annual report, Lea urged administration officials to proceed with efforts to "concentrate" the Chippewas west of the Mississippi River. Lea claimed he proposed the measure for humanitarian reasons. It was "calculated to promote the future welfare of this large and interesting tribe" and "to save them from actual starvation; as the game on which they mainly depend for the means of living is fast disappearing, and cannot much longer afford them a support" (Lea 1851b, 4).

Meanwhile, continued pressure for their removal led Chief Buffalo of La Pointe (Fig. 19) and twenty-eight other Chippewa chiefs and headmen to dictate a petition to Lea. Charging that Watrous had "aggrieved and wronged" them, the Chippewa leaders complained about the "great deception" that had been used to promote their removal to Sandy Lake. Reciting Commissioner Stuart's 1842 promise that they could remain on their land as long as they "lived on friendly terms with the Whites," the chiefs and headmen charged Watrous with misconduct.

We are not satisfied that it is the President that requires us to remove. We have asked to see the order, and the name of the President affixed to it, but it has not been shewn us. We think the order came only from the Agent and those who advise with him, and are interested in having us remove.

Since the Chippewas of Lake Superior had "never shed the blood of the Whites; nor killed their cattle; nor done them any injury; and ... are not in their way,"

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Fig. 19. Portrait of Chief Buffalo. The head chief of the La Pointe band is depicted dressed in a military uniform and wearing a peace medal. From the Madeline Island Historical Museum Collection. Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. WHi(x3)41266

the Indians asked, "why is fit) that we now bear this order to remove?" Claiming to be totally "in the dark" about the reasons for the order, Buffalo and the other leaders of the Lake Superior Chippewas called for an end to all efforts to remove their people and for the resumption of the payment of annuities at La Pointe as promised in the 1842 treaty. The Indians ended their petition with a request that they be allowed to send a delegation to Washington in order to review their grievances with American officials there (Buffalo et al. 1951).

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The Chippewas waited for a response to their petition, but their patience wore thin by the spring of 1852. Chief Buffalo, who was then in his early nineties, decided to travel to Washington without prior approval. In early April, Buffalo together with Oshoga, a young chief of "rare promise and merit" (Morse 1857, 348), several other chiefs, and interpreter Benjamin Armstrong left La Pointe en route to Washington. "To return {from Washington} without anything accomplished," commented Armstrong as the delegation traveled eastward, "would be to rekindle the fire that was smouldering into an open revolt for revenge" (Armstrong {1892}, 294).

Chief Buffalo led the delegation to Washington armed with a petition supporting the Chippewa cause. As they passed through white communities, Armstrong circulated the document among the residents and asked them to sign it (Armstrong 118921, 293). "We are satisfied," the petition said of the Indians, "that they have been hardly and injuriously used by the Agents appointed to make them their payments during the past Two seasons, & by the removal of their usual place of payment Conceeded {sic} to them in their treaty to a place farther west where they are exposed to the cold & starvation." The petition referred to the Chippewas as "a peaceable and inoffensive race living chiefly by hunting & fishing" (Fig. 20). Included among the residents of Lake Superior communities signing the petition were bankers, merchants, and traders. Eager to keep the Chippewas and their annuities nearby, these men had little difficulty in signing the document, which concluded that "while their removal West would in Our Opinion be a great damage to them it would in no manner benefit the white population of the Country" (Citizens of Lake Superior 1852).

When the Chippewa delegation finally reached Washington during the latter part of June (Fig. 21), both Indian Commissioner Lea and Interior Secretary Stuart ordered the Indians to return home immediately since they had not received permission to make the trip. Only the intervention of Whig Senator George Briggs of New York, who encountered the delegation by accident while dining, led to a meeting with Briggs's fellow New York Whig, President Fillmore (Armstrong 118921, 296-97).

In preparation for the meeting with "Great Grand Father" Fillmore, Buffalo had dictated a document that reviewed all of the outstanding grievances against the United States. The chief began by informing the president that Chippewa men, women, and children of northern Wisconsin were "deeply grieved" by the way in which they had been treated since 1850. Buffalo protested the violation of Chippewa reserved rights and urged Fillmore to remember the promises made at the 1842 treaty parley. "All who were present at that treaty listened to your words, which you sent to us," the memorial stated, adding that "Commissioner {Stuart} promised ... that if we were good men, that we should not only be permitted to remain on our lands for fifty, but one hundred years to come." Explaining that his band had "at all times acted in obedience" to American laws and had advised other Indians to "lead a quiet and peaceable life," Buffalo requested an explanation for the Removal Order and for the subsequent efforts to evict his people from Wisconsin (Buffalo et al. 1852).

Buffalo especially complained about the indignities the Chippewas had suffered as a result of having to go to Sandy Lake to receive their annuities in 1850. He spoke of the "very bad flour," which "resembled green clay," and the other "rotten provisions" American officials had issued, and the loss of "so many" young people due

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Fig. 20. The City of Superior, 1856. This lithograph by P. S. Duval and Son shows Chippewas and whites fishing and sharing the shoreline of Lake Superior. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. LC-USZ62-50524

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Fig. 21. Chippewa Delegation in Washington, 1852. From Bartlett (1929, 69). Benjamin Armstrong and four unidentified chiefs are depicted here. Courtesy of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Media Development Center.

to the remote location and lateness of the annuity payment, which left the Indians at the mercy of the "incliment" weather. Buffalo also charged that recent annuity payments were inadequate. "I obtained part of my annuity which was paid to me by My Agent, with one arm he paid me that, which I ought to have had in full with both arms." Buffalo requested redress for all of these grievances. "Is it not the obligation of white men to fulfill their contracts," he asked. "And should they not fulfill them, their contracts become null & void{,} consequently a misunderstanding exists, which can and ought to be adjusted to the mutual satisfaction of the parties concerned." Buffalo concluded his remarks with a plea for "justice":

It is generally the case with the white men, when they have selected a spot to dwell at, that they begin to consider and look around them, to see what obstacles are in their way. They begin to cut away the underbrush and bad trees, in order to make the land level and smoothe so that nothing will come in contact to hurt their feet, they see good trees and they are allowed to stand & live, & they are not cut down. We beseech you to do towards us as you do, allowing the good trees {-the Wisconsin Chippewas-} to stand and live in your domain. And furthermore we pray, that in accordance to that, we so fully under

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stood that our annuities should be paid to us at La Pointe & that they may be continued there. (Buffalo et al. 1852)

Thanks to the efforts of Senator Briggs, Buffalo soon received an opportunity to meet President Fillmore and to present the grievances of his people in person.

The Chippewa delegation presented Buffalo's petition to President Fillmore in the White House after everyone present at the meeting, including Senator Briggs, Commissioner Lea, and Secretary Stuart, had smoked the peace pipe passed to them by Buffalo. In reading the petition, the president acknowledged that he recognized some of the signatures of leading citizens of the Great Lakes region. After deliberating a day, Fillmore agreed to rescind the Removal Order, to cease all efforts to remove the Chippewas from Wisconsin, and to pay back, current, and future annuities at La Pointe. As news of the delegation's success reached Wisconsin, the Chippewas celebrated their great victory. Upon his return, Chief Buffalo convened a "grand council" of Chippewa bands at La Pointe where an interpreter translated the message President Fillmore had given him (Armstrong {I 892}, 297-98; Buffalo et al. 1852; Levi 1956, 60-61; Clifton 1987, 27).

President Fillmore's decision to allow the Chippewas to remain in Wisconsin has been the subject of recent controversy between supporters and critics of continued Indian usufructuary rights. Scholars have not located a decree by Fillmore specifically rescinding President Taylor's Removal Order. As noted earlier, the Interior Department ordered a temporary suspension of the order while Fillmore reviewed the status of the Chippewas (U. S. District Court 1978, 1328-330, 1350 n. 17; U. S. Court of Appeals 1983, 348; Lea 1851a; Treat 1851). Several contemporaneous events shed light on the president's motivation for undertaking such a review, reinforce Armstrong's contention that Fillmore revoked Taylor's order, and demonstrate that such a suspension by Fillmore is consistent with his handling of Indian affairs,

Chief Buffalo and white missionaries residing among the Chippewas had presented the Fillmore administration with strong accusations about the conduct of Agent Watrous (Fillmore 1852a; Buffalo et al. 1852; Treat 1852). At the same time, opposition to the Removal Order by distinguished white citizens of the Great Lakes region may have influenced the president (Citizens of Lake Superior 1852). By the end of 1852, Fillmore had definitely shown more interest in the well-being of Indians than had his immediate predecessors. For example, he had granted the Menominees an extension of the date of their removal from Wisconsin and had ordered the Indian Office to search for a suitable home for the tribe in Wisconsin (Ourada 1979, 118-19). He also expressed concern that "justice" to the Indians in the states of Texas and California as well as those in the Territory of Oregon required the establishment of "particular districts" or reservations so that they would not be "tenants at sufferance, and liable to be driven from place to place at the pleasure of the whites" (Fillmore 1852b, 171; Knobel 1984, 188-89; Trennert 1975, 86). There is some basis, therefore, for Chippewa editor George Copway's recollection several years after Fillmore left office that the New Yorker's administration was "kind to the Indians" (Copway 1856). Whatever Fillmore's motivation, the Chippewas were elated by his decision to allow them to remain in Wisconsin.

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Two years after Chief Buffalo's meeting with President Fillmore, the Wisconsin legislature informed federal officials that "the Chippewa Indians in the region of Lake Superior are a peaceable, quiet, and inoffensive people, rapidly improving in the arts and sciences: that they acquire their living by hunting, fishing, manufacturing maple sugar, and agricultural pursuits: that many of them have intermarried with the white inhabitants, and are becoming generally anxious to become educated and adopt the habits of the 'white man."' Wisconsin legislators urged the Indian Office not to impose removal upon the Chippewas and recommended that laws be adopted to "encourage the permanent settlement of those Indians as shall adopt the habits of the citizens of the United States." Finally, and probably an important consideration for some of the legislators with ties to the traders in northern Wisconsin, they requested that all future annuity payments be made at La Pointe (Wisconsin Legislature 1854, 397).

In negotiations at La Pointe in September of 1854, United States treaty commissioners found it necessary to assent to the insistent demands of the Lake Superior Chippewa for the demarcation of permanent reservations in Wisconsin. George Manypenny, who had replaced Luke Lea as commissioner of Indian affairs following the inauguration of Democrat Franklin Pierce as president in March of 1853, had hoped to secure the mineral wealth of unceded areas in the Lake Superior region by concentrating all Chippewa Indians west of the Mississippi River (Manypenny 1853, 245). A year later, however, Manypenny conceded:

There are ... within the limits of Wisconsin, and also within the northern peninsula of Michigan, a few small bands of the Chippewas of Lake Superior, who still occupy their former locations on lands ceded by the treaties of 1937 and 1942. It has not, thus far, been found necessary or practicable to remove them. They are very unwilling to relinquish their present residences, as are all the other bands of the same Indians; and it may be necessary to permit them all to remain, in order to acquire a cession of the large tract of country they still own east of the Mississippi, which, on account of its great mineral resources, it is an object of material importance to obtain. They would require but small reservations; and thus permanently settled, the efforts made for their improvements will be rendered more effectual. (Manypenny 1854, 212-13)

The Wisconsin Chippewas acceded to American acquisition of the rich mineral lands along the north shore of Lake Superior only after American officials promised to establish permanent reservations. Treaty Commissioner Henry C. Gilbert informed Commissioner Manypenny that "the points most strenuously insisted upon" by the Wisconsin Chippewas were "first the privilege of remaining in the country where they reside and next the appropriation of land for their future homes. Without yielding these points, it was idle for us to talk about a treaty. We therefore agreed to the selection of lands for them in territory heretofore ceded" (Gilbert 1854, 0137; App. 5).

Wisconsin's Chippewa Indians had learned several valuable lessons from the 1837 and 1842 treaty parleys. They absolutely refused to agree to the land cession sought by the Americans in 1854, as they had done in 1847, until permanent reservations were provided in the state. Furthermore, according to Benjamin Armstrong, when the U. S. interpreter began to translate the remarks of the American negotiators, Chief Buffalo interrupted him and insisted that the Indians appoint their

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own interpreter. "We do not want to be deceived any more as we have in the past," asserted the chief (Armstrong {18921, 301).

The 1854 treaty (Fig. 22) provided for American acquisition of the north shore (see Fig. 7) and the establishment of four Chippewa reservations in Wisconsin (Fig. 23): Bad River located directly east of Ashland on the shore of Lake Superior with two hundred acres on Madeline Island for a fishing ground; Red Cliff situated at the northern tip of Bayfield County, which was established as a result of the 1854 treaty and an 1856 executive order by President Franklin Pierce;(40) Lac Courte Oreilles in Sawyer County southwest of Ashland; and Lac du Flambeau to the east in Vilas County along the Flambeau Lake, known to the Indians as "Lake of the Torches," because of the traditional practice of spearing fish by torchlight (Kappler 1: 933-34, 2: 648-52, App. 6; Danziger 1973, 178-79; Royce 1899, 796-97).

Approximately one year after the negotiations at La Pointe, Commissioner Manypenny(4l) commended the people of Wisconsin for supporting the establishment of reservations in their state for the Chippewas. "They have not interposed any objection, but, on the contrary, have seemed willing that the Indians might be permitted to remain," Manypenny said of Wisconsinites in 1855. The commissioner reported that he was undertaking "the necessary steps" to survey the boundaries of the reservations and to provide the Chippewa bands with "the means of education, and in all other respects to fulfill the beneficial stipulations of their treaty" (Manypenny 1855, 322-23). The following year, Manypenny issued a glowing report about the condition of the Chippewas in northern Wisconsin. He informed Secretary of the Interior Robert McClelland in 1856 that the reservation Indians of the missionary settlement at Bad River had received "a liberal supply of farming implements, carpenters' tools, household furniture and cooking utensils; and every Indian having a house and residing in it, has been supplied with a good cooking stove and the usual cooking utensils, a table, bureau, chairs, bedstead, looking-glass, and many other articles for household use. The effect of this policy is quite perceptible and salutary, and has stimulated many to erect and provide for erecting new houses at Bad river {sic} and several other places" (Manypenny 1856, 554-55).

Manypenny's glowing report did not reflect reality for many of the Chippewa people of Wisconsin. Bad River had better soil conditions than the other areas designated for reservations, and it took some twenty years before all of the reservations granted in the 1854 treaty were selected and surveyed (Kappler 1: 928-36; Madison Weekly Democrat 1878a). Many Indians continued to roam throughout the ceded area engaging in their traditional pursuits. Without clearly marked boundaries for their reservations, the Lac du Flambeau and Lac Courte Oreilles Indians found it especially difficult to protect many of their resources (Vennum 1988, 260). The St. Croix Chippewas, who were left out of the 1854 negotiations, remained landless for eighty years. They lived as squatters on cutover lands or on taxdelinquent lands belonging to various counties, eking out a living as best they could deep in the forests just west of Lac Courte Oreilles. The Sakaogan Chippewas, who were also left out of the 1854 negotiations, signed a treaty with American officials in 1855, which promised them a reservation of twelve square miles of land. Left landless since the U. S. Senate refused to ratify the treaty, they lived as squatters near Crandon. Not until after the enactment of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 did the St. Croix and Sakaogan bands, the so-called Lost Bands, obtain legal title to the lands they had occupied for centuries-the Sakaogan Chippewas

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Fig. 22. Treaty of 1854. The first page of the handwritten treaty manuscript is reproduced above. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Service.

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Fig. 23 Chippewa Reservations in Wisconsin. Map by Sean Hartnett. Data from Lurie (1987, 10) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Great Lakes Agency in Ashland, Wisconsin.Compare tribally held acres in 1989 to the acreage originally provided and the number of acres alloted after the establishment of each reservation. Although federal officials promised in 1855 to establish a twelve-square-mile reservation at Mole Lake, the 1,700 acre reservation was not provided until the Indian New Deal of John Collier. The St. Croix Chippewa, who were also landless until they received 1,715 acres under Collier, are scattered in five small parcels of land across three counties. Today each reservation is a checkerboard of white-owned property equal to or exceeding the amount of Indian land held in trust under federal jurisdiction. Also, some Indian land is held by individual Indians rather than by the bands.

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took possession of a small reservation barely comprising 1,700 acres known as Mole Lake in southwestern Forest County near Crandon, and the St. Croix Chippewas received a slightly larger reservation for their five scattered communities at Danbury, Webster, and Hertel in Burnett County and at Luck and Balsam Lake in Polk County (see Fig. 23). Nevertheless, the Wisconsin Chippewas had at least retained a portion of their homeland at Bad River, Red Cliff, Lac du Flambeau, and Lac Courte Oreilles as a result of the 1854 agreement (Lurie 1987, 21; Levi 1956, 95-101; Erdman 1966, 24, 27; Danziger 1979, 153-55; Masinaigan 1985; Wisconsin State Journal 1990c, 10).

The reservations proved to be small in terms of the traditional Chippewa huntingfishing-gathering practices. Efforts to concentrate the Lac Courte Oreilles and Lac du Flambeau bands at the Bad River Reservation in the early 1870s failed. Although their lands were unsuitable for agriculture and they were plagued by trespassing lumbermen, settlers, railroaders, and white "sharpers" who defrauded them, the members of these bands refused to abandon their reservations (New York Times 1871; Campbell 1898, 317; Royce 1899, 857; Danziger 1973, 182-83).

Reports from the Indian agent at Red Cliff in 1861 and those of the agent stationed there in 1891 indicate that the Indians near Lake Superior were experienced sailors and active fishers who sold their surplus to white communities (Webb 1861, 74; Leahy 1891, 468). A Bureau of Indian Affairs official who traveled through northern Wisconsin in the early 1870s noted that Chippewa men opposed the federal govemment's efforts to train them as "agriculturalists." He reported that, although the men considered farming to be "squaws work," they were eager to undertake "mans" work. "All the Lake Superior Indians will work if only somebody will find something for them to do," the official assured Indian Commissioner Edward P. Smith (Day 1873).

During the second half of the nineteenth century, Chippewa men found temporary employment as sawyers, log drivers, graders for railroads, and packers of survey equipment. But, such wage labor positions were unstable and unpredictable. The Chippewas found it necessary to live by a mixture of traditional pursuits such as hunting, and fishing, and gathering, as well as wage labor, the sale of wood and other products, and annuity payments until they expired in the mid 1870s (Day 1873; Shifferd 1976, 19; Danziger 1979, 96). For many years after the establishment of the reservations, so many Chippewa men found it necessary to fish, hunt, and took for employment away from the areas reserved for them that not until 1892 could Indian Bureau officials state assuredly that a majority of the Wisconsin Chippewas were permanent reservation residents (Danziger 1973, 182).

The presence of Chippewa Indians near white communities sometimes alarmed the residents. During the summer of 1878, for example, Norwegian and Swedish immigrant settlers in Burnett County in northwestern Wisconsin misinterpreted the intentions of Chippewa Indians at a nearby encampment and triggered an "Indian panic. " Wild rumors of Chippewa warriors from Wisconsin and Minnesota joining Sioux braves on the warpath caused what one observer referred to as the "timid Swedes" of Burnett County to abandon their farms and flee for their lives. Telegraph messages reporting that local officials had joined the exodus crossing over to Minnesota led Governor William E. Smith to seek assistance from the U. S. War Department (Forsyth 1878; Bryant 1878; Madison Weekly Democrat 1878b; Barron County Chronotype 1878; St. Paul Pioneer Press 1878).

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Wisconsin Adjutant-General Edward E. Bryant and Lieutenant Colonel James W. Forsyth, aide-de-camp to U. S. Army General Philip Sheridan, investigated the situation and found no cause for alarm. As a Minnesota editor reported, rumors of an impending attack were "absurd." Noting that the Chippewas in both states were at peace and that the Indians in Burnett County had not taken anything from the abandoned farms, the editor commented:

The Chippewas of Wisconsin ... are not only utterly dependent upon the whites, but they are surrounded upon all sides by a wide cordon of white settlements. War would simply drive them from their ancient retreats in the pine woods and rice lakes out of the two States, into the arms of their old and merciless enemies, the Sioux, across the Missouri. But not only the physical conditions render a Chippewa war on the whites impractable, but the moral conditions render it absurd. Such a panic as that in Burnett county, Wisconsin, could only arise from a profound misconception of the habits and character of the Chippewa Indians of that section. All their traditions bind them to peace with the whites. Their utter dependence on the whites guarantees it. (St. Paul Pioneer Press 1878)

A newspaper editor in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, agreed with his Minnesota colleague but expressed the hope that the incident in neighboring Burnett County would "result in obliging the Indians to keep on their reservations" (Barron County Chronotype 1878). General Bryant and Colonel Forsyth supported this position.

General Bryant lost little time in assuring Governor Smith that the situation was under control. Seemingly oblivious of the Chippewa usufructuary rights in ceded territory including Burnett County, Bryant recommended that the innocent Chippewas make way for the needs of the white settlers:

While the Indians undoubtedly meditate no mischief, certainly no hostility to the whites, they are a nuisance to the settlers; they stroll about, beg, pester timid women, pick cranberries before ripe, shoot off the deer, and by their presence retard the growth of those portions of the State which they frequent. They ought to be kept on their reservations. As long as they are allowed to roam about in bands, so long will they cling to the lazy habits of Indian life. Penned up on their reservations, they would be compelled to resort more to agriculture, and it certainly would be a relief to the settlers in our northern woods, if these disagreeable bands were kept out of their neighborhoods.

Colonel Forsyth agreed and informed General Bryant that he intended to recommend that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) adopt stricter regulations for the Chippewa bands in order "to keep them on their reservations, and to drive them by all politic measures into industrial pursuits" (Bryant 1878). Also ignoring Chippewa offreservation usufructuary rights, BIA officials responded by encouraging the Indians to earn their living within their reservations under federal guidance (Danziger 1979, 96).

In the 1870s, federal officials not only actively sought to prevent the Chippewas from "clinging" to such "lazy habits of Indian life" as hunting, fishing, and gathering off-reservation on ceded lands, they also reexamined the policy of negotiating treaties with the Indian tribes. In ending treaty making for domestic political reasons in March of 1871, however, congressmen specifically recognized the validity of existing treaty obligations(42) (Kappler 1: 8; Priest 1942, 96-102, 244; Cohen 1982, 128). Chippewa usufructuary rights in ceded territory as reserved in the treaties of 1837 and 1842 remained in effect. There was little legal impact on the continuing relationship between the United States and the Chippewas as a result

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of the 1871 enactment, but the BIA and residents of Wisconsin increasingly undermined Chippewa usufructuary rights during the ensuing decades.

Among those questioning the soundness of treaty making with Indians were some prominent residents of Wisconsin. In 1870, a committee of the Old Settler's Club of Milwaukee County, composed of Increase A. Lapham-a charter member of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters and of the American Ethnological Society whose numerous achievements earned him the titles of "the first Wisconsin scientist" and "the first scholar of Wisconsin" (Kellogg 1933; Sherman 1876, 60-61; Quaife 1917)-and colleagues Levi Blossom and George G. Dousman, praised the federal government's earlier decision to establish reservations in Wisconsin for the Chippewas rather than to remove them from the state. They quoted approvingly from Commissioner Manypenny's 1856 report (cited earlier) and referred to the government's reservation policy for the Chippewas as "a move in the right direction, and one that might have been adopted with advantage at an earlier date." While the members of the Old Settler's Club viewed the removal policy as "at best a temporary, a short-sighted policy," they had even harsher words for the government's policy of "regarding a mere handful of poor, miserable Indians as a distinct nation. " Calling the idea of dealing with Indians in Wisconsin as sovereign states an "absurdity," they commented, "why the Indians, any more than the Chinese, the Mormons, or any other people should be allowed to maintain a distinct government within our own, it is difficult to understand." The solution was clear to them. "Let us at once cease this absurd and ridiculous policy, and treat every Indian, as we do all others, according to his individual rights; allow him the same privileges, and require of him personally, and individually, the same duties; and subject him to the same laws, as other citizens and residents within our borders, and very much of our Indian trouble will be avoided" (Lapham et at. 1870, 10, 13-14). Lapham, Blossom, and Dousman, like other Americans of their generation, had come to view Indian treaties as an obstacle to an effective Indian policy, Indeed in 1871, when Congress prohibited further treaty making with Indian tribes, the three Wisconsinites-like others who advocated making the Indians citizens-undoubtedly viewed the change as only the first step toward eventual citizenship (Mardock 1971, 105).

The precarious economic position of the reservation Indians made them vulnerable to the Bureau of Indian Affair's educational and assistance programs, which were designed to promote acculturation. No longer in a position to choose from white culture those features that appealed to them, the Wisconsin bands found themselves increasingly dependent on the white man's largesse. Chippewa agriculture, following white practices, was still in its early stages by 1900 and provided only a minor source of food and income. The Indians were also exploited by unscrupulous logging companies who cheated them while transforming their forests into cutover lands and by white trespassers who stripped timber from their reservations without much fear of capture and prosecution since they were often aided by conniving Indian agents (New York Times 1888b, c; Danziger 1979, 89-91, 94, 100, 103; Fries 195 1, 202; Levi 1956, 242). In 1872, for example, La Pointe Agent Selden N. Clark negotiated a "give-away" contract for timber from Lac Courte Oreilles with an Eau Claire entrepreneur(43) (Shifferd 1976, 22). Not until 1888 did Congress extend anti-trespass legislation to Indian reservations and the Senate launch an investigation into the logging practices on Chippewa lands (Fig. 24) that exposed numerous

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Fig. 24. Logging Scene on Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation, 1909. Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. WHi(x3)37336

frauds committed against the Indians (New York Times 1888b, c; 1889; Fries 195 1, 202; U. S. Secretary of the Interior 1889).

From the ratification of the 1954 treaty until the turn of the century, the Lake Superior Chippewas tried repeatedly to convince American officials to faithfully execute the financial provisions of their treaties (Shifferd 1976, 21). They especially complained about overdue annuity payments (Fig. 25) and funds owed them as a result of the federal government's use during the Civil War of inflated paper currency instead of the hard coin required by the treaties. During a visit to Washington in 1864, the members of a delegation from Wisconsin recounted their recollection of the manner in which Chippewa reserved rights had been incorporated into the treaties of 1837 and 1842. The bilingual petition of 1864 cited earlier in this study was preceded by a memorial stating, "we have always kept our promises made to our Great Father, and we have the right to expect him to keep his promises made to us. ""The petition may have contributed to the Bureau of Indian Affair's decision in 1865 to pay the annuities at Red Cliff and Bad River in coin, but the arrearages went unpaid in spite of the contributions of Chippewa warriors to the Union cause during the Civil War (Nichols 1988, 3-5; Current 1976, 366).

One administration after another found excuses for denying the Indians an audience to discuss the overdue payments (Danziger 1979, 230 n. 19). In 1867, for example, Acting Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles E. Mix rejected a Chippewa request for a conference in Washington on the basis that travel through American cities would have a bad moral influence on the Indians. Yet, Mix did not meet them in Wisconsin either (Mix 1867). For the next twenty-five years, the Chippewas persisted in their efforts to secure their overdue funds; but, as an eastern newspaper editor observed in 1889, "no one {was} willing to listen" (New York Times 1888a). In 1878, after reporting that rumors of Chippewa hostilities in Wis

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Fig. 25. Annuity Payment Scene at La Pointe. Photograph by Charles A. Zimmerman. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.

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Fig. 26. Indian School in the Vicinity of Hayward, 1880s. Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. WHi(x3)23295

consin were groundless, La Pointe Indian agent Isaac L. Mahan informed Indian Commissioner Ezra A. Hayt that "the Chippewas have grievances that would make white men tear their hair and howl from one end of the country to the other, but they prefer to submit quietly and peaceably to the powers that be, praying without ceasing, hoping continually that the good men of the Great Father's household will yet hear and answer their petitions by the necessary legislation. " In particular, Mahan urged Hayt to convince Congress to pay the funds the United States owed the Chippewas. "If the government would pay these poor people half what is justly their due under former treaties," the agent asserted, "they could and would live comfortably for many seasons to come." In the meantime, Mahan stressed the necessity of securing "large appropriations for net-twine and hooks" so Chippewa fishers could provide adequate subsistence for their families (Mahan 1878, 147-48). Despite such pleas, when the members of the U. S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs examined the records of the U. S. Treasury Department in 1892 they discovered that the federal government still owed the Chippewas more than ninetytwo thousand dollars. "The breach of faith to these unfortunate people," the Senators asserted, "is a greater reproach to the Government by reason of the fact that, while so many tribes and bands of western Indians have resorted to war in their exasperation, the Chippewas have been uniformly faithful and friendly" (U. S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs 1892, 2-4). Nevertheless, a thorough examination of the federal statute books for the 1890s led historian Edmund Danziger, Jr. to conclude that Congress never appropriated funds to pay the Chippewas (Danziger 1979, 230 n. 19-231, n. 19).

Throughout the late nineteenth century, but especially after passage of the Dawes Severalty Act in 1887, and continuing during the early 1900s, Bureau of Indian Affairs officials sought to transform the communal Chippewa people into "civilized," capitalistic farmers through programs of coercive education and social

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Fig. 27. New Testament in Ojibwa Language, 1875. The conversion of Chippewas to Christianity was one of the ways non-Indians measured Indian "progress" in becoming "civilized." Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. WHi(x3)24983

control (Figs. 26-28). Designed to convert communal tribal property into individually owned lands, the Dawes Act was also intended to isolate individuals from the tribal community so that they could eventually be absorbed into the larger white society (Otis 1973). Whatever the goals of the severalty legislation, lands allotted

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Fig. 28. An Indian Farmer Preparing a Seed Bed, c. 1930. Federal officials encouraged the Chippewas to farm, but small family farms on the cutover lands available to the Indians proved inadequate for making a living. Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. WHi(w6)6290

to Indians became easy targets of lumber companies or were lost through forfeiture when taxes could not be paid (Danziger 1979, 97-109; Glad 1990, 486). As one scholar has commented, "a Wisconsin county tax sale notice can be mightily confusing when you do not understand ownership to begin with, when you have never heard of taxes, and when you speak only Chippewa" (Wilkinson 1990, 17-18). Although they congregated together on an increasingly diminished land base and were under tremendous pressure to abandon tribal affiliations and identity as well as traditional communal ways, the Chippewas tried to follow their traditions as best they could (Figs. 29-30). They developed cooperative strategies for hunting, fishing, and gathering under existing conditions (Haskins 1909; Shifferd 1976, 18, 26-38; Vennum 1988, 264; Glad 1990, 486-87).

Beginning during the latter part of the nineteenth century, Chippewa fishers and hunters (Fig. 31) faced increasing competition for fish and game from commercial fishers, market hunters, and white sportfishers and hunters. Northern towns like Bayfield, a stop on steamer lines, had attracted tourists since the 1860s. As early as 1870, a Bayfield hotel reported that the majority of its registrants during the previous year had been "pleasure seekers" from "down below." All Wisconsin

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Fig. 29. Chippewa Herbalist and Family in Rice Lake, 1916. The Chippewa woman depicted here had a wide knowledge of herb and bark medicines. Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, WHi(x3)36518

railroads terminated in Chicago, and the flow of tourists from that city to Wisconsin was substantial. During the century following 1860, tourism and recreation became the largest combined source of employment and income in many northern counties as more and more city dwellers who enjoyed bird-watching, camping, boating, fishing, hiking, hunting, sight-seeing, and swimming were attracted by the state's more than eight hundred miles of Great Lakes coastline, nearly fifteen thousand lakes, and more than nine thousand miles of trout streams. The promotional efforts of the Wisconsin Central Railroad, which built the rambling Chequamegon Hotel in Ashland that took several trainloads of vacationers as well as sportfishers and hunters to fill, especially contributed to the growing interest in northern Wisconsin as a vacation spot. Meanwhile, the presence of increasingly large numbers of sportfishers and hunters, together with competition for game from commercial sources, made fishing and hunting less dependable sources of food for the Indians by the early twentieth century. The Chippewas also had to contend with the power of the State of Wisconsin as they sought to eke out an existence on and off their reservations (Wisconsin State Journal 1990c, 13; Shifferd 1976, 30-3 1; Nesbit 1985, 194, 529; Thompson 1988, 288).

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Fig, 30. Chippewa Woman Preparing Splints for Basket-making, c. 1925. Courtesy of the Wisconsin State Historical Society. WHi(x3)18837

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Fig. 31. Hunting in Winter on Snowshoes. From a stereograph by Charles A. Zimmerman. Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. WHi(x3)15462

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