by David Treuer
When government representatives returned to Red Lake in 1886, hoping to secure the approval of the tribe to relocate other Ojibwe there, and to prepare the reservation for allotment, the leaders were ready. Before they could so much as suggest terms, Red Robed stood and addressed the commission, opening with a salvo of complaints. “We have written a great many times,” he noted, “but we have never received a satisfactory answer. We do not know any of our chiefs who have ceded this land; we cannot find the name of a single chief who has ever ceded this land or signed his name on paper.” Commissioner Charles Larrabee was put off his game immediately. “We can see the possibility of a misunderstanding having been made at the time,” he acknowledged. “But it is not in our power to rectify that mistake at the present time.”
The chiefs were relentless. They rejected the commission’s proposals out of hand, and indeed the right of any outsider to put a price on their land. “This property belongs to us, the Red Lake Indians. That is the conclusion we have arrived at. That is the conclusion we have all arrived at,” they said. Then Red Robed and He Who Is Spoken To began a long recital of illegal timber cutting, inroads made by homesteaders, and the past false dealings of the government. After a long while, Commissioner Henry Whipple was able to read the terms the U.S. government was proposing to the Red Lake government. One of the proposals was that the rest of the Ojibwe in Minnesota be relocated to Red Lake. He Who Is Spoken To spoke again: “We wish to live alone on our premises; we do not wish any other Indians to come here.” The chiefs were resolute and their response was clear: they unanimously opposed allotment. Gradually the Red Lake chiefs wore the commission down, but they were as smart as they were resolute: they could read the writing on the wall. Allotment was coming, and they would have to fight it. To that end they used as a bargaining chip another huge tract of land north of the reservation proper. The chiefs told the commission they were willing to cede much of it in exchange for opting out of allotment and as long as the Red Lake Band controlled all the land around both Upper and Lower Red Lake. He Who Is Spoken To also demanded that at the top of the treaty the commission include the sentence “It should be premised that the Red Lake Reservation has never been ceded to the United States.” (In most cases, during treaties tribes relinquished title to the land and then portions of it were deeded back to them.)
The commission left dissatisfied, but they knew they’d gone as far as they could with Red Lake. After the Nelson Act was passed, however, another commission was empaneled and sent to Red Lake in the summer of 1889 to try again for allotment. The act formally known as “An Act for the relief and civilization of Chippewa Indians in Minnesota” but referred to as the Nelson Act, for its author, was at bottom a more vigorous version of previous allotment acts. It provided for the relocation of all Ojibwe people in Minnesota to the White Earth Reservation in the western part of the state. The only “relief” it would bring was the Minnesota Ojibwe’s final dispossession of their land. Once again they were met in force and in consensus by Red Lake leadership. Once again the chiefs began with grievances. “We consider that the Government did not keep its agreement according to our understanding,” began Chief Leading Feather. He detailed how the government’s surveyors had not respected the agreed-upon boundaries. The chiefs were both specific and eloquent. Wewe (Snow Goose) said that as a result of the government’s inability to control timber cutting and the ruthless practices of price-gouging traders, there “are many things which come inside the line of the reservation which can be compared to the works of the devil, and I am unable to estimate the amount of the damage done by these things. You see how tall I am. If I should be able to stand in the midst of the money, of the value of damages, what had been stolen from us, it would go over my head.” One commissioner, Senator Henry Rice, wrote bitterly of the chiefs (no doubt ruing their ability to outmaneuver him diplomatically): “We found them intelligent, dignified, and courteous, but for several days indisposed to give a favorable hearing.”
The commission never did get a favorable hearing on the matters it had wanted to pursue. Complaining of white encroachment on tribal land, Praying Day noted, “I can see my property going to waste; they are stealing from me on every side.” A chief with the impressive name Zhaawanookamigish-kang—He Who Treads Earth from the South—told the commission, “No liquor shall ever come on this reservation. It would be the ruination of all these persons you see here should that misfortune come to them.” He Who Is Spoken To piled on: “This property under discussion, called Red Lake, is my property. These persons whom you see before you are my children. They own this place the same as I own it. My friends, I ask that we reserve the whole of the lake as ours and our grandchildren’s hereafter. . . . We wish to guarantee to our posterity some security; that is why we demand the reservation we have outlined on that paper.” After days of tense negotiations, with Rice and the other commissioners leaning on the chiefs and the chiefs dodging all of the commission’s proposals, Chief Niigaanakwad stood, as is the Ojibwe custom when speaking. “I stand before you as spokesman of the band,” he said, “and to show you that my assertion is correct, I proclaim it by a rising vote.” Two-thirds of the Red Lakers in attendance rose to their feet in support. “Your mission here is a failure,” he told the commission. “We never wish hereafter to sign any instrument. . . . We never signed an instrument in which we did not have a voice. . . . We shall return to our respective homes.” Wewe said it more simply: “I don’t want to accept your propositions, I love my reservation very much; I don’t want to sell it.”
After six days of talks, He Who Is Spoken To rose and, speaking for all of Red Lake, told the commission, “I said that I was opposed to having allotments made to us; I do not look with favor on the allotment plan. I wish to lay out a reservation here, where we can remain with our bands forever. I mean to stand fast to my decision. . . . We wish that any land we possess should be not only for our own benefit, but for our posterity, our grandchildren hereafter. . . . We think that we should own in common everything that pertains to us; with those that are suffering in poverty, just as the same as we are.” In the end the Red Lake Ojibwe ceded millions of acres of land to the north, but they were never subjected to allotment; to this day they have never opened the reservation to the sale of alcohol.
The Red Lake Chiefs didn’t just survive the encounter—they learned a valuable lesson from it: they needed to maintain strong leadership that worked to create consensus among the general population of the tribe. Only by presenting a united front could they hope to stave off the U.S. government. Likewise, they noticed that on other reservations marked by dissent or populated with variously displaced and relocated bands and tribes and families, the government and its agents were very successful at playing factions off one another, empowering some people and disempowering others, until they got their way. The Red Lake leaders worked together to make sure that each and every community on the reservation was represented by hereditary chiefs. They met regularly and worked through their considerable differences. In 1918, under the leadership of Peter Graves and Paul Beaulieu, they formalized their structure of governance by creating the General Council of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians. This was, arguably, the first and only tribal representative body in the United States at the time. It honored Ojibwe leadership structure and spoke to the need for a modern government to deal with modern times. When federal agents tried to work around leaders they found unsympathetic, they were met with the force of the entire general council. In 1934, when the government pushed for modern Indian government across the country, Red Lake not only was ready, but was ahead of the curve.
Red Lake Reservation also managed to withstand the assault on Ojibwe religious practices. The reservation included a number of villages along the southern edge of Lower Red Lake. Ponemah, a village at the sharp end of the spit of land that separated Lower and Upper Red Lake, was isolated and insular. Its inhabitants understood themselves to be the ones who had driven t
he Dakota out of Red Lake at the Battle of Battle River, and who had driven away army recruiters at gunpoint during World War I—and who for decades had prevented missionaries from getting any foothold in their homeland, even as Ojibwe villages to the south were inundated by Catholics, Episcopalians, Baptists, and Methodists. A story had it that once the Catholics had set to building a church in Ponemah, but before it could be completed, it was burned to the ground. The missionaries began rebuilding, and again the structure was burned down. The priest, frustrated, asked a Ponemah leader when he and his people were going to accept the word of God and Jesus Christ, and the man said, “Hai, ganabaj baanimaa, baanimaa gosha” (Oh, maybe later). Supposedly that’s why the village is denoted as Ponemah on American-made maps, although the Ojibwe refer to it as Obaashing (The Place of the Clashing Winds).
Nonetheless, in 1916 the Indian agent wrote to two Ponemah chiefs—Nezhikegwaneb (Lone Feather) and Azhede-giizhig (Pelican Sky)—and threatened them with sanctions:
My friends it has been reported to me that you have been taking a very active part in the dances recently held on the “point” and that it was necessary . . . to direct you not to dance anymore, also that you made excuses to the effect that the government had reference to the Squaw Dances and not to the medicine dances when they requested that you discontinue your foolish abuse and over indulgence in dancing last winter. In this connection your attention is called to the law regarding the practice of Indian Medicine Men on the reservation and a further violation of this law will be properly punished by me. . . . It is unlawful for you to continue in these medicine dances.
Nodin Wind, Ponemah’s preeminent spiritual leader and a savvy politician, responded with a letter that he had dictated to an interpreter (he couldn’t read or write) and had signed by eighty leading members of the Ponemah community:
We Indians in the vicinity of Ponemah, on the Red Lake Reservation, Minnesota, protest against the ruling of the Indian Department at Washington, D.C., prohibiting the ancient Indian ceremony known to the white man as the “Grand Medicine Dance.” We base our protest on the following grounds.
The so called Grand Medicine Dance is not a dance in any sense of the term. It is simply a gathering of Men, Women, and children for the purpose of giving praise to the Great Spirit, thanking him for the manifold blessings bestowed upon the tribe and praying for continued health, happiness and long life.
The beating of the drum is simply an accompaniment to the songs of praise, uttered by the congregation. As in every church of the white man, piano or organ is found for the purpose.
There is no medicine present at this ceremony and nothing that is supposed to be medicine: it is strictly a religious ceremony and nothing else.
To illustrate, let us say that an Indian has been sick for some time and eventually recovers: the members of his family and friends will give the so called Grand Medicine Dance as a token of respect and thanks to the Great Spirit, in other words, to God, for his recovery. On the other hand, should he die, the same ceremony will be performed, changed of course to deep regrets, instead of rejoicing.
Among the whites the minister is called to administer salvation to the sick or dying and after death the minister is called for the same purpose.
We understand that this government gives its subjects the freedom of worshipping as he chooses and we cannot understand why we are deprived of this privilege.
Through dissimulation and secrecy and outright rejection of Christianity, Ponemah remained resolutely pagan. Even today there are no Christians and no churches in Ponemah. Red Lake was successful in fighting off allotment and forced conversion, if not the boarding schools. But their success in resisting meant that when their children completed school, they could return to a strong community. Other tribes were not so lucky, but they all resisted their own destruction in their own way.
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THE CHICKASAW had originally been excluded from the provisions of allotment along with the other four of the Five Civilized Tribes in Oklahoma. But when they became subject to allotment and the dissolution of their tribal governments and treaty rights under the Curtis Act in 1898, they charted a different course than Red Lake. As a part of the act, the Chickasaw (along with the other four tribes) lost millions of acres and were rendered temporarily politically voiceless. But Kevin Washburn’s recollection of Bill Anoatubby’s approach to solving life’s riddles—If it’s going to be, it’s up to me—was clearly in widespread practice in Chickasaw country long before Anoatubby came to power. Since the tribes didn’t have reservations anymore, they essentially borrowed American civic structures to preserve their tribes and their tribal selves. They functioned as citizens and incorporated towns, opened businesses, bought and sold land, levied taxes, founded civic organizations, ran Indian candidates as mayors, aldermen, and city councilmen, and engaged in a frenzy of institution building.
They were so effective at this kind of work they earned the ire of the commissioner of Indian affairs. “Owing to the hostility of the governing portion of the tribe to the control of the schools by the Department [of Indian Affairs],” the commissioner reported in 1900, “the Chickasaw council has undertaken to conduct these institutions as formerly, supporting them by appropriations from their own revenues. As the coal and asphalt royalties were not to be used, the ‘Regulations for education in Indian Territory’ did not apply to this nation, which attempts out of its common funds to manage the scholastic interests of its people.” Clearly unaware of the irony (wasn’t the government interested in helping Indians become self-sufficient, resourceful, hardworking, and civilized?), he ranted on:
Its legislature appoints a superintendent of schools, who in turn selects a local trustee for each school, which superintendent and trustees constitute the school board of the nation. The local trustees being the creatures of the national superintendent are removed by him at will. The present superintendent is a half-blood of some education, but is said to have little force of character. The trustees generally are full-bloods, the majority of whom are members of the nation’s legislature. The neighborhood schools are located in isolated communities, patronized principally by full-bloods when patronized at all. The children, in many instances, and teachers also, use the Chickasaw vernacular to the almost total exclusion of English.
The supervisor of schools for that nation, in his report on conditions, says that the schoolhouses are mostly small frame buildings, furnished with a few rough board benches, with rarely a desk, blackboard, or writing materials. Many of the houses are “too filthy for swine to occupy, never having been cleansed since they were built; many of the children in squalor and rags.” Teachers are not chosen for merit, but by favoritism, preference being given to Chickasaws “when the local trustee does not have a noncitizen friend who wishes the appointment.”
Such was the response of many among the Five Civilized Tribes to efforts at government control in this period. They learned how to adapt and engaged in a process of institution building that made them relatively strong and able to withstand much of what the government threw at them.
The Menominee, who had arguably lived in the western Great Lakes longer than any other Algonquian tribe, resisted the predations of the U.S. government in their own unique ways. Their tenure in northeastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan likely goes back to prehistoric times, unlike the Odawa and Ojibwe, who expanded west and overran them. The name “Menominee,” which was given to them by the Ojibwe, means “People of the Wild Rice,” which suggests that the Menominee understood the significance of the crop and harvested it extensively long before anyone else did. Slovenian Roman Catholic missionary and linguist Frederic Baraga has one of the most colorful descriptions of them (and perhaps of any tribe) in his dictionary of the Ojibwe language. He wrote that the name of the tribe was “given to some strange Indians (according to the sayings of the Otchipwes [Ojibwe]), who are rowing through the woods, and wh
o are sometimes heard shooting, but never seen.”
At the time of contact in the seventeenth century, the Menominee had consolidated their territory to an area of about ten million acres in northeastern Wisconsin. They managed to stay there, and to hold on to their land for quite some time, but in the nineteenth century, facing relocation and inroads by white settlers, they ceded land to the government in 1831, 1832, 1836, 1848, 1854, and finally in 1856. After the last cession, the Menominee were left with about three hundred thousand acres northwest of Green Bay that were almost entirely given over to forest—old-growth white and red pine. As the settlers around them cleared the land and planted crops, the Menominee watched and decided, collectively, not to follow suit. They felt about their trees much as the Red Lakers felt about their lakes: if they could protect the trees they, in turn, would be protected by them.
Oral history has it that a kind of spiritually based sustainable-yield management system was put into practice shortly after the reservation was established in 1854. According to a tribal leader, Charlie Frechette, the Menominee invoke this practice as part of many of their ceremonial proceedings: “Start with the rising sun and work toward the setting sun, but take only the mature trees, the sick trees, and the trees that have fallen. When you reach the end of the reservation, turn and cut from the setting sun to the rising sun, and the trees will last forever.” The proceeds from the first trees they cut and sold went to buy flour. The tribe was in a position to use the resources it had left in order to take care of itself and to remain self-sufficient.
