History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 143

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198

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The following day a band of about sixty young warriors, mostly boys, set fire to a ' building at the mission, six miles from Pine Ridge. The colonel of the Seventh Cavalry, with eight troops and a detachment of artillery, went to drive them away. The Indians

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fell back toward their main camp, followed by the troops. Without taking proper precau- tions the colonel moved his command down a ravine, and was soon in a pocket, with the Indians occupying the hills and bluffs on three sides. The colonel sent back repcated requests for assistance, and for troops to rescue his command. The last messenger, Lieut. Guy Preston, a gallant officer, dashed up the valley under fire and returned with the relici. Fortunately Lieut .- Col. Guy V. Ilenry, a very able officer, was within reach. Although his battalion of four troops of the Ninth Cavalry (colored) had marched 100 miles in the last twenty-four hours, he moved rapidly to the rescue. The four troops were deployed to the right and to the left and drove the scattered Indians from the hills and bluffs, and relieved the Seventh Cavalry from what might have been another massacre.

These two affairs occurred but a short distance from the great hostile camp, causing great excitement, and for a time it was feared that nothing could prevent a general out- break and a devastating war. But the strong cordon of troops continued their slow pressure, moving more and more closely to the main Indian camp, so as to overawe it by force, and at the same time every measure was taken to draw them back to a peaceful con- dition by sending messages to the principal chiefs. Fortunately 1 had met most of the leaders on former occasions. Many of them had surrendered to me before, in the cam- paigns of the Northwest, and I was enabled to appeal to their sense of reason and better judgment and to convince them of the impossibility of the theories upon which they were acting. I also assured them, in case they should surrender to peaceful conditions, of strict compliance with the terms of their treaty, that a representation of their needy condition should be made at Washington, and that I would be their friend. This argument, although it required many days and great effort, finally prevailed, and 1 succeeded in drawing that large camp back to their agencies, where they agreed to abandon their hostile designs and follow my direction. This was one of the most gratifying events of my life, as it un- doubtedly saved many valuable lives and the country from a devastating war. It was effected without the Indians breaking out into the settlements and without the loss of a single life outside of those engaged in the military service and the Indians above mentioned.

The bringing about of this desirable result consumed many anxious months, occasioned by the necessary delay in getting the troops into position, and moving them judiciously to where their presence would have the best effect. At the same time long delays were made before the Indians would accept the terms of the Government. The delays incident thereto, not being understood by those distant from the scene of action, excited adverse criticism and unfavorable comments charging inefficiency. I received many insulting com- munications, denouncing what the writers supposed to be procrastination or timidity on the part of the military, and from others anxious to have hostilities precipitated in order that the vultures might prey upon the spoils of war.

These last active operations occurred during the severity of winter. The ground was covered with sleet at times and frequently with deep snows, but the troops were well equipped for a winter campaign, and very little suffering occurred among them.

When the Indians were moved back to their agencies they were advised to give a guarantee of their good faith that such threatening hostilities or acts of war would not occur again in the near future, and as an earnest of this they were told that they should send a body of representative men to the East as hostages, and as a pledge that in the future they would keep the peace. This they consented to do, and a party of some thirty of the principal warriors was gathered together and sent to the nearest railway station, and thence by rail to the headquarters of the division at Chicago. This body included two of the Messiah's missionaries, Kicking Bear and Short Bull. 1 placed Capt. Jesse M. Lce in charge of their agency, and he. by his rigid integrity and able administration, soon won the confidence and gratitude of the Indians.

A small delegation, composed of representative men of the Oglalas and Brules, was also selected and sent to Washington with a few judicious officers, to represent the condi- tion of their people, the non-fulfillment of treaty stipulations, and the want of provisions and their suffering in consequence. This body included such prominent chiefs as American Horse. Red Cloud, and Broad Trail.

After peace was fully restored the troops were reviewed preparatory to their being sent back to their former military stations. This review was one of the most interesting in my experience, as it occurred in mid-winter and during a snow storm. The vast prairie. with its rolling undulations, was covered with the white mantle of winter. That scene was probably the closing one that was to bury in oblivion, decay and death that once power- ful. defiant and resolute race. It was doomed to disappear, leaving behind it no evidence of its former life and power. And as the warm breezes of spring would remove the robe of winter, a new life, verdure and beauty would appear. Those prairies would see i new civilization. happy homes, prosperous communities, and great states. The sounds of the merry bells of industrial activity and the music of progress were to take the place of the war-cry and the echoes of alarm and violence.

The Indians here had a fair opportunity of witnessing the terrible power which they had fortunately avoided, as well as the advisability of remaining at peace in the future At its close the troops moved to their various destinations, not since to be reik n' b 1 against the Indians.

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In 1876, after a series of conflicts between the troops and Indians which beset the railway construction and cost a number of lives, the hostilities cul- minated in the massacre of Custer and his men on the Little Big Ilorn, which practically ended Indian hostilities in the Dakota country, though the Black Hills troubles, of a local nature, disturbed that section for a year or more.

But there was no further organized hostility to the Government or the whites, until the Messiah craze of 1890. Then the hostile council fires were rekindled and flamed for a brief month, entailing great loss to the Indians and requiring the sacrifice of life by the troops. With the extinguishment of that remarkable and insane rebellion, the hostile spirit of the Sioux appears to have been effec- tually and permanently subdued, and Dakota had witnessed the last of its hostile Indian troubles.

No achievement of great merit in the history of our Government will sur- pass in importance its successful efforts in civilizing the Sioux Indian. Whether the long delay which preceded the adoption and execution of the l'eace Policy and led to this happy result, will be set down to the country's discredit, or will be shown to have been practically unavoidable ; it ought not to detract from the merit of final success. The adoption of the beneficent plan was in the line of chity to a barbarous race confronted with possible extermination. It was prompted by humane motives of the most exalted character; and it moreover added to rather than detracted from the burdens of the white people. It is a part of the white man's mission and duty to lift up those races that have not the native force and intelligence to lift themselves. Left alone in his savage situation, with no pursuits but the war and the chase, constantly warring among themselves, ex- posed to decimating disease, extermination must have followed. Christian civili- zation has saved the race; and the Territory of Dakota supplied the field as well as the race where this glorious work has been accomplished. Many of the tribes are now represented by a generation of peaceable, industrious and en- lightened Indians to whom the war path is a tradition. The Indians of the Northwest will never again resort to hostilities as a means of obtaining redress for wrongs and injuries. He can now patronize the courts, plead his own canse, preach his own sermons, build his own modern houses and live within them, plant his own fields and harvest his crops. The wise policy of the Government during the past forty years has wrought a marvelous change in the Sioux Indian.

THE SISSETON INDIANS

As late almost as 1847 the Sisseton and Wahpeton Indians were running free and wild in Minnesota and found a favorite resort at St. Anthony Falls where they were accustomed to fish and to hunt.

They were not unfriendly toward the whites and the new white settlers or invaders rather, who were then finding their way to the wilds of the west from the civilized centers of the east, found a friendly greeting from them and their intercourse continued indefinitely to be of an amicable and in many respects a profitable nature. Alexander Ramsey was among the earliest of these pioneers, -an honest, wise, discreet and humane man, who by his exemplary conduct, and judicious course, gained the confidence of these Indians, which clung to him with increasing strength through his long and useful life and the history of the north star state discloses how valuable a factor was the ascendency gained by Ramsey over these tribes, in promoting the cession of Indian lands to the Government, in maintaining peaceable relations with the Indians, and in the early settlement of the territory by an excellent class of eastern people who were wise enough to profit by Colonel Ramsey's example. He was the William Penn of Minnesota.

In 1851, through Alexander Ramsey and Luke Lea, a treaty was made with these tribes, the Sissetons and Wahpetons, by which they transferred to

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the Government the largest and all things considered the best portion of Minne- sota, amounting to over thirty million acres, and extending from St. Anthony Falls to the Big Sioux River including the eastern shore of the Big Sioux Val- ley from the lowa northern boundary to Big Stone Lake and Lake Traverse, including, of course, the ground upon which the principal and most valuable portion of the flourishing metropolis of Sioux Falls has been built. The Sisse- ton and Wahpetons were friendly tribes, and so remained and still remain. They were not allied with the Santees and had no part in the Little Crow outbreak of 1862. Little Crow's people who joined with him in his atrocities, were known at that time as the "Lower bands," while the Sissetons and Wahpetons were called the "Upper Sioux." Little Crow, however, occupied a reservation lying on the Minnesota River Valley which had been reserved for them by the treaty mentioned or subsequently set apart for them, while the Sisseton and Wahpeton tribes had withdrawn to their present reservation at or contiguous to Lake Traverse and Big Stone Lake. It was the Sissetons and Wahpetons who be- friended the white people during the Little Crow raid. They rescued from Little Crow's bands 250 white women and children and captured about three hundred of Little Crow's warriors the same fall, and turned them over to General Sibley at Camp Release.

Settled on their new reservation these friendly tribes had, apparently by their own volition, largely discarded their former barbarous customs, abandoned the chases, given up living in tepees and built log houses, the Government and a wise agent assisting to some extent, but the Indian people, men and women, seemed to lead in the industrial life they were striving to follow, the Govern- ment simply seconding their meritorious efforts.

SECOND SISSETON CESSION

About one million acres of land in the northern part of the territory were ceded by the Sisseton, Wahpeton and Cut-head tribes of the Sioux in May, 1873; the tract was bounded and described as follows :

Bounded on the south and east by the treaty line of the Lake Traverse Treaty of 1851 and the Red River of the North to the mouth of Goose River; on the north by the Goost River and a line running from its source by the most westerly point of Devil's Lake to the Chief's Bluff at the head of James River. On the west by James River to the mouth of Moccasin River; thence to Kampeska Lake, to a point on the boundary of the cession of 1851, as above mentioned.

In this treaty these tribes cede all their land and extinguish all their claim to land in Dakota Territory, except the tract known as the Sisseton Reserva- tion, which was to be divided into farms for the Indian owners In payment of the land ceded the Government obligated itself to pay the Indians $800,000, to be paid in ten installments of $80,000 each, in live stock, agricultural imple- ments, clothing, provisions, and such other articles as the Indians may require, in the discretion of the secretary of the interior.

The Sisseton and Wahpeton tribes were located on a reservation whose eastern boundary was identical with the eastern boundary of the territory. adjoining Big Stone Lake. The two tribes numbered about two thousand They were regarded as friendly Indians and nearly all of them were fairly in- dustrious, partially civilized and prosperous.

The Indian commission composed of ex Governor Filmunds. Secretary 1 H. Teller and ex-Judge P. C. Shannon, who had been sent to the Spoton Agency for the purpose of making a treaty of cession with the Wahpeton and Sisseton Sioux. attended to their mission in May, 1881. but were unable to induce the Indians to sell any portion of their reserve which was located cet of and adjoining Big Stone Lake and Lake Traverse. The Indians were found to be unwilling to part with any portion of their land at that time, cont lent

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that they would be able to secure a much better bargain by holding it, and they were not in want of money or other things of value at the time. The Indians were found living in a state of their own organization. They have a govern- ment consisting of governor and State Legislature. Chief Gabriel Renville was their governor, and the Legislature consisted of twenty-eight Indian members. It was divided into two houses, the upper house containing fifteen members, and the lower house thirteen members.

Their seat of government is at Sisseton Agency. . The Legislature holds regular sessions, all its business is transacted in the Sioux tongue, and the rec- ords are kept in the Sioux vernacular. Bills were introduced and passed, the same as in the law-making bodies of the whites, and were then submitted to the governor for approval or rejection. There were on the records instances where the governor had vetoed bills, which had afterwards been passed over the veto. There had been cases of influence exerted by lobby members, but rarely. The measures passed by the Legislature were subject to the scrutiny of the interior department, under whose sanction the Legislature had been in- augurated and encouraged. The treaty commission was the signal for a called session of the Legislature, which was fully attended, before which the propo- sition of the commissioners was laid and considered and discussed for some time, resulting in a declaration not to sell their land or any portion of it at that time. The Indians were not drawing any supplies or annuities from the Govern- ment, and were supporting themselves principally by agriculture and stock raising in which industries they had become capable of earning their own living expenses, and accumulating a moderate surplus.

In 1887, about thirty-five years after the Treaty of 1851, which was made at Fort Snelling, the traveler journeying through a large portion of the Sisseton reserve would have found little, except the tawny complexion of the people and the frequently awkward pronunciation of the English language, to remind him that he was traveling through a country inhabited by Sioux Indians, and that all the improvements he witnessed were the result of their voluntary industry.

It would seem that these tribes of the Sioux had been cast in a different mold from the other tribes of the nation. They may not have excelled in in- telligence but they appeared to be endowed with an enterprise and ambition that is not found in any of the other tribes, though closely followed by the Yanktons and Santees after the Indian wars of 1862-5, who made commendable progress, but failed apparently to achieve as much, and advance as far in civilization, as the Sissetons and their companion tribe. These people, however, had a competent Indian leader, a native of their tribe, Gabriel Renville quite well educated, a Christian, who devoted himself to the work of promoting the moral, intellectual and industrial interests of his people. In 1887 they were in a position to look out for themselves without the protection and parental aid of the Great Father who had not therefore entirely withdrawn his guardianship. The Indians were then living under a republican form of government of their own making, based on the plan of our state governments, with a constitution patterned after the Constitution of the United States. Their treaty with the United States was declared to be the supreme law of their government. The power of their government was distributed between three distinct departments-legislative, exec- utive and judicial. Sisseton Agency was the capital, and there the Legislature met annually in January. This body was made up of two houses, a Council and a House of Representatives. The Council was composed of the old sub- chiefs and head men, but a new Council, composed of one member from each of the ten political precincts into which the reservation had been divided, was elected in November, 1887, for the term of four years, and every four years thereafter. Two representatives from each district were elected for the term of two years, one of which was elected in April of each year, while the council- men were elected quadrennially in November. Every male person of the tribe over twenty-one years of age had one vote. The executive power is vested in a

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principal chief, who is thereby the governor. Gabriel Renville had been chosen to this exalted position with a life tenure, but after his death a principal chief is to be chosen for four years. The duties and powers of the office are the same as usually belong to the executive of a state, with the pardoning power and the authority to veto the acts of the Legislature. He may be impeached the same as the governor of a state.

Chief Renville possessed executive ability of a high order. Ile did not speak English, but was so well educated in the Sioux language which had been reduced to a written form by Missionary Riggs, that he was able to express himself most clearly and eloquently in his native language. He delivers a written mes- sage to the legislative bodies annually recommending such measures as he deems advisable. The judicial power is vested in a Supreme Court and justice of the peace. The court consists of five members who are elected every two years. In April each year each of the ten districts elects one justice of the peace and one constable. The constitution also provides for one assistant principal chief who succeeds to the presidency temporarily in case of the death of the incumbent and this official presides over the Council. The house elects its presiding officer. There is also a general reservation officer called the treasurer, and a secretary, sheriff and attorney. These are all chosen for four years. Offences in which white men are involved are not within the jurisdiction of the Indian court, but are subject to the laws of the United States. It was predicted that within a quarter of a century the members of these tribes would all be enrolled as citizens of the United States. Their children were all taught in English speaking schools, though all would also learn the Indian tongue in their family life. Those of the tribes who had been converted to Christianity. which included a fair proportion, were divided between the Presbyterian and Episcopal denominations, the former having the greater number.

The Sisseton Indian reservation, as is well known, was located in the very midst of not only an excellent farming country that abounded in superior natural attractions, but was surrounded by the white settlements which were growing more populous every passing year. The Sissetons were reliable friends of the whites, many of them well on the road to become thoroughly civilized and practically all in favor of living and working like white people, wearing the garh of the whites, earnest in supporting schools and many of them devoutly religious. But with all this in their favor their large reservation was an obstacle to the proper development of that portion of the territory situated in its central portion measuring north to south, and lying directly on the Minnesota boundary line. hence it was for the interest of the white settlers numbering in 18& many thou- sands, in that part of the territory, to secure the opening of the reservation to settlement and to civil government. The Indians did not object to this, but rather favored it, but had hitherto been unwilling to make any treaty of cession owing to an old claim they held against the Government growing out of the Indian troubles in the War of 1862 and later known as the Little Crow war. Efforts had been made to negotiate with them, but without success, and in May, 1889, the community of Watertown took the matter up and sent a committee to Milbank to meet the Indians, and endeavor to arrange satisfactory terms. This committee was headed by Gen. 11. R. Pease. They met the Indians in council at the Big Coulee on the 21st of May and adjourned to a beautiful grove. A big feast preceded the proceedings, which were opened with a prayer by Rev. Charles R. Crawford, a half brother of the head chief of the Sissetons, Gabriel Renville. After prayer General l'ease stated the object of the council to be to to ascertain their views in regard to opening their reservation.

Mr. D. W. Diggs, acting as stenographer to report the proceedings. Chici Gabriel Renville was the first to speak, Rev. Mr. Crawford interpreting. The chief said in substance :

I don't feel that I made friends with the white man today. At the time of the mas ar in 1862, our people made friends with the whites and protected them from the hath withy Vol. 1-53

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all heart. We stand between the hostiles. We suffered a great deal. After that the Government took our annuities and we have suffered from it. Many years we had worked hard to get what belonged to us, and when the bill was made out the Government had taken om two years. That was not right. We never thought to keep this reservation for our lifetime. If your customer owes you and asks for more credit, you won't trust him till he pays up what he owes. If the Government pay back annuities, and then asks us to sell our land, the question will be what price you shall pay for it.

In answer to the question, "What do you think the Government ought to pay for the land," Renville replied :

I can't say. When commission and Indians get together, they talk it over.

Being asked what the Indians claimed, Renville formulated it as follows:

First, they want their patents issued, securing to them their land in severalty.

Second, they claim that under the treaty of 1851 there is due them, in annuities cut off in 1862. the amount as adjusted and admitted by the interior department of $305.987.37. and for the two years left out of the account, the amount of $36,800, making a total of $342,787.37.

Third, according to the treaty of 1851 the survey of our land is wrong. The amount of land taken from us by this is about forty-eight thousand.

These are the specific demands the Indians make of the Government. They also claim that there is due them from the Government, as pay for Chief Renville and twelve of the scouts for five months' service performed by direction of General Sibley in 1863 and 1864.

Renville also suggested that he thought that all the Indians who are twenty- one years old when the treaty is made should receive 160 acres of land. "The bill gives this amount to all twenty-one or over at the date of the bill's passage, with eighty acres to those between eighteen and twenty-one, and forty acres to all under eighteen." Renville added, in conclusion, "That when the claim is settled they want the money paid in cash, and not in shoe pegs and overalls."

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History of Dakota Territory, volume I, Part 143

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920 Publication date: 1915 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1198

Author: Kingsbury, George Washington, 1837-; Smith, George Martin, 1847-1920
Publication date: 1915
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1198