"We, the undersigned, hereby certify that the foregoing agreement was fully explained by us in open council to the Indians of the Red Lake Reservation, Minnesota; that it was fully understood by them before signing, and that the agreement was duly executed and signed by said Indians.

"RED LAKE AGENCY, MINNESOTA, March 12th, 1902.

"Jos. C. Roy,

"C. W. MORRISON,
"PETER GRAVES,

"We, the undersigned, do hereby certify that we witnessed the signatures of James McLaughlin, U. S. Indian inspector, and the two hundred and twenty (220) Indians of the Red Lake Reservation, Minnesota, to the foregoing agreement.

"DANIEL SULLIVAN,
"Overseer in Charge of Subagency.
"FRANK H. KRATKA,

"Mayor of Thief River Falls, Minn.
"B. L. FAIRBANKS,
"White Earth Agency, Minn.

"RED LAKE AGENCY, MINNESOTA, March 12th, 1902.

"I certify that the total number of male adult Indians over eighteen (18) years of age belonging on the Red Lake Reservation, Minnesota, is three hundred and thirty-four (334), of whom two hundred and twenty (220) have signed the foregoing agreement. G. L. SCOTT, 'Major, Tenth Cavalry, Acting Indian Agent.

"LEECH LAKE AGENCY, MINNESOTA, March 17, 1902."

Therefore,

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the said agreement be, and the same hereby is, accepted, ratified, and confirmed.

SEC. 2. That in accordance with the provisions of article three of said agreement the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars be, and the same is hereby, appropriated out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated.

SEC. 3. That the lands ceded to the United States under said agreement shall be disposed of under the general provisions of the homestead and town-site laws of the United States, and shall be opened to settlement and entry by proclamation of the President, which proclamation shall prescribe the manner in which these lands may be settled upon, occupied, and entered by persons entitled to make entry thereof, and no person shall be permitted to settle upon, occupy, or enter any of said lands, except as prescribed in such proclamation, until after the expiration of sixty days from the time when the same are opened to settlement and entry.

Provided, That the rights of honorably discharged Union soldiers and sailors of the late civil war and the Spanish war, as defined and described in section twenty-three hundred and five of the Revised Statutes, as amended by the act of March first, nineteen hundred and one, shall not be abridged: And provided further, That the price of said lands shall be three dollars and ninety cents per acre, but settlers under the homestead law, who shall reside upon and cultivate the land entered in good faith for the period required by existing law, shall be entitled to a patent for the lands so entered upon the payment to the local land officers of the usual and customary fee and commissions, and no other or further charge of any kind whatsoever shall be required from such settler to entitle him to a patent for the land covered by his entry, except that homestead settlers who commute their entries under section twenty-three hundred and one, Revised Statutes, shall pay for the land entered the price fixed herein.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I said to the Indians here on page 38:

My friends, when I was leaving Washington, just a few minutes before starting I had a talk with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in relation to this matter-that is, Commissioner Jones-and he told me to be liberal in the price allowed you for the lands, and he would approve of it; that he was desirous to see you people of the Red Lakes protected in every way possible, and he told me that I might provide that you receive double the amount of land for allotments that you are entitled to under the present act.

This was quite an inducement. Under the Nelson Act, so called, they were only entitled to 80 acres, whilst this agreement as negotiated with them provided for 160 acres. These are the minutes of the council that was held with the Indians in 1903, when I went back to see if they would ratify the provisions of the appropriation act of March 3, 1903. It shows my explanation to the Indians and their positive refusal to accept, on account of the method of opening lands, manner of payment, and the granting of about $57,000 in land to the State of Minnesota at a minimum price.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, wherein do you consider that their refusal on their part to ratify is so important in this hearing that we are now holding?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I do not think it is important at all. The only thing that I would regard as important is that the bill that was submitted to them-the act that was submitted to them for their concurrence continued and there were a great many changes from the original agreement of 1902. That retained article 4 in toto, which recognized them as the only owners of the Red Lake Reservation.

Mr. KELLY. When we adjourned yesterday there was a question I wanted to ask. When you went out in 1902 to have your negotiations with the Indians was there any understanding at all with the Indians at that time that if they accepted the agreement you brought to them, that the provisions of the act of 1889 would be waived, where the residue of the Red Lake Reservation was to be held for all Chippewa Indians?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. The minutes show the discussion very clearly. That was told them several times.

Mr. KELLY. You gave them to understand that?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Yes.

Mr. KELLY. Don't you think that was the reason they accepted the agreement?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Without a doubt that had a great deal to do with it.

Mr. HERNANDEZ. Do I understand that the reason that they accepted the first agreement-I mean the Red Lakes-was because they were to get from under the agreement of 1889?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. That did not come out in the discussions at all. The CHAIRMAN. I do not think Mr. McLaughlin has proceeded far enough in his statement for us to begin to interrogate vet. I would like to have him go on and explain why they went up there to make this contrast. Why did the Government at that time want to take that band of Indians there and separate them and give them an advantage, you might say, over the other members of the Chippewa Tribe?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. That, Mr. Chairman, I know nothing of, other than these petitions that came in here-the petition of the Commercial Club of Thief River Falls, the delegation from the State, two Senators and some Congressmen, and my instructions from the departmentand I had just arrived; if I recollect--I had just arrived from California, and they sent for me and told me what they would do would send me out to Minnesota. I had never visited the Chippewas before. The CHAIRMAN. Have you anything further on your mind that you want to tell us with regard to what took place?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I simply came up here to submit these agreements, and in case the committee desired to ask me any questions, I would be very glad to answer them.

The CHAIRMAN. Then, Mr. Hernandez, I will ask your pardon for having broken in at the time I did, but I supposed he had a long statement with regard to this which he wanted to make before we started to question him. You have stated you were requested to offer them an inducement of double the amount that they expected to receive. In other words, they were figuring on getting 80 acres and you gave them 160. Now, what I am interested in is, why that sort of an inducement was offered. Why was it so necessary at that time to make this particularly seemingly advantageous arrangement with the Red Lakes, as against all the others of the Minnesota Chippewas?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. As I understood that and still understand that, it was because the Red Lakes had a large amount of surplus land, a large reservation, and the same was allowed the White Lake Reservation Indians later by the act of 1905. They had taken 80 acres of land, but 80 acres additional was given to them.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, when you went up there, you did not see anybody but the Red Lake Indians?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I did not see any of the other Indians.

The CHAIRMAN. So you did not know at that time whether or not other portions of the Chippewa Band were favorable to that sort of a special arrangement?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I did not.

Mr. KELLY. But there was no request from any other Chippewa Indians to have this negotiation?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. No; other than a number of Indians told me they had been receiving letters from Washington and from elsewhere, advising them not to negotiate any agreement.

The CHAIRMAN. But you did go ahead and make the agreement and sign them all up?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Yes; under my instructions.

The CHAIRMAN. And it was brought about largely by such inferences and eloquence as you could bring to bear upon them, and the further particular inducement of the additional 80 acres of land?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I regarded it for the best interests of those Indians.

Mr. KELLY. Much more than the additional 80 acres, Mr. Chairman. There was also the proposition that the Red Lake Indians would own entirely all the Red Lake Reservation, instead of the Chippewas.

The CHAIRMAN. But when you went up there to make it, you believed yourself it was a particularly advantageous thing for the Red Lake Indians to do?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I did.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, with your great knowledge of Indian affairs at that time, it must have come into your mind, "Is it not possible that this is an arrangement which will not work to the advantage of all the Chippewas?"

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. That did not occur to me at all, on account of my instructions.

The CHAIRMAN. You can see now, from the way the thing has turned out, that that would have been a normal thing to have had under consideration at the time. Of course, I appreciate that you were under instructions to go and do a certain thing.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I was very well acquainted with the commissioner in the agreement of 1889, H. M. Rice. He was the first governor of Minnesota, the first United States Senator, an old friend of mine. Mr. Whiting, of Wisconsin; I knew him, and I knew that they had had a long summer's work there in negotiating the agreement, and the Indians complained a great deal about it.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to see that penciled note that you gave me yesterday in the hearing.

Mr. SINCLAIR. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the major about the Pembinas? The Pembinas are on that Red Lake Reservation also? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. There are a number of them still there.

Mr. SINCLAIR. Did you negotiate with them in making this treaty? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Not in this treaty at all.

Mr. SINCLAIR. Why were they not included?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. They were not included in my instructions the second time I went out.

Mr. SINCLAIR. About how many Pembinas are there?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. They are not designated. They are all called Red Lake Chippewas. There are some Pembinas among them. There were about that time 100 or 105 Pembinas on land on the White Earth Reservation which had been purchased by the Government and located there.

The CHAIRMAN. Bishop Marty was up there about that time, advising.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. What did he mean when he made this statement?

We do not say that the other Indians have a right on this reservation which is yours alone. Now, this reservation being yours, you must do with it as your advantage dictates, and for the advantage of the whole Chippewa Nation.

What did he mean, in your judgment, by saying that was to the advantage of the whole Chippewa Nation?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. He undoubtedly felt like many others had felt, that that tract of country belonged to the Red Lake Indians alone, but the act of Congress that they were presenting would not bear them out in that; that was in violation of the act of Congress. All the Indians were interested, so far as negotiations were concerned. The CHAIRMAN. You knew that that statement was a fact when were making that agreement?

you

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I did not see those minutes at all. The CHAIRMAN. You knew of this agreement, did you not? You knew that this agreement you were making with the Red Lakes was contrary to the law as it existed at that time?

Another thing

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Oh, yes; I was aware of that. I wish to say. A number of the Red Lakes were talking with me at the hotel and around the office. They claim that they did own about 3,000,000 acres at one time in their reservation, and that they ceded all of that except about 800,000 acres which were reserved for them as a diminished reservation. That is what we were negotiating for, and this 2,200,000 acres that they had ceded, thrown into a jackpot, that they had given them a right to participate in the proceeds.

The CHAIRMAN. They thought, having ceded that property over to the whole Chippewa Nation, that it was a reasonable compensa- . tion for what they were getting under this agreement?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Yes; for what they were getting under this agreement.

The CHAIRMAN. There is a real potent thing in this proposition. Mr. HERNANDEZ. Yes; but is there any record?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. No.

Mr. HERNANDEZ. There is nothing that will bear that out, on that contention?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. No.

The CHAIRMAN. But, Mr. Hernandez, we are searching now not only for the written agreement, but the thing that surrounded it, that brought out the written record. What do you mean; what they were actually doing the thing for? I do not think that we can always in these matters determine them merely by just what the written words say? I think you must consider the surroundings to some extent at least. I always do in making up my mind about a question.

Mr. HERNANDEZ. As I understand it, the first record which was made in official acts with these Indians by the Federal Government, was made in 1854, was it not? That is when they were brought really under Federal control?

Mr. KELLY. That was the treaty; yes.

Mr. HERNANDEZ. That is as far back as we can go.

Prior to that,

as I understand it, these Indians were apparently occupying that territory there. They were moving from one place to another, as a sort of nomadic tribe.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. As far back-I reached Minnesota in the spring of 1863, and am well acquainted with the Indians of Minnesota and the Northwest since that time, and at that time the Red Lakers were up in that country. I don't know how long previous to that. Mr. HERNANDEZ. Right there where you found them in 1902 ? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. In 1902.

The CHAIRMAN. You haven't any interest in the particular solution of this question, except as to how it would distribute the benefits. to the greatest number of people?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I have not.

The CHAIRMAN. You have no particular pride in carrying out this agreement, if it should be found that it ought never to have been made?

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. When I concluded that agreement with the Indians, I submitted my report and the agreement to the Secretary. The CHAIRMAN. You are here just as a witness, to give us the benefit of the knowledge you have concerning that agreement. Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Since that time, have you kept watch of that situation up there, so that you would be able to say whether or not you believe that the agreement has been a righteous one, and it has been a good thing for the Red Lake Indians, as well as the other Chippewas that are involved.

Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I always regarded it as an excellent agreement, for the best interests of the Red Lakers, at least.