The CHAIRMAN. But, up to this time, the Red Lake Indians have not received very many benefits from the agreement, have they? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I think they have, as provided in the act of Congress. The CHAIRMAN. There have been no lands allotted. ཨཙྪཱ The CHAIRMAN. Their lumber has not been sold to a very great extent at this time? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. As will be seen from the minutes of my council, the Indians were opposed-were very much opposed to allotments at that time, and I advised them to make it possible for them to receive the allotments when the time was up. Mr. KELLY. Have you gone over, Major, the original Ellsworth bill that is before this committee? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I have not. Is that Congressman Ellsworth of Minnesota ? Mr. KELLY. Yes. Would you say it would be a square deal now to allot the Red Lake Indians according to the plan of each one having an equal allotment, and then take the residue for the benefit of the Chippewa Nation? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I could not answer that question. The CHAIRMAN. You do not want to give your opinion in that matter? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I am something like Mr. Meritt was yesterday. We don't want to mention names. The CHAIRMAN. That is all right enough from an officer's standpoint, but in order to get to the real facts of this situation, we should call things by their right names, and we should get to the bottom of it, without regard to whose toes are stepped on, and it seems to me that if any member of this committee has a question he desires to ask you, who drew that agreement, that is pregnant, that is material, and without regard to whom it affects, you ought to answer the question. Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I will be pleased to, Mr. Chairman. Mr. KELLY. I would just like to say this, Mr. Chairman. I agree with you heartily in that statement, that we are having the responsibility of acting on a matter here which is in controversy, and can not be settled apparently by that agreement. Therefore, we want to know if we are going to take the responsibility, and I ask the question as to whether now, after all the proceedings that have occurred, it would be a square deal to allot these Red Lake Indians, under the plan of 1889, each one getting an equal chance, and then the residue to go to the benefit of the Chippewa nation instead of the Red Lake Indians alone? I do not believe that would require any mention of names. Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. My work in the Indian Service has been very general. I have not been to the Red Lake agency, I think, since that time, about 1904, and I really do not know the conditions at the present time. I know the conditions generally among the Millack Indians, but I have not given the White Earth matters a great deal of study and thought, but I know a great deal of dissatisfaction grew out of that, and there were reports in the department made by Inspector Wright in regard to it, but the conditions under that act had been very unsatisfactory, especially the sale of the timber, and I have had comparatively little to do with it. Mr. KELLY. Well, have you ever come in contact with any of this insidious propaganda that Mr. Meritt spoke about yesterday, in an effort to discredit the Indian Bureau, for ulterior motives? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I do not know what Mr. Meritt referred to yesterday. The CHAIRMAN. That is the first you had heard of it? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Yes; I have heard people talk against the Indians. Mr. KELLY. You do not consider that their objection made to the work of the Indian Bureau is regarded as a sinister propaganda? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Not at all. The CHAIRMAN. Maj. McLaughlin, as I understand it, after you succeeded in making that agreement, and after your efforts trying to get the Red Lake Indians to agree to the legislation which subsequently was passed, your connection with it ceased. Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. Ceased. The CHAIRMAN. And since then, you have no knowledge whether or not the arrangement has worked satisfactorily, or whether it has worked at all? Mr. MCLAUGHLIN. I have not. The CHAIRMAN. Then I do not see where you can give us any further information with regard to the matter which will be helpful. If there is anybody else who desires to ask him any questions, we will be pleased to have them. If not, Major, we are grateful to you for the information you have given us. Now, Mr. Meritt, is there anyone else you wish heard Mr. Steenerson, are you here with a desire to enlighten us on this question? STATEMENT OF HON. HALVOR STEENERSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MINNESOTA. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Steenerson, will you tell us-we have several conflicting interests here, and I would like to know, if I can, which side of the question you are on. Mr. STEENERSON. I will try and get at that. The first I knew about this Ellsworth bill was yesterday. Otherwise, I think I would have been here before. The White Earth Reservation is entirely within my district. The Red Lake Reservation was formerly entirely within my district. It was so when the act of 1904 was passed, and when Mr. McLaughlin negotiated the agreement by the sale of those 11 towns. At the present time, the county of Clearwater in my district embraces a portion of the Red Lake Reservation. The balance of the reservation where most of the Indians reside is in Beltrami County, which is in Knutson's district. Now, as to my interest in this matter, if I were to go by the number of people, the number of voters, the proponents of this bill, as I understand it, acting through their attorney, Mr. Ballinger, because I do not suppose Mr. Ellsworth had very much to do with framing this bill I understand it is framed by the attorney for this Chippewa association-now, most of those that are in control of that organization live in my district. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Steenerson, will you permit me to make a suggestion? Mr. STEENERSON. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Since that bill was drawn, the interested parties have been at work here diligently in the city, and they have prepared a bill, subsequent to the drafting of the Ellsworth bill, which carries many changes; and yesterday the recognized counsel and the Bureau agreed before this committee that they were within 5 per cent of an agreement upon the entire bill; so that probably you have not seen the new measure. Mr. STEENERSON. No. I will simply say that I was very much shocked at the proposition contained in the Ellsworth bill, because it attacks the legislation for the last 30 or 40 years, and it assumes that it was all wrong, and that they are going to have us appropriate large sums of money to sue the State of Minnesota, and to sue the Red Lake band of Indians, and to have it adjudicated. I have heard of people buying a law suit, but this is the first time I ever heard anybody suggesting that he buy a suit against himself, and that is what this amounts to. And not only that, but it would be a suit involving facts 30, 40, 50, or 60 years old, and almost entirely forgotten and passed out of the memory of human living beings, and it would be the greatest chance for msirepresenting the facts to the Court of Claims, and I was surprised that it was really entertained with seriousness. Now, I want to say a few words about my connection with this legislation. The original Nelson Act was passed before I came to Congress. It was passed January 14, 1889. Senator Nelson was the author of it. The CHAIRMAN. He was in Congress at that time? Mr. STEENERSON. He was a Representative in Congress. He worked nearly his whole term before he got that bill through. You will recall that that bill provides for the cession of all Indian reservations in Minnesota, except the Red Lake Reservation and a part of the White Earth that was already allotted, and it provided for the removal of all these 10 or 15 bands, scattered on the different reservations, to White Earth. Now, this is relevant, because I am about to discuss the act of October 22, 1904, of which I was the author, and which is based upon the McLaughlin agreement. The Nelson Act embraces a cession of a part of the then Red Lake Reservation. Now, here is the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, that gives a bird's-eye view of the original Indian titles in Minnesota. You will observe this great, big, blue-light blue-tract here, embracing probably 5,000,000 acres. That is the land of the Chippewas of Mississippi. That was ceded, I think, in 1855. Now, the Red Lake and Pembina Bands, or the Red Lake Band, then occupied what is here dark green and yellow, as you will see. The cessions were numbers 446 and 445. Now, the piece here in dark green along the Red Lake River does not represent all the holdings of the Chippewas. The Red Lake Band, then the Red Lake and Pembina Bands, as they were called, held that land there in North Dakota as far as Devils Lake, and that was ceded in 1863, at the Grand Crossing, where the United States was represented by Mr. Morrill and two other commissioners. The treaty was made right near where I live, at the crossing of the Red River. Nobody was a party 173731-20-16 to that treaty except the United States and the band of Red Lake Indians. Their title and right to cede the land were not questioned. Then that left them this large tract here in yellow. That was ceded under the Nelson Act, and part of it-that is, you will see here all the colored part-was ceded under the Nelson Act and part of itthat is, here you will see all the colored part-was ceded under the Nelson Act and the particularly white left around the lake here is what is called the diminished reservation, and this includes the socalled 11 towns ceded by act of 1904. So this tract that was ceded, according to the report, contained 3,260,000 acres That was contributed by the Red Lake Band of Indians to this common pot. That was the Nelson Act, that all these lands should be ceded, and the money derived from it should be the common fund. The timber was to be sold and the land was to be sold, and that amounts to some $6,000,000 now, after paying all expenses and annual outlay for support. Mind you, the Red Lake and Pembina Bands numbered, when the Nelson Act was passed, 1,386, or, say, 1,400 souls, men, women, and children. They contributed 3,200,000 acres to the common fund, as against less than a million acres of the other tribe. The whole amounted to 8,400 Indians. That is all there was. They had a census made at that time, and they included everybody that was entitled to enrollment, and that amounted to 8,400. So you see that one-sixth of the Indians constituting the Red Lakers contributed three-quarters of all the land to the common fund. Mr. KELLY. Right there, when that cession was made by the Red Lakers, under the Nelson Act of 1889, they were to cede everything with the exception of enough to equal allotments for the Red Lake Tribe? Mr. STEENERSON. Oh, no. The cession exactly describes the boundaries that they ceded, and the balance was retained for the Red Lake Indians with a view to something in the future-allotting it in severalty. Mr. KELLY. I understood the report of those commissioners to be that they held 700,000 acres particularly because a great portion of that land was swamp land. Mr. STEENERSON. That is very true. They say there is more swamp land retained for the Red Lake Indians, because so much of it is swamp. I have a bill pending before the Committee on Food Control, to get permission to build a dam at the outlet of Red Lake and to drain those lands. If we get a proper outlet for those lands, the land which the Rice Commission's report says is worthless, will be most valuable. They are the richest lands in the world, and if this improvement we are contemplating-we have organized a drainage district which will spend over a million dollars, most of it, of course, for improvement in dams outside. Well, no, the principal thing is the regulating works for an outlet for Red Lake. Red Lake is a lake of 400 square miles surface with a drainage basin of 2,000 square miles, and it is the ideal place for holding the water. The banks of the Red River, flowing out of Red Lake, are so low that in ordinary stages of water the river is bank full, but when the water is high or in a wet season, that whole country adjacent to the river is absolutely useless-it is flooded. The CHAIRMAN. It has been brought to the attention of the committee that under the proposed drainage scheme of the Red Lake, when that improvement was completed, it would lower the lake 8 feet. What do you say about that? Mr. STEENERSON. Well, the Interior Department had a conference yesterday about it, and we continued the conference until later on. It is too early to say how much that will lower it, or how much it will raise it. They will control the level of the lake to prevent the floods. The CHAIRMAN. If you lower that lake 8 feet, what would be the surface mileage of the lake after that? Mr. STEENERSON. Well, it would probably be a little less. The shores are somewhat shallow, but the law will provide that the Interior Department will control the level of the lake. That is a part of the agreement that is going to be made, that the Secretary of the Interior shall determine what shall be the minimum and what shall be the maximum, so that will be taken care of. Mr. KELLY. Let me get the point I was trying to get at. You do not contend that it was ever as a matter of right that these 700,000 acres were to be held for the benefit of the Red Lake Indians exclusively, do you? Mr. STEENERSON. Oh, certainly. Now, I want to go into that. Here is what the Mississippi Band-they had four or five million acres. They sold that. That was given to them. Now, in 1863 the Red Lake Band made a treaty with the United States for the sale for the cession of this vast tract embracing the Minnesota side of the Red River Valley and in North Dakota clear to Devils Lake. The CHAIRMAN. I did not get the date. Mr. STEENERSON. 1863. That was ceded by the Red Lake Band, not by the Chippewas of Mississippi, nor Chippewas of Lake Superior, and when this question of ceding the reservation-there was an objection at the time that they were contributing more to the common fund, by contributing 3,200,000 acres, than the others were contributing, and the commissioner said, "It is true you are contributing more. This is your land, but still at the same time all of this region between Lake Superior and the Rocky Mountains, or at least the western part of North Dakota, was taken by conquest from the Sioux and you were allied with the Chippewas of Missisippi and the Chippewas of the Lake Superior Band, and therefore it is due to their cooperation that you got this land, and, therefore, it is not so unjust as you seem to think to contribute part of it to the common fund." Well, they finally secured the agreement giving these 3,200,000 acres, but I call your attention to the fact that in the treaty the Indians-the tribe that occupied the land-were recognized as the owners. You will see here a title. I have got the treaty numbered in this Seventeenth Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Ethnology, page 322, who were the grantors-the possessors. Of course, the United States owns the title to all of it, but they have the right of possession. The Chippewas of Lake Superior, cession of October 30, 1854-55-56-that is the big blue one-Chippewas of the Mississippi-they did not ask the Red Lake Band anything about it. The United States dealt with the Chippewas of Mississippi. Now, in 445-that is the cession of the Red River Valley north of the Wild Rice River, extending into North Dakota |