Chippewas of Red Lake and the Pembina Band cession of October, 1863-they were recognized as the owners. In treaty No. 446, this treaty under the Nelson Act, a separate agreement was made and they signed it, although the act provided that there should be a majority of all the Indians agree to it. They were a recognized separate tribe or band of Indians up here.

Now, this was the situation when the act of 1904 came up. Since you have had Maj. McLaughlin, you are probably familiar with the contract he made with them.

The CHAIRMAN. We would like to hear you on it, though, just the

same.

Mr. STEENERSON. The act of 1904 begins by reciting the McLaughlin agreement. It was in 1902 Maj. McLaughlin made this agreement, and you will notice it provides that the Red Lake Indians should get $1,000,000 for the 11 towns of approximately 265,000 acres. We sought to get that appropriation in Congress. I became a member of Congress after that bargain was made, but there was no legislation on the statutes. With the Minnesota delegation, I went to Speaker Cannon to get this appropriation of $1,000,000, assuring him that the money would be refunded by the homesteaders, the land to be subject to homestead at $4 an acre. First a man had to pay $4 and then he had to comply with the homestead law and was only entitled to 160 acres. The Speaker refused to recognize me on that proposition. I had a bill pending and he refused to recognize me because of the condition of the Treasury, and, therefore, I was unable to get the bill at that session. I then framed the so-called Steenerson Act, which provided that instead of paying $1,000,000 flat, we would sell the land first, subject to the homestead law, at auction. My view of this land part of it was right across the river from the city of Thief River Falls of 5,000 people, on the Great Northern Railroad, and on the Soo Railroad.

An auction sale was held. Each quarter was sold to the highest bidder, and the bidder had to pay the price in installments and had to fulfill the homestead law. That was the provision of the law. Some of it sold as high as $35 an acre. It was sold very advantageously. After the first sale, the bill provided that it should be subject to another homestead at a minimum of $4 an acre, but no one could keep a homestead unless he paid the price that it had been bought at this auction, provided the bidder did not comply, and so on. Eventually all of this land went to homesteaders at $4 an acre—that is, the unsold part. The department-Mr. Meritt will bear me out that instead of getting $1,000,000 the Indians got $265,000 more than a million, and it is the first time in the history of legislation about the Indians that we have given them more than they agreed to take, and the Red Lake Indians will bear me out in this. They have touched my heart, not in the usual Indian fashion in which they always claim they are cheated, but they have said they had a square deal under that act and "we are satisfied that the white people have treated us right for once."

Mr. COLE. What became of that $1,260,000?

Mr. STEENERSON. It was paid into the Treasury and then paid out to the Red Lake Indians.

Mr. COLE. Separately?

Mr. STEENERSON. It was not paid to every Indian, no; because they were recognized as the owners of this land. That went to the Red Lake Band. You will see from this map that here are cessions from the various bands, from the various 15 or 20 bands of Indians that occupied the land. They sold the land. Their title was a title of occupancy, and the Nelson act itself says that the commission shall procure a cession of the lands from the different tribes or bands of Indians occupying the same. Now, here is the whole Red River Valley, it was ceded by the Red Lake Band in 1863. That is

The CHAIRMAN. Fifty-six years ago the 6th day of December last, because that is the day I was born?

Mr. STEENERSON. Yes; 56 years ago. Since that time nobody on the face of the earth has questioned that the United States had the right to get the possessive right of the Indians that occupied it. They occupied it and they fought for it, and I have seen the place where they had fortifications and their trenches, where they fought as bravely as the men in France for that Red Lake Reservation, and they won it from the Sioux, and their allies were the other Chippewas, and the other tribes got this other land over here which was sold in 1854 and 1855. No Red Lakers shared the proceeds of these lands. I went and had a council after Maj. McLoughlin had procured this agreement, which was a fair agreement, and as the major always does, he explains it thoroughly, and I had great difficulty in getting them to agree to take the chance about getting the price of the land sold at auction, as I proposed, and the million dollars. They wanted the million dollars flat, but I took my chances on getting it, and I knew if we did not get the million dollars Congress would have to pay it, because that is what the major had agreed to pay them, and of course they never complained of getting more.

I went with those Indians and talked with them and I heard their contention that this was their land, that they had won it-they and their ancestors and won it by conquest, and that they occupied it, and that they had ceded the 3,200,000 acres for the common benefit of the Chippewas of Minnesota; and that in view of the fact that the remainder was so small, and a large part of it was overflow and unfit for cultivation, by reason of being swamp, that they needed the balance, and you will observe it is not such a very large tract. (Pointing to map.) There is only this shore. This is all timber on the south shore. This is all timber. This is half tamarac swamp. Here is the prairie region, and that is practically all overflow. They said they needed this land for themselves, and they wanted to put it into the act of 1904 that this reservation was for the Red Lake Indians, and we put it in there and could not see any reason why. I am telling you now the reason why it was put into that act, because the history from the beginning shows the Chippewas of Red Lake were recognized as the owners of that land. They were occupants. Of course, the fee was in the United States. They did not cede it under the act of 1889.

Now, when they understood that, they were satisfied, and the law has been executed since 1904, and this $1,265,000 that they received for these 11 towns has been devoted to their interests. They have been paid annuities and what else? Is there anything for schools? Mr. MERITT. Oh, yes; there are schools there on the Red Lake Reservation.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, Mr. Steenerson, at the time these various agreements were made, was there any protest on the part of other portions of the Chippewa Band in Minnesota?

Mr. STEENERSON. Never, never. I never heard any objection to it whatever. If there was any, the department knows about it. They did not make it to me, and Senator Clapp, who had charge of the bill, who was chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs-we talked that over and Senator Clapp and I were up-I don't remember whether we were up before or after the act of 1904 was signed, but we were there sometime; but we never heard any complaint-at least, I didn't, and when I was with Senator Clapp we held pow-pow with them, and there was no complaint.

Now, it seems to me

The CHAIRMAN. You understand, in making this argument, that under this act and the jurisdictional bill which accompanies it, the Chippewas of Minnesota expect to collect back from somebody this $1,265,000 of which you are speaking?

Mr. STEENERSON. I supposed that was in the Ballinger bill that I saw, or the Ellsworth bill, but it is not only that, they are going to attack the disposition of the funds under the Nelson Act. They are going to bring suit against the State of Minnesota. The Interior Department has allowed certain swamp-land claims and other land claims, and the State of Minnesota will be sued. You will be appropriating a large sum of money here to sue the State of Minnesota. I do not see that we should assume that what Minnesota and the Interior Department has done is wrong. I am familiar with that thing. The State of Minnesota claimed a lot of swamp land under an act long anterior to this. The 1862 swamp-land act, and it was prior to the reservation in question. The State auditor and attorney general of the State of Minnesota were here in Washington, and they submitted briefs, and some of us were notified. I do not think the Minnesota delegation in Congress took any particular part, one side or the other. It was a question between the Indians and the State; but the Interior Department-the Secretary of the Interior--has issued a patent to thousands of acres of this land, which has gone into the hands of bona fide people, and I would not assume it was wrong to do so. They must have had what they supposed was the law back of them, and for this committee to authorize a suit and pay the expenses of such a suit upon simply the say-so of somebody, after it is years and years old, seems to me is going a good ways for litigation.

The CHAIRMAN. Why do you assume that they are going to do it? You said a moment ago in your remarks that you were going

Mr. STEENERSON. I withdraw that. I did not mean to say that. The CHAIRMAN. I think you ought to withdraw that.

Mr. STEENERSON. Certainly, I did not mean any reflection. The chairman knows very well I did not mean that. I have unbounded faith in the good sense, not only of this chairman, but every member of this committee.

Now, I am very much interested in this matter, because I was sort of sponsor for this act of 1904, which put into it terms that the Red Lake Reservation should be the property of the Red Lake Indians.

The CHAIRMAN. The claim is that in that act of 1904 of which you are so proud, that would completely change the law of 1889. If you will pardon me, let us go into what the law of 1889 says.

Mr. STEENERSON. I do not mean to say that I am proud of the verbiage. I am proud of the purpose and intent of it, because it followed the history of the land titles up there. I do not admit that the act of 1914 changes the act of 1889 when properly understood. The CHAIRMAN. I understand, but the act of 1889 provides this: "The commission shall be appointed, whose duties shall be to negotiate with all the different tribes of Chippewa Indians in the State of Minnesota for the complete cession of all their right and title, except the White Earth and Red Lake Reservations"-the first section of the bill. The third section is that "these commissioners shall thereupon, as soon as practicable, and under the direction of the said commissioners, allot lands," etc. Now, the contention we have had is that the act of 1889 required the cession of all lands, except an allotment sufficient to carry out the terms of the general allotment act. Mr. STEENERSON. If you will read the proceedings which I have here, at the time of the cession, that Nelson Act was not interpreted to mean that they were simply to have enough for allotments. Now, that expressly provided that they were going to be on the shore of Red Lake and have their fishing rights. They said that they desired to have 10 acres apiece for maple bush. There is maple sugar made there, and that was mentioned in the pow-wow when they signed this, and they were to have the timber. Now, the Red Lake Indians, at least part of them, the Cross Lakers, were called pagans at that time. I presume they are pagans yet, but they are the finest lot of Indians I have known anywhere. I went over there once when there was an inspector of the Interior Department there, over on this point here. There is the finest stand of white pine that has ever grown on God's footstool. The land is high in the center and slopes to the side, and around the fringe is maple and a little hardwood, so in the fall of the year the fringe is yellow and the inside is deep green. If you go in there, you would think you were in a sacred place, and absolutely those 400 or 500 Indians regard that as a temple of God. They worship it, and they were so excited when they heard there was a representative of the Government in there to sell that timber to the lumber companies, as they thought he was, that they sent out word to everybody to meet them. They heard I was there and I met them, and I explained that this representative of the Interior Department was not going to sell their timber. They wanted to preserve that. I said they will probably make arrangements to cut that which is mature and dying anyway, but that the forest will be preserved. That is what they wanted, and that is what it is good for, for a perpetual forest, and Congress did later on create a forest reserve, embracing this point-an Indian forest for their own special benefit and some of their timber.

Now, the interpretation of the act as contended for there seems to me to be very narrow. I have not examined that act with that thing in view, but I recall that it has been the understanding for at least 30 years, since the Nelson Act was passed, that these Red Lake Indians were to have not only the lands that could be allotted in severalty for agricultural purposes, but were to have these forest lands that are not fit for agriculture, for their use, and I think that

would be a rather strange interpretation of that act. It must be interpreted with a view to the conversations which were had when the Indians signed the agreement that that act should take effect. You will remember I contended for that here a year or two ago, when these same gentlemen were making this contention about the power of Congress to use the money derived from the fund and to provide that the provision that you had under consideration providing for withdrawing from the principal sum a certain amount. You will remember I contended that under the understanding that was had at the time the act was accepted by the Indians it was only in the case of an emergency that they should use the principal. The interest was to be devoted part to the schools and part to their annuities, and the principal should be untouched except in case, as was explained to them, of extraordinary drought or something like that, but the Supreme Court, you will remember, decided the other way, that it was for the judgment of Congress to interpret that act as the necessities might require. They did not require strict adherence to the understanding at the time, but if you decide the other way, and decide in favor of the contention of the interpretation at the time the act was accepted, the Supreme Court would have sustained it. This is a new question to me that you have suggested, that that interpretation conflicts with all the contemporaneous understanding at the time the act was signed by the Red Lakers.

Mr. KELLY. Let me call this to your attention, further, that in exact opposite distinction to your claim that the Red Lakes were being treated with special advantage in the act of 1889, that that act distinctly gives them a different status on this ground only; that is, while the other tribes must ratify this agreement with a twothirds vote, the Red Lake Indians must be compelled to a cession of their land on a two-thirds vote of all the Chippewas. They were really put at a disadvantage in order to compel them to do the same thing.

Mr. STEENERSON. You will remember that was discussed in the report of the commission, that the Red Lake Indians said that they had been recognized as the occupants of that land from time immemorial, and that it was theirs; they did not want to share the proceeds of the part that was ceded with anybody.

Mr. KELLY. That is right, but the act provides

Mr. STEENERSON. Well, wait now. The commission says that they considered that, and they seem to have recognized that the Red Lakers had the possessory title to that. Now, here on page 14 of the commission's report of the Rice commission:

The first council was held at Red Lake June 29, where we remained until July 8. We found them intelligent, dignified, and courteous, but for several days indisposed to give a favorable hearing. The other propositions were not as favorable as those made three years ago, which did not require the proceeds of their reservation to be shared by others.

Now, they pointed that proposition out and the Red Lakers said, "This is not as favorable, because we share the proceeds with the rest of the Chippewas of Minnesota." The propositions were not as favorable as those made three years ago, which did not require the proceeds of their reservation to be shared by others. The chiefs were opposed to breaking up the tribal relations, fearing that if they were so broken their power and influence would be gone. The young