and the Indians there have a claim not only for the principal sum but the difference of 1 per cent in interest. The proceeds are now in the Treasury of the United States but unless legislation is passed that will refer this question to a court and the funds are held intact until the court can decide the ownership, those funds will probably be distributed among the Red Lakes, and further claims against the United States will accrue.

Now, Mr. Chairman, there is a matter that will come before this committee, to which I desire to direct your attention. It will come either before this committee, or before some other committee of the House. Some years ago under a resolution of Congress the War Department made an investigation as to a feasible plan for draining the lands contagious to the Red Lake River. The Red Lake River has its mouth in the southwest corner of Lower Red Lake and flows down to and empties into the Red River of the North. The plan is to drain the lands contiguous to the Red Lake River. The white people along that river are intensely interested in that drainage plan, and according to this report (H. Rep. No. 61, 66th Cong., 1st sess.), about 29 sections of Indian lands would be directly affected and directly drained by that project, at a cost to the Indians of $236,800; and then under the plan submitted there would be a further annual charge against the Indians of about $3,650.

That would be pretty expensive drainage. There would be about 115 Indians who could be allotted on those 29 sections of land. Now, it is true that the rest of the lands, those lands up here, and aggregating about 200,000 acres will be more or less affected by that drainage plan, as it proposes to lower Red Lake 4 feet, but the effect upon those lands is purely problematical. I desire to call your attention to that matter so that when that plan comes up later in Congress this committee, whether it comes before it or one of the other committees of the House, can at least look into it with care. I assert that the plan as proposed is largely for the benefit of the white man at the expense of the Indian.

Mr. ELSTON. How deep is that lake now?

Mr. BALLINGER. Probably 40 feet at the deepest point. Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to tell the committee the appeals that were made to me when I was on the Red Lake Reservation in July of this last year. Several of the younger members of the tribe came to me and asked me if something could not be done for them. They explained that there was no way by which they could take allotments and go on them and improve them with any certainty that the allotments would ultimately be made to them. They explained that they could go off of the reservation and secure employment at wages ranging from five to ten dollars per day, but if they did so they deemed it best to take their families with them, and if they took their families and remained off of their reservation in permanent employment when the allotments were made they would probably lose their allotments.

If they remained on the reservation there would be little to do but to obtain employment part of the year at a little sawmill, and in the winter season in a logging camp; and they said, "We are tied and helpless. We can neither benefit our condition nor leave, and we are squandering our time and our lives. Can not something be done that will enable us to get a fair and decent sort of living as men and

women?" Now that is the condition on the Red Lake Reservation, and the general council asks this committee to take some step that will enable those people to get an honest and square start in life and to own the land upon which they are now living or to secure land that will be allotted to them and that will be theirs and upon which they can go and make permanent improvements; and if they want to go elsewhere and obtain employment to better their conditions they can do so with certainty that they will not lose their tribal inheritance and the inheritance of their children. At the present time schools can not be established within that reservation and maintained, although the State has generously afforded teachers at Red Lake, and a public school is maintained at Red Lake and one at Redby. The latter is an open town site, but the rest of the reservation is locked up and there can be no development of it until the reservation is opened.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I pass to the question of forest reserves.

Under the act of 1889, all of the lands except so much of the White Earth and Red Lake Reservations as were not needed for allotment purposes were ceded to the United States to be sold and disposed of. In 1902, under the act of June 27, 1902, 32 Stats., 402-403, the Forestry Bureau of the United States conceived the idea that up around Cass Lake was a desirable place for a forest reserve. Appeal was made to Congress under which 200,000 acres of valuable timberland was authorized to be reserved from disposition. With the permission of the committee I will insert the provisions of the law in the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. If there is no objection it is so ordered.
Mr. BALLINGER. The said law provided:

Provided further, That in cutting the timber cn two hundred thousand acres of the pine lands, to be selected as soon as practicable by the forester of the Department of A griculture, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, on the following reservations, to wit, Chippewas of the Mississippi, Leech Lake, Cass Lake, and Winnebigoshish, which said lands so selected shall be known and hereinafter described as "fore try lands," the purcha er shall be required to leave standing five per centum of the pine timber thereon for the purpose of reforestation, as hereinafter provided, said five per centum to be selected and reserved in such manner and under such rules and regulations as may be prescribed by the forester of the Department of Agriculture and approved by the Secretary of the Interior: Provided further, That there shall be reserved from sale or settlement the timber and land on the islands in Cass Lake and in Leech Lake, and not less than one hundred and sixty acres at the extremity of Sugar Point on Leech Lake, and the peninsula known as Pine Point, on which the new Leech Lake Agency is now located, which peninsula approximates seven thousand acres, and in addition thereto ten sections in area on said reservations last aforesaid, to be selected by the forester of the Department of Agriculture, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, in lots not less than three hundred and twenty acres each in contiguous areas, and nothing herein contained shall interfere with the allotments to the Indians heretofore and hereafter made. The islands in Cass and Leech Lakes and the land reserved at Sugar Point and Pine Point Peninsula shall remain as Indian land under the control of the Department of the Interior.

This, like all such legislation, was the entering wedge to be followed later by more definite legislation. The matter rested until 1908 when Congress passed the act of May 23, 1908, 35 Stat., p. 268, creating the Forest Reserve and giving it the name of the Minnesota National Forest Reserve. By this act the lands of the Indians were taken again for the benefit of the whites as the forest reserve was for the benefit of the whites who desired summer recreation grounds and resorts within its limits.

I want to show to the committee a map of that national forest reserve. The law authorized them to take in 200,000 acres. They

threw the boundaries of that forest reserve around a vast area, over 500,000 acres. The lands marked in red on this map are Indian lands. Mr. Chairman, these Indian allotments might almost as well be in the heart of Africa. That forest reserve is inaccessible and the Indians allotted within its area are unable to utilize their lands, and the result is that they in part are the Indians that it is necessary for you to make some little appropriation annually to support and civilize until after

The CHAIRMAN. How many of them are there?

Mr. BALLINGER. I can not state offhand, but there are probably 400 or 500. Now, this color here, this light bronze, shows the swamp lands that have been patented to or applied for by the State. I am coming to that a little later in my argument, but I call your attention to it now and you will observe that a good portion of those lands are classified as swamp that have been applied for or patented to the State of Minnesota.

The part marked here in yellow is agricultural land. That land can not at the present time be homesteaded or utilized, and there is a large area of that. This part marked in green is the unsold pine lands. You see a little of that around here. The part here marked in blue is relinquished Indian allotments, and the white lands appearing along there is the land that was forest land, but has been cut. Now, gentlemen, there are less than a hundred million feet of timber in that forest reserve yet to be cut, and yet that vast area of land is lying to-day dormant and idle, and has for 31 years, or nearly that, as the result of the creation of a forest reserve there that is of no benefit to anyone.

The CHAIRMAN. Wherein does this legislation affect that?

Mr. BALLINGER. This legislation provides for the sale and disposition of that forest reserve, as provided for in the agreements of 1889. Mr. MERITT. There is no controversy on that point.

Mr. BALLINGER. But the matter may come up.

Now, if you have the House hearings of the last session I am going to ask you to turn page 286.

to

The CHAIRMAN. You can read it.

Mr. BALLINGER. Bear in mind that under the agreement of 1889 all the lands outside of the White Earth and Red Lake Reservations were ceded to the United States, and yet 31 years later we find included in forest reservations, upon which agencies are being maintained in Minnesota; 39,567 acres at Fond du Lac Reservation; 24,191 acres, Grand Portage Reservation; 105,047 acres, Leech Lake Reservation; 62,513 acres, Nett Lake Reservation.

Now, let me on this map give you an idea of where these reservations are situated. Here is the Nett Lake Reservation; here is the Red Lake Reservation.

The CHAIRMAN. How far apart are they?

Mr. BALLINGER. The Nett Lake Reservation and the Red Lake Reservation are about 150 miles apart, I should say, roughly. The Leech Lake Reservation is down here. The White Earth Reservation is here.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you state the approximate distances in mileage?

Mr. BALLINGER. Mr. Morrison, you are more familiar with distances in that country than I am. Commence with Grand Portage down to Nett Lake.

Mr. MORRISON. Well, now, let me see just how to get at that. Probably the way you would go, some 200 miles from Nett Lake down. Down from Cloquet it is one hundred and twenty and odd miles from Nett Lake down. From Cloquet to Leech Lake it is a hundred miles. From Leech Lake to White Earth, I mean where the agency is, that would be something like 70 miles; then from there to Red Lake it is 105 miles.

The CHAIRMAN. There is an agency at each one of those points?

Mr. BALLINGER. There is an agency at each one of those points. Now, Mr. Chairman, these forest reserves and these Indian reservations have strangled towns; have all been maintained in violation of law. They have prevented the establishment of schools and drainage districts. They have prevented the construction of roads and they have locked up and prevented the development of vast areas of the State, depriving the Indians of all opportunities of advancement, which was the prime object of the agreements entered into under the act of 1889. By the unauthorized retention of these reservations four agencies have been established and maintained for more than 20 years, contrary to law, at an annual cost to the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota of more than $75,000 per annum, and the money arbitrarily taken from their trust funds in absolute violation of their agreements with the United States. The Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1919, gives the claimed Indian population of the four reservations upon which these agencies have been unlawfully maintained, the number of agency employees, and the salaries paid them, as follows:

Among these employees I find Indian police. These Indian police have no police authority. They are used merely as messenger boys but are carried as Indian police. These are ceded reservations and no Indian policeman has the power to make an arrest upon them, yet I find all these overhead charges and expense on reservations that were ceded 31 years ago. I observe that the number of Indians, the population of the Indians, appears in the report, and it has not been revised for a good many years. There is probably about 60 per cent of the Indians enumerated in these reports still living in these localities These employees have no connection with any schools, and, in addition to the salaries paid, large sums were expended annually from the appropriations for support and civilization of the Chippewa Indians for the comfort of these employees, such as household furnishings, food, and so on. Every dollar of this money has been expended for the maintenance of reservations and agencies in defiance of the agreements of 1889, and by the unlawful maintenance of these reservations the Indians have been pauperized and held back and have been

compelled to accept rations at the hands of the tribe. They have been kept in ignorance, their morals undermined, and their manhood and womanhood impaired.

Mr. HASTINGS. May I ask whether the rolls have been completed with respect to the bands?

Mr. BALLINGER. Susbtantially so. The commission made the rolls, and the law did not require approval by the department.

Mr. HASTINGS. They do not require approval?

Mr. BALLINGER. But it is necessary to bring those rolls down so as to include those entitled to payments. The newborns come in, Mr. Hastings, and then there are a few entitled to allotments whose cases were not acted upon by the commission. This bill gives the Secretary power to add their names.

Mr. HASTINGS. Do all those bands of Chippewas speak the same language?

Mr. BALLINGER. Oh, yes. Now, I shall pass over the question of the expenses of the schools and will deal with that later. I want to come to the question of swamp lands. There is a provision in the jurisdictional bill to recover back lands from the State of Minnesota that have been improperly patented to the State and remain undisposed of, and also lands that have been applied for by the State, to determine the title of the State to those lands.

Section 4 of the agreement of 1889 provided for the classification of ceded lands into pine lands, and then provided that all other lands other than pine lands were for the purposes of this agreement termed "agricultural lands." And then it provided for the manner of disposition of agricultural lands. So that under that agreement there could have been only two classifications, one pine lands and the other agricultural lands. When the Surveyor General came to making surveys of the ceded lands, he followed the ordinary surveys of lands of the United States and classified and mapped all swamp lands as swamp lands—the lands that were pine lands were classified and mapped as pine lands and the lands that were agricultural lands were classified and mapped as agricultural lands. There was no authority under the act of 1889 for any classification of swamp lands. The result was that the State immediately asserted title or made claim to the land that was mapped as swamp land, and after some controversy the department proceeded to issue patents to the State for a very large amount of that land, how much I have been unable to ascertain, but it is somewhere between two and seven hundred thousand acres of land.

Then, in 1909, the Indians protested against the issuance of further patents to the State upon three grounds: First, that much of the land patented and applied for by the State was not in fact swamp land. Second, that the State was not entitled to further grants, as the State was not complying with the requirements of the act of March 12, 1860, relative to the use of the funds derived from the disposition of the lands patented to it in that the funds were not being used for the purposes of draining swamp lands within the State. And, third, upon the ground that no rights of the State attached to any of the ceded lands under the act of March 12, 1860, as none of the ceded lands were in fact public lands.

Mr. ELSTON. Is there any dispute about this swamp land?