Kitabı oku: «Minnesota», sayfa 5

CHAPTER VI
THE TERRITORY ORGANIZED

On May 29, 1848, Wisconsin was admitted to the Union as a state, with her western boundary fixed where it has since remained, on the St. Croix River line, Congress having refused to extend Wisconsin’s area to the Rum River line. The delta between the St. Croix and the Mississippi was politically left in the air. In the earlier correspondence and personal conferences of Minnesotians the only thought was of obtaining from Congress the establishment of a new territory. On August 4 a call signed by eighteen prominent residents of the wished-for territory was issued, for a convention to be held at Stillwater on the 26th. Sixty-one delegates appeared and took part in what has since been known as “the Stillwater Convention” of 1848. The proceedings resulted in two memorials, one to the President, the other to Congress, both praying for the organization of a new territory; in corresponding resolutions; in the raising of a committee to prosecute the purposes of the convention; and in the election of Henry H. Sibley as a “delegate” to proceed to Washington and urge immediate action.

The late governor of Wisconsin Territory, Hon. Henry Dodge, had been elected United States senator. The secretary of the territory had been Mr. John Catlin. A letter written by him August 22 was read before the Stillwater convention. It embodied the suggestion that the Territory of Wisconsin might be considered as surviving in the excluded area. He transmitted a letter from James Buchanan, Secretary of State, expressing the opinion that the laws of Wisconsin Territory were still in force therein, and that judges of probate, sheriffs, justices of the peace, and constables might lawfully exercise their offices. Such being the case, what was there to hinder him, Mr. Catlin, from assuming the position of acting-governor of Wisconsin Territory, and performing the proper duties? In particular, why might he not appoint an election for the choice of a delegate to Congress in a regular manner, if a vacancy should occur? His judgment was that a delegate elected “under color of law” would not be denied a seat. This scheme, which seems to have made no impression on the Stillwater convention, was rapidly incubated after its dispersion. Mr. Catlin took up a constructive residence at Stillwater. John H. Tweedy, delegate from Wisconsin Territory to the Thirtieth Congress, obligingly put in his resignation. Thereupon Acting-Governor Catlin issued a call for an election of a delegate to be held on the 30th of October. The result was the choice of Mr. Sibley against a slight and ineffective opposition.

The delegate-elect presented himself at the door of the national House of Representatives at the opening of the second session of the Thirtieth Congress. His credentials had the usual reference to the committee on elections. Mr. Sibley’s argument was ingenious and exhaustive, and it proved effective, for the committee absorbed its substance into their favorable report. On January 15, 1849, the House by a vote of 124 to 62 accorded Mr. Sibley his seat as delegate from Wisconsin. The same House refused, however, to make any appropriation for the expenses of a territory existing by virtue of mere geographical exclusion. A bill for the establishment of the Territory of Minnesota had been introduced into the Senate in the previous session. It was identical with that which had been strangled on the last day of the Twenty-ninth Congress. Mr. Sibley properly devoted himself to advancing the progress of the bill. It was promptly passed by the Senate, but it lagged in the House. The Whig majority had no consuming desire to favor a beginning likely to result in a Democratic delegation from a new state. They therefore clapped on an amendment, to which the Senate could not possibly agree, that the act should take effect March 10, six days after the expiry of President Polk’s term of office. The end of the session was but four days away. A House bill for the establishment of a Department of the Interior was still pending in the Senate. It provided for a goodly number of officials to be named by the incoming Whig President. Senator Douglas, acting for colleagues, authorized Mr. Sibley to give out to his Whig opponents that the Senate would be better disposed to passing their interior department measure if they should find it agreeable to recede from their offensive amendment to the Minnesota bill. On the last day of the session Mr. Sibley had the pleasure of seeing his bill pass, under suspension of the rules, without opposition. No one was so much surprised at the outcome as Mr. Sibley himself. It took thirty-seven days for the good news to reach St. Paul by the first steamer of the season from below. The boundaries of the new territory were those of the state later admitted, except that the west line was pushed out to the Missouri River, thus including an area of some 166,000 square miles. The governorship fell to Alexander Ramsey of Pennsylvania, then thirty-four years of age, who deserved well of his party in its late campaign and had done some excellent service as a member of the Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Congresses. He had been well educated in the best school, that of a life of industry and aspiration. Clear-headed, cautious, patient, he knew how to anticipate the courses of things and to plan for the probabilities of the future. He identified himself from the first with his new territory, and remained to the end of his long life, in 1903, a steadfast, loyal Minnesotian.

On May 27, in a small bedroom in Bass’s log tavern on the site of the Merchant’s Hotel in St. Paul, Mr. Ramsey wrote out on a little unpainted washstand his proclamation declaring the territory duly established. On June 11 he announced the division of his immense jurisdiction into three provisional counties, assigning to each one of the three judges, Goodrich, Sherburne, and Meeker, who had been appointed by the President. At the same time he directed the sheriff of St. Croix County to make a census of the population. The reported total did not measure up to the conjectures of hopeful citizens. After counting the 317 soldiers at “the Fort,” all the attachés of the trading posts, 637 dwellers at Pembina and 66 on the Missouri River, the footing stood at 4680 souls.

Pursuant to the organic act Governor Ramsey by proclamation of July 7 divided the territory into seven council districts, and ordered an election for August 1. The first territorial legislature that day elected, consisting of nine councilors and eighteen representatives, met at St. Paul, September 4. The organic act having provided that the laws in force in the late Territory of Wisconsin should remain in operation until altered or repealed by the Minnesota territorial legislature, this inexperienced body was not heavily burdened. The most notable enactment was that for the establishment of a system of free schools for all children and youth of the territory, introduced by Martin McLeod, but probably drawn up by the Rev. Edward Duffield Neill, the well-known historian of Minnesota. A bill passed October 20, incorporating the Minnesota Historical Society, was doubtless from the same hand. Governor Ramsey’s message of 1849 was much extended by an account of the Indian tribes of the territory, prepared for him by Dr. Thomas Foster.

There was no legislative session in 1850. The statutes of 1851 embrace but few of notable importance. After a long and bitter struggle the capital, temporarily placed by the organic act at St. Paul, was permanently located in that town. To secure the majority vote it was necessary to concede to Stillwater the state prison and to St. Anthony the university. The evidence of a formal “tripartite agreement” to this arrangement is lacking, but it is probable that an understanding or expectation influenced the voting. The diligence with which a body composed largely of fur-traders and lumbermen overhauled a revision of the territorial laws, prepared by a committee of lawyers, bears testimony to a zeal for duty. The result was the well-known “Code of 1851.” It embodied substantially the New York code of procedure. The general incorporation law did not include railroad corporations. An act of 1852 prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors was submitted to a vote of the electors and ratified by a vote of 853 to 662. Before the year was out the supreme court of the territory, on an appeal from below, ruled the act to be unconstitutional on the ground that the organic law having vested all legislative power in the legislative bodies, the referendum was inoperative. In 1853 equity procedure was conformed to that of civil actions.

The dominating feature of Governor Ramsey’s territorial governorship was the extinguishment of the Indian title of occupancy to all the lands of the Sioux in Minnesota, except the small reservations. No time was lost by interested parties in impressing on Mr. Ramsey the importance of increasing the area of settlement in his territory. Land speculators and lumbermen desired an enlargement of their spheres of operation. The Indian traders, who in previous years would have opposed a treaty of cession, were at this time, under changed circumstances, eager. The hunting of wild animals for their pelts had greatly reduced their numbers, so that the trade had dwindled. The prospect of profits in land speculation appeared likely to exceed those of Indian trading. The traders also were of opinion that it was about time for a substantial liquidation of Indian debts due them. The half-breeds and squaw men had, as we shall see, a strong desire for a treaty. Moved by what seemed a general demand, Governor Ramsey recommended to the first territorial legislature that they memorialize Congress to provide for a treaty of cession with the Sioux. That body promptly complied. The commissioner of Indian affairs had meantime been interested to such a degree that he arranged for a treaty, and to pay the expenses out of funds already at his disposal. He appointed as commissioners to conduct the negotiation Governor Ramsey, being already superintendent ex-officio of Indian affairs in his territory, and the Hon. John Chambers of Iowa, and furnished them a body of instructions, which served more than the immediate purpose. He restricted their expenditure for presents to $6000. The Sioux were summoned by runners to come in to council in October. The commissioner of Indian affairs was precipitate. The traders were not quite ready, and there were prominent citizens in St. Paul who feared that a big cession of Indian lands west of the river might give Mendota a dangerous precedence. But few of the Sioux came in, and they were unwilling to treat. The effort aborted. Its success might have secured for Governor Ramsey political rewards for which he had to wait. The Indian appropriation bill of 1850, carrying $15,000 for the expenses of treating, was not approved till September 30. The season was too late for the assemblage of the Indians, widely scattered on their fall hunts. Then ensued a contention, lasting many months, over the appointment of a colleague to Governor Ramsey for the negotiation of the treaty. At one time it appeared that a trading interest adverse to the American Fur Company had virtually succeeded in securing the appointment of a gentleman from Indiana, on whom it could depend. To dispose of this and other aspirants, an amendment was tacked on to the proper paragraph of the Indian appropriation bill of the session, providing that commissioners making Indian treaties should thereafter be selected from officials of the Indian Bureau, to serve without extra compensation. The contemplated treaty with the Sioux involving a cession of many millions of acres and large disbursements for a long time, the commissioner of Indian affairs, the Hon. Luke Lea of Mississippi, resolved to act in person.

The Minnesota Sioux comprised four of the seven tribes of the nation, and were themselves geographically divided into “upper” and “lower” Sioux. The two upper tribes were the Sissetons and Wahpétons. The former had their villages on lakes Big Stone and Traverse, the latter on the upper reaches of the Minnesota River, with some sandwiching of bands. The lower Sioux were the Medawakantons and the Wah-pé-ku-tes: the villages of the former were strung along the west bank of the Mississippi from Winona to Fort Snelling and on up the Minnesota to Belle Plaine. The Wah-pé-ku-tes dwelt on the headwaters of the Cannon River, in what Nicollet called his “Undine region.” As they were averse, like all barbarians, to having their numbers counted, the Indian Bureau up to the time when all became “annuity Indians” could only guess at the population. Eight thousand was the general estimate at the middle of the century. Each tribe was subdivided into bands of unequal numbers, each under its own chief. The bands of each tribe recognized one of the older and most capable chiefs as their head chief. Wabashaw was head chief of the Medawakantons. The instructions of 1849, already mentioned, charged the commissioners to make but one treaty, advised them to promise no money payments, and forbade them to provide for debts due by Indians to the traders. The reader can surmise why no Indians came to treat.

The new commissioner of Indian affairs did not of course have to instruct himself, and he appears to have relaxed the conditions imposed by his predecessor. At any rate, he soon found out that if he wished to make a treaty it would be necessary for him to pay some money, and to arrange for the payment of traders’ claims. Because of a diversity of these claims against the upper and the lower Sioux it was desired that separate treaties be made. This was conceded. Because the upper tribes were thought to be less opposed to a treaty and a cession, it was decided to begin with them; and those Indians were summoned to council on July 1 at Traverse des Sioux. The commissioners and their party found on their arrival none but those there resident. It was not till the 18th that enough of the upper bands had come in to warrant negotiation. Meantime the disinclination of the Indians had been mitigated by the rations of pork, beef, and flour dispensed by the commissary, and presents to reluctant chiefs. On July 23 the treaty was signed in duplicate. As the chiefs left the table they were “pulled by the blanket” and steered to another, where they touched the pen to a third document, which later became notorious under the name of “the traders’ paper.” The upper Sioux by this treaty sold to the United States all their lands in Minnesota for $1,665,000, except a reservation twenty miles wide straddling the Minnesota River, from Lake Traverse down to the Yellow Medicine River. The principal consideration was an annual payment of $68,000 for fifty years, of which $40,000 was to be cash. The United States also engaged to expend $30,000 for schools, mills, blacksmith shops, and like beneficial purposes, to remove the Indians to their new homes, and to provide them with subsistence for one year. A residue of $210,000 was to be paid to the chiefs in such manner as they should thereafter in open council request, to enable them “to settle their affairs and comply with their present engagements”; in plain English, to pay the claims of the traders. The traders’ paper amounted to an assignment in blank of this whole sum. The schedule of claims was not attached to the paper till the next day. On the question whether the chiefs who signed knew what they were doing, the evidence is conflicting. On August 5 a second treaty, ceding the same lands, was signed at Mendota. The reservation for the lower bands was also on the Minnesota River, extending from the upper reserve down to the neighborhood of New Ulm. Each of the two tribes agreed to pay traders’ claims to the amount of $90,000. The lower Sioux were encouraged to conclude the bargain by a promise that $30,000 out of a $50,000 “education” fund provided for in the treaty of 1837 and never paid, but allowed to accumulate, should be distributed, so soon as the treaty should be signed. The money was paid, and within a week it was in the hands of St. Paul merchants and whiskey sellers; $10,000 or thereabout went for horses. The commissioners congratulated themselves and the country on this magnificent purchase of a region larger than New York, at a cost of the “sum paid in hand.” The annual payments promised would, they figured, be equaled by the interest from the lands.

The treaties awaited the action of the Senate. Before that body convened in the December following, representations were made to the authorities at Washington that a “stupendous fraud” had been practiced on the Sioux. The upper Sioux, inspired by a trader attached to an interest adverse to the American Fur Company, which had not obtained recognition for its claims, were much excited. In December twenty-one chiefs resorted to St. Paul, where they represented to Agent McLean and Governor Ramsey that their signatures to the traders’ paper were obtained by fraud and deceit. They declared that their bands owed no such sums of money, but were willing to pay what sums a fair examination of the claims might prove to be just. The agent promised to report their protest and demands to his superiors, which he did. Governor Ramsey had only to assure the chiefs that as treaty commissioner he had nothing to do with traders’ claims. The money would be paid to their chiefs and braves, and it was for them to dispose of it as they thought proper. When the treaties were laid before the Senate in February, 1852, opposition to ratification at once sprang up, and long delay ensued. It was not any allegations of fraud and deceit which formed the ground of this opposition. It came from Southern senators not willing to extend the area of settlement to the north, on which to build another free state. It was not till June 28 that ratification was voted by a slender majority, and that not till after amendments were made, which opponents believed the Sioux would never agree to. In particular the senators cut out the paragraphs providing for the two reservations, and substituted a provision that the President should select new homes for the Minnesota Sioux outside the ceded territory.

In August Governor Ramsey was authorized to obtain the consent of the Indians to the amendments. This was effected through persons influential among them and without calling general councils of the tribes. The consent of the upper Sioux, however, was not secured till after the execution of a power of attorney to Governor Ramsey, which they were allowed to believe “broke” all former papers, that of the traders in particular. The money appropriated for the immediate payments became available so soon as the Sioux chiefs had signed their ratifications, and Governor Ramsey was designated as disbursing agent and given a credit on the treasury for $593,000. The payments did not begin till November, and then with the lower Sioux. The Wah-pé-ku-te chiefs gave no trouble, but signed their joint receipt for $90,000 of “hand money,” and a power of attorney to Mr. Sibley to receive the money and distribute it to their licensed traders. The seven Medawakanton chiefs would not sign receipts till after they had been encouraged by the distribution of $20,000 in equal sums, deducted from the amount of traders’ claims. Some minor enticements contributed. At “The Traverse,” a fortnight later, “a very evil and turbulent spirit” was manifest. The chiefs demanded the money “for settling their affairs” to be paid to them. They would then decide “in open council” how it should be distributed. Mr. Ramsey was firm, and held them to the terms of the traders’ paper, which he considered an irrevocable contract. The local Sissetons were so riotous that a company of troops had to be summoned from Fort Snelling to keep them in order. After much delay and no little effort he was able to obtain twelve signatures to a receipt for the money to go to traders, but only two of the names were those of old and well-recognized chiefs, and only one that of a signer of the treaty of 1851. The moneys thus secured to the traders, and some moderate gratifications to the half-breeds, were, with the exception of the $90,000 paid the Wah-pé-ku-tes, delivered by Governor Ramsey to one Hugh Tyler, a citizen of Pennsylvania holding powers of attorney. This gentleman distributed according to the schedules of the traders’ papers, retaining by their consent the sum of $55,250, about thirteen and one half per cent., as compensation for his services in securing the ratification of the treaties and for other purposes.

Political enemies of Governor Ramsey, and parties dissatisfied with the distribution of moneys under the treaties, laid formal charges and specifications against him before the Senate at the next session, in 1853. Upon the request of that body the President undertook an investigation and appointed two Democratic commissioners. Their report, covering, with testimony and exhibits, 431 octavo pages, was submitted to the Senate in 1854. It was on the whole moderate and even charitable in tone, but conveyed a censure for allowing the Indians to deceive themselves, for not paying strictly in accordance with the terms of the treaties, for use of oppressive measures in securing the receipts of the chiefs, and for allowing Hugh Tyler a percentage not “necessary for any reasonable or legitimate purpose.” The testimony disclosed that some amount of this money had been used as a “secret service fund” to expedite the business. As to the use of money to influence officials, the principal witness for the defense declared that none had gone or would go into the hands of Governor Ramsey, but that as to other officers, he declined to answer. The labored argument of his lawyers served only to darken counsel, when compared with Governor Ramsey’s clear and frank explanation, filed before the investigation was begun.

The report went to the Senate committee on Indian affairs, a Democratic committee of a Democratic Senate. On February 24, 1854, they reported that after a careful examination of all the testimony the conduct of Governor Ramsey was not only free from blame, but highly commendable and meritorious. Thereupon the committee was discharged from further consideration.

The gist of the matter is, that a treaty of cession was much desired by the people of the territory, and intensely by politicians and speculators. It could not have been long delayed. No treaty could be made with these Indians without the active aid and intervention of the traders and half-breeds. Such aid could be had only by paying for it. The device of allowing Indians to stipulate in treaties for the payment to traders of debts due them from individual Indians, as if they were tribal obligations, had long been practiced. But for the machinations of disgruntled parties desirous of being taken into the happy circle of beneficiaries, the scheme might have been worked as quietly and comfortably as usual. An old interpreter says of these treaties that “they were fair as any Indian treaties.” Having undertaken to see that the traders and half-breeds should not go unrewarded for their indispensable services, Governor Ramsey stood by them to the end. The sums paid them were no robbery of the Indians. But for the fact that the treaties of 1851 were the beginning of troubles to be later treated of, they need not have taken so much of the reader’s time.

A few days after Governor Ramsey took up his residence in St. Paul, another citizen established himself in that city of promise. His ambition was not confined to sharing in the unearned increment of a rapidly growing capital city; he wished also to take a part in public affairs. Henry M. Rice, born in 1816 in Vermont, emigrated to Michigan at the age of nineteen, equipped with an academy education and two years of law studies. He came on to Minnesota in 1839, and was employed presently by the Chouteaus of St. Louis, who took over the business of the American Fur Company, to manage their Winnebago and Chippeway trade from Prairie du Chien. In 1847 he became a partner in the business and removed to Mendota, a place much too strait for two such men as himself and Mr. Sibley. Established in St. Paul, Mr. Rice threw himself into every movement and enterprise projected for the development of the town. He generously shared his gains with the public. His personal qualities were such that he could not help desiring public employment and obtaining great success in it. His manners were so gracious and yet not patronizing, that he made friends with all sorts and conditions of men. He divined with an unerring instinct the motives of men and parties, and knew when and how by appropriate suggestion to let them apparently move themselves towards his desired ends. An early example of Mr. Rice’s influence and success may be found in a contract which he obtained in 1850 for collecting vagrant Winnebagoes and returning them to their reservations. The Winnebagoes were a powerful Wisconsin tribe when the white man came, and long after. The government persuaded them to vacate first their mineral lands and later all their lands in Wisconsin, and move to the so-called “neutral ground” in Iowa. This was a strip of territory some twenty miles wide, starting from the northeast corner of Iowa and running south of west to the Des Moines River. The generous presents and annuities required to effect the sale and removal were the ruin of the Winnebagoes. They became idle, dissolute, mischievous. The white settlers could not endure them, and the Indians themselves tired of their confinement to a narrow area. Accordingly in 1846 a treaty was effected for the exchange of the neutral ground for a reservation of eight hundred thousand acres in Northern Minnesota. A tract lying between the Watab and Long Prairie rivers, west of the Mississippi, was obtained from the Chippeways for this purpose.

In the summer of 1848, with the help of traders and the military, the Winnebagoes, by this time sick of their bargain, were put on the road for their new home. Some did not start, others fell out by the way, but a majority of the twenty-five hundred souls were landed at Long Prairie. They liked the new home even less than they expected, and soon began to desert and scatter; some to encamp along the upper Mississippi, some to the neutral ground, others to their ancient country in Wisconsin; and a few are said to have wandered off to the Missouri. Wherever they went they were unwelcome, and the Indian office was flooded with complaints of their depredations and trespasses. Mr. Rice had traded with the Winnebagoes and had so attached them to himself that they had made him their sole commissioner to choose their new Minnesota home. His aid had been called in to persuade them to move. To him now the Whig commissioner of Indian affairs resorted to round up the vagrant Indians and corral them on their proper reservation. He agreed to pay Mr. Rice seventy dollars per head for the service. Meantime Governor Ramsey and Agent Fletcher were occupied with collecting the Indians below, and preparing to transport or march them northward without material expense to the government. Delegate Sibley was supposed to be the proper territorial organ at the seat of government. The feelings of these gentlemen may be imagined when they learned that the “infamous Rice contract,” of which they had not had the least knowledge or suspicion, had been concluded, and Mr. Rice’s agents were on the road. In vain did Governor Ramsey inform the commissioner that he had several hundred ready to march; in vain was Delegate Sibley’s “official protest” against a secret, unconscionable, insulting proceeding. A House committee of investigation exonerated the commissioner, but he took early occasion to resign his office. The point of interest to the Minnesota citizen was not the alleged excessive cost to the government, or the comfort of the Winnebagoes. He was concerned to know who had the greatest pull at Washington, and it appeared to him at the close that a certain private citizen of St. Paul, a Democrat, and not the Whig governor nor the Democratic delegate, was the man to “swing things” there.

In the fall of the same year (1850) came the regular election for delegate to succeed Mr. Sibley upon the expiration of his term. Mr. Rice, who had contested Mr. Sibley’s election in 1848 as delegate from Wisconsin, – with little vigor, however, – was too prudent to come out against one who had brought home the organic act, and made no opposition to Mr. Sibley’s unanimous election as delegate to the Thirty-first Congress, although he organized the democracy of the territory as if for a candidacy. Nor did he personally aspire to the office when Mr. Sibley’s first term was to expire. To defeat that gentleman he virtually dictated the Whig nominee, who had been useful in securing the Winnebago contract, and persuaded the regular Democratic nominee to retire on the eve of election in favor of the Whig candidate.

Mr. Sibley, although a Jeffersonian Democrat dyed in the wool, ran as a people’s candidate. The total vote was 1208; a transfer of 46 votes would have elected the Whig candidate. The accounts of historians, surviving citizens, and the newspapers of the day concur in pronouncing this political campaign the bitterest and most intensely personal ever known in Minnesota. Mr. Sibley’s opponents attacked him as the representative and tool of the American Fur Company, an ancient, shameless, intolerable monopoly. Party lines broke down, and the issue became “Fur versus Anti-Fur.”

Mr. Sibley served through the Thirty-first and Thirty-second Congresses with admirable efficiency. At one time objection was made against his active participation in general legislation, and the suggestion made that a delegate should confine himself to matters concerning his territory. Mr. Sibley replied that Minnesota was part of the United States, and that whatever concerned them concerned her, and claimed for her delegate the right to be heard, and all the more because he had no vote. The matter was dropped. He had little difficulty in obtaining for Minnesota the needful appropriations for her government expenses, roads, and public buildings, and the reservation in 1851 of two sections in each township for common schools, and of two townships of land for the endowment of a university. His most conspicuous act, in the highest degree creditable to him, although barren of results, was his effort to secure the passage of his bill to extend the laws of the land over the Indians. His speech of August 2, 1850, in which he denounced the rascality of the white man’s dealings with the natives, the absurdity of treating with them as separate nations, and their need of the protection of the law, is a splendid testimony to the intelligence and wisdom of the man who doubtless knew more about Indian affairs than any other man on the floor. He spoke to deaf ears. The government went on sowing to the wind, to reap the whirlwind.