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Show REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFPAllt8. 135 they were induced to surrender without further bloodshed, partly upon the promise that the Government would act justly toward them and would so far as possible be lenient in view of their past good record, the office recommended, December 13,1898, that the Department of Justice be requested to take steps to secure Executive clemency for all of these Indian prisoners, commnting their term of imprisonment to t,wo months, remitting their fines, and sending them to their homes after suitable warning and assnrance on their part of good conduct in the future. This recommendation was approved and forwarded to the Department of Justice, and June 3,1899, the pardon asked was granted. Irritation growing out of the arrests by deputy marshals, as above recited, may be assigned as the immediate cause of this outbreak; but more than that is needed to explain such an unlooked-for act of hos-tility on the part of a small portion of a tribe which has been the tradi-tional friend of the white people and which stood between helpless settlers and the Sionx in Minnesota's terrible years of 1862 and 1863. For many years Chippewas have been arrested and taken from their homes to St. Paul and other points as witnesses or as offenders, chiefly in whisky cases. Often wholesale arrests have been made solely for the sake of the fees which wonld accrue to the officials. Indians have been helped to obtain whisky by the very ones who arrested them for using it. In some cases Indians carried off to court have been left to get back home as best they could. The whole matter of arrests by deputy marshals had come to be a farce, a fraud, and a hardship to the Uhippewas and a disgrace to the community. But neither does this by itself explain the outbreak. When a dele-gation of Ohippewas visited Washington last winter their most bitter complaint was about injustice iu the nse of their funds and frauds in the disposition of their timber. Without going into details it is sufficient to say that in 1889 the Chippewas were with difficulty induced to cede to the United States large tracts of valuable pine lands on the repre-sentation that the stile of the pine wonld bring them in a fund of sev-eral milliou dollars. As is always the case many Indians were utterly opposed to the negotiations. A commission was appointed to make allotments or1 ceded and reservation lands and to secure removals to White Earth of those who were willing to go there. Estimators were appointedtoappraisetheohippewapine. Theexpenseof both is charged to the fundof the Indians. The expense of the commission up to date has been not less than $200,000, most of it in salaries. The work of the ' estimatorsprovRdworthless and a second set of estimators was appointed with no better results, and a thirdset of n1en was axsigned to the work. Up to date about $280,000 hns been charged to the Indiausforestimating. Meantimelargetractsof pinewhich hadbeen estimated atfromone-fourth to one-half their valnc were sold, and that loss also fell upon the Indians. Again, under authority to dispose of dead and down timber, contractors have cut large quantities of green standing timber. ' There are also |
