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Show 34 COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. LIQUOR TRAPPIC ES n S O T A . The suppression of liquor tra5c among Indians in Minnesota re-ceived a very severe setback during the year. The activities of the service there had been increasingly devoted to exclusion of liquor from territory immediately adjoining reservations and Indian set-tlements, as well as from the reservations and settlements themselves. The administrative justification of this policy needs no argument; its legal justification was a provision contained in each of a series of treaties by which the different bands of Chippewa Indians, just prior to and during the Civil War, ceded some of their lands to the Gov-ernment and accepted reservations and other considerations in lieu thereof. This provision, while varying slightly in the different treaties, guaranteed to the Indians that the laws of the United States pro-hibiting the introduction of liquor into Indian country should apply with equal force to the whole of the ceded territory as well as to that retained. Some of these ceded lands immediately adjoined Indians' homes and others were remote and now contain only white settle-ments and towns. Acting under these laws and treaties, I made every possible at-tempt to keep liquor away from the Indians. I realized that a strict enforcement of the letter of the law would involve not only this, but also the prevention of its introduction into any part of the ceded territory, which covered two-thirds the State of Minnesota, and in-cluded many large towns and cities, among them the city of Minne-apolis. I did not attempt to enforce the law throughout the whole territory for two reason+first, because the o5ce had not the money or the men to see that any orders given to that effect were carried out; and, second, because, in the case of laws passed so l o n ~ag o to meet conditions which had now, as to a great extent of the terntory,nt-terly changed, I felt that it was my duty to begin by doing whatwould bring about in the quickwt possible time the complete protection which the ldws extended to our wards, the Indians. I felt that after I had used every cent of money and every man at my disposal to bring this result about it would then be time enough to consider the immediate duty toward the wider territory and the city of Minne-apolis. I felt, and have always felt, that while it was the duty of the Indian O5ce to exert itself to the utmost to keep liquor away from the Indians, it was no part of its duty, unless under direct and unequivocal order of statute, to keep liquor away from white men, or to take any part whatever in temperance or prohibition move-ments in white neighborhoods, even in those situated closely to the Indians, provided those communities saw to it that the Indians were not debauched or tempted. |