Deseret Weekly | 1890-11-22 | Page 19 | The History of a Crime

THE HISTORY OF A CRIME I 1 have frequently observed ahat that the DESERET EVENING NEWS has a kind tilde side for the indians and it has occurred to me that my personal knowledge of one of our reservations and the treatment ment the indians indiana received thereon might be of interest in 1855 the united states ratified a treaty with the saginaw swan creek and black river bands of chippewa indian of michigan by terms of the treaty those ind indians ians coded ceded to the united states baates all lands then held by them and all unpaid annuities under a former treaty rhe fhe lands thus ceded to the united states were at that time very valuable and are today c covered vered with city town village and farm in the richest part of the state in return for these lands and unpaid annuities the indians indiana received several tracts of land so far removed from what passed for civilization that it was thought the indians would never again come in the way of the whites in addition to this land the indians of those bands only the treaty said were to receive for various uses sundry sums of money amounting to over and was to be paid in coin as annuities this money was paid out to or for chiefly for these indians between 1856 1855 and 1868 la 1855 6 67 7 the indians gathered on the isabella isabel la reservation the largest tract of the lands alluded to above to the number of f 1500 one of the first freaks of the agent in charge was to allow men and women chiefly women who had bad for years been supposed to be white and who belonged to some of the old aristocratic families of detroit and saginaw to prove themselves members of those chippewa bands by decent and to claim and receive annuities and to select and obtain lands on the reservation probably the agent lid did it for a consideration IP I government was very much interested te in the isabella reservation for it was thought a plan had bad been adopted that would result in a speedy civilization of the indians by the terms of the treaty the I 1 were to select lands as follows each head bead of fat family husband or widow 80 acres each orphan family of two or more 80 each single orphan under age 40 0 each single person of age 40 the selections selection sas as made were to be reported by the agent to the secretary of the In interior terror and recorded to the selector a certificate issued that guaranteed the land to the in than dian or heirs for avei ever and neither land nor timber could be alienated they could dit cut and sell their own timber but could not dispose of it wholesale standing the government furnished teams agricultural implements and seed built smithy carpenter shop saw mill grist mill four st school bouses three or four churches and council house furnished mechanics miller teachers and superintendent the agent was a methodist priest the teachers were methodists the mechanics were methodists and the agent made his brother in law reservation trader the I 1 indians dia 9 built anu snug g lo 10 log q h houses many of them and cleared little farms they raised wheat buckwheat potatoes and other vegetables they felt that they had located to stay and were full of hope but the trader eagerly trusted them to the amount of their annuities and when the money came his bills were p ild first and generally the he indiana got little or oo nothing thing he charged them 5 a pint for whiskey and five prices for everything they bought for a time the mill ground their grain but soon the miller managed to be away rhett needed the grain was not ground and the indians were forced to buy feed from the trader they saw it was useless to raise grain and quit whites worked in among them and swindled them out of their teams and gradually many of them fell back into their old ways of living the good intention of the government was forgotten the agent teachers and other employee emp loyes simply drew salaries and let the indians go as they pleased in twenty five years only two indians learned to write and six to read in those government schools aben the war cime came there was a 8 boom in pine lands then saginaw lumbermen became anxious to get hold of the isabella reservation church bemb members rs laid in with the agent to get it the I 1 indians n were taught that the reason they did not got get rich like white maw man was because the government treated chiw him alike like chud 11 the indian were induced to petition government to get their land in fee simple so that they could ue u e it like white man the whites sent affidavits setting forth that they knew the indians to he be educated christians capable of taking care of their property the government yielded in 1864 the treaty was amended so ao as to give the indians their laud land in fee but mid they should first brat be classified into those competent and those not so competent the first should get their patents without restriction the second could not alienate their property the classification could have been made in a week but it was not made for several years why because the white chris tian lumbermen were not ready they sent ent agents among the indians and an agreement was signed whereby the indians bound themselves to sell to these whites all the land they had selected or might select as well as the pine they alphey bound themselves not to chop over three acres a year for making farms and not to remove a log or burn a brush pile without the consent of the whites who were 60 miles away and no road between but the trail before the classification was made those whites had bad become the ostensible owners of the reservation then the indians were classified and out of 1700 who were to receive patents 1662 1652 were competent and 48 not so competent then the list of selections of land was made out and sent to washington the saginaw whites got a copy of it although the government required that it should be kept secret A white man on the reservation knowing what the saginaw men hid hd done sent to washington and bribed somebody to give him a copy of the list he made six copies and sold them to other whites at 60 50 each thus there thare were seven gangs besides the saginaw fellows in the forests of the reservation before a patent was issued striving to get the indians hound bound to sell bothem to them government discovered the fraud cancelled the selections and ordered a new list to be made in secret the work was finished on a saturday rhe fhe government agent had to travel 18 miles to reach a train three men thieves went on the stage and bribed the driver to arrive too late for the train the agent had to remain over sunday the thieves stole his list let and copied it they went back to the reservation and before the patents issued they had clouds 11 or bogus claims on more than half of the reservation government discovered this fraud algo and arrested the thieves they were carried to detroit for trial but got clear on the technicality that they had only copied a public document if government was too indifferent to follow it up and they escaped the penitentiary two of those three men have been hounding me for years because I 1 exposed their crime against the indians in 1871 2 patents were issued to 1700 indians on the reservation 1652 being competent f inside 0 of f two yeara there were only two of those indians who owned a toot foot of land of the 48 not so fo competent a white awhile man now living told me that he paid the agent a methodist priest 10 each to get 23 of them changed to competent P in washington and that he be then bought them from the I 1 indians such was the end of a great experiment to civilize the indians the government wasted a quarter of a million dollars permitted white thieves to get it and the indians indiana were driven from their homes worse than before the experiment began the government was a party to the shameful wrong of the methods by which the thieves obtained the indians 9 land I 1 will vivo nive you some account in another article here I 1 can only say that history can hardly show a more cruel robbery and crime than the despoiling ties polling of the isabella chip denasi in 1883 1 I went to the reservation knowing what government had done and expecting to find a high degree of civilization among the indians I 1 found that there were only about of them and only three or four families that were not in a state of beggary they bad died of hunger and cold or wandered away 1 1 at once began an exposure asure of the maltreatment of the indians fians mians an investigation was ordered by president arthur but the thieves were all republicans they broke it down by assuring the authorities that if it were allowed to go goon on it would throw the state into the hands of the democrats in 1884 in the fall of 1884 1 went to the res ree er determined to carry my work through under cleveland I 1 intended to remain three months and gave sunday lectures to cover my design which was to get a complete history of the frauds when it was discovered what I 1 wae doing the thieves bc bought aught an outfit for a paper and hired a blackguard who would have been a bonanza for the salt lake tribune to fight me they also employed a methodist priest who had been con vi ted aed of stealing from a child 1 I 1 remained on the reservation eleven months twice I 1 was attacked by hired roughs boughs the thieves went to washington and had me shut out of the indian office I 1 appealed to cleveland he ordered lamar mar to I 1 investigate A special agent was sent he and the indian agent for the state spent three months and sent in a report that corroborated my exposure of the frauds and the agent was instructed to obtain evidence and aad prosecute as fast as possible had the work been done years before when government knew of the wrongs and the republican Republic aTa party was in its zenith of power those men would have been sent to the penitentiary when I 1 finally compelled washington to look at the case the limit of criminal prosecution had bad long passed but a dozen men were convicted in elvil civil suite all christians and some of them worth millions and the frauds were thoroughly broken up the remnant of the indians are better off today than for many years but they have lost their prop orty erty forever but I 1 have shown you only part of my work the real friends of the indians in the east were working hard to have government recognize the manhood of the indian and give him his lands in fee in the west thieves were urging the same thing knowing that once the I 1 indian jian got his patent a bott bottle letof of whis whisky a gun un a pony or a few dollars would soon U relieve him of it some of the thieves whom I 1 had bad exposed were urging it I 1 at once sounded an alarm I 1 showed what had resulted from the fee simple plan on the isabella reservation I 1 warned the friends odthe of the indian that they were only pre preparing parIngs a way lor for his destruction truc tion and urged that all allotted lands should be held in trust A copy of the dawes bill was sent to me in 1886 for an opinion I 1 urged that the indians be allowed to select and that their lands be held in trust for a generation at least and better if for fifty years when the bill bili became a law jaw there was a proviso creating a trusteeship for 25 years and giving the rhe president power to extend it if the indian was shown to be then incompetent to take care of his property and protect himself it is my satisfaction to know that I 1 helped to secure that provision it is all the protection over indians have today against the white thieves who would rob fob them and destroy them without hesitation if they once became the owners in fee of the last claim they have on earth for doing this work I 1 have been persecuted by those michigan thieves without ceasing they swore in 1885 that they would kill that d d ellis if it cost 22 I 1 am on deck yet and expect to remain so but it seems that they have followed me to salt lake CHARLES ELLIS