The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1894-12-13
Minnesota Indians.

faked with line tooth comb to
find a man utterly unfit to handle.
the business Of the United States
with the Chippewa Indians Of Min
nesota no more perfect success
could have been attained. This
reflection is called forth by the
action Of the department Of the in
terror after trying for five or six
years to move handful of abject
Indians to the reservation set apart
for their use at White Earth under
the provisions of the treaty made
with the Indians. All these years
the Chippewa commission Of Min
nesota has been.spending thousands
Of dollars in alleged attempts to
induce the Indians to live up to
the treaty and go on their new re-
serve. Now comes the news that
Hoke has let the commission go
and decides that the Leech Lake,
Fond du Lac, Mile Laos and other
bands of Indians may take their
allotments where they are. This
means very much to the people Of
Minnesota.
It means that the Chippewa In
dams are to remain in possession
Of the. old reservations and the
White Earth as we'll. This will
allow two or three sections Of lands
practically to leach Indian and de-
fer the opening, sale and settle
ment Of this large territory indefn-
itely, besides five times that
amount of territory adjacent to
these several reserves, because no
man who knows an Indian from a
moose will ever settle in the i'm
mediate vicinity of the reservation
unless 1t be to sell them whiskey
or turn ''Squaw men, It is the
same old upper and neither mill
stones between which the Indian is
to be obliterated by inoculating
him with the white mans vices and
starva alton. Independent of the
inhumanity Of such course toward
the Indian the result on the white
man is equally bad. To the. In
dian 1t means poverty, degrade
ton and extermination-to the
white man it means premium on
plumber and rascality. It means q
half dozen fat places for politica]
bench men to superintend the ex,
termination of the Indians. Il
means the burning of all the pine
on the reservations in order tc
allow its being cut, and when it is
cut and burned the reservations
will be as uninhabitable as the
desert of Sahara.
| Take the Leech Lake reserve az
an example. It is surrounded or
the north by the lake and on thu
south, west and east by one of thu
heaviest bodies of pine which eve
stood in the northwest. During
the last year standard guage log
cling railways have been built clea
along the south and west side O
the reserve, and now some tw'
thousand lumbermen are cuttin!
| the last tree that stands outside 0
! the reserve. In a year the debri
will be piled around the reserv
fourteen miles wide and eighteel
miles long, like fagots around
cannibal roast and all the fire er
gines in America cannot proven
the desolation of this reservation
this elegant home on which Secre
tary Hoke Smith has settled til
Indian should it once catch fire
The injustice to the Indian
not compensated for by the disae
vantages occasioned the whit
man. The whole system is ev
and inexcusable on any grounc
The silence of those usually $
alive to the calls Of humanity an
Justice must be attributed to eithe
a fendish desire to see the India
DIFFERENTIATED or to dense and il
excusable ignorance Of the col
ditions and situation Of thes