The herald., 1896-11-18
FRIEND OF THE RED MEN.
Chippewa Indians Highly Esteem
Bishop Whipple of Minnesota.

Right Rev. Henry B. Whipple's mar
riage in New York recently at the age
of IA years, to Mrs. Evangeline Simp-
son, as announced in the Enquirer was
the subject of no little comment among
the Episcopalian clergy and laymen OF
this city. Bishop Whipple is one of the
most influential men in the Episcopal
church. He was merchant in good
business standing before he entered the
ministry and when he went TO Minnesota
as the missionary bishop of that diocese
he interested himself greatly in the well
fare of the Indians. The great success
of his mission at White Earth is one of
the most remarkable results of his la
bors. Here may be found many hun
dreds OF Chippewa Indians who are
thoroughly civilized and Christianized,
living in houses, wearing clothes like
white men, and many Of them owning
carriages, pianos or house organs-a
thoroughly prosperous agricultural
community.
The Indians gave the bishop the name
Of Straight Tongue" because of his
veracity and integrity, and a gentleman
who resided in Minnesota and 1922 tells
this story of him, in illustration of the
regard in which the old man is held by
the Indians
In that year great firm of lumber
men deliberately Jumped" the Indian
lands about Red Lake, and proceeded to
cut down the pine timber without the
least regard or consideration for In
dian rights. The young men under Chief
Leading Bird took the Warpath at once,
and announced their intention of clean
ing out the entire camp of lumbermen.
A serious outbreak would certainly have
followed-and perhaps something like
this was what was wanted by the lum-
bermen, it being the usual custom in the
Indian country to first incite the natives
to commit acts of reprisal or depreda-
ton whenever it is desired to rob them
OF their property or lands In the ex-
citement that Is sure to follow an In
dian outbreak number of people are
killed, and whatever else happens when
the fray is over the Indian is certain to
find himself landless and homeless.
In this case, however, Chief Leading
Bird persuaded the hot-headed young
men to wait few days until he could
go to Faribault and take counsel with
"Old Straight Tongue" The gentleman
ribault when the chief arrived and was
present at the interview between the
Indians and the bishop
After hearing the chiefs story the
bishop. who was just recovering from a
surgical operation for some catarrhal
trouble of the nasal organ, and was
propped up in bed, sent for the United
otdleS statutes containing tne treaty
with the Red Lake Indians. He read the
treaty carefully while the chief, with his
attendant braves and Vincent Roy, the
half-breed Interpreter, stood in silence
around his bed and acted as though the
bishops reading impressed them as some
| mysterious or occult rite. When he had
finished, the bishop said to Leading
Bird, through the interpreter:
Go back home and tell your young
men to leave the white men alone. Say
nothing to them; have no communica-
tion with them whatever, and | will see
that the great father makes them pay
you in full for all the pine they steal'
1t was straight Tongue" who spoke,
and Leading Bird trusted him, and not in
vain, for next spring when the Red lake
logs ran into the booms at Saltwater or
Minneapolis "Old Straight Tongue" ap-
| peared on behalf of the Indians with a
replevin suit that was like the farmer S
| fence-'hog tight and bull high" The
| lumber men carried the case to the high
| er courts, but the replevin suits held, and
| IN the end the bishop administered a
| very considerable fund for his friend,
| Leading Bird of Red lake, who there
| upon removed with his entire tribe to
| the White Earth country, where each
| family was given a comfortable cabin,
some agricultural implements and live
stock and fairly started on the white
mans road"
1T was a remarkably good price they
| got for their pine, too," was the way the
| bishop used to speak of it afterward in
| telling the story