Evening star., 1898-12-19
INDIANS WANT JUSTICE
Report of Special Agent Jenkins on Timber
Cutting.
LabOrers Deprived of Their Pay,
tion of Green Trees.

Special Indian Agent jenkins, in a report
Just submitted to Commissioner of Indian At
fairs Jones on the investigation of the tim
Der operations on the Chippewa reserva-
tiCn in Minnesota, which caused the recent
Indian troubles, makes ssme statements
radically differing with those in other
ports. He says that during the last fiscal
year 4s 919,946 feet of reservation pine tim
Der cut and banked there were sold at
average of S4.7S per 1000. There were
thirty-twO camps in operation, and there
were IS 1-3 per cent of the wages due the
laborers in the camps after settlement On
the diminished reservation the special agent
says there were - .62 $50 feet cut and
banked, sold at s4 96 per 1000, and the la
borers We're paid 95A per cent of the
amount due them on the settlement.
He states the trouble was in the manage
ment of the camps and in the system it
self. Owing to the inability of many of the
camps to pay out, and as, under the rules,
the labOrers' claim were the last to be paid !,
scores of Indians working there did not re-
ceive the wages they expected, and hence
serious complaint arose. OF hfty-three
camps in operation the past fiscal year
many employed less than 10 per cent In
dian labor. and very few had over 30 per
cent, the Indian labor average being from
10 to - per cent.
The Company stores.
The system of stores maintained by the
camps, with their exOrbitant prices and
credit to reckless Indian buyers, is stated
to have caused great dissatisfaction. The
bills presented to the agent for settlement
by the various supply companies, who fur
nished the camps with the necessary gro
cerles, etc, during logging operations, were
not IL rule properly ltemIzed, and while
they cannot be SAID to be eXOrbltant, the
special agent says they are loosely made
n -kN-s.k
and give abundant opportunity for fraud
and CoIlusion.
Cutting Green Timber.
The chief source of all the Indians COM
plants was that the green timber Of the
reservation was being ruthlessly cut down
ana destroyed under pretense OF being dead
and down timber. AT nve councils held with
The Indians from various portions of the
reservations MIR. jenkins says Iney, to d
man, veheInenuy protested against further
cutting OF The So-Cal4ed dead and down.
1ney are convinced, he says, that more
thdn One-hdl1 OF the timber cut at the
camps has been of the best green and grow
ing pine and that they realizing little
or nothing from it.
on many of the tracts of the diminished
reservation, the agents says, he found these
complaints well founded, and that evidences
of the clean cutting of everything mer-
Chdntable were abundant everywhere. OF
5000 or 1000 logs he found cut and skidded
on several tracts he says fully 10 per cent
were from green trees.
The Indians are, however, he conclud-
ed 'deSirOus of having the timber opera
tons resumed on the basis of common sense
and common honesty. They favor the sell
ing outright of all this pine timber at not
less than 81 per thousand for Norway and
S5 for white as it stands, the putting In
nominee plan. Either, l think, would re-
suit satisfactorily