Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1898-12-21
INDIANS ARE ROBBED,
SDeciaf Agent jenkins Makes an
Interesting Report on Tim
Der OPERATIONS.

Washington, D. c., Dec 19-SpeciaI
Indian Agent Jenkins in a report just
submitted to Commissioner of Indian At
fairs Jones, on the investigation of the
timber operations on the Chippewa reser-
walton III Minnesota, makes some state
ments radically differing with those in
other reports.
He says that during the last fiscal year
4S,9l9,946 feet Of reservation pine timber
cut and banked there were sold at an
average of $4.78 per thousand There
were thlrty-tWO camps in operation and
there was 81 1-3 per cent. of the wages
due the Ia bOrers in the camps after set
t!ement. On the diminished reservation,
the special agent says, there were D.
~, 9Ol feet cut and banked, sold at
S496 per thousand, and the labOrers were
PAID 9oA per cent. of the amount due
them on the settlement.
tie states that the trouble was in the
management of the camps and in the sys-
tenn itself. Owing to the inability of many
or the camps to pay out and as, under the
rules, the labOrers claim, were the last to
be paid, scores of Indians working there
dld not receive the wages they expected
and hence serious complaint arose Of
htty-three camps in opera ton the past ifs
cal year, many employed less than 10 per
cent. Indian labor and very few had over
90 per cent, the Indian labor average be-
ing from ID to 20 per cent.
Ihe system of stores maintained by the
camps with their eXOrbitant prices and
credit to reckless Indian buyers. is stated
TO nave caused great dissatisfaction. The
bills presented to the agent for settlement
by the various supply committees, who
furnished the camps with the necessary
groceries, ETC., during logging operations,
were not as rule properly temized and
Whlle they cannot De said to be OXOr-
Dltant, the special agent says they are
loosely made out, with no apparent check
on purchases, and give abundant oppor-
tunlty for fraud and collusion."
The chief source of all the Indians COM
plants was that the green timber of the
reservation was being ruthlessly cut down
and destroyed under pretense of being
dead and down timber. At five councils
held with the Indians from various por-
TONS OF the reservations, Mr.. Jenkins says,
they TO man yehemently protested
against further cutting of the so-called
dead and down. They are convinced, he
says, that more than one-half of the tim
Der cut at the camps has been of the best
green and growing pine and that they are
realizing little or nothing from it. On
many Of the tracts of the diminished reg
ervation the agent says he found these
complaints wel-founded, and that eviden-
ceS of the clean cutting of everything
merchantable were abundant everywhere.
OF 1000 or 1000 logs he found cut and
sskidded, he says, fully 60 per cent. were
from green trees.
The Indians are, however, he con-
Guided, 'desirous of having the timber
operations resumed on the basis of COM
mon sense and common honesty. They
favor the selling outright of all this pine
timber at not less than 50 per thousand
for Norway and So for white, as it stands,
or the putting in of mills by the govern
ment under the Menominee plans. Either
would result satisfactorily"