page_title: Knute Nelson
section_title: U.S. House of Representatives, 1883–1889
hierarchical_section_title: Knute Nelson / Minnesota frontier / U.S. House of Representatives, 1883–1889
context_page_description: Knute Nelson was an American attorney and politician active in Wisconsin and Minnesota. A Republican, he served in state and national positions: he was elected to the Wisconsin and Minnesota legislatures and to the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate from Minnesota, and served as the 12th governor of Minnesota from 1893 to 1895. Having served in the Senate for 28 years, 55 days, he is the longest-serving Senator in Minnesota's history.
  Nelson is known for promoting the Nelson Act of 1889 to consolidate Minnesota's Ojibwe/Chippewa on a reservation in western Minnesota and break up their communal land by allotting it to individual households, with sales of the remainder to anyone, including non-natives. This was similar to the Dawes Act of 1887, which applied to Native American lands in the Indian Territory.
context_section_description: Nelson served in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1883 to March 4, 1889, in the 48th, 49th, and 50th congresses. In keeping with practices of the Gilded Age, his first agenda item in Congress was to ensure patronage for his supporters in Minnesota by doling out the limited number of federal appointments available. Most were made through Paul C. Sletten, the Receiver of the U.S. Land Office in Crookston. In addition to rewarding political support, he replaced pro-Kindred appointees in the forested counties around the Northern Pacific Railroad, the so-called "Pineries." Particularly publicized was the firing of Søren Listoe as Register of the U.S. Land Office in Fergus Falls.
  Nelson did not always follow the orthodox Republican line in the House. In 1886, he abandoned the Republican caucus to vote for the Morrison Tariff Bill of 1886, which sought to reduce the tariffs on some imported items. Two years later, he and three other Republicans voted for the more aggressive tariff reductions in the Mills Tariff Bill of 1888. Although passed by the House on July 21, 1888, the Mills Bill was so heavily amended by the high-tariff Republicans in the Senate that the House found the result unacceptable, and no changes to the tariff were made in 1888.
  Nelson was frustrated by what he perceived as the House's lack of effectiveness. He got involved in long debates about pension issues for Civil War veterans. His most notable legacy as a representative was passing the Nelson Act of 1889. It created the White Earth Indian Reservation in western Minnesota as a place to consolidate Native Americans from other reservations in the state, allocated communal land to heads of households, and opened up sale of the remaining thousands of acres of land to immigrants, at Native Americans' expense.
  Considering his time in the House a "personal failure", Nelson decided not to seek reelection in 1888. Some suspect that a narrow escape from a drowning accident on October 11, 1886, also played a role in increasing his ambition.
caption: A statue of Nelson stands in front of the Minnesota State Capitol
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