Treaty of Old Crossing

Prior to 1863, Ojibwe/Chippewa and eastern Dakota or Santee "Sioux" tribes had fought over the Red River Valley. The Ojibwe were the main occupants of the region when the first European fur traders arrived in the late 18th century. Development of the Hudson's Bay Company settlement at Fort Garry established trade with St. Paul. The Red River Trails ran between the two terminus points. This led to American settlement in the flat river valley lands. These instructions came from the Secretary of the Interior, Thomas Ewing. Who, with the approval of President Zachary Taylor, suggested the United States acquire the land for the expansion of agricultural settlement. After locating the site for he future Fort Abercrombie, Major Woods continued downriver to Pembina, where he spent 25 days and met first with Dakota and then the Métis from the Pembina Chippewa band as well as members of the Red River Chippewa reaching no land agreements. causing the Senate to deny confirmation, and the Chippewa land cession failed. The Ojibwe objected to the establishment of a town on their territory, and the Legislature moved the county seat to Crookston, but demands for doing something about the "sullen Chippewa" and their claims to the territory continued to mount and by 1862 had risen to a crescendo. The fur traders and steamship operators then renewed efforts to have the government acquire the land. The main negotiator for the United States in the Treaties of Old Crossing was Alexander Ramsey, ex-Governor and made Indian Commissioner in late spring of 1863. During the weeks leading up the Old Crossing Treaty, Ramsey held negotiations with the Red Lake and Pembina bands. It was not Ramsey's first attempt to obtain cession of the Red River Valley from the Ojibwe. He treated with the Red Lake and Pembina Bands to sign the unratified treaty at Pembina in 1851. That treaty ceded over of of the Red River Valley to the United States for about five cents an acre. ==1863 treaty==

On September 21, 1863, Ramsey arrived escorted by troops of the 8th Minn. Additionally accompanied by a battery of the 3rd Minn. light Artillery and 90 assorted wagons, 340 mules, 180 horses, and 55 oxen. John Nicolay did not participate in 1863 as he had already departed Washington to represent Lincoln at another treaty signing in Colorado. The Pembina band arrived a couple days after Ramsey, and negotiations ensued. Initially, Ramsey offered $20,000 for a "right of passage", that the Chippewa roundly rejected. Over the next several days, a psychological battle of wills pitted the Ojibwe negotiators, most of whom disclaimed any interest in selling their land, against the impatient Ramsey, who feigned disinterest in acquiring their land and invited a counteroffer. Eventually, on October 2, 1863, Ramsey and his co-commissioner, Ashley C. Morril, induced the chiefs, headmen and warriors of the Pembina Band and Red Lake Band to sign the Treaty of Old Crossing (1863). The United States treaty negotiators had overtly misrepresented the purpose and effect of the proposed treaty as merely conveying a "right of passage" over the Ojibwe lands to the United States. The United States intention to bring in settlers as well as the railroad had been an established policy for years, as was plainly stated in newspapers and governmental reports of the time. Governor Ramsey's journal of the treaty negotiations contained his speech to the assembled Ojibwe in which he, as a trained lawyer and experienced politician and Indian negotiator, directly misrepresented the purpose and intent of the treaty: Now, there is growing up a trade of considerable importance between the British settlements on the north and the American settlements on the south. ... Now, this is a trade which cannot and must not be interrupted. And their Great Father, feeling this, and desirous to prevent any trouble between his white and red people, has sent us here to come to some understanding with you about it. Their Great Father has no especial desire to get possession of their lands. He does not want their lands at all if they do not want to part with them. He has more land now than he knows what to do with. He simply wishes that his people should enjoy the privilege of traveling through their country on steamboats and wagons unmolested Even after the initial proposal for a mere right of way was rejected, he was representing that if they sold their land, the Ojibwe could still occupy it and hunt on it for a long time. "Signed in the Presence Of:" ==The 1864 amendments==

Afterwards, it was stated that the Ojibwe signatories of the 1863 treaty did not know the character of the treaty they had made and, in the words of the Episcopal Bishop Henry Whipple, it was "from beginning to end a fraud...". It is said that the principal "translator" involved in the negotiations, Paul H. Beaulieu, was familiar only with Dakota languages and the "Chippewa Métis" creole language and not with the Ojibwe words and meanings as used by the Red Lake Band and other non-Métis Ojibwe people. Even if the English used by the negotiators was accurately translated to the Ojibwe negotiators, however, the effect was the same—the treaty ceded away over of land for a total consideration of just over $500,000, or 5 cents an acre. Governor Ramsey bragged that it was the lowest price per acre ever paid for Indian land cessions in the history of the United States. The United States Senate refused to ratify the treaty on the grounds that it was "too generous to the chiefs", and sent back an amended treaty with the demand that the Ojibwe capitulate to the revisions. The Senate eliminated language which would have diverted unused portions of the $100,000 indemnity fund to the chiefs after settlement of all just claims, and instead provided for any unused funds to be added to the annuity payments to be distributed directly to members of the bands on a per capita basis. It also added a proviso to Article 8, prohibiting any assignment of the half-breed scrip until after the patent had been issued to the original claimant, after 5 years of proving up the claim. As a result of the unilateral alterations to the unratified treaty imposed by the Senate, several original Indian signers of the 1863 treaty refused to sign the amended version. Nonetheless, the "treaty" was re-executed by the United States Commissioners along with certain representatives of the bands who had been taken to Washington, D.C. for this purpose, all of whom signed the amended treaty on April 12, 1864. This version of the treaty was then signed by President Abraham Lincoln, in early May 1864. After negotiating the initial Treaty of Old Crossing in 1863, Ramsey had been appointed to the United States Senate before the follow-up treaty negotiations in 1864, and probably played a role in approving the ensuing revisions to the treaty he had just negotiated. ==1864 supplemental treaty==

One of the dissatisfied chiefs from the Red Lake Band recruited Bishop Whipple to assist in an effort to enhance the benefits of the treaty to the Red Lake and Pembina Ojibwe. This resulted in a supplemental treaty, sometimes called the Treaty of Old Crossing (1864) but entirely negotiated in Washington, D.C., which in some ways enhanced the benefits of the treaty to the signatory bands and in other ways assured that much of the indemnity fund would never find its way back to the tribes. The 1864 supplement reduced the $20,000 annuity to $15,000, but specifically allocated $10,000 per year to the Red Lake band and $5,000 per year to the Pembina band (to be distributed per capita directly to individual members of each band). It eliminated the fixed term of 20 years and provided for the annuity to be paid "during the pleasure of the President". An additional annuity payment of $12,000 ($8,000 for the Red Lake band and $4,000 for the Pembina band) was established for a period of 15 years, with these payments to be made to the bands in common for agricultural assistance and materials to make clothing and "other useful articles". The United States also committed to provide a sawmill, to furnish a blacksmith, physician, miller and farmer, and to provide various blacksmithing and carpentry materials and tools with an annual value of $1500 over a period of 15 years. In effect, these changes increased the price paid by the United States for the ceded land to about 6 cents an acre. Other changes made to the terms of the 1863 treaty in the supplemental treaty of 1864 have provoked ongoing controversy among Ojibwe and white historians alike. The $100,000 indemnity fund was reallocated, to provide that $25,000 would be immediately distributed to the chiefs of said bands "through their agent". The balance of the funds were specifically earmarked for the satisfaction of specific claims for "depredations committed by said Indians" on Euro-American traders' goods at the Red Lake River and for "exactions forcibly levied by [said Indians]" on the steamship operations on the Red River, and the remainder was to be allocated pro rata in satisfaction of other claims. The provision for collaborative review and settlement of these claims by an appointed commission in consultation with the chiefs of the Ojibwe bands was eliminated, with the determination of claims left entirely to the "agent for said bands". In effect, the revisions transferred control of the indemnity fund to the white Indian agent and assured that none of the funds would be allocated to the Indians themselves. The 1864 supplemental treaty also altered the provisions for half-breed scrip, restricting the holder to claims on land within the ceded territory, while eliminating restrictions on assignment or required prove-up of claims. The Red Lake Band has renounced these aspects of the treaty, contending that none of the purported signatories for the Red Lake Band were legitimate leaders or had authority to speak for or sign away their ancestral lands, and that virtually all of the benefited Métis claimants were non-citizen relatives of members of the Pembina band who used the scrip to acquire timberlands formerly belonging to the Red Lake Band. Signatory representatives ==Legacy==

Governor Ramsey virtually admitted the fraud he had perpetrated in his letter transmitting the final treaty to Congress for ratification, saying: I stated to them very plainly, that if the offers were not agreeable to them they should make another proposition. The Great Father had several times offered to purchase the land, not because he wanted it for settlement—at least during the lifetime of the youngest of them, but because he wanted a free passage over it ... As Governor Ramsey was well aware, the treaty did not merely grant "a free passage". By the text of the treaty, the signatory Ojibwe bands did "hereby cede, sell, and convey to the United States all their right, title, and interest in and to all the lands now owned and claimed by them ... within the following described boundaries:". The intended effect of the treaty on the part of the United States negotiators in fact was to extinguish all Ojibwe interests in the land for the benefit of the United States. This in fact was the stated objective of the treaty in all of Ramsey's communications on the subject other than his statements to the Ojibwe during the negotiations. Most of the indemnity fund wound up in the hands of Norman Kittson, who had pioneered steamship operations on the Red River as a means of handling a burgeoning trade with the Hudson's Bay Company. The Ojibwe had accused Kittson of trespassing on their territory, cutting timber for fuel and starting forest fires. At one point they had demanded tribute for the continued right to pass along the river—the "exactions forcibly levied" referred to in the text of the treaty. The treaty indemnity payments thus may be seen as a politically inspired bailing out of Kittson from a losing position, using the excuse of Indian "depredations" which had been no more than a demand for payment by the Ojibwe for the right of passage now being exacted from them. Although the Ojibwe had no involvement in the Dakota War of 1862, white agents in the press and the government freely associated the Ojibwe with the Dakota, or Sioux, and overtly argued for reduced benefits to the "Indians" due to the depredations committed on white settlers in the "Sioux Uprising". The leading historian of North Dakota, Elwyn B. Robinson, described the treaty as satisfying the "sullen Chippewa" who had "wanted to sell their land to the United States" and who had "plundered" fur traders' property and "threatened to stop the steamboat" if their long-frustrated desires were thwarted. Even as soon as 1899, Euro-Americans were characterizing the 1863 and 1864 Treaties of Old Crossing as "ending the trouble" caused by the Sioux Uprising. The official Red Lake County history tour guide still characterizes the treaty as a "peace treaty", as does the centennial history of Red Lake County, the split-off portion of the original Polk County in which the Old Crossing now is located. Describing the monument erected in 1932 to commemorate the Old Crossing Treaty, it states: Here at the "Old Crossing" is a monument which commemorates a peace pact....As the descendants of these self-same Indians [i.e., the Ojibwe] pause in its shadow they may well say our forefathers kept their faith, and be proud that this was done. Ojibwe negotiators at Old Crossing denied any interest in selling the lands of their people. A standard Minnesota history work states: Bottineau himself had a hand in the founding of several townsites in Minnesota in the late 1850s, including the town of La Fayette, on the east side of the Red River of the North, in still unceded Ojibway territory, in 1857. Bottineau now was engaged by Ramsey (escorted by Sibley) as one of his interpreters in treaty negotiations at the Old Crossing in 1863. In this capacity, Bottineau signed the treaty himself, and his nominal role as an interpreter often is characterized as "negotiator", probably for good reason. At the same time as Sibley loaned Ramsey the services of his guide and interpreter, Sibley also provided two companies of dragoons to escort Ramsey to the Old Crossing treaty grounds in late September 1863. Soon after the treaty was consummated, the principal beneficiary, Sibley's former partner in the fur trade, Norman Kittson, and Kittson's current partner in the steamboat and railroad business, James J. Hill, developed the first railroads through the Red River Valley and re-established the steamboat traffic on the Red River of the North. Bottineau went on to found the town of Red Lake Falls and recruited French-Canadian immigrants to settle the recently ceded Ojibwe lands in nearby Louisville Township, where he also founded the townsite of Huot, the site of the Old Crossing Treaty negotiations as well as the former location of the nonexistent town of Douglas as first county seat of Polk County. ==See also==