St. Croix Riverway Time and the River: A History of the Saint Croix

CHAPTER 1:
Valley of Plenty, River of Conflict (continued)

The Treaties of 1837

Land cession treaties made it impossible to maintain even modest controls on fur traders. The Dakota and Chippewa reluctantly accepted the treaties because of the growing environmental degradation of their embattled homelands. The elimination of beaver, during the 1820s had been one warning sign of the change. The high value beaver allowed Indian hunters to obtain their annual wants with a very limited effort. Much more hunting time was required and less food was obtained when the smaller less valuable muskrat was trapped as a replacement. The same was true of the increased difficulty encountered and energy required when subsistence hunters were forced to rely more on white-tailed deer than a herding animal like elk. The Dakota were particularly affected by these changes because the Chippewa had steadily encroached upon their territories along the St. Croix and Mississippi. The Dakota no longer had the broad sweep of territory over which they had traditionally ranged during their annual subsistence cycle. As early as 1812 the Dakota were forced to adapt to these changes. Agriculture, which was unimportant to the Dakota at the height of their power in the 1600s, became increasingly significant as a way to bridge the nutritional gaps in their seasonal subsistence cycle. When the Cass expedition in 1820 visited the Dakota villages on the St. Croix one of its members, Charles Trowbridge observed that corn was "almost their only food." While this was an exaggeration, to be sure, based on a misunderstanding of the Dakota's seasonal movements, it nonetheless reflected a profound change. Trowbridge further noted that Dakota hunters did not even try to hunt in the vicinity of Little Crow's village near the mouth of the St. Croix, a clear sign that game in the region had been seriously depleted. Buffalo, which were once abundant along the Upper Mississippi, in 1820, could not be found short of a two days journey beyond the river. Over time buffalo were found only after increasingly farther journeys to the west. Lawrence Taliaferro, a very careful observer of Dakota life, frequently noted that they suffered from starvation, not merely in the winter but even during the summer. In August of 1835, he noted that they were completely without wild rice and that "to go out to hunt is for them to go off to starve." A year latter he reported that the St. Croix Dakota had completed their summer hunt without killing a single deer. Requests for government supplies from the Indian agent became more frequent as did complaints of Chippewa intrusions on Dakota lands [79]

The Chippewa who were accustomed to operating within a smaller territorial range than the Dakota suffered less than the their rivals. Even so adjustments were forced upon them. In 1832, hunters along the Upper St. Croix still found deer near the river but moose, which had been abundant, were eliminated from the area and could only be found along the remote headwaters of the Brule River. The Chippewa, who in the early 1800s had provided fur traders with most of their provisions from hunting deer and gathering wild rice, also became more dependent on agriculture. Joseph Brown, making no mention of his large supply of illegal whiskey, claimed that the way he won the Snake River Chippewa to his posts was by showing the Indians how to plant fields of corn. "The failure of the [wild] rice crop in the fall made the corn, potatoes, pumpkins and turnips very valuable to the Indians and probably saved many from starvation during the winter," he claimed in a letter to a missionary. When Schoolcraft visited a Chippewa village near Big Fish Trap Rapids in 1832 he found "Corn and potato fields." Not only were such fields new to that generation of St. Croix Chippewa but Schoolcraft also noted that the fur trade had also brought "a considerable change of habits, and of the mode of subsistence; and may be considered as having paved the way for further changes in the mode of living and dress." By 1832 as much as half of the trade goods brought from Mackinac for the Chippewa trade were foodstuffs and clothing. A gradual but nonetheless decisive change in the fortunes of the St. Croix's Indian peoples was the transition, made apparent by the 1830s, from being providers of subsistence to the whites to becoming dependent upon fur traders for their subsistence. [80]

The dependency of both the Dakota and the Chippewa on the European-Americans for alcohol, trade goods, and increasingly for food, was the knife's point used to push them into treaty negotiations that led to the loss of the territory over which they had fought for so long. In July of 1837, Henry Dodge, Governor of the Wisconsin Territory negotiated the cession of Chippewa lands along the Upper Mississippi and St. Croix rivers. In return for these hard won lands the Chippewa received annual access for the next twenty years to a paltry $19,000 worth of trade goods, and a mere $9,500 in cash payments, and government supported blacksmith shops and model farms. They retained the use of their old lands for hunting, fishing, and gathering, but only at "the pleasure of the President of the United States," which in effect meant as long as they did not get in the way of European-American settlement and industry. Of greatest immediate importance, however, was the provision that paid $70,000 to fur traders who had claims against the Chippewa. The decline in stocks of fur bearing animals on their lands and their growing need for European-American manufactured goods had gradually put the Chippewa in the position of annually accepting more goods in advance than they could pay for at the end of the trapping season. The accumulated debt was substantial, although the payment of $25,000 to Lyman M. Warren, the principle trader on the St. Croix, seems excessively high. Settlement of this debt was an important matter, in part because of the presence of traders like Warren at the negotiation. But the Chippewa themselves were well aware that they needed the treaty to keep open their source of credit. Chief Shagobi, of the Snake River band, bluntly admitted that he and the other leaders were "afraid to return home if their traders are not paid. They fear they should not survive the winter without their aid." [81]

Even considering their dire necessity the St. Croix Chippewa made a poor bargain when they agreed to the 1837 Treaty. The payment received for their very extensive and valuable lands was too small to make a significant difference in the band's quality of life. Indian Agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who did not participate in the treaty negotiation, complained, with some exaggeration, that the payment "would not exceed a breech cloth and a pair of leggings apiece." Fur trader Lyman Warren blamed the bad deal on bribes paid by Lawrence Taliaferro to the leaders of the Pillager Chippewa, who lived at Leech Lake. The Pillagers then used their influence to encourage the St. Croix and Chippewa River bands to accept a hasty settlement. Schoolcraft, who was strongly biased against Taliaferro, found this tale convincing. "The pillagers certainly do not," Schoolcraft wrote in his memoirs, "as a band own or occupy a foot of the soil east of the Mississippi. . .but their warlike character has a sensible influence on those tribes quite down to the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers." Even the location of the treaty payment sites favored the Pillagers, not the eastern bands. The St. Croix people were forced to travel several hundred miles to the Crow Wing River to receive their meager payments. [82]

The Dakota were also forced to part with title to their share of the bloody St. Croix in 1837. The American Fur Company clamored for the treaty, claiming in excess of $50,000 in Dakota debts. The Dakota were loath to sell their St. Croix lands, but there also was a strong feeling that they could not go on as before. Little Crow, the son, namesake, and successor to the leadership of the St. Croix Dakota, found it harder and harder to locate game within their old hunting grounds. In the fall of 1835, after nearly dying of exposure in a snowstorm, he staggered into Taliaferro's agency in desperate need of food. Wearily Little Crow agreed to the necessity of taking up the plough. A smallpox epidemic in 1836 further demoralized the Dakota, leading one chief to say to Taliaferro, "the land is bad. . .and your advice is this day asked for my people." Taliaferro's advice was to go to Washington, D.C. and negotiate the secession of some of their lands. By advocating the journey it may have been the Indian agent's intention to overawe the Dakota with American power. If so the strategy worked, for after a week of negotiations the Sioux representatives were forced to accept the government's price of one million dollars for all tribal lands east of the Mississippi, more than $600,000 less than the Dakota asked for. Unlike the Chippewa treaty, the 1837 Treaty of Washington did not grant the Dakota a limited right to hunt and fish on the ceded lands. From the government's point-of-view the Dakota's tenure on the banks of the St. Croix was at an end. [83]

In agreeing to the 1837 land cessions the Chippewa and Dakota people embraced an unavoidable contradiction. Their lifestyle and culture was based upon their occupation of the land. Yet, to maintain that lifestyle they had to give up their ownership of the land. Far from being dupes of the government negotiators the Indians knew the Americans were anxious to exploit the pine forests of the St. Croix and Rum River. Chippewa chiefs very sagely had proposed ceding the territory for sixty years, the amount of time they estimated for its forest resources to be exhausted. Flat Mouth, chief of the Pillager Chippewa, observed, "it is hard to give up the lands. They will remain and cannot be destroyed but you may cut down the trees and others will grow up." Governor Dodge, however, rejected that proposal and insisted on a traditional cession. What the Dakota and the Chippewa received in return were treaty annuities that allowed the Indians for twenty years the opportunity to continue the pattern of living they had adopted since the beginning of the fur trade. The Chippewa retained a limited right to use the forests and the waters of the St. Croix. A Leech Lake Chippewa captured this sentiment when he told the treaty council "we wish to hold on to a tree where we get our living and to reserve the streams where we drink the waters that give us life." In that sense the treaty was a conservative solution to a looming crisis. Life would go on as before. But for how long? The President of the United States could order them off the lands at any time and the annuity payments, that kept the flow of trade goods coming were due to last only twenty years. The treaty was a blend of trying to protect a fading old way of life and tentative embrace of a new, scarcely imagined way of living. Annual payments for farm implements, seed, and the assistance of experienced farmers and the less specific provision for the establishment of schools, clearly demonstrated that Dakota and Chippewa leaders understood that the they were fast approaching a threshold of change, and that they would need help to cross to the other side. [84]

Figure 10. Lawrence Talliaferro, the proud intelligent Virginian who served as the long-time United States Indian Agent on the Upper Mississippi. He tried to mediate the Dakota-Chippewa conflict on the St. Croix.