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

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

Strangers on the Land: The St. Croix Indians in the Settlement Era

In the wake of the treaties several new kinds of European-Americans came into the St. Croix country. Lumbermen were the largest group, followed by farmers and merchants. Of most direct interest to the Chippewa were the missionaries. Showing much less scruple for the division between church and state than modern public officials, the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs relied upon missionaries to carryout the transformation of the St. Croix bands from hunters and gatherers, to sedentary agriculturists. The work had actually begun four years before the treaty, in 1833, when Reverend Frederick Ayer established a mission school at Yellow Lake, about a mile from the trading post. Ayer was a Presbyterian sent west by the American Board of Foreign Missions. After two years of difficult work trying to win the support of the Yellow Lake band, Ayer moved the mission to Pokegama Lake. The soil there was much more conducive to agricultural experiments and the supplies of wild rice and fish were reputed to be more reliable. These factors made the Snake River band more sedentary than the Yellow Lake Chippewa. Best of all Ayer received an invitation from the Snake River people to bring his school to their band. In time Pokegama became the most successful mission in the region. In 1838, the Presbyterian missionaries working among the Chippewa agreed to consolidate their efforts at that site. Ayer was joined at various times by William Boutwell, Edmund Ely, and Sherman Hall. The government lent support to their effort by locating one of the official Indian model farms at the south end of Pokegama Lake. Jeremiah Russell, of the Indian bureau, sought to carve a farm out of the wilderness. He hoped that in time it could be a nursery for Chippewas schooled in European-American agriculture. [85]

As agents of change the missionaries caused tension and division among the ranks of the Chippewa. No two Chippewa responded to the presence of these new strangers in the same way. The leaders of the Snake River band saw the mission school as a positive development that would give their children the means to learn the white man's letters. Others may have accepted the missionaries out of regard for their farming efforts, which after all provided a backup source of support during times of famine. The Yellow Lake band was deeply divided by Frederic Ayer's initial mission. At a council soon after his arrival Ayer was told in no uncertain terms he was not wanted there. "The Indians are troubled in mind about your staying here," said one speaker, "and you must go–you shall go." But a second faction in the tribe felt contrary, and the next day told Ayer that they were grateful for what he had done, "you have clothed and provided for us. Why should we send you away?" Ayer was invited to stay, but in the months that followed he was constantly unsure of his position, "things were not as they should be." The band chief remained constantly, in Ayer's words "on the fence," as he tried to maintain a consensus among his badly divided people. When the missionary left Yellow Lake the chief must have been greatly relieved. Reverend Boutwell had an even more difficult time with the Leech Lake Chippewa. After receiving several warnings they poisoned the missionary's daughter. Fortunately the girl recovered and Boutwell quickly left for the friendly clime of Pokegama Lake. [86]

The modest success enjoyed by Ayer and Boutwell was partially based on the care each took to cultivate the fur trade elite that had long influenced life along the St. Croix. Ayer became a friend of Lyman Warren. The veteran fur trader was a devout Presbyterian who used his money and influence to help Ayer build his base among the Snake River band. Boutwell earned entry into any trading post in the region by marrying the daughter of Ramsay Crooks, the managing partner of the American Fur Company. This Chippewa Metis woman was described by one contemporary as "a commanding figure" who did much to win her husband a hearing among her mother's people. Even so the missionaries often skirmished with their Indian neighbors across a cultural divide. Frederic Ayer, at great trouble and expense, brought farm animals to the lake mission. His effort to have a proper American farm were sometimes frustrated by Indian hunters, who when hungry did not differentiate between wild game and domesticated animals. "At Fond du Lac and Pokegama," wrote the Reverend Sherman Hall, "they have been much tried this summer with the Indians. They have killed several cattle at the latter place for the mission, and one at Fond du Lac. Some have appeared otherwise hostile." Nonetheless, the missionary was convinced he and his colleagues would "preserve in efforts to save these wretched heathen." On another occasion Ayer lost considerable face when he accused an Indian women of stealing several shirts left out in the sun. He went so far as searching, and none to gently, her lodge, only to find out that Mrs. Ayer had simply misplaced the items. The Indian women felt disgraced by the affair, although she never took action against the missionary. "Some of the Indians laughed heartily," at the crestfallen man of God, "others made remarks rather sarcastic." [87]

It was not, however, the cultural barriers that separated the Chippewa from the evangelical Christians that led to the demise of the mission in the St. Croix valley. In the end it was the rekindling of the ugly war between Dakota and Chippewa that broke up the mission and its agricultural experiment. With the withdrawal of the Dakota to the west side of the Mississippi with the 1837 treaty, there was hope that European-American commerce could expand in the region and the chronic wars might be brought to an end. This hope was shattered in 1839 when four Leech Lake Chippewa killed a Mdewakanton leader at Lake Harriet, the site of a successful Protestant mission to the Dakota. The attack was the action of a few rogue warriors. The bulk of the Chippewa wanted to maintain peaceful relations. Two large delegations of Chippewa, one from Mille Lacs the other from the St. Croix had just met with Dakota leaders at Fort Snelling where they smoked tobacco and pledged amity. When news of the murder reached the Dakota, they vowed to reward treachery with treachery. Dakota war parties fell on the Chippewa returning unsuspectingly from the Fort Snelling conference. The St. Croix people were surprised at the present site of Stillwater, Minnesota and twenty-three Chippewa, mostly women and children, were killed. "I was on the battle-field of Lake St. Croix soon after the conflict, " recalled a missionary, "and saw the remains of the slaughtered Chippeways scattered in all directions. The marks of bullets were upon the trees, and the shrubbery was all trodden down. Some of the dead were suspended upon the branches of the trees." A new round of vengeance raids followed. One ambush led to the deaths of two of Little Crow's sons in the forest between the Snake River and St. Croix Falls. The scalping knife fell on the Lake Pokegama settlement in 1841. [88]

The mission was located on east side of Lake Pokegama, although the majority of the Snake River band lived on an island in the lake. The island village gave the Chippewa extra protection from Dakota raiding parties. A few of the Snake band, however, trusting the protection of the mission had settled in cabins on the mainland. The evening before the attack a large Dakota war party secreted themselves in the brush adjacent to the mission. Their plan was to wait for the Chippewa to commence work in their fields and then fall upon them. This ambush, like so many others, was spoiled by several overly anxious warriors. That morning the Chippewa were late in canoeing from the island to the mission and those on the mainland did not go to the fields. When a solitary canoe of two men and two young girls approached the shore, it was fired upon. The Chippewa were thus alerted to the danger. Those on the mainland barricaded themselves in several cabins while those on the island took up arms. The Dakota laid siege to the cabins for several hours before giving up in frustration. At least one Dakota was killed in the fighting as well as two young Chippewa girls. The Missionary E.F. Ely found the little corpses on the shore. "The heads cut off and scalped, with a tomahawk buried in the brains of each, were set up on the sand near the bodies," he latter recalled. "The bodies were pierced in the breast, and the right arm of one was taken away." [89]

Although the Snake River band had successfully defended their village, they feared a return by the Dakota. The band broke up into family groups and retreated into the wilderness. The mission was abandoned by its acolytes. "The Indians were scattered," recalled Elizabeth Ayer, "and dared not return." For a time Reverend Ayer tried to visit the scattered members of the band in their isolated camps, but when it became clear they did not intend to return to Pokegama the Presbyterians had no choice but to abandon their mission. In 1842 the mission was removed to La Pointe. Not until the spring of 1843 did the Chippewa return in force to Pokegama Lake. The mission was briefly reestablished. But the rapid increase in the number of European-American lumbermen and a handful settlers in the region made the missionaries lose faith in the location as an effective base from which to convert the Chippewa to the white man's God and a farming lifestyle. The Reverend William Boutwell, who also served as a field agent for the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, encouraged the Snake River Chippewa to abandon Pokegama Lake and locate at Mille Lacs, where wild rice and fish were abundant and contact with whites less frequent. The mission in the St. Croix valley was abandoned in 1845. [90]

The missionaries also soured on their prospects along the St. Croix, Rum River, and other areas ceded in the 1837 Treaty because of the pervasive presence of whiskey traders. While the St. Croix had been Indian territory, the agents of the Office of Indian Affairs had the power to regulate who traded there, where they traded, and with what wares. After 1837 the valley was simply another part of the Wisconsin Territory, a vast region with large opportunities and little in the way of civil administration. Alcohol, which in times of competition between fur traders had always greased the wheels of commerce, now became the principle article of trade for men intent on separating the Chippewa from their annuity payments. By 1844 William Boutwell complained to a fellow missionary that the ceded lands were "inundated with whiskey." [91]

Among the unsavory traders who entered the St. Croix at this time was Joe Covillion. He was a Metis who took over the former mission school at Yellow Lake and used it for his post. Located on the Yellow River just where it leaves Little Yellow Lake, the trading house was the scene of many drunken reveries and a key location in the first murder mystery in the St. Croix valley. In 1845 Albert McEwen hired Covillion to guide him to timberlands in the Yellow Lake region. McEwen had a large amount of gold coin he hoped to use to secure title to lands upon which a profitable speculation might be made. McEwen never returned from the trip. Covillion explained that he had actually not been with McEwen and he cast suspicion on a Chippewa who was alleged to have actually served as guide. Not long afterwards McEwen's body was found stuffed in a hallow tree about ten miles from Covilion's post. Preliminary investigation revealed that Covillion had in his possession a large amount of gold coins, McEwen's watch, and a fist full of land warrants. Calmly the trader explained that he obtained these from the Chippewa in trade. Later that winter the Indian whom Covillion had claimed guided McEwen was found dead in his camp. Covillion, the owner of "considerable property" retired to Taylor's Falls, where he died in 1877. [92]

Another less than worthy trader of this period was Maurice Mordecai Samuels. In 1846 he had a trading post at the mouth of the Sunrise River. In time honored fashion he established himself with the Chippewa by taking one of their women as his wife. Latter he relocated to St. Croix Falls where he operated a "ball alley" and trading post. Samuels was described by fellow pioneer W.H.C. Folsom as "a shrewd man and an inveterate dealer in Indian whisky." No friend of the fur trader, Folsom accused Samuels of being "unprincipled" and "repellant" to the "moral sense of the community." There can be little doubt about how repellant was the type of whiskey sold by Samuels. He did not trouble to import the product from the Ohio Valley where it was abundant and cheap, for less expensive still was to use grain alcohol and then attempt to impart the right flavor and color by artificial means. Samuel's recipe included boiled roots and tobacco, which according the Folsom poisoned many whites and Indians. One consumer of the concoction went insane and leapt from a high point of the Dalles to the falls below. Samuels profited handsomely from his trade with the Chippewa and in time became a leader of the community of St. Croix Falls. [93]

National Park Service archeologists have explored the site of Samuel's 1846 trading post at the confluence of the Sunrise and the St. Croix River. The post consisted of a main building where Samuels lived and conducted his trade and a second flimsy outbuilding that served as a barn or other shelter for animals. The diet of the traders who lived there at this time was somewhat different than that of the Northwest Company traders a generation earlier. In addition to local meat products such as fish and rabbit, Samuels consumed a large amount of pork. Whether this pork was slaughtered on the site from his herd of livestock or sent up river salted in barrels, Samuels was in a much less isolated position than earlier traders. An historic site within the Riverway from this period can be found where Goose Creek enters the St. Croix River. In 1846, Thomas Connor, an old veteran of the Northwest Company, operated a trading post at that location. William Folsom, who visited the post in 1846, described it as a "bark shanty, divided into rooms by handsome mats." [94] The location has been tested for archeological remains on many separate occasions and has also been much visited by collectors of antique bottles and metal detector enthusiasts. Archeological explorations by the National Park Service's Midwest Archeological Center revealed the foundations of a structure from the mid-nineteenth century. The site, however, was not confirmed as Connor's post because the remains of a chimney seemed to clash with Folsom's description of the post as a portable bark shanty. Artifacts found at the site, such as gunflints, glass beads, and kaolin pipes suggested the occupation of the site by temporary traders or Indian hunters in contact with traders. [95] Trading posts like Connors or those of whiskey traders were seldom occupied for long periods of time. The whiskey traders were particularly active in the wake of an annuity payment.

Whiskey was an important commodity at all trading posts but the whiskey shops of men like Samuels and Covillion in particular were the scenes of many degrading and deadly spectacles. Bad liquor sold with no restraint led to trouble at Alexander Livingston's grog shop on the St. Croix at the mouth of Wolf Creek. Livingston, who may have operated in cooperation with the veteran fur trader and whiskey dealer Joseph R. Brown, was gunned down in 1849 after a "drunken melee in his own store." Livingston died of his wound, while his killer, a Metis named Robido, escaped prosecution. Another whiskey dealer to die as a result of his own greed was Miles Tornell, a Norwegian operating near Balsam Lake. Tornell refused to back down in the face of competition from a German-American whiskey dealer, a man identified only as Miller, who operated a post on the lake. The German resolved the competition by hiring a Chippewa to murder Tornell. When the crime was detected, the Indian was executed, while Miller was merely flogged. In 1847, one of Samuels' subordinates, Henry Rust, was killed in a brawl with a drunken Chippewa, Notin. Unlike most such cases this one came to trial. The verdict reflected the outrage many early settlers felt toward the whiskey traders. Notin was found not guilty and a criminal complaint was issued against Jake Drake, the Samuels employee who sold Rust his stock of booze. Drake himself fell victim to foul play shortly thereafter, an inebriated Metis slew him near his Wood Lake post. [96]

The presence of the whiskey dealers and the availability of treaty money accelerated the abuse of alcohol among the Indians of the valley. James Hayes, Indian agent to the Chippewa, complained of the "cupidity and heartlessness of the whiskey dealer," which he blamed for the "accounts of outrages and crime" that washed over the St. Croix frontier in the wake of the treaties. Among the Dakota, who had formerly lorded over the St. Croix, the impact was even more pathetic. "They would have whisky," wrote missionary Gideon Pond. "They would give guns, blankets, pork, lard, flour, corn, coffee, sugar, horses, furs, traps, any thing for whisky." As a result "They killed one another. . .they fell into the fire and water and were burned to death, and drowned; they froze to death, and committed suicide so frequently, that for a time, the death of an Indian in some of the ways mentioned was but little thought of by themselves or others." [97]

Between the rapacity of the whiskey dealers and the incompetence of federal authorities the St. Croix Chippewa benefited little from the financial terms of the 1837 land cession. In 1838 the Office of Indian Affairs bungled the first payment due them. The Chippewa had been told to gather on Lake St. Croix, near the future site of Stillwater, Minnesota, to receive their payment in goods and supplies. The Chippewa began to gather there in July. Every steamboat ascending the river was besieged by anxious Indians who sought their due from white immigrants, not appreciating that they "had nothing to due with payments." All summer and most of the fall the Chippewa waited, faithful and famished. The large congregation of Indians stripped the surrounding area of both firewood and game. Only in November with the Indians starving and freezing did the promised goods finally arrive. One hundred barrels of flour, twenty-five of pork, bales of blankets, boxes of guns and ammunition, even casks of gold dollars were all unloaded while thick flakes of snow covered the ground. Desperately hungry the Chippewa tore into the food. Many ate too much too soon, and suffered agonizing cramps for their trouble. According to one witness, "many of the old as well as the young died from overeating." In the meantime ice formed on the St. Croix rendering useless more than a thousand canoes the Chippewas had brought to transport their goods. They were forced to destroy the craft, rather than let them fall into the hands of the Dakota. Only that which they could carry on their backs could be taken north to their winter camps. Much of the food, money, and goods had to be left behind. During the long agonizing march up river and during the harsh winter that followed many Chippewa perished. As pioneer chronicler William Folsom noted, "their first payment became a curse rather than a blessing to them." [98]

In this manner the thousands of dollars of federal assistance to the Chippewa that the chiefs had seen as the means to maintain their fur trade lifestyle only further impoverished the Indians. J. F. Schafer, who distributed supplies to the Chippewa in 1851 complained of "the introduction of liquor among the Indians immediately after issuing provisions." When Schafer saw the Chippewa trading "their Blankets &c. for liquor," he tried to suspend the distribution of goods until the whiskey dealers left the payment site at the mouth of the Snake River. Indian agents frequently referred to the St. Croix Chippewa as "exceedingly poor, and naked and needy." William Warren, who had spent his life living amongst the Chippewa, advised the Governor of Minnesota "there is not under the sun a more wretched people than they are & will continue to be so as long as they remain in close proximity to a bad white population." Governor Alexander Ramsay himself described the St. Croix band as "the most miserable and degenerate of their tribe." [99]

The condition of the Indians excited more fear than pity among the European American settlers and lumbermen who were quickly moving into the ceded lands along the St. Croix. There was little attempt on settler's part to understand the customs and traditions of the Indians they found living in the valley. Typical of these cultural clashes were the numerous stories of Indian men barging into the cabins of white settlers and demanding food. Chippewa etiquette required visitors, however uninvited, to be fed. That kindness, of course, required some reciprocation, but not immediately. Whites regarded these visits as intimidation and complained to Wisconsin and Minnesota officials of "marauding Indians." Whenever something went missing, Indians were the first suspects. When early settlers in St. Croix Falls were missing a pig of lead, they accused the Chippewa of the theft. The Indians denied the crime, although the whites later noticed, "that all their war clubs, pipes and gun stocks had been lately and elaborately ornamented with molten lead." These types of actions, and encounters with lumbermen, inclined federal officials to revoke the provision of the 1837 treaty that allowed the Chippewa to remain on the ceded lands. [100]

On February 6, 1850 President Zachary Taylor issued an executive order ending the Chippewa's right to hunt and fish on the ceded lands. Local Indian agents were given the responsibility of determining which Chippewa were to be removed and where they would be relocated. The news caused considerable consternation among the Chippewa of Lake Superior, but among the St. Croix bands there was some interest in removing to another area. Only a month before the President's order the Snake River Chippewa had petitioned their agent for removal to the Crow Wing River in the Minnesota Territory. Portions of the band had already left the valley and crossed over the divide to Mille Lacs. Plans were made to remove all of the Chippewa from the valley, but typical of the slipshod manner in which Indian removals were managed federal authorities were unable to gather together the majority of the Indians in the region. After working all summer to make the move work Indian Agent John Watrous was able to effect the removal of 288 St. Croix residents to the Crow Wing River. Few of these remained long; nearly half were gone in a month. No concerted effort was again made to remove the St. Croix bands, nor were they awarded reservation lands in subsequent federal treaties. In the wake of President Taylor's order and the botched removal program, the St. Croix Chippewa were left in a legal limbo. They were not recognized as having rights in the St. Croix valley, yet there they resided for the next eighty years on lands unused or abused and abandoned by European American settlers. This precarious, furtive lifestyle led to the St. Croix band of the Chippewa being dubbed "the lost tribe." While the government may have lost sight of where they were, the Chippewa themselves were never "lost," or even in hiding. All they lost was the opportunity to live on at the Lac Court Oreilles Reservation. Instead they simply continued to live in small, band communities within the valley, where they live today. [101]

With no remaining legal claim to the St. Croix than the Chippewa, farmers of the lower St. Croix had no tolerance of the Dakota. In 1855, a large band of Dakota established a winter camp in the valley near Marine Mills. At first residents regarded the Dakota as interesting exotics. "They were really a curiosity to many of our citizens; they having not seen since their settlement here so large a party of Indians before," reported one townsman. In seeing the Dakota "dressed in pure Indian winter style" the people of Marine shared with each other "not a few half supressed, half frightened remarks at [of] ridicule." The merchant in charge of the local general store brought out a large barrel of crackers that the Indians "devoured" with the noise of "a flock of hungry geese." But it was not long before the Dakota ceased to be interesting and were regarded by most people in the area as a nuisance. One farmer complained the Dakota were, "frightening our wives and children, plundering our premises, laying vicious hands on every thing their savage eyes crave, and not leaving unmolested the domestic sanctity of our potato hoes." Without the least irony the settlers complained "and what is worse they are killing all our deer, --this last offense amounts to an unpardonable crime." [102]

The opportunity to hunt in the under utilized forests of the St. Croix is what lured the Dakota back across the Mississippi River. What recently arrived farmers regarded as "our deer" were, of course, a resource the Dakota had relied upon for generations as part of their seasonal subsistence cycle. Changes in the population and ecology of the Upper Mississippi country made their old hunting grounds on the St. Croix more attractive than ever. The growth of settlements such as Red Wing, Hastings, and St. Paul, and their adjacent agricultural districts, where by 1850 more than five thousand European Americans resided, taxed the game populations along the Mississippi. Development along the St. Croix was focused more on logging, with Swedish immigrants only just beginning to establish farmsteads north of Stillwater. The presence of these whites was not yet enough to deplete the game resources of the long contested region. The Dakota may also have felt somewhat shielded from Chippewa attack by the small population of newcomers. Every January or February in the 1850s the Dakota undertook hunts in the valley. These were male dominated hunting parties, with only a handful of women and children in the company. In addition to helping to prepare the deer hides the women made moccasins that they sold for bread in Stillwater. The Apple River was a particularly rich hunting preserve. "They were heavily laden with skins, game, &c., and seemed to be well pleased," recorded the St. Croix Union in January of 1857, at the conclusion of that year's hunt. The amount of game brought down by these hunting parties was indeed prodigious. "How many deer did you kill?" asked a reporter who visited a Dakota camp in 1855. In answer one of the hunters "held up both hands, and motioned with them quite deliberately, ten times–indicating, as we interpreted it, One Hundred." A year later when the Dakota left their hunting camps near Marine the local populace estimated, with perhaps some exaggeration that between eight and twelve hundred deer had been taken. [103]

The hunting success of the Dakota perturbed the European American settlers because they counted on game as a source of food and barter during the first years of farming. "It is hard for the industrious and poor white settler to have his wood and stacks of hay burnt up," the St. Croix Union editorialized, "his traps and their booty stolen, and his game shot down, and much of it wasted." The settlers formed committees, signed petitions, and lobbied the territorial governor, but to no avail. The new white residents of the St. Croix complained the Dakota had not become sedentary and blamed the government who "allowed a set of scheming rouges with a pittance of whiskey to cheat them out of their annuities." But nothing was done to stop the Dakota visits, which continued till the 1860s, when their villages were pushed far up the Minnesota River valley and the St. Croix ceased to be a lucrative hunting ground. [104]

Tragically throughout the painful twilight of Indian tenure, while English and Swedish voices replaced those of the Chippewa and Dakota along the St. Croix, the vicious intertribal war continued. The conflict was no longer really about territory, as treaties with the United States had awarded the valley to others. Vengeance, however, continued to exert a powerful spell. Remembering the wrongs of the past helped to obscure the problems of the present. Just as important was the need of young men to find a way to assert their manhood in a traditional way. Economic decline narrowed their range of opportunities to win distinction, so the feud continued.

In March of 1850, a war party from the village of Little Crow, the son of the Dakota leader who had first negotiated with the Americans, surprised a Chippewa camp on the Apple River. The ambush was a complete success. Eleven Chippewa women and children, and three men, were killed as they made maple sugar. One boy was captured. The next day the jubilant Dakota passed through Stillwater on their way west. They "went through the scalp dance, in celebration of their victory–forming a circle round the Chippeway boy–their prisoner–and occasionally striking him on the face with their reeking trophies," recorded the Minnesota Chronicle. The encounter was no different than hundreds that had come before and others that would follow. But the times and the river were different. With hope, boldness, and perfidy new people and new ways were dominating the valley. What once was seen as the way of wilderness war now, with the passage of the frontier and the disinheritance of a people, was deplored as simple, tragic, murder. [105]

The wretched attack at Apple River was one of the concluding scenes in the long history of Dakota dominance of the St. Croix Valley. After the tragic Sioux Uprising of 1862 the Dakota were removed far from the border river. Indian voices continued to be heard along the waterway but after 1862, those people were the Chippewa. They outlasted their ancient enemies by sheer persistence and they endured in the valley after the 1837 cession of their lands to the United States by practicing that same virtue.

The majority of the old Snake River band of Chippewa abandoned the valley during the 1850s, relocating to Mille Lacs. The bands at Yellow Lake and along the headwaters of the St. Croix, however, remained where they had always lived. Lacking land tenure they lived as squatters on government or lumber company lands. Wild rice and cranberry harvests remained vital to their subsistence and were supplemented with the yields of hunting and fishing. Furs continued to be traded, although the exchange now took place with small town merchants at a general store and not with red-sashed voyageurs at a trading post. During the late 1860s the United States government began to move Chippewa on to designated reservations. Most of the St. Croix Chippewa were related to tribal members living at the Lac Courte Oreille Reservation. A smaller number had family connections to the Chippewa of the Bad River Reservation. In time the reservations were subdivided into individual family allotments. The St. Croix Chippewa were not based at any reservation and most received no allotments and little in the way of educational or health services. While Bad River and Lac Courte Oreille were recognized Indian communities the St. Croix Chippewa pursued an independent existence largely unknown to the government. People in northern Wisconsin began to refer to the St. Croix band as "the lost tribe." [106]

Of course, the Chippewa were the last people in the valley to be "lost." They adapted to the rise of the logging industry by utilizing it as a source of wage labor. Chippewa frequently worked as lumberjacks and river drivers. In the latter task they excelled. In 1902, the loggers Gear & Stinson employed an entire crew of Chippewa to bring their drive down the Clam River. [107] A resident of Shell Lake later recalled "the young men, many of them, are our best drivers on the river; quick, sprightly, active." [108] Edward St. John, a Metis logger employed a large number of his Chippewa kinsmen in his forest operations. One of his logging campsites, located in Pine County, Minnesota, exists within the Riverway. The camp was operated by St. John for the Marine-on-St. Croix lumber company of Walker, Judd, and Veazie. During the last years of the nineteenth century between 150 and 175 Chippewa continued to reside along the St. Croix. [109] Trouble for them came when the pine forest was cut and there no longer were log drives on the river. This period coincided with the rise of fish and game regulations that made it difficult for Indians to live off the land on a full-time basis. Private ownership of land was also at its peak during the first years at the end of the nineteenth century restricting their ability to gather wild foods. Cranberry marshes that had been utilized for generations, for example, were increasingly drained to grow hay for dairy cows. White farmers, often from foreign lands, sometimes nursed fears about the native people who lived around them. In 1878, several Swedish settlers started a panic that spread like wildfire through Burnett County, Wisconsin. A large gathering of Chippewa was exaggerated into the beginnings of a concerted attack by both the Chippewa and the Dakota on all settlers. Scores of farms were abandoned in anticipation of an attack the Governor called upon General Philip Sheridan to dispatch federal troops to restore order. The army exposed the entire affair to be a misunderstanding, although it did recommend to Wisconsin that the Chippewa not be allowed to "roam about in bands." [110] As squatting on private lands became problematic some of the Chippewa bought parcels of land where families erected wooden shanties and invited friends and kinsmen to settle as well. One such collection of wigwams and houses was located about a mile up the Namekagon River from the St. Croix. Called Dogtown or Ducktown it was home to as many as fourteen families and was occupied as late as 1938. John Medoweosh, a band leader, owned a tract of land at the junction of the Yellow and St. Croix rivers. He lived there for many years with an extended, multi-generational family. Augustus Lagrew, a Metis with a full-blooded Chippewa wife, owned land a few miles from Shell Lake, Wisconsin, that also served as place of congregation for the Chippewa. Gifts of food or small loans by white neighbors helped the Chippewa get through hard winters, although rarely did the Indians beg for handouts or apply for formal aid through the county poor fund. [111]

There are scores of historic sites associated with the post-treaty occupation of the valley by the Chippewa. One such site was the Pacwawong Lake village site that was occupied from the mid-nineteenth century until about 1910. It was located about where there is now a boat launch, which destroyed the historical integrity of the site. Another village site from this period was at Little Yellow Banks on the St. Croix River in Pine County, Minnesota. The area had been utilized as a camping site by the Dakota and before them by prehistoric Native Americans. Several Chippewa families lived there until the 1930s when, according to oral tradition, they were displaced to make way for a Boy Scout camp. There are also many sites of historic and prehistoric Indian burials in the valley. [112]

The United States Government rediscovered the St. Croix Chippewa in 1910 when Senator Robert M. La Follette held a Senate hearing on the condition of Indians in Wisconsin. The fact that the St. Croix Chippewa had in the past received little in the way of annuities prompted several congressional efforts to provide them with federal relief. But the St. Croix Chippewa were not given what they needed most, a guaranteed land base within their homeland. Not until 1934, with the passage of the Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act), did the St. Croix Chippewa receive a federally recognized reservation. After eighty landless years the St. Croix people could not be brought together at a single location. Instead the new 3000-acre reservation was spread out over eleven separate Burnett County locations.

In the years that followed the Chippewa grew more and more like their neighbors whose ancestors hailed from Europe. Most of the St. Croix band became practicing Christians. One of their numbers, Philip B. Gordon, became the first Indian priest in the United States. He served not only his own people, but for many years was the beloved pastor to a largely white parish in the St. Croix valley. [113] Chippewa children participated in the same rural schools as the sons and daughters of farmers. Yet, in spite of these marks of assimilation the Chippewa remained anchored in their Indian identity. This identity became more important in the 1970s when the "Red Power" movement sparked greater political assertiveness. One result of this was the so-called "Walleye War" that was triggered in 1983 when the federal court established the rights of the Chippewa to fish outside of state regulations. The decline of both agriculture and forest products in the region had forced both whites and Indians to rely more on jobs in the tourism and recreation fields. Whites feared that the Chippewa's exercise of treaty rights would degrade stocks of fish that were critical to maintaining tourism. These tensions, which became violent in some parts of the North Country, were largely restrained in the St. Croix Valley. [114]

A more important assertion of Native American status came with the establishment of casino gambling. In 1974, President Richard Nixon approved changes in federal Indian policy that sparked a general move toward greater independent control of reservation lands by the tribal community. Although unanticipated at the time this led to a gradual expansion of restricted enterprises, from garbage dumps to gambling, on Indian reservations. The St. Croix Band of Lake Superior Chippewa took advantage of this change to establish two casinos, at Turtle Lake and Danbury. In a stunning turnaround, the St. Croix Tribal Enterprises became the largest private employer in Burnett County. Hundreds of white as well as Indian people found jobs in the gaming rooms and hotel complex. Profits from gambling led to the growth of a series of family, housing, and health services for the tribe.

At the 1837 council that resulted in the cession of their St. Croix lands the Chippewa chief Maghegabo tried to explain to Governor Henry Dodge that his people would endure in the valley. "Of all the country that we grant you we wish to hold on to a tree where we get our living & to reserve the stream where we drink the waters that give us life." The chief then placed an oak sprig, the germ of new life, on the council table. "Every time the leaves fall from it, we will count it as one winter past." After more than one hundred and fifty leaves have fallen from that symbolic tree the St. Croix Chippewa are more numerous and more economically successful than at any point in their history. Through exercise of the same patience and persistence that had served them so well in the long twilight struggle with the Dakota, the Chippewa survived the wave of white emigration that broke over the valley in the mid-nineteenth century. For them the St. Croix and the Namekagon remain "the waters that give us life." [115]

Figure 11. Dakota Village.