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Members of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Grand Portage in 1885, three decades after the Grand Portage reservation was established through the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe. Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society
Editor’s note: Natalie Rademacher is the granddaughter of Mary (Blackwell) Harrelson. She is a journalist who has worked for the Minneapolis Star & Tribune, St. Paul Pioneer Press and currently works at the Mankato Free Press. She is also a free-lance journalist who has agreed to write a three-part series about the 1854 Treaty, what came before, the treaty itself, and what followed. We hope you enjoy these pieces.
The North Shore looked very different 167 years ago. Majestic white and red pine trees filled the forests – many standing more than 100 feet tall. Wild rice beds flourished in the inland lakes and rivers. A few surveyors and white men had journeyed into the Arrowhead region, but the area was primarily home to Anishinaabe people. Then the 1854 Treaty was established by the tribes and United States government, allowing for mining exploration, logging and for settlers to move onto the northern and western shores of Lake Superior.
Henry C. Gilbert
The treaty established that members of the Grand Portage, Bois Forte and Fond Du Lac tribes could continue hunting, fishing and gathering on the ceded territory, ensuring they could keep practicing their cultural traditions and sustenance lifestyles.
Tribes have taken the federal government to court to ensure these rights are upheld and are still fighting to be able to continue these practices today.
Over the next few weeks, a series of articles will dive into the details, history and ramifications of the 1854 Treaty and the ongoing efforts to ensure tribes retain the rights promised in the treaty.
The treaty economy
Before the 1854 Treaty, only a handful of white settlers lived in the area. Grand Portage had been a trading hub for a period of time, but the practice was mostly abandoned by the 1820s since fur trading no longer promised large profits.
Other Anishinaabe tribes in Michigan and Wisconsin had already signed and negotiated treaties with the U.S. government, establishing reservation boundaries and exchanging goods and annuities for territory.
This was the time of the treaty economy, according to Joseph Bauerkemper, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota – Duluth who researches Indigenous governance and federal and state policy regarding tribal nations. These treaties were often how tribes paid off debts that were often forced on tribes by traders and other individuals. About 368 treaties were established between tribes and the U.S. government between 1777 and 1868 – providing the U.S. with much of its current territory.
The Arrowhead region had largely been overlooked by white settlers until surveyors found a vein of copper in 1848 and wanted the three Anishinaabe tribes to cede land in the area so it could be explored further. The tribes also had debts and wanted amends from the U.S. government for a disastrous attempt to move Anishinaabe people living east of the Mississippi River into the region a few years earlier.
Officials in Minnesota wanted a larger concentrated population of Indigenous people to spur economic activity, so President Zachary Taylor ordered that Anishinaabe people be removed from the south shores of Lake Superior and relocated to Minnesota in 1850. These tribes refused to leave their homelands, so then-Minnesota Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey hatched a plan to force them to move west. Tribes were told their annual payments from the 1842 Treaty of La Pointe would be distributed in October at Sandy Lake, near Duluth, instead of in La Pointe, Wisconsin.
But Ramsey planned to delay the payment until later, after the waterways froze over so the tribes would be unable to return home that winter.
More than 4,000 people journeyed to Sandy Lake to collect their payments on October 25. The cold set in as they waited and many starved due to the meager and spoiled government food rations. Disease and exposure to the cold also ravaged through the community.
John Watrous, a subagent at La Pointe, did not arrive at Sandy Lake until late November that fall and he only fulfilled a portion of the promised payments. People were given meager food supplies and no cash to help with the journey home. By then more than 150 people had died. Another 250 perished on the harsh walk back to Wisconsin and Michigan through snow and ice.
To prevent another disaster like Sandy Lake, the tribes involved in the 1854 Treaty wanted to ensure they could not be forcibly removed from their lands.
Treaty commissioner Henry C. Gilbert was surprised when about 4,000 Anishinaabe people attended negotiations for the 1854 Treaty at La Pointe. Chiefs brought their entire tribes and even tribes not involved in the treaty came to witness the talks.
Many came because they wanted to ensure demands were met. In other negotiations, treaties omitted or included provisions that reduced the final annuity paid to tribes. Tribes often unwillingly ceded all of their homelands. Traders would often take part of the annuities due to tribes as a way to collect money for individual’s debts, reducing how much money tribes actually received from the promised payments.
“Locational differences and past political dealings influenced each treaty,” said Marne Kaeske, cultural preservation specialist for the 1854 Treaty Authority, an inter-tribal agency that manages off-reservation hunting, fishing and gathering rights of the tribes. “Indian agents on the ground knew the tribes, knew the issues and could use that when negotiating treaties.”
In the 1854 Treaty talks, tribes insisted they remain on their land and retain the right to hunt and fish on the ceded territory.
The treaty established the current reservation boundaries for Grand Portage and Fond Du Lac bands, and stated that the Bois Forte reservation area be established at a later date.
The tribes also negotiated payments for the ceded land to be delivered over two decades and required that annuities could not be used to pay off people’s debts, preventing traders from taking portions of the payments.
In a letter to George W. Manypenny, the director of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, commissioner Gilbert apologized for the finalized treaty – expressing regret for not purchasing the whole territory and for how much payment was promised to the tribes. The sheer number of Anishinaabe people and persistence during negotiations forced him to meet the demands of the tribes.
“We had much difficulty in reducing the amount insisted upon to the sum stated in the treaty,” he wrote. “I regret very much that we could not have purchased the whole country and made the treaty in every particular within the limit of your instructions. But this was absolutely impossible, and we were forced to the alternative of abandoning the attempt to treaty or of making the concessions detailed in the treaty.”
After the signing of the treaty, tribes moved to the established reservations and settlers flocked to the ceded territory. Over the next few years, a mining company located several mineral deposits in the region, but the expected mining boom never appeared. Many of the towering pine trees were cut down for timber.
Tribes continued to hunt, fish and gather on the ceded land, rights that were secured in the treaty. The ability to practice these rights waxed and waned over the last 167 years, and were sometimes challenged by conservation officers and government entities. Tribes would later fight in court to ensure these treaty rights are upheld.
Look for part two of this three-part series in next week’s issue of the Cook County News-Herald.
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