1855 Land Cession Treaty with the Ojibwe

Schoolcraft, Aitkin, Warren

Henry Schoolcraft, who signed the 1825 multinational treaty at Prairie du Chien and 8 other Ojibwe treaties, first made a name for himself as a mineralogist, identifying copper and lead deposits. In 1819 he wrote a book entitled Lead Mines of Missouri that drew the attention of Lewis Cass, Michigan Territorial Governor. The next year, on an expedition with Cass, Schoolcraft bribed local Ho-Chunk men to show him the location of lead mines in the Prairie du Chien area. He was then appointed the head US Indian agent for all of the vast Michigan Territory. He appointed his brothers and brothers-in-law to positions in the Indian Affairs bureaucracy, and they signed Ojibwe treaties in what is now Michigan.

Schoolcraft's first wife was a member of a prominent eastern Ojibwe family. She shared with him the stories that became a primary source for Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha. Through a network of marriages with her relatives (French, American and Ojibwe), other treaty signers joined the same extended family as Schoolcraft. Lyman Warren became a prominent fur trader and signed treaties with the Ojibwe from what is now Minnesota in 1842 and 1837. His son Truman signed Ojibwe treaties in 1855, 1863, 1864, and 1867. Lyman's son William, who signed an 1847 Ojibwe land cession treaty, forged an identity that straddled two worlds, writing an important history of the Ojibwe people and serving in the Minnesota Legislature.

William Warren's wife, Mathilda Aitkin (daughter of fur trader William Aitkin) also had a relationship with treaty signer Samuel Abbe. Aitkin (for whom Aitkin County is named) advocated the introduction of whiskey into the Indian trade; he signed Ojibwe treaties in 1842 and 1847. Abbe wend on to the join the board of directors of railroad and canal companies, and signed an Ojibwe treaty in 1863.

Beaulieu, Borup, Oakes

Brothers Paul H. and Clement H. Beaulieu were sons of a French fur trader and grandsons of a prominent Ojibwe leader. There were trading at La Pointe, Wisconsin when an Ojibwe delegation from present-day Minnesota arrived there to sign a treaty there, and soon followed the Ojibwe back to present-day Crow Wing to take advantage of trading opportunities.

Clement worked initially for the American Fur Company; by the time of the Civil War, he was the primary supplier of all trade goos to the Ojibwe. His former AFC associate Henry Sibley named him an officer in the Minnesota militia, and after the Civil War he became a Indian agent. Paul became a surveyor for the Stevens Expedition, an excursion on behalf of the Pacific Railroad. When the White Earth Ojibwe reservation was created, Paul was the first person on the Ojibwe rolls to move there.

Paul and Clement had two sisters, Julia and Elizabeth, who married respectively Charles Oakes and Charles Borup (who had been the AFC representative at La Pointe). These brothers-in-law entered business together, forming some of the earliest banking ventures in Minnesota. With Clement Beaulieu, they owned the Northern Fur Company (a successor to AFC), and presented claims for debt payments at the 1854 Ojibwe treaty.

Paul Beaulieu signed treaties with the Ojibwe in 1845, 1855, 1863 and 1864. Clement Beaulieu, Borup and Oakes all signed the 1842 Ojibwe treaty in Wisconsin. Clement also signed the 1855 treaty in Minnesota Territory, and Oakes signed an 1847 land cession treaty.

Henry Mower Rice (and Edmund Rice)

Henry Mower Rice (signer of Ojibwe treaties in 1847, 1854, 1855 and 1863) began his career selling goods to military forts and trading with the Ojibwe and Ho-Chunk. Arriving in St. Paul, he purchased land claims around the area of St. Paul. (The use of funds from his employer, Pierre Chouteau, for his own land speculation led to embarrassment when his books were audited.) He eventually parlayed his trading connections and political ambitions into a position of power in US politics and US-Indian relations.

In 1847, Rice became the spokesman for the Ojibwe at a land cession treaty in Washington. In 1851, he offed to secure Dakota signatures on a land cession treaty if he were paid $10,000. Fur traders put up the money, and the Dakota sold millions of acres of their land. "Just how he accomplished this masterstroke has never been fully determined." (Wingerd, North Country.) When Minnesota became a State, Rice became the State's first US Senator.

Henry and his brother Edmund (a US Representative from Minnesota) acquired extensive land holdings, directorships in railroads, and other interests that related to US-Indian relations, becoming the chief rivals of Henry Sibley in both business and politics.

Clark W. Thompson and Benjamin Thompson

A banker, land and railroad speculator and Minnesota legislator, Clark W. Thompson received a political appointment to the important position of Northern Superintendent of Indian Affairs, centered in Minnesota. His tenure, which began in 1861, was characterized by wide-scale fraud and contributed significantly to the Dakota War of 1862.

Clark’s brother Benjamin was placed in charge of selecting the place to which Dakota were forcibly removed after the War: Crow Creek in what is now South Dakota. He became the Indian agent there, a place characterized by “the lack of rain, the lack of timber, the dryness of the creeks, the isolation, and the unproductiveness of the prairie.” Under his direction, “rations were given on Saturday, eaten up by Sunday and the Indians starved for the rest of the week.”

Clark signed 3 Ojibwe treaties in 1863 and 1864, as well as treaties with the Omaha and Ho-Chunk in 1865. Benjamin signed Ojibwe treaties in 1864 and 1866, and a post-removal treaty with the Sisseton and Wahpeton Dakota in 1867.