many of them, "among whom were the Winnebagoes, utterly refused to send deputies to the council." This disaffection was thought by the commissioners to be largely due to the influence of British traders, who plied the Indians with gifts, and assured them that war would soon break out again between the United States and Great Britain. It is probable, however, that the Winnebagoes held themselves aloof from these negotiations more from a general distrust of white men than from any partisan or selfish leaning to the side of Great Britain; for when Dr. Jedediah Morse visited them, only seven years later, he wrote: "There is no other tribe which seems to possess so much jealousy of the whites, and such reluctance to have intercourse with them, as this."

Spite of this reluctance they made, in 1816, a treaty “of peace and friendship with the United States," agreeing "to remain distinct and separate from the rest of their nation or tribe, giving them no assistance whatever until peace shall be concluded between the United States and their tribe or nation." They agreed also to confirm and observe all the lines of British, French, or Spanish cessions of land to the United States.

In 1825 the United States Government, unable to endure the spectacle of Indians warring among themselves, and massacring each other, appears in the North-western country as an unselfish pacificator, and compels the Sacs, Foxes, Chippewas, and Sioux, including the Winnebagoes, to make a treaty of peace and friendship with each other and with the United States. The negotiations for this treaty occupied one month; which does not seem a long time when one considers that the boundaries of all the lands to be occupied by these respective tribes were to be defined, and that in those days and regions definitions of distance were stated in such phrases as “a half day's march," "a long day's march," "about a day's paddle in a canoe," "to a point where the woods come out into the meadows," "to a point on Buffalo River, half way between its

source and its mouth." These were surely precarious terms for peace to rest upon, especially as it was understood by all parties that "no tribe shall hunt within the actual limits of any other without their consent."

At the close of this treaty there occurred a curious incident, which Schoolcraft calls "an experiment on the moral sense of the Indians with regard to intoxicating liquors." "It had been said by the tribes that the true reason for the Commissioners of the United States speaking against the use of ardent spirits by the Indians, and refusing to give it to them, was the fear of expense, and not a sense of its bad effects. To show them that the Government was above such a petty motive, the commissioners had a long row of tin camp-kettles, holding several gallons each, placed on the grass; and then, after some suitable remarks, each kettle was spilled out in their presence. The thing was ill-relished by the Indians, who loved the whiskey better than the joke."

At this time the lands of the Winnebagoes lay between the Rock and the Wisconsin rivers, along the shore of Winnebago Lake, and the Indians claimed that the whole lake belonged to them. It was here that President Morse had found them

living in 1822. He gives the following graphic picture of their pleasant home: "They have five villages on the Lake, and fourteen on Rock River. The country has abundance of springs, small lakes, ponds, and rivers; a rich soil, producing corn and all sorts of grain. The lakes abound with fine-flavored, firm fish." Of the Indians themselves, he says: "They are industrious, frugal, and temperate. They cultivate corn, potatoes, pumpkins, squashes, and beans, and are remarkably provident. They numbered five hundred and eighty souls."

In 1827 a third treaty was signed by the Winnebagoes, Chippewas, and Menomonies with the United States and with each other. This treaty completed the system of boundaries of their lands, which had been only partially defined by the two

previous treaties. Of these three treaties Schoolcraft says: "These three conferences embody a new course and policy for keeping the tribes in peace, and are founded on the most enlarged consideration of the aboriginal right of fee-simple to the soil. They have been held exclusively at the charge and expense of the United States, and contain no cession of territory."

They were the last treaties of their kind. In 1828 the people of Northern Illinois were beginning to covet and trespass on some of the Indian lands, and commissioners were sent to treat with the Indians for the surrender of such lands. The Indians demurred, and the treaty was deferred; the United States in the mean time agreeing to pay to the four tribes $20,000,"in full compensation for all the injuries and damages sustained by them in consequence of the occupation of any part of the mining country."

He says

In 1829 a benevolent scheme for the rescue of these hardpressed tribes of the North-western territory was proposed by Mr. J. D. Stevens, a missionary at Mackinaw. He suggested the formation of a colony of them in the Lake Superior region. and his words are as true to-day, in 1879, as they were fifty years ago : "The Indian is in every view entitled to sympathy. The misfortune of the race is that, seated on the skirts of the domain of a popular government, they have no vote to give. They are politically a nonentity. *** The whole Indian race is not worth one white man's vote. If the Indian were raised to the right of giving his suffrage, a plenty of politicians on the frontiers would enter into plans to better him; whereas now the subject drags along like an incubus in Congress."

It did, indeed. Appropriations were sadly behindhand. The promises made to the Indians could not be fulfilled, simply because there was no money to fulfil them with. In 1829 a Washington correspondent writes to Mr. Schoolcraft: "There

is a screw loose in the public machinery somewhere. In 1827 we were promised $48,000 for the Indian service, and got $30,000; in 1828 $40,000, and got $25,000." A little later the Secretary of War himself writes: "Our annual appropriation has not yet passed; and when it will, I am sure I cannot tell."

In 1830 the all-engrossing topic of Congress is said to be "the removal of the Indians. It occupies the public mind throughout the Union, and petitions and remonstrances are pouring in without number."

Meantime the Indians were warring among themselves, and also retaliating on the white settlers who encroached upon their lands. The inevitable conflict had begun in earnest, and in September of 1832 the Winnebagoes were compelled to make their first great cession of territory to the United States. In exchange for it they accepted a tract west of the Mississippi, and before the 1st of June, 1833, most of those who were living on the ceded lands had crossed the river to their new homes. Their title to this new country was not so good as they probably supposed, for the treaty expressly stated that it was granted to them "to be held as other Indian lands are held."

Article three of this treaty said, "As the country hereby ceded by the Winnebagoes is more extensive and valuable than that given by the United States in exchange," the United States would pay to the Winnebagoes $10,000 annually in specie for twenty-seven years. The Government also promised to put up buildings for them, send teachers, make various allowances for stock, implements, tobacco, etc., and to furnish them with a doctor.

The Winnebagoes agreed to deliver up some of their number who had murdered white settlers. Lands were granted by patent to four Winnebagoes by name -two men and two women; for what reason, does not appear in the treaty.

Five years later the Winnebagoes ceded to the United States all their lands east of the Mississippi, and also relinquished. the right to occupy, "except for hunting," a portion of that which they owned on the west side. For this cession and relinquishment they were to receive $200,000; part of this sum to be expended in paying their debts, the expense of their removal and establishment in their new homes, and the rest to be invested by the United States Government for their benefit.

In 1846 the Winnebagoes were forced to make another treaty, by which they finally ceded and sold to the United States "all right, title, interest, claim, and privilege to all lands heretofore occupied by them ;" and accepted as their home, “to be held as other Indian lands are held," a tract of 800,000 acres north of St. Peter's, and west of the Mississippi. For this third removal they were to be paid $190,000-$150,000 for the lands they gave up, and $40,000 for relinquishing the hunting privilege on lands adjacent to their own. Part of this was to be expended in removing them, and the balance was to be "left in trust" with the Government at five per cent. interest.

This reservation proved unsuited to them. The tribe were restless and discontented; large numbers of them were continually roaming back to their old homes in Iowa and Wisconsin, and in 1855 they gladly made another treaty with the Government, by which they ceded back to the United States all the land which the treaty of 1846 had given them, and took in exchange for it a tract eighteen miles square on the Blue Earth River. The improved lands on which they had been living, their mills and other buildings, were to be appraised and sold to the highest bidder, and the amount expended in removing them, subsisting them, and making them comfortable in their new home. This reservation, the treaty said, should be their "permanent home;" and as this phrase had never before been used in any of their treaties, it is to be presumed that the