Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation - Selkirk Concession

Selkirk Concession

Chief Sitting Bull was hinting at something now hidden from the present, when he told General Terry that "...For 64 years you have kept us and treated us bad." Sitting Bull was probably 46 at the time. Around 1811, the Selkirk Concession was supposedly issued by the Hudsons Bay Company to Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk. The land was not white but Anishinaabe. It covered a large area of land in Canada and the northern United States including parts of eastern Saskatchewan, southern Manitoba, northwestern Ontario, northern Minnesota, eastern North Dakota, and northeastern South Dakota. The Turtle Mountains were within the land area of the Selkirk Concession. It is also known as the Red River Colony and the District of Assiniboia. However, Sitting Bull may have not been recalling an unknown event 64 years before 1877, but a treaty the Anishinaabe Nation signed with the whites which set aside a huge Reservation around 1870. Chief Sitting Bull was obviously trying to tell Native Americans something. It may have dealt with a Reservation the whites have totally erased from history. In fact, it may be related to the infamous "10 cent an acre treaty".