Treaty of Old Crossing - A Legacy of Self-deception

A Legacy of Self-deception

The purpose of the treaties remains a matter of confusion, some of which seems to be deliberate. Although the Ojibwe had no involvement in the Dakota War of 1862, white agents in the press and the government freely associated the Ojibwe with the Dakota, or Sioux, and overtly argued for reduced benefits to the "Indians" due to the depredations committed on white settlers in the "Sioux Uprising". The leading historian of North Dakota, Elwyn B. Robinson, described the treaty as satisfying the "sullen Chippewa" who had "wanted to sell their land to the United States" and who had "plundered" fur traders' property and "threatened to stop the steamboat" if their long-frustrated desires were thwarted. Even as soon as 1899, Euro-Americans were characterizing the 1863 and 1864 Treaties of Old Crossing as "ending the trouble" caused by the Sioux Uprising. The official Red Lake County history tour guide still characterizes the treaty as a "peace treaty", as does the centennial history of Red Lake County, the split-off portion of the original Polk County in which the Old Crossing now is located. Describing the monument erected in 1932 to commemorate the Old Crossing Treaty, it states:

Here at the "Old Crossing" is a monument which commemorates a peace pact....As the descendants of these self-same Indians pause in its shadow they may well say our forefathers kept their faith, and be proud that this was done.

These self-deceptive recharacterizations of the historic purpose of the treaties overlook statements by several Ojibwe negotiators at Old Crossing who denied any interest in selling the lands of their people. They also ignore the incessant political pressure that motivated the United States treaty negotiators and the undisguised plan to force a land cession in order to allow for white settlement and agricultural development of the fertile Red River Valley that had been an express policy articulated at the Cabinet level of the United States government since at least the late 1840s.

The historical setting of the 1863 negotiations against the immediate backdrop of the panic and confusion resulting from the Sioux Uprising also has been minimized. A standard Minnesota history work states:

Though the treaties ceding the Red River Valley followed shortly after the Sioux War, they were not in any direct sense a consequence of the outbreak. In fact, commissioners had been sent out from Washington in 1862 to negotiate a treaty, but the plan had been interrupted by the Indian war.

While it is true that in 1863 the current United States Government efforts to induce the Ojibwe to give up their lands had been under way since 1862, and had been attempted at least once before in 1851, the immediate punitive reaction to the Uprising included a direct and unequivocal campaign of intimidation against the Ojibwe, as well as a pervasive and vicious retaliatory war against the Dakota, within a few miles of the chosen site for the negotiations. In this respect, whatever might have been negotiated before the Uprising in 1862 can never be known, but the results of the "negotiation" with the implied force of United States Army and Minnesota militia in the immediate vicinity cannot be denied.