American Indians die waiting for $21

January 25, 2009 12:00 am

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All for $21.

Three Indians died, and hundreds of men, women and children flocked into Traverse City in late July 1910, only to wait days, some at least two weeks, for one of the 1836 treaty payments still due them.

Three Traverse City news stories stand out if you're looking for a glimpse of area American Indian life from 1900 to 1942.

This is the first -- the 1910 treaty payment bungle in Traverse City.

The U.S. Court of Claims had ruled in 1907 that the federal government still owed 5,600 Michigan Ottawa and Chippewa Indians $131,000 promised them in the 1836 treaty, according to the Evening Record.

Each adult was to receive $21.16 and each child under three $1.25, about $460 and $28 in today's dollars. The government paid about $14,000 to 700 claimants in Traverse City from July 19 to Aug. 4.

The American Indians spent about half of it in Traverse City for railroad fare, groceries, dry goods, boots, shoes and liquor "among drinking men," despite police warnings to saloon keepers and others not to sell to them, an Evening Record story noted.

The long wait, red tape and subsequent deaths were but "another example of the white man's injustice to the poor Indians," said Rep. George A. Loud, a Republican congressman from Au Sable, in town for a Spanish-American War veterans convention.

The people of Michigan and Traverse City also came under fire.

"There is more prejudice against these people in Michigan than in any state we have been in, and it is senseless," Charles Dickson, payment agent for the federal Office of Indian Affairs, told the Evening Record. "People in Traverse City act as though they had never seen an Indian before."

Only 35 people a day could be processed under federal rules for verifying American Indian identities against treaty-related enrollment records that had been created two years before for 5,600 Ottawa and Chippewa Indians in Michigan. Index cards with their names were not even alphabetized.

Meanwhile, American Indians from Petoskey, Northport and even Saginaw flocked to Traverse City, though Dickson would visit those places later.

The city's boarding houses were full. The city also was hosting the veterans convention and a very successful "Traverse City Day" that attracted an estimated 5,000 people from outlying areas.

Police Chief Charles Ashton found vacant rooms in a downtown building for mothers "too weary to stand," who crowded into his office with their babies and small children. All had to sleep on bare floors. A large canvas was stretched across the beach for others who slept on the sand with no other covering than the canopy, the Evening Record reported July 21.

Loud's letter to Robert G. Valentine, Office of Indian Affairs commissioner in Washington, criticized the agency for gross mismanagement and outrageous treatment of American Indians.

"It is impossible to conceive of a body of white people submitting to the treatment as have been involved in this payment of the just dues to these poor Indians. If anyone wished to outrage these poor people, nothing more diabolical in its unfairness and injustice could possibly be conceived," he wrote.

Of the three men who died, two were run over by a train, "their bodies cut to fragments," Loud wrote. The third fell on stone steps in front of the bank while waiting for his payment. Their lives "should rest upon the consciences of the office in Washington who planned this un-businesslike method of payment."

Loud said his last impression of Traverse City as his 6:30 a.m. train pulled away was an American Indian woman sitting on the steps of a store near the payment office, waiting for it to reopen.

"It was not a pleasant picture," he said.

-- Loraine Anderson

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