Red Lake Indian Reservation
The Red Lake Indian Reservation covers in parts of nine counties in Minnesota, United States. It is made up of numerous holdings but the largest section is an area around Red Lake, in north-central Minnesota, the largest lake in the state. This section lies primarily in the counties of Beltrami and Clearwater. Land in seven other counties is also part of the reservation. The reservation population was 5,506 in the 2020 census.
The second-largest section is much farther north, in the Northwest Angle of Lake of the Woods County near the Canada–United States border. It has no permanent residents. Between these two largest sections are hundreds of mostly small, non-contiguous reservation exclaves in the counties of Beltrami, Clearwater, Lake of the Woods, Koochiching, Roseau, Pennington, Marshall, Red Lake, and Polk. Home to the federally recognized Red Lake Band of Chippewa, it is unique as the only "closed reservation" in Minnesota. In a closed reservation, all land is held in common by the tribe and there is no private property.
The tribe claims the land by right of conquest and aboriginal title; they were not reassigned to it by the United States government. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa refused to join with six other bands in organizing as the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe in the mid-1930s; at the time, its people wanted to preserve their traditional system of hereditary chiefs, rather than forming an electoral government. As of 2011, the Ojibwe language is the official language of Red Lake. Seven principal clans found on the Red Lake Indian Reservation are makwa, mikinaak, owaazisii, nigig, migizi, waabizheshi, and ogiishkimanisii. As a population minority name and adik clans are also found.
In the 2000 census, Red Lake was the most populous reservation in the state, with 5,162 residents. The only place in Minnesota with a higher Native American population at that time was the state's largest city, Minneapolis, 250 miles to the south; it recorded 8,378 Indian residents that year. By 2007, the White Earth and Leech Lake reservations had higher resident populations of enrolled Ojibwe. The reservation's largest community is Red Lake, on the south shore of Red Lake. Given the large lake in the heart of the reservation, its total land area of covers about 70% of the reservation's surface area.
History
In the 17th century, the Algonquian-speaking Ojibwe migrated into present-day Minnesota from the north around the Great Lakes. Their warriors went ahead of colonizers and were told to clear the way for the Anishinaabe families. Before invading the Mille Lacs region, Ojibwe warriors had forced their way into the region just west of what is now Duluth, Minnesota, on Lake Superior. They established a village known as Wi-yah-kwa-kit-chi-ga-ming. It was later called Fond du Lac by French fur traders, the first Europeans to interact with the Ojibwe in this area. From there, Anishinaabe warriors invaded the Sandy Lake and Red Lake regions. Their conquest of the Red Lake region may have occurred between 1650 and 1750. By that time, Anishinaabe people were already living in the Grand Portage, Rainy Lake, and Pembina region of present-day northern Minnesota.After evicting the Dakota living in the Red Lake region, the Noka occupied the area. They eventually allowed other Anishinaabe totems to enter the Red Lake region to live. Most Anishinaabe immigrants to this area were from the Noka totem. They established many villages in the Red Lake region. Later, they and their Dakota allies invaded the plains of present-day North Dakota, western South Dakota, and Montana. The Western Dakota, who refused to surrender, continued to fight the Anishinaabe-Dakota alliance. With each battle and defeat, more Dakota asked for peace from the Anishinaabe. The Western Dakota who continued the conflict developed a great hatred for those Eastern Dakota who were allies of the Anishinaabe.
William Whipple Warren, the first historian of the Ojibwe people, noted their longstanding associations with the French Canadians by the mid-18th century, due both to fur trading and intermarriage among their peoples. As a result, the Ojibwe fought with the French during the Seven Years' War against the English; it was known in North America as the French and Indian War. Although the English won the war and took over "French" territory in Canada and east of the Mississippi River, the Ojibwe retained many trading and family associations with ethnic French Canadians.
19th century
In the 1850s two Roman Catholic priests established a mission with the Red Lake band. Later, Catholic nuns from the Benedictine monastery in St. Joseph founded St. Mary's Mission at Red Lake. They organized a boarding school at the mission to serve Ojibwe girls, teaching them Christianity and English. Over time, most residents on the reservation adopted Roman Catholicism, although many also retained Ojibwe rituals and traditions, including funeral and mourning practices.In 1862 a commission composed of U.S. Senator Wilkinson, Indian Commissioner Dole, and Indian Superintendent Thompson had been selected to make a treaty with the Red Lake Nation, prior to the Sioux uprising. Lincoln sent his private secretary Nicolay to represent him to the Chippewa/Ojibwa peoples. A newspaper reported that the Sioux had learned that a commission had been sent to treat with the Red Lake leaders. The Sioux thought that the commission was going to give their annuities to the Red Lakers and sent a war party to intervene. Both the Red Lake and Pembina bands waited at the agreed treaty location on the Red River. When the Commission failed to show the two bands raided a Red River oxcart train bound for the Fort Garry Selkirk settlement of the Hudson's Bay Company. Afterwards the Red Lakers objected to the Pembina band taking the cattle and saw to it that the cattle were returned.
Close to this time, the Sioux made a raid on Fort Abercrombie driving off the Fort's livestock and horses. Included in this were 200 annuity cattle intended for the Red Lake Chippewa. The cattle had been diverted to Abercrombie for safe keeping from a Sioux attack.
However, when the Red Lakers were informed that the Sioux actions were the cause of the delay of the Treaty Commission meeting them and their cattle having been taken, they offered to defend the frontier from the Santee Sioux. In 1863 the Pembina Band of Chippewa Indians and the Red Lake Band negotiated the Treaty of Old Crossing in Minnesota with the United States. They agreed to cede their lands in the Red River and Pembina area. They made additional agreements for land cessions in the following decades, under pressure of increased numbers of European-American settlers in the area. The Reverend Bishop Henry Whipple was furious at what the treaty called for.
The United States and the British surveyed the international border to adjust previous errors. The corrected boundary included the Northwest Angle within the United States as well as its native inhabitants, the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa. As the Bois Forte lacked federal recognition from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau consolidated the small Bois Forte Band with the Red Lake Nation administratively.
While the tribe ceded large tracts of land to the U.S., it maintained a central geographic location. It resisted U.S. attempts to gain its approval for allotment of communal land to individual households under the Dawes Act of 1887. This involved dividing communal tribal land into individual household plots for farming and private ownership. The US would declare any land remaining on the reservation after allocating 160 acres to each head of household as "surplus" and available for sale to non-Indians.
During this period, some of the Pembina band, refused relocation to either Turtle Mountain or the White Earth reservation. They located to the Red Lake Reservation because it was "untouched Indian land." It has never left tribal control and is unique for that.
On July 8, 1889, the Bureau of Indian Affairs told the Minnesota Chippewa that the Red Lake and White Earth reservations would be retained, but the others would be put up for public sale. They said that Chippewa from the other reservations would be relocated to White Earth. The Bureau told tribal leaders that members of each reservation could vote on whether to accept allotments at that reservation. Voting was limited to all qualified tribal men. The Chippewa leaders were outraged.
Red Lake leaders warned the U.S. Government of reprisals if their Reservation was violated. The members of the White Earth, Mille Lacs, and Leech Lake reservations all voted overwhelmingly to accept land allotments and allow the surplus land sold to the whites, with the tribes to receive lump sums of money from the sales. The October 5, 1898, Battle of Sugar Point was over land.
In 1889, the Red Lake Reservation covered 3,260,000 acres or 5,093 sq. mi. The Band was forced to cede 2,905,000 acres as "surplus" after allotment to households registered on the Dawes Rolls took place. That left the Reservation with over 300,000 acres surrounding most of Lower and Upper Red Lake. Learning of Chippewa unrest because of the vote, the United States later set aside large areas of forests to add back to the Red Lake Reservation. However, in 1904 US officials returned, and forced the band to cede more land from that set aside in 1889. The present Red Lake Reservation dates to the 1904 land act. There was no allotment of land at that time to individual Chippewa living on the Red Lake Reservation.
Only a small portion of the northeast corner of the White Earth Reservation remained. It was a fraction of its original size. All the other Chippewa reservations in Minnesota were closed. The lands were sold following the Nelson Act of 1889. As a result of the 1898 Rebellion on the Leech Lake Reservation, the US changed its policy returning some land to Minnesota's remaining Chippewa reservations.