Becker County, Minnesota - Chapter with an unread heading (no. 1 of those read), 1907 (part 16 of 16)

Johnston then proceeded to read the call for the convention, a proceeding which should have been done before the chairman was selected. He was nearly through when it occurred to Barto to read it also, and he began on the same document. And then a fresh riot sprung up. Not a word of the reading could be heard, and eight or ten were trying to make speeches in the midst of the yells. Johnston finally shouted an order to clear the stage of every one but the committee and the reporters. That would have removed both Holmes and Comstock. He said he had hired the hall and would have it cleared. On this announcement a Nelson man shouted: "I move the convention adjourn to the tent on the prairie." Comstock put the motion and declared it carried. Johnston was shouting in the meantime that the "regular" convention would be held in that hall and invited every one to remain. Comstock, notwithstanding he had declared the convention adjourned to the tent, did not want to lose any points on "regularity." He declined to go unless he was put out, so that he would have valid grounds for holding a convention somewhere else. As all the deputy sheriffs were Kindred men, one of them accommodated him by walking with him to the head of the stairs. H. L. Gordon, of ^linneapolis (not a delegate or even a resident of the district) mounted a chair and urged the Nelson, Graves and Gilman men to leave. A deputy sherifif grabbed him and escorted him to the door as a disturber of the peace.

The doors had been guarded both from inside and out to keep the crowd from rushing in, and the stairway was so packed the Nelson men had great difficulty in leaving. Finally Mr. Bowman, the owner of the hall, got the doors open and spiked them, so that if there was another row upstairs there would be a chance to run. But the Kindred men remained in the hall, while the Nelson forces met at the tent, and two love feasts were set in motion.

Nelson may be said to have entered prominent political life direct from the tented field. The prairie breezes which fanned his brow that sultry July afternoon have been a kind harbinger to him and wafted him onward and upward until he reached the Senate. The only object of holding the convention in the tent must have been to put the crowd in a hot box, for it was literally a case of "standing room only," there being no seats or tables within, and it might as well have been held on the open prairie. But there was harmony, because all of those who were opposed to Nelson were attending the convention at Bowman's hall.

S. G. Comstock brought his right to be chairman at the hall to the tent. It was a case where a man took up his rank and walked. He accordingly called the tent convention to order and proceeded at once to prove that that was the "regular" convention and any other would be a fraud. He presented the report of the district committee, which the chairman, Mr. Johnston, of Detroit, would not recognize. That report disclosed that the district committee had acted as a committee of credentials as well, and had named delegates from 20 counties who were entitled to seats, leaving eight counties still to be heard from. This report was promptly adopted, and a few minutes later the platform was reported. It was about the usual style of platforms, except that it was bitter in its denunciation of Kindred and his

When it came to nominations, Halvor Steenerson, of Crookston, sent up Nelson's balloon; C. A. Oilman was inflated by Gov. Barto, while Graves was depicted in glowing colors by D. G. Cash, of Duluth. Gilman and Graves had been candidates on the theory that Nelson and Kindred would so divide the delegates as to make a third man a necessity. They had allied themselves to the Nelson wing in the hope that if it proved that Nelson could not obtain it, his strength would go to them. Gilman and Graves had antagonized Kindred as sharply as had Nelson, and when the district convention split their forces had no other recourse save adhering to the Nelson wing. As a consequence, it was nonsense to present their names at the tent convention as that crowd was overwhelmingly for Nelson. But they went through the motions and took an informal ballot, which stood: Nelson, 44; Graves, 7; Gilman, 10. The formal ballot gave it to Nelson by 44 votes to 15 for the other two combined. Nelson responded with an acceptance speech which pledged his loyalty and "regularity" to the party, while insisting that the Kindred crowd represented everything which was bad, corrupt and "irregular." Gilman, Graves, H. L. Gordon, of ]\Iinneapolis, and Albert SchefTer, of St. Paul, all made ratification meeting speeches, and the Nelson campaign was launched.

While all this was going on in the tent, the Kindred men were working right along with their convention at Bowman's hall. The temporary chairman, Mr. Holmes, kept shouting while the Nelson men were leaving, that the only "regular" convention would be in that hall, but blood was up and no one halted. When the Nelson supporters had vanished the Kindred convention went ahead more harmoniously, if anything, than the tent afifair because they did not have any other candidate than Kindred, even nominally. Geo. H. Johnston, the chairman of the district committee, was made permanent chairman. Johnston's speech on taking the chair was something unique. He declared that he had been a supporter of Nelson and had prepared a speech in his favor. He then proceeded with quite an eulogy of Nelson as a soldier and citizen, but now that Nelson had "bolted," as the speaker claimed, his party loyalty compelled him to stand by Kindred. That was cool, as he had been for Kindred all of the time. He then proceeded to claim that he had prepared to so rule as to admit 36 Kindred delegates and 42 for the field against him, and that Comstock and Barto had originally agreed to this, but had finally attempted to depose him from the chairmanship of the committee, because he would not consent to have the committee pass upon the credentials of the delegates, and actually name those entitled to seats.

Of course it took but a few minutes to have the committee on credentials report the Kindred delegates as contestants and all were admitted, and if any delegation was not full a proxy was supplied. The resolutions did not even take the trouble to declare loyalty to the Republican party, as the Nelson platform did. They were entirely devoted to claiming "regularity" and denouncing the other side as "dishonorable, despicable and most infamous." C. B. Sleeper, of Brainerd, named Kindred in a glowing speech, and no other name was presented. The roll call gave him 64 votes - all that were cast. Here were 64 votes in a convention which if full would have had 78. Nelson had 61 in his convention, which gave an aggregate of 125, or a surplus of 47 more than there would have been if only one convention had been held. Kindred was brought in and accepted, deprecating the trouble and the bringing in of the nationality question.

The evening in that little town was quite a wild one. Kindred had brought two or three brass bands, and they headed a procession which marched about the streets yelling like madmen. In fact, they were very mad men. In order to turn an honest penny the ladies of Detroit had opened a hall to give refreshments for the benefit of the village cemetery association. Kindred felt so good that he gave $100 outright to the association, and the boys on his side said that they wanted to finish up the cemetery to have a proper place for Nelson when they got through with him in the fall. As Kindred furnished the political corpse in November, he was wise in dedicating a cemetery at the beginning of the campaign.

There were hot discussions between the partisans until the trains left, but no absolute violence, though the air was frequently split with yells and emphatic adjectives.

The question of which was the "regular" convention was the great controversy throughout the campaign. It was very hard to ascertain the truth, for both Nelson and Kindred men had resorted to all kinds of tricks known to the political trade to capture delegates. I am inclined to think, outside of leaving the hall at Detroit where the convention was called to meet. Nelson had the best of the "regularity," but with that thrown in Kindred's favor, it gave him the "regular" advantage. In 1868 almost the entire excuse for calling Donnelly a bolter was because he was nominated for Congress at a different place from the hall designated in the call. The only way the Nelson men could have been more regular was to have remained and had a fight, but as a stray bullet might have hit a newspaper man I was always willing to waive the irregularity of their departure from the hall. As the Kindred men. by the coup d'etat of getting possession of the hall at an early hour, had two to one on the inside of the building, they could have thrown the Nelson men out bodily, and that would have made it "regular" for them to have gone to another place for their convention, on the ground that they had been physically assaulted. I give this as a legal ruling on political regularity and as an inducement to bring on a fight, if such a condition of affairs ever exists again. The Republican state committee sat in judgment on the "regularity" and decided that Nelson was the "regular" nominee. How circumstances alter cases and how worthless such decisions are was illustrated by the decision against Donnelly in 1868 (which I have already noted) for doing exactly what was approved in Nelson's case in 1882.

Next to the "regularity" problem, the point to be settled, was what would the Democrats do? The Nelson men did not feel that they had much hope from the Democratic votes, and were anxious to have a Democrat nominated. The Kindred men thought they could secure a good many Democrats, and were equally anxious to have no Democratic nominee. It seemed almost certain that without a Democratic nominee, Nelson would be defeated. The Democrats at first seemed inclined to give Kindred the chance, but they finally held a convention, Sept. 7, at Fergus Falls. E. P. Barnum, of Stearns County, Robert Miller, of Otter Tail, and R. C. Moore, of Stearns, were candidates. There was no excitement at the convention, and the attendance was not large. One ballot did the business, standing: Barnum, 49; Miller, 18; Moore, 19; scattering, 10. Strenuous efforts were made by the Kindred people to get Barnum to withdraw. All of these efiforts (and some of them were very liberal) were unavailing, and Barnum remained his party standard bearer, though certain of defeat.

The canvass was intensely personal and exciting. Kindred spent money lavishly and the Nelson forces had a good deal. Kindred had workers in every county, doing nothing else from the time he was nominated, in July, until November. In many cases where newspapers were hostile he established new ones. His army of clerks and his literary bureau were expensive. Brass bands, torchlight processions, special trains, etc., were the common occurrence, and when you come to spread this out over 28 big counties, many of them having to be canvassed by private conveyance to make up the poll of the district, the expense amounted to something enormous. Well informed men claimed at the time that Kindred expended $225,- 000. This may be too large, but I think it is extremely conservative to say that he put in $150,000. Minnesota is not likely to see the counterpart of that fight again. Mr. Kindred is now a resident of Philadelphia. I hear he has been lucky in some speculations and has largely, perhaps entirely, recovered his fortune, which was so sadly shattered by that campaign. He was the most liberal and energetic political plunger the state has ever seen. The vote in November, electing Nelson, stood: Nelson, 16,956; Kindred, 12,238; Barnum, 6,248. Two years before, in the presidential campaign, which always brings out the vote, those same counties gave Garfield (Rep.) 15,442. and Hancock (Dem.) 8,405. In 1881, just one year previous, the Republican vote in the district for governor was 13,831 and 6,595 Democratic. This shows that Barnum was strong with the Democrats and held well up to his party vote, but the Republicans exceeded their presidential vote of 1880 by nearly 14,000, and their gubernatorial vote of 1881, the previous year, by nearly 16,000. As Barnum only fell behind Hancock's vote about 2,000, and was only 347 below the Democratic vote of '81, the great influx of voters must have been Republicans. In John Hay's famous poem, "Little Breeches," he tells of a little boy being transported from the embrace of the deadly winter storms to the warm sheep fold, and says: "How did he get thar? Angels." I am inclined to attribute the sudden irruption of Republican voters in that district to the same divine agency and let it stand at that. But no one disputes that Knute Nelson's original election to Congress was a wave from the North sea. We used to sing, "In the North sea lived a whale." Things have changed. He seems to have migrated to Minnesota and brought his whole family.

Building The Court-House And Jail

After the final and permanent location of the county seat at Detroit, as decided at the general election in 1877, the township of Detroit, according to a previous agreement, paid the rent annually for a building for the use of the county officers, which was the structure now owned and occupied by G. C. Nunn, a part of which is now occupied by him as a harness shop and store. There was a strong wish on the part of the people living north, east and south from Detroit, and more particularly on the part of the people living in that village, to clinch the location of the county seat by building a court-house and jail at that place.

Accordingly at the session of the legislature of 1883 a bill was worked through that body, and duly signed by the governor, authorizing the commissioners of Becker County to issue bonds to build a court-house and jail, subject to a vote of the people at the ensuing annual election. The measure, however, was voted down by a decisive majority, the two western tiers of townships excepting Lake Eunice voting nearly solid against it.

For sometime previous to 1884, three out of five of the county commissioners had been elected from the western townships, and were strongly opposed to expending any money at the county seat under any circumstances. The commissioner districts as then constructed were : First district, Richwood, Erie, Burlington and all territory lying east of those three townships. Second district was made up of Detroit Township.

In 1883 the board was made up of the following members : First district, T. W. Chilton ; second district, F. B. Chapin ; third district, T. W. Dunlap ; fourth district, Olof Bjornsted ; fifth district, Hans Ebeltoft.

At the election in November, 1883, there were two changes in the membership of the board, one of which at least was destined to have an important bearing on the near future history of Becker County in general and of Detroit in particular. In the second district E. G. Holmes was elected to succeed F. B. Chapin who was not a candidate for re-election, l^ut who was as much in favor of county buildings as Holmes himself. In the third district the election was very close, T. W. Dunlap being defeated by S. B. Dexter by the small margin of three votes. Dunlap afterwards claimed that I was the cause of his defeat, and I incurred his everlasting displeasure for the imaginary offense, but while I was innocent of the crime the election of Dexter was a godsend to the village of Detroit, for if he had not been elected it is doubtful if there would have been any county buildings at that place for several years to come.

When the new board met in January, 1884, it had a majority that was ready and willing to do anything within the bounds of law and reason to secure the construction of county buildings.

The new board was organized by electing E. G. Holmes as chairman, and he became the leading spirit of the board, and to him more than any one else is Becker Coimty indebted for its present county buildings. He was also loyally supported by both Dexter and Chilton.

As soon as the new board had settled down to business. Holmes began ransacking the revised statutes of Minnesota for authority to build a court-house and jail, and finally hit upon Section 815, Chapter 8 of the Revised Statutes of 1878, which reads as follows:

Each county organized for judicial purposes shall provide at the county seat a suitable court-house, and a suitable and sufficient jail, and fire-proof offices, and other necessary buildings, and keep the same in good repair.

On the strength of the authority delegated by this brief paragraph in the laws of Minnesota, the board of county commissioners, at the instigation of Mr. Holmes on the 8th day of April, 1884, passed the following preamble and resolutions :

Whereas; the statutes of the state provide that there shall be established, in every county, by the authority of the board of county commissioners and at the expense of the county, a jail for the safe keeping of prisoners, and Whereas; the County of Becker has no such jail building.

Now, therefore be it Resolved; and it is hereby resolved. That we proceed to construct a building in the village of Detroit to be used for the purpose aforesaid; said building to cost a sum not to exceed $6,000, to be erected and placed upon a spot of ground to be designated by the board.

And be it further Resolved; That for the purpose of raising the money required for the payment of the cost of said building, there shall be issued the bonds of the county, not to exceed the sum of $6,000; that such bonds shall bear interest at the rate of seven per cent per annum, payable semi-annually, in the city of New York, until paid."

Holmes, Dexter and Chilton voted for the resolution and Ebeltoft and Bjornsted voted against them. The two latter gentlemen, however, were only carrying out the wishes of their constituents, as both the fourth and fifth commissioner districts were solidly opposed to the construction of county buildings.

Soon after the passage of the above resolution the $6,000 jail bonds were signed by E. G. Holmes the chairman of the board, and by myself, the then county auditor, the bonds were placed on the market and sold, and the money placed in the county treasury. Before work on the jail was begun, however, the following resolution was adopted June 3rd, 1884:

Whereas; the statutes of the state provide that each county organized for judicial purposes, shall provide at the county seat, a suitable courthouse and: Whereas; the time has now arrived when such court-house should be provided: Now, therefore, be it resolved; that we proceed to construct a building in the village of Detroit, to be used for the purpose aforesaid, said building to cost a sum not to exceed $18,000, and if built in connection with the jail, then the combined cost of said courthouse and jail shall not exceed the sum of $24,000, said court-house to be erected and placed upon a spot of gound selected for that purpose by the said board.

There was not much outspoken opposition to the jail proposition, but when the resolution was passed to build the cotirt-house a storm of protests came from Lake Park, and an injunction suit to enjoin the chairman of the board and the county auditor from signing the $18,000 court-house bonds was commenced at the instigation of Knute Stakke and others of Lake Park, while from Audubon, the place that had Ijeen the rival of Detroit for the county seat seven years before, there was but little opposition so far as I ever heard. A hearing in the matter of the injunction suit was had before Judge Brown at Little Falls, and the injunctittn was set aside, the judge deciding that the count}- commissioners had legal authority under the section and chapter quoted above, to construct county buildings as set forth in the resolutions by the board.

The opposition from Lake Park came largely from the circumstance that there had been an election held the year before, and that a majority of the voters of the county had voted against the proposition to erect county buildings, and they could not believe there was any law whereby the board could take action contrary to the expressed wishes of a majority of the voters of the countv.

After the injunction was set aside, and the action of the county commissioners sustained by the courts, all opposition came to an end, and commissioners lijornsted and Ebeltoft worked in harmony with the other members of the board.

The foundation of the court-house and jail was built by T. J. Martin and Marcus Shaw in July, 1884, and the building was constructed by A. A. Whittemore, the father of Drew and John Whittemore and Mrs. G. C. Nunn.

Owing to delay caused by the injunction suit and other matters the building was not finished that year, but work was resumed early in the spring of 1885 and the building completed in May following and formally dedicated on the 30th day of that month.

''But the day is not j-et over. Another event, and perliaps the most important ever known in Becker County is yet to take place - tlie dedication of our new court-house." It is not known in whose fertile brain was first originated the plan tn have the court-house dedicated on Memorial Day, but the day was fixed and the following well-known gentlemen were appointed a committee, and the matter placed in their hands: John K. West, Ai Brooks, J. B. Carman, A. E. Bowling, M. V. B. Davis, W. J. Wood and C. W. Dix.

The selection of Henry Way to deliver the principal address was especially fitting, he being one of the earliest pioneers of the Northwest, and one of the first white settlers in Becker County, and a continuous resident ever since.

Paul Beaulieu of White Earth spoke with pride of the red man's blood that coursed through his veins and gave an early picture of our county, claiming to be the first resident living here as early as 1854.

The furniture, desks, etc., were bought of Luger Brothers, of Fargo, at a cost of $2,600, and in addition to this amount the further sum of $800 was paid for heating apparatus, making the total cost, including the ground on which it was built, less than $28,000 ; as good a building as there is in the state of ^linnesota for the money it cost.

The bonds issued for building the court-house and jail are now all paid off, and everybody, even at Audubon and Lake Park, is not only reconciled but well pleased with the final outcome, and the people generally all over the county are proud of their courthouse and jail.

The Seasons

In the fall of 1870 there was no frost until the 13th of October. The first snow fell on the 20th of October which remained only a day and was followed by an open winter.

The four succeeding winters were long and hard, all of them setting in between the ist and the loth of November, with scarcely a thaw until the 5th of April, and the snow which was frequently between three and four feet in depth lingering until the middle of that month, and the ice holding in the lakes until the ist of May.

The Winter of 1872-3. The worst storm of this winter of storms was the memorable /th of January storm, which for length and severity outranks any storm that has ever visited Becker County at any season of the year. It commenced about noon on the 7th of January, 1873, and raged for more than fifty hours, extending all over Minnesota and Dakota. When the storm began I was eating dinner at the house of Ole E. Bjorge, the father of Hon. Henry O. Bjorge, on Section 8, township of Lake Park. The forenoon had been mild and warm, so much so that the snow began to melt, while the wind was blowing gently from the southeast. After dinner I left the house and started for the railroad station at Lake Park. The wind was still from the southeast, but it increased in velocity to a gale, when all at once it whirled around to the northwest and came down over the prairies with the force of a tornado. It was all I could do to keep on my feet, and I was just barely able to get back to the house I had left a few minutes before. It also became intensely cold. The house was built in a small grove of oak timber and the roaring: of the wind anions: the trees was so loud that we could scarcely hear one another talk. Henry O. was) then only two years old and just beginning to talk a little Norsk. I remember that he and I kept pretty close to a little corner behind a cook stove during the storm. The next day after -noon, I strapped on my snow shoes and started for Lake Park, but as soon as I got away from the shelter of the grove, I found I could not stand up and I was obliged to go back to the house. I tried it again on the morning of the third day, but with the same result. After dinner the wind began to abate but was still blowing a gale, and I tried it a third time, this time with the wind nearly square in my back and the snow packed good and hard, I managed to reach the station.

A passenger train had been detained there during all the storm in charge of George Dow. The first trio of conductors on the Northern Pacific Railroad were Captain Spaulding, George W. Sweetmen, and George Dow. Dow is still running a passenger train on the Winnipeg branch. The snow was now nearly three feet deep, a foot having fallen during the storm, but the extreme force of the wind had packed it down so hard that the next day I walked from Lake Park to Section 30 in the township of Atlanta and back over the prairies without snowshoes, a distance of eighteen miles. There were several other blizzards that winter nearly as severe as this one, but they were of comparatively short duration. There were no lives lost in Becker County although there were several narrow escapes. Stengrum Nelson and old John Sullivan, of Cuba came near perishing in the storm. Two men lost their lives in Clay County, and more than seventy lives were lost in Minnesota during the big storm. After these four winters came four winters more of a mild character, especially the winter of 1877 and 1878. The summer of 1877 w^as a very favorable one for crops, the temperature and moisture being all that could be asked for, resulting in a bountiful harvest. A few inches of snow fell early in November, but after a few days disappeared, when an Indian summer set in, which with very slight interruptions lasted all winter. Much of the time it scarcely froze at night, and plowing, with a few interruptions was carried on every month during the entire winter. Pansies were in blossom in the gardens and dooryards on Christmas day, and the prairies were bedecked with flowering anemones on the 24th of March, and they had come to stay. The northwestern skies w^ere illuminated by prairie fires nearly every

We now come to a succession of long, hard winters, beginning with that of 1879 and '80, and ending with that of 1883 and "84. The winter of 1880 and '81 was exceptionally long and severe. A snow-storm began on the 15th of October, Avhich lasted for twenty-four hours, during which time the snow fell to the depth of fifteen inches. The street in the village of Detroit, on the south side of where Hotel Minnesota now stands was filled its whole w^idth even with the tops of the board fences that stood on each side of the street. The worst of all was. the snow had come to stay, a large part of it remaining until the ver}- last of the ensuing April.

1880 was the first year of the settlement of the Shell Prairie country, and many of the new settlers were caught in this October storm with no other shelter than their tents and wagon covers, and much suft'ering followed as a result of the storm. Snow fell later on to the depth of three and a half feet. It thawed a little early in April, then froze up again. I walked from Detroit up to the north end of Floyd Lake, a distance of five miles, on two feet of hard snow on the 20th day of April. This was the longest winter by nearly a month of any on record.

During that winter I was engaged in examining the Northern Pacific Railroad land in the timbered country around the southern, eastern, and northern borders of the Shell Prairie country, sleeping in a tent at night, and walking on snowshoes during the day.

The October snows had bent the tops of the young jack pines over and fastened them to the ground, in which position they remained, like so many arches, until the ensuing spring. Charlie Sturtevant was with me during this terrible winter.

The winter of 1887 and 1888 set in on the 17th of November. The snow was deep and the weather cold and stormy. It was during this winter that nearly one hundred people froze to death in Dakota. Then came four very mild and short winters, followed by cold weather and deep snow in the winter of 1892 and "93. The next four winters were mild and comparatively short.

The summers during this long series of years were generally favorable, up to that of 1894. This was the year of the disastrous Hinckley fire, and a year long to be remembered in Becker County. Its numerous lakes and ponds, however, saved it from any widespread devastation.

On the first of March it lay in the woods four and a half feet deep on the level. It began to thaw on the iSth of March and in ten days it had about all disappeared. This was the spring of high water and disastrous floods on the Red River of the North, and the lower Mississippi.

Since that time our winters have been very mild, with about a foot of snow, except in the winter of 1903 and '04, which was pretty cold. The winter of 1906 and '07, however, is liable to break all records.

The earliest snowfall on record was that of 1872, when four or more inches of snow fell, beginning on the night of the 24th of September and again on the 27th of September, 1899, there was a light fall of snow. The summers of 1904, 1905 and 1906 were exceedinglv wet.

Old Soldiers

The army nurses who have made their homes in Becker County are : Dr. Emma K. Ogden, Detroit ; Mrs. Alexander McVicker, Lake View ; Mrs. E. L. Wright, Burhngton.

Miss Ogden appHed to Miss Dorothy Dix for a position as army nurse in 1863 and was directed by her to Dr. James King, the division surgeon of the Pennsylvania troops, then stationed in Virginia, and she served under him as army nurse in a sanitary camp during the remainder of the war.

County Commissioners

John Cromb, March ist, 1871, to January 2nd, 1872... Lake Park. John F. Beaver, ]\Iarch ist, 1871. to January 2nd, 1872. .Audubon. Chris. Gardner, March ist. 1871, died in office Burlington.

Miscellaneous

T. K. Torgerson held the position of deputy in the office of the collector of internal revenue for the United States for the State of Minnesota during Cleveland's first administration.

C. G. Sturtevant held the position of land examiner for the Northern Pacific Railroad Company during the year 1880, and held the same position for the Canadian Pacific Railroad during the years 1881 and 1882.

The following Becker County men have held the position of deputy United States marshal: E. L. Warren, Gus. H. Beaulieu, J. B. Hillier, Robert Morrison, Robert G. Beaulieu, M. S. Converse. Special Deputies : George Campbell, White Earth, a mixed-blood ; Charles Moulton, White Earth, a mixed-blood ; E. H. Fook, ^^'hite Earth, a white man.

of the White Earth boys who are now in good standing. I know they will all be very much pleased to have their names appear in your book. As to myself, will say that I was employed as deputy United States marshal for sixteen years, and later I held the very responsible position of chief estimator of Chippewa Indian lands in this state during the years 1903 and 1904. I had under my charge during that time twenty-four men. The work assigned me was to estimate all the pine timber, and classify all the agricultural lands embraced within the boundaries of the ceded Chippewa lands in Minnesota; and included in the Leech Lake. Cass Lake, White Oak Point, Winnibigoshish, Bois Fort, Deer Creek, Red Lake, Fond du Lac and Pigeon River Reservations. This piece of work I feel proud of for the reason that other corps of estimators that have from time to time been sent into the field by the government to estimate the Indian timber have been found on investigation to be very much against the best interests of our people. You perhaps know as much about those matters as I do.

Henry W. Warren, was born on the White Earth Reservation ; is now employed as superintendent of the Government Indian school at Bena, Minn. ; is a graduate of the Carlisle Institute of Penn., and is also sub-agent of the Bena agency.

John Morrison, was born on the White Earth Reservation; is now employed as superintendent of the Government Indian school at Red Lake, and is also a graduate of the Carlisle Institute.

Benjamin CaswEle was also born on the White Earth Reservation, and is now employed as superintendent of the Government school at Cass Lake, and is also a graduate of Carlisle.

Eugene J. Warren was also born on the White Earth Reservation, and is now employed as disciplinarian of the Government school at White Earth, and is also a Carlisle graduate.

John B. Warren was born on the White Earth Reservation, is a graduate of Carlisle ; was noted as one of the great football players of the University of Minnesota in years 1903 and 1904, and during that time was a university law student. He is also a graduate of the Normal School of Indiana, Pa.

Allan L. Morrison is a White Earth boy ; I think that he is a graduate of the Haskell Government school. He is now employed as chief clerk at the White Earth agency, a position of responsibility.

William F. Campbell is a graduate of the Carlisle Government school, also a graduate of State University Law School ; is nov/ practicing law at Manohmen, Minn. He is a White Earth boy, and has made his home there for many years.

Dan. S. AIorrison is a White Earth boy also. He attended school at Carlisle, and is now employed as assistant clerk at the White Earth agency.

Donald McDougall is a White Earth boy ; a graduate of the Haskell Institute of Nebraska, and is also employed as assistant clerk at the White Earth agency.

Alex. McDougall is another W^hite Earth boy, a graduate of the Haskell School, and is also employed at the White Earth agency as assistant clerk, having been transferred here from the Leech Lake agency.

William R. Spears is a White Earth boy ; is now in the Indian trade in which business he has been engaged for many years. He is a son of Mrs. Julia A. Spears.

B. L. Fairbanks is another White Earth boy; is a prosperous Indian trader in which business he has been engaged for many years, both at White Earth and Red Lake Reservations. He sue-

Besides the different persons whose names are appended to the various articles in this work I am under special obligations to Mr. L. C. McKinstry, of Detroit, for assistance in gathering information and for other help in the preparation of this work.