TREATY OF 1837 — WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY - March 2025
The photo first appeared on the front page of Mille Lacs Band newsletter, "The Mille Lacs Band News" April 1999.
By Don Wedll, Former Commissioner of Natural Resources
The Treaty of 1837, an agreement between the United States and the Ojibwe tribe, is still valid today.
A lot has been written about what happened after the treaty, especially the treaty’s impact in modern years. But little has been said about the events that led up to the treaty. Maybe if people knew more about what happened and why, they would see this area’s past — and its future — in a new light.
In the early 1800s, this area of Minnesota was still con- trolled by the British. After the War of 1812, it became part of the territory possessed by the United States, and explorers like Zebulon Pike and Lewis Cass searched the upper Mississippi looking for the river’s source. Based on the explorers’ reports, American fur traders and land speculators saw opportunities to expand. White settlers then followed the traders and speculators, leaving the Eastern seaboard and pouring into the Middle West, where they hoped to enhance their lives by having land to farm and timber to build their homes.
The Ojibwe people’s homelands, significant stretches of territory with dense forests, were tremendously appealing to non-Indian eyes. The allure of acres of trees and land was coupled with the settlers’ view of the Ojibwe as nomadic people roaming aimlessly. This view was inaccurate — the Ojibwe moved deliberately with the seasons to the best places to pick berries or hunt game or fish or harvest wild rice — but it gave some settlers a sense of entitlement to the land and lumber because they felt they would use the natural resources better than the Indians.
Since the late 1700s, the United States had adopted the European method of using treaties to acquire Indian land, and from 1836 to 1854, the U.S. would seek and get much of north ern Michigan, northern Wisconsin, and northeastern Minnesota this way. The Treaty of 1837 was one of these treaties. Through it, the U.S. acquired a tract starting where the Crow Wing River enters the Mississippi River just south of present-day Brainerd, then extending down the Mississippi to just north of St. Cloud, then east to the Wisconsin-Michigan border. This area encompassed about 12 million acres of land, lakes, and rivers.
Interestingly, many of the Ojibwe leaders who signed the treaty were from lands that lay outside this ceded territory. A few of them hesitated to sign an agreement giving up the lands of others, knowing that this was going to start a major change in the Ojibwes’ lifestyle. But the majority agreed to the treaty terms: a series of payments of money, goods, farm tools and seed, and tobacco, plus help in establishing blacksmith shops. And, of course, the now-famous provision about retaining the rights to hunt, fish, and gather wild rice.
The 1837 ceded territory, from Indian Land Cessions in the United States, compiled by Charles C. Royce and presented as Part 2 of the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896-97.
The Indian leaders were also influenced by non-Indian fur traders who attended the treaty negotiations. According to the Treaty of 1837, the fur traders were to receive payments for the Ojibwes’ supposed debts to them, which motivated the traders to press for passage of the treaty.
But more interesting for people in this area, the Mille Lacs Band’s lands were included in the 1837 ceded territory. This occurred because the maps used in 1837 did not accurately show how certain geographical points were located in relationship to other points. The maps showed the Crow Wing River entering the Mississippi River below Mille Lacs Lake, not on the north end of Mille Lacs Lake as it is correctly shown today. This error was corrected with later revisions of maps.
The error wasn’t presented to Mille Lacs Band leaders until they negotiated the Treaty of 1855, which created the Mille Lacs Reservation. They were surprised by the change in the maps. The change illustrates how hard it was for Indian leaders to make treaties in a language they did not read or write, forcing them to rely on the interpretation skills and honesty of others.
The Treaty of 1837 became one of many misunderstandings between the Mille Lacs Ojibwe government and other governments over land and treaty rights. But maybe the passage of time and the Band’s careful management of its treaty harvests — with some historical background for good measure — can end those misunderstandings. Source: This article was published in The Moccasin Telegraph Collection: Memories and History of the Mille Lacs Ojibwe. Don Wedll worked in a variety of roles for the Mille Lacs Band for more than 35 years.
IN TREATIES WE TRUST: HOW AND WHY THE UNITED STATES ACQUIRED LAND FROM INDIAN TRIBES
By Don Wedll, Mille Lacs Band Historian
This article by Don Wedll was first published in the Mille Lacs Messenger. It is reprinted here to preserve his teachings and bring them to the next generation. In this role working for the Band, Don Wedll was instrumental in securing legal recognition of the Band’s hunting and fishing rights and forming tribal environmental policies at the national level.
“I promise.” How quickly we learn the importance of these words. As kids, we might promise to clean up our rooms in return for an allowance or a trip to the ice cream stand. Later, as adults, we pledge to keep our word in many ways, big and small. Promising to “tell the whole truth” in a courtroom and promising to repay a mortgage over 30 years is, in essence, the same thing — we say we’ll do something, and then we keep our word.
We keep our word because it is the right thing to do. And we keep our word because we have to be able to depend on each other, to trust other people. Without trust, how could we leave our kids with a babysitter? How could we assume the treatment the doctor prescribes is the best course of action?
People are not the only ones who make promises. Governments also pledge to do certain things. Pave roads, for example, or oversee the health of our food supply.
The nearly 400 treaties that the United States made with Indian nations from the late 1700s until 1871 are examples of governmental promises. Most of these treaties had the same goal: acquire land from Indian nations for the growing American nation. The Indians did not always want to give up their land, but as the United States grew more powerful, tribes often had no choice.
However, tribes did try to ensure that the United States made certain promises in exchange for the millions of acres of land it acquired. For example, in some treaties, the United States promised to create permanent homelands, called reservations, where tribal members could live. Treaties also often detailed monetary payments that were to be made to tribes by the government, or goods such as twine and tobacco that were to be provided by the United States to the Indians.
Tribes were told that the treaties they signed would last a thousand years or more. “As long as water flows, or grass grows upon the earth, or the sun rises to show your pathway, or you kindle your camp fires, so long shall you be protected by this Government, and never again be removed from your present habitations,” U.S. Senator Sam Houston told some tribes in 1854.
Unfortunately, those beautiful words — like so many others spoken or written during the years of treaty making — were not honored. Treaties were made, misused, remade, and forgotten, and tribes became understandably cynical about the United States’ desire to keep its promises to Indians.
The misuse of treaties also embarrassed and angered non-Indians who understood that by breaking its word, the United States eroded its own credibility and its ability to make meaningful agreements for its own benefit and the benefit of others. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, in a 1960 opinion about a case involving the Tuscarora Indian Nation, criticized the country’s poor record of supporting treaties, stating, “Great nations, like great men, should keep their word.” President Ronald Reagan used a similar quote in support of tribes.
At Mille Lacs, Indian treaties involving hunting and fishing rights have been upheld in the courts. A lawsuit to disestablish the Mille Lacs Reservation was dismissed because the courts found that the Reservation boundaries did not harm anyone. These actions have caused controversy, no doubt about it. But sometimes doing the right thing after years of doing the wrong thing causes controversy, because we’ve grown used to the wrong way. The civil rights movement, the end of slavery, women getting the right to vote — all these things caused huge controversies during their time. But as a nation, we worked through them and are better for it.
Hopefully, learning to keep our word regarding Indian treaties will have the same result.
