In 1851, immediately after the conclusion of the Sioux treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota, Governor Ramsey made the long journey from St. Paul to Pembina, and there made a treaty with the local Chippeways for the cession of a great tract. This treaty went in with the Sioux treaties for confirmation and had to be “sacrificed” to secure favorable action by the Senate on them. What “interest” desired the extinction of Indian titles upon such a remote and disconnected area is not well known. Mr. Norman W. Kittson had operated there since 1843, for the American Fur Company. The ratified treaties mentioned left the Chippeways, some ten thousand in number, concentrated on reservations of moderate extent set apart in the ceded territory. These they still occupy, generally in peace, depending largely on their annuities for subsistence. Their progress in civilization and Christianity has been sufficient to keep the missionaries and teachers from giving up in despair. No body of ecclesiastics ever had a more complete rule over a people than the medicine-men of the Chippeway Indians. * * * * * An incident of the Chippeway treaty of 1854 must here have mention, at the risk of tedium. As was usual, the half-breeds had to be conciliated by a benefaction to prevent them from dissuading the Indians. It was given them in the shape of an eighty-acre tract in fee simple to each head of a family or single person over twenty-one years of age, of the mixed bloods. This distribution was made and all beneficiaries, three hundred and twelve in number, were satisfied, within two years. Ten years after the negotiation of the treaty an accommodating commissioner of Indian affairs, upon application through Delegate Rice, issued two certificates for eighty-acre tracts to two members of a prominent Minnesota family, mixed bloods of the Chippeways of Lake Superior, who had never lived with those Indians. He also ruled that the grant extended to Chippeway mixed bloods of any tribe wherever resident. To prevent the oversight of any worthy beneficiaries under these rulings, industrious gentlemen at once employed themselves in searching them out and revealing their unsuspected good fortune. “Factories” were established at La Pointe, Wisconsin, Washington, D. C., St. Paul, and in the Red River country, and nearly twelve hundred were discovered. Later examinations of the lists showed that in some cases both man and wife had been reckoned as heads of families; and that the names of some minors, of some Chippeway families with too little white blood to fairly count as “breeds,” and of a few deceased persons had been enrolled. The motive for this extraordinary diligence lay in the fact that the certificates or “scrip” could be used for the location of pine on unsurveyed lands, giving the holder the opportunity of ranging the woods and selecting the most valuable. These certificates the