half-breeds were commonly willing to alienate for a small consideration. That they were on their face absolutely unassignable, and so good only in the hands of the beneficiary himself, was no serious obstacle to the ingenious operators. Two powers of attorney, one to locate, the other to sell, served as a virtual conveyance to the speculating lumberman. James Harlan, Secretary of the Interior in Lincoln’s second administration, put a stop to this pretty game. But his successor, O. H. Browning, yielded to the persuasions of interested parties, and on July 11, 1868, reopened the doors to them. Within a few weeks a prominent citizen filed 315 applications and received 310 pieces of scrip. An investigating committee expressed the opinion that “probably not one of these was valid.” They were good for 24,800 acres of pine. The liberal secretary ruled that they might be located on any lands ceded by the Chippeways by any treaty, and need not be selected on those ceded at La Pointe in 1854. Applications continued to come in. In the following year, 1869, Colonel Ely F. Parker, by birth a Seneca Indian, was made commissioner of Indian affairs. Taking up the applications, he rejected them all and gave notice that no more scrip would issue under the treaty of 1854. Holders of certificates obtained in the manner described were discouraged, but not cast down. They prevailed on the Secretary of the Interior in 1870 to appoint a gentleman of Minnesota a special agent to examine claims. Reporting progress in March, 1871, that agent had found 135 persons entitled to scrip. Columbus Delano was Secretary of the Interior in the year last mentioned. Assured that the subject of Chippeway half-breed scrip would bear scrutinizing, he appointed the Neal commission. The report of that commission brought the facts above related to the surface. Of the 135 claims reported valid by the late special agent they found two legitimate. They approved eleven out of 495 others presented. The commission also examined 116 “personal applications,” filed in the St. Cloud land office, and these without exception were fraudulent. That number of persons, belonging to a Red River train bivouacked at St. Cloud, had been taken into the land office and steered through the motions of applying for scrip. For this accommodating service they were paid from fifteen to forty dollars apiece. The commission recommended that no more Chippeway half-breed scrip under the treaty of 1854 should be issued, unless by order of Congress, and that the persons who had been guilty of subornation of perjury, forgery, and embezzlement should be prosecuted.