“From the close of 1906 or 1907, when isolated transactions were going on, the fiercest of the fraud and debauchery had subsided, till the summer of 1909 a condition like that of the quiet which succeeds a prolonged intoxication occurred. The Indians had mainly, in one form or another, parted with their heritage and in most instances, had suffered severely from the result. Poverty, sickness, a sense of mortification and loss at the hands of the white men pervaded their minds and depressed their spirits. The pine again, as in the case of the four townships, by clean-cut lines of apparent division had shown up in the ownership and possession as to certain territory (and this the largest and most valuable part) of the Nichols-Chisolm Lumber Co.—pine reputed in extent to be of the amount of 150,000,000 feet. [Illustration: DISPOSSESSED OJIBWA AT REAR OF AGENCY BUILDINGS Rice River, White Earth, Minn., 1909. ] “Pine in another clean-cut and well-defined territory, reputed to amount to about 50,000,000 feet, was found to be in the possession and under the control of the Park Rapids Lumber Co.; and in still another section, equally well defined in its boundary line, a reputed 50,000,000 feet was controlled by the Wild Rice Lumber Co. Likewise the best of the agricultural lands had fallen into the hands of, or under the control of, the so-called bankers at the hamlets before mentioned, and certain men of great wealth and influence resident in the city of Duluth, as well as in St. Paul and Minneapolis. * * * * * “The first result of the treaties of 1889 was the saddling upon the Chippewas of an allotting commission of three members and a large retinue of subordinates. The expense of this commission was $88 a day, and the work that the commission and its subordinates accomplished could doubtless have easily been done by an allotting clerk at $1,000 a year. Besides this commission many other white officials were sent to the reservations, ostensibly to supervise the cutting of the timber and on many other pretexts, for all of which the Indians had to pay. A corps of estimators, each drawing $6 a day of the Indians’ money, was appointed to estimate the pine on the Red Lake Reservation. Fraud having been discovered in making this estimate, a new corps of estimators, numbering about twenty-six, was appointed to do the work over again. Each of the new corps also received $6 per day of the Indians’ money.