White Earth has been the subject of much investigation on the part of Committees of the Senate and House of Representatives. The most lengthy and exhaustive investigation, covering every phase of the subject, is the report of the Committee on Expenditure in the Interior Department, Honorable James M. Graham of Illinois, Chairman. House Resolution No. 103; July 25, 1911–April, 1912; 2759 pp. Those who care to follow the subject further, will find in this lengthy report an enormous amount of material. A synopsis entitled “The Lesson of White Earth” will be found in the report of the 30th Conference of Friends of the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples held at Lake Mohonk, N. Y., October, 1912. ----- Footnote 14: Letter of Dec. 2nd, 1914. Federal Building, Minneapolis. Footnote 15: Letter of Aug. 29th, 1914. CHAPTER IX. THE SIOUX AND THE MESSIAH CRAZE The Sioux is one of our most famous Indian nations. As the Iroquois activities two centuries ago placed them in the forerank of American aborigines, so the Sioux from the days of Lewis and Clark down to the present have been much in evidence. They are primarily a strong, hearty race possessed of dominant spirit. Their reservations at Standing Rock, Rosebud, Pine Ridge, etc., contain most of the 28,000 natives of this stock. Reference to Major Powell’s linguistic map will acquaint readers with the enormous extent of territory they once occupied. The Commissioner’s map of 1913 shows that these people today own a small fraction of their original holdings. The general progress of the Sioux, the famous men that they have produced, I have covered in the chapters treating of Education, Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, etc. They were known to the army officers as Horse Indians, and to many others as Plains Indians. The horse was to the Sioux what the birch bark canoe was to the Ojibwa or the Penobscot. In early days their habitat was almost entirely confined to the Great Plains, the foothills of the Black Hills and the Missouri River. They were in Minnesota at an early period, but were driven westward and southward by the Ojibwa. The older Ojibwa claim that the Sioux frequently surprised hunting parties of these woods Indians, and that whenever the Ojibwa were caught out on the plain by the Sioux, they were invariably defeated with great loss. The Ojibwa therefore resorted to the strategy of luring the Sioux into the woods. Where this was possible, the expert woodcraft of the Ojibwa came into play and they generally defeated their enemies with heavy slaughter. 1850 to 1868 found the Sioux supremacy on the Great Plains unquestioned. With the coming of the railroad, and steamboat navigation on the Missouri, and the great influx of white traders, their powers declined as I have indicated in some detail on other pages.