History Documentation:
NEWSPAPER ARTICLE ON LCO STATUS - July 14, 1929
Complete Senatorial Record Of the July 11 1929 Hayward Testimony Before US Senators (From Wisconsin Historical Society's Turning Points)
Indian Hearing Marked by Humor and Tragedy
U.S. Senators Told of Flooding of Tribesmen’s Burial Ground and Health
Needs
By Staff Correspondent of the Journal
From The Milwaukee Journal – July 14, 1929
Hayward, Wisconsin – Passing in solemn parade before the United
States Senate subcommittee on Indian Affairs to plead the case of their
people, the Chippewas of Wisconsin made a drama for the statesmen with
every witness a character in himself.
Some were comedians to the point of buffoonery, self-conscious
in the presence of the great white fathers. Others spoke stark tragedy.
There were venerable one, honored chiefs on their tribes, feeble with the
years upon them. There were enterprising young fellows, university educated,
business-like, and a little cocky.
Testifies in Whisper
Tragedy fairly shrieked in the silence of the courtroom here
Thursday as William Wolf dragged his sick body to the witness chair to
whisper to the senators the bitter story of the white man sneaking upon
his government allotted territory and cutting it clear of its valuable
timber without his knowledge.
Wolf is in an advanced stage of tuberculosis. His voice is gone.
He is able to whisper only a few words at a time and those spoken in the
good English that marks the Indian who has gone high in the white man’s
schools.
Every eye was fixed upon his emaciated figure and his blanched
face with its staring eyes. When it was evident that Wolf could go on no
longer, Walter J. Staats, newspaper editor of Downers Grove, Illinois,
and a north woods vacationer in his campers’ leggings and boots, rose from
his place in the courtroom and strode to the witness’ aid.
$18,000 in Timber Taken
Wolf had been his guide for six summers, Staats said.
“He was a strapping fellow, able to ford a river with a canoe
and a pack on his back easily; three years ago T.B. hit him, “He will never
be cured now.”
More than $18,000 in timber was cut from Indian lands upon the
reservation without the owner’s knowledge, Wolf told the Senators. He doesn’t
know who got the timber.
A comedy touch was provided by Thomas Bracklin, who claims to
be the only living family member of the family of the Chippewa Chief Na
Na On Gabe, one of he signers of the government treaty with the Indians
in 1854.
Bracklin, amazingly agile despite his advancing years, proudly
dangled before the eyes of the Senators a large silver medal on a black
silk ribbon. The medal bears the date 1789 and the signature of George
Washington. It professes “friendship and kindness” for the Indians.
Gathering Around the Medal
“My family is more than 150 years old; my great-grandfather,
my grandfather and my grandmother all had these medals for bravery.” Bracklin
said excitedly. “Does that make any difference in what I am going to say
to you Senators?”
The Senators checked Bracklin as he rattled on and advised him
to file his statement with the committee with the clerk of record.
The Indian gathered up his medal and his sheaf of papers and
turned to the spectators in the courtroom. “See that medal,” he said in
an excited voice, “Nobody else here has a medal like that.”
Spectators, both brown and white flocked about Bracklin. Such
a hub-bub of motion and chatter set up that Senator La Follette was obliged
to rap for order and Bracklin left the room in surprise and offended dignity
as the hearing proceeded.
Thomas Leo St. Germaine of the Lac du Flambeau Chippewas is
a lawyer, a university graduate and has been a football player of national
repute. Tall and young, with a legal knowledge obtained at the University
of Wisconsin, the University of Iowa and Yale University, where he starred
on the football team. St. Germaine acted as spokesman and interpreter for
many of his tribesmen.
Not Chippewa: Ojibway
When George Amose, 85-year-old chief of the Flambeau Chippewa
was called to the stand at the opening session he motioned for an interpreter.
“Can you speak Chippewa?” Senator Burton K. Wheeler asked St.
Germaine.
“Chippewa!” the big athlete snorted. “There is no such thing
as Chippewa. There is an Ojibway tongue, but no Chippewa. Most of you are
too lazy or ignorant to say Ojibway. So you make it just Chippewa.”
The ancient father of his tribe began his plaint in a quavering
voice and the jumble of brief monosyllabic words that is St. Germaine’s
Ojibway.
“The white man should change the way marriages are done.” Amose
said as interpreted.
“Indian has no liking for marriage that way. My children wish
marriage after their old customs.”
The “old tribal custom” appears to the modern mind as just free
love. A brave sees a squaw that he wants and he takes her. When he is tired
of her, he takes another. The benefit of the clergy is no benefit to them.
Moving Time Has Come
With the coming summer has also come moving day at the Flambeau
reservation. Authorities see in the advent of the warm season a ray of
hope for checking at least temporarily the ravages of tuberculosis and
other diseases.
The clapboarded houses at the reservation are being deserted
for the wigwam, the summer home of the Chippewas. Built of cedar bark and
tied together with wire and fiber thongs, a wigwam is to be seen in almost
every yard of the Indian village. Some are as round as an Eskimo’s igloo.
Still others are constructed upon the rectangles of the white man’s barn.
The wind can whistle in the cracks.
“This summer moving is all a part of the Indians urge to move;
he hates to stay in one place.” Dr. Lynnwood Keene, reservation physician
told the visiting Senators.
“It is a tribal instinct, inherited from the primitive days
when Indians lived in a tent and move to a new tent as soon as one had
been used the proper length of time. It is just as much a health measure
as it is a nomadic urge.
“Stabilizing the Indian and domesticating him to a one home
man may be held responsible in some measure to the ravages of disease among
the race. He has never learned to live in one place. His nature demands
that he move at regular intervals.”
Complete Senatorial Record Of the July 11 1929 Hayward Testimony Before US Senators (From Wisconsin Historical Society's Turning Points)