“In his very being were the forces destined to open a new way for his poor and oppressed, and by his masterful leadership, his unyielding perseverance in the field of battle he was able to preserve the Red Lake Reservation for the people to whom it rightfully belongs…. The things for which he fought will live forever in the hearts and minds of his people.”
DAVID B. O’REAR (Peter Graves Tribute adopted by the General Council of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, April 2, 1957)
Collins W. Oakgrove (Zhaawanoowinini, or Man of the South) was in many ways a typical Red Laker. He was short in the legs but broad in the shoulders, a full-blood, a member of the kingfisher clan, and a direct lineal descendant of White Thunderbird. Oakgrove was born in Red Lake on March 16, 1944, and raised mainly in Ponemah. His family never had much money. He remembered packing a Mason jar of tea and a lard sandwich and walking to school most days because his family did not have a vehicle for many years. But he was happy, quick to laugh, and proud of his family and place. In 1956, his parents gave him a dollar to purchase a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk from the store in Ponemah.
Thomas and Mary Spears clerked the Ponemah store at that time. The luxury of refrigerated food products was new in Ponemah. A small and unreliable diesel power plant had been built to power the school several years previously, but residential and commercial service elsewhere had been very rare until October 1, 1952. That’s when the Rural Electric Association (REA) tied the village into the power grid and ran cable to Ponemah, bringing power to most of the village. The Ponemah store changed with the times, stocking less kerosene for the house lamps and more refrigerated food. Collins Oakgrove was hot and dusty by the time he made the walk to town. He stood in front of the milk refrigerator with a hand on the glass, cooling down. He was twelve years old.1
Oakgrove snapped to attention when Peter Graves walked into the store. Graves had a light complexion compared to most Red Lakers. But he was a tall man and had a commanding voice as he talked to Mary Spears, eloquently engaging her in Ojibwe, laughing, and nearly running right into Oakgrove, who stood staring. It wasn’t just Graves’s complexion or height that caught his attention. Graves was wearing a shirt with a button-down collar, a tie, a vest, a suit coat, slacks, and shiny dress shoes with just a hint of dust from the dirt parking lot outside. Everything about his appearance told Collins Oakgrove that he had money and power. With a gravelly laugh, Graves patted Oakgrove on the head and stepped past him to grab his milk and return to the clerk to pay. Reaching into his pocket, Graves produced a large wad of cash, too thick to fit in any wallet. He had paid Spears and turned to leave when Oakgrove, still standing in front of the refrigerator, asked, “Wow. Where did you get all that money? Does it grow on trees?” Graves erupted in raucous laughter and patted Oakgrove on the head again: “Don’t be a fool, boy. Money doesn’t grow on the trees. It grows in the trees.” He winked and left.
Peter Graves was born on the south shore of Red Lake, by the water, just a half mile east of the Red Lake Indian agency. His official government birth record lists May 20, 1870, as his date of birth, but church records give the date as May 20, 1872, which Graves himself believed to be more accurate. Although he was Red Lake’s most powerful political figure for thirty-nine years, it surprises many people to know that he claimed no blood from Red Lake. His mother, Lake Superior Woman (Gichi-gamiiwikwe), was from Leech Lake, a daughter of an Ojibwe chief there named Chaff (Mazaan, or Wild Rice Chaff). As a young woman, she fell in love with a man from Red Lake and moved there around 1860 to get married and start a family with him. Her husband was a younger son of Moose Dung. Together they had five children. But tragedies struck in rapid succession as she lost her husband and three of their children. She had to start over, and it was a painful struggle.2
Mary C. English, sister of William Whipple Warren, was a teacher at the new government boarding school in Red Lake. She was part of the very large Warren–Cadotte trading family and was a direct descendant of Richard Warren, who came to America as one of the original pilgrims on the Mayflower in 1620; Michel Cadotte, a famous French trader; and the head hereditary chief from the Ojibwe village at La Pointe, White Crane (Waabishki-ajijaak). Mary English was very knowledgeable and spent years informing and collaborating with Frances Densmore on her groundbreaking work Chippewa Customs.3
English took pity on Lake Superior Woman and, in an effort to help her rebuild, decided to give her an English name through a baptismal rite. Lake Superior Woman, a monolingual Ojibwe speaker with no English name, was christened Elizabeth Margaret Graves, named for a friend of Mary English who lived in Boston. The two namesakes never met, but from that simple act sprang the large and powerful Graves family at Red Lake. Elizabeth Graves eventually forged a new relationship with Joseph Truman Omen. Omen was a refugee from the Louis Riel Rebellion in Canada (1869–70). He came to Red Lake in 1871 and soon connected with Elizabeth Graves. Within a year their son was born. Elizabeth, who in spite of her baptism still largely followed traditional Red Lake Ojibwe religious beliefs and practices, sought out respectable community members to serve as namesakes for her son. At the ceremony, he was named Lone Feather (Nezhikegwaneb).
Omen was a white man. In spite of his connection to the Louis Riel Rebellion, he was not Métis and had no native or French ancestry, but was from pure Scots-English stock. Although Lone Feather had a bona fide Indian name, the Red Lakers seized on the identity of his father and called the boy Zhaaganaash, which meant Englishman. The name stuck. From 1872 to 1877, Lone Feather was usually referred to as Zhaaganaash.4
Joseph Omen never married Elizabeth Graves and didn’t show much loyalty to his relationship with her. He had another son with another woman at Red Lake and named that boy Joseph Omen Jr. Elizabeth Graves turned to her old mentor, Mary English, who suggested the name Peter for her son and the surname Graves, after his mother. Joseph Omen exerted some influence on Peter Graves during his early years. At his insistence, even though Elizabeth still largely held on to traditional Ojibwe ways, Peter was baptized Catholic.
Omen left for a job with the railroad when Peter Graves was five years old and never returned to Red Lake. Peter was raised with his two step-siblings from his mother’s marriage to the son of Moose Dung. He knew his half-brother, Joseph Omen Jr., but they never formed a close relationship.5
In 1877, at age five, Peter Graves was sent to the government boarding school that was established in Red Lake that year, as a member of its inaugural class of kindergartners. In 1884, at the age of thirteen, he was sent to Jubilee College, a secretarial preparatory school located in Dubee County, Illinois (near Peoria). After only ten months at Jubilee, he was transferred to the Lincoln Institute in Philadelphia, which Graves called the Educational Home. The school was industrial and he took several jobs as he progressed through the grades, working on a farm, doing construction work, and rolling cigars. When he was seventeen, he played professional baseball with the old Middle States League, based in Hazelton, Pennsylvania.
Graves was admitted to Princeton University on a baseball scholarship, but declined the opportunity because he believed that they valued him as a baseball player only and not for his brains. He left Pennsylvania on October 5, 1889, and returned to Red Lake. He arrived just after the most significant political development in recent memory at Red Lake—the negotiations for the Nelson Act whereby Red Lake ceded a vast swath of acreage around its now diminished reservation.
Graves struggled in his first few years back at Red Lake. He worked in a lumber camp during the winter of 1889–90, cutting timber and helping to boom logs on Lower Red Lake, which were towed to the Red Lake River outlet and then run on the river down to Crookston for milling. In the spring of 1890 he took a job as janitor and disciplinarian at the government boarding school in Red Lake. In 1891, he met Mary Fairbanks and fell in love. They were soon married and raising children—John (Wenji-gimiwang, or Cause of the Rain), Joseph (Baadwewidang, or Approaching Sound), Isabelle, Alice, William, and Rose.6
Graves never lost his command of the Ojibwe language in spite of spending twelve years away from his home community in English-only environments. His knowledge of English was exceptional. In the summer of 1890, he was hired by the Office of Indian Affairs to work at the Red Lake Agency as an interpreter. For the next thirty years he worked there in several capacities, serving under a Mr. Laird, Captain George B. Read, Captain J. C. Lawler, George A. Morrison, Daniel Sullivan, and Earl W. Allen.
In 1893, agent John T. Frater recruited twenty-one-year-old Graves to the Indian police. Within five years he was promoted to chief of police. The Indian police were the law-enforcement agency on the reservation, working for the nonnative Indian agent under the auspices of the Office of Indian Affairs. Graves quickly developed a reputation as being stern and fair. He was also exceptionally loyal to his supervisors in the OIA, and he took great pride in never criticizing them in his long tenure working for the U.S. government.7
Graves was put to the test soon after his promotion. On September 15, 1898, U.S. deputy marshal Robert Morrison and U.S. Indian agent Arthur M. Tinker arrested Leech Lake elder Hole in the Day for bootlegging. Several Leech Lake Ojibwe rescued Hole in the Day in a daring attack on Morrison and Tinker. Major Melville C. Wilkinson, General John M. Bacon, and a detachment of around a hundred soldiers from the Third Infantry Regiment boarded steamers and came to Bear Island on Leech Lake on October 5, 1898, to arrest Hole in the Day again. When they disembarked, one of the soldiers accidentally discharged his rifle. The Leech Lakers, hiding nearby, thought they had been discovered and fired upon. They fired back, killing one Indian police officer and six soldiers, including Major Wilkinson. Ten more soldiers were wounded. The Leech Lakers suffered no casualties. All of Minnesota was in an uproar. The Leech Lake Ojibwe were bracing for war.8
At Red Lake, the hereditary chiefs held council to decide if they should intervene and send warriors to fight with the Leech Lakers against the U.S. Army. Peter Graves, now age twenty-six and serving as chief of police for the past five years, politely asked to join the council. He was welcomed by the hereditary chiefs and entered the assembly, shaking hands, exchanging pleasantries, and reconnecting with Red Lake’s leaders. But when the council formally began, Graves sat with a stern look on his face, listening intently to the discussion until he was unable to restrain himself any longer. He sprang to his feet and took over the meeting with a stunning assertion of authority. Here’s his account in his own words:
They were ready to go. I argued. I told them that anybody who would go to help the Leech Lake Indians must stay and belong to that band. We don’t want no rebels from the Red Lake reservation. Whoever goes, I said, relinquishes their rights on Red Lake…. I said, “We’re not going to war with the government.” I said, “We know better.” I said to one old man, I said, “Let me tell you something. You’re an old man. You’re the warrior; you’re the veteran.” He had been in battles with the Sioux. You couldn’t do anything. That’s what I told them. When I got through, they agreed with me. There was not a single one that went. They knew they’d be on the road; they wouldn’t belong here if they went and fought with Leech Lake.
The venerated warrior that Graves confronted at the chiefs council was none other than Sun Shining Through, nicknamed Business (or Pus-se-naus). As soon as Graves had accomplished his objective, he defused the tension, telling Sun Shining Through, “All the government will do with you is keep tea away and you’ll go crazy.” Graves remarked, “He was a great tea drinker.” Sun Shining Through burst into laughter, soon joined by all the other chiefs. The Red Lakers stayed home and let the Leech Lakers deal with fallout from the Battle of Sugar Point on their own.9
Before this, Graves had earned positions in large part because of his English-language skills, education, and connections with the OIA. After 1898, the eloquent, educated, light-complexioned, half-white, half–Leech Lake Indian became an established political force at Red Lake in his own right. From that day on, the hereditary chiefs looked at Peter Graves differently. They could have denied him access to the council in the first place, refused to let him speak once he got there, or dismissed his counsel as the words of a youngster, an outsider, or a usurper. Instead, they responded to his brash and unsolicited intervention into the affairs of the chiefs with a firm, respectful validation. His position became theirs. From then on, Graves was ascending, and the hereditary chiefs sought to include and empower him at every turn. Graves returned the respect. Rather than try to push past them, he responded as a willing pupil and subordinate, though he was never shy about sharing his own pointed opinions on policy.
Later in 1898, Graves considered enlisting in the U.S. Army when the Spanish-American War broke out. He had a strong desire to distinguish himself on the field of battle. But the chiefs wanted him to stay at Red Lake. He followed their counsel. Forty years later he remarked, “I was very unfortunate in not having the opportunity to enlist in the Spanish-American War. I was then, what I consider, in my prime. Certain parties advised me not to enlist.”10
Graves’s relationship with the hereditary chiefs continued to deepen in 1899 when he accompanied a delegation from Red Lake to Washington, DC, as both interpreter and delegate. Captain Mercer, agent at the Leech Lake Agency, insisted on his appointment as interpreter because of his well-established service as a U.S. government employee and intermediary with tribal leaders. But the Red Lake hereditary chiefs insisted that he also serve as a delegate for the tribe.
In 1902, when James McLaughlin came to Red Lake to negotiate with the chiefs for the cession of the eleven western townships, the government again wanted Graves to interpret. The chiefs wanted him to help them. He did both. His influence was instrumental in advancing the goals of the chiefs. He helped them prepare a petition that articulated their position on critical issues—a new diplomatic tactic that helped them negotiate better terms in the cession agreement. Graves also followed an interesting pattern in his employment. Instead of moving from one job to another, or ascending up a supervisory command chain, he often kept his current positions and simply added more. His ability to balance so many demanding jobs simultaneously was a marvel. In government and police work it sometimes earned him criticism as a dictator. There is no doubt that he was accumulating political and material power through his stacking of positions. On April 30, 1901, without stepping away from his duties as chief of police, he also assumed the position of postmaster, which expanded his influence.
In 1908, he again demonstrated the extent of his influence on tribal leaders even beyond Red Lake. In a striking display of trust, Leech Lake chief Hole in the Day, the central figure in the 1898 Battle of Sugar Point, came to Red Lake for Graves’s advice and counsel. According to Graves:
Red Lake delegation to Washington, DC, 1899. Front row, left to right: Red Robed, Two Skies (Niizho-giizhig), Blue Sky (Ozhaawashko-giizhig), Old Man (Akiwenzii), Sounding Light (Madweyaasang), Cut Ear (Giishkitawag), Across the Sky (Edawigiizhig). Standing, third from left, Shining Feather (Waasegwaneb); fifth from left, King of the Sky (Ogimaa-giizhig). Photo by C. M. Bell. Red Lake Tribal Archives.
He sent word to see if I could see him. I sent word that he could come see me any time, so he came at 2 o’clock one night. He wanted to know what they were going to do to him. He was the leader of that fight, you see. He went to Canada and lived there for ten years or so before he turned back. He had trusted me, you see. Whatever I told him would be so. That is why he came to me. I told him that as long as he behaved himself … if he didn’t, if he was arrested for drunkenness or anything, he’d be out. It would be put against him, and he’d have to be responsible for his actions in the past. That’s what I told him.
Hole in the Day took his advice, prompting Graves to say years later, “I want to say that the old man was of very good character up to the time of his death.”11
Graves’s influence was growing in all directions—deepening his relationships with the Red Lake hereditary chiefs, expanding his sphere of influence in Indian country, and earning respect from his supervisors in the Office of Indian Affairs. After Hole in the Day’s visit to Red Lake, Graves was promoted to assistant clerk for the OIA at the Onigum branch of the Leech Lake Agency. He accepted the position, which required his presence at Leech Lake. He maintained a steady back-and-forth between Leech Lake and Red Lake over the next several years.
Graves suffered a terrible setback in his personal life in 1912, when his wife Mary died. He did his grieving by pouring himself into his work for the OIA, receiving stellar reports from each supervisor he reported to: Major G. L. Scott, John T. Frater, J. F. Giegoldt, Karl F. Mayor, and Harvey K. Meyer. In spite of his career success, the next few years made for hard adjustments as he kept up his work at Leech Lake, parented his children alone, and worked hard to serve the community at Red Lake without an official position in which to do so. Graves was an attractive man, full of charisma and potential. In 1915, he attracted the attention of Susan Wright, fell in love, and wasted no time in marrying her the same year. Their blended family grew with new additions—Mary, Maude, Amy, Clyde, Mildred, and Doris.12
While Graves was rebuilding his personal life, forces were at work to undermine the land status of the Red Lake Ojibwe. Officials in Washington, DC, still hoped to allot the reservation, breaking the communal status of the land and enabling individual ownership. That in turn would enable land sales, tax seizures, and white commercial, timber, and agricultural development at Red Lake. Some Indians were willing to work with the government to make that happen.
Walter F. Dickens and Representative Halvor Steenerson met with the Red Lake chiefs to bargain for the commencement of allotments and further opening of timber at Red Lake for white harvest. Steenerson served in the U.S. Congress from 1902 to 1923 and was one of the primary advocates for timber exploitation at White Earth and Red Lake. His appropriation bill riders and legislative efforts were a large part of the enabling effort behind white timber harvests in Indian country. In fact, when Steenerson and Dickens met with the Red Lake chiefs in 1912, Steenerson had already included language in the appropriation bill to enable timber harvesting and the drainage of swamps at Red Lake.13
Nathan J. Head, a mixed-blood Ojibwe born in Winnipeg, was among those advocating for allotment at Red Lake. Head was roughly the same age as Peter Graves, having been born on March 20, 1875. In 1912, he wrote a sophisticated plan to allot and subdivide the lakeshore at Red Lake. On September 10, 1913, the commissioner of Indian affairs wrote to agency superintendent Walter F. Dickens, “Submit allotment matter to general council of Indians Sept. 22, and advise the Office here. Mail promptly the result.” The chiefs of Red Lake never approved allotments, and this time was no exception, but the government was relentless in its pursuit of that goal.14
Ed Prentice and other Red Lake leaders traveled to Washington in April 1914 to voice complaints about timber and land issues. The delegates all received letters from the OIA that read: “Your applications have been filed and when the question of giving the Indians of the Red Lake Reservation allotments in severalty shall have been determined will be given consideration.” Tensions between the government and its pro-allotment allies at Red Lake and the chiefs, who still opposed any form of allotment, were extremely high.15
Red Lake’s trust funds from the sale of ceded lands and timber were being badly mismanaged by the federal government. Graves saw a lot of the correspondence through his work for the OIA, and he knew that something had to be done. In 1913, the money that the federal government collected for sale of the land that Red Lake ceded around Thief River was supposed to be transferred to the tribal trust fund. The tribe expected the government to make a payment of $8.1 million, which was essentially the difference between the collected sale value of land and its appraised value plus compensation for the delay in paying the tribe. Graves worried about payments to Red Lake being mismanaged or even redirected. He knew that the hereditary chiefs needed more structure and formalized power if they were to be successful in protecting the land, water, and interests of the Red Lake people.16
Graves was now poised for one of the most critical and long-lasting contributions ever made to the political evolution of Red Lake. In 1939, Graves humbly wrote, “I promoted their Council in its present form in the year 1918.” But he did much more than promote the General Council. He saw the need for Red Lake’s government to evolve and orchestrated the change.17
On most reservations across the United States, the Office of Indian Affairs appointed Indian agents—white men—to rule the Indians. The agents usurped the power of chiefs over time. When the government owed money to Indians, the money used to be distributed to chiefs, who dispersed it to their people. That made chiefs powerful financial arbiters. But during the treaty period, the Indian agents took over that duty, and the Indians lined up to get their payments from white men. That took power from the chiefs and gave it to the Indian agents. The agents ran the allotment process on most reservations. They had their own police forces in most places, and they even had their own court systems.18
The critical powers and functions of chiefs were systematically dismantled. As white land, mining, oil, and timber speculators descended on reservations across the country, the Indian agents enabled their predatory takings from Indians and usually were paid handsomely for their service by both the government and private business interests. The ability of chiefs to protect their people diminished with each passing year. Many tribal people lost the knowledge of who their hereditary chiefs were.
At Red Lake, the hereditary chiefs held on. In some ways, the OIA and private business interests did at Red Lake what they did everywhere else. But Graves acted as a counterforce. He was highly respected by his supervisors in the OIA and he used his relationship capital with them to support the empowerment of the hereditary chiefs. He had a knack for being diplomatic and firm at the same time when serving as an intermediary between the OIA and the chiefs.
The government lumped all Minnesota Ojibwe together for many financial transactions, including management of trust funds. Red Lake ceded more than half its remaining land and timber resources in the Nelson Act. By 1918, Red Lake was generating 80 percent of the revenue for land and timber sales but collecting 14 percent of the profits from the trust funds. The other bands, dominated especially by White Earth Ojibwe, developed an organization called the General Council of the Chippewas of Minnesota to manage relations with the federal government regarding the trust fund.
Red Lake was being marginalized and treated unfairly. Graves said, “The Red Lake Indians found at this time that these few men [who were running the General Council of the Chippewas of Minnesota] would control their affairs, would ask congress to pass laws to attain their ends.” At a special presentation before representatives of the other Ojibwe bands and the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, Graves directly told them, “They [the Red Lake chiefs] have decided to sever their relations to your Council [General Council of the Chippewas of Minnesota] and do not further recognize your said Council as a medium for the transaction of their tribal matters and affairs before the Indian Department and the Congress of the United States.” Red Lake needed its own council. Graves summed up the development: “We asked fair play from the General Council of the Chippewas, but they would not give it to us, so we had to separate from them.”19
As the white feeding frenzy on Indian resources, especially timber, was reaching a peak by World War I, Graves knew that more had to be done to strengthen Red Lake’s right and ability to practice self-governance. He also knew that the Office of Indian Affairs could be pushed only so far. This knowledge made him a deft and dexterous creator of Red Lake’s first modern governance structure.
In 1918, Graves invited the hereditary chiefs to a meeting and explained that they had to modernize their government and make it official to be properly recognized and legitimized by the OIA. He worked closely with Paul H. Beaulieu, who was not a chief but was a well-respected community and business leader. Together they drafted a constitution for the General Council of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians and presented it to the chiefs for review. Otto Thunder, Spencer Whitefeather, and Alva Burns signed approvals from local village Indian councils for the new governing system. It was a unique structure in many respects and not without flaws, but it did serve to bridge the ancient Ojibwe leadership paradigm to a new age in tribal governance.
Article 1 of the constitution established the General Council, but Article 2 recognized the role and positions of the hereditary chiefs and empowered them to be the primary political agents at Red Lake. Red Lake had seven primary hereditary chiefs at the time, so the document named seven hereditary chieftainships and empowered each of them to appoint five fellow representatives to the General Council. Together, they were the voting membership of the General Council. Chiefs from villages outside of the diminished reservation at Warroad and other places were not formally recognized in the new structure. Ponemah had multiple chiefs as well, and not all were represented. But in spite of these shortcomings, the new constitution and General Council empowered most of the identified chiefs at Red Lake and had their full support.
Article 3 articulated the right of the General Council to appoint a chairman and other officers, although none of the appointed officers had voting power. Article 10 made it clear that each hereditary chief’s position existed with successor rights by heredity. In other words, those positions were to pass from father to son. Essentially, the structure of the General Council preserved the power and positions of the hereditary chiefs, but gave it a formal organizational structure.
The addition of nonvoting officers to keep and record minutes and assist with financial record keeping did not reduce the General Council’s powers but made the work easier. Eventually, it would enable them to supplant the documentary and fiduciary activities of the OIA on the reservation. The hereditary chiefs had a lot of faith in Graves and saw the proposed constitution as supportive of their power and positions. Although Red Lake had maintained hereditary chieftainships from 1760 to 1918 without any documentation, the change won approval. With the unanimous support of the chiefs, the constitution of the General Council of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians became Red Lake’s charter political document.
On April 13, 1918, the General Council held its first formal meeting under the new constitution. The seven formally recognized chiefs were King Mountain (Ogimaawajiweb), Sits Alone, Little Frenchman, William Sayers (Niigaanose, or He Who Walks Ahead), Red Feather (Miskogwan), Striped Day, and Nodin Wind. Most of the hereditary chiefs already had many decades of political leadership as a result of their positions. Sits Alone had been chief since 1864. His father, Little Thunder, died in Washington while serving as chief during the Old Crossing Treaty renegotiations. Sits Alone and Striped Day signed the Nelson Act in 1889 and the Thief River land cession in 1902. They were now seventy and fifty-two years old, respectively. Little Frenchman and King Mountain, at sixty-one and fifty-nine, were also signatories to the Nelson Act. Wind, one of the most respected spiritual leaders on the reservation, had served as chief in the Red Lake delegation to Washington in 1909. Red Feather was the son of Red Robed. Bazile Lawrence temporarily served as acting hereditary chief for a while after 1918. He was a signer of the 1889 Nelson Act at the age of twenty-two and a tribal delegate to Washington in 1909, but he was not a hereditary chief then. Half the hereditary chiefs at the time of the General Council’s genesis signed by an X mark because they had no English-language literacy. They were powerful in Red Lake, and now Graves could use the General Council to further empower them with the U.S. government.20
The first job of the General Council was to appoint officers. Peter Graves was named treasurer and served in that capacity from 1918 to 1920. Then he was appointed secretary-treasurer and served in that role from 1920 to 1957. Joseph B. Jourdain was appointed chairman and John Graves secretary for the first two years. Both of the other officers deferred to Peter Graves, who was the primary authority figure and architect for the entire effort. Once the General Council was created, Peter Graves served for life without dispute. Anna Gibbs reflected on his contributions: “Peter Graves created the General Council. All the traditional chiefs were there and he honored them, but he also made the council like the United States of America government. There were white people just swarming all over the reservation before that. But once Peter Graves made the council, that’s when the white people finally left Red Lake alone.”21
Getting white people to leave Red Lake alone took much more than creating the General Council, but the new governance structure was a critical step. Red Lake was one of the first tribes in the United States to develop a modern representative constitutional governance structure. Most other tribes didn’t even think about trying to do that until after passage of the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934. Even then, it took decades for most to develop the political and economic infrastructure to manage their own affairs. In Mille Lacs, for example, all business operations for the tribe were run by three white bankers from Onamia until 1954.22
Two tribes, inspired by Red Lake’s success, tried to replicate the process for their communities. The Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe and the Leech Lake Band of Chippewa Indians tried to develop modern councils like Red Lake. But efforts in both places stalled because they did not have support from within the Office of Indian Affairs and because tribal leaders were not sufficiently unified to collectively advocate for themselves without dissension. The General Council of the Chippewas of Minnesota, which tried to represent all of the Minnesota Ojibwe, broke up from internal division and excessive OIA control. Replicating Red Lake’s success was difficult without someone like Peter Graves to organize internally on the reservation and advocate with the OIA.
Red Lake’s General Council breathed new life into the warrior nation. The General Council sent delegations to Washington, DC, to advocate for land and political issues affecting the tribe. Nodin Wind led one in 1920 that met with Senate and congressional committees, secretary of the interior John B. Payne, and commissioner of Indian affairs Cato Sells. Wind and Graves led another delegation in 1924, and Graves traveled to Washington several times alone to pursue Red Lake’s political agenda.23
The constitution for the General Council underwent at least one significant amendment—Red Lake tribal members had to be born to Red Lake parents. Residency was important for political participation at Red Lake. The Ojibwe had always freely moved from one village to another. It had long been assumed that the new village of residence, much more than history, defined political association. The first chiefs at Red Lake were all born elsewhere. Peter Graves had invoked the importance of residency over birthright in 1898 to intimidate would-be participants in the possible conflict between Leech Lake and the U.S. government. Throughout the treaty and early reservation periods, Ojibwe people were moving and changing associations. The U.S. government reinforced that with its efforts to relocate people to White Earth. Elizabeth Graves, Nathan J. Head, and many others had shown through personal example that you didn’t have to be born in Red Lake to be a Red Laker; but you did have to live there.
By 1918, things were starting to change. Indians owned less land. Annuities from land sales, pressure from white settlement, and government policy made people more sedentary. This posed a real challenge to prevailing assumptions about political identity. Roger A. Jourdain recalled: “It was generally assumed that if you were born in the Red Lake Hospital, built in 1914, you were a Red Laker. You’ve got to understand that in those days not many people left the reservation, and if you decided to leave, you were on your own.” The General Council eventually adopted an amendment to dispose of the requirement for birth on the reservation in favor of a looser definition of Red Lake citizenship eligibility—being born to Red Lake parents. Blood quantum was not required at Red Lake until 1961.24
The importance of the General Council of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians has yet to be fully understood or appreciated outside of Red Lake. In the end, it enabled Red Lake leaders to finally take control of their own reservation, prevented the intrusion of state government into the policing of the reservation, protected the integrity of the unallotted land base on the main part of the diminished reservation, and preserved a vital role for the hereditary chiefs in the leadership of the reservation. Its creation was a prescient act of political genius.
By 1919, Peter Graves saw his position in the Leech Lake Agency of the Office of Indian Affairs as a conflict of interest with his role as treasurer for the General Council at Red Lake. He could not in good conscience continue to represent Leech Lake, so he resigned his position with the OIA and moved back to Red Lake. For Graves, resigning from the OIA was bittersweet. He strongly felt that it was the right thing to do, but he loved the work, his white supervisors, and his role as an intermediary, respected by whites and Indians alike. He guarded his reputation carefully. Reflecting on the decision years later, he said:
My real reason for resigning the Indian Service was that the Chippewas of Minnesota had started to make claims against the Red Lake Band…. I was opposed to those claims, and they accused me of taking this stand on account of my being a Government employee, and there was nothing else for me to do but to resign, for I strenuously objected to their claims, which would have meant a calamity, as I thought, for the Red Lake Band of Indians if the claims had been upheld by the Courts. I resigned from the Service without any hope or expectation of getting another position in which I could make a living, so I moved back to the Red Lake Reservation in May, 1919.25
Graves then unleashed a torrent of political action and advocacy to protect the land and interests of the Red Lake Ojibwe. The General Council rallied behind him with a unified voice for the separation of Red Lake from the other Ojibwe bands in financial settlements, in opposition to allotment, and for holding all tribal lands in common for the benefit of all tribal members. In 1919, Graves pushed the OIA to investigate treaty and land rights in Ojibwe country. All of the non-Red Lake Ojibwe in Minnesota wanted to handle their claims collectively. Most bureaucrats and politicians in Washington also wanted to lump all the Ojibwe together, quantify the damages owed to the Indians, and pay it off to settle all claims on a per capita basis. But Red Lake’s interests were unique. It had ceded more than half its remaining land in the 1889 Nelson Act and the 1904 Thief River land cession. The other Ojibwe bands in Minnesota had legitimate grievances of their own, but Red Lake was making the overwhelming majority of the deposits into a joint account with the other bands for timber and land sales but only received a fraction of the payments.26
Graves knew that the egregious land and timber fraud at Red Lake and the unique set of circumstances with regard to the Nelson Act and the Thief River cession and the refusal of the Red Lake chiefs to accept allotments necessitated a special treatment. He correctly foresaw that the proposed settlement would divert money owed to the people of Red Lake to the other Ojibwe bands. He also worried that allotment would somehow spread to Red Lake. The Ojibwe at Mille Lacs were still receiving allotments in 1926. The main Red Lake reservation remained intact, but Graves wanted to make sure that they were not coerced into accepting allotments: “We have reasons why we do not want allotments. We cannot take care of them. We will sell them. We know our young men would do it.”27
Graves wrote a culture-based environmental manifesto as a codified tribal political position connecting resistance to allotment with protection of the environment: “We believe it is our best interests to own our Red Lake Indian Reservation in common so that we may not be able to commercialize or destroy our home.”28
This view proved prescient, not only with regard to preserving tribal ownership and control of the land, but also with regard to degradation of the reservation’s ecosystems and natural resources. Many white land and business speculators wanted to develop Red Lake’s shoreline into resort and cabin sites for white tourists and home-owners. Graves beat back every effort, frequently saying, “I want this paradise kept for my children and my grandchildren.” There is a direct connection between Graves’s anti-allotment environmental advocacy from 1919 to 1957 and the fact that today Red Lake is the cleanest aquifer in the state of Minnesota.29
In order to protect Red Lake’s governing system and land, it was becoming more and more important to formalize Red Lake’s separation from the other Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota not just with an independent political council, but in all legal matters. Red Lake’s independent action in court cases was the first salvo of a new battle in the long war to keep Red Lake independent, unallotted, and sovereign. Graves doggedly pursued Red Lake’s financial and legal claims through numerous court cases over nearly three decades.
In 1920, Peter Graves traveled to Washington, DC, to hunt for an attorney and initiate Red Lake’s case. He commissioned Daniel B. Henderson, explained Red Lake’s position, and put him to work. Henderson was capable, although not an Indian law expert, and Graves spent hours educating him in preparation for advocacy with the U.S. Senate, the OIA, and the Court of Claims. Graves’s position as a loyal Red Lake patriot and a well-educated, articulate English speaker paid heavy dividends for the tribe long before the legal process was under way.30
On March 1, 1924, Graves testified before the House of Representatives Committee on Indian Affairs. He brought Henderson with him but did most of the speaking. He was self-assured and clear on the legal issues. He wanted a bill from Congress to pay out the funds from Ojibwe land and timber sales currently held in trust by the federal government and to separate Red Lake’s share. He got traction with the representatives, and they recommended further work with the Senate. There too Graves succeeded in advancing Red Lake’s effort, as the Senate established a special commission for field hearings in Minnesota.31
On August 26, 1924, Graves brought Henderson with him to Bemidji. Red Lake’s financial claims from land issues were directly challenged by all the other Minnesota Ojibwe. A new Senate commission came to Minnesota to hear them out. Senators John W. Harreld, John B. Kendrick, and Lynn J. Frazier formed the commission, attended by commissioner of Indian affairs Charles H. Burke, several OIA officials, Ojibwe delegates, and attorneys. The atmosphere was adversarial and the senators tightly controlled the agenda and speaking time. The commission traveled to several Ojibwe communities and held hearings over the next several days. At the one in Bemidji, Graves displayed a consistently engaged, patient, forceful demeanor that had a real, tangible influence on the senators and ultimately shaped the political and legal position of all the Minnesota Ojibwe. Red Lake, of course, was the primary beneficiary of his representation.32
Graves kept Webster Ballinger, attorney for the Ojibwe bands, on the defense. He addressed Senator Harreld: “Mr. Chairman, you want correct information, of course, and you will never get it from Webster Ballinger so far as the Red Lake Indians are concerned.” He carefully praised the OIA while pushing the government for action to release the trust funds and pay the people of Red Lake what they were owed for timber and land sales, and he evoked American ideals of rugged individualism to accomplish this goal: “They would starve to death. They cannot use the money if they cannot get hold of it. When you work you expect to be paid and pay your way.”33
Timber and land-sale proceeds went into the fund in Washington, DC, but Red Lake could not access its own money while the other tribes demanded a piece of it and the government held all the controls. Graves gave a brilliant series of statements and rebuttals. He brought the hereditary chiefs with him to meet the senators and asked them to testify in Ojibwe. He corrected the government interpreters and clarified language and position issues. In the end, the entire Senate delegation was supportive of Red Lake’s position. One OIA official wrote afterward, “Peter Graves is perhaps the most intelligent Red Lake Indian.”34
Graves presented copies of the General Council’s founding documents, citations for bills, quotes from critical pieces of the 1889 Nelson Act and 1904 Thief River cession legislation. Then he released the tribe’s attorney to address the senators. Henderson’s job was easy at that point. He told the senators: “There is specific, express and most positive legislative enactment now that compels that money to be paid to the Red Lake Indians, separately and apart from all the others. Until legislation to a contrary effect, there is no escape that the money is going to be paid; there is no escape in regard to whom it shall be paid.”35
In 1926, the non-Red Lake Ojibwe bands in Minnesota sued the federal government over mismanagement of their trust funds from land and timber sales. Red Lake’s land and timber sale money was tied up with that of the other Minnesota Ojibwe. Rather than join the suit, Graves counter-sued both the government and the other Ojibwe bands as intervener in the case. This succeeded in getting many of Red Lake’s land and trust fund claims codified in a major lawsuit and brought before the U.S. Court of Claims. The case was pending for three years while affidavits and depositions were compiled. Graves had to find more lawyers, and eventually hired Fred Dennis, an attorney from Detroit Lakes, and retained him for decades. Multiple issues were on the table. The first argument was over compensation for land sold at Red Lake and for mismanagement of the tribe’s trust fund. Graves initially asked for $5,469,698.20 in compensation to the tribe for land plus interest and an additional $800,000 for trust fund mismanagement.36
After further delays, the Court of Claims case received an initial hearing in 1930. Eventually, the Red Lake claims case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. On October 14, 1935, the Supreme Court denied the petition of the other Ojibwe bands, essentially affirming Red Lake’s independent status for trust fund administration and exclusive ownership of its own reservation. After that, Graves’s work with the senators began to bear fruit and Red Lake had much less trouble protecting its independence.
Additional Red Lake land claim issues were allowed before the Indian Claims Commission by an act of Congress on August 13, 1946. The tribal petition was ultimately denied on September 17, 1951. Many of those claims are still unresolved.37
Red Lake did not win all of the arguments in all of its cases by any means, but much new and important information came to light. The Catholic priest from Red Lake, Thomas Borgerding, and a dozen Ojibwe participants in the 1889 negotiations provided depositions and testimony significant for the case and for documenting divergent perspectives on the Nelson Act. Borgerding was present for the Nelson Act negotiations and claimed that the official treaty log did not properly reflect the strenuous insistence of the Red Lake chiefs that they retain all of Upper and Lower Red Lake.
The government also wanted to lump all payments to all of the Minnesota Ojibwe together, but Graves strenuously objected. He felt that Red Lake’s land and trust fund issues were unique and could not be treated in common with the rest of the Ojibwe population. He also felt that Red Lake was owed more because it had been more egregiously robbed and defrauded.
Perhaps even more important, he worried that a blanket treatment of all the Ojibwe would provide a legal precedent or justification for the future allotment of the reservation at Red Lake. On July 7, 1933, in the middle of the legal claims process, G. E. E. Lindquist, representing the Board of Indian Commissioners, wrote to Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior, to advocate for allotment of the Red Lake reservation. Red Lake won a partial but significant victory in its case. It did not get the lake back. It did not get the full compensation it had asked for. But it did avoid allotment, validate its independent position, and document timber and land issues for future action. In the end, it saved Red Lake more than $10 million.38
The other Ojibwe bands in Minnesota kept their financial claims consolidated with one another. They even built a new common governing body—the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Each reservation had independence over local governance, but tribal enrollment and many other issues were handled collectively through the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe’s governing body. Again, Red Lake maintained its separate financial and political position.
The personal sacrifice Graves made in quitting his job with the OIA to serve Red Lake’s interests in the land claim paid off for Red Lake. It protected Red Lake’s unallotted reservation from further land loss. If not for Graves’s intervention, Red Lake would likely be part of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe today and could very well have been forced to allot its reservation. Graves’s action also further cemented Red Lake’s political cohesion and the respect that the OIA had for Red Lake’s General Council. Red Lake was a sovereign force in its own right and everyone knew it. It also enhanced Graves’s reputation as a strong and dedicated leader.39
When the tension over the settlement dispute subsided, Graves focused on rebuilding his personal homestead at Red Lake. He converted a small bedroom into an office, which was stacked with books and articles on Indian history, treaties, and U.S. government policy. He planted gardens, raised vegetables, and fished. He took a temporary job as field census enumerator for the Red Lake district in 1920. All the work he was doing to provide for his family as a hunter, fisherman, and gardener got him thinking about how to leverage those skills, widely shared by most people at Red Lake, into full-fledged commercial businesses.40
Graves opened a window into the timber business for Red Lake as soon as the General Council was established. It did produce results, generate jobs, and create a revenue stream for the tribe. But Red Lake was late to the party. Minnesota’s timber business peaked in 1905, and by 1919, even the Mill City (Minneapolis) lumber mills were closed. It is not by accident, then, that Red Lake was finally able to assert control over the mill and timber business on the reservation as many of the wealthy timber tycoons abandoned the region and moved to the state of Washington to set up operations in the Columbia River Valley.
In 1917, the output of the Red Lake sawmill was doubled to 2 million board feet per year, with most of the cutting being done at Ponemah Point over the next several years. The General Council established itself and worked to expand operations immediately afterward. They focused on their independent tribal logging operations and expanding influence and control over federal timber contracts on the reservation. The U.S. Forest Service brought the first cars to Red Lake—a Ford car and a Dodge truck. The General Council often negotiated with the federal government on support and forestry analysis.41
Federal legislation in 1916 and 1924 allocated funds from Red Lake’s trust accounts for the construction of a new mill on the reservation. In 1924, the General Council directed the expansion to take place at Redby. By 1925, the new mill was operating at capacity. It more than doubled the production of the previous mill to 5 million board feet per year. In 1926, legislation was passed to spend more of Red Lake’s trust funds for further expansion of mill operations, including the addition of a planer operation and a box factory. The mill was busy, and sometimes eclipsed demand and infrastructure capabilities. In 1933, the mill was closed and the employees furloughed for three years while the supervisor worked to sell excess inventory.42
As the General Council got more involved in mill operations, the business started employing Indians through logging outfits to piece out the remaining sections of the reservation under supervision of a federally appointed superintendent. This formally replaced the mill operation at Red Lake. Initially, the entire operation was supervised by white men. A. C. Goddard operated the mill, built by Cyril Dickinson. Both were white men, as were 70 percent of the employees. That shifted as the mill operation evolved over the next fifteen years. They stopped floating logs in Red Lake in 1936, and trucked everything to the mill site. By 1950, operations moved to a new base camp at Little Pine Island with a 99 percent native labor force.43
Red Lakers loading logs on the reservation, about 1940. National Archives, Kansas City, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Red Lake Agency (1964), (NARA-285749).
Red Lake was technically a closed reservation, meaning that it was never opened to white settlement or private ownership. No whites owned private land on the reservation except for a few parcels sold to schools and railroads, some of which did end up in private white ownership. In spite of that, Red Lake was overrun by whites. Fleets of boats operated in tribal waters from Thief River Falls to Redby to transport logs for the mill at Red Lake and in support of nonnative logging operations throughout the region. Red Lake was taking control of its own mill and lumber operations. At the same time, numerous nonnative timber operations were working major contracts throughout the ceded lands, and often by arrangement on Red Lake lands. In the summer of 1926, for example, the International Lumber Company laid fifty miles of logging railroad tracks, opened six new lumber camps, and cut 45 million board feet of timber on 19,000 acres. Once the timber was hauled out, they pulled up the tracks and moved to another area.44
The intense cutting at Red Lake produced a pattern of natural and human impact that continued to deplete the resources. The General Council pushed for a sustainable tribal harvest plan, reseeding, and capturing more of the value-added work through its mill operations. But every major nonnative timber business simply wanted to cut all the trees and leave. The harvest protocol of clear-cutting large amounts of acreage damaged soil fertility because of increased wind and rain erosion and salinization of the soil by water penetrating deeper into rock and mineral substrate and releasing salt. Every summer, seasonal strong winds and occasional storms became more and more catastrophic, as standing timber was exposed to winds without the natural buffers of a surrounding healthy forest. This weakened root systems, causing massive blowdowns every year.45
Compounding the soil and timber damage was the rate, size, and intensity of forest fires. The number of arson fires set in the late 1800s and early 1900s diminished when timber companies no longer needed to use the dead and down laws for access, but they did not end. There were fewer arson fires, but the fires that did occur were larger and much more intense.
Natural fires usually burned through the understory and left the tall timber unscathed. But when tall timber was clear-cut in many places, the understory and the blowdown timber burned completely. The fires raged so hot and intense that the partially decomposed pine needle duff burned clean, further depleting soil nitrates and topsoil depth. Dormant seeds in the decomposing soil were burned out and natural timber regeneration was impossible in many areas. In 1930, for example, a large blowdown felled 2 million board feet of timber on the reservation. Timber companies reclaimed just over half. Then a forest fire raged for days, engulfing three thousand acres of land on the reservation, destroying everything in the burn area from dormant seed to tall timber. More fires the same year at Ponemah, Redby, and the Sandy River burned an additional 13,000 acres.46
Charles H. Winton, one of the Minneapolis timber entrepreneurs, was thinking about ways to accelerate growth rates for continued harvest and so reseeded 230 acres at Red Lake. But when thousands of acres were burned, thousands cut, and hundreds reseeded on soil with depleted nutrient values and higher salt content, the results were understandably poor. Eventually, poplar, bur oak, and scrub brush became established in many places. Red Lake’s vast pine timber resources, the awe and envy of timber tycoons for generations, were quickly becoming a thing of the past.
The entire American timber industry was soon to feel the full impact of its unsustainable environmental and economic practices and experience massive decline. Minneapolis was the largest lumber market in the United States in 1900, yet by 1919 there were no sawmills operating anywhere in the city. Duluth closed mill operations in 1926. Focus shifted to the state of Washington with the same unsustainable model.
Eventually, with all of the old-growth forests cut, a much lower rate of timber harvest took place across the country. For the people of Red Lake it produced mixed impacts. They got a reprieve from the intense feeding frenzy of the timber tycoons, and the pace of white settlement slowed. But the depletion of the timber resources greatly reduced the potential of the industry to alleviate poverty for Red Lake families. Some Red Lakers worked in the mill or cutting logs, but most of the real money went to white companies that employed primarily white folk.
The forests at Red Lake were permanently changed and diminished, producing a catastrophic cascade effect on animal populations. Woodland caribou, once plentiful at Red Lake, declined rapidly with deforestation. The Minnesota state hunting season for caribou was canceled after 1904. By 1915, Red Lake was home to the only surviving herd in Minnesota. By 1940, they were extinct. Minnesota’s elk were almost annihilated by habitat loss and overhunting. By 1932, only a small herd survived in Red Lake’s reclaimed ceded lands. The northwestern Minnesota moose herd declined later, as a lag effect from habitat loss, tick expansion, and climate change. Red Lake had to cancel its moose season at times in the 1980s and put a moratorium on hunting by the 1990s. The animal population declines made it ever harder for Red Lakers to live a subsistence lifestyle.47
Keystone species such as the timber wolf suffered tremendously as the big-game population around Red Lake imploded. Starving timber wolves increasingly hunted the feral horse herd in Ponemah, domestic livestock, and even fish. Frank Donnell recalled:
In the winter it was kind of dangerous being out there on the lake. The wolves, they’d take off after you. Them timber wolves—Christ, they’re as big as Shetland ponies. And if they didn’t get no fish, they’d take off after you.
My dad, he used to haul mail across there, from Red Lake to Ponemah. He used just a regular sled that he used to use hauling wood. They called it a wagon box. They’d put that on there and throw the mail in there. He said he could never go across that lake alone. He used to have two, three teams with him. They’d get so far out on the lake and all the timber wolves would take after them. See, they were starving. They were after them horses.48
In the 1930s, Minnesota’s timber economy nearly collapsed. Most mills were closed, rail infrastructure was dismantled, and prices plummeted. Stumpage prices (the standard value for standing timber measured as board feet per stump) in 1936 were about one-third what they were just twenty years earlier. Red Lake stayed in the timber business in spite of the declining benefits. In the early 1900s, Red Lake’s mill was one of 554 northern Minnesota lumber mills and was smaller than at least thirty of them, but by 1936 it was the third largest in the state. That did not happen because of Red Lake’s expansion so much as because everyone else had declined. The smaller margins on the business were not the top concern for the General Council, which was primarily interested in sustaining milling to keep Red Lake families employed and in maintaining a range of healthy businesses to grow the local economy.49
Agricultural conversion of timberland was an abysmal failure. County governments nearly went bankrupt trying to drain the largest swamp in the state for farmland cultivation. In 1932, Beltrami and Lake of the Woods Counties converted several sections of ditched land to state title for a game preserve as payment for ditching debts. In 1935, the OIA was still trying to get Indians to farm at Red Lake. There were some successful tribal farmers on the west end of Lower Red Lake, but in the swamp and timberland, farming was not practical.50
In 1939, most of the timber was harvested, most of the white farms had failed, the Crookston Mill went out of business, and the Red Lake line was finally closed. The rails were pulled up and sold off. The railroad right-of-way was sold for telephone lines rather than reverting to tribal control. The tribe stayed engaged in the lumber business. By the 1950s, Red Lake’s lumber operation was grossing $300,000 annually, all tribally controlled.51
On August 2, 1951, Peter Graves initiated major forestry litigation on behalf of the tribe with the Indian Claims Commission. It took fifty years to resolve, but eventually netted the tribe a settlement of $53.5 million. Graves was mainly responsible for both the legal action and the successful conversion of the reservation logging operations to Red Lake control.52
Graves had spent his teenage years in Philadelphia, and he traveled extensively. He knew that there was no way to go back in time or drive all the white folks away from Minnesota. But there was a way forward, and it did not require the cultural capitulation of the Red Lake people.
The people of Red Lake had always fished to feed their families. In 1900, Red Lake chief Praying Day filed formal complaints with the OIA about white encroachment on Red Lake waters at Lake of the Woods and Red Lake. In the early 1900s, some Red Lakers started to trade or sell some of their catch to white settlers. As Graves returned to subsistence living himself in 1920, he could see the value of helping all Red Lakers leverage the natural resources and their traditional fish harvesting skills into a new commercial enterprise. It became, and remains, one of Red Lake’s most distinguished and successful modern cultural and economic accomplishments.53
Graves knew that for the idea to succeed he needed to have the chiefs and the General Council behind it, and he needed to chase the white folk away from Red Lake’s fish. White businessmen were the primary beneficiaries of Red Lake’s timber harvests. They had a lot to gain and a lot of experience in navigating the federal government, the state government, and entrenched powers in the OIA. They were ready to apply the same protocol and practice to Red Lake’s fish resources. But things were different this time—thanks to Peter Graves and the General Council.
On September 12, 1917, as a temporary wartime measure, the Commission of Public Safety worked with white business interests to establish Red Lake Fisheries under Minnesota state law with the stated purpose of alleviating food shortages in Minnesota. John Lind, who was governor of Minnesota from 1899 to 1901, had a controlling interest in the Minneapolis, Red Lake, and Manitoba Railroad Company, which operated the rail line to Redby. Lind wanted to increase freight traffic on his railroad. He was also a member of the Commission of Public Safety, which authorized the state-operated commercial fishery in Redby. Lind’s Minneapolis, Red Lake, and Manitoba Railroad was awarded an exclusive contract to transport all fish from Red Lake to market.54
The state-sanctioned operation at Red Lake also needed federal approval. Minnesota’s state game and fish director, Carlos Avery, succeeded in getting the necessary permissions. Lind supported Avery’s subsequent unsuccessful run for governor of Minnesota in 1924. In 1918, the fish plant in Redby shipped 500,000 pounds of walleye and whitefish throughout Minnesota. The fishery operated under a wartime contract until 1919.
At the close of World War I, white businessmen and state officials sought to maintain their control of Red Lake’s fish beyond a wartime permit. The Minnesota State Game and Fish Department extended the commercial harvest and sale of Red Lake’s fish by its own fiat, without further regulatory approval or consultation with Red Lake’s new General Council. In 1921, it also removed the wartime restriction on sales only to Minnesota and began shipping Red Lake fish all over the country. In 1923, the Minnesota legislature approved funding to construct buildings for the Red Lake Fisheries plus a dam on Mud Creek to regulate water levels for the new hatchery. The funds approved were derived from the sale account for the fish harvest, which was managed by the state and had a significant surplus.55
Red Lake Fishery, about 1915. Minnesota Historical Society.
Red Lake did not have exclusive control of proceeds from the fishing. The state shared in those proceeds, usually taking at least half of the gross revenue, and the buildings were constructed from the state’s share. The marginalization of the Red Lake people in the fishery plant development and sale pricing was all the more maddening because Red Lake was supposed to be a business partner with the state and Indians did most of the work.
For typical Red Lakers trying to make a living from fishing, the process was aggravating. They had to supply their own boats and nets and do all of the labor for their harvest, but they could only sell their catch to the fishery at Red Lake. Red Lake tribal harvesters were routinely paid about 40 percent of the price garnered by white harvesters in the United States or Canada. S. A. Selvog, Minnesota State Game and Fish overseer for operations at Red Lake, wrote, “The price paid for the same quality of fish is much under that paid by private parties…. This in itself results in dissatisfaction on the part of the Indians.” The artificial price suppression continued long after the end of World War I. There was no way for tribal members to directly sell or control the fruits of their harvest.56
In addition to having their compensation restricted by the state, tribal harvesters had to wait to be compensated until sale cycles were complete. When that happened, they received their deflated payment for their catch and, later, a small fishery royalty. Royalties that were paid to Red Lake for fish sales were distributed to the entire tribal population. The state provided no labor, no materials, and no insurance for the operation. But they collected half of the profits and controlled all of the sales, pricing, and revenue distribution. Tribal harvesters had been fishing with nets for generations, but the state viewed their fishing rights as a new gift from the state exercised at the government’s pleasure. Minnesota State Game and Fish commissioner James F. Gould avidly enforced the state’s controlling position. He wrote, “The Indians have no legal right to fish commercially in the waters of Red Lake … and the moment they fish in the waters of Red Lake and attempt to or do transport fish produced by them outside the confines of the Indian reservation … both the seller and the purchaser subject themselves to prosecution.” The state also regulated net mesh sizes and equipment specifications.57
Lloyd and Rufus Johnson fishing. Red Lake Tribal Archives.
Peter Graves’s son, John Graves, traveled to Grand Forks to sell fish in the spring of 1926. He was arrested and charged with poaching and sale of fish without a permit, both violations under state game laws. The arresting officer said that since Indians became citizens in 1924, they were subject to all state laws. That was patently false. Tribal sovereignty was not impacted by the Indian Citizenship Act. Peter Graves wrote to OIA officials for remedy or intervention and received none. He paid a sixty-dollar fine and left the issue alone, even though he probably could have won in court had he pursued it.58
Political approval for expansion of state fishery operations at Red Lake was easy to get at this juncture because it involved no tax burden and all of its advocates were well-established white business interests. John B. Hanson, a Redby merchant, was one of the primary advocates who pushed for legislation to continue the commercial fishery after World War I. He obtained a special order vesting the rights for commercial harvest of fish at Red Lake in six people, only two of whom were Indians. These four whites and two Indians had permission to net fish themselves or buy fish from Indians. So the first sanctioned commercial fishermen at Red Lake were mostly white men. The bill also did not require them to buy fish from Indian fishermen. Some white men, such as Art Allard, held jobs at the Red Lake fishery plant from 1918 to 1929.59
State Game and Fish Commissioner Gould knew that resistance was building to state control of the Red Lake commercial fishing operation. He wrote a flurry of letters to various officials, investigating the possibility of allotting the Red Lake reservation, creating a state or national park, or finding another legal means to enable continued white control of Red Lake’s fishing. In spite of the growing power of the General Council of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa and Peter Graves’s hawkish eye on the commercial fishing arrangement, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Burke wrote back to Gould: “Allotments will be made at as early a date as possible…. There will still remain approximately 200,000 acres of tribal land after the Indians now eligible are allotted.” High-ranking state and federal officials were still working on a way to carve up the Red Lake reservation even in the 1920s.60
The people of Red Lake were not pleased with the maneuvering of outsiders to get at their fish resources. Their understanding was that they owned all of the fish in both Upper and Lower Red Lake. The first large commercial net strung across the narrows was cut on the Ponemah side and irrecoverable. Graves hired attorney Edward L. Rogers to investigate the issue of pricing and control of sales in 1926. Some of the Red Lakers started to sell whitefish in Red Lake Falls, hoping to receive a citation that would result in a test case.61
It soon became abundantly clear that some concessions would have to be made to the people of Red Lake. The authorization bill was rewritten with terms providing for an exclusively tribal harvest. For Peter Graves, the lesson was clear: sovereignty was what people insisted upon. When they didn’t, it was systematically eroded. The legislative change enabled all Red Lakers to fish for the commercial operation. But as with logging, that in no way guaranteed that the profits would flow to the Indians. Almost 850,000 pounds of fish were harvested in 1925, but the majority of the profits were still going to the state, which collected all money from the sale of fish, controlled the price markup, issued sales receipts, and banked the proceeds, keeping most for the state and distributing the rest to a trust fund for the tribe.62
In 1927, private businesses tried to derail commercial fishing at Red Lake. An attempted injunction failed. Then Michael Lapinski, a white commercial fisherman, brought a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota for operating a commercial business enterprise, a violation of state law. Because the state was trying to supersede the tribe and take control of the fish business, it never asked Red Lake to join the suit or make arguments about its sovereign immunity. That might have endangered the state’s intervention and control of the fish at Red Lake. Lapinski won his court case. The state was ordered to close the fishery.63
Red Lake was in a tough spot. The Red Lake people wanted to fish, needed the money, wanted a fair price, and desired to control the fruits of their own labor. The state wanted the fishing to continue, which put the tribe in alignment with the state on that critical point. But the state also wanted to capture most of the revenue, and that did not sit well with tribal members. Recent state efforts to build infrastructure for the commercial operation left the state feeling entitled to the profits. The fishing business was getting complicated. Many nonnative agencies and individuals were playing chess with the Red Lake people’s livelihoods.
Graves again used his political and legal acumen, his official function as secretary-treasurer for the General Council, and his knowledge of state and federal political processes to advance Red Lake’s agenda. On February 19, 1927, Graves arranged a special meeting with Theodore Christianson, governor of Minnesota, and State Fish and Game Commissioner Gould. Joseph B. Jourdain and Roy A. Bailey also represented the interests of the General Council. Recent legal developments put the state in violation of its own laws and the entire fishery operation was in limbo. The General Council passed a resolution supporting Roy A. Bailey’s nomination for superintendent of the fishery, although the state resisted the idea.64
Graves proposed that the state of Minnesota amend state law in order to enable the state to engage in commercial fish operations as a temporary measure. Such a law would likely be ruled unconstitutional in court. As soon as legislation could be arranged and before there were further legal challenges, he proposed transferring title of the fishery from the state to the federal government, which would then lease the buildings back to the state. That would keep the state in the fishing game—a win for Gould and Christianson. But it would reduce state micromanagement and its ownership stake in the fishery and allow the tribe to strengthen its control.
Graves’s plan was an incremental shift to tribal control of the fishery—from state to federal, and then from federal to tribal management. He promised to support this phased action if a price structure more favorable to the Red Lake Ojibwe could be negotiated. The temporary measures proceeded, but tensions remained high for two more years as the state jockeyed for a way to maintain control of fishing at Red Lake and Graves countered with legal action.
In 1928, the General Council contracted with attorneys Robert C. Bell and Fred Dennis to pursue all aspects of the Red Lake case, including its power as a sovereign nation. The legal battles and appeals they won confirmed that the state of Minnesota could not operate or partner in the operation of a commercial fishery at Red Lake. That gave the General Council a means of taking control of the fishery operation, which now had to be managed under the auspices of the sovereign tribal government.
On February 15, 1929, the Minnesota legislature introduced legislation to authorize the lease of state fishery buildings to the federal government on behalf of the Red Lake Ojibwe. The phased and incremental process by which Red Lake asserted control over the fishery must have seemed agonizingly slow to those who made their living on the lake. But a faster or more revolutionary approach would have surely failed to generate the necessary support for state legislation, federal legislation, and cooperative arrangements with all the agencies that already had a stake in the business. Graves’s ultimate success in liberating the fishing industry from the state and keeping it alive is to this day one of his most appreciated accomplishments at Red Lake.65
On March 27, 1929, the General Council and the state of Minnesota executed a legal agreement, with the state giving Red Lake exclusive control of the fishery and of maintaining the enterprise. The state of Minnesota had spent considerable money—all earned through the sale of fish caught by underpaid Red Lakers—in building fishery infrastructure at Red Lake. Under the new agreement and with legal hurdles successfully cleared, the fishery plant was leased to the federal government, which assigned use rights to Red Lake.66
The change orchestrated by Graves in 1929 enabled Red Lake to use tribal values to guide the fishery operations. Instead of highly competitive individual business practices, the men and women who fished Red Lake formed a business cooperative. It was organized as the Red Lake Fisheries Association on March 27, 1929. Within three days they had an approved corporate charter, operating under tribal, state, and federal law. Graves was elected secretary-treasurer for the Red Lake Fisheries Association in 1929 and was reelected annually for the next twenty-eight years. John Wind, Peter Sitting, Simon Stately, and Benjamin Littlecreek joined Graves on the first Red Lake Fisheries Board in 1929. In order to create and manage a sustainable fish harvest without state intermediaries or legal complications, the General Council named the Red Lake Fisheries Association the only legal conduit for Red Lakers to get fish to market.67
It took a long time for Red Lake to assert full control over harvesting in its own lake. From 1927 to 1934, there were still eighteen white fishermen commercially harvesting on Lower Red Lake, which was seven percent of the harvester labor force. While Indians had to sell their fish through the Red Lake Fisheries Association, white commercial fishermen at Red Lake were selling independently and at a better price. In 1933, the white fishermen filed a lawsuit against the Red Lake Fisheries Association in state court, arguing that their exclusion from the Red Lake Fisheries Association was illegal. Their primary concern was financial. If they were part of the association, they would receive the band members’ royalties from the fishing operation, which captured five percent of the gross sales. The U.S. district attorney in St. Paul joined the federal government to the lawsuit because of its established interest. This time America’s sovereign immunity (not the tribe’s) got the case dismissed. After 1934, all of the commercial harvesters were Ojibwe.68
As the state was slowly pushed out of its controlling position at the Red Lake fishery, it continued to meddle and attempt to undermine Red Lake’s sovereignty and control of the resource. In 1935, the state used monies from its Red Lake fish harvest trust fund to purchase land in the village of Waskish and by the Tamarac River. Those parcels were among the most contested titles in the region because the people of Red Lake understood them to rightfully belong to the tribe after Henry Rice promised all of Upper and Lower Red Lake and a mile of land in all directions around them to the tribe at the Nelson Act councils in 1889.69
Now the state of Minnesota was buying sections of that land, denying access to the tribe, and doing it with money from the sale of fish harvested by the Indians of Red Lake. The activities of the state were an extension of the long-standing practice of pushing Red Lakers off of Upper Red Lake and protecting white access. The state claimed to need the property and buildings for a new fish hatchery, but that was an elaborate smoke screen. The state’s ownership of fishery buildings did not entitle it to acquire land and restrict Ojibwe use of the land. In 1936 the state’s own solicitor clearly stated, “Exercise of the Indian right of fishing is subject to Federal and not State regulation and control.” The state’s action was both morally wrong and inconsistent with the State Game and Fish Commission’s mission of public access, conservation, and sustainable resource use. The new tribal attorney, Fred Dennis, wrote to Minnesota governor Harold Stassen: “It was the most extravagant, wanton, and uncalled for expenditure of funds of the State that could have been made.”70
Peter Graves always had a fire in his belly, but the state manipulations around Red Lake land stoked it red hot. In 1939, Graves wrote to Harry E. Speakes, the new state game and fish representative:
So far as I am personally concerned you may come and take your buildings which we are occupying at any time you so desire. The state of Minnesota owns the buildings acquired by unlawful methods, as I understand, as found by its own court, of which you must be aware. These buildings were built from profits of the Red Lake Fisheries, most of the money being earned by the Red Lake Indians as not one penny of Minnesota taxpayers money went into these buildings…. It appears that as long as you are dealing with an inferior race of people there should be no consideration given regardless of conditions. You may come and take over your buildings just as soon as you please since showing your attitude, but I hope you do not write me any more letters.71
Graves had a simple agenda: the return of Upper Red Lake and pushing the state out of the Red Lake fishing business. Raymond H. Bitney, superintendent of the Red Lake Indian agency, was persuaded. In 1939, he wrote:
That portion of Red Lake in the northern end of it which was taken away from them in the Treaty of 1889 and should be restored to them, and in addition to that portion of Upper Red Lake which is not inside the shore of the lake be given to the Indians and become part of their reservation. In addition to the exclusive control of the lake and the restoration of the lake to the reservation, it would be well to ask the State of Minnesota to turn over to the Red Lake Cooperative Fisheries Association or to the Red Lake tribe the fisheries building, fisheries lease, and the hatchery at Redby.72
As Graves gained more political traction in getting Upper Red Lake back, he pressed harder for a remedy. Bitney was supportive of his efforts, as were a number of politicians in St. Paul and Washington. Graves wanted to work out a land exchange whereby the state would swap its parcels in the disputed area for federal lands elsewhere. The federal government would repatriate them to the tribe and appropriate funds to slowly buy out willing private landowners within the originally agreed-upon boundary for the reservation.73
At Graves’s request, Representative Richard T. Buckler, whose district included the land in question, introduced a bill in 1935 to enable the land swap at the federal level. Buckler immediately began getting loud complaints from white constituents. The main objectors to the legislation included the Bemidji Civic and Commerce Association, the Beltrami County Board of Commissioners, and the Bemidji American Legion Post. They claimed that the county had spent millions trying to drain the swamps in the land proposed for retrocession and that they had a financial interest in keeping them; they also complained that Red Lakers would kill off the woodland caribou, moose, and deer.74
Graves found it both maddening and amusing that whites in Beltrami County were worried about Red Lakers killing off the game they had maintained sustainably for nearly two hundred years. He did not argue, but went to work with the General Council and soon sent Buckler and all objecting parties copies of a tribal resolution to declare all retroceded lands a game preserve, free from hunting or trapping by either whites or Indians. He asked for a meeting with the objectors and various political figures, including the Beltrami County auditor, the Beltrami County attorney, the county commissioners, and the secretary of the Civic and Commerce Association. He brought Fred Dennis, the tribe’s attorney, who laid out the entire history of the taking of the lake. Then the real reasons for the objections came to the surface. Beltrami County Commissioner Tyrene said, “People are objecting to the Indians acquiring all of the lake and not permitting anyone to fish therein.”75
Graves was not surprised, but he was certainly disappointed. Nobody at the meeting questioned the validity of Red Lake’s claim to be rightful owners of all of Upper Red Lake. They simply wanted to fish there too; and nobody in Washington had the stomach to tell them no.
Graves knew when and where to fight political battles. He had to abandon the push for major federal legislation, and turned his attention to the state, with some success. The Minnesota state senate passed a bill to allow Graves’s proposed land swap process on February 20, 1939. It was a safe move for the legislature, but it was enabling legislation and, ultimately, the federal government would have to set up a process and appropriate funds to do it.
The OIA surveyed land parcels and improvements to calculate an appropriation and recommend federal legislation to push the plan forward. The OIA favorably reported on the intended bill to the U.S. Congress but struck the appropriation recommendations out of the legislation, leaving Red Lake responsible for purchasing back the land that had been stolen. The political wind behind a remedy for the theft of the lake died shortly after that. Through the tribe’s attorney, Fred Dennis, Graves did persistently push for land reclamation in state court condemnation proceedings throughout the 1930s, with some success; regaining the lake would have to be a continuing battle. But Graves came close to getting the lake back.76
Graves regarded the effort as a personal failure and it haunted him for the rest of his days. The people of Red Lake still see it as a valiant effort, and one that illuminates the possibility and paves a political path that might yet get the lake back in Red Lake’s sovereign domain. They walk that path every day.
Graves continued to push for the return of Upper Red Lake and exclusive Red Lake control of the fishery. He got a breakthrough on fishery management. The commissioner of Indian affairs refused to sign a renewal of their agreement with the state when it expired on July 1, 1938. That forced the state to cooperate in the final transition of fishery operations to the tribe. In 1943, ownership of the remaining fishery buildings was transferred from the state of Minnesota to the federal government, and Red Lake assumed control of the trust land and buildings without further need for agreements or leases. The state was finally off the tribe’s back.77
The entire fishery operation was a tribal enterprise. It paid royalties to all enrolled tribal citizens and patronage payments to fisheries members. The state and federal governments never subsidized the Red Lake Fisheries Association or any part of the operation, as it was and remains a self-sustaining business.
With a sustainable harvest of fish and a generous restocking program through the Redby Fish Hatchery it was anticipated that the Red Lake Fisheries would be able to support, through gainful employment, as many as two hundred families or more in perpetuity. The propagation of walleye and whitefish proved reasonable, and the fishery thrived for many decades. By 1950, more than two hundred Red Lake men and women were employed through the fishery, with a direct impact on six hundred families. More than $3 million was paid to tribal members as royalties from fishery operations. The Red Lake Fisheries Association had 240 members at its highest point.78
Hanging nets to dry, about 1935. National Archives, Kansas City, Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Red Lake Agency (1964), (NARA-285729).
The Red Lake Fisheries Association managed the tribe’s fish resources and finances responsibly, but in the 1990s faced an unforeseen crisis. A combination of illegal harvesting by tribal members for unsanctioned sale and increasing white sport fishing on Upper Red Lake resulted in an overharvest of walleye, the staple fish resource and the economic driver for fishery sales. In 1987, Byron Dyrland of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) caught Red Lake tribal member Bill Lawrence with ten thousand fillets of Red Lake walleye. The fish was not harvested for sale through Red Lake Fisheries, but was on its way off the reservation for illegal sale. The confiscation was the largest ever in the history of the Minnesota DNR.
The marine ecosystem at Red Lake is a complicated one with multiple trophic levels. When the walleye population collapsed, the crappie population exploded, as the two species are on a population teeter-totter at Red Lake. In a gut-wrenching decision, the Red Lake Fisheries Association called a moratorium on commercial fishing from 1997 to 2006 so the walleye could recover. The tribe and state conservation enforcement agencies stepped up oversight on illegal harvesting and sale. The walleye recovered and the association resumed business with a careful management plan for sustained harvest.79
The development of the Red Lake Fisheries Association was a major contribution to Red Lake’s cultural continuity as a nation of fish harvesters and warriors. It strengthened Red Lake’s political empowerment and cross-village cohesion. Peter Graves’s legacy with the fishery was one of sustained cultural endurance and a financial bridge to success in the larger economy.
When it came to the pace and direction of change, Graves was both pointed and patient, saying, “I wish to state that I do not believe in trying too rapidly to enforce the white man’s civilization on the Indians, but rather that they be given plenty of time and all the necessary assistance in learning.” The fishery provided a sustainable venue for the people of Red Lake to test and sharpen their financial and business acumen in a new economic reality. Graves dismissed concerns about the emerging financial management skills of the people and defended the sovereign right of the Red Lake people to run their own affairs and businesses. He said, “Give the Indian time. If there’s any money, hand it to him if it’s his. That’s good education. The experience will teach you. But if you don’t get that experience, how are you going to know anything about it?”80
He added: “The only salvation for any people—the Indians, and anyone else—is if they can get enough education to compete with the way of life in which they are living…. If a young man is educated, he can compete and make a proper living.” In a formal position drafted and vetted through the General Council on March 11, 1950, Graves stated, “Our children must be educated as far as possible that they may be able to compete in the methods and ways of the present civilization. Education, we believe, is the only real salvation.”81
Peter Graves was fighting for control of the Red Lake fishery during the Great Depression. At the same time a major change in federal Indian policy was brewing that had the potential to greatly help or greatly harm Red Lake’s sovereignty. The political pendulum in Washington swung to the left as a vast array of New Deal programs started, including Social Security and the Civilian Conservation Corps. John Collier, who served as commissioner of Indian affairs from 1933 to 1945, wanted to make an Indian New Deal. His guiding philosophy was to make the OIA an advisory agency to tribes rather than a supervisory one. He wanted to recall the Indian agents and let tribes govern themselves. That was a welcome thought in Indian country, but the destruction of so many tribal governments through the treaty period meant that a lot of work was required to build new ones.
The cornerstone of Collier’s plan was the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). It became law on June 18, 1934. The IRA created a template for tribes to reorganize, but the template was fraught with problems, including cookie-cutter constitutions that did not reflect tribal culture, customs, or values and usually had very little separation of powers. The law did have a provision whereby tribes had to decide if they wanted to reorganize or not via a referendum vote.
Red Lake already had a representative governing structure that empowered its ancient chief system and it seemed to be winning important battles on fishery and land issues. Graves worried that reorganizing under the IRA could weaken the Red Lake system or impose a foreign one. Even so, he supported bringing the issue to the people of Red Lake for a vote. On May 3, 1947, the people rejected the revised constitution (229 for and 266 against). It ultimately failed over fears that the changes might undermine the authority of the hereditary chiefs and put too much power in the hands of the OIA, because the proposed revised constitution was an IRA reorganization. While the other tribes in Minnesota accepted the IRA, Red Lake again struck out on its own.82
Even though the General Council rejected reorganization, it used the political climate in Washington and the reorganization process in place across Indian country to further legitimize the General Council as the governing body and to increase its influence. Graves pursued every opportunity to strengthen Red Lake’s sovereign power. First and foremost, Article 3 of the IRA provided: “The Secretary of the Interior, if he shall find it to be in the public interest, is hereby authorized to restore to tribal ownership the remaining surplus lands of any Indian reservation heretofore opened, or authorized to be opened, to sale, or any other form of disposal by Presidential proclamation, or by any of the public land laws of the United States.” The new legislation would not change the reservation boundaries, but there was a lot of public land in the territory that Red Lake had ceded in 1889.83
Graves soon had the tribe’s attorney, Fred Dennis, and Red Lake OIA Superintendent Raymond H. Bitney writing a flurry of letters and legal briefs to repatriate Red Lake’s “undisposed” ceded lands now in public possession because of tax forfeitures and failed farms. Much of the ceded land north of Red Lake, opened for white settlement after 1889, was swampy, and the drainage projects had failed. Many of the white farms and homesteads were abandoned and went into tax forfeiture.84
After twenty-seven years of advocacy, secretary of the interior Harold L. Ickes finally responded to the petitions of the General Council and Graves’s relentless efforts. On February 22, 1945, Ickes issued an order to “restore to tribal ownership all those lands of the Red Lake Indian Reservation which were ceded … and which were opened for sale or entry but for which the Indians have not been paid and which now are or hereafter may be classified as undisposed of.” Abandoned white homesteads in Nelson Act territory with titles assumed by county, state, or federal agencies had to be returned to the tribe. The General Land Office presented a list of lands for repatriation to William A. Brophy, commissioner of Indian affairs. The impact was monumental, with 156,698 acres of ceded land returned to tribal control.85
The land repatriation was highly contested. Some white landowners and hunters feared being denied use of reclaimed parcels. Some government officials were in principle opposed to land going from the government to Indians when they had been trying to engineer land transfers from Indians to the government for most of their careers. In addition, a large section of 32,000 acres by Baudette was inadvertently excluded from the transfer order.86
Many title issues became evident as the transfer process got under way. Although the land transfers were valid, they were never formally added to the federal register because of all the title questions, prompting extended delay and investigation. The 1945 list of lands for repatriation was replaced by a new one in 1988 that omitted some from the 1945 list and added many others. The total repatriation acreage on the 1988 list was now 186,533 acres. After a long legal pursuit by the tribe’s attorney, Marvin J. Sonosky, the 32,000-acre parcel in Koochiching County was officially transferred to the tribe on January 8, 1989. A new list was developed in 1997 and many parcels remain unresolved. Today, most titles have completed transfer to the tribe, but the review process is ongoing and open.
While Peter Graves pursued Red Lake’s legal and financial claims with the government and worked on building Red Lake’s fishery business, he was also supporting development initiatives in many other areas on behalf of the tribe. The General Council successfully undertook to work the emergent federal government grants system as well as the legislative appropriation process. It successfully petitioned for funds in 1937 to improve the roads from Red Lake to Highway 2 and along the lake to Ponemah. In 1948, Red Lake established a revolving loan fund to support tribal member business and personal property development. It was enabled by tribal trust fund reserves, with an initial set-aside of $100,000. As loans were repaid, the tribe kept granting more.87
Graves also convinced the General Council that it needed a communication strategy and the power to share information. A local newspaper, the Red Lake News, had been established in 1912. It failed in 1920, but through support from the General Council it was relaunched and has successfully continued ever since. Today the tribe maintains an electronic newsfeed, Red Lake Nation News, as an extension of the communication platform adopted by the General Council during the Peter Graves era.88
The General Council was having success in many simultaneous political battles, but its work was usually accomplished through adversity. The Office of Indian Affairs was renamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1947. That was a tiny part of a larger effort to make the agency more advisory and less supervisory. Red Lake was able to slowly diminish the agency’s controlling position on the reservation. Not everyone supported the waxing power of the tribal government. Many nonnative citizens and politicians were adamantly opposed to tribal sovereignty. The state of Minnesota was especially distrustful of Red Lake after it lost the long battle over control of the fishery.
The political pendulum that swung left in 1934 for the Indian Reorganization Act swung far to the right in 1953. The federal government passed legislation that year to give state governments more jurisdiction over criminal affairs on Indian land. The effort had been developing for many years. Criminal matters in the United States were considered almost entirely under state law. In 1883, the court case Ex Parte Crow Dog ruled that due to the sovereignty of tribes, state governments had no jurisdiction over Indian crime on Indian land. Only the federal government could take actions that affected tribal sovereignty. In 1885, in response to that court case, the federal government passed the Major Crimes Act, which established a mechanism for the federal government to assume jurisdiction in Indian cases of murder, manslaughter, rape, assault, arson, burglary, and larceny. In 1953, the federal government wanted to transfer that power back to state governments. The proposed legislation, called Public Law 280, would affect Indians in several states, including Minnesota.89
In 1953, most tribes in Minnesota were just starting to organize reservation business committees and develop modern governing structures under the Indian Reorganization Act. When the new law was proposed, they were not in a political position to fight it, but Peter Graves was. He wrote letters on behalf of the General Council to his connections in the Bureau of Indian Affairs to influence the legislation. Red Lake’s well-established political presence was impossible to dispute. There was simply no need for further state jurisdiction at Red Lake, especially when it was obviously not welcome. Public Law 280 passed into law on August 15, 1953. Red Lake was exempted. The Minnesota Supreme Court later explained, “the exclusion of the Red Lake Reservation from Public Law 280 was done out of deference to the wishes of the Red Lake Band of Indians.”90
There were legal tests after the legislation passed. Red Lake’s exclusive jurisdiction over all civil and criminal matters except for those explicitly covered by the Major Crimes Act was affirmed by ruling of the Minnesota Supreme Court in Sigana v. Bailey, where the state was denied jurisdiction in a civil suit because of Red Lake’s inherent sovereignty and exemption from Public Law 280. State v. Holthusen, State v. Lussier, and other cases further affirmed Red Lake’s unfettered exclusion from state interference. Legal arguments had to be made. Lawyers had to be hired. Sovereignty was not unassailable; but it could be protected with consistent effort. Red Lake maintained a higher degree of political and legal independence as a result of its exemption from Public Law 280 than most Minnesota tribes were able to. In 1973, the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa in Minnesota also got an exemption. Today, most of the tribes in Minnesota are trying to develop their courts and police infrastructure so they too can be free from state control over criminal matters.91
The greatest affirmation of the faith the people of Red Lake placed in Peter Graves is evidenced in his role as the primary reformer of the reservation’s justice system. At the very beginning of the treaty period, Indian agents began to assume controlling positions on reservations across the country. They ran political affairs, usurping the power of chiefs. They had their own police forces in many places. They also ran the Court of Indian Offenses to administer justice and enforce restrictions on tribal religion and culture. To change this system, Graves again had to apply all of his skills as an insider with the General Council and with the government.
Indian agents customarily appointed judges to the Court of Indian Offenses they administered on the reservations. Sometimes they appointed themselves. Usually, a government official, fur trader, or business leader was chosen to assume the duties. Sometimes the judges were of native descent, but usually they were of mixed heritage and were more integrated into the nonnative business and political community than the Indian community.
Graves was in a unique position at Red Lake. By 1936, it had been eighteen years since he had worked for the OIA, but he was still deeply trusted by white officials. He communicated in English and in their way, with letters, formal notices, and position papers. The fact that Graves was also a man of the people, an Ojibwe speaker, and a Red Lake partisan might have excluded him from consideration for a job as judge in most places, but his relationships with white government officials and his service to the government overshadowed his tribal status in their eyes and persuaded them to trust him. Graves was appointed judge for the Court of Indian Offenses at Red Lake and served from 1936 to 1943.
Being trusted by whites got Graves the job as judge, but being trusted by Indians enabled him to shape the judicial climate on the reservation. He held court only one day each week, always on Saturdays at 10 am. For most of his tenure as judge, he worked in tandem with Charles C. Harkins, who served as chief of police. Although careful not to have any miscarriages of justice, they moved with incredible alacrity. One time they disposed of thirty-three cases in two and half hours.
As judge for the Court of Indian Offenses, Graves had a great deal of procedural freedom, including determining the need for juries. He always offered the accused the opportunity for a trial by jury but, in a stunning testament to the faith that the people had in him, every defendant in the more than five thousand cases he presided over declined the right to trial by jury and instead elected to have Graves be the sole arbiter of their fates. There were no exceptions. “I know them all,” Graves said. “They are my people. I know their reputations, good or bad. They can have a jury if they want one, but they never do.”92
Graves was given this deference because of his fairness, not because of his leniency. He had little tolerance for those who violated Red Lake’s liquor laws in particular. “Outlaws and anarchists, I call them,” he said. “All our troubles come from liquor.” He unabashedly discussed alcohol problems on the reservation and consistently advocated that Red Lake remain a dry reservation.93
For several years, Graves was secretary-treasurer for the General Council, secretary-treasurer for the Red Lake Fisheries Association, and judge for the Red Lake Court of Indian Offenses. He was a man of great power. For some Red Lakers, he was also beginning to be seen as a man with considerable conflicts of interest. Paul H. Beaulieu brought the issue to his attention in private, and Graves listened. In 1943, Graves resigned his post as judge and used his considerable influence to get Paul H. Beaulieu appointed to the position. Graves knew that the most effective way to avoid accumulating enemies was to keep them as friends. Beaulieu served as judge from 1943 to 1955 and was equally firm and fair.94
Graves then worked to empower the General Council in making official endorsements of judge selections on the reservation. The important power vested in the Indian agents to make these decisions was now being transferred to the indigenous governing body for the reservation. It was a significant transformation. At the same time, Graves strongly advocated keeping the state government out of Red Lake’s jurisdictional hair. His success at fending off Public Law 280, combined with his own service as a judge and his sustained advocacy for and leadership of the General Council, helped to successfully shape the Court of Indian Offenses—originally a powerful assimilation tool—into a cornerstone of Red Lake’s indigenous political power base.
Graves came a long way over his many years on earth. From a small “half-breed” with no sustained father figure and no special favors to the height of his power, he proved himself again and again: he was resilient in the face of forced assimilation, diplomatic under pressure, firm in his values. In 1900, he earned $240 per year, which was 20 percent of the average wage for whites working for the OIA. By the time he died, he had retired as postmaster and judge but still served as secretary-treasurer of the General Council and secretary-treasurer of the Red Lake Fisheries Association. He had enemies, but they were too afraid to fight him openly. He had many friends, both white and Indian. He also had a very large family. At the time of his death at age eighty-four, he had fifty-one grandchildren and seventy-six great-grandchildren. Today his descendants number in the hundreds.95
Graves reflected on his life: “I have never belonged to any clubs or societies, except church societies…. I have no special hobbies. Baseball was my greatest enjoyment when I was playing in the games. Hunting wild game, not for the fun of it, but for actual necessity, is my other hobby.” Graves was never elected to any position or inherited any title. But he was the most powerful political leader on the Red Lake reservation for many decades.96
People often asked Graves how he built and maintained his position. Red Lake was a nation of warriors, and nobody on the reservation submitted to anyone without a fight. He offered a simple, blunt answer: “I was more pushy than anybody else. I always acted in the interest of these folks on many occasions.” He elaborated: “You know just how stubborn I am in doing things for the Red Lake Indians that I am absolutely sure are for their benefit.” Graves valued honor, integrity, and humility as well as forward thinking: “I didn’t want to lie to anybody if I could possibly help them, because if I got caught lying, everybody would be laughing at me. If I’m not positive about anything I’ll tell you.”97
Graves worked hard at politics but saw his role as more than political. He had to look out for his people. During the Great Depression, he used to take horse-drawn wagons through the communities of Little Rock, Red Lake, Redby, and Ponemah with Christmas packages, purchased at his own expense, and distribute them to needy families. When he saw a legal threat or intrusion on the tribal nation, he mounted a vigorous defense.
There were weaknesses in the governance structure at Red Lake, and Graves could see them. He did not blindly defend the system he worked so hard to build. He tried to help it evolve. In 1942, he proposed changes to the tribal constitution, but the people rejected them. He was able to implement some incremental changes to Red Lake’s political structure, but he knew that more had to be done. Still, he could not move faster than his people or his chiefs. He was a team player in that sense, even though he was perceived as more of an autocrat.
In 1940, Graves received the Indian Achievement Medal at the Indian Council Fire in Chicago. Although he was exceptionally self-assured, he carried on work in an often adversarial environment that left him short on appreciation and affirmation. He was especially proud of that medal and the acknowledgment it represented.
It is hard to overstate what Peter Graves did for Red Lake. He Who Is Spoken To pulled the chiefs of the villages at Red Lake together in an emergent national identity. Nodin Wind catalyzed that effort and pulled Ponemah into the Red Lake nation. Peter Graves grew, strengthened, and formalized Red Lake as a tribal nation. He modernized and evolved the political structure. He also fought off major intrusions into Red Lake’s sovereignty and numerous efforts to allot its land. He coalesced the power of individuals and hereditary chiefs to create a common institution—the General Council. It allowed Red Lake to act as a united political entity. Even though he was an appointed officer and served at the pleasure of the hereditary chiefs, his self-sacrificing service, force of personality, and political acumen led the General Council to give him undisputed power to wield for the Red Lake people. Ultimately, Red Lake paid the price for the structural weakness of that arrangement, but it benefited greatly from his wisdom, foresight, and capability as a leader of the warrior nation.
Peter Graves had a way of getting things done. It was awe inspiring at times, and deeply offensive at other times. He worked with the U.S. government, never against it. It made him effective in many different ways, but the pace of change was sometimes too slow for the people. The OIA built a mess hall for agency employees in 1910 and continued to operate it until 1955. The IRA of 1934, the shift from supervisory to advisory agency, and the change of the Office of Indian Affairs to the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1947 all offered entry points for reducing agency personnel and pushing the U.S. government out of Red Lake. Graves never used a heavy hand with the government, however, even though he and the General Council out-lasted the government’s role. Without bloodshed or a reduction in government support, Graves eventually saw the Indian agents and personnel recalled, the mess hall closed, and Red Lakers retaking control of Red Lake.98
Graves usually worked with rather than against white folk at Red Lake. At his urging, the General Council approved the white-owned and -operated Red Lake Summer Resort Association to lease land at the Narrows on Red Lake and run tourist resorts there for white vacationers. For at least thirty years the General Council granted annual permits for white duck hunters to hunt on the reservation at Red Lake. Special fishing privileges were extended to white employees of St. Mary’s Church, the school, and tribal programs.99
Graves was a fighter, and he would take on anyone, native or white, in any political battle. But he accomplished most of his work not in opposition to the OIA but in collaboration with it. He spent most of his working years as its employee. And in running the affairs of the General Council, he struck a steadfastly cooperative position. In a policy statement made through the General Council, he wrote: “The General Council sincerely believes that the office of Indian Affairs, which is under the immediate supervision of the Secretary of the Interior, should not be abolished as it has and is now doing wonderful work in the advancement of the Indian Race in the United States.” In the same document he also wrote: “The Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians suggests, most solemnly, that their consent first be obtained to dispose of any of their tribal affairs and property.” When speaking to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, he said, “We do not wish to go on record that we are blaming the Indian Bureau for anything. Everything is blamed on the Indian Bureau, but it doesn’t all belong there. It originated from some other place.” He reported that during his entire tenure with the OIA, “I never had any trouble with any of the officials that I have worked for during my career in the Government Service.”100
Graves was an intimate friend of Senator Knute Nelson, the man He Who Is Spoken To had dubbed Chipmunk because he was so annoying. Graves looked past Nelson’s personality defects and his role in drafting the legislation that engineered Red Lake’s large land cessions in 1889 and 1904. Graves remarked, “I have often wondered why Senator Nelson liked me—because I was just as stubborn as he was.”101
Graves wielded his relationship with the federal government like a double-edged sword. His connections and friendships with numerous white officials usually served the people of Red Lake well. When he needed to take a firm stand with the government, as he did with the development of the Red Lake Fisheries Association, those relationships and that trust made all the difference in the world.
The double-edged sword cut the other way too, particularly when Graves stepped out of sync with the will of the people at Red Lake. Especially late in his tenure with the General Council, that became more common. By the time he died, almost every appointed officer and nonhereditary authority figure on the General Council was an immediate family member of his. Graves never directly countermanded the hereditary chiefs, so the issues before the General Council did not divide him and the chiefs. He had protected their positions and power, and they accommodated his requests for family members to be appointed to positions with the General Council.
When Collins Oakgrove saw Peter Graves come to the Ponemah store with a large wad of cash in 1957, Graves felt no need to hide the fact that he had obtained the cash from timber sales. Because there was no private ownership of land at Red Lake, the money could only belong to the people of Red Lake. Graves used it to buy his milk. It was a small thing, but part of a larger pattern that undermined support for him and faith in the integrity of the General Council.
Eventually, divergent views on tribal policy tested Peter Graves as never before. He always passed the tests of his power, but increasingly he had a hard time passing the tests of his ability to diplomatically unify political factions on the reservation. In 1952, the General Council gave permission to the Minnesota National Guard “for the use of a portion of the Red Lake Reservation as a bivouac area and firing range.” They also extended permission to the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy to test ordnance (including two-foot bombs and rockets) and do bombing and strafing runs north of Upper Red Lake. The air traffic and explosions were a constant annoyance and were even terrifying for some tribal residents.102
The General Council also allowed uranium prospecting in the Northwest Angle. In 1956, it approved separate uranium prospecting permits for one-thousand-acre parcels of tribal land for Alyce Modahl and Louis J. Glick. Test drilling went on for at least four years. Ultimately, no uranium was found, but if it had been, it could have been a real environmental and health crisis. When the people found out, they were furious.103
Increasingly the people wanted their legally closed reservation to be, in a practical sense, closed to white management and intrusion. They wanted someone to stand up to the federal government too, and Graves was not that man.
In the 1940s, Graves worked with Bazile Lawrence to sign off on the construction of a dam on the Mud River in Redby by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It had the potential to support the fish hatchery in Red Lake, a stated objective. But many others saw the development differently. Roger Jourdain, the protégé of Paul H. Beaulieu and for many years a student and an admirer of Graves, was so furious that he began to politically organize in opposition to the General Council. The Ojibwe across Minnesota were devastated when the government built dams at Pokegama, Leech Lake, Lake Winnibigoshish, and the Rum River in prior decades because the flooding they caused permanently damaged wild rice and lowbush cranberry resources. In Mille Lacs, tribal members actually destroyed the dam when it was first built across the Rum River.104
Jourdain felt that Graves and Lawrence had lost touch with the primary mission of the Red Lake people—to keep the land and water intact and under tribal control. Surrendering control to the federal government in an action detrimental to the environment that served no financial benefit to the people was unforgivable to Jourdain. Over the next decade his organizing against the General Council grew more formidable, attracted more adherents, and eventually prompted Jourdain to say, “Their day of retribution is at hand.”105
Jourdain was on the move, but Graves paid him no heed. On December 1, 1954, the Bureau of Indian Affairs consolidated its agency at Red Lake with Leech Lake and White Earth in a new office in Bemidji. In 1956, the Department of the Interior entered into a long-term agreement with the University of Minnesota to provide extension services throughout the state. The General Council did not advocate for Red Lake to be exempted or given control of program funds to administer on Red Lake’s behalf. The actions of the agency and the development of the extension program heightened the growing sense at Red Lake that the government was marginalizing the tribe. It added extra fuel to the fire that Jourdain was stoking: the General Council was losing touch with the people as well as its effectiveness in advocating for them in Washington.106
Peter Graves was visiting his grandson, Peter Strong (Bebaamibatood, or He Who Runs Around), and other family members in late January 1957. The Strongs had a young, spirited colt, less than a year old. Graves went out to see the animal, patting his head and talking to him. The horse was playful and even a bit tempestuous at times. He grabbed Graves by the collar of his coat and started to pull him around, accidentally toppling the elderly statesman over. Graves’s head collided with the frozen ground. Family members rushed to his aid, but the damage was done. Internal bleeding from his head injury put pressure on his brain, and the old man never recovered.
He lay in a coma for more than six weeks. Many friends and family members came to see him. His political adversaries and allies watched with awe—and some with barely bridled ambition—as Peter Graves slowly slipped away. The moment finally came at 7 pm on March 14, 1957. Peter Strong clearly remembered Charlie Smith standing in the room, asking repeatedly, “Is he dead yet? Is he dead yet?” When Graves drew his last breath, Smith donned his coat and drove straight to the home of Roger Jourdain to tell him, “Now. Now we can move.” Strong recalled, “But now looking at it, Christ, how much power that old man had, totally unconscious for nearly two months, and they still couldn’t do anything.”107
Erwin F. Mittelholtz, who worked for the Beltrami County Historical Society and worked closely with the General Council on a major tribal history project, memorialized Graves: “Peter Graves (sometimes called “Chief”) was perhaps one of the greatest leaders and spokesmen that the Chippewas of the Red Lake Indian Reservation will ever know or remember. He ruled firmly, sometimes with an iron hand, yet he was a statesman and guardian for the rights and protection of the Red Lake Chippewa Indians for more than half a century. In all, he gave over 65 years of rewarding service to the cause and betterment of the Minnesota Chippewas through his leadership and guidance.” Jay Edgerton, who often reported for Minnesota newspapers on Red Lake politics, wrote in the Minneapolis Star after Graves died: “The grand old man of Red Lake may have been the greatest Indian of our time.” Raymond H. Bitney, Red Lake OIA superintendent, worked with Graves for years. He wrote: “Peter Graves has always been interested in the welfare of his people from an unselfish standpoint, and at all times has been opposed to any move to exploit them or their interests. He is a great orator and has a very strong and forceful personality and thinks things through very carefully before arriving at a decision.”108
Hundreds of people came to pay respects to Peter Graves as his body was interred at St. John-in-the-Wilderness Episcopal Church cemetery in Red Lake. They were overwhelmed not just by what they had lost with his passing, but by what they had gained because of his coming. As they shared stories and reminisced, they were stunned to find that during his last year of life he had privately bequeathed a final message to each of his children and many of his grandchildren. It was not about his undying love for them or what he had done with his life. It was about the lake.
In spite of all his amazing accomplishments, Peter Graves spent the last year of his life obsessing about not getting the lake back. It burned in his heart as the greatest wrong visited upon the Red Lake people in their history and the one thing he could not successfully rectify in his lifetime. The final message he left to his family is that he would never stop trying: “Even when I am dead, I will haunt the shores of these waters. My spirit will never be at rest until all of the lake is back in the hands of my people.” For his many progeny and the citizens and leaders of Red Lake today, there is every reason to believe that that is exactly what happened.109
Roger Jourdain, about 1970. Charles Brill, published in Red Lake Nation: Portraits of Ojibway Life (University of Minnesota Press, 1992).