Unknown to H. Z. Mitchell, August 16, 1864

General H. Z. MITCHELL:

DEAR SiR: I have just been reading in the Chicago Tribune of August 15 about the combination of all the Western tribes of Indians in order to get up and carry on a general Indian war against the whites.

Dear general, no doubt that there is many a true Union man in Minnesota that will not believe these reports, and all rebel sympathizers will do all they can to keep the people from putting any confidence in the report. At the outbreak of the rebellion south I often made the remark, both in public and private, in Saint Cloud, that if the rebellion was not crushed in two years we would have a regular Indian war. I was laughed at by many a Union man and hissed at by Copperheads, but how soon were my fears brought to be sad realities you yourself know. Again, in our troubles with the Chippewas, I always said not to place too much confidence in them. They are my own people and I know them well. My wife’s kindred are the Leach Lakers. The way is open for me to go and settle among them as a missionary, but she decidedly refuses to go, and her excuse is this, that there cannot be any confidence placed in their pretensions of peace. If things go on as usual, sooner or later we will have trouble with them, and no dependence can or ought to be placed in the word of the traders that are amongst them when they say there is no danger. The Sioux war ought to teach us a lesson. One year ago last winter, when the two chiefs from Leach Lake and I took them to your officer at Saint Cloud, on our return back to my home they told me, in presence of my wife, that there had been for two years the tobacco of peace sent by Hole-in-the-Day and others of their chiefs to different parts of the Chippewa Nation, even to Lake Superior Indians, and also to the different Western tribes, to unitetheir forces together and fight the Americans, as they were all satisfied that the course of the American Government toward the Indians, by cheating them out of their payments for their lands and continually driving them from place to place, satisfied them all that the intention of the Government was to exterminate them, for no other reason but that we are Indians, and all that remained for them to do to rise up in a body and die fighting their bitterest enemy, as they call the American people. This same information was also given me by Mr. Desharlah’s son, in the presence of his father, at Fort Abercrombie, after our fight with the Sioux; that they had sat in their council themselves and smoked of the tobacco.

Dear general, and I myself, James Tanner, heard Mr. Hole-in-theDay, the scoundrel pet of U. S. Indian agents, U. 8. officers, and rascally Indian traders, say to me in his own house four years ago that he could clear out one-half of Minnesota, while the Sioux would the other half, and that I need not be surprised if I once heard of such a work. I have heard many of our leading Chippewas speak of rising up in arms against the long knives, as they call the American people. When I used to be amongst them they used to often ask me when the British would fight the Americans; that they would all go for the British. ‘That same feeling is yet burning in the breast of most all of our American Indians. These remarks I make are facts that I have been posted on for years, and if these feelings have been harbored, cherished, and talked of around council fires and prevented from carrying out their desires and cravings of their hearts only for want of munitions of war, how much more will they carry them out now, meeting with assistance from the rebels and copperheads. Now you see from this that this combination of the Western tribes is no new thing; it is only the carrying out of the long-cherished and talked-of plans.

This past winter I have often spoken of this long-talked-of plot in my lectures throughout the United States, and have urged on the necessity of changing our Indian policy of cheating and driving the Indian, We cannot have perfect peace with the Indians until we make and receive them as our fellow-citizens. Dear general, for once let the word of a poor Indian Tanner (that is much hated by many of Minnesota, especially by Christians and ministers of the gospel for speaking always plainly) be listened to, when I tell you as long as the Southern rebellion lasts, do not place too much confidence in the Chippewas. If you do you may do it at the sacrifice of thousands of precious lives of our best Minnesota white citizens. In the present course of our Government toward removing our Minnesota Chippewas farther west is only helping the Indian to carry out his long-thought-of plan or plot, for the farther west they are removed the nearer we ourselves bring them with their allies, the Western tribes, and easier to be reached and supplied by rebels with munitions of war by the way of the plains and Canada, and safer will their families be by being taken by our armies. True, we have plenty of Chippewa half-breeds that are citizens, but in a Chippewa outbreak you cannot depend on one of them, for I have heard many of them say that they would never fight against their own fathers, mothers, and people. I also see by the treaty stipulations that the Mill Lake Indians are liable to be moved at any time. Dear general, is this the reward we give them for their loyalty to us in our Sioux troubles—how they came and offered their services to you to go and fight Sioux for and with us? Will their liability to be removed at any time from their present homestead strengthen their loyalty to our Government? These are questions of deep interest for the peace of our dear State. Land speculators and politicians and all enemies will laugh at these remarks. But let me tell you the plain truth: If our Government removes those Mill Lake Indians while this war lasts, we turn their loyalty to savage and bitter rebellion against our of Mill Lake down where they are, and make them our fellow-citizens at a cost of a few thousands of dollars than it will be to remove them in the midst of these, our troubles, and add to the ranks of our enemies those that might have been our best friends, and at the cost of not thousands but millions of dollars and thousands of precious lives, and that to gratify the hellish selfishness of a few speculators, if they are Goverement officials? I have a letter before me that was handed me in Washington from Hole-in-the-Day to the President of the United States and Commissioner of Indian Affairs, dated Saint Paul, June 7, 1863, where he urges the removal of his band on to the eastern tributaries of the Red River. I know Hole-in-the-Day as well as any man. He has never once showed the least desire or effort made to get one single family of his band to settle down and become civilized. Even he himself, in his pretended civilization, never abandoned his narrow breech-cloth or blanket, but in the stead of helping his Indians to a state of civilization he, with the traders, cheated his own people out of all the money he could, for which his own people sought to kill him several times. He has also ever opposed the works of the faithful missionaries amongst his people. He has even hired Indians to kill these missionaries. Is this the work of a man who is anxious for the good of his people? Was he not also the leader of the Chippewa troubles and rebellion we had in 1862? All that lacked of his carrying out his plans that he told me of four years ago, and massacre the whole Mississippi Valley to Saint Paul, was that he could not get the Rabbit Lake band and Mill Lake band of Indians to join him, and he feared them. Ifhe felt for the good of his people, as he represents himself in his letter to the President, he never would have drawn his people into such trouble. His aim, in my opinion, is this: He only desires to get to be removed to the Red River, so that he can be so much nearer his western allies, and where he can get munitions of war easier, and where he can make his escape safer, either in the woods or plains. And then, and only then, after thousands of horses, cattle and property, &c., has been stolen and hundreds of lives lost; then, and only then, will ye white men learn that the leopard has.not changed his spots nor the Hole-in-the-Day his rebellious plots.

Now, dear general, I know that these remarks of mine will be by many in Minnesota laughed at, as those remarks of mine were laughed at in 1862. But laugh who will, no far-seeing man cannot help but say with me that the course our Government is taking in the removal of our Minnesota Indians to the west is only concentrating their forces to come against us the easier and safer for themselves. If the Southern rebellion lasts much longer we may rest assured of a general Indian war as this Government has never yet experienced, and, surely, then we will have more than a handful; for if 2,000 or 3,000 of Sioux has for nearly three years given us so much trouble and expense, what will 100,000 give us? The peace of our country, and its prosperity, and the good of humanity in general, demands of our Government to do away with the old rotten Democratic principle of driving and speculating out of the Indians. Why not settle them down where they are and citizenize them? If they rise in rebellion against us can we blame them? Where is the people that could put up with the abuses that we have heaped upon some of our Indians and not rise up in rebellion, and expressly when instigated and furnished and led on by base Copperheads and rebels.

My wife’s severe and long sickness has disabled me from returning to Minnesota this fall. Having been idle so long and the heavy bills I have had to pay out, with no income, has deprived me of the means to go home this fall, or I would leave to-morrow for my dear troubled State, if I had the means, and shareinher troubles. I shall leave here next week for Prairie du Chien, Wis., and spend the winter there and go up early in the spring. You are at liberty to do with this letter as you see proper. If you see proper to give it to the public press you can do so.

Excuse my ignorance and lack of good spelling.

Your unworthy servant,

Hpgrs. Dist. oF Minnesota, DEPT. OF THE NORTHWEST,