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Treaty

Chippewa (Red Lake and Pembina) at Old Crossing, Red Lake River, Minnesota (1863)

The 1863 Old Crossing treaty had the Red Lake and Pembina Chippewa cede land in Minnesota and Dakota Territory for $20,000 yearly.

Signed
October 2, 1863
Senate
Ratified
Land given up
about 9.8 million acres
Land set aside for the nations
about 3.7 million acres
The land in this treaty’s record. Open on the map

What happened

On October 2, 1863, at Old Crossing on the Red Lake River, commissioners Alexander Ramsey and Ashley C. Morrill signed a treaty with chiefs, headmen and warriors of the Red Lake and Pembina bands of Chippewa. The bands ceded all their right, title and interest in lands they claimed in Minnesota and Dakota Territory, within boundaries starting at the Lake of the Woods.

The United States agreed to pay $20,000 a year for twenty years, with up to $5,000 yearly held for farming, education and goods. It also set aside $100,000 to pay for "depredations" on traders and for exactions levied on a steamboat company on the Red River, and to help the bands pay their debts. The treaty granted homesteads of 160 acres to adult mixed-blood men who met its conditions, and 640-acre tracts for chiefs Moose Dung and Red Bear.

An 1899 Supreme Court case, Jones v. Meehan, concerned title to the Moose Dung tract. The OSU treaty database lists ratification on March 1, 1864.

Summarized with AI assistance from 3 sources and checked against their words; not yet reviewed by historians or by the nations. Report an error

What the sources say, and how this was checked

Well supported by the sources below.

  1. Twenty thousand dollars per annum for twenty yearsTribal Treaties Database (Oklahoma State University): Treaty with the Chippewa-Red Lake and Pembina Bands, 1863
  2. to enable them to pay their just debts, the United States agree to appropriate the sum of one hundred thousand dollarsTribal Treaties Database (Oklahoma State University): Treaty with the Chippewa-Red Lake and Pembina Bands, 1863
  3. reservation of six hundred and forty acres near the mouth of the Thief river for the chief Moose DungJones v. Meehan, 175 U.S. 1 (1899) (Cornell LII)

Research notes. The treaty text states no acreage for the land ceded. Jones v. Meehan is cited only to show that it concerned the Moose Dung tract; its holding is not summarized here.

What the treaty did to the land

About 9.8 million acres given up. about 3.7 million acres recognized, kept or set aside for the nations. Each shape is a numbered area in the federal government’s 1899 record of land cessions.

What happened next

Everything the record holds about this land and this treaty, in order: what earlier agreements said, what this one did, and what the United States, the courts and the nations did afterwards.

  1. 1863

    This treaty

    About 9.8 million acres ceded to the United States by the Chippewa (Red Lake and Pembina bands). About 3.7 million acres set aside as a reservation for the Chippewa (Red Lake and Pembina bands)

    The 1863 Old Crossing treaty had the Red Lake and Pembina Chippewa cede land in Minnesota and Dakota Territory for $20,000 yearly.

  2. 1899

    In court

    Jones v. Meehan

    A treaty can itself grant individual land in fee to a chief, with no later act of Congress or patent, the Court held.

The law behind it

The legal ideas behind the decisions, and related records without a date. Court cases and laws with a date are in what happened next, above.

  • Legal doctrine

    canons of construction

    Courts read ambiguous treaties in favor of tribes and as the Indians would have understood them, rules the Supreme Court has repeated for more than a century.

  • Legal doctrine

    indian title

    Indian title is a tribe's right to occupy land, which only the United States may extinguish; courts enforce it through the Nonintercourse Act.

Who is doing the work today

The nations connected to this treaty come first, then groups returning land and defending treaty rights. Support goes directly to them.

This history belongs to living nations. Start with them:

Working with these nations

Native legal and land defense, nationally

Gifts go straight to each organization; this atlas takes nothing. Listing is not endorsement: how organizations are listed.

Sources

  1. treaties.okstate.edu/treaties/treaty-with-the-chippewa-red-lake-and-pembina-bands-1863-085reference work
    Treaty with the Chippewa-Red Lake and Pembina Bands, 1863 Oct. 2, 1863.| 13 Stats., 667.

Shapes are approximate and are not legal descriptions of land, title or jurisdiction.