October 2 is the anniversary of the signing of The Treaty of Old Crossing in 1863. This day saw the Ojibwe people sell off all their land to the USA for a pittance.

White people in Minnesota were becoming increasingly upset at the presence of native people. The recent Dakota War, which I wrote about earlier, had put the fear into them. So at the request of the white settlers, the government stepped in to remove the Ojibwe people as well.

The negotiator they selected was Alexender Ramsey, the former governor of Minnesota during the Dakota war. During his time in office, he had oversaw the rounding up of Dakota into concentration camps, their mass executions, and he personally established a bounty on the scalp of every Dakota after the war.

So Ramsey came to the meeting with a gatling gun and negotiated with the local tribes for days at gunpoint. He presented the deal as payment of $20,000 to the tribes in order to secure safe passage through their lands. The tribes didn’t see much point in refusing the deal, as they would take what they wanted anyway, and they would still get to keep their land.

Of course, once the treaty went to Washington, it was rewritten as a sale of the land. The US regime found other people to sign it, some of them not actually even native. The tribes were surprised to discover that their homes were now alloted for white people, and they were forced out of the state. Bishop Whipple, who acted as unpaid council for the tribes said it was “from beginning to end a fraud”. He was powerless to stop it. The US considered the land rightfully theirs.

Today, Minnesota has a native population of less than 1%. The US courts have admitted that the land was stolen, but only agreed to pay a paltry $54m. The Red Lake Historical Society has this whitewashing to say about today’s events:

Thus the Red Lake and Pembina bands of the Chippewa Indians ceded to the United States of America that most wonderful and fertile land that became known as the “bread and butter basket” of the nation, making it possible for thousands of families to acquire homes.