The Pembina and Red Lake bands of Chippewa ceded to the United States the Red River Valley of the north in two treaties. Both were named for the treaty site, "Old Crossing" and the year, Treaty of Old Crossing (1863) and the Treaty of Old Crossing (1864). In Minnesota, the ceded territory included all land west of a line running generally southwest from the Lake of the Woods to Thief Lake, about west of Red Lake, and then angling southeast to the headwaters of the Wild Rice River near the divide separating the watersheds of the Red River of the North and the Mississippi River. In North Dakota, the ceded territory was all of the Red River Valley north of the Sheyenne River. In size, the area was roughly east-west and north-south, making it nearly of prairie and forest.
"Old Crossing" on the Red Lake River (today Huot) was approximately southwest of Red Lake Falls. It was a river ford and layover site on the "Pembina" or "Woods" trail, of the Red River Trails between Fort Garry in Rupert's Land and St. Paul, Minnesota.The site at Huot has been known as the "Old Crossing" since well before the treaty negotiations, and is identified with the eastern, or "Woods" branch of the Pembina Trail. Rhoda R. Gilman, Carolyn Gilman & Doborah M. Stultz, The Red River Trails: Oxcart Routes Between St. Paul and the Selkirk Settlement 1820–1870, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, 1979, pages 58–59. A history of Polk County published in 1916 states that Kittson's ox cart trains beginning in 1844, as well as the Woods-Pope expedition of 1849–50, used an earlier "Old Crossing" ford of the Red Lake River near Fisher's Landing, about halfway between the forks of the Red River and the Red Lake River and the "later" crossing at modern Huot. See R.I. Holcombe, ed., Compendium of History and Biography of Polk County, Minnesota, W.G. Bingham & Co., Minneapolis, 1916, pages 47–49. See the Compendium, id. at 49, by 1870 the Fisher's Landing route "seems not to have been much traveled", but the Crow Wing Trail from Pembina to Mendota may originally have crossed there before the Woods Trail was pioneered further east near Huot. Subsequent histories have not pursued the claim of the Compendium that the "Old Crossing Treaty" should have been called the "New Crossing Treaty". Additionally there was another "Old Crossing" on the Red River trails, located on the Ottertail River about southeast of Breckenridge. See Clarence A. Glasrud, ed., Roy Johnson's Red River Valley, Red River Valley Historical Society, Moorhead, Minn. (1982), pages 173–74.
History Prior to 1863, Ojibwe/Chippewa and eastern Dakota or Santee "Sioux" tribes had fought over the Red River Valley. The Ojibwe were the main occupants of the region when the first European fur traders arrived in the late 18th century. Development of the Hudson's Bay Company settlement at Fort Garry established trade with St. Paul. The Red River Trails ran between the two terminus points. This led to American settlement in the flat river valley lands.
The pressure to remove "Indians" from the American portion of the Red River Valley originated with U.S. Army Major Samuel Woods expedition in 1849 to locate a site for a military post. He was instructed to proceed north to Pembina, "to hold conferences with the Indians and learn whether their lands in the Red River Valley might be purchased and opened for white settlement." These instructions came from the Secretary of the Interior, Thomas Ewing. Who, with the approval of President Zachary Taylor, suggested the United States acquire the land for the expansion of agricultural settlement. After locating the site for he future Fort Abercrombie, Major Woods continued downriver to Pembina, where he spent 25 days and met first with Dakota and then the Métis from the Pembina Chippewa band as well as members of the Red River Chippewa reaching no land agreements.
Within weeks of the 1851 Treaty of Mendota and the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux with the Santee Sioux, Governor Ramsey negotiated a separate Treaty with the Pembina and Red Lake Chippewa and Metis (September 20, 1851). In it the Red Lake Band and the Pembina Band of Chippewa signed away rights to over of Red River Valley land extending on each side of the Red River. In the face of opposition from Southern states and to obtain ratification of the Sioux treaties, the Northern sponsors of the Chippewa treaty withdrew their support, causing the Senate to deny confirmation, and the Chippewa land cession failed.
With the introduction of steamboat operations on the Red River and plans for railroad development in Northwest Minnesota, the clamor for development and settlement south of the 49th parallel continued unabated throughout the 1850s. Incursions into Chippewa territory on the part of fur traders and others were common. A major trader and Métis state legislator, Joseph Rolette, founded the settlement of "Douglas" at Old Crossing which was designated by the Legislature as the first county seat of Polk County. The Ojibwe objected to the establishment of a town on their territory, and the Legislature moved the county seat to Crookston, but demands for doing something about the "sullen Chippewa" and their claims to the territory continued to mount and by 1862 had risen to a crescendo.
Following the onset of the southern rebellion, Southern State opposition to expansion of free states ceased. In 1862 railroad interests along with promoters of land development asked the U.S. Government to renew efforts to negotiate a "treaty" with the Ojibwe for the cession of the Red River Valley. The chiefs of the Pembina and the Red Lake bands of were invited to treat near the Grand Forks of the Red Lake River and Red River. The Chippewa leaders encamped at the Old Crossing in mid-August, awaiting the U.S. treaty commission that included President Lincoln's private secretary, John George Nicolay. When hostilities of the Sioux Uprising spread into the Red River Valley, the treaty commission was forced to seek refuge at Fort Abercrombie. Treaty goods and cattle were also taken to the fort for safe keeping, but the Santee Sioux raided all of the livestock. After which Abercrombie was attacked multiple times and endured an extended siege. When the Chippewa leaders were informed of why the treaty didn't happen and where their cattle were they offered to fight the Sioux.From the Red River, The Saint Paul Daily Press, Sept. 6, 1862, Minnesota digital newspaper hub, 2023, MNHS, 345 Kellogg Blvd, St Paul, MN The Indian War, The Saint Paul Daily Press, Sept. 28, 1862, Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub, 2023, MNHS, 345 Kellogg Blvd, St Paul, MN From Fort Abercrombie, The Weekly Pioneer and Democrat, Sept. 12, 1862, p.5, Chronicling America, Library of Congress, 2023, From the Red River, White Cloud Kansas Chief, Sept. 18, 1862, p.2, Chronicling America, Library of Congress, 2023
The fur traders and steamship operators then renewed efforts to have the government acquire the land.
The main negotiator for the United States in the Treaties of Old Crossing was Alexander Ramsey, ex-Governor and made Indian Commissioner in late spring of 1863.
During the weeks leading up the Old Crossing Treaty, Ramsey held negotiations with the Red Lake and Pembina bands. It was not Ramsey's first attempt to obtain cession of the Red River Valley from the Ojibwe. He treated with the Red Lake and Pembina Bands to sign the unratified treaty at Pembina in 1851. That treaty ceded over of of the Red River Valley to the United States for about five cents an acre.
1863 treaty
On September 21, 1863, Ramsey arrived escorted by troops of the 8th Minn. Additionally accompanied by a battery of the 3rd Minn. light Artillery and 90 assorted wagons, 340 mules, 180 horses, and 55 oxen. John Nicolay did not participate in 1863 as he had already departed Washington to represent Lincoln at another treaty signing in Colorado. The Pembina band arrived a couple days after Ramsey, and negotiations ensued. Initially, Ramsey offered $20,000 for a "right of passage", that the Chippewa roundly rejected. Over the next several days, a psychological battle of wills pitted the Ojibwe negotiators, most of whom disclaimed any interest in selling their land, against the impatient Ramsey, who feigned disinterest in acquiring their land and invited a counteroffer. Eventually, on October 2, 1863, Ramsey and his co-commissioner, Ashley C. Morril, induced the chiefs, headmen and warriors of the Pembina Band and Red Lake Band to sign the Treaty of Old Crossing (1863).
The United States treaty negotiators had overtly misrepresented the purpose and effect of the proposed treaty as merely conveying a "right of passage" over the Ojibwe lands to the United States. The United States intention to bring in settlers as well as the railroad had been an established policy for years, as was plainly stated in newspapers and governmental reports of the time. Governor Ramsey's journal of the treaty negotiations contained his speech to the assembled Ojibwe in which he, as a trained lawyer and experienced politician and Indian negotiator, directly misrepresented the purpose and intent of the treaty:
Now, there is growing up a trade of considerable importance between the British settlements on the north and the American settlements on the south. ... Now, this is a trade which cannot and must not be interrupted. And their Great Father, feeling this, and desirous to prevent any trouble between his white and red people, has sent us here to come to some understanding with you about it. Their Great Father has no especial desire to get possession of their lands. He does not want their lands at all if they do not want to part with them. He has more land now than he knows what to do with. He simply wishes that his people should enjoy the privilege of traveling through their country on steamboats and wagons unmolested
Even after the initial proposal for a mere right of way was rejected, he was representing that if they sold their land, the Ojibwe could still occupy it and hunt on it for a long time.
The text of the treaty presented by Ramsey and Morril in fact ceded Ojibwe control and ownership of all of the territory (Article 2) to the United States, while "compensating" the signing bands with annuity payments of $20,000 per year to be divided up and paid to individual members of the two bands over a period of twenty years (Article 3). It provided a mechanism for non-Indian claims against the signatory Ojibwe bands to be reviewed by a commission appointed by the President of the United States in consultation with the Ojibwe bands, and appropriated $100,000 to be used to pay claims of individuals (whites) for past Indian wrongs, while relieving the Red Lake Band and Pembina Band of the threat of "punishment for past offenses". (Article 4). It left the "chiefs" of two of the bands with "reservations" consisting of 640 acres (one square mile) each (Article 9) and provided other direct inducements to the "chiefs" in the form of direct cash payments (Article 5). In lieu of annuity payments, it also provided for payment to the Métis or "half-breed" relatives of the Chippewa (Ojibwe) who were citizens of the United States the right to obtain scrip entitling the holder to claim anywhere within the ceded territory or elsewhere that was opened up for homestead by the United States (Article 8).
1863 treaty signatory representatives