. >*w f^j <^ THE BA TTLE OF SUGAR POINT Vl Re-Examination •-.X'''1^ William E. Matsen READERS of the New York Times on Thursday, Octo­ Battle of Sugar Point, a disaster for the United States ber 6, 1898, were without doubt shocked by the head­ Army but not, as the subsequent unraveling of events lines on the front page that day—shocked and, for would reveal, the bloodbath conjured up by the Times those old enough, no doubt reminded of similar head­ editors. Sugar Point, occurring nearly eight years after lines 22 years earlier that had announced the Rattle of the Battle of Wounded Knee, was, if not the last battle the Little Big Horn. Temporarily crowding out the by- between army troops and American Indians, certainly then-familiar news from Cuba (where the loss of the one of the very last. And while Brigadier General John Maine was being avenged with proper jingoistic fervor) Mosby Bacon and 77, not 100, members of the United was the news of another Indian battle, seemingly a States Third Infantry had been decisively defeated by a disaster of a magnitude only slightly smaller in scale handful of indignant Ojibway in north-central Minne­ than that suffered by General George A. Custer and sota the previous day. Bacon and most of his force were the unlucky Seventh Cavalry. "Troops Battle with Indi­ still very much alive even as readers gasped over their ans," "Rumored Massacre of One Hundred Soldiers," newspapers. The fate of the troops, however, was still "Fierce Fight with Bear Lake Savages in Minnesota," an open question that morning since, as Major Samuel "General Bacon Dead?" proclaimed the headlines. The D. Sturgis, General Bacon's adjutant in St. Paul, ca­ New York editors might have lacked information, but bled Washington, the "Indians seem to have best posi­ they certainly knew how to attract the attention of tion."^ their readers.' What brought General Bacon and the members of The erroneous headlines and the equally inaccurate the Third Infantry to the shores of Leech Lake, a news stories that accompanied them were about the 109,415-acre body of water about 175 miles north of Minneapolis, was the pursuit of an Indian man who ' The Times referred to the battle site at Leech Lake as seemed determined to avoid contact with a system of being on "Bear Lake" in all of its early accounts of the battle. justice which the good general was obligated to serve. Reporters may have taken this name from Bear Island in Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig (Hole-in-the-Day) was a small, Leech Lake near Sugar Point. Bear Island was the site of the wiry man and "as fine a looking man and fighter as I failed council that preceded the outbreak. ever saw in my life," according to United States Mar­ ' De-Bah-Ji-Mon (monthly newspaper of the Leech Lake Reservation, Cass Lake), July, 1985, p. 1; Louis H. Roddis, shal Robert T. O'Connor who had attempted to secure "The Last Indian Uprising in the United States," Minnesota the Indian's arrest. Later, the news reporters would History Bulletin 3 (February, 1920): 273-290; St. Paul Pio­ neer Press, Oct. 7, 1898. The claim of being the last Indian battle is not uncontested. The site of the battle is currently William Matsen, an instructor in mass communications and known as Battle Point, while a different spot is called Sugar English at Bemidji State University, is pursuing a Ph.D. in Point. English at the University of North Dakota. Fall 1987 269 make him a chief, a tribal leader, and a medicine man, but Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig was, in truth, only a 62-year- old man whose neighbors rose to protect him from what they perceived to be a flagrant misapplication of the whites' law.^ IN APRIL, 1898, Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig had had his first direct experience with the white system of justice when he was arrested and carried to Duluth, slightly over 100 miles to the east. There he had been held on a liquor bootlegging charge and freed only when not enough evidence was found to convict him. Released without any money, he had made his way back to Leech Lake on foot. The trip cost him one pair of well-worn mocca­ sins and apparently left him with one well-founded conviction: not to fall into the grasp of the white judi­ cial system again. That conviction would lead to the brief but bloody confrontation on the shores of Leech Lake on a stormy October day in 1898.* After the battle. Commissioner of Indian Affairs William A. Jones condemned "the frequent arrests of Indians on trivial causes, often for no cause at all, tak­ ing them down to Duluth and Minneapolis for trial, two hundred miles away from their agency, and then turning them adrift without means to return home." The arrest of Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig on bootlegging charges, while it would definitely have the most far- reaching effects, thus was not an isolated event.^ The commissioner also commented on another injus­ tice which loomed in the background: the theft of Leech Lake Reservation pine by logging companies and their agents. On September 25, only ten days before the battle, the "chiefs and headmen of the Pillager band of ' Minneapolis Tribune, Oct. 5, 1898. Bug-0-Nay-Ge- Shig's status as simply an Indian among Indians was one of the few things the New York Times managed to get right in its first account of the battle. At least part of the subsequent confusion may stem from the fact that two 19th-century Ojibway chiefs were named Hole-in-the-Day The first of these, alternately a fighter and peacekeeper, claimed to have consolidated his people's land holdings at the expense of the Dakota. He died in about 1845. The second, his son, contin­ ued to fight the Dakota as he saw necessary, but also spent much time trying to convince the United States government to fulfill its treaty obligations to the Ojibway He was assassi­ nated by dissident Ojibway in 1868; see Mark Diedrich, The Chiefs Hole-in-the-Day oj the Mississippi Chippewa (Minne­ apolis: Coyote Books, 1986), 3, 14, 20, 46-48. Sugar Point's Hole-in-the-Day does not appear to be descended from these men. A further note on names: spellings of both the Ojibway and some of the soldiers' names vary from source to source, as do the first names of some of the federal officials. ' Many accounts place this incident in the winter, but records indicate that it occurred in April; see Roddis, "Last Indian Uprising," 278n8, wherein the date 1895 is most likely a typographical error for 1898. BUG-O-NAY-GE-SHIG on Bear Island, 1897 = New York Times, Oct. 27, 1898. 270 Minnesota History Chippewa Indians of Minnesota" had petitioned Presi­ dent William McKinley for redress on this problem." The immediate cause of the events at Sugar Point, how­ ever, was without doubt Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig's deter­ mination to avoid another senseless journey to, and most probably from, Duluth. On September 15, 1898, an Ojibway named Sha- Boon-Day-Shkong and Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig went to the agency in Onigum, one of the larger Indian villages on Leech Lake, to receive their annuity payments. There they were seized and held as witnesses for yet another bootlegging trial by U.S. Deputy Marshal Robert Morrison and Colonel Arthur M. Tinker, Inspector of Agencies. As the two captives were being led to a boat that would start them on their way to Duluth, Bug-O- Nay-Ge-Shig, speaking in Ojibway, called for assis­ tance from nearby onlookers. In the melee that fol­ lowed, the two captives managed to escape. Although Morrison and Tinker claimed they were set upon by a group of 200 Indians, Ojibway accounts of this incident state the number was much smaller and that the res­ cuers included a large number of women.' One individual who would pay for the assistance he rendered the fleeing captives that day was Bah-Dway- We-Dung, whose English—or "other"—name was George White. As Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig fled past him. White tackled a pursuer. Subsequently, he was named as one of 20 Ojibway charged with aiding the fugitive. GENERAL dOHN M. BACON, probably in the 1890s This incident led the authorities to call for assistance from the army, as it now seemed that Bug-O-Nay-Ge- Shig could not be taken by any means short of military General Bacon's assistance on October 5 because he action. had no orders from a superior officer.' On October 3, a council was to have been held at the THE FIRST response by the military could hardly have Onigum agency to persuade the recalcitrant Bug-O- been less impressive. Twenty soldiers of the Third Regi­ Nay-Ge-Shig, Sha-Boon-Day-Shkong, and their res­ ment United States Infantry from Fort Snelling were cuers to surrender. None of the wanted men attended, dispatched to Walker, the only white settlement on but some of the Onigum Ojibway told the two repre­ Leech Lake, where they arrived on September 30. sentatives of the Office of Indian Affairs, John H. Suth­ These troops, who were under the command of Second erland, agent at White Earth, and Inspector Tinker, Lieutenant Chauncey B. Humphreys, were sent to Oni­ that the weather was too windy for a crossing from the gum and played no part in the events that followed; villages on Bear Island and other points on the east side ultimately, Lt.