Alternatives
The salt spring lands held by the University of Minnesota had a troubled past, plagued by fraud not only by the Belle Plaine Salt Company but by federal, state, and university officials. Yet, there could easily have been a different path. When Wisconsin became a state in 1848 its legislature negotiated with the federal government to forgo claiming any salt spring lands in favor of a second allotment of seventy-two sections for their state university. A decade later, Governor Sibley and the Minnesota legislature could have easily done the same. However, buoyed by false rumors of salt springs and the desire to retain the land for the state itself, they chose not to. Instead, they based their claims on non-existent salt springs, undercutting those claims’ legitimacy.
In addition, while the lands Skinner claimed at his salt springs 1 through 9 were ceded to the federal government in 1851, seven years before Minnesota became a state, the lands around springs 10, 11, and 12 were very different. Those lands were recognized as Ojibwe lands up until the 1855 Treaty of Washington, negotiations that deliberately excluded the leaders of many bands and villages affected by the land cessation. Even then, the Ojibwe leaders present never ceded their full rights to the land, retaining many land use rights including the right to hunt and fish on the land.
Throughout the twelve years between the Treaty of Washington and the establishment of the White Earth Reservation, the only inhabitants of the land around those northern springs were Ojibwe. Although there were no large villages by those springs, several Ojibwe settlements were present. Those people had not left after the 1855 treaty was signed so the land ceding was only on paper, never on the ground. Even state officials during those years continued to refer to it as Indian land. When the White Earth Reservation was formed, its location was chosen specifically because the land had never been claimed by white settlers.
Even by the loose legal standards of the time, the legitimacy of the salt spring land claims was dubious. Those lands had originally been claimed by Skinner based on salt springs that did not exist. Despite repeated requests from the federal government, the state, like the Belle Plaine Salt Company, never provided any evidence of salt at their claimed springs simply because none existed. Furthermore, after the 1858 expedition, Governor Sibley and the state did not follow through on Skinner’s claims, allowing them to expire. Skinner’s stakes and blazes about the springs were lost to winter storms and summer rains and his claims were never surveyed until after the White Earth Reservation was established in 1867.
- When state auditor and land commissioner McIlrath finally attempted to follow up on the salt spring land claims in 1868, he sidestepped the government’s request for proof that the salt springs existed. McIlrath also recognized the eighteen sections around springs 10, 11, and 12 were then legally part of the White Earth Reservation and made no claim to them.
- When Winchell and the university regents (which included now-Regent Sibley) tried to revive the White Earth claims years after they relinquished, they again sidestepped the question of the salt spring land claims legitimacy. They also falsely based their appeal for indemnity lands on the argument that the original claims had been lost through ‘no fault of the state, or of its officers.’ Winchell claimed that ‘The tardiness of the officers of the general government in certifying them to the state is the only cause of the deficit [the lands still due]. Regent Sibley obviously knew those statements were untrue, while Winchell also realized no salt springs were ever present.
- More importantly, the eighteen sections of land at springs 10, 11, and 12 were recognized as being Ojibwe land so the university had no right to claim indemnity acreage for them. Sibley himself, in an earlier December 1, 1858, letter to the General Land Office Commissioner, wrote about those tracts that ‘It will be found that these salt springs with eighteen sections of land adjacent thereto have been selected within the country as yet unceded by the Indian tribe to which it belongs, to the government, as it was necessary so to secure the whole of the twelve salt springs granted to the state. I am aware that the state cannot take possession of these before the extinguishment of the Indian title, but they can be so designated as to inure to the benefit of the state so soon as that event shall take place.’
Sibley’s letter acknowledged Skinner and Bottineau acted as pre-emptors, claiming Ojibwe land on the assumption it would soon be ceded. Instead, those tracts remained Ojibwe land. Even if title temporarily changed in the years after Sibley’s letter, Sibley and the state did not follow through on those pre-emptor claims to legitimize them. In 1867, the United States government formally confirmed those lands as belonging to the Ojibwe. That confirmation occurred a year before the state attempted to claim the original salt spring lands and seven years before the university requested indemnity acreage for the White Earth lands. At the time, Winchell and the regents were trying to take land from the from the federal government, not the Ojibwe. Yet in making their claims, the university regents were engaging in a novel form of land theft. They were invoking a pre-emptory claim long after it was invalidated and claiming Ojibwe land in the form of indemnity acreage.
Laudably, in recent decades, proceeds from the sale of nearly half the indemnity acreage claimed on White Earth land has been dedicated to the support of American Indian Studies and scholarships for Indigenous students. Considering their history, it is only reasonable that the relative worth of the White Earth indemnity lands sold in the 19th century should follow.
As extensively documented in the 2023 TRUTH Report, the University of Minnesota benefited tremendously from the seizure of Indigenous lands. In fact, as a land grant institution, our university might not have come into being without those seized lands. However, the lands Skinner claimed around springs 10, 11, and 12, were fundamentally different from other university land grants. Those eighteen sections of land were never a part of the land grant process but remained Ojibwe lands. While the legality of the University of Minnesota’s 19th century claim of indemnity acreage for White Earth Reservation land is dubious, in retrospect its immorality is certain.
