Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/128

 CHAPTER VIII. INDIAN TROUBLES. Half-Breed Tract — The Location and Purpose — Issue of Scrip — Difficulties Which Ensued — Threats and Recourse to Wash- ington Finally Settle the Matter — Spirit Lake Massacre — Investigation by Red Wing Men — Uprising of 1862. The difficulty in regard to the "Half-breed tract," so called, was a source of much inconvenience to the early settlers in Goodhue county. As has previously been mentioned, the lower hands of Sioux had succeeded in having set off a certain tract of land, lying largely in the present Goodhue county, for the benefit of their half-bloods. There is little doubt that the Indian traders and those in their employ were the chief instruments in having such a reservation made. The persons who would be entitled to share in the tract were at that time chiefly children under age. This land was not laid off into townships and sections by the surveyors until about a year after the other parts of the county had been surveyed. A few settlors, however, had, by permission of some of the relatives of the Indians, settled within the tract. Some had .purchased rights of some mixed bloods and had made a claim accordingly. "When the United States survey was finally made, no attention was paid to previous boundaries, the townships and sections being laid down in the usual order, and in conformity with the adjacent lands. Soon after the land office was opened in Red Wing, a list of the names of all persons entitled to a share in the reserved tract was made out and sent to the general land office in Washington. Scrip was immediately issued to each name, designating the number of acres the person named was entitled to. General Shields brought the scrip to Minnesota for distribution. A great portion of this scrip passed into the hands of parents or guard- ians of children, and from them it passed into the hands of speculators. About this time there were probably two hundred families of whites settled upon this tract. Many of them held quit claims from individual half-breeds for a certain number of acres. But the land office could not recognize the quit claims, 90