Hole in the Day

[citation needed] In 1847 Hole-in-the-Day succeeded his father, Hole in the Day (senior), as head chief of the Mississippi Band of the Ojibwe in central Minnesota.

[3] Late in the fall of 1885, the ex-Secretary of War and ex-governor, Ramsey escorted the son of Hole in the Day and Ellen to Washington D.C. as Minnesota's candidate to West Point.

[4] Very early in the Dakota War of 1862, Hole-in-the-Day spoke out in favor of joining forces with the Mdewakanton to drive European settlers from Minnesota.

[5] To encourage other Chippewa to join him, Hole-in-the-Day spread a rumor that the Union Army was drafting Ojibwe men to fight in the ongoing Civil War.

[6] Largely in reaction to this rumor and war mongering, a group of Leech Lake Pillager band burned the Indian Agency in Walker, Minnesota, took prisoners, and went to Crow Wing.

Also at that time Crow Wing, Minnesota citizens used alcohol to get the bi-racial Chippewa intoxicated and sign papers as substitutes to fight in the Civil War.

[13] However, war Chief Mou-Zoo-Mau-Nee (Iron-Walker) and 200 Mille Lacs warriors remained to protect the fort as did 100 from the Sandy Lake band.

Both the Sandy Lake and Mille Lacs bands gained "non-removal" designations from the United States Federal Government as a result.

[13] When no one else could reach him, Roman Catholic priest and missionary Father Francis Xavier Pierz entered Hole in the Day's camp at great personal risk and convinced the Chief to call off the attempted uprising, to go with him to Crow Wing, and sign a peace agreement with the United States Federal Government.

St Paul's two photo studios made images of many of Chippewa leaders that came to the Capitol in 1862, including Hole-in-the-Day's, that are now in the Minnesota Historical Society archives.

He repeated what the Indian agent had told them at Fort Ripley, that the Mille Lacs Band could stay on their reservation for 1,000 years for their actions in support of the Government.

[24] In July, 1863 the Senators, united in their dislike for Pope, requested that Secretary of War Stanton authorize an independent mounted Indian Battalion of Minnesota Volunteers consisting of the 1000 Chippewa "auxiliaries".

[32] Despite his efforts the Red Lake band held a low opinion of Hole in the Day and made it known at their September 1863 treaty signing.

They were several miles from his home and were on the way to Washington, D.C., where the Chief intended to renegotiate the terms of the treaty regarding the Ojibwe migration to the new White Earth Indian Reservation.

In the meantime, Hole-in-the-Day had issued orders that no Ojibwe were to move to White Earth until the U.S. Government actually built everything on the Reservation that had been promised in the previous Treaty.

Near the Crow Wing Agency, the Chief found the road obstructed by a group of twelve armed men from the Pillager Band.

Only Ojibwe's warning of the dangers of kidnapping a "White woman" prevented the Pillagers from abducting Ellen McCarthy; the youngest of the Chief's wives.

[37][38] In an interview on White Earth during the 1920s, an elderly Catholic Ojibwe recalled that the men who had secretly hired the Pillager Band assassins pretended at the time to be very scandalized by Fr.

[39] According to Ojibwe author and historian Anton Treuer, the oral tradition passed down among Hole-in-the-Day's extended family is that the Chief's non-Catholic relatives objected to Ignatius' choice of burial, secretly dug up and removed the Chief's body, and reburied him according to traditional Ojibwe rites at a secret location near the town of White Earth.

In 1911, the surviving assassins testified and confirmed longstanding suspicions that the 1868 murder of Chief Hole-in-the-Day had been a contract killing: they had been hired by a group of mobbed up Métis businessmen, fur traders, and illegal whiskey peddlers led by Allan Morrison and Clement Hudon Beaulieu, the Democratic Party's political boss of the region of Minnesota where Crow Wing was located.

Similarly to both the rackrenting Anglo-Irish landlords of the same era and the many other robber barons like them during America's Gilded Age, Beaulieu and the other conspirators then abused the power of their positions to enrich themselves and their families, while systematically defrauding and impoverishing everyone else on White Earth.