Porter James McCumber (February 3, 1858 – May 18, 1933) was a United States senator from North Dakota.

[1] In his youth, he reportedly worked as a grain stacker on the farm of George Worner, near Great Bend.

In an effort to resolve disputes over hunting territory, in 1858 the Ojibwe and Dakotas, with the assistance of U.S. negotiators, agreed to the "Sweet Corn Treaty", defining their respective lands.

Two years later, the federal government, pressured by people who wished to settle there, entered into negotiations with the Pembina and the Red Lake Ojibwe.

[5] In 1863, the United States signed The Old Crossing Treaty with the Red Lake and Pembina Bands of Chippewa who ceded several thousand acres of Indian lands near the Red River of the North to the United States government in exchange for a nominal amount of money to be paid to the Ojibwe.

By 1875, the Government had compelled a substantial part of the Pembinas, on threat of loss of their annuities from the 1863 cession, to move from the unceded portion to the White Earth reservation in Minnesota.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1922, having been defeated in the Republican primary by former governor Lynn Frazier.

[12] McCumber was Woodrow Wilson's staunchest Republican supporter in the Senate for the League of Nations.

[13] McCumber resumed the practice of law in Washington, D.C., and was appointed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925 as a member of the International Joint Commission to pass upon all cases involving the use of the boundary waters between the United States and Canada.