Sandy Lake Tragedy
By changing the location for fall annuity payments, the officials intended the Chippewa to stay at the new site for the winter, hoping to lower their resistance to relocation.
Due to delayed and inadequate payments of annuities and lack of promised supplies, about 400 Ojibwe, mostly men[1] and 12% of the tribe, died of disease, starvation and cold.
By the 17th century, the Ojibwe nation occupied much of the Lake Superior region, from east to west, in modern-day Ontario of Canada, and Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota of the United States.
High-ranking officials in President Zachary Taylor's administration planned an unlawful and unconstitutional removal of the Ojibwe,[3] breaking multiple treaties in the process.
[3] The policy was planned by Secretary of Interior Thomas Ewing, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Orlando Brown, Minnesota Territory Governor Alexander Ramsey and Sub-Agent John Watrous.
[1] To force the Ojibwe west of the Mississippi, Brown directed the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to change the site of the fall payment of annual annuities and provision of supplies.
The BIA notified the people that rather than this annuity rendezvous being held at La Pointe, Wisconsin, the economic and spiritual center of the nation, as was common, it would be moved to a sub-agency at the more isolated trade-hub location of Sandy Lake.
[1] Officials in favor of relocation knew that the Chippewa would then be spending their annuity payments in Minnesota (west of the Mississippi River) rather than in Wisconsin, and thus benefit the local and regional patronage system.
In the fall of 1850, representatives from 19 Ojibwe bands packed up and started the arduous journey to the shores of Sandy Lake, where they had been told to gather by late October.
[4] As a result of this tragedy, the Lake Superior Chippewa bands under the leadership of Chief Buffalo of La Pointe, pressed President Millard Fillmore to cancel the removal order.
During the three years following the Sandy Lake events, Chief Buffalo negotiated hard and became a proponent for permanent reservations in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Because the action was illegally taken under the Indian Removal Act, although it had officially ended, Chief Bagonegiizhig of the Gull Lake Band negotiated hard with the BIA to restore these groups to Wisconsin.
