Helen Nicolay

When John first met Chippewa (Ojibway) Indian Chief Hole-in-the-Day at a tense meeting on the banks of the Mississippi River in Crow Wing, the chief was approximately 40 years old, “but looking very young for that age.”

In the summer of 1862, during the height of the Civil War, President Lincoln sent John Nicolay to Minnesota. He was to meet with William P. Dole, a United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs to help negotiate a land cessation deal with Chippewa (formerly known as Ojibwah/Ojibway) tribes in the Red River Valley. The federal government had already made agreements with the Dakota tribes, the traditional enemies of the Chippewa, in land to their immediate south. This decision would put the Union between the two tribes and would have the benefit of expanding United States federal territory.

John Nicolay was to be an observer and, as personal secretary to President Lincoln, represent the United States federal government in the land treaty. He could not have known the Dakota would wage war against the white settlers, even if he was aware Native Americans were being cheated.

Under the treaty Traverse de Sioux and Mendota in 1851, the Dakota sold their rights to their land to the US Government. They ceded some 21 million acres, in exchange for future payments for a tiny fraction of the land’s worth, equaling approximately $0.07 per acre. They were left with narrow strips of land along the Minnesota River where it was agreed they would settle.

Native American tribes discussed the possibility of going to war with the whites, to take back their land and live as they had before the treaty. Since many men among the settlers left their towns in Minnesota to fight for the Union, some among the Dakota believed it would be the best time to wage war.

James H. Baker, Secretary of State in Minnesota, wrote, “A most frightful insurrection of Indians has broken out along our whole frontier. Men, women, and children are indiscriminately murdered, evidently the result of a deep-laid plan, the attacks being simultaneous along our whole border.”

John Nicolay, William Dole and his group were in St. Cloud, Minnesota when they met Chippewa agent, Lucius C. Walker, who told them of the outbreak. They returned to St. Paul and learned from “a surely and truculent chief of the Mississippi Chippewa,” Hole-in-the-Day, that travel to Fort Abercrombie on the Red River and Fort Ripley were dangerously susceptible to attack.

Hole-in-the-Day tried to entice his fellow tribesmen to join the Dakota in driving the white European settlers out of Minnesota. He was unsuccessful in convincing them, but for a time had motivated some to take action.

At Fort Ripley, Dole sent word to Hole-in-the-Day to engage the chief in a peaceful meeting.

John Nicolay writes, “The Indians are in bad temper and the young braves want to fight; but they are poorly armed and have little ammunition, and therefore hesitate. Hole-in-the-Day is a shrewd and intelligent and able diplomatist, and has the counsel and assistance of interested whites.”

It was not until September 10 that year when they finally arranged to hold council in the village of Crow Wing. The meeting was tense. “At noon the Indians appeared, having crossed at the ferry above the village where the Mississippi sweeps round to the northeast. They came on in irregular, straggling groups, chiefs and braves promiscuously intermingled, not following the road but the bank and the beach of the river.

The Chippewa braves and chiefs ambled down into the village and sat, forming a semi-circle on the upper slope of the village, facing the tents, with the white European settlers and soldiers on the opposite slope. “They were scarcely half seated when two or three of them ran up to the river bank and shouted some signal or command in the direction of down the river,” John Nicolay writes.

Hole-in-the-Day stood, with, “the lower half of the face, from the nose down, painted a deep brown, four of five shades darker than his natural color; a touch of white paint directly under each eye; his long black hair plaited, and the plaits wound horizontally, turban-like, round his head; the scalp-lock, say four inches long, tied so as to stand like a spreading, upturned brush, and painted bright vermillion; and three eagle feathers, slanting backward, fastened in his hair.

“He was dressed in a light, striped shirt, a broadcloth frock-coat, an otter-skin trimmed with red, and evidently used to fasten round the throat like a muffler, hanging back over his shoulder; leggings, moccasins, and a gray blanket gathered and held round the waist with his left arm and hand, so as to leave his right free for gesture in speaking…A black leather belt and holster round his waist held a Colt’s navy revolver, and in his hand he carried a wooden war-club, flat and crescent-shaped, with a large round ball at the end.

“Standing erect, walking, moving his arm, with extended forefinger in emphatic gesture, his eye full of fire, and his features full of expressive energy, while he was making his short speech, Hole-in-the-Day was a very model of wild masculine grace—a real forest-prince.

“But the moment he again seated himself on the ground his muscles relaxed, his eyes closed, his face assumed a look of stupid stolidity, and he was once more a gross, repulsive being, with no higher instinct than hunger, and no higher passion than revenge.”

Despite the casual manner of the speakers and calm formality of the meeting, Nicolay writes it was a “critical and dangerous situation.

“There was no hurry, no confusion, no excitement; a holiday gathering could not have shown more apparent carelessness. Quietly, and with scarce audible commands, the soldiers were instructed and posted in the most advantageous positions for defense.

“Two old backwoodsmen, cool and trusty shots, were stationed within a few paces of Hole-in-the-Day, with orders, at the first signs of conflict, to make him their special mark.”

John Nicolay said that despite the seemingly casualness of the meeting, the Indians were just as prepared for attack. “Sitting and lying about in motley groups, their faces striped and spotted with every imaginable hue and device, their blankets slipping down from their naked, bronzed, sinewy arms and busts, they smoked, chatted, and laughed with each other, feeling of the sharp points of their new, bright arrow-heads, and showing one another the fashion, weight, and convenience of their war-clubs with the most provoking sang froid.”

The Chippewa did not get the amnesty nor ten thousand dollars’ worth of goods Hole-in-the-Day was trying to obtain from the federal government, as John Nicolay wrote. Hole-in-the-Day’s people ultimately revolted against the Chippewa chief’s authority and he was eventually murdered. Hole-in-the-Day was navigating between two different worlds and attempting to find a good middle ground.

Helen writes, “My father entertained no sentimental illusions about the North American Indians. He had grown up too near frontier times in Illinois to regard them as other than cruel and savage enemies whose moral code (granted they had one) was different from that of the whites. Yet he recognized in Hole-In-The-Day a man of strong character and marked ability.”