When the Graham Committee hearings were published, the affidavits and correspondence were made public. The Indian is supposed to have persuaded Miss Donnell to speak in his favor. One of the Department of Justice officials told me that the case against him was dropped.
We learned that certain educated Indians made a practice of going to these Government schools, calling the pupils into the parlor or the music-room or parade-ground, and transacting business with them.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ROLL. STORIES. RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHITE EARTH
Many years ago the employees at White Earth Agency made a roll of the Chippewa Indians. One would suppose that so important a document as a register of all the Indians would be accurate. But the original roll, as on file at the White Earth office, in 1909, bristled with inaccuracies. For instance, the name Mah-geed is the Ojibwa pronunciation of Maggie. Many of the Indian girls were named Mah-geed by the priests and missionaries. Those who made the Government roll apparently thought that Mah-geed was a distinguished Indian name, so they had entered up quite a number of Mah-geeds. No other name is added.
The Ojibwa name for old woman is Min-de-moi-yen. To the clerks who made the roll this sounded like the name of an Indian, so they solemnly set down many such names. “Young girl” is E-quay-zince. There are a large number of E-quay-zinces in the roll. Yet, mind you, this is the official roll, to which I objected, and to which the Indian Office employees replied that if it was so entered on the roll it must be correct! When Indians are assembled together, if one would call for E-quay-zince or Mah-geed, it would be precisely as if, in an audience of two or three hundred white persons, the speaker should ask for a “young girl” named Mary to come forward, or request that “the lady” come to the platform.
By whom, aside from old Joe Pereault, an illiterate and troublesome French-Canadian, who was employed for some time in the Agent’s office at White Earth, this roll was made, I do not know.
As the roll we found in the Agent’s office in 1909 had been there for years, I have often wondered how the authorities could differentiate between the various Mah-geeds. If annuity money is to be paid an Indian woman, E-quay-zince; what E-quay-zince would receive said payment? And the same is true with reference to Min-de-moi-yen. If on an occasion of great moment all the women of these names should appear at the agency simultaneously, how would the employees be able to deal with them? The spectacle would be amusing, and complicated, to say the least.