Destruction of Bois Forte Ojibwe Homeland, 1891–1929

Creator: William Millikan

Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Camp 39, about one mile north of Echo Lake, ca. 1916. Visible are the root house (in the foreground, next to the office) and the filling shack.

From 1890 to 1910, timber speculators and lumbermen patented most of the valuable pine lands in north-central Minnesota—the homeland of the Bois Forte Ojibwe. By the 1920s, dams and deforestation had so damaged the landscape that it could no longer support the tribe’s subsistence economy, and its members were forced onto their reservation at Nett Lake.

On April 7, 1866, the Bois Forte Ojibwe signed a treaty that transferred two million acres of their homeland (between Lake Vermillion and the Canadian border) to the United States. They continued, however, to live on and harvest the natural resources of their original territory.

In 1892, Congress extended the provisions of the Timber and Stone Act to Minnesota, allowing any individual to purchase 160 acres of white pine for only $2.50 an acre. Citizens of Tower and Duluth realized that the best tracts would be worth ten times that, and a flood of land speculation swept the area.

Wirt Cook, a Duluth timber speculator, organized expeditions to the Bois Forte area to select the best white pine. He and other lumbermen fronted the $400 price for 160 acres. In a scheme later denounced as bribery by the Duluth Evening Herald, they then paid entry men and women $50 to $100 for each timber and stone patent, and within ten years, lumbermen had patented hundreds of claims. But with no means of bringing the timber to market, they remained absentee landlords, and most of the Bois Forte Ojibwe continued to subsist on their ancestral lands.

Duluth land agent Charles H. Maginnis realized that he could buy land certificates given to Spanish American War veterans as a bonus for service. He could then sell these soldiers’ additional homesteads (SAHs) cheaply and easily. He carefully selected his pine lands in townships that had already attracted the attention of lumbermen; to the north and northeast of Pelican Lake, he used over 450 SAHs to patent Bois Forte lands.

Maginnis sold much of his land to Cook and to timber dealers Turrish and Daniels. In August of 1901 Cook decided to begin harvesting his vast timber holdings north of Virginia. Turrish and Daniels, meanwhile, incorporated the Virginia and Rainy Lake Railroad (V&RL) and began laying track north towards the forest. To process the logs into lumber they also constructed a lumber mill on Silver Lake in Virginia. The mill would turn out 300,000 board feet of pine a day.

A year later Cook formed a partnership with St. Croix lumberman William O’Brien. Their Minnesota Land and Construction Company expanded the Virginia mill and started cutting pine on their holdings. In 1905 they incorporated the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company, and the railroad crept into the southern part of the forest.

Lumber companies associated with the Frederick Weyerhaeuser cartel were also buying timber lands in the area. Many of the SAHs patented by Maginnis were sold and resold until they were purchased by the Weyerhaeuser cartel. By 1909, Weyerhaeuser companies had bought up nearly a quarter of Maginnis’s Bois Forte SAHs.

Lumberman Edward Hines of Chicago then proposed a consolidation of all the timber interests north and northeast of Pelican Lake. He and the Weyerhaeuser companies combined with Cook to expand the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company. Hines provided the cash to double the size of the Virginia mill while Cook and Weyerhaeuser contributed close to 2 million dollars of timber.

With the railroad running north of Pelican Lake and the largest white pine lumber mill in the world ready to process over a million board feet of logs a day, the Bois Forte forests were under attack. Although the 1866 treaty had reserved 55,211 acres for the Bois Forte Ojibwe at Nett Lake, as late as 1910, they still occupied 100 percent of their homeland.

The Virginia and Rainy Lake Company completed its logging headquarters at Cusson on land originally homesteaded by Jacob Kieffer. Logging Superintendent Frank Gilmore quickly set up the first logging camp on land patented by Maginnis with Missouri militiaman James R. Laurance’s SAH. Edward Hines, now president of the company, decided to clear cut all timber wherever it was logged. Within two years, his crews had cut 18 million board feet. Meanwhile, hunters on the company’s payroll depleted wild game to feed the loggers.

By the late 1910s, the Bois Forte land was stripped of timber, and dams built to facilitate logging had destroyed the vast wild rice beds of the Rainy Lake watershed. Gradually, the local Ojibwe moved to the Nett Lake reservation; V&RL continued logging until 1929.

Cite

Millikan, William. "Destruction of Bois Forte Ojibwe Homeland, 1891–1929." MNopedia, Minnesota Historical Society. https://www3.mnhs.org/mnopedia/search/index/event/destruction-bois-forte-ojibwe-homeland-1891-1929

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First Published: December 04, 2019

Last Modified: April 09, 2025

Bibliography

Database of homesteads and soldiers’ additional homesteads patented on Bois Forte
lands and eventually logged by the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company. Personal collection of the author, 2019.

“Decided By Bliss: Numerous Duluth Land Cases Are Settled.” Duluth Evening Herald, May 4, 1897.

Duluth Land District records
US General Land Office
State Archives Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: See the following series: Abstract of Preemption Declaratory Statements, 1857–1898; Abstract of Soldiers’ Additional Homestead Declaratory Statements, 1890-1907; Abstract of Timber and Stone Declaratory Statements, 1892–1908; Correspondence: letters received from Government Land Office, 1858–1908; Register of Certificates to Purchasers, 1857–1908; Register of Final Homestead Certificates, 1868–1908; and Register of Homestead entries, 1863–1908.
http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/glo002.pdf

Eichholz, Duane W. “Virginia and Rainy Lake Logging Company.” Typescript, University of Minnesota Duluth, 1954. Available at the Minnesota Historical Society Library as HD9759.V46 E32 1954.

P2334
Frank H. Gillmor papers, 1910–28, 1948
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Business records kept by Gillmor as superintendent of logging for the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company (1910–1928); and correspondence (1948) with the Forest Products History Foundation, St. Paul, Minnesota (now the American Forest History Foundation) about forest products industries. There are data on costs of food, equipment, and labor, and the management of timberlands for logging.

Hidy, Ralph W., Frank Ernest Hill, and Allan Nevins. Timber and Men: the Weyerhaeuser Story. New York: Macmillan, 1963.

Indian Claims Commission. Docket No. 18-D. Final Award, January 28, 1977.
https://cdm17279.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17279coll10/id/1154/rec/1

Indian Claims Commission. Docket No. 18-D, Interlocutory Order, June 13, 1974.
https://cdm17279.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17279coll10/id/1746/rec/1

Indian Claims Commission. Docket No. 18-D, Opinion of the Commission, January 28, 1977.
https://cdm17279.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p17279coll10/id/1190/rec/1

Johnson–Wentworth Company corporate records, 1894–1937
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Minutes (1894–1914), stock and accounting records (1894–1937), annual financial and inventory reports (1903–1931), and land and timber descriptions (undated) of the Johnson–Wentworth Company, a Weyerhaeuser operation jointly owned by the Northern Lumber Company and the Cloquet Lumber Company.

King, Frank A. Minnesota Logging Railroads. San Marino, CA: Golden West Books, 1981.

Kohlmeyer, Fred W. Timber Roots: The Laird Norton Story, 1855–1905. Winona, MN: Winona County Historical Society, 1972.

Laird, Norton Company corporate records, 1855–1958
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Records of, and information about, a family-owned, Winona-based lumber company. Includes records of more than 75 associated logging, lumber, land, colonization, and other companies active in states from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa to Louisiana and the Pacific Northwest.
http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00331.xml

“Land Cases Decided” and “Estimate the Value: Real Estate Dealers Give Testimony on Value of Railroad Lands.” Duluth Evening Herald, July 20, 1898.

Lewis James G. “Biographical Portrait of Edward Hines (1863–1931).” Forest History Today (Spring/Fall 2004): 64–65.
https://foresthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2004-Bio-portrait-Edward-Hines.pdf

Minnesota Attorney General’s case files concerning international boundary flowage, 1908–1942
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Description: Correspondence, printed reports, legal documents, land tables and descriptions, maps, photographs, and other materials relating to several suits brought by the state of Minnesota and private parties against the Minnesota and Ontario Power Company, its successor the Minnesota and Ontario Paper Company, and the Rainy River Improvement Company for land damage due to flooding along the Rainy River.

Laura Jane Musser and family papers, 1842–1989
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Personal papers documenting the careers and interests of Laura Jane Musser; her parents, Richard Drew and Sarah Walker Musser; her sisters, Alice and Mary; and related families.
http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00355.xml

Northern Lumber Company and affiliated companies records, 1882–1967
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Minutes, stock records, accounting records, and other financial information documenting the logging, lumbering, waterpower, river improvement, railroading, general merchandising, and related operations of the Northern Lumber Company (1896–1945) and several affiliated companies operating in northern Minnesota.
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Nute, Grace Lee. Rainy River Country. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1950.

Plat Book of St. Louis County, Minn. Rockford, IL: W. W. Hixon, 1916.

Potlatch Timber Company records, 1884–1934
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“Red Blanket Protests: Chippewa Chief Complains to Governor Van Sant That the White Timber Cutters Are Defrauding the Indians.” Duluth Evening Herald, April 3, 1901.

Richner, Jeffrey. People of the Thick Fur Woods: Two Hundred Years of Bois Forte Chippewa Occupation of the Voyageurs National Park Area. Lincoln, NE: US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, and the Midwest Archeological Center, 2002.

“Some Land Decisions: One By the Secretary and Several Local Rulings.” Duluth Evening Herald, December 7, 1897.

“Trouble Is in Prospect: Squatters and Stone and Timber Men Ready to Fight.” Duluth Evening Herald, August 5, 1893.

“Trouble Likely: Timber and Stone Abuses Being Thoroughly Investigated.” Duluth Evening Herald, December 5, 1902.

United States Treaty with the Bois Forte Ojibwe, April 7, 1866. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1867.

Virginia and Rainy Lake Company records, 1905–1965
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Minutes (1905–1939), maps and plat books, deeds, abstracts, and title and tax records of a lumber company operating in Saint Louis and Koochiching counties of northern Minnesota. There are also a minute book (1910–1926), a stock certificate book (1910), and a plat book (1911) of the St. Croix Lumber and Manufacturing Company (Winton, Minn.).

F. Weyerhaeuser and Company records, 1892–1955
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Correspondence (1902–1934); agreements, contracts, and other land and legal papers (1895–1903); annual statements (1895–1934); log accounts (1892–1905); tax records (1923–1938); articles of incorporation (1901); and other papers of [Frederick] Weyerhaeuser and Company and associated lumbering and lumber products companies.
http://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/01186.pdf

Related Resources

Primary

F. W. Bonness and Company records, 1873–1909
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Correspondence, financial records, deeds, wage records, contracts and other business records of several lumbering and logging concerns that operated in Aitkin, Cass, and Crow Wing counties in northern Minnesota.

Albert J. and George A. Lammers papers, 1859–1920
Manuscripts Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: Correspondence, deeds, legal papers, minutes, financial records, and miscellany relating to the mining, lumbering, land, and other business ventures of the Lammers brothers of Stillwater, Washington County (Minn.).

OH 108
The Vermilion Lake People: Vermilion Lake Bois Forte Ojibwe Oral History Project
Oral History Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul
Description: These oral history interviews were conducted for a project entitled “The Vermilion Lake People,” commissioned by the Bois Forte Heritage Center. Those interviewed discuss various aspects of the history of and life on the Bois Fort Reservation in northeastern Minnesota, including childhood, education, work, social customs, and economic and social conditions.
http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display?irn=10469064

Secondary

Gates, Paul W. The History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1968.

Griffin, Jane Geldes, ed. “Rainy River Homesteader: The Letters of Frank M. Geddes.” Minnesota History 41, no. 2 (Summer 1968): 61–75.
http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/41/v41i02p061-075.pdf

Larson, Agnes M. The White Pine Industry in Minnesota: A History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007.

Mickelson, Peter. “Nationalism in Minnesota During the Spanish American War.” Minnesota History 41, no. 1 (Spring 1968): 1–12.
http://collections.mnhs.org/MNHistoryMagazine/articles/41/v41i01p001-012.pdf

Trask, David F. The War with Spain in 1898. New York: Macmillan, 1981.

Van Brunt, Walter. Duluth and St. Louis County, Minnesota: Their Story and People. Chicago: American Historical Society, 1921.

“The Virginia and Rainy Lake Company: Virginia, Minnesota.” Typescript. Brooklyn: Albertype, 1924. Available at the Minnesota Historical Society Library as HD9757.M6 S23 1924.

Related Images

Camp for workers laying tracks for the Virginia and Rainy Lake Railway north of Virginia, 1902.

Virginia and Rainy Lake Mill, Virginia, ca. 1910.

Virginia and Rainy Lake Company locomotive, ca. 1915.

Wigwam on Nett Lake Reservation of Ojibwe, 1918.

Ojibwe children at their home near the head of Pelican Lake (outside the Nett Lake Reservation), 1918.

Nett Lake Reservation of Ojibwe, ca. 1920.

Gappa Landing, on Lake Kabetogama, Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company, ca. 1920.

A sleigh load of white pine logs about to be tripped, Virginia and Rainy Lake Company, ca. 1920.

Hoist Bay, Namakan Lake where the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company loaded its logs, ca. 1920.

Winter in Cusson, St. Louis County, Minnesota, 1927.

Logging tracks laid through the pine forest by the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company, ca. 1928.

Skidding white pine logs with drays. Virginia and Rainy Lake County, Virginia, Minnesota, ca. 1928.

Lumberjacks fell a white pine, the “Monarch of the Forest,” for the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company, ca. 1928.

http://collections.mnhs.org/cms/display?irn=10813698

Minnesota Public School Fund

The Ojibwe: Our Historical Role in Influencing Contemporary Minnesota

Voyageurs National Park

Franz Jevne State Park

Superior National Forest

Vermilion Iron Range

Paul Bunyan (folklore character)

Turning Point

In 1910, Edward Hines decides that the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company will clear cut the pine lands of the Bois Forte Ojibwe. In the same year, the International Lumber Company finishes construction of a dam that will destroy the vast wild rice beds along the northern border lakes.

Chronology

1866

The United States signs a treaty with the Bois Forte Chippewa (Ojibwe) that acquires their land in north central Minnesota. It pays them 4 cents an acre. The Ojibwe ignore the treaty and continue to live their traditional life in their homeland.

1872

Congress awards Soldiers’ Additional Homesteads to veterans of the Civil War. Each soldier or his heir will receive additional public land to increase his homestead to 160 acres.

1873

Congress makes the rights to Soldiers’ Additional Homesteads transferable and drops the necessity of improvements or residence. Almost all soldiers sell their right to timber speculators, who use them exclusively to buy land in northern Minnesota.

1878

Congress passes the Timber and Stone Act to slow down the fraudulent use of the Homestead Act to obtain timber lands. Any individual can buy 160 acres of timber or mineral land for $2.50 an acre for his or her use only.

1891

United States surveyors reach the Pelican Lake area north of Virginia. Thirty-five squatters are already claiming the best white pine groves in Township 66, Range 19. All but three of them abandon or sell their claims within a few years.

1892

The Timber and Stone Act is extended to include Minnesota. Over 1.4 million acres of Minnesota timber is patented under the Act. Duluth lumberman Wirt Cook uses dummy entry men and women to buy up white pine lands in the Bois Forte region.

1898

The Spanish–American war breaks out. Minnesota supplies 8,498 soldiers to fight in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. United States veterans of the war receive Soldiers’ Additional Homesteads that they can sell to anyone.

1900

Duluth land speculator Charles H. Maginnis patents his first Soldiers’ Additional Homestead in the Bois Forte region. In the next decade he will buy close to 1,000 Additional Homesteads and locate 493 of them on Bois Forte lands.

1901

Wirt Cook and timber speculator Henry Turrish incorporate the Virginia and Rainy Lake Railroad. Construction begins from their lumber mill in Virginia and runs north toward the forests of the Bois Forte area..

1905

Cook and Marine-on-St-Croix lumberman William O’Brien form the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company. The sawmill in Virginia is expanded to produce 500,000 board feet of lumber a day. Construction of the railroad reaches Cook, Minnesota.

1908

Lumberman Edward Hines of Chicago and the Weyerhaeuser interests combine with the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company. The capacity of the Virginia sawmill is doubled to handle the clear cutting of the Bois Forte lands.

1910

The company town of Cusson is built along the railroad just north of Pelican Lake to serve as a headquarters for the Virginia and Rainy lake Company. Over 18 million board feet of white pine logs is clear cut from the area in the first year of operation.

1910

MANDO (the Minnesota and Ontario Paper Company) completes a power dam at International Falls to power the paper mills and raise the water levels on Rainy Lake. The fluctuating water levels destroy the wild rice beds of the Bois Forte region.

1914

A dam at Kettle Falls raises the water levels of Lake Kabetogama and Lake Namakan, flooding and destroying vast beds of wild rice. The Virginia and Rainy Lake Company cuts logs and floats them to Hoist Bay, where it loads them onto rail cars.

1929

The Virginia and Rainy Lake Company shuts down its operations in Northern Minnesota. Over 400,00 acres of white pine have been clear cut. They ecology that has sustained the Bois Forte region has been destroyed.