Last Card Played

In Oct. 1892 in the midst of treaty negotiations a native committee appointed by a federal treaty commission becomes the recognized government body of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa ousting the traditional tribal government headed by Chief Little Shell III. The new tribal government known simply as the Committee of Thirty-Two sign a land settlement treaty of which the TMC would get one million dollars for ten million acres no re-enlargement of the existing reservation and thousands of people would be dropped from the tribal rolls. This agreement with the Federal Government would become infamously known as the “10 Cent Treaty of 1892.” In this historical investigation Roland E. Marmon has uncovered a paper trail which implicates the federal government and various tribal representatives who would in cover of secrecy wrest control of the last thing the Turtle Mountain Chippewa held dear and that was the land itself. The questions posed by the newly uncovered evidence will raise even more questions but it will be a rallying cry to understand the real story behind the massive land loss and dispossession of an American tribe.