Mille Lacs Band made with the United States and British representatives over the decades. The Ojibwe also suffered because of new infectious diseases, which killed many. By the end of the nineteenth century, only a few hundred Ojibwe remained on the Mille Lacs Indian Reservation. At that time, pressing for assimilation, the United States government prohibited the Ojibwe from practicing their religion (many had converted to Catholicism but still combined it with traditional prayers and rituals), tried to have their children sent to boarding schools at which they were forced to learn and speak English, and virtually denied their right to govern themselves. Their traditional way of life was nearly impossible to follow. When the Sioux hostilities broke out in 1862 Chief Hole in the Day made threats to take the north to war too. Chief Mou-zoo-mau-nee of the Mille Lacs Band sent 300 warriors to the Fort Ripley to aid in its defense. On September 8, 1862 a Mille Lacs Band Chief with 75 warriors was met and stopped at Watab, Minnesota just north of St Cloud, Minnesota. They wanted to join the government forces fighting the Sioux. Fort Ripley was informed and Capt. Hall invited the Chippewa to come to the fort as guests of the State to await a decision on their offer. The week before the Fond Du Lac band sent a letter to Gov. Ramsey to forward to president Lincoln offering to fight the Sioux. In 1863 and 1864 the Mille Lacs Band signed two treaties that acknowledged their actions and made the tribe "un-removable" from their reservation as well as made the reservation boundaries permanent. The State erected a large monument to the Chief and the Mille Lacs band at Fort Ridgely cemetery in 1914 for their service to the State. Over the next century, Ojibwe bands in the Mille Lacs region struggled with poverty and despair. With the passage of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, the bands of the Mille Lacs region joined five others in forming the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, organized 1934-1936. The four historical bands in the Mille Lacs region (Mille Lacs Indians, Sandy Lake Band, Rice Lake Band of Mississippi Chippewa, and Snake and Kettle River Bands of St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Minnesota) were reorganized as the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. In the early 1990s, the Band opened Grand Casino Mille Lacs and Grand Casino Hinckley. Since then,