Algonkian Church History

Who Taught the Stockbridge Indians to Moon?

2012-01-31T18:42:00.012-06:00

Yes, you read that title correctly, if you were thinking of "Mooning" as the pulling down of one's pants to expose one's butt as an intended insult.

William Kellaway's book, The New England Company 1649-1776 , is a history of the mission society that went by that same name.

The New England Company was the London-based philanthropic organization that supported the mission town in Stockbridge, Massachusetts starting in the 1730's. I'm not completely cynical about organizations like The New England Company...

I'm not starting the argument that they were ethnocentric; they were, we know that, this is about something else: Stockbridge, Massachusetts was a strategic location in the ongoing wars between Britain and France. If we can assume that the mission society gave the Indians something good (just for now, feel free to argue against that later), religion, "civilization," whatever, it certainly wasn't free, because the people of Great Britain got an excellent guerrilla warfare unit out of the deal.

During the American Revolution, the Continental warship Bonhomme Richard, commanded by John Paul Jones, won a hard-fought engagement against the British ships of war HMS Serapis and HMS Countess of Scarborough off the east coast of England. I figured it would be more appropriate to illustrate this entry with warships of that era than with a picture of a "moon."

By the 1770's Great Britain had become the enemy. The Stockbridges - lets remember they consisted of Mohicans and Wappingers and other Algonkian remnants - were the only Native nation to fully side with the thirteen colonies, that is, the Americans, for the whole Revolutionary War. At that point the officials of The New England Company had a chance to show that it was really about religion, that their support of the mission across the ocean was more than just a sort of inducement to support the British in war. And sure enough, the New England Company pulled through, paying John Sergeant Jr.'s salary as late as May of 1783 (Kellaway, page 278).

Things eventually broke down, however. There were logistical reasons for the breakdown, but there was also the realization that some of the New England Company's American commissioners were "among the prime leaders and first stirrers up of the rebellion."

The once-loyal British-allied Indians had been made 'treacherous' by the white Americans. (In other words, the Stockbridge Indians sided with the Americans, becoming "traitors" in British eyes.) This brings us to possibly the most remarkable incident in Kellaway's entire book:

[T]he Stockbridge Indians had been brought to Boston when British naval vessels were there on purpose to insult them, and were taught, by turning up their backsides, to express their defiance of them (Kellaway, 280).

So there you have it: One of the things the Stockbridge Indians learned before they left Massachusetts was how to insult people by "mooning."

Your Comments and My Posts

2012-01-13T14:45:00.006-06:00

With over 270 posts, it can be somewhat of a challenge to find what you want in the Algonkian Church History blog.
A number of comments that were submitted recently were responses to some of my older posts.

Anyway, the most recent comment the blog received was to an old post. A reader who identified herself as Lisa said

So looking forward to information on the Gardner Family. My grandmother's father was Thomas Gardner, who is Stephen's son and really have not found too much reliable information. Great site!

Well, the Gardner family is - in my opinion - a very important part of the Stockbridge Indians, So I went back and created a new label for the Gardner family and tagged seven existing posts (plus this one) with it. (See the list of labels on the right of the screen).

Another thing to keep in mind if you're looking for something in particular: There is now a google-powered search box near the upper-right corner of Algonkian Church History. Of course, if all else fails, the site allows you to send me an e-mail.

Our Mother Tongues: A Recommended Site for Native Languages

2012-01-06T10:09:00.008-06:00

I've recommended other Native language websites before. However, the Our Mother Tongues site succeeds in a way that no other sites have until now: It puts Native languages into the full-blown multimedia experience many of us have come to expect from the worldwide web. Our Mother Tongues is able to do just that because their focus is on Native languages that are spoken today.

Their "Voices" section features a grid of 40 photos of Native langauge speakers. A click on any of the photos opens an audio file, a recording of that person speaking their langauage.

Since this blog claims a focus on the Algonkian family of languages, the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project will be of particular interest.

Our Mother Tongues even offers e-Postcards (like the one below) that come with their own audio.

Leif Erikson and the Possibility of Christianity in America circa 1000 A.D.

2011-12-05T15:57:00.017-06:00

This statue of Lief Erikson is located near the state capitol building in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Thanks to my recent posts about the Walum Olum, Algonkian Church History has a new set of readers. If I understand their views correctly, it appears they claim that the Lenape Indians became Christians during one of the voyages of Leif Erikson (or possibly during a visit from other Norse Greenlanders). Although the Walum Olum supports such a belief, the Walum Olum wasn't written before the 1700's so we'll have to look at other sources.

Two primary sources tell us about Lief Erikson: The Saga of Erik the Red and The Saga of the Greenlanders.

According to chapter 5 of The Saga of Erik the Red (see this English translation) Leif Erikson was sent by Norway's King Olaf to take Christianity to Greenland. Later, in chapter 11, the Greenlanders come upon people paddling "hide-canoes." It strikes me that these people are much more likely to have been Inuit [Eskimos] than Lenape. And nowhere is it claimed that issues of religion were discussed.

I wasn't able to find a translation of The Saga of the Greenlanders on the web. According to various sources, this saga includes some description not only of Leif Erikson's voyages, but also those of his two brothers, his sister, and a man named Thorfinn Karlsefni. I have not found any discussion of The Saga of the Greenlanders which claims that any of the voyages were used to bring Christianity to the Native Americans, instead I'll wait for my readers to contribute that evidence.

It seems so far that the evidence for Christianity on Turtle Island in "pre-Columbian" times is rather flimsy. Using the two sagas as their guides, scholars have tried their best to identify the location of the Viking settlement known as Vinland, but, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography,

It must be said that both sagas are too vague, too confused, and too brief in their accounts of the course followed by the Icelanders to Vinland, of the geographical and topographical features, of the flora and fauna, and so on, to enable positive identification. Even the passage in the Saga of the Greenlanders on the length of day in Vinland, which at first sight would seem very helpful, has proved a broken reed. Its interpretation involves highly technical definitions and astronomical calculations, leading to such great diversity of opinion that, on the basis of the passage, Vinland has been located as far north as 58°26´N and as far south as 31°N, or even Florida. Each scholar has had to juggle the narratives, assume copyists’ errors, supply missing details, and so on, in order to make his favourite locality fit the meagre details the sagas provide. By such means Vinland has been located as far south as Florida, as far north as Hudson Bay (where the climate is assumed without evidence to have been much warmer in the year 1000 than at present) and as far inland as the Great Lakes. Helge Ingstad has even suggested that there existed a North and South Vinland, the latter on the New England coast and the former in Newfoundland.

So without knowing where Vinland was, I think it would be difficult to claim that a particular tribe or Native nation was brought to the Christian religion by Norwegian explorers.

More About the Walam Olum

2011-11-16T08:50:00.016-06:00

In my last post I conceded that the Walam Olum (also known by other spellings) is not regarded as an authentic Delaware or Lenape document by most scholars. And given that document's history, we'll never know its exact origins.

However, a long-neglected scholarly article that appeared in the Texas Journal of Science in 1955 explains that the content of Constantine Samuel Rafinesque's 1836 translation could have come from Delaware spiritual leaders in the late decades of the 1700's. The article, "The Walum Olum of the Delaware Indians in Perspective," was written by William Newcomb Jr. and appeared on pages 57 - 63 of volume 7 of the Texas Journal of Science.

Although a Google search will take you to a number of articles that conclude the Walam Olum is a fraud (see my previous post), Newcomb's article is not available online. However, this is no reflection of any lack of scholarship on his part. Therefore, I will use his research to explain to you why the content of the Walam Olum may come from authentic Delaware voices dating long before Rafinesque's translation was ever published.

Newcomb's general opening comments are also relevant to Algonkian Church History:

The Walam Olum consisted of a creation myth, a deluge [flood] myth, and what purported to be the subsequent history of the tribe. The mythology was consistent with Algonquian mythology in general....(page 57).

(On the other hand, Newcomb concludes that the Walam Olum's account of historic Delaware migrations was not consistent with that described by observers like Heckewelder and Zeisberger.)

Anyway, Newcomb sets the stage for the Walam Olum by telling us that by about "1750 prophets and messiahs began to appear among the Delware, and they continued to appear sporadically until 1812 (page 59)." According to the prophets, proper ritual action among the Delaware people would reverse the trend of cultural disintegration and collapse that white contact had brought about.

The earliest and most successful prophet, of whom we have knowledge, was known as the Delaware Prophet or the Imposter. His career reached its zenith about 1762 (Peckham, 1947:98; Heckewelder, 1881; 293). This man had received in a vision instructions from the Great Spirit on how to restore his people to their former state.... His teachings were made concrete by a number of symbolic figures painted on a tanned deer hide. Replicas of this map were made, some on paper, and were sold by the Delaware prophet. Some of the purchasers in turn seem to have become minor prophets (Heckewelder, 1881: 293). Parkham (1910; 215) recounted Pontiac as saying, however, that: 'A prayer, embodying the substance of all that [the prophet] had heard, was then presented to the Delaware. It was cut in hieroglyphics upon a wooden stick, after the custom of his people; and he was directed to send copies of it to all the Indian villages'(page 60).

Newcomb concludes that both Heckewelder's account and Parkham's quoting of Pontiac "are correct" and he notes that the period in which prophets existed among the Delaware Indians coincides with the period of time in which the Walam Olum "might well have been produced"(page 60).

Bottom line: "The Delaware were acutely conscious of their past and were desperately trying to revive it." So Newcomb concludes that it would be perfectly "natural" or even "inevitable" that

some Delaware, perhaps one of the prophets, would symbolize by pictographic recordthe traditional myths and legends of his people? The myths and legends would, of course, be based upon or derived from, the traditional tales, but the emphasis and perhaps even their content would be changed to suit the conditions of the age (page 61).

I think that today's scholars are making a mistake when they are dismissive of the Walam Olum. On the other hand, some people who claim to be well-educated have tried to prove that specific things happened hundreds of years ago based on the Walam Olum. That is probably a much bigger mistake.

The Walum Olum: Authentic or Fake?

2011-11-03T13:54:00.025-05:00

The image you see below is an artist's interpretation that borrows heavily from the Walum Olum. This particular pictograph and the words that go with it illustrates a creation story that is similar in some ways to the creation story in the Book of Genesis.

First of all, what is the Walum Olum?

The necessary background is provided in this quote from Steven C. Harper (page 18):

In 1822 an eccentric natural history professor at Transylvania College, Constantine S. Rafinesque, reportedly inherited a pictographic Lenape history, the "Walum Olum," from a mysterious Dr. Ward, who received it for treating Delawares in Indiana. Rafinesque learned Lenape from the dictionaries of Moravian missionaries and translated the "Walum Olum" which he published in 1836.

In recent years the Walum Olum (sometimes known as the Red Record) has also been published on the Sacred Texts website.

The Walum Olum comes up occasionally in my research and I've noticed that while some have claimed it to be a fraud, others quote from it as if it is an ultimate authority. Well, which is it?

An authentic sacred text or a fraud? The answer is.....

The same as the answer to many historical questions: we don't know for sure.

I'm going to have to admit that most people think it is a fake. For evidence on that see the Archaeology Magazine website. According to that site the Walum Olum is "Hokum."

So it goes without saying that the Walum Olum - by itself - should not be used to prove things. (Unfortunately, this is being done by people who claim to be educated.)

I consider the Walum Olum to possibly be authentic based on what I read today in Steven C. Harper's book. The rest of this post is based on a few things that Harper has to say.

One of the best known historians of the Delaware people, C. A. Weslager "admired [the Walum Olum's] consistency with archaeological and ethnographical accounts" (according to Harper, page 19, this was covered in pages 77-79 of Weslager's Delaware Indians).

Of course, just because it gives an accurate picture of the Delaware people doesn't mean that it was created by the Delawares before white contact as some claim.

Could the Walum Olum possibly be an ancient text?

[This paragraph was written on November 15th, 2011]
My reading of Steven Harper (I borrowed his book and no longer have access to it) led me to believe that the Walum Olum might possibly be an ancient text. However, the only evidence Harper gives of this is a 1955 article in the Texas Journal of Science. I have a copy of that article and it will be the topic of my next post.

Sources:

Harper, Steven C. (2006) Promised Land: Penn's Holy Experiment, the Walking Purchase, and the Dispossession of the Delawares, 1600 - 1763. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press.

Newcomb, William W. Jr., "The Walum Olum of the Delaware Indians in Perspective," Texas Journal of Science, Volume 7 (1955), pages 57-63.

Weslager, Clinton A. (1972) The Delaware Indians: A History. Bruunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

ACH Book Recommendation: Chief Bender's Burden by Tom Swift

2011-11-01T17:19:00.009-05:00

Even if you are a baseball fan, you might not have heard of Charles Albert "Chief" Bender. In fact, I doubt that many of today's baseball fans know much about the so-called "deadball era."

In those days, Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics (or "A's") were regular participants in the World Series. The team featured the then-famous $100,000 infield (a lot of money to pay four players back then) and two Hall of Fame pitchers, Eddie Plank and "Chief" Bender, a White Earth Anishinaabeg from Minnesota.

Strip away the baseball content from this book and you have pretty much the same theme as Algonkian Church History: Indians denied their native ways took on white ways - and, for the most part, they succeeded in doing so. On the other hand, the title: Chief Bender's Burden: The Silent Struggle of a Baseball Star is spot-on.

Tom Swift researched Bender's life carefully and found that he volunteered to attend Carlisle. As you may know, there were times when Indian children were rounded up and forced to leave their parents. But after finishing up at one boarding school, Charles Albert ran away from home and was glad to see the "recruiters" from Carlisle. Unfortunately, Bender went to boarding school willingly after literally getting kicked by his father (who, I should probably mention, was white). Whatever role Bender's mother had in his upbringing was pretty much summed up by the fact that she didn't have much of a connection with Chalres Albert.

Later it was the manager and part owner of the Philadelphia A's, Connie Mack, who became a father figure to his young star pitcher. I enjoyed reading about some of the aspects of baseball then that are very different from how things are today. How did fans follow the scores back then? I'll give you a hint, they weren't sent to your Blackberry or reported on ESPN's Sportscenter, I'll let you get the real answer from the book.

Anyway, Swift pulled up a bunch of reports or stories about things that may or may not have happened. My favorite, if true, could have been the reason why 1914 was Bender's last season in an A's uniform:

[Mack] sent Bender, his bright pitcher with the eagle eyes, to New York to scout the Boston Braves. But, according to one version of the story, while Bender was supposedly in New York, Mack ran into him on a Philadelphia street corner.

"I thought you had gone to look over the Braves," Mack said.

Bender shrugged him off. "What's the use of wasting a perfectly good afternoon looking at a bunch of bush league hitters?" (page 209)

For more, see the book's page on the University of Nebraska Press' website.

You can buy the book and read several reviews at Amazon.com.

The Name of the Stockbridge Mohicans

2011-10-12T14:08:00.012-05:00

The photo below was taken at The Great Mohican Pow-Wow in Ohio. I include it here once again to underscore that many of the "original" Mohicans migrated to the Ohio River Valley long before the Stockbridge Mohicans came together in Massachusetts.

I've already written two posts on this subject. Those posts received more comments than I usually get and all they really covered was the confusion surrounding the name of the tribe known in this blog as the Stockbridge Mohicans.

In The Mohicans and the Stockbridge Mohicans I argued that a historical change in the makeup of the "Mohican" people makes it confusing to use the same name across all historical periods. Then in The Mohicans and the Mahicans I argued that there really isn't an accepted distinction between those two different forms of the word "Mohican." Recently I've given the Mohican/Mahican issue further thought, and decided that those two different spellings which are the same except for a single vowel, should not, in my opinion, represent different meanings because the difference in pronounciation is so small. It seems to me that the difference in pronounciation between "Mohican" and "Mahican" is smaller than the variations in pronouncing practically any single word by two people with different regional accents. So not only is the Mohican/Mahican distinction not well known or observed, but, in my opinion, it wouldn't end the confusion even if it was known and observed by many people.

Like I've said before, a group of people can call themselves whatever they want. Nevertheless, after taking the time to point out problems with the status quo, I figure I might as well offer what I think is the best solution. Let the tribe and everybody else ignore this post if they want, but I might as well put it out there.

If it comes down to one word, most of the tribe likes to call themselves "Mohicans." One exception was a man who posted a comment to the Mohican Seven forum saying he prefers "Stockbridge" because it is more historically accurate. I use "Stockbridge Mohicans" as the name of the tribe because the people identify with the word "Mohican" and the word "Stockbridge" makes it clear which Mohicans they are.

So there you have it, the tribe from about 1740 to the present should - in my opinion - be called the Stockbridge Mohicans.

A reader of my Mohican/Mahican post said he thought the original Algonkian languages can tell us a lot about what name or names a tribe should take for itself. If he was onto something, then we might want to call the pre-Stockbridge Mohicans the "Muhheconnew" people and call their land or their old nation the "Muhhecunnuck." There are other possible names to use for the pre-Stockbridge Mohicans, one would be the "Aboriginal Mohicans."

Anyway, I'm content to think that I've said enough about this topic.

The Mohicans and the Mahicans

2011-10-04T14:29:00.025-05:00

The beautiful scene below was "borrowed" from the official website of the Stockbridge-Munsee Community (they are usually referred to here as the Stockbridge Mohicans).

In July, my post "The Mohicans and the Stockbridge Mohicans" was intended to raise the issue of how current and historical tribal names have brought about a lot of confusion. Or, to be more precise, names by themselves don't necessarily generate confusion, but a tribe that is made up of remnants of various tribes may want to be careful in what they choose to be called.

Comments that were posted to that post have raised a possible solution. In particular, a tribal elder - she uses "Maaliish" as her screen name - used the words "Mohican" and Mahican" in different ways - without explaining the difference. Well, I think the difference for that tribal elder is based on something that James Oberly (2005, page 5) wrote:

Anthropologists say that the term "Mohican" characterized the seventeenth century union of three groups of Indian villages in what is now the Hudson River Valley of New York State: the "Mahicans," the Wappingers, and the Housatonics.

From that passage it may seem that the term "Mahicans" is now only used for the original 'full-bloods' as it were, while the word "Mohicans" is only used to describe the modern tribe that includes the descendants of "Wappingers" and "Housatonics."

But I don't take Oberly literally there. I mean, do you really think that "anthropologists" went to the trouble of defining a distinction between "Mahican" and "Mohican"? Even if anthropologists came to an agreement on the proper use of those words, do you believe that a critical mass of ordinary people (like you and I and members of the tribe) have changed their speech to properly reflect the pronounciations and meanings that were coined by those anthropologists?

I give James Oberly a lot of credit for addressing the issue that I raised in "The Mohicans and the Stockbridge Mohicans" and I don't blame him for making it seem like it was already addressed by anthropologists. He needed to address it but didn't have the time to bother writing whole paragraphs on it like I did.

Furthermore, I give Maaliish a lot of credit for using Oberly's distinction. But that is exactly my point: Except for a few people who remember what Oberly wrote on page five, I'm afraid to say the distinction doesn't exist.

I have promoted James Oberly's book here in the past and I really don't see what I'm saying now as negative. In my experience, something that is mentioned once in a book seldom changes our language.

But if the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians really wants to stop the confusion, it can be done. It can be done (partly) by addressing the issue in the tribe's newspaper. It can be done (partly) by addressing it at the tribe's museum. And it can done (partly) by addressing the name issue legally the next time a new tribal constitution is written. Since I haven't been keeping tabs on the tribe lately, maybe this kind of thing is already being done. If so, I'd like to hear about it.

And maybe I'm just a raving lunatic. I mean, I like things to be clear. A lot of other people - on this issue and other issues - don't seem to mind if the waters are muddied. What do you think?

Headline: United States Fails in Honest Attempt to Help New York Indians

2011-09-15T09:37:00.025-05:00

Native American activists have made the claim that the United States intentionally pitted the Menominee Indians against the New York Indians that wanted to emigrate to their country in the 1820's. I can see that. But as more research has been done and the details are spelled out more clearly by historians, I think it is more accurate to say that the United States government was just too sloppy, unorganized, and maybe even too incompetent to properly broker a legal arrangement between the two parties.

James Duane Doty was the federal judge who served as legal counsel on behalf of the Menominees in the Council of Butte des Morts in August, 1827. At issue then were the negotiations that had been made between the various tribes in 1821 and 1822. Doty would later go on to be the second Governor of the Wisconsin Territory (1841-1844) and the fifth Governor of the Utah Territtory (1863-1865).

In my last two posts, I have already made the point that in order to make a proper treaty, the official leaders of the parties involved must be present. And although you'd think that was something more basic than Diplomacy 101, somehow, despite the fact that the Menominees didn't have an official leader, treaties were still produced and signed.

I've mentioned the treaties made in 1821 and 1822 before (see "Negotiations and Arrivals" and see "Ellis Describes More Negotiations"). Those documents, of course, gave the Brothertown, Oneida and Stockbridge Indians the opportunity to move to what is now the state of Wisconsin. However, for good reasons, the two treaties were never ratified by Congress. According to the Milwaukee Public Museum, the opposition to the treaties from both the Menominee and the Ho-Chunk (or "Winnebago") Indians was what prevented their ratification. Congress somehow sensed that something was wrong back then, and thanks to the work of Brad Jarvis, The Brothertown Nation of Indians, we know a lot more about it.

Jarvis' sixth chapter (pages 179-215) is about the negotiations between the Wisconsin Indians and the New York Indians. The chapter title is "A Tedious, Perplexing and Harassing Dispute," if you've already read my NY Indian Removal series of posts I think you'll be able to read it without finding it tedious or perplexing.

How was the United States sloppy or even incompetent in assisting the New York Indians in purchasing land from the Wisconsin Natives? This quote may give you a good idea:
.

The United States had sent Charles Trowbridge, a young government surveyor, with the 1821 New York Indian delegation in order to keep a report of the council. Trowbridge's report...illustrates much of the confusion in the negotiations. Upon arrival in Green Bay the contingent from New York found both the agent and the interpreter absent. Despite the fact that the lack of a translator would prove difficult in negotiating a land cession, the New York Indians decided to proceed anyway (Jarvis, pages 198-199).

And later, Charles Trowbridge "stepped outside of his role as an observer and tried to convince the Ho-Chunks to cede the Menominee lands in place of the Menominee." (That's right, Trowbridge asked the Ho-Chunks to give away something that wasn't theirs to give.)

To say the least, the negotiations started off on the wrong foot.

Another Reason Why the Menominees had no Official Chief from 1818 to 1827

2011-09-14T10:16:00.009-05:00

In my previous post I described a nine-year period in which the Menominees were without an official leader. The source I was using put an emphasis on how both Oshkosh and Josette were young and got along with each other and weren't in any hurry to take charge of the tribe for those reasons.

But after giving it some thought, I now suspect that both Oshkosh and Josette were deliberately avoiding the polical spotlight because it was in the best interests of the Menominee people at that time to be unorganized.

As you may recall, the old chief, Tomah, had been an ally of the British. Tomah's death in 1818 coincided with the time when the Menominees had to accept the reality that the British were no longer in the picture.

I may have to back up and explain how this was a problem. The western theater of the War of 1812 was Indian Country and it was the last of a number of wars the Menominee Indians were on the wrong side of. Of course their numbers had also been reduced by the usual onslaught of European diseases. With British troops finally out of the area, the United States ceasefire policy was to acquire Indian land via purchase. (Military force, it was decided, would cause too many hard feelings.) . So although there weren't enough Menominee warriors left to defend their large territory, they must have known that the biggest threat to their land would be to have an organized government with a central leader. In other words, both Oshkosh and Josette avoided their opportunity of coming to power, because they knew that by doing so, they would only speed up the process of making arrangements for much of their land to be sold to the United States.

In my next post, I'll discuss how the Menominees' "chieflessness" affected the New York Indians as they prepared to come to the "Green Bay" area of what was then known as Michigan Territory.

Oshkosh The Brave: An Old Book About the Menominee Chief and his Family

2011-08-16T08:37:00.014-05:00

I came across a little book about the Menominees recently. The Foreward is by Roy Oshkosh, who claimed to be the "Nominal Chief" of the tribe that was in the process of being terminated in the 1950's.

As Oshkosh The Brave: Chief of the Wisconsin Menominees, and His Family was published in 1954 it became, according to Roy Oshkosh, "the finest work of portraying the true life of my ancestors and our people, which was fast becoming a lost chapter in American history."

The author, Phebe Jewell Nichols, apperently a white woman, was the wife of Angus T. Lookaround, a Menominee. Ms. Nichols/Lookaround (she uses both last names within the book) acknowledges that most of the book first appeared as articles in the Oshkosh Northwestern (in case you didn't know, the Northwestern is a newspaper based in the city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin).

According to Oshkosh The Brave:

The old Menominee Chief Tomah died in 1818. The tribe had no leader or, you might say they had two emerging leaders, Josette who was Tomah's son, and Oshkosh, a young man who was also mentored by Tomah. The two young men got along well and the tribe went through a period of mourning the old chief before choosing a new one.

While Tomah had been an ally of the British, the new chief would have no choice but to deal with the United States. Although there were a few minor Menominee chiefs that were persuaded to sign agreements with the US government in the years after Tomah died, the documents didn't amount to much because the minor chiefs really didn't have the Menominee people behind them.

By the 1820's General Lewis Cass was both Governor of Michigan Territory and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Nichols/Lookaround describes it this way:

The Menominees would have to eventually give up their domain, and Cass wanted it as painless and legal as possible. He called for a treaty making meeting at Butte des Morts in 1827.

One thing about treaties is that you have to have the leaders of both parties sign a treaty and this, of course, cannot be done if one of the parties doesn't have an official leader. So General Cass spent three days talking with the Menominee people, essentially trying to determine if the next chief should be Oshkosh or Josette.

And that is how Oshkosh was chosen to lead the Menominee people through some of their toughest times.

Phoebe Jewell Nichols [Lookaround] knew Reginald Oshkosh, the grandson of the historic chief.

The Mohicans and the Stockbridge Mohicans

2011-07-12T08:08:00.013-05:00

The word "Mohican" in the names of this park and other places in Ohio, reflects the fact that Mohicans were leaving their homeland and moving into the Ohio River Valley as early as the late 1600's.

By 1740 most Mohicans had disappeared from the Hudson River Valley. In fact, many of them had been living in the Ohio River Valley for generations. Over time, these "western" Mohicans intermarried with tribes like the Miami, the Delaware, or possibly with frontier whites. Ultimately, they did not maintain their Mohican identity.

Meanwhile, back in their homeland, the once-mighty Mohican nation was struggling to survive as a result of the changes brought about by over one hundred years of white contact. The fur trade brought about a dependence on white goods, problems with alcohol, an increased competition with other Native nations for resources, bloodier warfare, and, of course, devastating European-imported diseases like smallpox.

So by the 1740's, changes in both the natural environment and the surviving population resulted in the once-mighty Mohican nation being spread out in small, scattered communities.

The history of the Stockbridge Mohicans began when two Mohican villages along the Housatonic River in what is now Massachusetts, decided to accept a Christian mission. The residents of those two villages got more than they bargained for: instead of just teaching a new religion and teaching the children to read, the Indians' British neighbors imposed the structure of white culture upon them. Most notably, the two villages were soon gathered into one town which the British called Stockbridge.

The popularity of Stockbridge, Massachusetts - for both religious and non-religious reasons - made it the Council Fire - in other words, the capital city - of what was left of the Mohican Nation. However, it bears noting that many of the Indians that joined the Stockbridge community were Wappingers or other non-Mohican Indians.

Or were they?

The way some people now use the term "Mohican," anybody who is descended from the Stockbridge Indians is a Mohican, so it doesn't then matter if your ancestors were Naragansetts or some mix of Algonkian-speaking refugees: As long as you are descended from the Indians of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, New Stockbridge, New York, and/or Stockbridge, Wisconsin, you can call yourself a "Mohican."

And why not?

My point is not to prevent a group of people from calling themselves whatever they want, but rather to end the confusion and the talking past one another that often results from cases like this where one word means two different things.

Or do I have it completely wrong?

You tell me.

Sources:

Dunn, Shirley. (2000) The Mohican World, 1680-1750

Frazier, Patrick. (1992) The Mohicans of Stockbridge

Sultzman, Lee. Mahican History
.
.
.

Menominee Memorial Erected

2011-06-16T15:30:00.007-05:00

The Menominees have erected a memorial for their veterans at a park in Keshena.

Click on the photo for a better view:

Let's not forget that when America goes to war, the Native Americans are putting more than their share of young men and women in harm's way.

The Brothertown Nation of Indians - A Highly Recommended Book

2011-05-16T14:05:00.011-05:00

Brad Jarvis' recent (2010, University of Nebraska Press) book The Brothertown Nation of Indians: Land Ownership and Nationalism in Early America, 1740-1840, received a very positive review in the April, 2011 issue of Choice Magazine. The reviewer, Lawrence Hauptmann, placed it in the "Highly Recommended" category.

Jarvis also gets a "thumbs up" from me simply for referring to his subjects as the "Brothertowns," instead of the "Brothertons." (Some academics prefer the latter name despite that fact that it is also the name of an entirely different tribe of Christian Algonkians.) Anyway, I also like the fact that Jarvis bothers to deal with the Brothertown Nation's time in what is now Wisconsin instead of just focusing on their days in New York State among the Oneidas.

There is a quote (page 6) in the introduction to Professor Jarvis' book which you may find to ring true with things I've been saying here:

"Christian themes of redemption and self-empowerment also resonated with people marginalized by colonialism."

The Unintended Consequences of Education at Wheelock's School

2011-04-18T15:45:00.033-05:00

The University of North Carolina Press recently (2010) published a collection of scholarly writings by various authors under the title Native Americans, Christianity, and the Shaping of the American Religious Landscape. The book includes a chapter by Rachel Wheeler, "Hendrick Aupaumut: Christian Mahican Prophet," and another by David J. Silverman, "To Become a Chosen People: The Missionary Work and Missionary Spirit of the [Brothertown] and Stockbridge Indians, 1775-1835." (Silverman, or, more likely, the editor of the book, likes to spell it "Brotherton," which adds to the confusion over which tribe of Christian Algonkians he is referring to.)

My attention, however, was drawn to a piece called "Print Culture and the Power of Native Literacy in California and New England Missions" by Steven W. Hackel and Hilary E. Wyss (pages 201-224). It was partly about Moor's Charity School which essentially came about after Samson Occom proved to be a particularly successful pupil of Eleazar Wheelock. Rev. Wheelock (pictured here) saw his success with Occom as an opportunity to start a school.

Unfortunately, Wheelock was not one of the truly good missionaries who always had the Indians' own best interests in mind in all of his work. According to Hackel and Wyss, Wheelock believed teaching young Indians to read and write would turn them "into docile figures eager and willing to work under the watchful supervision of white missionaries." However, "none of his students in fact turned out that way"(page 216). Wheelock's attitude could well explain why he took the money Samson Occom raised in Britain to start the historically white institution known as Dartmouth College.

Instead of striving to please Wheelock, their white master, here are some of the things Hackel and Wyss tell us that the student's of Moor's Charity School accomplished with their education:

Hezekiah Calvin forged a pass for a slave (and was imprisoned for it).

Samson Occom wrote "petitions for a variety of Native communities."

Joseph Johnson, after leaving the school, gave up drinking and became a schoolmaster.

And, (also according to Hackel and Wyss, page 218), the Brothertown community itself would not have coalesced without Wheelock's school.

The graphic above is a painting by Joseph Steward (1753-1822). It is kept in the Hood Museum of Art.

The Mohicans of Pachgatgoch: As told by Moravian Missionaries

2011-03-14T20:11:00.011-05:00

The diaries of thirteen Moravian missionaries were recently translated (from German) into English. These translated diaries, along with a 73-page introduction, six appendices, and various other sections, were published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2009 under the title Gideon's People: Being a Chronicle of an American Indian Community in Colonial Connecticut and the Moravian Missionaries Who Served There. Corinna Daily-Starna and William A. Starna translated and edited the nearly 700 pages that make up a two volume set.

As far as the blogoshere is concerned, I've been beaten to the punch on this one. A Febrary 19, 2010 post to the Religion in American History blog by Linford D. Fisher was titled "The View from Pachgotgoch (or, Why Moravians Are Still Sexy)".

If Linford Fisher's post wasn't enough to convince you to read all 690-plus pages of Gideon's People, I'll just have to tell you a few other things about it.

Q: Who was Gideon?
A: Gideon was the headman of the village of Pachgatgoch, a unique community in the sense that it was a community of Christian Indians not organized by the missionaries (this is explained in the introduction, page 60).

Q: Is there any data in this book that I can use for genealogy?
A: Any of the Appendices might be helpful to you. they are, as follows:
Appendix 1 --> page 437: Catalogus of the Indian Congregation in Pachgatgoch
Appendix 2 --> page 447: Names Compoiled by Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg
Appendix 3 --> page 451: Catalogus of Baptized and Unbaptized Indians in Pachgatgoch
Appendix 4 --> page 461: Lists and Correspondence
Appendix 5 --> page 523: Biographical List; and
Appendix 6 --> page 537: the Gazatteer (a list of geographical names)

King Philip's War: One of the Bloodiest in American History

2011-02-20T11:38:00.011-06:00

Above: An artist's conception of King Philip's War

According to Daniel Mandell's new book (page 134), King Philip's War was "the bloodiest war in American history in terms of its proportionate effect on a region." Of an estimated population of 80,000 people, almost 9,000 were killed, two-thirds of them were Native Americans. As Mandell tells it (on page 135), the six thousand Indian deaths resulted from combat, disease, and hunger. Furthermore, another two thousand Indians left New England as refugees; and "about one thousand were sold into slavery and certain death in the West Indies."

So, if we can be callous enough to look at the big picture of all of that misfortune, we might say that the upshot of King Philip's War was that Indians became a significantly smaller and weaker minority in New England in a short amount of time.

Nevertheless, as you have seen elsewhere in this blog, Native communities did survive in various ways. And, just as before, religion played a role. According to Mandell, "Christianity became an even more significant aspect of Indian life" after the disastrous war. He specifically mentions the Mohegans, Niantics, Pequots and Narragansetts who "formed their own churches, and developed a host of talented and famous Native preachers." As you may already know, Mandell has the Brothertown Indians in mind when he makes this statement.

King Philip's War by Daniel Mandell

2011-02-14T17:35:00.012-06:00

A map of New England in the "Praying Indians" era.

As one of its reviews on Amazon.com states, if you read one book about King Philip's War, it should be Daniel Mandell's. King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty (published by Johns Hopkins in 2010) is both well-researched and readable.

As you might imagine, the thing about it that has interested me the most (so far) came under the heading "Christian Indians." Here are a couple brief excerpts:

The process by which many Wampanoags, Massachusetts, Nipmucs, and Pennacooks embraced the English God and culture was driven by the devasting epidemics and other massive changes to their world. Indians and Puritans similarly believed that the supernatural world worked in everyday occurrences, and both groups saw recent events as evidence that Jehovah had overcome the native gods and that survival required adoption of the English God. Roxbury minister John Eliot stepped into this psychic gap after learning the Massachusett language, preaching that Indians could find salvation by shedding heathenish ways and adopting Puritan disciplines in order to breathe the rarefied Calvinist air (pages 39-40).

...Native converts wore their hair like the English and forswore many old habits, from religious ceremonies, to body greasing, to demonstrate their ability to walk the Christian path of righteousness (page 40).

Mandell also writes of how the first 'praying town' of Natick came about through the partnership of John Eliot with Waban, head of the Massachusett village of Nonantum.

The Munsees in Wisconsin: We'll Keep Trying Until We Get it Right

2011-01-27T08:30:00.012-06:00

I have already written a few posts in which I have focused on the Munsee element in the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians now residing in Shawano County, Wisconsin. It is a topic that is so complicated that I am resolved to keep trying until I get it right.

You might say that the Munsees were a 'political football' during the nasty citizen vs. Indian partisanship (and, of course, federal Indian policies of those times tended to encourage that kind of factionalism).

Diplomats in Buckskins (right) shows that The Stockbridge Mohicans weren't the only tribe that sent delegations to Washington asking the government to change their policies.

If you have read James Oberly's A Nation of Statesmen, you have a good idea of how strings were pulled in Washington D.C. for the Indian party when the Republicans were in power and for the Citizen party when the Democrats were in power. The result was a complicated mess of conflicting realities contested between various sub-groups of Indians.

It was an Indian party goal to exclude the Munsees. As a result, members of the Indian party, their lawyers, and other advocates worked to portray the Munsees as outsiders. There certainly was a time when outsiders were welcomed into the Stockbridge community, but you may remember that was stopped with the Quinney Constitution of 1837. (You may also remember that the arrival of a band of Munsees from Canada is one of the events that led John W. Quinney to write that constitution.)

And so we have documents that tell us that there are no Munsees living among the Stockbridge Mohicans. Actually, I think that there were times when the Indian party was largely successful in getting rid of all the other Indians that sought to be part of the tribe. As a result, Indian party documents that claim that few if any Munsees were around might be accurate. I really do have my doubts about the numbers of Munsees that today's Shawano County Indians are descended from. That is a viewpoint that I advanced in a post in my New York Indian removal series in the spring of 2009.

I'm grateful that Jeremy Mohawk submitted a comment to that post recently. Mr. Mohawk stated that he is a descendant of the New York Munsee rolls of 1839 and that (including his wife, three sons and a daughter) his family "still" lives on the Shawano County Reservation. However, I imagine that if we asked Jeremy Mohawk if his Munsee ancestors had ever left the rez, he would admit to gaps of time where they had to leave. He also said "alot of folks up here have Munsee lineage, well most do." As a matter of fact, I have observed that many or perhaps even most tribal members I know personally do claim to be part Munsee. How can we reconcile that with some of the Indian party documents?

Well, we will keep on trying until we get it right. And by "we," I mean that I don't think I can add or change much without the help of further genealogical data from tribal members.

The Mohican Language: Is it Worth it?

2011-01-14T10:11:00.015-06:00

I see that Lion Miles' Mohican Dictionary is posted on Debra Winchell's History's Faces blog (look for it in the upper right-hand corner). Just a casual look at the document convinces me that he worked very hard at compiling that dictionary. More than 90 percent of the dictionary is an "English to Mohican" section, with many English words having several Mohican pronounciations.

As a layperson I have only a fuzzy understanding of all the problems involved in compiling a dictionary of a language that was not spoken for several decades as well as being a language that was already changed by white contact by the time people began to interpret or translate it. The result of those (and other) problems is that Lion Miles' dictionary - an attempt at accurately re-creating Mohican - is too complex for ordinary people like you or I to use as a guide in learning Mohican.

But, you know, that is okay. Tribes and independent groups of Indians get together for language camps and that social context is really the best place for adults to learn a language.

Jim Northrup (pictured) organizes the annual Nagaajiwanaang Ojibwe Language Camp in Sawyer, Minnesota.

The language controversy among the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians (if I understand it correctly) is that the Lenape (or Delaware/Munsee) language is being learned along with some Mohican words. For many, including the tribe's Language and Culture Committee, this is good enough. But others feel that the uniqueness of the Mohican language is being kept from being fully realized by that way of teaching.

Rainer Posselt is one tribal member in the latter camp. In his comment to one of my earlier posts he expressed his disappointment that the Language and Culture Committee is essentially teaching Lenape but calling it 'Lenape-Mohican.' As Posselt says, "just tell us it is Lenape, you don't have to lie."

The "York Tribe" in Indiana

2011-01-13T09:21:00.014-06:00

<-- Yorktown, Indiana today.

Andy Olson, a reader from Indiana, contacted me a few months ago to tell me about his research of the New York Indians in Indiana. Although he was asking for some help with his project, I have also been able to learn things about the New York Indians from him, most significantly that the allied Brothertown, Stockbridge and Munsee Indians may have stayed in Indiana for longer than historians realize. Back in the 1820's they were known as "the York Tribe" and the modern town of Yorktown, Indiana (located in the Muncie metro area) is named after their settlement. (Of course, "Muncie" is one of the ways that "Munsee" used to be spelled.)

Andy Olson writes that he is part of the Kilgore family which owned a farm just outside of Yorktown from 1825 to 2002. And there was a " Kilgore family legend passed down" in the family that suggested that "David Kilgore [Olson's great, great, great grandfather] made a 'pact' with a departing 'York Indians' chief that neither Kilgore nor any of his descendants would disturb a burial ground on his property."

That is where it began for Andy Olson. He has now read a lot of papers at the Indiana Historical Society.

As you may remember, by the time the Stockbridges and other New York Indians made it to Indiana's White River, that land had already been purchased by the federal government for white settlement. While tribal petitions to re-designate the land did not accomplish their goal, the bureaucrats of the day at least left us with a record of New York Algonkians (men only) that were settled in the White River area as of 1819. This list is provided here courtesy of Andy Olson:

Jonas Littleman, Nicholas Jourdan, David Abrams, Johiakim Youcum, Jonas Thompson, John Littleman, Cornelius Aaron, Jehoiakim Abram, Sampson Pauskemp, Thomas Hickman, James Joshua, Henry Sukhukowrooh, Joseph Pewauqkuewheek, Abram Konnookhauthe, Cornelius Doxstater. David Neesonnuhhuk, John Baldwin, Abram Kauwaukheck, Daniel Aupehiheukum, John P. Konkpot, Aaron Nohsowwaunmut, Absalom Quinney, Isaac Littleman, [and] Sampson Owwohthemmauq.

New York Land Claim Finally Settled

2010-12-01T16:18:00.005-06:00

The State of New York finally came to an agreement with the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. The dispute was over 23,000 acres that the tribe had left behind in the 1820's when they migrated to what is now Wisconsin.

Having succeeded in running a casino on their Shawano County, Wisconsin reservation, the Stockbridge-Munsee are now making plans to build another casino in New York State. For a full account of the historic settlement please see the article on page 1, of Mohican News, "A Ray of Hope."

New Book on the Delaware is "Highly Recommended"

2010-10-14T12:03:00.008-05:00

Before you go out and purchase Delaware Tribe in a Cherokee Nation, I should point out that its intended audience is not the general public. If you're a history professor or working towards being one, then this book is highly recommended for you. For the rest of us, it may be enough to read this review from Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (October, 2010 issue, page 364).

In this intriguing, precisely told tale of how the Lenni Lenape (aka "Delaware") became citizens of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, anthropologist [Brice] Obermeyer [the author] constructs the time line of events that led to this situation in his ethnography of a people fighting to hold on to their identity. The "most removed" of Native Americans, the Lenape split into entities on the US and Canada. One group settled on land in the antebellum Cherokee Nation in what is now Oklahoma. In an 1867 document (colloquially called "the agreement"), the tribes agreed that Lenape born in that community thereafter would enjoy full membership in the Cherokee Nation. Problems arose quickly, however, because the Cherokee had not expected the Delaware to retain an ongoing Lenape identity. In the subsequent 150 years, the Delaware have fought for and received federal recognition, only to have it rescinded at the behest of the Cherokee. Since all federal services [must now] come through the Cherokee, the de-organized Lenape can either accept their historic status or do without. Obermeyer's volume details a fascinating and unique case study in intertribal relations and the role of sovereignty in maintenance of tribal identity.

The review, by C.R. Kasee of Winston-Salem University, included a "highly recommended" rating or three of a possible four stars.

Read more about this book on Amazon.com
***

Treaty with the Delawares of 1818

2010-10-05T17:12:00.006-05:00

While I have had quite a few things to say about treaties (see U.S. Indian Policy), I may have neglected to point out that a lawyer, Charles J. Kappler (1868–1946) compiled and edited all the treaties that the United States made with the various Native nations and his work is now available at one place online.

You may remember that the Stockbridge Mohicans once hoped to join the Delawares on the White River in Indiana Territory. I've already addressed the details of that intended move including why it never happened. Somehow the Delawares were "persuaded" to sell their land. They may have been told that it would be better to sell and have the U.S. Government provide them with a western reservation than to fight to their deaths.

Anyway, by signing treaties, of course, Native nations ceded or handed over their lands to the United States. More than one treaty was made at St. Mary's in 1818 and the one that we are concerned with here was made on October 3rd, 1818.

The Conversion of Fish Hawk

2010-09-10T08:21:00.005-05:00

Bonnie Sue Lewis uses the conversion story of Fish Hawk, a Cayuse Indian, to illustrate the complexity involved in deciding to become a Christian Indian. (To get the whole story, you'll have to read Creating Christian Indians.) Like many other Indians, Fish Hawk made a deathbed conversion.

If Fish Hawk's conversion was like most people's stereotype of deathbed conversions, it would have been a superficial and/or cynical gesture, but this is clearly not the case. Instead, Fish Hawk experienced a vision; and it was his vision that led him to accept Christianity, but not the rest of white culture.

Creating Christian Indians

2010-09-02T11:35:00.015-05:00

If there is one ongoing theme to this blog, it lies in the idea that in many cases, American Indian converts to Christianity weren't fakers, many of them genuinely understood, accepted, and/or sensed something about the missionaries' messages. A second, and equally important point - that I've not emphasized as much - is that becoming a Christian doesn't make a new convert into a non-Indian.

One historian who promoted both ends of this line of thinking a few years before I started blogging was Bonnie Sue Lewis, a professor of mission and Native American Christianity at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. Lewis is the author of Creating Christian Indians: Native Clergy in the Presbyterian Church (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). Much of her book focuses on the Dakota Sioux and the Nez Perce.

However, in the book's much more general introduction, Lewis observes that a "growing number of historians have begun to show an appreciation for Native ingenuity in shifting cultural boundaries to gain their own ends."

She gives a number of examples of recent descriptions of Christian converts who never stopped being Indians. One of those descriptions came from the anthropologist Raymond DeMallie, who studied Black Elk's conversion to Catholicism. As Lewis puts it, DeMallie saw Black Elk's conversion as a sincere one "but reasoned that Black Elk remained Indian insofar as he used the resources of the Christian church to fulfill traditional Indian leadership roles" (page 26).

Despite being well-renowned for their conversion to Calvinist Christianity back in the colony of Massachusetts, the Stockbridge Mohicans had become an insignificant "western" tribe by the time the events in Bonnie Sue Lewis' book take place. While it is possible that she was aware of the ABCFM*-sponsored mission to the Stockbridge Indians that took place in what is now Wisconsin, there is no mention of the Stockbridge Mohicans in Creating Christian Indians. I'll have more to say about that in a future post.

Still There! The Lenape and Nanticoke Indians of New Jersey

2010-08-16T15:41:00.019-05:00

Although I have emphasized the role of the Christian church as a uniting factor in the history of the Stockbridge Mohicans, I also documented how abandonment by a white mission society was one part of an environment that disorganized or even disintegrated the Stockbridges.

But in this post, you'll hear about another tribe that stuck together over many years - and their churches made it possible. These people - like the Stockbridges and the Brothertowns now living in Wisconsin - are made up of the descendants of Algonkian remnants. They are the Nanticoke and Lenni Lenape Indians of New Jersey.

The history and other important facts related to the Nanticoke - Lenape Indians have been very well laid out in pdf format (a 62-page e-book, if you will), by the Rev. Dr. John R. Norwood. The title is

Use this link to read We Are Still Here!

The Nanticoke - Lenape are currently well-organized and recognized by the State of New Jersey. They emphasize the community's spiritual values on their website, one being the idea that they don't wish to profit from vice. In other words, they don't want a casino. They have passed a tribal law against gaming and want to make it clear that they are different from the recently-formed smaller group with a very similar name, the "Unalachtigo Band of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Nation." (The Unalachtigoes want a casino.)

The Nanticoke - Lenni Lenape Tribal Prayer Ministry has its own link on the tribe's website. Consistent with what I have always said here, members of the Prayer Ministry do NOT consider their Native spirituality to be inconsistent with Christianity as they practice it.

The tribe has a museum with its own website. One page of that site is titled "Hidden in Plain View," and it tells of how these Indians, denied of any other political structure, used their churches as community political units. White people were always welcome to worship in the churches, but membership was strictly for Natives only.

Stereotypes and Realities

2010-07-14T13:00:00.006-05:00

Many of us are concerned about various stereotypes. Fortunately, Devon A. Mihesuah, a Professor of History and an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, has taken aim at many of them in her book, American Indians: Stereotypes and Realities.

The Table of Contents itself says a lot - at least it says a lot about how wrong many Americans are about the Native people.

Here are some of the Stereotypes that are refuted:

[2] Indians were conquered because they were inferior

[4] Indians had no civilization until white people brought it to them

[9] Indians had/have no religion

[10] Indians welcome outsiders to study and participate in their ceremonies

[12] Indians are confined to reservations, wear braids and ride horses

[14] Indians get a free ride from the government

[19] "My grandmother was an Indian"

[22] Indians know the histories, languages and cultural aspects of their own tribe... and all other tribes

Mihesuah counters each stereotype with a reality.

So... if Indians weren't inferior to whites (in many ways), then how were white invaders able to conquer them? Mihesuah explains (pages 29-32) the reality: Indians were conquered because of their lack of immunity to European diseases.

Of course - if you've been reading Algonkian Church History - you already knew that.

Poygan Paygrounds: Scene of a Sad Chapter in Menominee History

2010-06-07T18:05:00.016-05:00

By the time the Menominee Indians gave up large pieces of land, they had already lost most of their members to warfare and diseases. In 1836 the Wisconsin Territory came into being, and in order to get ready for a large influx of white settlers, the Treaty of Cedars was made.

Although Chief Oshkosh made it clear that Governor Henry Dodge had dealt with his people fairly, Charles Velte, author of Historic Lake Poygan (self-published in 1976) asserts "the Indians would have been better off if they had turned their lands over to the government free [of charge]"(page 62). What could be more insensitive than to make such an assertion?

If you read further, some of the accounts of the annual payments made on the south shore of Lake Poygan make Velte's unfortunate statement comprehensible.

Unfortunately, Velte doesn't cite all of his sources so I cannot do so either:

The Treaty of 1836 drew to these annual payments adventurous crowds of all classes of society then on the frontier.... The traders in this area came for the collection of their just accounts for the credits to the Indians during the year. Then there was the peddler and vendor of flash jewelry, beads and colored scarfs who came to attract the Indian to their wares. then the gambler, the sport, and the hanger-on of the frontier to play his game, and all of them came to get their fair share of the money of the Indian, and they all met with fair success. the agent of the United States was usually guarded by a company of soldiers who made some show of protecting the Indians. Temporary eating houses and boarding places were improvised and the scene was one of exciting life; the forest was alive with the hum of these activities (quoted in Velte, page 62).

A history of Winnebago County written by a man named Harney in 1880 is also quoted on pages 62-63:

...the Indians were met by the Government agents, whose duty it was to deal out a small quantity of rusty pork, a few pounds of damaged tobacco, with blankets and some money. A company of soldiers were generally on duty to guard these
treasures from the avarice and cupidity of the hundreds of white men who congregated here as promptly as the natives themselves. White and half breed traders...would invariably manage to be on the ground at pay day. Merchants from all parts of the country, from Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, Milwaukee, Prairie du Chein, Chicago, Detroit, and elsewhere....

Velte also quotes from the journal of an Englishman who visted the Wisconsin Territory in 1841. A Merry Briton in Pioneer Wisconsin was published in 1842 and that book includes a description of the payment procedure as quoted on page 65 of Velte's book:

The moment the last dollar was paid, down went the American flag and the agent and his men rushed to their boats and sheared off from the scene of action. Then the whiskey seller took the field.

Eloquence is Power: Book Acknowledges Hendrick Aupaumut's Role

2010-05-27T09:04:00.014-05:00

Not having written communication opened the way for tribes to develop oral communication into what might be called a powerful art form. The skill of oratory, I would imagine, was even more developed among the Mohicans, who first brokered interactions between the Iroquois and other Algonkians and later worked as cultural brokers between Indians and white settlers.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, Captain Hendrick Aupaumut worked as a diplomat in George Washington's Administration, where he brokered an uneasy peace with the Delawares and other "western" Indian nations. (Captain Hendrick was the first non-white to hold such a position with the federal government.)

A book by Sandra M. Gustafson (University of North Carolina Press, 2000), Eloquence Is Power: Oratory and Performance in Early America has something to say about one of our heroes:

A Revolutionary war veteran, Christian Indian, dedicated leader of his Mahican community, and preserver of Mahican traditions, Aupaumut envisioned his role as ambassador to the northwest Indian nations as an extension of ancient Mahican traditions of diplomacy. Negotiating on behalf of the "15 sachems of the United States," Aupaumut employed both written text and the oral forms of the treaty council with authority.

And here's a sample of a part of a June 20, 1791 speech that was later written down:

Brother,
I feel thankful that by the goodness of the Great Spirit above we have again brought our pipes together; that we may speak together in friendship. I feel glad that the father of the United States has appointed you to kindle this council fire for peace. - I have something to say to you which for a good while has lain with weight upon my mind.
Brother, Attend!
I will remind you that I, my nation have always been the true friends of the Americans. Even from the first day they entered into a covenant of friendship. I, my nation have never been unfaithful nor broken any part of the chain of friendship.

You can view that speech fragment online as part of the Papers of the War Department project. The curious thing about it is they call it a "Speech of Hendrick to Stockbridge Indian Chief," while Captain Hendrick was himself a Stockbridge Chief and his words were clearly meant for the ears of United States officials.

People of Nama'o

2010-05-07T15:01:00.003-05:00

You already know that the Menominees are 'the people of the wild rice' (although there are some Wisconsin Indians who disagree). But according to a new book published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, the Menominees are also the "People of Nama'o." Nama'o means "sturgeon" in the Menominee language and "People of Nama'o" is chapter 6 of the new book, People of the Sturgeon:Wisconsin's Love Affair with an Ancient Fish. Mostly, it is a book about the modern-day white people who stand on the ice of Lake Winnebago with spears, waiting for a huge sturgeon to swim by.

For information about this photo, please see the Fish Geek blog.

But the prehistoric fish has been important to Menominee culture since prehistoric times.

According to page 176, the Menominees' "Fish Dance" mimics "the movements of the sturgeon as they travel up the river to spawn." (Pictured is David Grignon, the Menominee tribal historic preservation officer.)

Black Elk: The Controversy Continues

2010-04-30T12:55:00.006-05:00

Michael Steltenkamp's second book recently received a bad review in the American Library Association's Choice Magazine.

Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Missionary, Mystic was panned by Colgate University's C.T. Vecsey as having much of the same content as his earlier book Black Elk. Furthermore, Vecsey questions Steltenkamp's objectivity, while appearing to side with authors like the poet, John Neihardt, who strike me as being quite subjective.

(In addition to being a Roman Catholic priest, Seltenkamp also has a PhD in anthropology.)

Vecsey criticized Steltenkamp for basing all of his research on his interaction with Lucy Looks Twice. I have to question this. As I see it, Steltenkamp carefully read Neihardt's book and was right to ask why the poet glossed over the last 40-50 years of Nicholas Black Elk's life.

If the review of Steltenkamp's current book was online I'd give you a link to it. However, I can give you a link to a site that looks at Black Elk in a way that is closer to how I tend to look at him. I especially encourage you to scroll down to the botton of the link and read the section under the heading

WHY IS BLACK ELK SO CONTROVERSIAL?

The person responsible for that site is Sam Wellman. Black Elk is one of his "Heroes of History," and I'm somewhat amused that the heroes he tends to focus on are "explorers," and "missionaries." These, as you may know, are two of the most-bashed occupations amongst historians.

Roger Williams and the Naragansetts

2010-04-09T13:51:00.005-05:00

The American Indian Studies Program at Cal State University has done us the service of creating "Indians of North America - The Native American Experience." Their collection of historical images features a few that are relevant to Algonkian Church History.

The Naragansett name has come up in my previous posts because some of the genetic makeup of the Stockbridge and especially the Brothertown Indians comes from the Naragansett Nation.

Here is Cal Tech's description of the above engraving (property of the Library of Congress):

London-born Roger Williams (c.1603-1683) was an American Puritan leader and founder of Rhode Island. Banished from Massachusetts in 1636 for his separatist ideas, he set out with a few followers and went to Rhode Island. There he befriended the Narragansett Indians and bought land from them to settle on, naming the town Providence. Williams firmly believed in treating the Indians justly and humanely; he encouraged his fellow colonists to pay the Indians fairly for their land. In 1643, he published a dictionary of the Algonquian language, an endeavor which helped further friendly relations between the settlers and the Narragansetts. Providence
became a safe haven for many people, among them Quakers, Baptists, and Jews, who fled the religious persecution of the New England settlements.

An Indian Land Case in the Colony of New York, part 3 of 3

2010-03-30T17:09:00.013-05:00

*Read part 1 of this series*
*Read part 2 of this series*

Henry Moore (below) was the Royal Governor of the Colony of New York from 1765 to 1769.

The remainder of Patrick Frazier's thirteenth chapter in The Mohicans of Stockbridge is impossible to summarize in the space of one blogpost. As is often the case, his research turns up a lot of details that can hardly be called insignificant. Nevertheless, for those of you who won't be reading Frazier's book soon, here's what happened next:

The four Stockbridge chiefs returned to the colony of Massachusetts full of optimism after having been treated so well in London. They were told that the earl of Shelburne would send instructions on their case to New York's Governor, Henry Moore, and there is no reason to doubt that those instructions were sent. On the other hand, Governor Moore's willingness to heed those instructions is another matter. It appears that just too much was riding on the case - I mean that Moore's cronies had a lot to lose if he ruled in favor of the Indians. For that reason he apparently managed to ignore any pressure that may have been applied from London.

Here's how the case was resolved according to Patrick Frazier (page 169):

At the end, Governor Moore asked [Wappinger Chief Daniel] Nimham's counsel if they thought they had had a fair trial. The lawyers avoided answering directly. The 'several exceptions' they had taken to the [contested] deed were, in their minds, rather fundamental legal points. Moore closed the proceedings without rendering a final decision. A few days later the decision suddenly appeared in the public press. The governor and the council declared that the [land] patent was good and the purchase valid, that the Wappingers had no right to the land, and that they had been induced to complain by squatters who wanted support for their own claims. The Wappingers' complaint was "vexatious and unjust, and...accordingly dismissed.

This decision was not only a shock to the Indians but it was also a shock to their schoolteacher, Timothy Woodbridge, who wrote a number of letters in a futile attempt to advocate for the Indians.

*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*-----*
A contemporary account of this "Indian Land Case" exists. Learn about it from this post.

Stockbridge Indians Appeal to the King

2010-03-19T15:16:00.017-05:00

The Hudson Valley Land Case as told by Patrick Frazier, Part 2

The 13th chapter of Patrick Frazier's The Mohicans of Stockbridge (pages 160-171) is called "Learning the King's Limitations." It begins with our Indian heroes of Stockbridge, Massachusetts - the Wappinger Chief Daniel Nimham, as well as the Mohican patriarchs Jacob Cheeksaunkun (believed to be the father of the Chicks family), Solomon Uhhaunauwaunmut (the father of Hendrick Aupaumut and the Hendricks family), and John Naunauphtaunk - striking a deal with "William Gregg, Jr., a well-to-do New Englander." Essentially, Gregg was paying the four Indians and their four wives to go to England, and paying them to reside there for three years while they appealed their land case (as discussed in the previous post) to the King. In return, Gregg would receive a twelve square-mile tract of land and, while in England, the three Mohicans (but not Chief Nimham) would "act as Gregg's servants" (page 160).

Below: The Salisbury Cathedral is just one of the remarkable sights seen by the delegation of eight Indians when they arrived in England in 1766.

Frazier's account of the visit - as you might imagine - is quite remarkable. Nevertheless, in the limited space I have, I'll stick to the appeal of the land case itself, the reason for the trip.

At the end of August [1766] the Lords of Trade reported their findings to the King, focusing on the Wappinger claim. In their opinion there were grounds for further investigation into the facts, especially since 'frauds and abuses in respect to Indian lands...have so notoriously prevailed and been complained of in the American colonies and in [the colony of New York] in particular' (page 163).

Frazier continues in the next paragraph:

The earl of Shelburne had taken [the Indians'] affairs under his wing. After consulting with the king, the earl informed the Indians that he would instruct Governor Moore to give their case serious consideration and to find a just and speedy solution.

My guess is that the delegation had hoped for more when they set off across the Atlantic. Nevertheless, the "Indian land case" was at least taken seriously in London and Daniel Nimham and the rest prepared to pursue the case with the Governor.

The Hudson Valley Land Case as told by Patrick Frazier, Part 1

2010-03-19T11:50:00.016-05:00

Land conflicts (as well as military conflicts) were discussed at the Albany Congress of 1754. In this particular artist's conception, Benjamin Franklin appears to be ignoring the plea of a chief or is possibly just looking towards us because he is "easier to draw" that way.
In one of my first posts, I recommended that you read The Mohicans of Stockbridge, by Patrick Frazier. The book has merited mention in several posts since that time and needed to be kept out of my previous post so as not to upstage the remarkable document which is its topic. Having read that post, you're ready for a preview of that same legal case as told by Patrick Frazier on pages 155-170 of The Mohicans of Stockbridge.

The Highlands patent covered "about 200,000 acres" and Daniel Nimham's father and grandfather had "complained frequently to the patentee and his heirs about the patent"(page 155). In the wake of the Seven Years War (often called the "French and Indian War"), Chief Nimham, as you may know, moved his Wappinger remnant - roughly two hundred people - to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Soon afterwards, the estate's heirs, Roger Morris, Beverly Robinson, and Philip Philipse, "asserted their claim and even extended it by nearly 5,000 acres" (pages 155-156). Sir William Johnson, an advocate for the Indians made appeals to the authorities which were "met with polite but evasive answers" (page 157).

Sir William Johnson ---->

However, a hearing was granted for the Indians before Lieutenant Governor Cadawaller Colden on March 5, 1765:

Daniel Nimham, speaking in English, presented the Wappinger claim to the territory based on the ancient tribal heritage. Then he interpreted the proceedings for the other Indians, while [Samuel] Munrow [a white ally of the Wappingers whose own self-interest was also at stake], and the representative of the patent heirs debated the issues. The Indians, somewhat intimidated by the imperious air of the council, were taken aback when Beverly Robinson produced a curious Indian deed for the area in question, dated 1702 and signed by several Indians. Although one of the old tribesmen recognized some of the names, he recollected no transaction that the deed described. Samuel Munrow was allowed to examine the deed only briefly, but he could see flaws and possible fraud even so.

Before they had to leave, Chief Nimham asked to hear a verdict from the Lieutenant Governor. Colden conferred with his council and declared the deed to be good and, Frazier also reports that Colden "told the Indians to trouble the government no more" (page 158).

An Indian Land Case in Colonial New York

2010-03-10T08:29:00.028-06:00

A remarkable document was reprinted in the Summer, 1964 issue of Ethnohistory (volume 11, Number 3). This document, having been preserved in the British Museum, was introduced and edited by professors Oscar Handlin and Irving Mark under the title: "Chief Daniel Nimham v. Roger Morris, Beverly Robinson, and Philip Philipse - An Indian Land Case in Colonial New York, 1765-1767" (known hereafter as simply the Indian Land Case).

A portrait of Beverly Robinson.

At issue was a large tract of land in the Hudson River Valley, at least 20 miles long. British aristocrats from the Philipse family claimed to have made a legitimate purchase of it from certain Wappinger Indians. To this day, Philipse descendants do not acknowledge the illegitimacy of their ancestors' claim.

Patrick Frazier dealt with this land ownership controversy so very well in pages 155-170 of The Mohicans of Stockbridge (since the Google e-book omits some pages, you're much better off getting ahold of the print version). However, Frazier "cheated" by using many good sources. My job right now is to just tell you about the Indian Land Case as it appeared in Ethnohistory about 200 years after it was first written by an anonymous Connecticut lawyer sympathetic to the cause of the Indians.

The Indian Land Case tells of how the Wappingers occupied and held claim to the contested land when whites first discovered this country, how they fought and died for the British and how their remnant moved to "a place called Stockbridge" in 1756 (pages 196-197). (The issue of why the Stockbridge Indians, despite being made up of so many Wappingers and other non-Mohicans, are often called Mohicans is something that I won't make an issue of right now.)

The Land in question was in Dutchess and Westchester Counties on the New York side of the Hudson River.

By the 1760's, the purported lords of the land-in-question were Philip Philipse and his brothers-in-law, Beverly Robinson and Roger Morris. The three aristocrats sought to eject the Wappinger Indians and their salt-of-the-earth white tenants in 1765.

With just a few sentances, professors Handlin and Mark's introductory summary tells us exactly what happened over the course of about two years:

The Indians and their tenants, charging that the Philipse claim fraudulently deprived them of their land, petitioned Lietenant-Governor Cadawallader Colden and his Council who in 1765 rejected their plea... they appealed to the King's ministers who referred them back to the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, and his Council, with the same result as formerly (page 193)."

Cadawallader Colden -->

Why was the original plea, and in particular, the final appeal rejected? This quote from the Indian Land Controversy makes it quite clear:

They [the Indians and their attorneys(s)] also further intimated that inasmuch as it had been Suggested to them that most if not all the Gentlemen of the Council, were either Interested in the Lands in Controversy, or in other Lands which lay under Similar Circumstances and had perhaps once before Judged in this same Case; they were desirous that his Excellency [the Attorney General of the Colony of New York] should hear and determin the matter of said Complaint without his Council; or at least that None of those Gentlemen who were thus Interested or who had already once Judged in the Cause might sit in Council during the trial. But this being taken as an Impeachment of the Honor of the Council was not Granted (page 213).

To put it another way, there was no such thing as a conflict of interest back in those days. If you were an aristocrat or an oligarch, you were entitled to be interested in whatever you were already interested in.

1900 Census: Menominee and Shawano Counties (Wisconsin)

2010-03-04T09:41:00.011-06:00

The German Lutheran Church, Rev. Nickel's (inset) congregation before his ministry to the Stockbridge Indians. This photo and others can be found on the Shawano County Genealogy website.

A local group of genealogists created Shawano County Genealogy a while back. Last month they added a "1900 Menominee/Stockbridge Census" page.

Jean Barkow and Cathe Ziereis transcribed a listing of people - Indian and non-Indian - who lived in Indian Country in Shawano and Menominee Counties who were counted in the 1900 federal census. I'm calling your attention to the list, partly because you may want to use it, but also because of how Cathe introduces the list:

I personally feel like we killed these names in transcribing them as they were written.

On the plus side, you may be able to provide Cathe with the correct spellings.

Also available on the site are lists of Stockbridge Indians buried at The Old Stockbridge Cemetery and the Red Springs Cemetery. This article is at the bottom of the Red Springs Cemetery page:

Black Elk's Vision and the Two Roads Map

2010-03-02T14:58:00.010-06:00

Possibly the most memorable part of John Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks is Black Elk's description of the vision that he experienced as a boy. On page 93 of Steltenkamp's Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala, he reviews what a couple of scholars had to say about visions:

In Lakota tradition, "visions of real significance could come to a child of ten and twelve years and might affect the course of his life" (Royal Hassrick, 1964). Never taken lightly by their recipients, such visions still retained a forceful hold on people quite advanced in age. A vision often prescribed particular obligations and brought special power to the person receiving it (Robert Lowie, 1963).

Steltenkamp refers specifically to Black Elk's own vision in his next paragraph:

At the age of nine, Black Elk received a great vision, and Neihardt vividly narrates its details in an early chapter. Referred to as the living heart of the book and Black Elk's life, one commentary notes that an "attempt to describe it would do it injustice"(Frank Waters, 1984).... This childhood experience is shown as haunting Black Elk's conscious life, and the holy man repeatedly asks Wakan Tanka [God or The Great Spirit] if he properly sought the vision's fulfillment.The book's concluding chapter movingly suggests that Wakan Tanka answered Black Elk's question affirmatively.

On page 94, Steltenkamp tells us that "a key to interpretation of the vision, perhaps unknown to Neihardt and other commentators, surfaced in Black Elk's life at the time of his conversion [to Christianity]." The key that Steltenkamp refers to is a Roman Catholic teaching aide commonly known as the Two Roads Map (pictured right). The Two Roads Map was a "picture catechism," a piece of paper one foot wide and several feet long that illustrates "what Christians have traditionally called salvation history" and, Steltenkamp adds on page 95, "the Two Roads Map imaginatively captured in picture form the basic worldview of traditional Christian theology."

Remarkably, Steltenkamp notes that there are parallels between Black Elk's vision and the Two Roads Map, including "thunder beings, a daybreak star, flying men, tree imagery, circled villages, a black road, a red road, friendly wings, an evil blue man living in flames, a place where people moaned and mourned, emphasis on people's history, and gaudily portrayed, self-indulgent individuals. "

In Black Elk's vision as well as in the Two Roads Map, the Red Road was the good path. The term "Red Road" has now come to mean the good and authentic path for all Native Americans, to many of them, "the Red Road" now means "the traditional Indian way."

But - while this may come as a shock to many American Indians - Michael Steltenkamp's research has made it clear that for Nicholas Black Elk himself, Christianity was the Red Road.

Drum of the Brothertown Nation

2010-02-23T18:11:00.006-06:00

The February 21st, 2010 issue of The Fond du Lac [Wisconsin] Reporter featured the photo you see above (taken by Justin Connaher). In case it is too small for you to read, the caption below it says:

Native American drummers kick off Saturday's Celebrate CommUNITY event. This is the third year that Gordon Williams of Shawano and his drummers, as representatives of the Brothertown Nation, welcomed the flags of all countries during an opening ceremony. The annual celebration is sponsored by United for Diversity and draws more than 1,000 spectators to enjoy ethnic food and dance, and cultural crafts.

John Neihardt's Black Elk

2010-02-22T14:55:00.008-06:00

The cover of a book that I haven't read seems like a perfect visual for this post.

This series of posts about Black Elk is designed to promote Michael Steltenkamp's perspective. However, it would be a mistake for me to go negative on John Neihardt in a broad sense. Overall his Black Elk Speaks remains important and largely accurate.

Admittedly I have been disappointed at Neihardt for not including anything about how Black Elk was a Christian for the last 40-plus years of his life, but I can understand that his book would have been less powerful if he actually showed how well his indigenous subject adapted to a 'white man's religion.'

Lucy Looks Twice

2010-02-18T11:53:00.007-06:00

I first mentioned Michael Steltenkamp in a recent post. While Steltenkamp lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation he ran into an old woman in front of the Holy Rosary Mission. The woman turned out to be Lucy Looks Twice, the only surviving child of Black Elk (page xviii).

At that time, Michael Steltenkamp was a teacher at the Red Cloud High School and he wanted to learn more about Black Elk in order to share it with his students. His talks with Lucy Looks Twice led to a research project that ultimately produced Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala,the book upon which this post is based.

Steltenkamp's first interview with Lucy Looks Twice got off to a bad start because he asked her questions based on the famous books Black Elk Speaks and The Sacred Pipe. Lucy made it clear that she had never read the famous books about her father but knew enough about them to be aware that "her father was being misunderstood and that people were using the material from his books in a way he never intended"(page xx).

Black Elk's daughter had a complaint about John Neihardt, a poet and the author of Black Elk Speaks (pages 20-21):

My father related to John Neihardt an addtion to his book, but they never put it out. Afterward, he realized this and wanted the last part of his life also told - his life as a Christian man praying. My father wanted it known that after he quit his medicine practice, he became a catechist. But this man [Lucy pointed to a picture of John Neihardt] really believed in the Indian religion....

Many people have already read about my father's life as a medicine man in Black Elk Speaks and The Sacred Pipe. So, I'd like to tell about the rest of his life- the many years not talked about in either book. The greater part of his life was spent as a Catholic catechist whom I knew as [my] loving father.... My father would have wanted me to do this.

Bill Miller and Janice-Marie Johnson: The Stockbridge Mohicans' Grammy Winners

2010-02-10T13:49:00.022-06:00

My thanks to Wenona Gardner for posting a Shawano Leader article to her Mohican 7 e-mail list. The article, Bill Miller Wins Third Grammy is a good read.

A lot of Bill's music has been posted on YouTube.
Since this blog is about church history, I decided to embed a song of his called "I Believe."

Possibly even more famous than Bill Miller is Janice-Marie Johnson, a member of "A Taste of Honey" the group that won their Grammy for Best New Artist in 1979. Their number 1 song was called "Boogie Oogie Oogie." You could actually sing those kinds of words in the 1970's and become rich and famous doing it. Or, maybe not just anybody could, but Janice-Marie did.

A Taste of Honey's big hit "Boogie Oogie Oogie" can be viewed on YouTube.

Read the Wikipedia article about A Taste of Honey.

No doubt about it, Janice-Marie can still rock.

Steltenkamp's Black Elk

2010-02-05T09:23:00.011-06:00

There's a good chance that you've already heard of Black Elk, the holy man of the Oglala Sioux. I don't think that I can introduce him better than Professor of Theology Dennis Hamm did writing for the Center for the Study of Religion and Society in their Fall, 1993 issue:

Black Elk (1863-1950) may well be the most famous native North American. That he is even better known than Crazy Horse, Red Cloud and Sitting Bull is due mainly to the achievement of John Neihardt. The Nebraskan poet interviewed the Oglala holy man when the latter was 68. Out of those sessions he published, in 1932, the now classic Black Elk Speaks, which presents a stunning portrait of Black Elk as late 19th-century visionary and medicine man. Out of another set of interviews during the winter of 1947-48 (three years before the subject died), Joseph Epes Brown published The Sacred Pipe (1953), which gave the world further material from Black Elk's 19th-century medicine-man years. These two books are responsible for most people's picture of the man. Curiously missing from this portrait is the latter and longer part of his life-the fifty years lived in the 20th century, including his conversion to Christianity in 1904 and his long and productive career as a Catholic catechist.

That's right, for the last forty-five years of his life, Black Elk was a Christian.

In the preface to Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala, Michael Steltenkamp reminds us of a 1970's television commercial in which an Indian (apparently a Sioux) sees litter and starts to weep. That romantic notion doesn't match one of Steltenkamp's experiences as a schoolteacher on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Steltenkamp was giving a ride to a friend of his who was a very traditional Indian. The young man didn't understand why Steltenkamp didn't want him to throw a soda bottle out of the car window.

<--- author Michael Steltenkamp

Steltenkamp's point in bringing up that incident (which I greatly shortened), is that we modern Americans have a lot of romantic (and false) notions about traditional Native American Indians. Neihardt's Black Elk Speaks remains an important book, but it left us with some assumptions that are - fortunately for us - cleared up by Michael Steltenkamp.

Stay tuned for more on Black Elk: Holy Man of the Oglala.

Experience Mayhew's Indian Converts

2010-01-22T08:50:00.015-06:00

Up until this point I have had little to say about the Wampanoag Indians, but they bear more than just a mention in Algonkian Church History. The Wampanoags were a community of Christian Algonkians that was established long before King Philip's War and lasted long after the Stockbridge Indians left Massachusetts.

In 1727, Experience Mayhew's collection of Native biographies came out under the title Indian Converts, or Some account of the lives and dying speeches of a considerable number of the Christianized Indians of Martha's Vineyard, in New-England.

A new scholarly edition of Mayhew's book came out recently with an introduction by Laura Leibman, a professor of English and Humanities at Reed College.

Thanks to somebody at Reed College (probably the librarians), many digital images, several study guides, and more are available online as the Indian Converts Collection.

Here's a few links to images and other resources in the Reed College Indian Converts Collection:

Chapel at Gay Head
Sampson's Hill Meeting House
South Mashapee School

A small number of grammar school students had the opportunity to pursue further education at the Harvard Indian College.

Is it possible that some Indians who claimed to be Christians were just "playing along" in order to get something from the whites? Many certainly did. It is easier to understand those kinds of issues in light of the Reed College Indian Converts Collection's study guide on magistrates and guardians.

There is also an important study guide on "Island Christianity."

God Is Red: A Native View of Religion - or Should it be "One Native's View of Religion"?

2010-01-11T09:05:00.008-06:00

Vine Deloria's God is Red: A Native View of Religion is essentially an opposing viewpoint to Algonkian Church History. Nevertheless, both can still be (and in my opinion are) "good reads."

In God is Red and his other books, I have to wonder if Deloria is attacking Christianity per se or is he only attacking the beliefs and practices of certain white American Christians. Deloria paints with broad strokes, which also raises the question of whether he actually thinks that he can speak for all Native Americans. Perhaps he made a conscious decision to employ a more powerful all-emcompassing rhetoric, and realized there might be exceptions to the rules he was laying out.

But are the Stockbridge Mohicans and their missionaries, the Brothertown Indians, the praying Indians of the 1600's, and many other Christian Indians merely exceptions to Vine Deloria's rules? Academics should consider that question when they read Deloria.

The Role of the Lost Tribes Theory in Promoting Missions

2009-12-28T19:49:00.007-06:00

Right: the Pilgrims make a treaty with Massasoit of the Wampanoags.

As you may recall, many whites and at least some Indians once believed that Algonkian Indians were descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Something that James De Jong's As the Waters Cover the Sea does well is to explain what that "lost tribes theory" did for missions to those Indians. One might say that it motivated whites to support mission work. Many believed that the conversion of Native Americans would lead to the Chilead, or Millennium (a one-thousand-year period in which Christ would reign over a peaceful earth).

"...many leading Puritans in England and America wrote and endorsed missionary propaganda in the 1640's and 1650's. Their support was predicated on the belief that through missions, the glorious gospel day would dawn. It should be noted that this faith was based on many Old and New Testament passages of hope and not on a few select verses" De Jong, page 55.

Those verses included Psalm 72:8, Isaiah 49:6, Matthew 24:14, Mark 16:15, and Revelations 21:21.

However, as you may recall, things went downhill with King Philip's War in 1676. By that time, the lost tribes theory was not as widely believed. De Jong says (page 64) that scholars had a variety of ideas about the origin of the American Indians at that time.

I know of at least one person who believes in the Lost Tribes Theory to this very day.

The Peak of Christianity Among Indians in New England

2009-12-17T15:38:00.004-06:00

In an article posted to the website of The New Yorker magazine, Jill Lepore named the "Massachusetts Psalter" (see its title page above) as one of "The Top Ten Books of 1709." Lepore explains that the psalter is a "book of psalms, translated into Algonquian, and set into type by a Nipmuck Indian named James Printer."

Daniel Gookin was a missionary in the 1600's. According to his reports, there were over 1400 "praying Indians" on Martha's Vineyard and another 1100 Native Christians in Massachusetts Bay in 1674 (Historical Collections of Indians in New England, 1792, cited on page 46 of De Jong's As the Waters Cover the Sea).

Gookin somehow estimated a total of 3600 Christian Indians in Massachusetts at that time. However, historian Alden Vaughan reviewed a number of documents, including Gookin's, and estimated that 2500 was a more accurate number. Furthermore, according to Vaughan, one out of every five Indians in New England in 1674 was a Christian.

De Jong explains why Algonkian Christianity never reached higher numbers than that:

Early in the summer of 1675, for motives still being debated by historians, the Wampanoag sachem known as King Philip and his allies from three other Indian tribes attacked the colonists and their Indian allies. In a savage, year-long war in which an estimated five thousand Indians and ten percent of colonial forces were killed. Over thirty years of mission work was damaged irreparably..... Hundreds of Christian Indians were killed in the war and countless others died from hunger and exposure suffered on Deer Island in Boston Bay, onto which they had been herded by apprehensive colonists. Only four of the fourteen towns survived the conflict (pages 46-47).

The Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: "Come Over and Help Us"

2009-12-16T09:57:00.015-06:00

As James De Jong and other authors have observed, the official seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (see above) depicted an Indian who was saying "come over and help us." I will not bother to repeat what others have observed that that statement may represent in terms of ethnocentricity. Instead, I want to point out, as De Jong does (on page 32 of As the Waters Cover the Sea), that "come over and help us" is a Biblically inspired statement. It comes from Acts 16:9:

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: There stood a man of Macedonia and prayed him, saying 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.'

The point is not whether or not the American Indians ever asked for missionaries, instead, the point is that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was incorporated under the pretense of helping the native Algonkian-speaking people, or at least it was founded under the pretense of converting those natives to the Christian religion.

Although there were exceptions (notably John Eliot's work and the towns of "praying Indians"), the tone that was set in colonial New England was more about improving the whites' standard of living than about mission work. Here's what Patrick Frazier said about this topic:

Converting the American natives to Christianity had ostensibly been the principal aim of the Massachusetts Bay settlement, according to the charter of 1628. A century later some believed that this aim had been forgotten. Solomon Stoddard, a respected clergyman, suggested in 1723 that recent epidemics, Indian wars, and Indian alliances with the French might be signs of God's anger with the English for failing to spread the gospel among the natives (The Mohicans of Stockbridge, page 18).

James De Jong's "As the Waters Cover the Sea"

2009-12-10T08:24:00.013-06:00

One aspect of Algonkian church history that we've largely neglected so far is called missiology. Missiology is the study of church missions. I consider missiology to be a problematic area of study for two reasons: 1)things that were written about Christian missions in early America were almost always written by whites who had certain biases or prejudices and 2)on the other hand, the current conventional wisdom (not discouraged by academic historians) is to dismiss the early American missionaries as ethnocentric if not downright pernicious.

Unfortunately, there were pernicious missionaries, but let us not forget that many of the explorers, traders, and government officials were also pernicious. White culture as a whole, not the Christian church specifically, is what American Indian nations crumbled under. And if you've been reading this blog regularly, you're probably aware that missionaries did do things for Indians that benefited them in this world.

Fortunately I've been able to find an excellent book which addresses some aspects of early American missiology, As the Waters Cover the Sea: Millenial Expectations in the Rise of Anglo-American Missions, 1640-1810, by James De Jong. As the title suggests, the book is about how the world view of American whites motivated their mission work. In one of my earliest posts, I briefly discussed millenialism and its role in the first Algonkian missions. De Jong's book takes that into much greater depth and we'll consider it thoroughly in the coming posts.

Reformation Heritage Books has this to say about As the Waters Cover the Sea:

James De Jong’s dissertation sure-footedly guides us through the complex relation of millennial expectations and Anglo-American missiology from the Puritan age to the beginning of the nineteenth century. He shows how millennial hopes varied throughout this period from an Adventist type of premillennialism to a low-keyed postmillennialism. Nevertheless, De Jong concludes that these anticipations often balance themselves out somewhere between other-worldly and secularized hopes and between the temporal and eternal aspects of salvation. This balance enabled believers to engage in mission work confidently yet realistically, setting a viable pattern for us to follow today as we continue to look to Christ in hope, drawing our vision of humanity and missiology from His word.

Death of the Tribal Church: Keeping the Faith

2009-11-23T18:10:00.012-06:00

Conclusion of the Death of the Tribal Church Series
A series of posts about the church history of the Stockbridge Mohicans

I. Introduction
II. Summary of Tribal Church History, 1734 - 1844
III. A "Riot" with "no Fighting"
IV. Was Jeremiah Slingerland "a Man of too much Consequence"?
V. Was Jeremiah Slingerland a Big Spender?
VI. The ABCFM Pulls out of Stockbridge
VII. The Citizen Party Makes a Request
VII. Jeremiah Slingerland Keeps on Preaching

Today's post: Keeping the Faith

This 1878 map shows the Stockbridge Reservation shrunk to 1/4 its original size. Contrary to what some say, the shrinking of this reservation cannot entirely be blamed on the Congressman/Lumber Barron Philetus Sawyer. The Indian party leaders who made closed-room deals with Sawyer (Jeremiah Slingerland as much as anybody) are also responsible.

Reverend Slingerland's death appears to have devastated his Presbyterian congregation. The three Presbyterian ministers sent to serve the tribe between 1884 and 1907 stayed for an average of only about a year. But even before Slingerland's death, the era of a unified tribal church for the Stockbridge Mohicans had already passed. Led by Stephen Gardner, some of Slingerland's political opponents (citizen party families) already had a preference for Roman Catholicism. While their neighbors, the Menominees had a long association with the Catholics, many of the Stockbridges would insist on remaining Protestant. Among them were leaders like William C. Davids and Ed Sprague who sought out Lutheran ministers in the area in 1892, giving rise not only to Immanuel Mohican Lutheran Church, but also to a Lutheran boarding school. Nevertheless, for better or for worse, there was no going back to having one church for all of the Stockbridge Mohicans.

One hundred and twenty-five years after Jeremiah Slingerland's death, there is still a Presbyterian church on the reservation. While Presbyterianism has survived, Christianity as a whole has done better. Now over one hundred and sixty years after the ABCFM withdrew its support of the Stockbridge Mohicans' mission, my estimate is that church attendance on the reservation is comparable to national averages.

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This is the last of a series of seven posts.

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Some serious issues have been covered in this series of posts.
One is the issue of white mission societies being unwilling to promote or encourage independence from Indian churches.

I made it a point to stick to the facts:
But in this case much of what we know is "He said, she said" material. Many of the facts we have are rather subjective statements, the perceptions of Cutting Marsh and Jeremiah Slingerland. I don't think either was dishonest. What Marsh saw as a "riot," Slingerland saw as an event where "excitement prevailed" but there was "no fighting, save one."

Race, religion, culture, politics, personal ownership and thrift... these are just some of the controversial issues that this series of posts has touched on. Your comments are appreciated.

Death of the Tribal Church: Jeremiah Slingerland Keeps on Preaching

2009-11-20T09:11:00.013-06:00

Death of the Tribal Church Series
A series of posts about the church history of the Stockbridge Mohicans
I. Introduction
II. Summary of Tribal Church History, 1734 - 1844
III. A "Riot" with "no Fighting"
IV. Was Jeremiah Slingerland "a Man of too much Consequence"?
V. Was Jeremiah Slingerland a Big Spender?
VI. The ABCFM Pulls out of Stockbridge
VII. The Citizen Party Makes a Request

VIII. Today's post:
Jeremiah Slingerland Keeps on Preaching

The Winnebago Presbytery today covers this area (northeast Wisconsin and adjoining counties). Meetings that had an impact on the church history of the Stockbridge Mohicans were held at Neenah and Weyauwega. Also highlighted in purple is the location of the Stockbridge's Shawano County reservation.

The tribe had kept the faith without missionaries before and they would again in Shawano County. Informal worship services were held at the Slingerlands' home until Methodists came into the area and organized the first church on the new reservation in 1863 or 1864. Ironically, Jeremiah Slingerland, an unordained Indian preacher, essentially served as a missionary to whites in the frontier town of Shawano for four years. As of the summer of 1859 he was preaching either on the reservation or in Shawano every Sunday (letter from Slingerland to Electa Candy, 7/21/1859, John C. Adams Papers). The first white minister didn't arrive in Shawano until 1863 (booklet celebrating the 125th anniversary of the First Presbyterian Church in Shawano, page 1).

The Stockbridge Mohicans had a long history of Calvinist Christianity. All their missionaries right up to Cutting Marsh and Jeremiah Slingerland had been either Presbyterians or Congregationalists (and during these times there weren't major doctrinal differences between the two denominations). In his heart, Slingerland never was a Methodist, but because Methodists cooperated with Calvinists, he became licensed as a preacher of the Methodist Episcoal Church.

Then on January 31st, 1866, Slingerland traveled to the annual meeting of the Presbytery of Winnebago in Neenah. After being examined in "Experimental Religion, ancient languages, church history, and natural sciences," he was finally ordained a Presbyterian minister - more than twenty years after he graduated from the seminary (minutes of the Presbytery of Winnebago).

On August 28th, 1867, at a presbytery meeting in Weyauwega, Reverend Slingerland proposed that a Presbyterian church be organized for the Stockbridge Mohicans. The new Presbyterian church was given $200 in financial aid from the Presbyterian "Board of Domestic Missions" (minutes of the Presbytery of Winnebago). However, due to the continued partisan tribal politics and the lack of farmable land on the reservation, this new congregation was considerably smaller than previous congregations had been.

When Reverend Slingerland died unexpectedly of pneumonia in 1884, the Presbytery of Winnebago eulogized him as

an intelligent , able, and devoted minister of Christ. The faithful servant of his tribe... watchful and efficient in their behalf.. [who] identified himself with their poverty and their wrongs, he has stood among them as a true shepherd leading them in the way of life (minutes of the Presbytery of Winnebago, 7/9/1884).

The series will continue.

Death of the Tribal Church: the Citizen Party Makes a Request

2009-11-18T14:31:00.013-06:00

Death of the Tribal Church Series
A series of blogposts about the Stockbridge Mohicans and their relationship with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
I. Introduction
II. Summary of Tribal Church History, 1734 - 1844
III. A "Riot" with "no Fighting"
IV. Was Jeremiah Slingerland "a Man of too much Consequence"?
V. Was Jeremiah Slingerland a Big Spender?
VI. The ABCFM Pulls out of Stockbridge

VII: Today's post:
The Citizen Party Makes a Request

This modern-day Lenape elder is doing a switch dance. This isn't necessarily the same kind of dancing that the Munsees that came to the new Shawano County reservation were doing at that time.

A new treaty made in 1856 was intended to bring together the Indian Party, the citizen Party, and other Indians, including Munsees, on some land purchased for them from the Menominees in what is now Shawano County, Wisconsin. Since the new reservation was purchased entirely with Indian party funds, much of the Indian party refused to move to the new reservation. However, Jeremiah and Sarah Slingerland made the move in February of 1857, while other Indian party leaders were still protesting (letter from Sarah Slingerland to J.N. Davidson, 9/19/1890, quoted in Davidson, page 55).

The citizen party was in power on the Shawano County reservation and within three weeks of Slingerland's arrival they sent a letter to the ABCFM in which they claimed their political troubles had finally been settled. They proceeded to ask that another missionary be sent.

The Munsee Indians still remain in darkness and ignorance - they worship the great Spirit by dancing. Our people here have had no regular teacher [of the gospel] for some time... and as their former missionaries have heretofore been sent by good white people of the east, they are led to look again that way, and...respectfully inquire [whether they will] again be favored by a minister or not (quoted from a 3/3/1857 letter from the Stockbridge Indians to the ABCFM, ABCFM Papers).

The letter itself, of course, tells us that the citizen party leaders wanted a minister. But some parts of the quote above, as well as the timing of the letter, suggests that the citizen party leaders didn't want Slingerland, a leader of the Indian party, to be their minister.

The ABCFM did not send a new missionary.

Additional sources used:
*John C. Adams Papers (State Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin)
*Schafer's Domesday Book
*Oberly's A Nation of Statesmen.

Death of the Tribal Church: The ABCFM Pulls out of Stockbridge

2009-11-17T17:54:00.018-06:00

The ABCFM Papers are kept here at Harvard University's Houghton Library. The Papers are available in microfilm via interlibrary loan. Refer to the ABCFM Papers finding aid for a list of reels of microfilm covering missions to many nations.

The Death of the Tribal Church Series:
I. Introduction
II. Summary of Tribal Church History, 1734 - 1844
III. A "Riot" with "no Fighting"
IV. Was Jeremiah Slingerland "a Man of too much Consequence"?
V. Was Jeremiah Slingerland a Big Spender?

Today's post:
The ABCFM Pulls out of Stockbridge

Situated in Boston, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions didn't have the luxury of closely overseeing its missionaries in the field. In making decisions, it seems they had to rely heavily on the views of their missionaries. Several months before he left the Stockbridge Mohicans, Reverend Cutting Marsh was already advising the ABCFM about what he felt should be done after his departure. During Marsh's lame duck period the ABCFM also took the opportunity to have Marsh reconsider some of his recommendations.

Asked by the ABCFM "Ought [Jeremiah Slingerland] not be encouraged to go on preaching and keep the church together?" Marsh replied that he felt Slingerland should not be ordained for a number of reasons, one being that he continued to lack confidence in Slingerland's work and another being that Slingerland had been investigated by the Green Bay Indian Agent for asking to be paid for teaching "two schools at the same time" (letter from Marsh to Greene, 9/21/1848, ABCFM Papers).

Marsh was also asked about the mission property. He made it clear that his position had not changed since 1845 when he wrote that the ABCFM was "under no obligation whatever to the tribe for any of [the mission] property excepting fifteen acres of the soil" (letter from Marsh to Greene, 7/28/1845, ABCFM Papers).

And so the ABCFM decided to withdraw from the Stockbridge mission. Cutting Marsh and his family moved out of the mission house but Jeremiah Slingerland didn't move in. Nor was he ordained.

A modern satellite photo of Wisconsin's Lake Winnebago. The village of Stockbridge is on the east shore.

The treaty made on November 24th, 1848 promised the Indian party a number of payments for lost lands as well as money to start over and a new seventy-two section reservation (a section is equal to 640 acres, or one square mile). However, exactly where the Indian party would move was not specified. The Indian party never did come to an agreement with the federal government over where they would go. As years went by, many members of both the citizen party and the Indian party remained at Stockbridge on Lake Winnebago.

Jeremiah Slingerland continued his work as a schoolteacher - paid by government funds - and on the side he preached, farmed, and attended to Indian party politics. In 1853 he married a white woman named Sarah who was also a teacher. Town records show that white ministers O.P. Clinton and J.P. Jones as well as Slingerland were paid to preach between 1850 and 1857.

This series will continue.

Lion Miles Weighs in on the Language Issue

2009-11-15T19:52:00.009-06:00

Lion Gardiner (pictured right) was a commander in the Pequot War. One of his descendants, Lion Miles, has been researching the history, culture, and language of Mohican Indians for at least the last seventeen years.

In response to recent contributions of Shawn Stevens and Jeremy Mohawk, Lion Miles of Stockbridge, Massachusetts contributed an article to the current (November 15, 2009) issue of Mohican News. Most importantly, Miles announced that his Mohican dictionary is "nearly finished and I have sent a draft to the Arvid Miller Library, hoping that it will be examined by the Language and Culture board." He reported using written material from the following Indians: Hendrick Aupaumut, John Metoxen, John Konkapot, Jr., and the Moravian convert known as Tschoop, or Johannes. Miles also used material from the following whites: John Sergeant (which one he does not say), and Jonathan Edwards, representing the Stockbridges as well as the following whites who represent other Mohicans, perhaps all but the last one are Moravians: John Ettwein, John Jacob Schmick, Benjamin Smith Barton, John Heckewelder, and Thomas Jefferson.

Miles made it clear that in his opinion reviving the Mohican language would be a good thing, or at least "a worthy goal." Miles points out that the Munsees and the Mohicans really didn't live together until 1835 so common ancestors don't go back far enough for those who consider themselves Mohicans to be satisfied to call Munsee their own language.

Munsee words found themselves into Mohican later and many of them were quite different. For example, the word "anushiik" is Munsee for "thank you," but the Mohican word was "onewe." "Eagle" was "migisso" in Mohican but "wapalonna" in Munsee.

In Lion Miles' opinion, there is not enough evidence out there to re-create the Mohican language exactly but "there is material to come reasonably close."

Death of the Tribal Church: Was Jeremiah Slingerland a Big Spender?

2009-11-13T14:28:00.020-06:00

Death of The Tribal Church Series
A Series of Blogposts about the Stockbridge Mohicans and their relationship to the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM)
I. Introduction
II. Summary of Tribal Church History, 1734 - 1844
III. A "Riot" with "no Fighting"
IV. Was Jeremiah Slingerland "a Man of too much Consequence"?

Today's post:
Was Jeremiah Slingerland a Big Spender?

Although Jeremiah Slingerland was a Stockbridge Mohican, Cutting Marsh described him as the kind of man who might wear the same kind of clothes as the Englishmen in this drawing.

One of Cutting Marsh's biggest charges against Jeremiah Slingerland regarded his handling of money. Marsh felt that "if an Indian has money he will lay it out for anything he may fancy he needs....[and] I find Mr. S an Indian still in this respect"(letter from Marsh to Greene, 11/18/1847, ABCFM Papers). Slingerland had asked the ABCFM for money more than once and he had explained that he needed it to buy clothes. When asked about the matter Marsh opined

His complaint about clothes would appear strange to one who should have seen...his wardrobe, the genteel manner in which he dressed daily and on the Sabbath and especially the pile of clothes he would furnish Monday morning for the wash. Mrs. M[arsh] repeatedly remarked whilst he lived with us [that] she would rather do the washing and ironing of two common men than Mr. S[lingerland] (quoted from Marsh's letter to Greene of 11/11/1847, ABCFM Papers).

Given the opportunity to defend himself, Slingerland wrote,

Respecting my economical habits, I suppose I have not shown them to that degree I might have done. But Sir, I ask who does? Who is not conscious of greater indulgences than what he ought to have allowed upon himself? (quoted from Slingerland's letter to Greene of 2/9/1848, ABCFM Papers).

Although we know that racism prevented Native ministers of earlier generations from making a decent living, there is really no way for us to determine whether or not Slingerland received enough pay for his work or whether or not he was disciplined enough to budget it properly. From our modern perspective it is nobody's business how one spends one's own money, but Marsh believed that the repairs on the mission property that Slingerland would make "would amount to five times as much as they would under a white man's direction." Furthermore, Marsh predicted that the mission property, if turned over to Slingerland, would be mortgaged within five years in order to pay debts. Marsh went into further detail explaining why he felt this way, bout, once again, it is impossible for us to know with any certainty how fair or unfair his opinion of Slingerland's spending habits were (letter from Marsh to Greene, apparently undated, ABCFM Papers).

But when it came to budgeting, it wasn't just Slingerland that Marsh complained about to the ABCFM, it was the tribe as a whole:

I have long felt and others have said the same that the Stockbridges ought to do something themselves towards [financially] supporting he gospel. when they want to send a delegation to Washington[,] which has been often since I resided amongst them[,] they will always find a way to get the means. When they want to employ a lawyer[,] which they often do[,] they will raise enough money to pay him. And it has appeared to me that the gospel ought to be considered as being worth something as well as the services of lawyers (quoted from Marsh's letter to Greene of 10/18/1847, ABCFM Papers).

Marsh acknowledged that the Indians were poor. but he noted that the neighboring Brothertown Indians provided some of the financial support for their missionary (letter from Marsh to Greene, 4/12/1848, ABCFM Papers).

Death of the Tribal Church: Was Jeremiah Slingerland "a Man of too much Consequence"?

2009-11-11T10:10:00.015-06:00

The Death of the Tribal Church Series:
I. Introduction
II. Summary of Tribal Church History 1734 - 1844
III. A "Riot" with "no Fighting"

Today's post:
Was Jeremiah Slingerland "a Man of too much Consequence"?

After the act of 1843 was passed, frontier businessman Daniel Whitney and other whites eagerly bought up pieces of what had been the Stockbridge Reservation from Indians who had "acquired the rights of citizenship."

The Stockbridge Mohicans' bitter inter-tribal politics alienated Cutting Marsh and Jeremiah Slingerland from each other. The partisanship went back at least as far as 1843 when the tribe's citizen party succeeded in getting the United States Congress to declare all Stockbridges citizens of the United States. This essentially dissolved the tribal government and turned the reservation into private allottments. While leaders of the Indian party worked to nullify the act of 1843, members of both parties went ahead and proceeded to sell land. In 1846 the Indian party - of which Jeremiah Slingerland became a member - succeeded in getting the act of 1843 overturned. Something about the act of 1846 (which overturned the act of 1843) disturbed Cutting Marsh.

Although the Indian Party sold land and gave warantee deeds unconditionally [under the] act of 1843[,] still in the act of 1846 they got a clause inserted declaring all land sales under the former act null and void. They now suppose that all the lands they have sold have come back without compensation to the purchasers of any kind; and the leading man in the party I understand is determined they shouldn't be paid anything in return... I am very much tried upon the subject. And Mr. S[lingerland,] speaking of the subject[,] called them in my presence 'the supposed claims of white men' (letter from Marsh to Treat, 6/21/1847, ABCFM Papers).

In addition to the fallout from Slingerland's political activities, Marsh had other concerns. According to Marsh's brand of Christianity, pride was a great sin and he didn't like the praise and attention that he believed was lavished upon Slingerland for being a well-educated Indian. Marsh complained to the ABCFM that "Good people of the East have flattered [Slingerland]" with the result that Slingerland had "become a man of too much consequence" (letter from Marsh to Greene 9/13/1847, ABCFM Papers). On the same day that Marsh wrote those words, the tribal government - members of Slingerland's Indian Party - wrote their own letter to the ABCFM, asking that Slingerland be appointed in Marsh's place. The tribal leaders were careful to praise both men, but in noting that Slingerland was "now thirty-one years old," they may have hoped to cast doubt on Marsh's claims that Slingerland needed more experience before he could exhibit good judgement (letter from tribal leaders to the ABCFM, 9/13/1847).

Death of the Tribal Church: A "Riot" with "no Fighting"

2009-11-09T15:54:00.011-06:00

The Death of the Tribal Church Series:
I. Introduction
II: Summary of Tribal Church History, 1734 - 1844

Today's post:
III. A "Riot" with "no Fighting"

Today's community of Stockbridge, Wisconsin is still a rural village of about 600 people. By 1845 some combination of the Stockbridge Mohicans' conflicts and struggles and Cutting Marsh's own stern stubbornness had greatly compromised his effectiveness as the missionary. However, a member of the tribe was studying to become a minister and Marsh mentioned him in a letter to the ABCFM. "Jeremiah Slingerland[,] now in the Theological Seminary in Bangor [Maine] will leave there this fall and he intends to visit his people. I have thought that it would be best to have him take my place here." Marsh added "perhaps he would do more good than a white man"(Letter from Marsh to David Greene, 7/28/1845, ABCFM Papers).

By the time Marsh wrote that letter, Jeremiah Slingerland had already served the ABCFM in mission work with the Penobscots at Old Town, Maine. Slingerland did return to the Wisconsin Territory in the fall of 1845. He moved in with Rev. Marsh and his family and began working as a schoolteacher and assistant minister. Marsh's first reports of Slingerland's labors to the ABCFM, were positive. Marsh observed that Slingerland "appears to take great interest in the welfare of his people, takes hold and labors harmoniously"(letter from Marsh to Greene, 2/17/1846, ABCFM Papers). However, by the summer of 1846, Slingerland had become involved in tribal politics and, in so doing, he alienated some members of the church and also Rev. Marsh (Marsh to Greene of 8/11/1846, ABCFM Papers). From that point on, Marsh was convinced that Slingerland didn't have good enough judgement to take over his post (see especially Marsh's letter to Greene of 4/1/1847, ABCFM Papers).

The first significant political activity Slingerland was involved in was described as a "riot" by Marsh. but in his own report to the ABCFM, Slingerland asserted that there had been "no fighting... save one." Nevertheless, Slingerland admitted that "excitement prevailed" and explained that his party, after seeking legal counsel, decided it was appropriate to use physical force to prevent a white tax collector from seizing their property. After describing his version of the event in question, Slingerland asked the ABCFM for a different assignment, noting that the "labor here is just enough to employ one." He felt members of the church preferred him to Marsh but his own preference was "I should wish Mr. Marsh remain and have me go some where" (letter from Slingerland to Greene, 4/6/1847). However, the ABCFM did not act and both men stayed put. Relations between them deteriorated to the point where Slingerland moved out of the Marsh household and the two men avoided each other. Slingerland continued his mission work but stopped reporting what he was doing to Marsh (letter from Slingerland to Greene, 2/9/1847). As a result, Marsh couldn't possibly have appreciated the work Slingerland was doing from that point on.

Death of the Tribal Church: Summary of Tribal Church History, 1734 to 1844

2009-11-05T13:26:00.017-06:00

Death of the Tribal Church:
The Stockbridge Mohicans and the ABCFM
I. Introduction
II. Today's post: Summary of Tribal Church History 1734-1844

As this crude map shows, what is now the state of Wisconsin was part of the Michigan Territory in 1830, the year that Cutting Marsh began his ministry to the Stockbridge Mohicans.

During Cutting Marsh's time as the missionary to the Stockbridge Indians, when people out east spoke of "Green Bay," they weren't referring to the modern city of Green Bay, but, rather, much of what we would now call eastern Wisconsin. The Stockbridges' first settlement was known as Statesburg and it was located within today's city of Kaukauna.

By the 1730's the once-mighty Mohican Indian nation was devastated by diseases, warfare, and other aspects of more than one-hundred years of white contact. Not only had their numbers decreased dramatically, but the Mohican hunting and gathering economy and their traditional religion were greatly weakened. In 1734 two Mohican chiefs were approached by two clergymen who represented the New England Company, a philanthropic mission society based in London. A Christian mission was proposed by the two ministers. This proposal was later debated in a local council and ultimately at a council of the Mohican nation. It was decided that the new religion "should be preached in one certain village and let every man and woman hear it and accept it if they think best" (Hendrick Aupaumut, "Extract From an Indian History," in Massachusetts Historical Collections, pages 99-102). A missionary and a schoolteacher were successful enough to attract Mohicans and other Indians and the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts was incorporated in 1739.

Aspects of white contact continued to cause more suffering among the Stockbridge Mohicans in the decades after the mission town was established. Many of their best men died while fighting for the British (against the French) and for the young United States in the Revolutionary War (See Frazier's The Mohicans of Stockbridge for more about this period of time). There is not space here to describe all of the tribe's struggles and losses except to note that they were pushed west, to New York State by the 1780's, and by the mid-1820's most of them had settled along the Fox River in what is now Kaukauna, Wisconsin.

Despite their hard times over the years, tribal leaders prided themselves on being "civilized" Christian Indians. However, they had left their missionary back in New Stockbridge, New York. They addressed the issue of being without a missionary in an undated draft of a letter they intended to send to a mission society.

We hold meetings for divine worship regularly every Sabbath, conferences on fridays, concerts for prayer every first monday in each month. The meetings are conducted by the members of the church by prayers and reading a chapter with the notes and observations in Scott's Bible.

And we would also inform you that here is an extensive country where the people are absolutely without any means whereby they might attain to the knowledge of a true God, a great field indeed where much improvement is wanting in all respects [the Ho-Chunk or Winnebago Indians and the Menominees] are all in a spiritual sense sitting in the regions [of the] shadow of death. May God in his allwise providence dispose the hearts of the heralds of the cross to come into this distant country to sound the glad tidings of the gospel not only to us but may it also reach our Menominee and Winnebago brethren who have no knowledge of our blessed redeemer (found in the John C. Adams Papers at the Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison).

While it is not clear exactly where that letter wound up, Rev. Jesse Miner who was serving the remnant of the tribe in New York State visited the Fox River settlement in 1827. A year later, Miner was instructed by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to move his ministry permanently. However, Miner died after serving the Stockbridge Mohicans on the Fox River for only several months.

Under the auspices of the ABCFM, Rev. Cutting Marsh began his ministry among the Stockbridge Mohicans in 1830. A few years later, Marsh moved along with the tribe to some good agricultural land on the east shore of Lake Winnebago. Their settlement there - as it was in Massachusetts - became known as "Stockbridge" in English and "Muhheconnuk" in their native language. While it appears that Marsh had something of a honeymoon period with the tribe, he was not as tolerant as some of his more successful predecessors had been. Marsh, of course, was also unfortunate to be serving the Stockbridges at a time when inter-tribal political tensions - largely resulting from federal Indian policy - were coming to a head.

This is part of a continuing series.

Death of the Tribal Church: Introduction

2009-11-04T10:38:00.017-06:00

As the Stockbridge Mohican's white missionary gets ready to leave them, the tribe is divided politically. Although a promising young member of the tribe has graduated from an eastern seminary, his political involvement alienates him from the missionary and others. To what extent is a unified tribal church possible amongst a politically divided tribe? Will a white mission society support Indians without the presence of a white missionary? This is what the present series of posts is about.

In my research on the conflict between Cutting Marsh and Jeremiah Slingerland, I was fortunate, not only to have a chance to look at microfilmed ABCFM records and other primary materials, but I also benefited from reading Roger Nichols' (pictured) thesis, Cutting Marsh: Missionary to the Stockbridges. At least some of the conclusions I've come to were first made by Roger Nichols back in 1959. Although Nichols is now a well-known historian, few people are aware that he ever studied the Stockbridge Mohicans. I'm grateful to be able to present material here which he addressed decades ago.

The young state of Wisconsin created this flag to reflect an economic future that didn't necessarily include Indians.

Death of the Tribal Church:

The Stockbridge Mohicans and the ABCFM

(American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions)

Introduction

The year is 1848. Over the past fifteen years, what had been the Stockbridge Reservation on the east shore of Lake Winnebago has gone form having no white people to having three whites for every Indian. The brand new state of Wisconsin plans to flex its muscles and have the Stockbridge Mohicans move west of the Mississippi River. in fact, for a number of years the federal government has already been trying to push the tribe west. Treaties and acts of Congress over the past ten years which were purported to be "for the relief of the Stockbridge Indians" have only brought about a complicated and confusing situation and fostered bitterly partisan tribal politics.

One hundred and seventy-seven Stockbridge Mohicans are now recognized as members of the Indian party. The federal government will negotiate a treaty with Indian party leaders which will compensate them for lands lost and provide them with a new reservation in what will become Minnesota. Meanwhile, members of the citizen party have taken allotments of land. They can stay in Wisconsin, but neither the federal government nor the leaders of the Indian party recognize them as part of the tribe politically.

Cutting Marsh, whose effectiveness as the missionary has been compromised by the political turmoil and - at least to some extent - by his own rigidity, decides that it is time for him and his family to leave Stockbridge, Wisconsin. His feelings for the tribe having soured, Rev. Marsh has been advising the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), to withdraw their support for the mission. What will happen to the Stockbridge Mohicans church?

This is the first of a continuing series of posts.

Lecture on the Lenape (Delaware) Indians

2009-11-03T17:52:00.003-06:00

If you are in or near Albany, New York on Sunday, November 8th, you'll want to read John Warren's post about a lecture presented there by Dr. David Oestreicher. The presentation is called "The Lenape: Lower New York's First Inhabitants."

Language Issues: A Minority Viewpoint is Published in Mohican News

2009-11-01T19:55:00.009-06:00

The pre-contact distribution of Algonquian languages according to Answers.com.

"Mohawk" is not only the name of an Iroquois-speaking Indian nation, it is also a fairly common last name among the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians (the tribe/nation usually referred to here as the Stockbridge Mohicans). A letter to the editor in the November 1, 2009 issue of Mohican News by Jeremy Mohawk is the subject of this post.

As you may know, today's Stockbridge Indians have been working on the Mohican language. Some of them like to assert that the Mohican language is not dead. Others speak of "reviving" the Mohican language. In fact, a revival of Mohican seems to me to be the best that can be hoped for. Meetings have gone on recently in which interested Stockbridges have guessed at pronunciations of Mohican words that were written by or under the supervision of the tribe's missionaries and they have also borrowed words and pronunciations from other groups of Indians. Proper grammar for the Mohican language is also a work in progress.

On the other hand, as Jeremy Mohawk writes, there is no need to revive the Munsee Delaware/Lenape language, since it never ceased being spoken at Moraviantown, Ontario, Canada.

The Munsee dialect of Lenape has been brought to our reservation and a lot of people are using it. The Language and Culture Board has adopted it as a language for our people. We have been using this language for our feasts, prayers at the feast, titles of our feasts and in our homes.

Mohawk added that the Munsee dialect of Lenape is the language that is taught at the Stockbridge Mohicans' language camps and the teachers are authentic Munsee speakers from Moraviantown in Canada. Learning from people who actually speak the language really is the best (or possibly only) way to ensure that you'll learn the correct pronunciations of a language.

As Jeremy Mohawk sees it, members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians have common ancestors, some spoke Mohican, and others spoke Munsee [Delaware] Lenape. For that reason wouldn't the whole tribe be better off to learn a language that is still living than to work hard on the Mohican language but never know if you're speaking it correctly?

Menominee Confessions to Sister Mary Ignace

2009-10-28T08:36:00.010-05:00

A back view of St. Joseph's Boarding School, Keshena, Wisconsin. Parents didn't protest against the school overtly because they knew that if the school closed, their children would be sent farther away.

An anecdote relayed in Sarah Schillinger's book about St. Joseph's Boarding School in Keshena, Wisconsin, is about the Roman Catholic practice of confession. The anecdote requires no commentary, other than the disclaimer that it is not for me to comment on confession in a general sense, only that it proved to be a bad thing for many Indian children at St. Joseph's.

On page 65, Schillinger states that the students feared and disliked Sister Mary Ignace. A Menominee woman named Josephine Daniels recalled that "you.... [had] to go confess your sins every Friday, whether or not you had sins, you had to confess." But one Friday Josephine Daniels asserted that she had no sins to confess and the result was "a good licking" from sister Mary Ignace. The next week, Josephine Daniels told the priest that she had "killed about eleven people and committed adultery fifty times and told about seven hundred lies."

The priest was not so hard to deal with and Josephine Daniels' ridiculous confession resulted in an investigation. The children never knew for sure what kind of consequences Sister Mary Ignace faced or didn't face as a result of the beating she administered. In a 1994 interview, all that Josephine Daniels knew is that the nun was sent away and later came back.

[Schillinger's book leaves no clue as to when this confession/beating incident occurred, other than that St. Joseph's Dormitories were closed in 1952.]

Sarah Schillinger's Case Study of the Catholic Boarding School in Keshena, Wisconsin

2009-10-27T14:02:00.005-05:00

Before multiculturalism caught on, the United States was known as a melting pot, meaning that people from many ethnic or national backgrounds came to America and then assimilated or gave up their backgrounds and became "Americans."

On pages 114 to 118 of her book, A Case Study of the American Indian Boarding School Movement: An Oral History of Saint Joseph's Indian Industrial School, Sarah Schillinger reviews the academic literature on this issue and tells us that it is more accurate to say that European immigrants had the opportunity to integrate into American culture instead of being forced to assimilate. Europeans that came to this country formed communities of other immigrants that spoke the same language. Often this revolved around membership in ethnic-based churches.

Schillinger's point, of course, is that forced assimilation by means of Indian boarding schools was not only harmful to Indians, but also that it was an abuse that families of European immigrants never had to take.

Are you wondering how Menominee children were forced to speak English?
On page 102, Schillinger reports that the Catholic boarding school placed Menominee children in dormatories with English-speaking Stockbridge and Oneida children.

Samson Occom's Last Days

2009-10-25T19:40:00.004-05:00

While they lived in the Massachusetts mission town, all the Stockbridge Indians were members of a single congregation. Soon after their move to New York State, the falling out between their two legitimate ministers resulted in the tribe being split into two congregations.

After a few years of having two congregations, the Stockbridges held a council to discuss the situation. They decided that having their tribal church divided into two parties was a "stumbling block." Some felt that Rev. Occom (a Brothertown Indian) was "meddling too much with [their] civil government," and noted he had recently "fallen into the sin of intemperance[or drinking]" several times. They also felt he was "superannuated" or past his prime.

At that council, the Stockbridge Indians voted first to have one minister for the whole tribe and then chose John Sergeant [Jr.] to be that one minister by a twenty-two to eight margin. A committee was then formed to

inform Mr. Occom that it was not out of any ill will to him, that if he would leave us as minister of the Town...and as he had no support, if he would comply with our reasonable request and make us happy - we would unitedly do all we could to help him. But we are sorry to say he paid no regard to us. (Quoted from a letter from the Stockbridge Indians to Rev. Samuel Kirkland, June 22, 1792 in the Kirkland Papers at Hamilton College.)

Rev. Occom and his family had only moved to New Stockbridge a few months earlier. Politics may have been their reason for leaving Brothertown and the Stockbridges' letter suggests that politics had made the Occoms unwelcome at New Stockbridge. But they didn't leave.

Only a few weeks after the Stockbridge Indians wrote the letter referred to above, on July 14, 1792, Samson Occom suddenly died.

The Split Between Occom and Sergeant

2009-10-22T08:34:00.008-05:00

You may remember that both Samson Occom and John Sergeant [Jr.] received calls to minister to the Stockbridge Mohicans towards the end of 1787. In the short run, their plan was to engage in cooperative ministry. That plan seems to have worked for a little while, at least. Eventually, however, the two ministers came into conflict. Neither one of the ministers ever fully recorded what their falling out was about, but Occom did leave some clues.

In Samson Occom (1935), Harold Blodgett stated the conflict was over "doctrinal differences." In order to understand what he was getting at, we'll have to address the Calvinist context. One of the central tenets of Calvinism was the "depravity of man." In other words, sin and damnation were central aspects of American religion back then. It was believed that while everyone deserved to go to hell, Christ's atonement predestined some to be saved and enter heaven. It was also believed that outward manifestations (including a conversion experience), would somehow indicate who was predestined to receive God's grace. According to The Encyclopedia of Religion (page 103), it then became common for Puritan preachers to develop some kind of "complex morphology of conversion." As a result, there were controversies over who should be baptized and over what made a person worthy of church membership and communion. (Such a controversy over communion got Jonathan Edwards thrown out of the white congregation he served before ministering to the Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts.)

The question of who should be baptized is the only disagreement with John Sergeant that can be found in Samson Occom's journals. I would imagine they also had other disagreements in the months that they worked together, but no other disagreements were recorded.

On July 26, 1788, Occom wrote in his journal that he expected to have a debate with Sergeant, but instead Sergeant

"declin'd and finally Concluded that everyone should have full Liberty to Choose to act according to the Light and understanding he has in religious concerns, and so we parted in Friendship, Concluded to agree and disagree."

And so I believe that the falling out was over religious ideology and not over personality or race or cultural issues. Of course there really isn't enough evidence to know that for sure. But I've put what I know on the table and if anybody can add to that, you're welcome to do so.

Occom and Sergeant: Was their Conflict About Race?

2009-10-16T13:56:00.010-05:00

We're up to the point where both Samson Occom and John Sergeant [Jr.] had received legitimate calls to minister to the Stockbridge Mohicans at New Stockbridge, New York. It is rather well known that the two ministers eventually clashed. For that reason, I made it a point in my previous post to emphasize that they got along well for many years. It should also be noted that the two men of the cloth co-led a number of worship services together when the Stockbridges were getting settled in New York State.

Some have said that Occom and Sergeant came into conflict over racial issues. It is possible that Occom resented Sergeant for the advantages he had. It is true that Sergeant was a white minister and was paid like a white minister and Occom was an Indian minister that was seldom paid at all by church bodies. Nowadays we wouldn't blame a minority for raising Cain over that kind of inequality.

But in my mind Samson Occom was too "big" a person to get dragged into the kind of jealousy that would hurt his ministry. I think that Occom was wise enough to choose his battles. And, given what I know about John Sergeant compared to the other white people of his time, I just don't buy the argument that the two ministers had a falling out over the issue of race.

Samson Occom and John Sergeant Jr

2009-10-14T15:57:00.009-05:00

A photo of present-day Madison County, New York (courtesy of Carleen Vandezande).
While it could be said that the white Calvinist establishment was responsible for the betrayal of Samson Occom, I don't think of John Sergeant [Jr.] as being part of the Calvinist establishment. In fact, I read somewhere that he was not even ordained as a minister until late in his career. Sergeant just didn't have enough Calvinist orthodoxy in him to be an insider. On the other hand, Samson Occom, despite being an orthodox Presbyterian, was discriminated against for being an Indian.

For quite a few years, Rev. Occom was on good terms with John Sergeant. In his journal, Occom noted a number of times in which he ate with Sergeant, or stayed at Sergeant's house while traveling [see entries from July 15, 1774 to August 30, 1786]. In one 1774 entry, Occom even referred to the son of the first missionary on the Housatonic River as "good Mr. Sergeant." The Revolutionary War would later force Occom's people, the Brothertown Indians, to retreat to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which likely brought the two men into more frequent contact. They must have known each other quite well.

John Sergeant and his family didn't make the New York migration with the tribe. In the wake of the Revolutionary War, the philanthropists in London would no longer pay his salary and he knew the Indians couldn't pay it themselves. He just kept in touch with them well enough to make reports to other ministers in Boston. Some of those ministers eventually put together a mission society of their own. Meanwhile, beginning in 1785, Rev. Occom's Sunday worship services alternated in location between Brothertown and New Stockbridge, which were about six miles apart (Love, pages 279-280). On August 29, 1787, some Stockbridge leaders wrote to Rev. Samson Occom asking him to "settle with" them and minister to them on a more formal basis. They offered only twenty shillings, but it was something, at least. (A letter Occom wrote to clergy residing near Albany on December 26, 1791 tells us, however, that more than three years went by before he actually moved his family to New Stockbridge.)

Back in Massachusetts, the Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and Others in North America was incorporated, and on October 25, 1787 - just two months after Occom's call. They appointed John Sergeant to work and live among the Indians at New Stockbridge and to receive a salary of fifty pounds sterling.

Bernd Peyer's "The Betrayal of Samson Occom"

2009-10-09T15:35:00.006-05:00

Bernd Peyer is a German Historian who wrote a good article about Samson Occom which appeared in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine in 1998. Fortunately for us, the article is also online.

Peyer's article is largely about Occom's relationship with Eleazar Wheelock. To sum it up, after learning to read the Bible on his own, the nineteen-year-old Samson Occom became Wheelock's star student, around which a boarding school was established. As you may remember, Occom was the first Indian ordained as a Presbyterian minister and he raised a lot of money for Wheelock's school for Indians on a preaching tour in England and Scotland. A big part of Wheelock's betrayal of Occom occurred when he moved his school and gave up on educating Indians. Moor's Charity School became Dartmouth College.

After he returned to the United States, Occom realized that Wheelock had used him and even looked upon him as something of a freak or "creature." You'll understand that better if you read Peyer's article.

The white Calvinst establishment should have done more to support Rev. Occom and his large family. Throughout most of his career, Rev. Occom was forced to support his family through fishing, hunting, gardening, picking ginseng, and with money earned from binding books, and making wooden items such as spoons and urns.

In upcoming posts, I'll address Rev. Samson Occom's relationship with Rev. John Sergeant, Jr.

New Book: The Munsee Indians

2009-10-09T10:18:00.007-05:00

A new book about the Munsees is coming out next month.

Few people know that the Munsees were the Indians who sold the island of Manhattan to Dutch colonists.

In fact, it may be said few people know much about the Munsees at all. Being a refugee population by the time the United States came into existence, they were hard to keep track of.

As you may have read in one of my earlier posts, Munsee Indians moved in and out of what is now Wisconsin, and only a few permanently joined the tribe now known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

The Munsee Indians: A History by Robert S. Grumet, will be published by the prestigious University of Oklahoma Press. According to Library Journal, it is "illuminating and well-written."

The Stockbridge Bible is Returned and Comes Home

2009-10-06T17:38:00.016-05:00

My series of posts on the Stockbridge Bible is coming to an end.

Before we come to the final chapter, here's a brief summary of the series so far:

Introduction to the Stockbridge Bible

From Generation to Generation: Fundraising for the Massachusetts mission by a retired British sea captain, results in the gift of a two-volume Bible from the Prince of Wales' personal chaplain.

A Summary of 50 Years at the Massachusetts Mission Town

The Stockbridge Bible and the Lost Tribes Theory

Calvin Colton Reports on the Stockbridge Bible: Colton, a former minister from the east, visits the Stockbridge Mohicans in 1830 and reports on their acceptance of Christianity and white "civilization," and their "reverence" for their sacred Bible.

Jamison Quinney and the Stockbridge Bible: More than any other Indian, Jamison "Sote" Quinney is associated with the Stockbridge Bible. Read this post to find out why.

The Stockbridge Bible and the John Sergeant Memorial Presbyterian Church

The JSM Church, Fred Westfall, and My Research: This post offers a rare inside look at my research.

The Westfall - Choate Correspondence: Who is Mabel Choate and what do the letters between her and Rev. Westfall tell us about the Stockbridge Bible?

Photographic Evidence in the Story of the Stockbridge Bible: When was the Stockbridge Bible kept in the Sergeant Memorial Church?

Collectors and the Stockbridge Bible

Making an Offer for the Stockbridge Bible: How did the two volumes get from Wisconsin to Massachusetts?

How the Stockbridge Bible Made News in the 1920's: What do area whites say about Sote Quinney and the Stockbridge Bible?

The Stockbridge Bible is Sent Back to Massachusetts: This is a controversial topic, so I wanted certain things to be made clear.

Samuel Miller: Chief Uhm-Pa-Tuth: A Lutheran Indian visits Stockbridge, Massachusetts and sees the Stockbridge Bible, within months of the time it left Shawano County, Wisconsin.

Gone but not Forgotten: The Stockbridge Bible, 1931-1975

Miller to the Trustees: You Have Our Bible

The Stockbridge Bible: The Fight is On

Kim Vele's Priorities as Tribal Attorney in the 1980's

Fight for the Stockbridge Bible: The Long Standoff: This post features a powerful letter from an anthropologist, explaining why the Bible should be returned to the Indians.

What Will it Take to get the Stockbridge Bible Back?

....And now we finally come to the point where The Trustees of Reservations take the necessary steps to return the Bible. Here is how I told it in the spring, 2007 issue of The Book Collector:

On December 19th, 1990, a judge in Massachusetts signed a document authorizing the Trustees of Reservations to return the Stockbridge Bible to the tribe. The judgement quoted Captain Thomas Coram's inscription: 'to the use of the Congregation of Indians... and is to remain to the use of the Successors of those Indians from Generation to Generation.'

Finally, in March of 1991, on a bright, chilly day, in a quiet but moving ceremony, the Stockbridge Bible was taken out of the museum established by Mabel Choate and handed over to ten tribal delegates.

[After they had been driving for a couple days and were almost home, the delegates] informed other Stockbridges of their arrival and were told to stop at a parking lot at the edge of Shawano. When the delegates arrived at the parking lot they found over fifty people waiting for them, including members of a confirmation class that had made huge, colorful banners to celebrate the return of the Stockbridge Bible. The impromptu celebration also included handshakes, hugs, hymns, and a big circle prayer. There was now a large convoy that headed to the reservation, passing what had been the John Sergeant Memorial Presbyterian Church and finally stopping at the Arvid E. Miller Memorial Library-Museum where the Stockbridge Bible is still kept today.

The Abenaki and Their Missionaries: Solidarity of Kin

2009-10-03T19:50:00.008-05:00

The Stockbridges and Brothertowns are far from being the only Algonkians who had a positive experience with their missionaries. Here's one book I found that fits under the umbrella of Algonkian Church History:

The Solidarity of Kin: Ethnohistory, Relgious Studies, and the Algonkian-French Religious Encounter

*it was written by Kenneth Morrison, Professor of Religion at Arizona State University

*and published by State University of New York Press.

Solidarity of Kin is a good book for academics. However, when I read history I like it to be about "what happened next." I like to read history that is more about action and less about analysis so I have to admit to you that I did not finish reading this book.

Here's the bottom line: Jesuit (Roman Catholic) missionaries helped some Indians who were struggling to adjust to a greatly changed world. The missionaries didn't try to force the whole hook, line, and sinker of white culture on to the Abenaki people. Instead, they gave them pieces of Christianity that the Indians could integrate into what was left of the legends and other aspects of their traditional spiritual life. The result was not conversion, but rather syncretism.

What Will it Take to get the Stockbridge Bible Back?

2009-10-01T14:04:00.011-05:00

Years had gone by since the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians first asked The Trustees of Reservations to return their tribal Bible. What seems to have began as a polite disagreement deteriorated into a standoff in which the two sides either didn't communicate at all, or else did so only through their lawyers.

Legal avenues had been explored early on, but by the late 1980's, the tribe was seriously ready to take The Trustees of Reservations to court.

The church that began with John Sergeant Sr. and the Housatonic Mohicans still exists (in Stockbridge, Massachusetts) to this day. It is now known as the First Congregational Church of Stockbridge (their current building is pictured here). When the Stockbridge Indians were planning their historical trip in 1975 they asked the church if any of their members would be willing to let them stay in their homes. Bob Henderson and his wife stepped forward.

Bob Henderson was a businessman who respected the legal obstacles that the Trustees of Reservations faced, but believed that the Indians' moral claim to the Stockbridge Bible was of greater significance. Like the efforts of everybody else, Henderson's efforts to return the Stockbridge Bible back to the tribe in the mid-1980's were essentially of no consequence.

Reggie Miller was elected Tribal Chairman in 1987. On May 2, 1989 he wrote to Bob Henderson and informed him of the tribe's intent to take the case to court that summer if out-of-court action wasn't going anywhere. In that letter, Miller also asked Henderson if he could help get negotiations started with the Trustees of Reservations. Henderson's May 19th reply to "Chief R.C. Miller" stated that he had spoken with Rush Taggart and Stanley Piatczyc, requesting a meeting.

On June 23, 1989, three Stockbridge Mohican delegates, Chairman Reggie Miller, Tribal Historian Bernice Miller Pigeon, and her daughter, Linda Kroening, met with Stanley Piatczyc, Henry Flint and Davis Cherington of the Trustees of Reservations in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. To make a long story short, the three delegates came away from the meeting believing that the Trustees were "looking for a method to return the Bibles without creating for themselves a legal problem under their Trust responsibility."

From that point on, getting the Stockbridge Bible back was a matter of formalites and waiting.

Sources:
* Telephone interview with Bob Henderson, January 25, 2004.
*Photocopies of the following documents kept at the Arvid E. Miller Memorial Museum: correspondence between Reggie Miller and Bob Henderson, and a summary of the June 2, 1989 meeting in Massachusetts.

Fight for the Stockbridge Bible: The Long Standoff

2009-09-28T15:47:00.009-05:00

This photo of Mabel Choate's inscription in the Stockbridge Bible was taken by Jeff Siemers, in October, 2003, with the permission of the Arvid E. Miller Museum staff.

In recent posts I've portrayed individuals associated with The Trustees of Reservations between 1975 and the 1980's as stubborn and even insensitive, but the Trustees truly were legally bound to keep the contents of the Mission House Museum that was founded by Mabel Choate. The two-volume Stockbridge Bible, of course, was one of the contents of that museum. While it could be argued that Mabel Choate acquired the Bible illegally, the Stockbridge Mohicans don't appear to have done a sufficient job of making that point. In fairness to the Trustees of Reservations at that time, I should point out that in all the documents that I have read and re-read, the Stockbridge Mohicans didn't acknowledge the Trustees' legal obligation towards the Stockbridge Bible until 1989.

The Trustees of Reservations did offer members of the tribe an opportunity to visit them in Massachusetts for the purpose of presenting whatever evidence they had that the two-volume Bible should be sent back to the tribe. I have an undated photocopy of a list of evidence that tribal members apparently drew up in the early to mid-1980's. While the list gives many sources which verify that the Indians once owned the Stockbridge Bible, no part of the list addresses the question of the legality of the John Sergeant Memorial Presbyterian Church's sale of the that Bible to Mabel Choate.

Members of the Bible Return Committee and the Trustees of Reservations each knew enough about the Stockbridge Bible to understand their own viewpoint. Both sides had essentially dug in their heels and the only communications between them for several years were conducted by lawyers.

Kim Vele's Priorities as Tribal Attorney in the 1980s

2009-09-21T20:35:00.016-05:00

The Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians' Tribal Council, 2009:
Front row L to R: Greg Miller, Robert Chicks, Terrie Terrio
Back Row L to R: Doug Huck, Kimberly Vele, Jolene Bowman, Joe Miller

When Konkapot descendant, Kimberly Vele graduated from law school in 1984 it was almost unheard of for recent graduates to return to the reservation, but she and a few others set out to reverse that trend. "Indian Law was for hippies" back then, Vele told me. As tribal attorney in the mid 1980's she tried to make the return of the Stockbridge Bible a priority. In researching the case, Vele found The Trustees of Reservations to be aloof. "I wanted questions to specific answers and it seemed they hoped we would just go away" she recollected.

Ultimately Kim Vele was forced to put the return of the Stockbridge Bible on the back burner in order to deal with other issues. The Wolf River Batholith, a landform that encompasses the Stockbridge reservation, was one of twelve possible sites chosen by the National Nuclear Waste Repository Program when Vele was the tribal attorney. Batholiths were considered to be the safest landforms in regard to nuclear waste, and since many Indian reservations are located on batholiths, seven of the twelve sites that the federal government was looking at were located in Indian Country.

Until she left the tribal attorney job in 1987, Kim Vele focused her efforts on preventing the Wolf River Batholith from being selected as a nuclear waste repository site. One day she testified in Washington, D.C. before the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Power, explaining that if the Wolf River Batholith was chosen as a nuclear waste site, it would make the Stockbridge Mohicans' reservation useless, except possibly for grazing. While watching the news on television that night in her hotel room, Vele learned that "Chernobyl had blown up." A few weeks later, the tribe received a letter announcing there would be no more grant funds to study environmental impacts due to the fact that the entire Nuclear Waste Repository Program was being suspended indefinitely.

Kim Vele's efforts to bring the Stockbridge Bible back to the reservation in Shawano County, Wisconsin resulted only in a terse 1986 letter from The Trustees of Reservations, saying that their position hadn't changed.

Sources: Telephone interviews with Kim Vele (6/2004 and 4/14/2006), and a photocopy of a letter from the Trustees of Reservations to Kim Vele.

The Stockbridge Bible: The Fight Is On

2009-09-21T10:41:00.017-05:00

**This post is part of an ongoing series on the Stockbridge Bible***

The Trustees of Reservations explained to Tribal Chairman Leonard Miller in an October, 27, 1975 letter, that "because of questions of law and on the advice of its counsel," it could not and would not hand over the Stockbridge Bible.

Retired Episcopal Bishop Anson P. Stokes emerged as the leader of a Massachusetts group that advocated on the tribe's behalf. But ultimately the group realized it wouldn't win. The Bishop was told by a member of the Trustees that if his group tried to collect money for a lawyer, the trustees would "Hire the best lawyers in Boston to fight in court and ...spare no expense to crushingly defeat" those who were in favor of sending the Bible back to Wisconsin.

The Stockbridge Mohicans themselves eventually had their own meetings and formed a Bible Recovery Committee. The committee explored legal avenues they might use to get their tribal Bible back. But they were also looking at the issue from its moral and historical aspects. In 1981, Dorothy Davids self-published a booklet, The Stockbridge Bible: Documents Related to Their Recovery, which raised awareness on the controversy. In addition to exploring legal avenues, the tribe was now employing a new strategy: they asked sympathetic people and groups to speak out on their feelings about who should rightfully own the sacred volumes. They even hoped to embarrass the Trustees of Reservations into returning the Stockbridge Bible.

Ted Brasser was an anthropologist working at Canada's Museum of Man (now known as the Museum of Civilization, pictured right), when he became a pioneer in Mohican research. (One of my earliest posts was about his book, Riding the Frontier's Crest.) While Brasser was one of many, many people who wrote to the Trustees of Reservations, I found his letter to be particularly powerful and on-target:

In my training as an anthropologist, I have been admonished never to collect, or support the collecting of ethnographic objects that are still considered as important symbols of cultural identity and historical continuity by the ethnic group in question. This is particularly true where it involves the religious emotions of the people who own or use these objects. Working in a museum I am acquainted with the problems created by over-eager amateur collectors.

It may strike you as rather odd to treat an eighteenth-century Bible in an ethnographic context. However, it will be obvious to everybody learning the dramatic history of the Stockbridge Indians that this Bible was their Covenant's Ark during the many years of bitter hardship. Holding on to this Bible these people survived the brutalities of the old American frontiers as staunch Christians. In addition, and in spite of repeated betrayal by newcomers, the Stockbridges volunteered and fought for your ancestors in the American War of Independence, at a disastrous loss of human life to the tribe. It was around this Bible that the survivors gathered and moved west, to make way for your ancestors. Viewed in this perspective it is clear that this Bible to the Stockbridges is more than merely a valuable antique piece.

To my knowledge, Brasser's letter was never acknowledged by The Trustees of Reservations.

Acknowledgements:
*Thanks to the Arvid E. Miller Memorial Library-Museum for preserving and allowing me to photocopy many documents related to the Stockbridge Bible, including Ted Brasser's letter and the one sent to Chairman Miller by the Trustees of Reservations in 1975.
*Thanks to Rev. Richard Taylor, one of the members of Rev. Stokes' Massachusetts-based advocacy group for his letter to me, of June 4, 2004.

Miller to the Trustees: You Have Our Bible

2009-09-18T20:52:00.009-05:00

This photo of the first volume of the Stockbridge Bible was taken by Jeff Siemers with permission of the staff of the Arvid E. Miller Memorial Library-Museum in the fall of 2003.
After Mabel Choate died, the Mission House Museum and its contents became the legal responsibility of The Trustees of Reservations. As you'll remember from my previous post, some of the tribe's young people, after seeing the Stockbridge Bible, decided that the tribe should try to get it back. Tribal Council Chairman Leonard Miller took that idea seriously and on August 27, 1975, wrote a letter to The Trustees of Reservations. Miller wrote:

The Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe has knowledge of your possession of our Tribal Bibles presented to us by the Prince of Wales to be forever in our possession.

Miller also asserted that the two volumes had been obtained in an "illegal" transaction and asked that the request for them be considered "at the earliest convenience."

By the time that letter was written, however, the request to get the Stockbridge Bible returned to the tribe had already been made informally. In fact, the issue had already been discussed by the Trustees of Reservations in Massachusetts. The local newspaper, The Berkshire Eagle, printed an article about it on the day before Miller wrote his letter. The paper quoted Andrew Mack, the chairman of the Local Committee of the Trustees:

It is appropriate to have the Bible in the Mission House where Mr. Sergeant received the Indians.... As far as we know, over the years, as long as we've had the Bible, the Indians were satisfied.

Maybe he didn't realize that John Sergeant's wife Abigail had the Mission House designed so that the Indians could be required to use the back door when they wanted to visit with their missionary. In light of that fact, and in light of how the important the Bible had been to the tribe for so many years, I think Mr. Mack's comments were both ignorant and insensitive.

Gone But Not Forgotten: The Stockbridge Bible 1931-1975

2009-09-16T13:52:00.013-05:00

In recent years, the Stockbridge Mohicans have made a historical trip out east almost annually. During one of the tribe's earliest organized trips back to Stockbridge, Massachusetts (I believe it was in 1975), tribal members were invited to a party at the home of Norman Rockwell and his third wife, Molly. At that time the artist happened to be working on a painting of Rev. John Sergeant and Captain John Konkapot. Rockwell died in 1978 and the painting you see below was never finished.

Not many of the Stockbridge Mohicans knew what happened to their tribal Bible. When one small congregation - made up mostly of Indians, but also some whites - decided to sell the two volumes to a museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, they didn't bother to ask the rest of the tribe permission. Why should they? As they saw it, the Stockbridge Bible was the property of their church.

Since the Presbyterians felt no shame in selling what they believed was their own property, they had no reason to keep the sale a secret. Nevertheless, it seems that only a few non-Presbyterian Indians (such as Samuel Miller) knew that the Bible was back in Massachusetts. There was some protesting, or at least complaining, of what had happened, but by that time the relics were already gone.

The first well-known historical trip to Massachusetts by a family of Stockbridge Indians was in 1951. That year James Davids (an uncle of Clarence Chicks) brought his family east to see the sights of the town that their ancestors came from. Thelma Davids Putnam (a sister of James Davids) recorded that event (pages 57-58):

To their great surprise, they found the great two volume Bible was in the old Mission House in that town. In the vague rumors we heard they maybe were at the Smithsonian Institute. The Davids' were delighted to see the Bibles...

Since that time others have traveled to Massachusetts and have had the wonderful experience of seeing the land of our forefathers and have viewed our Bibles...

At that point (page 58) Thelma Davids Putnam tells of groups that went to see the Stockbridge Bible in 1968 and 1972. The next trip was made in 1975 with the following people loaded into four cars: The adults: Dorothy Davids, Ruth Gaudinas, Bernice Miller Pidgeon, Margaret Rausch, Sheila Moede, and Linda Kroening. The youth: Kay Miller, Fran Miller, Jackie Miller, Mark Davids, Renee Granquist, Vickie Bowman, Carmen Cornelius, Nikki Moede, and Leslie Kroening.

It was the young people of the 1975 trip who were the first to suggest that the tribe should try to bring the Stockbridge Bible back to the reservation in Shawano County, Wisconsin.

Acknowledgements:
*Thanks to Dorothy Davids for an e-mail in 2003 in which she responded to my question about the unfinished Norman Rockwell painting.
*Thanks to JoAnn Schedler, Interim Director of the Arvid E. Miller Memorial Museum in the fall of 2003 for letting me have a copy of the unfinished painting.

Samuel Miller: Chief Uhm-Pa-Tuth

2009-09-15T17:51:00.009-05:00

A few years ago I was doing some research in the Arvid E. Miller Memorial Library-Museum (the Stockbridge Mohicans' museum), and John Miller, the tribe's Director of Human Resources came in and passed around an article (from the May 19, 2004 issue of The Country Today) about a deceased relative of his, Samuel Miller. Actually, the article is really about a white person's childhood memory of seeing Miller's alter ego, "Chief Uhm-Pa-Tuth," during one of his speaking tours.

Samuel Miller's speaking tours or lecture circuits were designed to accomplish two goals: 1) to raise money for Lutheran missions to Indians and 2) to dispel some stereotypes that white people had about Indians. Wearing a Sioux headress, however, may have fed into some of the stereotyping that he was crusading against.

Like most performers, Uhm-Pa-Tuth mostly spoke to rather small crowds. However, when a nationwide Lutheran body celebrated the 400th Anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the Chief appeared in front of a packed house of 3000 people at the Strand Theater in Albany, New York. (Incidentally, his speech that night was also put on the airwaves by a local radio station.)

During that stay in Albany, Samuel Miller decided that he wanted to visit Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The Berkshire County Eagle (see photocopy above) had quite a lot to say about Miller's visit, including that he took "great interest" in the Stockbridge Bible and the communion set which had been acquired by Mabel Choate only a few months earlier. In fact, Miller apparently told a reporter that he had corresponded with a "Rev. C. Williams Fisher," (maybe he actually said "Thomas Knox Fisher," a Presbyterian minister to the Stockbridge Mohicans from 1889 to 1891).

Unfortunately for us, exactly what Samuel Miller may have felt or thought about the Stockbridge Bible - and the fact that it was now in white hands - was not something that was covered by the Berkshire County Eagle.

Language Geek's "Mahican" Page

2009-09-10T12:04:00.014-05:00

I'm thoroughly impressed with Christopher Harvey, or "Language Geek," as he is known on the web. I haven't met Mr. Harvey, but according to his website, he speaks English, French, and Welsh, and has studied Spanish, Irish Gaelic, Ancient Greek, Cree, Mohawk, Ojibway, Dinka, Latin, Hungarian, Korean, Innu, and Esperanto.

Language Geek's Mahican page got a healthy dose of "street cred" a few days ago when it was recommended on the Mohican 7 Yahoo subscription group. In my view, his website also has whatever kind of credibility I can give it. Chris Harvey has obviously done an awful lot of work on Native languages.

Ojibwa and Cree are the two languages (or dialects) from the Algonkian language family that Chris Harvey has studied formally. That expertise not only transfered into a knowledge of the hybrid language Oji-Cree, but also at least a working knowledge of the other Algonkian languages.

Language Geek has a Menominee page - it looks impossible to learn if you ask me (in case you don't know, Menominee is also an Algonkian language). Unfortunately, however, he leaves us with nothing on the Delaware language.

Language Geek warns that the content of his Mahican page is tentative to "VERY tentative." That explains why he doesn't have it linked to his main site. ("Mahican" is just a different spelling [or should I say different pronounciation] of "Mohican.")

Wâg g’nawenòhmâ!
(That means "good-bye [to many people], I'll see you again!")

The Stockbridge Bible is Sent Back to Massachusetts

2009-09-07T21:36:00.009-05:00

Pictured below is the inscription that Captain Thomas Coram wrote in both volumes of the Stockbridge Bible (the two inscriptions are not worded exactly the same, however).

There's a great temptation to think of the Stockbridge Bible as nothing more than a crumb that fell from the British table. I understand the basis of that line of reasoning myself. A series of wars in the 1700's had the British competing with the French for control of much of North America. The British and French were the world's superpowers and Stockbridge, Massachusetts just happened to be strategically located from a military standpoint.

But at least some of the British were genuinely excited about the success of the mission town from a religious/spiritual point of view. I like to think of the gift of the Stockbidge Bible in that context.

We are now up to the point where Mabel Choate, after consulting an expert on the matter, makes an offer of $1000 for the two-volume Bible and the communion set that has been associated with it. If you account for inflation, she was offering roughly $13,000 in today's money for the relics. It wasn't a ripoff.

Or was it?

It was a "good faith" transaction as far as the people involved were concerned. In fact, later claims that the deal was conducted "privily" only seem to reflect the bias of those who didn't belong to the John Sergeant Memorial Presbyterian Church. (Then again, that was the vast majority of the tribe.)

In the words of Captain Coram's inscription, the Stockbridge Bible was given to "the Indian Congregation."

To members of the Sergeant Memorial Church that meant it was church property. To Lutheran members of the tribe with an awareness of the tribe's church history, that same phrase meant the Stockbridge Bible was tribal property. In my own mind I have gone back and forth many times on this issue. It is a question that would have certainly come into play if ownership of the Bible had ever been contested in a court of law.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The bottom line is that the members of the John Sergeant Memorial Presbyterian Church voted unanimously to accept Mabel Choate's offer.

And so the Stockbridge Bible was sent back to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to sit in Mabel Choate's Mission House Museum.

People of the Wild Rice

2009-09-03T14:22:00.016-05:00

To your right is part of a drawing that was digitized for the Wisconsin State Historical Society's
"Turning Points in Wisconsin History" collection. It had appeared in the American Anthropologist many years before that.

Unlike some topics covered in this blog, there is no shortage of media coverage on wild rice (and in most cases, one of the first things mentioned is that it is not technically rice). Wild rice is such a healthy food that it is recommended by people like Dr. Andrew Weil. Although the Indians that lived in the Great Lakes region before white contact didn't have nutritionists, or dieticians, they knew the value of their special food.

As a matter of fact, they fought wars over it.

In the August, 1974 National Geographic article about the Menominees, a caption on page 239 explains that the Indian word for wild rice is "manomen," and the Menominees got their name from it. And so I came to think of the Menominees as the people of the wild rice.

However, a couple years ago when I was driving through the Bad River Chippewa reservation on my way to Ashland (WI), I saw a hand-painted sign that said "Manomen." I turned my vehicle around and went back to the house that had that sign along the side of the highway. The man selling the authentic wild rice was taking a nap, so I wound up talking to his college-age nephews for a little while. When I said something about how the Menominees were the "people of the wild rice," the two men became animated. They were emphatic, no they said, "we are the people of the wild rice! They were here but we kicked their [---]! Yeah we kicked their [---], that was before you guys [white people] were here." So I guess I didn't need to read about the wild rice wars, I learned it orally.

This photo, taken by a National Park Service employee, illustrates Wikipedia's entry on the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

The Lost tribes theory is one aspect of Algonkian Church History that I've been somewhat neglectful of. In future posts, I will present evidence that at least some of the Stockbridge Mohicans believed that they were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel (white people actually advanced that theory first and that is documented in some of my earlier posts). Anyway, when I first heard of the lost tribes theory it seemed ridiculous to me. But there are a few pieces of evidence that have made me seriously wonder about it lately. One is just the Algonkian word "Manomen." It is awfully close to the word "Manna." The special food that the Great Spirit gave to the Menominees sounds an awful lot like the special food that the Old Testament's God sent to the ancient Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness.

The Stockbridge-Munsee Community, Genealogy, and a lot more

2009-09-01T19:41:00.021-05:00

Do you remember this magazine cover? In 2006, Time named "You" as their person of the year. Blogs are part of the "social media," and Algonkian Church History is no exception. Although I have lots of ideas about where this blog is headed, I also like to respond to your questions and comments. I've had a few of them recently, plus a few that I've put on the "back burner," so let's get to it.

Scott Seaborne pointed out that the tribe which I refer to here as the "Stockbridge Mohicans" legally adopted "Stockbridge-Munsee Community" as their name in their 1937 constitution. He asked me if I knew why and added that he'd heard that the federal government expected or required once-unrecognized tribes to use the word "community" in their name. I don't know how the name "Stockbridge-Munsee Community" was chosen, or who chose it. All I can say is that the tribe is in the process of writing a new constitution now and maybe they'll give themselves a different name.

Genealogist Debra Winchell has agreed to write a guest-post for Algonkian Church History. She is from New York State and one of a number of people that I had a chance to talk to when I attended the Algonquian Peoples Conference in Albany during the spring of 2007. Starting from nothing more than a rumor that there was Indian blood in her family, Debra researched her ancestors all the way back to John Van Gelder, a Mohican-Wappinger.

I'm also looking forward to a guest post from an accomplished blogger whose screen name is Dumneazu. Since he has formal training in Algonkian languages, his contribution should be valuable.

Daniel Burr is trying to prove that he's a descendant of both the Housatonic Mohican Chief Konkapot and the renowned Mohegan/Brothertown minister Samson Occom (also spelled Occum). Although I do not question that some of his ancestors were named Konkapot, one expert, Lion Miles, of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, says that not all of the Konkapots were descendants of the original Konkapot. One family apparently took on that name in honor of the chief. Whether or not Daniel Burr is descended from Samson Occom depends on the truth or falsehood of a statement preserved in the old book Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England by W. DeLoss Love.

I'll quote from Daniel Burr's e-mail here:

I am looking for a Samson Occum who was a grandson of Rev.Samson Occum from his son Andrew Gifford Occum.W. Deloss Love's book Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England states this under Rev Samson's family son Andrew Gifford, born 1774 went to Brothertown, and had a lot there which he leased April 12,1792. He married, and his death occurred before 1796, when "widow Patience Occum" was given lot 41. They had a son, Samson Occum, who lived at Brothertown, received part of lot 19 in 1827, and removed, it is said, with his wife Elizabeth to the White River, Some Indians say he joined the Stockbridge tribe. Writing his name Yoccum,and has descendants among them.

There was a Housatonic Mohican living in the 1700's whose name was spelled "Yocun," "Yokun," "Yocon," "Yokim," and "Yocum," (according to page 367 of Shirley Dunn's book The Mohican World 1680-1750,) it is more likely (in my opinion) that Daniel Burr is descended from that Housatonic Mohican than he is from Samson Occom.

Another reader, Carleen Vandezande, has taken the trouble to get me some papers form the Madison County Historical Society in New York. According to one of the papers, Samson Occom returned from his preaching tour in Britain with a gold-plated walkingstick. There was also a lot of information on an Iroquois chief named Skenendoah. As a convert to Christianity, his story could become the topic of a future post.

Grave Sites of Simeon and Stephen Gardner Found

2009-08-29T18:29:00.013-05:00

The Septemeber 1, 2009 edition of Mohican News (Vol. XVII, No.17) features two articles that I want to blog on. The first, "Past Mohican Veterans Recognized," is about a "rededication of Civil War veterans" at the Woodlawn Cemetery in (the city of) Shawano, Wisconsin.

The article states that as of "[a] few years ago, Civil War veterans grave sites were unmarked or in a soldiers plot, group burial." Since Shawano has always been a predominantly "white" town, that statement is surprising: Is the Mohican News really saying that both white and Indian Civil War veterans from Shawano County were buried in unmarked graves? Is it saying that veterans of both races were buried together in a "group burial"?

I cannot tell you the answer to those questions. They only led me to scrutinize the article further and I think the News should also have been clearer on how many veterans who survived the Civil War were also in unmarked graves. They were, of course, young men when they returned and were likely to live long enough to purchase a gravestone and request to be buried with loved ones in Red Springs. (Other Stockbridge Indians who died in the late 1800's were buried in marked graves in the cemetery in Red Springs.) As a subscriber to Mohican News I wish more detail or explanation was provided.

Anyway, here's some of the "meat" of the article (these quotes are verbatim, that is, with grammatical errors):

"Through record searches, Mohican veterans, Simeon Gardner and Stephen Gardner, brothers were discovered and arrangements were made through the government to have their graves marked. Simeon Gardner received a new head stone, and now all Civil War grave sites located in the Woodlawn Cemetery will be marked."

and

"Simeon Gardner's grave had a musket with bayonet perched on and a Civil War backpack."

Maybe that is why Simeon Gardner's grave site "was used as the main point of representation of all 71 Civil War" veteran's grave sites in the re-dedication ceremony.

The ceremony in Shawano and the military history behind it, of course, are things for Gardner descendants and others to be proud of. We'll be hearing more about the Gardners in future posts. The same Stephen Gardner who fought in the Civil War also plays a prominent role in the church history of the Stockbridge Mohicans.

Indians on a Seesaw: An Article on the Menominees in the August, 1974 National Geographic Magazine

2009-08-26T20:14:00.020-05:00

left: Carl Maskewit and his children pose with raccoon pelts.

The August 1974 issue of the National Geographic Magazine featured an article about the Menominees written by Patricia Raymer with photographs from her husband, Steve Raymer. The full title of the article was "Wisconsin's Menominees: Indians on a Seesaw" (pages 228-251).

The Raymers spent time with the Sanome Sanapaw family, one of a few families still living, to a large extent, off the land.

"In the past the Menominees believed that the Great Spirit had granted the tribe two foods to be their own forever - wild rice and maple sugar. but the Sanapaws are the only family still tapping sugar maples in the spring" (page 242).

Patricia Raymer walked behind the hunters and heard their reaction when they got this Black Bear. The caption on page 232 states that Dude Valliere is carrying a 75-pound yearling. As of 1974, hunters still honored the old tradition of sharing their harvest with "friends, the sick, and the elderly."

According to the article, the tribe's economy at that time was based on the lumber mill and leaving the reservation to find other work.

Sultzman's "Compact History" of the Menominee Indians

2009-08-23T20:54:00.011-05:00

I introduced Lee Sultzman's "compact histories," in my December 31, 2008 post. Today's post is about Sultzman's compact history of the Menominees.

Which tribes lived on the land that is now Wisconsin back in 1600?

That's right, the Menominees were one.... and some of you will remember the Ho-Chunk (Winnebagoes) and the Ojibwe (Chippewa). Who were the others?

According to Sultzman, the Dakota Sioux were in the northwest, the Illinois were in the south and - surprise - the (Algonkian-speaking) Cheyenne were in the west-central part of what is now Wisconsin!

Sultzman says that the Menominees were never a huge nation - estimates of their pre-contact population range from 2,000 to 4,000 members. They were far from the only small nation in the midwest but the Menominees were different in that they

survived while the others disappeared or were absorbed by the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and the Menominee themselves. The Menominee, however, came very close to sharing this fate. When the French reached Green Bay in 1667, wars and epidemics which had swept Wisconsin after refugee tribes arrived in the 1650s had reduced the Menominee to about 400.

Here's what I didn't know about the Menominees:

Although the federal government helped them establish their successful sawmill, the government didn't always oversee the sawmill business in the Menominee's best interests. As a result, the tribe took the federal government to court and won a $9.5 million judgement. Sultzman says it is no coincidence that the tribe's federal recognition was terminated soon after they won that judgement.

Read Lee Sultzman's compact history of the Menominees.

How the Stockbridge Bible Made News in the 1920's

2009-08-20T12:42:00.007-05:00

You may remember how I tracked the whereabouts of the Stockbridge Bible from Jameson "Sote" Quinney's house to the safe on the altar of the Sergeant Memorial Church and then back to Quinney's house again (before going on to a bank in Shawano and then being sold to Mabel Choate). Of course we'll never know why Sote Quinney brought the two sacred volumes back to his house, but I think it has something to do with rumors he may have been aware of that outsiders wanted the tribal Bible.

Sote Quinney could have learned of those rumors by word of mouth, and he may also have read an article that came out in the newspapers of two "white" towns in 1927. On July 27th of that year, the Shawano Advocate published an article that was also printed in the Wittenburg Enterprise the next day. The article, as I noted in my Spring, 2007 paper printed in The Book Collector, was "full of racial bias and lacked accuracy."

Maybe you can make out some of the words of the article. It starts out by saying "Few Shawano county citizens know that locked securely in a strong safe in the little Presbyterian chuch at Red Springs is the Bible which was presented to the Stockbridge Indians by George III in 1742 when he was then Prince of Wales." Relatively minor details like who exactly gave the tribe its Bible and when the gift was made can be overlooked, but it gets worse.

The newspapers claimed that Quinney found the Stockbridge Bible in "an old rubbish heap." This claim is clearly a caricature of Rev. Earl North's report (which I consider quite reliable). According to North, the two volumes had been "found in a deserted house" and later brought to Sote Quinney because he was a spiritual and political leader of the tribe.

Anyway, I don't think we can consider the newspaper article to be reliable, but, nevertheless, I feel it won't hurt to include a few lines of it here:

Quinney kept this sacred book in his possession for thirty years. Ten years ago he consented to leave it in a small safe in the church. The combination of this safe is a secret, nobody but Quinney knowing how to obtain the Bible....

Quinney has been in ill health for some time, and it is expected that he will give the combination to Rev. McGreaham, pastor of the church for several years, before he dies.

Bury My Heart at the Monastery: The Menominee Takeover of the Novitiate

2009-08-19T13:19:00.025-05:00

In 1975, a dissident faction of Menominees attracted national media attention for their armed takeover of an abandoned monastery near their reservation. The Monastery building is known as "the Novitiate," because it housed a community of novice monks.

In 1995 I became part of a group of whitewater paddlers who came to Shawano County's Red River on Tuesday nights. The biggest appeal of the Red for many paddlers is this "surf hole" at the bottom of "Monastery Falls." The long-abandoned monastery you see in the top of the picture was once the object of an armed conflict that, fortunately, did not result in any deaths.

Here's another view. Both the photo and accompanying caption are from Google Images:

ALEXIAN BROTHERS NOVITIATE
Gresham, Shawano County. October 20, 1975. Altitude c. 2,000 ft. The camera looks SSW to the former Alexian Brothers Novitiate, situated on the north bank of the Red River about two miles east of Gresham and one-half mile south of the Menominee (County) Indian Reservation. On New Year's eve, 1974, a group called the Menominee Warrior Society took control of the vacant Roman Catholic facility, claiming it for Menominee tribal use as a hospital. In a well-publicized confrontation with the Wisconsin National Guard, the demonstrators were forced to withdraw, leaving the building in a state of disrepair.

You may remember my post about a book called "Airlift to Wounded Knee." Although it was about the Lakota Sioux, I considered it relevant to this blog because it represented a nation-wide turning point. As I commented in that post, "In less than three months, the scale that had been tipping towards shame, dramatically tipped to pride." And now, less than two years after that group of dissident Lakotas took over their own reservation, a group of dissident Menominees was taking over a large abandoned monastery building. (Apparently, as they understood it, an old treaty promised them the land back if the Roman Catholics ever left.)

Instead of trying to tell you the whole story, I'd like to recommend that you view an excellent 14-minute documentary video that is easily found on Patrick Rick's "Novitiate" website. It features live historical footage, interviews, and just a lot of material that I cannot possibly duplicate here.

This and other photos are the intellectual property of the Shawano Leader. Their use has been permitted by Wolf River Media, LLC, owner and publisher of that newspaper. Read a little more about the appearance of the National Guard's armored personnel carriers here.

The bus is parked less than a mile from the monastery. The photo is from the Alexian Brothers historical webpage.

Another photo used with permission of Wolf River Media, LLC, owner and publisher of the Shawano Leader. Read more about this photo here.

As they had done in South Dakota, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) participated in the Shawano County, Wisconsin takeover. The caption above the drawing reads: "Bury My Heart at the Monastery."

The Wisconsin State Historical Society digitized more photos and other images from the Shawano Leader. You can see them here.

Brothertown Bid for Federal Recognition Denied

2009-08-18T08:37:00.012-05:00

BREAKING NEWS:

Yesterday, August 17, 2009, the Bureau of Indian Affairs rejected the Brothertown Nation's petition for federal recognition.

Some of the details of the decision were related in an article (with no "byline") on Indianz.com. Here's how the article begins:

The Obama administration has made its first decision on a federal recognition petition. The Interior Department said today that the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin doesn't qualify for federal status. A press release said the tribe failed to meet five out of seven mandatory criteria for recognition. "Therefore, the department proposes to decline to acknowledge the Brothertown petitioner," the press release stated.

In considering the petition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs agreed that the tribe was previously recognized by the federal government. "The evidence in the record indicates that a Senate proviso to a Treaty of 1831, a Treaty of 1832 and an Act of 1839 constitute 'unambiguous previous federal acknowledgment' of the Brothertown Indian tribe of Wisconsin," the press release said.

But the BIA said the tribe lost its federal status 170 years ago. "Congress, in the Act of 1839, brought federal recognition of the relationship with the Brothertown Indian tribe of Wisconsin to an end."

Click here to read the rest of the article.

I know that some leaders of the Brothertown Indians will disagree not only with the decision that was made by the BIA, they will also disagree with the substance of the arguments made. Any members of the tribe who wish to voice their views on this blog are encouraged to contact me.
*

William Dick: The Last to Speak Mohican

2009-08-10T20:33:00.017-05:00

Do you remember when a petition to start a new Presbyterian church was placed on the Stockbridge Bible? (Some of the older Stockbridge Mohicans signed it with tears in their eyes.) The new church, of course, was named after John Sergeant, the tribe's first missionary. The three elders of the new church were William C. Davids, Jamison "Sote" Quinney, and William Dick (remember the photo of him sitting next to the steel safe?).

William Dick's Indian name was "Makwa Monpuy" or "Maq-wau-pey," according to the front page of The Milwaukee Journal on Wednesday, November 8, 1933 (see image above). The death of William Dick the day before at age 76 made the front page because he was the "Last of the Mohicans" as the newspaper put it, explaining that he "often repeated" that "the Mohican tongue was forgotten by all but himself."

William Dick was born in Stockbridge, Wisconsin where he learned to speak "lingering musical remnants of his native tongue" from his grandmother. He moved to the Shawano County reservation and then around 1914 he moved to Milwaukee to be close to his daughter and grandson.

The article states that Professor Franklin Speck of the University of Pennsylvania discovered "Dick's value to science." How that happened is not made clear, but the Journal did record that in 1932 anthropologists from the University of Chicago "sought his help in recording the ancient tribal tongue." He was understandably "a little dusty on the nouns and verbs, but Miss Olive Eggan...went back with a portfolio bulging with more than 300 Mohican words in their various forms."

As you may know, today's Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians has a language committee. Hopefully they are trying to get ahold of the recordings in the portfolio at the University of Chicago.

A List of the Ministers Who Have Cared for the Spiritual Needs of the Stockbridge Indians

2009-08-07T21:24:00.024-05:00

The image below is from the Winnebago Presbytery's website. The design at the right appears to be their logo.

The title of this post is taken verbatim from an entry in the records of the John Sergeant Memorial Presbyterian Church (it can be obtained on microfilm from the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia). Anyway, here's the list produced about as close to verbatim as I can get (unfortunately, the right edge has been cut off so dates of death are not visible on my photocopy):

1. Oct. 1734 to (illegible) Rev. John Sergeant b.1710 [ordained] Aug 31, 1735

2. Aug. 1749 to July 1751 Mr. Timothy Woodbridge [was the schoolteacher (for many years), but deserves credit for caring for the spiritual interests of the Stockbridge Indians nonetheless (especially after John Sergeant's early death).]

3. July 1751 to 1758 Rev. Jonathan Edwards

4. Nov. 1758 to 1775 Rev. Stephen West, D.D. b.1735 [?] [ordained] June 13, 1709[?]

5. 1775 to 1824 Rev. John Sergeant, jr b. 1781 [date of ordination not given]

[Unfortunately, Samson Occum is not mentioned in the document]

6. July 1827 to March 1829 Rev. Jesse Miner b. 1781 [died in present-day Wisconsin, 1829]

7. May 1, 1830 to 1848 Rev. Cutting Marsh [born 1800]

8. 1848 [1845 is arguably more accurate] to 1884 Rev. Jeremiah Slingerland [died 1884]

9. Oct 1888 to Oct 1888 Rev. A.W. Williams

10. April 1889 to April 1891 Rev. Thomas Knox Fisher

11. July 1891 to Feb 1892 Rev. Thomas Haug

----------------------- Services discontinued ----------------------------

12. July 1910 to Dec. 1917 Rev. Charles Kilpatrick

13. July 1, 1921 Rev. J.A McGreaham

14. May 1926 [Rev.] F.G. Westfall - Ordained at Caro, Michigan, June 15, 1897 by Flint Presbytery

15. Sept. 6, 1930 Rev. David Hillegas

16. Nov. 1, 1935 - Rev. Louis J. Albert

Of course there were ministers from other denominations in this period of time, but - with the exception of Samson Occom - this is an accurate record of the succession of the Calvinist ministers that served the Stockbridge Mohicans from 1734 to 1891 and then again from 1910 to about 1937.

The historian of the group appears to be Rev. Kilpatrick, who accompanied William Dick, one of the elders of his church, on a trip to Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Entries after Kilpatrick's time were recorded by each succeeding minister.

A Clarence Chicks Portrait by Tom Lindfors

2009-08-03T15:20:00.016-05:00

Tom Lindfors is a professional photographer who made a name for himself in Chicago working for thriving businesses and prestious institutions. If you look at his website, you'll see that he even took Michael Jordan's portrait. He took this photo of Clarence Chicks a number of years ago and asked Clarence to write something about himself to go with it. Below the photo is what Clarence wrote back then:

My name is Clarence Chicks. I am a member of the Stockbridge Tribe of the Mohican Nation. I was born on July 27, 1917 the eldest of nine children. I attended public and parochial schools in the Town of Red Springs, Wisconsin. I went on to attend Haskell Indian Institution in Lawrence, Kansas. There I completed High School and also a two year business course graduating in 1937. I was employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, served four years in the United States Navy during World War II and retired from General Motors in 1974. My recollections from early childhood was that I knew I was Indian, but it was some years before I fully realized the uniqueness of being a Native American and the development of intense pride in this fact. Life has been good to me with three successful children as well as a grandson I am proud of.

As we approach the 21st Century, I look forward to life as a Native American, as well as, an American citizen doing my part to fulfill my responsibilities as both. I am confident that in the coming century we will continue to enjoy the benefits of our democracy.

I probably could have devoted a whole post to the work that Clarence did fixing up his church - Immanuel Mohican Lutheran - and the old school building next to it (see photo). The bottom line is that the two buildings are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Clarence certainly has mechanical ability and he's worked with Habitat for Humanity for a long time. That is how he got to know the photographer, Tom Lindfors.

Now a resident of northern Wisconsin, Tom Lindfors told me (in an August 4, 2009 e-mail) about how he first heard about Clarence. Neither man could tell me how old Clarence was at the time, but a reasonable guess is that he was between 70 and 80 years old when, while using the Stockbridge tribe's firetruck to paint the upper reaches of the school building's exterior, there was an accident. Clarence was one of three men in the bucket and one of them wanted to go back down to the ground. Believe it or not, in the process of lowering, the bucket somehow broke. Perhaps even more unbelieveable was that although old Clarence fell out of the bucket, he sustained no serious injuries. When Tom Lindfors' father told him about that event, he felt destined to meet Clarence Chicks - and, of course, it goes without saying that he would take photos of Clarence. I asked Tom if he remembered taking those photos and I got a lot more than I expected. Here's some of what he told me:

I would consider Clarence a very good friend and one of the wisest people I know. He is someone I really admire. I have learned a great deal from him not only about Native Americans but about life in general.
The image Clarence sent you was the result of a rare reshoot, one of a handful I can remember in my career. I was working on an exhibit entitled, "Faces Within," and Clarence had agreed to sit for a portrait. We chose the church property for a variety of reasons, personal, historical and spiritual. The morning of the original shoot, was, one of the most memorable mornings I can recall. A very cool, exceptionally clear early autumn night, left a ghosty fog, moving like smoke in and out of the woods. The half hour drive to the church that morning was completely surreal, forest scape of intense color, masked by the serpentine fog knifed by distinct shafts of sunshine. It was truly breathtaking. Clarence had selflessly agreed to meet me early in the morning. The camera I had chosen was the perfect tool for the vision I had conjured, but unfortunately I was very unfamiliar with it. It was not one of my standard choices. Envision the same image Clarence sent you with brilliant leaves on the branches behind him, traces of fog mixed with dramatic white clouds against a deep blue sky and Clarence in his sharp black shirt. I was so caught up in the moment, I failed to properly pay attention to the framing constraints of the panoramic camera and ended up with Clarence out of focus in most of the frames. It was some of the most disappointing film I have ever had to look at and I'm left with only mental memories of that morning . . . and Clarence's patience and understanding. We remade the image as you see it, a week or two later. It is one of my favorite images in my collection maybe because of all that transpired in its making but also because of the perspective it demands of me, my own shortcomings and Clarence's friendship. We've had some long conversations since then.

Immanuel Mohican Lutheran Church

2009-08-03T15:15:00.015-05:00

This is the church building which was part of the Lutheran Indian Mission in the township of Red Springs, Wisconsin. Photo taken by Jeff Siemers, spring, 2009.

This is the church building that was part of the Lutheran Indian Mission. The congregation, you may remember, first got together in people's homes in 1892. By 1899 the parsonage was built with one room designated for worship services. The church building which you see above was dedicated on July 14, 1901. The congregation that had started out so informally eventually took the name of Emmanuel Mohican Lutheran.

The mission school began in 1902 and a dormitory was built in 1908 (see photo). (A bigger dormatory was built across the lake in 1922, but it is no longer standing.) According to Thelma Putnam (page 13), the mission eventually reached a census of 120 boarding students, plus 15 to 20 daily commuting students.

The mission was forced to close its dormatories in 1933 because it depended on contributions from people who no longer had anything to give. Nevertheless, the school remained in operation until 1958.

Over a two-year period (7th and 8th grades), one of the commuting students was Clarence Chicks (whose attendance at the mission school roughly coincided with the onset of the Great Depression). Clarence told me that in addition to Stockbridge Mohicans, the student body consisted of "a lot of Oneidas," and some "Winnebagoes" [Ho-Chunk] and "Chippewas."

Jack Campisi's Brief History of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin, Part 3

2009-08-01T08:26:00.014-05:00

This photo, posted on the internet by the Wisconsin State Historical Society, depicts a "Brothertown Dwelling" on/near Lake Winnebago.

On March 3, 1839, the U.S. Congress passed legislation dividing the Brothertown tribal lands in severalty and making the tribal members citizens. But in granting the Brothertown Indians citizenship the Congress faced a dilemma; could the Brothertown Indians be citizens and still retain tribal status?.....The specific language in the act read as follows: "...and their rights as a tribe or nation, and their power of making or executing their own laws, usages or customs, as such tribe, shall cease..."

Campisi says that citizen status worked out for a little while, but

By the 1870's much of the land was lost to non-Indians, and many tribal members were living on other tribe's [Stockbridge and Oneida] reservations, working on other people's farms, or living in one of the cities around Lake Winnebago.

Yet the tribe continued to operate as an organization. As part of the New York Indians, the Brothertowns received payments for a case against the United States regarding their land in Kansas.

When the Oneidas and the Stockbridges lost their lands as a result of the Dawes Act of 1887 and the "Citizen vs. Indian" controversy, the Brothertown Indians who had been living amongst them were thrown into what Campisi calls "social chaos." I think that pretty well describes the state of all the New York Indians in Wiscosnin in the first decades of the 1900's. But during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Stockbridges and Oneidas had the opportunity to take advantage of federal programs to gradually build themselves up again. However, Campisi laments, "No such effort was made on behalf of the Brothertown."

In all those decades since the depression there really isn't a lot to add to that. Without federal recognition or a significant land base, tribal members are largely on their own. But there was another court case in which the New York Indians - after a long court proceeding and huge delays - received per capita payments for Wisconsin land taken from them almost 160 years after it happened. That court battle motivated many of the Brothertown Indians to work towards federal recognition.

They're very close to being recognized, let's keep our fingers crossed for them.

Jack Campisi's Brief History of the Brothertown Indians of Wisconsin, Part 2

2009-07-30T13:04:00.013-05:00

The Brothertown Indians' Tribal Storyteller, Dick Welch, shows his daughter, Shelley Dekker, a historical display at the Fond du Lac Public Library (in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin). Jack Campisi gives credit to Samson Occom for persuading the following Native villages or communities to join together and move west to live near the Oneidas: "Mohegan, Mashantucket, Stonington, and Farmington in Connecticut; Charleston and Niantic in Rhode Island; and Montawk [or Montauk] on Long Island."

However, it was not long after the first group completed their migration that they were forced to flee as a result of the Revolutionary War. It was not safe for them to return until 1783. However, by as early 1785, white land speculators started to pressure the tribe to sell its land.

Despite being somewhat involved with the earlier removal plans of the Stockbridge Indians and Eleazar Williams, Campisi tells us that it was not until 1831 that bands of Brothertown Indians began to move from New York to Wisconsin. He adds that the migration happened gradually, with"members still joining as late as 1841."

Campisi's next two paragraphs are very important for understanding Brothertown history:

The tribe was hardly settled in its new location [in Calumet County, WI] having been pressured out of New York and pushed off its land in Kaukauna [aka Statesburg], when a new threat appeared. The federal government entered into negotiations with the tribes in New York and Wisconsin to exchange their lands for land in the Indian Territory of Kansas. On January 15, 1838, the United States concluded the Treaty of Buffalo Creek.

Once again the Brothertown tribe was in danger of being uprooted and forced to move. Once again, it was apparent that the cause of the problem was the manner in which the tribe held its land. By a perversity of law, as long as the land was held in common and inalienable, it was subject to loss by government action. The remedy, some thought, was to protect it in the same manner as the property of non-Indians was protected; through private ownership.

And so the Brothertown Indians chose to become citizens.

This series will continue.