Chequamegon History

For the first post on Chequamegon History, I thought I’d share my research into an image that has been circulating around the area for several years now. The image shows seven Ojibwe chiefs by their doodemag (clan symbols), connected by heart and mind to Lake Superior and to some smaller lakes.  The clans shown are the Crane, Marten, Bear, Merman, and Bullhead.

All the interpretations I’ve heard agree that this image is a copy of a birch bark pictograph, and that it represents a unity among the several chiefs and their clans against Government efforts to remove the Lake Superior bands to Minnesota.

While there is this agreement on the why question of this petition’s creation, the who and when have been a source of confusion. Much of this confusion stems from efforts to connect this image to the famous La Pointe chief, Buffalo (Bizhiki/Gichi-weshkii).

In 2007, the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) released the short documentary Mikwendaagoziwag: They Are Remembered. While otherwise a very good overview of the Lake Superior Ojibwe in this era, it incorrectly uses this image to describe Buffalo going to Washington D.C. in 1849. Buffalo is famous for a trip to Washington in 1852, but he was not part of the 1849 group.

At the time the GLIFWC film was released, the Wisconsin Historical Society website referred to this pictograph as, “Chief Buffaloʼs Petition to the President,” and identified the crane as Buffalo. Citing oral history from Lac Courte Oreilles, the Society dated the petition after the botched 1850-51 removal to Sandy Lake, Minnesota that resulted in hundreds of Ojibwe deaths from disease and starvation due to negligence, greed, and institutional racism on the part of government officials. The Historical Society has since revised its description to re-date the pictograph at 1848-49, but it still incorrectly lists Buffalo, a member of the Loon Clan, as being depicted by the crane.  The Sandy Lake Tragedy, has deservedly gained coverage by historians in recent years, but the pictographic petition came earlier and was not part of it.

If the Historical Society had contacted Chief Buffaloʼs descendants in Red Cliff, they would have known that Buffalo was from the Loon Clan. The relationship between the Loons and the Cranes, as far as which clan can claim the hereditary chieftainship of the La Pointe Band, is very interesting and covered extensively in Warrenʼs History of the Ojibwe People.  It would make a good subject for a future post.

After looking into the history of this image, I can confidently say that Buffalo is not one of the chiefs represented. It was created before Sandy Lake and Buffalo’s journey, but it is related to those events. Here is the story:

In late 1848, a group of Ojibwe chiefs went to Washington. They wanted to meet directly with President James K. Polk to ask for a permanent reservations in Wisconsin and Michigan. At that time the Ojibwe did not hold title to any part of the newly-created state of Wisconsin or Upper Michigan, having ceded these lands in the treaties in 1837 and 1842. In signing the treaties, they had received guarantees that they could stay in their traditional villages and hunt, fish, and gather throughout the ceded territory. However, by 1848, rumors were flying of removal of all Ojibwe to unceded lands on the Mississippi River in Minnesota Territory. These chiefs were trying to stop that from happening.

John Baptist Martell, a mix-blood, acted as their guide and interpreter. The government officials and Indian agents in the west were the ones actively promoting removal, so they did not grant permission (or travel money) for the trip. The chiefs had to pay their way as they went by putting themselves on display and dancing as they went from town to town.

Martell was accused by government officials of acting out of self interest, but the written petition presented to congress asked for, “a donation of twenty-four sections of land covering the graves of our fathers, our sugar orchards, and our rice lakes and rivers, at seven different places now occupied by us at villages…” The chiefs claimed to be acting on behalf of the chiefs of all the Lake Superior bands, and there is reason to believe them given that their request is precisely what Chief Buffalo and other leaders continued to ask for up until the Treaty of 1854.

The visiting Ojibwes made a big impression on the nationʼs capital and positive accounts of the chiefs, their families, and their interpreter appeared in the magazines of the day. Congress granted them $6000 for their expenses, which according to their critics was a scheme by Martell. However, it is likely they were vilified by government officials for working outside the colonial structure and for trying to stop the removal rather than for any ill-intentions of the part of their interpreter. A full scholarly study of the 1848-49 trip remains to be done, however.

Along with written letters and petitions supporting the Ojibwe cause, the chiefs carried not only the one, but several birchbark pictographs. The pictographs show the clan animals of several chiefs and leading men from several small villages from the mouth of the Ontonagon River to Lac Vieux Desert in Upper Michigan and smaller satellite communities in Wisconsin. After seeing these petitions, the artist Seth Eastman copied them on paper and gave them to Henry Schoolcraft who printed and explained them alongside his criticism of the trip.  They appear in his 1851 Historical and statistical information respecting the history, condition, and prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States.

To view all of these pictographs with Schoolcraft’s original interpretations visit the University of Wisconsin Libraries Wisconsin Electronic Reader project (1998)

According to Schoolcraft, the crane in the most famous pictograph is Oshkaabewis, a Crane-clan chief from Lac Vieux Desert, and the leader of the 1848-49 expedition.  In the Treaty of 1854, he is listed as a first chief from Lac du Flambeau in nearby Wisconsin.  It makes sense that someone named Oshkaabewis would lead a delegation since the word oshkaabewis is used to describe someone who carries messages and pipes for a civil chief.

Two of the six chiefs on the written petition do not seem to be represented in the pictographic petitions.  Wis-Kok doesn’t ring a bell, but I’ll be on the lookout for information on him.  Na-gon-nob was the name of a prominent chief from Fond du Lac at that time.  It shouldn’t be too hard to determine if it’s the same person.  If so, it wouldn’t be the only Washington trip for the Fond du Lac chief. He traveled to Washington in the 1860s to meet with President Lincoln.

Long Story Short…

This is not Chief Buffalo or anyone from the La Pointe Band, and it was created before the Sandy Lake Tragedy. However it is totally appropriate to use the image in connection with those topics because it was all part of the efforts of the Lake Superior Ojibwe to resist removal in the late 1840s and early 1850s.  However, when you do, please remember to credit the Lac Vieux Desert/Ontonagon chiefs who created these remarkable documents.

The story continues.  For an interesting tale of “Martell’s Chiefs” meeting some Freemasons in Cincinnati, read this post. 

For a more in-depth  look at the accomplishments of this delegation, and answers to some of the questions raised here, read this post.

Sources:

“An Interesting Incident.” Western Literary Messenger 12.2 (1849): 58-59. Print.

KAPPLER’S INDIAN AFFAIRS: LAWS AND TREATIES. Ed. Charles J. Kappler. Oklahoma State University Library, n.d. Web. 21 June 2012. <http:// digital.library.okstate.edu/Kappler/>.

Littell, Eliakim, and Robert S. Littell, eds. “Indian Incidents-Indians in Congress.” Littells’Living Age 20.253 (1849): 573. Print.

Mikwendaagoziwag, They Are Remembered. Prod. Lorraine Norrgard and Charlie O. Rasmussen. Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, 2007. DVD.

Satz, Ronald N. Chippewa Treaty Rights: The Reserved Rights of Wisconsin’s Chippewa Indians in Historical Perspective. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, 1991. Print.

Schenck, Theresa M. William W. Warren: The Life, Letters, and times of an Ojibwe Leader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2007. Print.

Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, and Seth Eastman. Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States: Collected and Prepared under the Direction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs per Act of Congress of March 3rd, 1847. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1851. Print.

United States. Cong. House. Miscellaneous Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives. By Ka-she-ansh, Osh-ka-ba-wis, On-gua-sug, Nah-gon-nob, O-gu-mah-ge-sic, and Wis-kok. Trans. John B. Martell. 30th Cong., 2nd sess. H. Doc. Miscellaneous No. 36. Washington: Tippin & Streeper, 1849. Print.

Warren, William W., and Theresa M. Schenck. History of the Ojibway People. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2009. Print.

Wisconsin Historical Society. “Ojibwe Leaders Represent Their Credentials in a Picture: An Ojibwe Birch Bark Petition, Ca. 1849.” Turning Points. Wisconsin Historical Society, 1996-2012. Web. 28 June 2012. <http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/search.asp?id=75>.

——– “Ojibwe Leaders Tell the Story of the Sandy Lake Tragedy in a Picture: Chief Buffalo’s Petition to the President.” Turning Points. Wisconsin Historical Society, 1996-2007. Web. 29 Sept. 2007. Internet Archive <http://web.archive.org/web/20070929120808/http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/search.asp?id=75>.