By Leo

At Chequamegon History, we deal mostly in the micro.  By limiting our scope to a particular time and place, we are all about  the narrow picture.  Don’t come here for big universal ideas.  The more specific and obscure a story, the more likely it is to appear on this website. 

Madeline Island and the Chequamegon region are perfect for the specific and obscure.  In the 1840s, most Americans would have thought of La Pointe as remote frontier wilderness, beyond the reach of worldwide events.  Most of us still look at our history this way.  

We are wrong.  No man is an island, and Madeline Island–though literally an island–was no island.

This week, I was reminded of this fact while doing research for a project that has nothing to do with Chequamegon History.  While scrolling through the death records of the Greek-Catholic church of my ancestral village in Poland, I noticed something strange. The causes of deaths are usually a mishmash of medieval sounding ailments, all written in Latin, or if the priest isn’t feeling creative or curious, the death is just listed as ordinaria.

In the summer of 1849, however, there was a noticeable uptick in death rate.  It seemed my 19th-century cousins, from age 7 to 70, were all dying of the same thing:

Cause of death in right column. Akta stanu cywilnego Parafii Greckokatolickiej w Olchowcach (1840-1879). Księga zgonów dla miejscowości Olchowce. https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/jednostka/-/jednostka/22431255

Cholera is a word people my age first learned on our Apple IIs back in elementary school:

At Herbster School in 1990, we pronounced it “Cho-lee-ra.” It was weird the first time someone said “Caller-uh.” You can play online at https://www.visitoregon.com/the-oregon-trail-game-online/

It is no coincidence.  If you note the date of leaving Matt’s General Store in Independence Missouri, Oregon Trail takes place in 1848. 

Diseases thrive in times of war, upheaval, famine, and migration, and 1848 and 1849 certainly had plenty of all of those.  A third year of potato blight and oppressive British policies plunged the Irish poor deeper into squalor and starvation. The millions who were able to, left Ireland.  Meanwhile, the British conquest of the Punjab and the “Springtime of Nations” democratic revolutions across central Europe meant army and refugee camps (notorious vectors of disease) popped up across the Eurasian continent.

North America had seen war as well.  The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848) ended the Mexican-American War and delivered half of Mexico over to Manifest Destiny.  The discovery of gold in California, part of this cession, brought thousands of Chinese workers to the West Coast, while millions of Irish and Germans arrived on the East Coast.  Some of those would also find their way west along the aforementioned Oregon Trail.

Closer to home, these German immigrants meant statehood for Wisconsin and the shifting of Wisconsin’s Indian administration west to Minnesota Territory.  Eyeing profits, Minnesota and Mississippi River interests were increasingly calling for the removal of the Lake Superior Ojibwe bands from Wisconsin and Michigan.  This caused great alarm and uncertainty at La Pointe.

All of these seemingly disparate events of 1848 and 1849 are, in fact, related.  One of the most obvious manifestations was that displaced people from all these places impacted by war, poverty, and displacement carried cholera. The disease arrived in the United States multiple times, but the worst outbreak came up Mississippi from New Orleans in the summer of 1849.  It ravaged St. Louis, then the Great Lakes, and reached Sault Ste, Marie and Lake Superior by August.

Longtime Chequamegon History readers will know my obsession with the Ojibwe delegation that left La Pointe in October 1848 and visited Washington D.C. in February 1849.  It is a fascinating story of a group of chiefs who brought petitions (some pictographic) laying out their arguments against removal to President James K. Polk and Congress.  The chiefs were well-received, but ultimately the substance of their petitions was not acted upon.  They arrived after the 1848 elections.  Polk and the members of Congress were lame ducks.  General Zachary Taylor had been elected president, though he wasn’t inaugurated until the day after the delegation left Washington.

If you’ve read through our DOCUMENTS RELATED TO THE OJIBWE DELEGATION AND PETITIONS TO PRESIDENT POLK AND CONGRESS 1848-1849, you’ll know that both Polk and the Ojibwe delegation’s translator and alleged ringleader, the colorful Jean-Baptiste Martell of Sault Ste. Marie, died of cholera that summer.

So, in this post, we’re going to evaluate three new documents, just added to the collection, and look at how the cholera epidemic partially led to the disastrous removal of 1850, commonly known as the Sandy Lake Tragedy.

The first document is from just after the delegation’s arrival in Washington.  It describes the meeting with Polk in great detail, lays out the Ojibwe grievances, and importantly, records Polk’s reaction.  I have not been able to find the name of the correspondent, but this article is easily the best-reported of all the many, many newspaper accounts of the 1848-49 delegation–most of which use patronizing racist language and focus on the more trivial, “fish out of water” element of Lake Superior chiefs in the capital city.

New York Daily Tribune, 6 February 1849, Page 1

The Indians of the North-West–Their Wrongs–Chiefs in Washington

Correspondence of The Tribune

WASHINGTON, 3d Feb 1849.

Yesterday (Friday) the Chiefs representing the Chippewa Tribe of Indians located on the borders of Lake Superior and drawing their pay at La Pointe, representing 16 bands, which comprise about 9,000 Indians, after remaining here for the last ten days, were presented to the President.– The Secretary of War and Commissioner of Indian Affairs were also present.  One of the Chiefs who appeared to be the eldest, first addressed the President, for a period of twenty minutes.  The address was interpreted by John B. Martell, a half-breed, who was born and has always continued among them.  He appears a shrewd, sensible man, and interprets with much fluency.  This Chief was followed by two others in addresses occupying the same length of time.  They all addressed the President as “Our Great Father,” and spoke with much energy, dignity and fluency, preserving throughout a respectful manner and evincing an earnest sincerity of purpose, that bespoke their mission to be one of no ordinary character.  They represented their grievances under which their tribes were laboring:  the trials and privations they had undergone to reach here, and the separation from their families, with much emotion and in truly touching and eloquent terms.

The oldest chief was Gezhiiyaash (his pictographic petition above) or “Swift Sailor” from Lac Vieux Desert. The two other chiefs were likely Oshkaabewis “Messenger” from Wisconsin River, and Naagaanab “Foremost Sitter” from Fond du Lac.

They represented that their annuities under their Treaty of La Pointe, made about the year 1843, were payable in the month of July in each year and not later, because by that time the planting season would be over; beside, it would be the best time and the least dangerous to pass the Great Lake and return to their homes in time to gather wild rice, on which they mainly depended during the hard winters.  The first payment was made later than the time agreed upon.  The agent, upon being notified, promised to comply with the terms of the Treaty, but every year since the payments have been made later, and that of last year did not take place until about the middle of October, in consequence of which they have been subjected to much suffering.– They assemble at the place for payment designated in the treaty.  It is then the traders take advantage of them–being three hundred miles from home, without money, and without provisions; and when their money is received it must all be paid for their subsistence during the long delay they have been subjected to; and sickness frequently breaks out among them from being obliged to use salt provisions, which they are not accustomed to.  By leaving their homes at any other time than in the month of July they neglect their harvesting–rice and potato crops, and if they neglect those they must starve to death; therefore it would be better for them to lose their annuities altogether.  And without their blankets, procured at the Pointe, they are liable to freeze to death when passing the stormy lake; and the tradespeople influence the Agent to send for them a month before the payment is made, and when they arrive the Agent accepts orders from them for provisions which they are obliged to purchase at a great price–one dollar for 15 lbs of flour, and in proportion for other articles.  They have assembled frequently in regard to these things, and can only conclude that their complaints have never reached their “Great Father,” and they have now come to see him in person, and take him by the hand.

In regard to the Half-Breeds at La Pointe, who draw pay with them, they say:  That in the Treaty concluded between Governor Dodge and the Chippewas at St. Peters, provision was made for the half-breeds to draw their share all in one payment, and it was paid them accordingly, $258.50 each, which was a mere gift on the part of the tribe; a payment which they had no right to, but was given them as a present.  Induced by some subsequent representations by the half-breeds, they were taken into their pay list, and the consequence has been that almost all the half breeds, as well as the French who are married to Indian women, are in the employ of, or dependent upon one of the principal trading houses, (Dr. Bourop’s) at La Pointe, with whom their goods and provisions are stored; and that they are thus enabled to select and appropriate to themselves the choice portion of all the goods designed for them–in many cases not leaving them a blanket to start with upon their journey of two or three hundred miles distant to their homes.  After many other details, to which we will make reference in future articles, they urged that owing to the faithlessness of the half-breeds to them, and to the Government, that they be stricken from the pay list.

One half the goods furnished are of no use to them.  The articles they most need are guns, kettles, blankets and a greater supply of provisions, &c.

They are under heavy expense, and no money to pay their board.  They have undertaken this long journey for the benefit of their whole people, and at their earnest solicitations.  They have been absent from their families nearly one year.  It has cost them $1,400 to get here.  Half of that sum has been raised from exhibitions.  The other half has been borrowed from kind people on the route they have traveled.  They wish to repay the money advanced them and to procure money to return home with.  They want clothes and things to take to their families, and ask an appropriation of $6,000 on their annuity money.

They have before made a communication to the President, to be laid before the present Congress, for the acquisition of lands and the naturalization of their bands–propositions which they urged with great force.

All the Chiefs represented to the President that their interpreter, Mr. Martel, was living in very comfortable circumstances at home, and was induced to accompany them by the urgent solicitations of all their people who confided in his integrity and looked upon him as their friend.

The paternalistic ritual kinship (“Great Father”) language used here by James K. Polk, can be off-putting to the modern reader.  However, it had a long tradition in Ojibwe “fur trade theater” rhetoric. Gezhiiyaash was no meek schoolboy, as evidenced by his words in this document (White House)

Their supplicating–though forcible, intelligent, and pathetic appeal, to be permitted to live upon the spot of their nativity, where the morning and noon of their days had been past, and the night time of their existence has reached them, was, too, and irresistible appeal to the justice, generosity and magnanimity of that boasted “civilization” that pleads mercy to the conquered, and was calculated to leave an impress upon every honest heart who claims to be a “freeman.”

The President, in answer to the several addresses, requested the interpreter to state to them that their Great Father was happy to have met with them; and as they had made allusion to written documents which they placed in his hands, as containing an expression of their views and wishes, he would carefully read them and communicate his answer to the Secretary of War and the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, assuring them of kindly feelings on the part of the Government, and terminating with some expressions very like a schoolmaster’s enjoinder upon his scholars that if they behaved themselves they might expect good treatment in future.   

The fact that they met Polk was not new information, but we hadn’t been previously aware of just how long the meeting went.  It is important to note the president’s use of “kindly feelings” and “behaved themselves.”  Those phrases would come up frequently in subsequent years.

One could argue that Polk was a lame duck, and would be dead of cholera within a few months, so his words didn’t mean much.  One could argue the problem was that the Ojibwe didn’t understand that in the American political system–that the incoming Whig administration might not feel bound by the words and “kindly feelings” of the outgoing Democratic administration.

However, the next document shows that the chiefs did feel the need to cover their bases and stuck around Washington long enough meet the next president.  To us, at least, this was new information:

National Era v. III. No. 14, pg. 56  April 5, 1849

For the National Era

THE CHIPPEWA CHIEFS AND GENERAL TAYLOR

On the third day after the arrival of General Taylor at Washington, the Indian chiefs requested me to seek an interview for them, as they were about to leave for their homes, on Lake Superior, and greatly desired to see the new President before their departure.

It was accordingly arranged by the General to see them the next morning at 9 o’clock, before the usual reception hour.

Fitted out in their very best, with many items of finery which their taste for the imposing had added to their wardrobe, the delegation and their interpreter accompanied me to the reception room, and were cordially taken by the hand by the plain but benevolent-looking old General.  One of the chiefs arose, and addressed the President elect nearly as follows:

“Father!  We are glad to see you, and we are pleased to see you so well after your long journey.

“Father!  We are the representatives of about twenty thousand of your red children, and are just about leaving for our homes, far off on Lake Superior, and we are very much gratified, that, before our departure, we have the opportunity of shaking hands with you.

“Father!  You have conquered your country’s enemies in war; may you subdue the enemies of your Administration while you are President of the United States and govern this great country, like the great father, Washington, before you, with wisdom and in peace.

 “Father!  This our visit through the country and to the cities of your white children, and the wonderful things that we have seen, impress us with awe, and cause us to think that the white man is the favored of the Great Spirit.

“Father!  In the midst of the great blessings with which you and your white children are favored of the Great Spirit, we ask of you, while you are in power, not to forget your less fortunate red children.  They are now few, and scattered, and poor.  You can help them.

“Father!  Although a successful warrior, we have heard of your humanity!  And now that we see you face to face, we are satisfied that you have a heart to feel for your poor red children. 

“Father Farewell”

The tall, manly-looking chief having finished and shaken hands, General Taylor asked him to be seated, and, rising himself, replied nearly as follows”

“My Red Children:  I am very happy to have this interview with you.  What you have said I have listened to with interest.  It is the more appreciated by me, as I am no stranger to your people.  I resided for a length of time on your borders, and have been witness to your privations, and am acquainted with many of your wants.

“Peace must be established and maintained between yourselves and the neighboring tribes of the red men, and you need in the next place the means of subsistence.

“My Red Children:  I thank you for your kind wishes for me personally, and as President of the United States.

“While I am in office, I shall use my influence to keep you at peace with the Sioux, between whom and the Chippewas there has always been a most deadly hostility, fatal to the prosperity of both nations.  I shall also recommend that you be provided with the means of raising corn and the other necessaries of life.

“My Red Children:  I hope that you have met with success in your present visit, and that you may return to your homes without an accident by the way; and I bid you say to your red brethren that I cordially wish them health and prosperity.  Farewell.”

This interesting interview closed with a general shaking of hands and during the addresses, it is creditable to the parties to say, that the feelings were reached.  Tears glistened in the eyes of the Indians and General Taylor evinced sufficient emotion, during the address of the chief, to show that he possesses a heart that may be touched.  The old veteran was heard to remark, as the delegation left the room, “What fine looking men they are!”

Major Martell, the half-breed interpreter, acquitted himself handsomely throughout.  The Indians came away declaring that “General Taylor talked very good.”

The General’s family and suite, evidently not prepared for the visit; were not dressed to receive company at so early an hour; nevertheless, they soon came in, en dishabille, and looked on with interest.

P.

One of the lingering questions I’ve had about the 1848-49 Delegation has been whether or not the Ojibwe leadership viewed it as a success.  This document shows that the answer was unequivocally yes.  It also shows why the chiefs felt so blindsided and disbelieving in the spring of 1850 when the government agents at La Pointe told them that Taylor had ordered them to remove.  They didn’t have to go back to 1842 for the Government’s promises.  They had heard them only a year earlier from both the president and the president-elect!

It also explains why during and after the removal, the chiefs number-one priority was sending another delegation.  One would eventually go in 1852, led by Chief Buffalo of La Pointe.  This would help secure the reservations sought by the first delegation, but that was only after two failed removal attempts and hundreds of deaths.

If the cholera epidemic had not come, Chief Buffalo and other prominent chiefs, would have likely gone back to Taylor in the winter of 1849-50.  They may have been able to secure new treaty negotiations, reservations on the ceded territory, or at the very least have been more prepared for the upcoming removal: 

George Johnston to Henry Schoolcraft, 5 October 1849, MS Papers of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft:  General Correspondence, 1806-1864, BOX 51.

Saut Ste Maries

Oct 5th 1849

My Dear sir,

Your favor of Sep. 14th, I have just now received and will lose no time in answering.  Since I wrote to you on the subject of an intended delegation of Chippewa Chiefs desiring to visit the seat of Govt., I visited Lapointe and remained there during the payment, and I had an opportunity of seeing & talking with the chiefs.  They held a council with their agent Dr. Livermore and expressed their desire to visit Washington this season, and they laid the matter before him with open frankness, and Dr. Livermore answered them in the same strain, advising them at the same time, to relinquish their intended visit this year, as it would be dangerous for them, to travel in the midst of sickness which was so prevalent & so widely spread in the land, and that if they should still feel desirous to go on the following year that he would then permit them to do so, and that he would have no objections, this appearing so reasonable to the chiefs, that they assented to it.

I will write to the chiefs and express to them the subject of your letter, and direct them to address Mr. Babcock at Detroit.

You will herein find enclosed copy of Mr. Ballander’s letter to me, a gentleman of the Hon. Hudson’s Bay Co. & Chief factor at Fort Garry in the Red river region, it is very kind & his sympathy, devotes a feeling heart.– Mr. Mitchell of Green Bay to whom I have written in the early part of this summer, to make enquiries relative to certain reports of Tanner’s existence among the sioux, he has not as yet returned an answer to may communication and I feel the neglect with some degree of asperity which I cannot control.

Very Truly yours

Geo. Johnston

Henry R. Schoolcraft Esq.

Washington

It is hard to say how differently history may have turned out if a second delegation had been able to go with George Johnston.  There is a good chance it would have been a lot more successful.  Johnston was much more of an insider than Martell–who had had a lot of difficulty convincing the American authorities of his credentials.  One of those who stood in Martell’s way was Henry Schoolcraft.  Schoolcraft, was regarded by the American establishment as the foremost authority on Ojibwe affairs and was Johnston’s brother-in-law. 

It may not have worked.  The inertia of United States Indian Policy was still with removal.  Any attempt to reverse Manifest Destiny and convince the government to cede land back to Indian nations east of the Mississippi was going to be an uphill battle.  The Minnesota trade interests were strong.   

Also, Schoolcraft was a Democrat, so he would have had less influence with the Whig Taylor–though agreements on Western issues sometimes crossed party lines.   However, one can imagine George Johnston sitting around a table in Washington with his “Uncle” Buffalo, his brother-in-law Schoolcraft, and the U.S. President, working out the contours of a new treaty avoiding the removal entirely.  Because of the cholera, however, we’ll never know.   

For more on how the fallout from the Mexican War impacted Ojibwe removal, see Slavery, Debt Default, and the Sandy Lake Tragedy

For more on the 1848-49 Delegation, see: this post, this post, and this post