Diplomacy in the Time of Cholera: why there was no Ojibwe delegation to President Taylor in the winter of 1849-50
December 15, 2024
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
Chief Buffalo’s Death and Conversion: A new perspective
April 18, 2014
By Leo Filipczak
Chief Buffalo died at La Pointe on September 7, 1855 amid the festivities and controversy surrounding that year’s annuity payment. Just before his death, he converted to the Catholic faith, and thus was buried inside the fence of the Catholic cemetery rather than outside with the Ojibwe people who kept traditional religious practices.
His death was noted by multiple written sources at the time, but none seemed to really dive into the motives and symbolism behind his conversion. This invited speculation from later scholars, and I’ve heard and proposed a number of hypotheses about why Buffalo became Catholic.
Now, a newly uncovered document, from a familiar source, reveals new information. And while it may diminish the symbolic impact of Buffalo’s conversion, it gives further insight into an important man whose legend sometimes overshadows his life.
Buffalo’s Obituary
The most well-known account of Buffalo’s death is from an obituary that appeared in newspapers across the country. It was also recorded in the essay, The Chippewas of Lake Superior, by Dr. Richard F. Morse, who was an eyewitness to the 1855 payment.
While it’s not entirely clear if it was Morse himself who wrote the obituary, he seems to be a likely candidate. Much like the rest of Chippewas of Lake Superior, the obituary is riddled with the inaccuracies and betrays an unfamiliarity with La Pointe society:
From Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Volume 3 (Digitized by Google Books)
It isn’t hard to understand how this obituary could invite several interpretations, especially when combined with other sources of the era and the biases of 20th and 21st-century investigators (myself included) who are always looking for a symbolic or political explanation.
Here, we will evaluate these interpretations.
Was Buffalo sending a message to the Ojibwe about the future?
The obituary states, “No tongue like Buffalo’s could control and direct the different bands.” An easy interpretation might suggest that he was trying to send a message that assimilation to white culture was the way of the future, and that all the Ojibwe should follow his lead. We do see suggestions in the writings of Henry Schoolcraft and William Warren that might support this conclusion.
The problem with this interpretation is that no Ojibwe leader, not even Buffalo, had that level of influence. Even if he wanted to, which would have been completely contrary to Ojibwe tolerance of religious pluralism, he could not have pulled a Henry VIII and converted his whole nation.
In fact, by 1855, Buffalo’s influence was at an all-time low. Recent scholarship has countered the image crafted by Benjamin Armstrong and others, of a chief whose trip to Washington and leadership through the Treaty of 1854 made him more powerful in his final years. Consider this 1852 depiction in Wagner and Scherzer’s Reisen in Nordamerika:
…Here we have the hereditary Chippewa chief, whose generations (totem) are carved in the ancient birch bark,** giving us profuse thanks for just a modest silver coin and a piece of dry cloth. What time can bring to a ruler!
So, did Buffalo decide in the last days of his life that Christianity was superior to traditional ways?
The reason why the obituary and other contemporary sources don’t go into the reasons for Buffalo’s conversion was because they hold the implicit assumption that Christianity is the one true religion. Few 19th-century American readers would be asking why someone would convert. It was a given. 160 years later, we don’t make this assumption anymore, but it should be explored whether or not this was purely a religious decision on Buffalo’s part.
I have a difficult time believing this. Buffalo had nearly 100 years to convert to Christianity if he’d wanted to. The traditional Ojibwe, in general, were extremely resistant to conversion, and there are several sources depicting Buffalo as a leader in the Midewiwin. This continuation of the above quote from Wagner and Scherzer shows Buffalo’s relationship to those who felt the Ojibwe needed Christianity.
Strangely, we later learned that the majestic Old Buffalo was violently opposed for years to the education and spiritual progress of the Indians. Probably, it’s because he suspected a better instructed generation would no longer obey. Presently, he tacitly accepts the existence of the school and even visits sometimes, where like ourselves, he has the opportunity to see the gains made in this school with its stubborn, fastidious look of an old German high council.
Accounts like this suggest a political rather than a spiritual motive.
So, did Buffalo’s convert for political rather than spiritual reasons?
Some have tied Buffalo’s conversion to a split in the La Pointe Band after the Treaty of 1854, and it’s important to remember all the heated factional divisions that rose up during the 1855 payment. Until recently, my personal interpretation would have been that Buffalo’s conversion represented a final break with Blackbird and the other Bad River chiefs. Perhaps Buffalo felt alienated from most of the traditional Ojibwe after he found himself in the minority over the issue of debt payments. His final speech was short, and reveals disappointment and exasperation on the part of the aged leader.
By the time of his death, most of his remaining followers, including the mix-blooded Ojibwe of La Pointe, and several of his children were Catholic, while most Ojibwe remained traditional. Perhaps there was additional jealousy over clauses in the treaty that gave Buffalo a separate reservation at Red Cliff and an additional plot of land. We see hints of this division in the obituary when an unidentified Ojibwe man blames the government for Buffalo’s death. This all could be seen as a separation forming between a Catholic Red Cliff and a traditional Bad River.
This interpretation would be perfect if it wasn’t grossly oversimplified. The division didn’t just happen in 1854. The La Pointe Band had always really been several bands. Those, like Buffalo’s, that were most connected to the mix-bloods and traders stayed on the Island more, and the others stayed at Bad River more. Still, there were Catholics at Bad River, and traditional Ojibwe on the Island. This dynamic and Buffalo’s place in it, were well-established. He did not have to convert to be with the “Catholic” faction. He had been in it for years.
Some have questioned whether Buffalo really converted at all. From a political point of view, one could say his conversion was really a show for Commissioner Manypenny to counter Blackbird’s pants (read this post if you don’t know what I’m talking about). I see that as overly cynical and out of character for Buffalo. I also don’t think he was ignorant of what conversion meant. He understood the gravity of what he was deciding, and being a ninety-year-old chief, I don’t think he would have felt pressured to please anyone.
So if it wasn’t symbolic, political, or religious zeal, why did Buffalo convert?
The Kohl article
As he documented the 1855 payment, Richard Morse’s ethnocentric values prevented any meaningful understanding of Ojibwe culture. However, there was another white outsider present at La Pointe that summer who did attempt to understand Ojibwe people as fellow human beings. He had come all the way from Germany.
The name of Johann Georg Kohl will be familiar to many readers who know his work Kitchi-Gami: Wanderings Around Lake Superior (1860). Kohl’s desire to truly know and respect the people giving him information left us with what I consider the best anthropological writing ever done on this part of the world.
My biggest complaint with Kohl is that he typically doesn’t identify people by name. Maangozid, Gezhiiyaash, and Zhingwaakoons show up in his work, but he somehow manages to record Blackbird’s speech without naming the Bad River chief. In over 100 pages about life at La Pointe in 1855, Buffalo isn’t mentioned at all.
So, I was pretty excited to find an untranslated 1859 article from Kohl on Google Books in a German-language weekly. The journal, Das Ausland, is a collection of writings that a would describe as ethnographic with a missionary bent.
I was even more excited as I put it through Google Translate and realized it discussed Buffalo’s final summer and conversion. It has to go out to the English-speaking world.
So without further ado, here is the first seven paragraphs of Remarks on the Conversion of the Canadian Indians and some Stories of Conversion by Johann Kohl. I apologize for any errors arising from the electronic translation. I don’t speak German and I can only hope that someone who does will see this and translate the entire article.
J. G. Kohl (Wikimedia Images)
Das Ausland.
Eine Wochenschrift
fur
Kunde des geistigen und sittlichen Lebens der Völker
[The Foreign Lands: A weekly for scholars of the moral and intellectual lives of foreign nations]
Nr. 2 8 January 1859
Remarks on the Conversion of the Canadian Indians and some Stories of Conversion
By J.G. Kohl
A few years ago, when I was on “La Pointe,” one of the so-called “Apostle Islands” in the western corner of the great Lake Superior, there still lived the old chief of the local Indians, the Chippeway or Ojibbeway people, named “Buffalo,” a man “of nearly a hundred years.” He himself was still a pagan, but many of his children, grandchildren and closest relatives, were already Christians.
I was told that even the aged old Buffalo himself “ébranlé [was shaking]”, and they told me his state of mind was fluctuating. “He thinks highly of the Christian religion,” they told me, “It’s not right to him that he and his family be of a different faith. He is afraid that he will be separated in death. He knows he will not be near them, and that not only his body should be brought to another cemetery, but also he believes his spirit shall go into another paradise away from his children.”
But Buffalo was the main representative of his people, the living embodiment, so to speak, of the old traditions and stories of his tribe, which once ranged over not only the whole group of the Apostle Islands, but also far and wide across the hunting grounds of the mainland of northern Wisconsin. His ancestors and his family, “the Totem of the Loons” (from the diver)* make claim to be the most distinguished chiefly family of the Ojibbeways. Indeed, they believe that from them and their village a far-reaching dominion once reached across all the tribes of the Ojibbeway Nation. In a word, a kind of monarchy existed with them at the center.
(*The Loon, or Diver, is a well-known large North American bird).
Old Buffalo, or Le Boeuf, as the French call him, or Pishiki, his Indian name, was like the last reflection of the long-vanished glory. He was stuck too deep in the old superstition. He was too intertwined with the Medä Order, the Wabanos, and the Jossakids, or priesthood, of his people. A conversion to Christianity would have destroyed his influence in a still mostly-pagan tribe. It would have been the equivalent of voluntarily stepping down from the throne he previously had. Therefore, in spite of his “doubting” state of mind, he could not decide to accept the act of baptism.
One evening, I visited old Buffalo in his bark lodge, and found in him grayed and stooped by the years, but nevertheless still quite a sprightly old man. Who knows what kind of fate he had as an old Indian chief on Lake Superior, passing his whole life near the Sioux, trading with the North West Company, with the British and later with the Americans. With the Wabanos and Jossakids (priests and sorcerers) he conjured for his people, and communed with the sky, but here people would call him an “old sinner.”
But still, due to his advanced age I harbored a certain amount of respect for him myself. He took me in, so kindly, and never forgot even afterwards, promising to remember my visit, as if it had been an honor for him. He told me much of the old glory of his tribe, of the origin of his people, and of his religion from the East. I gave him tobacco, and he, much more generously,gave me a beautiful fife. I later learned from the newspapers that my old host, being ill, and soon after my departure from the island, he departed from this earth. I was seized by a genuine sorrow and grieved for him. Those papers, however, reported a certain cause for consolation, in that Buffalo had said on his deathbed, he desired to be buried in a Christian way. He had therefore received Christianity and the Lord’s Supper, shortly before his death, from the Catholic missionaries, both with the last rites of the Church, and with a church funeral and burial in the Catholic cemetery, where in addition to those already resting, his family would be buried.
The story and the end of the old Buffalo are not unique. Rather, it was something rather common for the ancient pagan to proceed only on his death-bed to Christianity, and it starts not with the elderly adults on their deathbeds, but with their Indian families beginning with their young children. The parents are then won over by the children. For the children, while they are young and largely without religion, the betrayal of the old gods and laws is not so great. Therefore, the parents give allow it more easily. You yourself are probably already convinced that there is something fairly good behind Christianity, and that their children “could do quite well.” They desire for their children to attain the blessing of the great Christian God and therefore often lead them to the missionaries, although they themselves may not decide to give up their own ingrained heathen beliefs. The Christians, therefore, also prefer to first contact the youth, and know well that if they have this first, the parents will follow sooner or later because they will not long endure the idea that they are separated from their children in the faith. Because they believe that baptism is “good medicine” for the children, they bring them very often to the missionaries when they are sick…
Das Ausland: Wochenschrift für Länder- u. Völkerkunde, Volumes 31-32. Only about a quarter of the article is translated above. The remaining pages largely consist of Kohl’s observations on the successes and failures of missionary efforts based on real anecdotes.
Conclusion
According to Johann Kohl, who knew Buffalo, the chief’s conversion wasn’t based on politics or any kind of belief that Ojibwe culture and religion was inferior. Buffalo converted because he wanted to be united with his family in death. This may make the conversion less significant from a historical perspective, but it helps us understand the man himself. For that reason, this is the most important document yet about the end of the great chief’s long life.
Sources:
Armstrong, Benj G., and Thomas P. Wentworth. Early Life among the Indians: Reminiscences from the Life of Benj. G. Armstrong : Treaties of 1835, 1837, 1842 and 1854 : Habits and Customs of the Red Men of the Forest : Incidents, Biographical Sketches, Battles, &c. Ashland, WI: Press of A.W. Bowron, 1892. Print.
Kohl, J. G. Kitchi-Gami: Wanderings round Lake Superior. London: Chapman and Hall, 1860. Print.
Loew, Patty. Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 2001. Print.
McElroy, Crocket. “An Indian Payment.” Americana v.5. American Historical Company, American Historical Society, National Americana Society Publishing Society of New York, 1910 (Digitized by Google Books) pages 298-302.
Morse, Richard F. “The Chippewas of Lake Superior.” Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Ed. Lyman C. Draper. Vol. 3. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1857. 338-69. Print.
Paap, Howard D. Red Cliff, Wisconsin: A History of an Ojibwe Community. St. Cloud, MN: North Star, 2013. Print.
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.
Wagner, Moritz, and Karl Von Scherzer. Reisen in Nordamerika in Den Jahren 1852 Und 1853. Leipzig: Arnold, 1854. Print.
Warren, William W., and Theresa M. Schenck. History of the Ojibway People. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2009. Print.
KAIZHEOSH, and his band from Lake Vieu Desert. Michigan and Wisconsin: Copied from the original birch bark by Seth Eastman and published in Schoolcraft, Henry R. Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Volume 1. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, and Company, 1853. (Digitized by the University of Nebraska Libraries)
In the fall of 1848, a group of Ojibwe Indians led by a charismatic mix-blooded interpreter, arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio. They were bound for Washington D.C., but didn’t have the money to get there because they didn’t have “permission” from the Indian Agent for the trip. They had to raise funds along the way by putting on dances for the curious public. Those who read Chequamegon History might remember this post and recognize them as John Baptiste Martell, Oshkaabewis, Gezhiiyaash, and the other chiefs from the Lac du Flambeau/Ontonagon region who carried the famous pictographic birch bark petitions to Washington. The pictographs showing the united Ojibwe clans, and the written petition that accompanied them, asked the government to create reservations in Michigan and Wisconsin, and not remove the Oijbwe.
When Gezhiiyaash got sick in Cincinnati, the doctor he was seeing noticed that the petitions were not the only birch bark documents carried by the party. The ill Lac Vieux Desert chief was a leader in the Midewiwin Society, and he had brought a Mide scroll. His doctor, like many prominent American men in the middle of the 19th century, was a Freemason, and this is where things got interesting. And, I’ll leave it at that because I don’t want to spoil any more of this story. It’s a good one.
Masonic Voice Review, Volume 4. J. Ernst., 1849. Digitized by Google Books
There isn’t a whole lot to add to this other than to say the 1848-49 “Martell Expedition” gets weirder and more interesting with each new source that surfaces. Please read …a donation of twenty-four sections of land covering the graves of our fathers, our sugar orchards, and our rice lakes and rivers… and Reconstructing the “Martell” Delegation through Newspapers, for an explanation of the goals and accomplishments of these chiefs and the obstacles they faced along the way.
Sources:
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.
…a donation of twenty-four sections of land covering the graves of our fathers, our sugar orchards, and our rice lakes and rivers…
March 29, 2013
Symbolic Petition of Chippewa Chiefs: Original birch bark petition of Oshkaabewis copied by Seth Eastman and printed in “Historical and statistical information respecting the history, condition, and prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States” by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1851). Digitized by University of Wisconsin Libraries Wisconsin Electronic Reader project (1998).
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.
This written petition accompanied the pictographic petitions. It clearly states the goal of the the chiefs was to secure permanent reservations around the traditional villages east of the Mississippi.
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.
Amid articles on the end of the slave trade, the California Gold Rush, and the benefits of the “passing away of the Celt” during the Great Irish Famine, two articles appeared in Littell’s Living Age magazine about the 1849 delegation. The first is tragic, and the second is comical.
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.
Kenisteno, and his Band of Trout Lake, Wisconsin
Okundekund, and his Band of Ontonagon, Michigan (Upper) Kakake-ogwunaosh, and his Band of the head of Wisconsin River (Lower)
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.
Kaizheosh [Gezhiiyaash], and his band from Lake Vieu Desert, Michigan and Wisconsin (University of Nebraska Libraries)
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.
Chequamegon History 