By Leo
In April, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Department of Commerce v. New York and could render a decision any day on whether or not the 2020 federal census should include a question asking about citizenship status. In January, a Federal District Court in New York ruled that commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, violated the law by pushing for that question.
Those in agreement with the District ruling suggest that the Trump administration wants to add the question as a way of discouraging immigrants from participating in the census, thereby diminishing the political power of immigrant communities. This, they say, would violate the Constitution on the grounds that the census must be an “actual enumeration” of all persons within the United States, not only citizens.
Proponents of the citizenship question counter that citizenship status is a perfectly natural question to ask in the census, that any government would want to know how many citizens it has, and that several past iterations of the 10-year count have included similar questions.
It remains to be seen how the Supreme Court will rule, but chances are it will not be the last time an issue of race, identity, or citizenship pops up in the politics of the census. From its creation by the Constitution as a way to apportion seats in congress according to populations of the states, the count has always begged tricky questions that essentially boil down to:
Who is a real American? Who isn’t? Who is a citizen? Who is three-fifths of a human being? Who might not be human at all? What does it mean to be White? To be Colored? To be civilized? How do you classify the myriad of human backgrounds, cultures and stories into finite, discrete “races?”
The Civil War and Fourteenth Amendment helped shed light on some of these questions, but it would be a mistake to think that they belong to the past. The NPR podcast Codeswitch has done an excellent series on census, and this episode from last August gives a broad overview of the history.
Here at Chequamegon History, though, we aren’t in the business broad overviews. We are going to drill down right into the data. We’ll comb through the 1850 federal census for La Pointe County and compare it with the 1860 data for La Pointe and Ashland Counties. Just for fun, we’ll compare both with the 1855 Wisconsin State Census for La Pointe County, then double back to the 1840 federal census for western St. Croix County. Ultimately, the hope is to help reveal how the population of the Chequamegon region viewed itself, and ultimately how that differed from mainstream America’s view. With luck, that will give us a framework for more stories like Amorin’s recent post on the killing of Louis Gurnoe.
Background
Judge Daniel Harris Johnson of Prairie du Chien had no apparent connection to Lake Superior when he was appointed to travel northward to conduct the census for La Pointe County in 1850. The event made an impression on him. It gets a mention in his short memorial biography in the 1902 Proceedings of the State Bar Association.
Two years after statehood, Lake Superior’s connection to the rest of Wisconsin was hardly existent. This was long before Highways 51 and 53 were built, and commerce still flowed west to east. Any communication to or from Madison was likely to first go through Michigan via Mackinaw and Sault Ste. Marie, or through Minnesota Territory via St. Paul, Stillwater, and Sandy Lake. La Pointe County had been created in 1845, and when official business had to happen, a motley assortment of local residents who could read and write English: Charles Oakes, John W. Bell, Antoine Gordon, Alexis Carpentier, Julius Austrian, Leonard Wheeler, etc. would meet to conduct the business.
It is unclear how much notice the majority Ojibwe and French-patois speaking population took of this or of the census generally. To them, the familiar institutions of American power, the Fur Company and the Indian Agency, were falling apart at La Pointe and reorganizing in St. Paul with dire consequences for the people of Chequamegon. When Johnson arrived in September, the Ojibwe people of Wisconsin had already been ordered to remove to Sandy Lake in Minnesota Territory for their promised annual payments for the sale of their land. That fall, the government would completely botch the payment, and by February, hundreds of people in the Lake Superior Bands would be dead from starvation and disease.
So, Daniel Johnson probably found a great deal of distraction and anxiety among the people he was charged to count. Indians, thought of by the United States as uncivilized federal wards and citizens of their own nations, were typically not enumerated. However, as I wrote about in my last post, race and identity were complicated at La Pointe, and the American citizens of the Chequamegon region also had plenty to lose from the removal.
Madison, for its part, largely ignored this remote, northern constituency and praised the efforts to remove the Ojibwe from the state. It isn’t clear how much Johnson was paying attention to these larger politics, however. He had his own concerns:
House Documents, Volume 119, Part 1. U.S. Government Printing Office, 1859. Google Books.
So, in “that thinly settled and half civilized region,” Johnson only found a population of about 500, “exclusive of Indians.” He didn’t think 500 was a lot, but by some counts, that number would have seemed very high. Take the word of a European visitor to La Pointe:
Among 200 Indians, only a few white families live there. One of the boatmen gave us a name, with which we found Mr. Austrian.
And, from this Mr. Austrian, himself:
There were only about 6 white American inhabitants on the Island, about 50 Canadian Frenchmen who were married to squaws, and a number of full blooded Indians, among whom was chief Buffalo who was a descendant of chiefs & who was a good Indian and favorably regarded by the people.
~Joseph Austrian, Brother of Julius and La Pointe resident 1851-52
Who lived around La Pointe in 1850?
In her biography, William W. Warren: the Life, Letters, and Times of an Ojibwe Leader, Theresa Schenck describes the short life of an ambitious young man from La Pointe. William Whipple Warren (1825-1853) grew up on the Island speaking Ojibwe as his first language. His father was a Yankee fur trader from New York. His mother was a daughter of Michel and Madeline Cadotte. In his famous History of the Ojibways Warren describes the Ojibwe as people with whom he readily claims kinship, but he doesn’t write as if he is an Ojibwe person himself. However, he helped interpret the Treaty of 1847 which had definitively made him an Indian in the eyes of the United States (a fact he was willing to use for economic gain). Still, a few years later, when he became a legislator in Minnesota Territory he dismissed challenges to his claims of whiteness.
If he were alive today, Warren might get a chuckle out of this line from the South African comedian Trevor Noah.
People mocked me. Gave me names like mixed breed, half caste — I hate that term ‘half’. Why half? Why not double? Or twice as nice, I don’t know.
— Trevor Noah
William Warren did not see himself as quite the walking contradiction we might see him as today. He was a product of the time and place he came from: La Pointe. By 1850, he had left that place, but his sister and a few hundred of his cousins still lived there. Many of them were counted in the census.
What is Metis?
Half-breeds, Mixed-bloods, Frenchmen, Wiisakodewininiwag, Mitif, Creoles, Metis, Canadiens, Bois Brules, Chicots, French-of-the-country, etc.–at times it seems each of these means the same thing. At other times each has a specific meaning. Each is ambiguous in its own way. In 1850, roughly half the families in the Chequamegon area fit into this hard-to-define category.
Kohl, J. G. Kitchi-Gami: Wanderings around Lake Superior. London: Chapman and Hall, 1860. pg. 260-61.
We were accompanied on our trip throughout the lakes of western Canada by half-Indians who had paternal European blood in their veins. Yet so often, a situation would allow us to spend a night inside rather than outdoors, but they always asked us to choose to Irish camp outside with the Indians, who lived at the various places. Although one spoke excellent English, and they were drawn more to the great American race, they thought, felt, and spoke—Indian! ~Carl Scherzer
In describing William Warren’s people, Dr. Schenck writes,
Although the most common term for people of mixed Indian and European ancestry in the nineteenth century was “half-breed,” the term “mixed blood” was also used. I have chosen to use the latter term, which is considered less offensive, although biologically inaccurate, today. The term “métis” was not in usage at the time, except to refer to a specific group of people of mixed ancestry in the British territories to the north. “Wissakodewinini,” the word used by the Ojibwe, meant “burned forest men,” or bois brulés in French, so called because half-breeds were like the wood of a burned forest, which is often burned on one side, and light on the other (pg. xv).
Schenck is correct in pointing out that mixed-blood was far more commonly used in 19th-century sources than Metis (though the latter term did exist). She is also correct in saying that the term is more associated with Canada and the Red River Country. There is an additional problem with Metis, in that 21st-century members of the Wannabe Tribe have latched onto the term and use it, incorrectly, to refer to anyone with partial Native ancestry but with no affiliation to a specific Indian community.
That said, I am going to use Metis for two reasons. The first is that although blood (i.e. genetic ancestry) seemed to be ubiquitous topic of conversation in these communities, I don’t think “blood” is what necessarily what defined them. The “pure-blooded French Voyageur” described above by Kohl clearly saw himself as part of Metis, rather than “blanc” society. There were also people of fully-Ojibwe ancestry who were associated more with Metis society than with traditional Ojibwe society (see my post from April). As such, I find Metis the more versatile and accurate term, given that it means “mixed,” which can be just as applicable to a culture and lifestyle as it is to a genetic lineage.
One time Canadian pariah turned national hero, Louis Riel and his followers had cousins at La Pointe (Photo: Wikipedia)
The second reason I prefer Metis is precisely because of the way it’s used in Manitoba. Analogous to the mestizo nations of Latin America, Metis is not a way of describing any person with Native and white ancestry. The Metis consider themselves a creole-indigenous nation unto themselves, with a unique culture and history. This history, already two centuries old by 1850, represents more than simply a borrowed blend of two other histories. Finally, the fur-trade families of Red River came from Sault Ste. Marie, Mackinac, Grand Portage, and La Pointe. There were plenty of Cadottes, Defaults, Roys, Gurnoes, and Gauthiers among them. There was even a Riel family at La Pointe. They were the same nation
Metis and Ojibwe Identity in the American Era
When the 1847 Treaty of Fond du Lac “stipulated that the half or mixed bloods of the Chippewas residing with them shall be considered Chippewa Indians, and shall, as such, be allowed to participate in all annuities which shall hereafter be paid…” in many ways, it contradicted two centuries of tradition. Metis identity, in part, was dependent on not being Indian. They were a minority culture within a larger traditional Anishinaabe society. This isn’t to say that Metis people were necessarily ashamed of their Native ancestors–expressions of pride are much easier to find than expressions shame–they were just a distinct people. This was supposedly based in religion and language, but I would argue it came mostly from paternal lineage (originating from highly-patriarchal French and Ojibwe societies) and with the nature of men’s work. For women, the distinction between Ojibwe and Metis was less stark.
The imposition of American hegemony over the Chequamegon region was gradual. With few exceptions, the Americans who came into the region from 1820 to 1850 were adult men. If new settlers wanted families, they followed the lead of American and British traders and married Metis and Ojibwe women.
Still, American society on the whole did not have a lot of room for the racial ambiguity present in Mexico or even Canada. A person was “white” or “colored.” Race mixing was seen as a problem that affected particular individuals. It was certainly not the basis for an entire nation. In this binary, if Metis people weren’t going to be Indian, they had to be white.
The story of the Metis and American citizenship is complicated and well-studied. There is risk of overgeneralizing, but let’s suffice to say that in relation to the United States government, Metis people did feel largely entitled to the privileges of citizenship (synonymous with whiteness until 1865), as well as to the privileges of Ojibwe citizenship. There wasn’t necessarily a contradiction.
Whatever qualms white America might have had if they’d known about it, Metis people voted in American elections, held offices, and were counted by the census.
Ojibwe “Full-bloods” and the United States Census
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which
may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.~Excerpt from Article I Section II, U. S. Constitution
As I argued in the April post, our modern conception of “full-blood” and “mixed-blood” has been shaped by the “scientific” racism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The distinction, while very real in a cultural sense, was not well-grounded in biology.
The relationship of Indians (i.e. full-bloods or those living a traditional lifestyle) to American society and citizenship was possibly more contradictory then that of the Metis. In one sense, America saw Indians as foreigners on their own continent: either as enemies to be exterminated, or as domestic-dependent ward nations to be “protected.” The constitutional language about the census calls for slaves to be counted as three-fifths of a person. It says Indians shouldn’t be counted at all.
In another sense, however, the path to personhood in America was somewhat clearer for Indians than it was for African Americans. Many New England liberals saw exodus to Liberia as the only viable future for free blacks. These same voices felt that Indians could be made white if only they were separated from their religions, cultures, and tribal identities. In 1834, to avoid a second removal, the Brothertown Indians of Wisconsin petitioned congress for citizenship and the termination of collective title to their tribal lands. In 1839, their request was granted. In the eyes of the law, they had effectively become white. Other communities would follow suit. However, most Native people did not gain any form of American citizenship until 1924.
How did that play out for the Ojibwe people of Chequamegon, and how did it impact the 1850 census? Well, it’s complicated.
Race, the Census, and Classifying Households
The enumeration forms Daniel H. Johnson carried to La Pointe had more rows and columns than ever. The Seventh Census was the first to count everyone in the household by name (previous versions only listed the Head of Household with tally marks). It was also the first census to have a box for “color.” Johnson’s choices for color were “white,” “black,” and “mulatto,” forcing him to make some decisions.
He seems to have tried to follow the Indians not taxed clause strictly. 40-50% of households in the region were headed by a full-blood Ojibwe person, possibly only two of them were enumerated. You won’t find Chief Buffalo, Makadebinesi (Blackbird), Oshkinaawe, Omizhinaawe, Edawegiizhig, and their immediate families in the 1850 census. Jechiikwii’o (often called Little Buffalo) is not in the document, even though he was an early Catholic convert, dressed in “white” clothing, and counted more Metis Ojibwe among his followers than full-bloods. However, his son, Antoine Buffalo Sr. (Antoine Jachequaon) is counted. Antoine, along with George Day, were counted as white heads of household by the census, though it is unclear if they had any European ancestry (Sources conflict. If anyone has genealogical information for the Buffalo and Day families, feel free to comment on the post). A handful of individuals called full-bloods in other sources, were listed as white. This includes 90-year old Madeline Cadotte, Marie Bosquet, and possibly the Wind sisters (presumably descendants of Noodin, one of the St. Croix chiefs who became Catholic and relocated to La Pointe around this time). They were married to Metis men or lived in Metis households. All Metis were listed as white.
Johnson did invent new category for five other Ojibwe people: “Civilized Indian,” which he seemed to use arbitrarily. Though also living in Metis households, Mary Ann Cadotte, Osquequa Baszina, Marcheoniquidoque, Charlotte Houle, and Charles Loonsfoot apparently couldn’t be marked white the way Madeline Cadotte was. These extra notations by Johnson and other enumeration marshals across the country are why the Seventh Federal Census is sometimes referred to as the first to count Native Americans.
So, out of 470 individuals enumerated at La Pointe and Bad River (I’ve excluded Fond du Lac from my study) Johnson listed 465 (99%) as white. By no definition, contemporary or modern, was the Chequamegon area 99% white in 1850. The vast majority of names on the lines had Ojibwe ancestry, and as Chippewas of Lake Superior, were receiving annuities from the treaties.
There were a few white American settlers. The Halls had been at La Pointe for twenty years. The Wheelers were well-established at Odanah. Junius and Jane Welton had arrived by then. George Nettleton was there, living with a fellow Ohioan James Cadwell. The infamous Indian agent, John Watrous, was there preparing the disastrous Sandy Lake removal. Less easy to describe as American settlers, but clearly of European origins, Fr. Otto Skolla was the Catholic priest, and Julius Austrian was the richest man it town.
There were also a handful of American bachelors who had drifted into the region and married Metis women. These first-wave settlers included government workers like William VanTassel, entrepreneurs like Peter VanderVenter, adventurers with an early connection to the region like Bob Boyd and John Bell, and homesteaders like Ervin Leihy.
It is unclear how many of French-surnamed heads of household were Chicots (of mixed ancestry) and how many were Canadiens (of fully-French ancestry). My sense is that it is about half and half. Some of this can be inferred from birthplace (though a birthplace of Canada could indicate across the river at Sault Ste. Marie as easily it could a farm in the St. Lawrence Valley). Intense genealogical study of each family might provide some clarifications, but I am going to follow Kohl’s voyageurs and not worry too much about it. Whether it was important or not to Jean Baptiste Denomie and Alexis Carpentier that they had no apparent Indian ancestry and that they had come from “the true homeland” of Quebec, for all intents and purposes they had spent their whole adult lives in “the Upper Country,” and their families were “of the Country.” They were Catholic and spoke a form of French that wasn’t taught in the universities. American society would not see them as white in the way it saw someone like Sherman Hall as white.
So, by my reckoning, 435 of the 470 people counted at La Pointe (92.5%) were Metis, full-blood Ojibwe living in Metis households, or Canadians in Metis families. Adding the five “Civilized Indians” and the six Americans married into Metis families, the number rises to 95%. I am trying to track down accurate data on the of Indians not taxed (i.e. non-enumerated full-bloods) living at or near La Pointe/Bad River at this time. My best estimates would put it roughly the same as the number of Metis. So, when Johnson describes a land with a language and culture foreign to English-speaking Americans, he’s right.
Birthplace, Age, and Gender
Ethnic composition is not the only data worth looking at if we want to know what this area was like 169 years ago. The numbers both challenge and confirm assumptions of how things worked.
Let’s take mobility for example:
The young voyageur quoted by Kohl may have felt like he didn’t have a home other than en voyage, but 86% of respondents reported being born in Wisconsin. Except for ten missionary children, all of these were Metis or “Civilized Indian.” Wisconsin could theoretically mean Lac du Flambeau, Rice Lake, or even Green Bay, this but this number still seemed high to me. I’m guessing more than 14% of 21st-century Chequamegon residents were born outside the state, and 19th-century records are all about commerce, long-distance travel, and new arrivals in new lands. We have to remember that most of those records are coming from that 14%.
In September of 1850 the federal government was telling the Ojibwe of Wisconsin they needed to leave Wisconsin forever. How the Metis fit into the story of the Sandy Lake Tragedy has always been somewhat fuzzy, but this data would indicate that for a clear majority, it meant a serious uprooting.
For those born outside Wisconsin, more than two-thirds reported being born in Michigan, Canada, or Minnesota Territory. These are overwhelmingly Metis or in the case of Anglo-Canadians like Robert Morrin, heads of Metis households from areas with a fur-trade tradition. Only eighteen individuals reported being born in the eastern United States. Only three reported Europe.
I had more questions than assumptions about the gender and age breakdown of the population. Would there be more women than men because of the dangerous jobs done by men or would mortality from childbirth balance that out? Or maybe widows wouldn’t be counted if they returned to the wigwams of their mothers? How would newcomers skew the age and gender demographics of the area?
Let’s take a look:
A quick glance at Figure AG 1 shows that the population skewed male 248-222 and skewed very young (61% under 20 years old). On the eve of Sandy Lake, the natural increase in the population seemed to be booming.
The hypotheses that women had higher mortality rates and were more likely to be undercounted looked good until we limit the data to the Wisconsin-born population. In Figure AG 2, we see that the male majority disappears entirely. The youthful trend, indicating large families and a growing population, continues with 66% of the Wisconsin-born population being under 20.
The male skew of the total population was entirely due to those born outside Wisconsin. This is not surprising given how much we’ve emphasized the number of men who came into the Lake Superior country to marry local women.
A look at the oldest residents in chart AG 2 and AG 3 hints at another story. Madeline Cadotte is the only Wisconsin-born person over seventy to be counted. The oldest men all came from Michigan and Canada. Why? My hypothesis is that between the fall of New France in 1759 and the establishment of Michel Cadotte’s post sometime around 1800, there wasn’t a large population or a very active fur trade around La Pointe proper. That meant Cadotte’s widow and other full bloods were the oldest locally-born residents in 1850. Their Metis contemporaries didn’t come over from the Soo or down from Grand Portage until 1810 or later.
Economics
Before the treaties, the economy of this area was built on two industries: foraging and trade. Life for Ojibwe people revolved around the seasonal harvest of fish, wild rice, game, maple sugar, light agriculture, and other forms of gathering food directly from the land. Trade did not start with the French, and even after the arrival of European goods into the region, the primary purpose of trade seemed to be for cementing alliances and for the acquisition of luxury goods and sacred objects. Richard White, Theresa Schenck, and Howard Paap have all challenged the myth of Ojibwe “dependence” on European goods for basic survival, and I find their arguments persuasive.
Trade, though, was the most important industry for Metis men and La Pointe was a center of this activity. The mid-19th century saw a steep decline in trade, however, to be replaced by a toxic cycle of debts, land sales, and annuity payments. The effects of this change on the Metis economy and society seem largely understudied. The fur trade though, was on its last legs. Again, the Austrian travel writer Carl Scherzer, who visited La Pointe in 1852:
After this discussion of the of the rates of the American Fur Company and its agents, we want to add some details about the men whose labor and time exerted such a great influence on the fate and culture of the Indian tribes. We wish to add a few explanatory words about the sad presence on La Pointe of the voyageurs or courriers du bois.
This peculiar class of people, which is like a vein of metal that suddenly disappears within the bedrock and reappears many hundreds of miles away under the same geological conditions, their light reaches the borders of the eastern Canadas. The British people, with their religion and customs, reappeared on the shores of these northern lakes only in 1808 with the Fur Company. For labor they drew on those who could carry their wares across the lakes and communicate with the Indians.
Many young men of adventurous natures left the old wide streets of Montreal and moved into the trackless primeval forests of the West. Young and strong as laborers, they soon started to adopt the lifestyle and language of the aborigines. They married with the Indians and inhabit small settlements scattered throughout those mighty lands which begin at Mackinow Island and come up the upper lake to the region of Minnesota. They almost all speak the Canadian patois along with the language of the Chippewas, the tribe with which they came into kinship. We found only a few, even among the younger generation, who understood English.
Since then, every day the population of the otherwise deserted shore of Lake Superior increases with the discovery of copper mines. The animals driven away by the whirlwind of civilization toward the west, attract the Indians with their sensitive guns, leaving La Pointe, abandoned by the Company for their headquarters at St. Paul in Minnesota. Most voyageurs left the island, having seen their business in ruins and lacking their former importance. Just a few families remain here, making a meager livelihood of hunting, fishing, and the occasional convoy of a few travelers led by business, science, or love of nature who purchase their limited resources.
From Scherzer’s description, two things are clear. It’s pretty clear from the flowery language of the Viennese visitor.Washington Irving and other Romantic-Era authors had already made the Voyageur into the stock stereotypical character we all know today. Th only change, though, is these days voyageurs are often depicted as representatives of white culture, but that’s a post for another time.
The second item, more pertinent to this post, is that a lot of voyageurs were out of work. This is especially relevant when we look at our census data. Daniel Johnson recorded the occupations of all males fifteen or over:
A full 55% of enumerated men fifteen and older still identified themselves as voyageurs in 1850. This included teenagers as well as senior citizens. All were from Metis households, though aside from farmer, all of the other occupation categories in Figure O 1 included Metis people.
A look at household sizes did not show voyageurs having to support significantly larger or smaller families when compared to the other occupation categories.
The other piece of economic data collected was value of real estate. Here we see some interesting themes:
If real estate is a good proxy for wealth in a farming community, it is an imperfect one in the Chequamegon area of 1850. If a voyageur had no home but the river and portage, then we might not expect him to put his coin into land and buildings. A teacher or Indian agent might draw a consistent salary but then live in supplied housing before moving on. With that caveat, let’s dig into the data.
Excluding the single farmer, men in the merchant/trader group controlled the most wealth in real estate, with Julius Austrian controlling as much as the other merchants combined. Behind them were carpenters and men with specific trades like cooper or shoemaker. Those who reported their occupation generally as “laborer” were not far behind the tradesmen. I suspect their real estate holdings may be larger and less varied than expected because of the number of sons and close relatives of Michel Cadotte Sr. who identified themselves as laborers. Government and mission employees held relatively little real estate, but the institutions they represented certainly weren’t lacking in land or power. Voyageurs come in seventh, just behind widows and ahead of fishermen of which there were only four in each category.
It is interesting, though, that the second and third richest men (by real estate) were both voyageurs, and voyageur shows a much wider range of households than some of the other categories: laborers in particular. With the number of teenagers calling themselves voyageurs, I suspect that the job still had more social prestige attached to it, in 1850, than say farmer or carpenter.
With hindsight we know that after 1854, voyageurs would be encouraged to take up farming and commercial fishing. It is striking, however, how small these industries were in 1850. Despite the American Fur Company’s efforts to push its Metis employees into commercial fishing in the 1830s, and knowing how many of the family names in Figure O 3 are associated with the industry, commercial fishing seemed neither popular nor lucrative in 1850. I do suspect, however, that the line between commercial and subsistence fishing was less defined in those days and that fishing in general was seen as falling back on the Indian gathering lifestyle. It wouldn’t be surprised if all these families were fishing alongside their Ojibwe relatives but didn’t really see fishing (or sugaring, etc.) as an occupation in the American sense.
Finally, it could not have escaped the voyageurs notice that while they were struggling, their former employers and their employers educated sons were doing pretty well. They also would have noticed that it was less and less from furs. Lump annuity payments for Ojibwe land sales brought large amounts of cash into the economy one day a year. It must have felt like piranhas with blood in the water. Alongside their full-blood cousins, Metis Ojibwe received these payments after 1847, but they had more of a history with money and capitalism. Whether to identify with the piranha or the prey would have depended on all sorts of decisions, opportunities and circumstances.
Education and Literacy
The census also collected data on education and literacy, asking whether children had attended school within the year, and whether adults over twenty could read and write. The history of white education efforts in this area are fairly well documented. The local schools in 1850 were run by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (A.B.C.F.M.) at the La Pointe and Odanah missions, and an entire generation had come of age at La Pointe in the years since Rev. Sherman Hall first taught out of Lyman Warren’s storehouse in 1831. These Protestant ministers and teachers railed against the papists and heathens in their writings, but most of their students were Catholic or traditional Ojibwe in religion. Interestingly, much of the instruction was done in the Ojibwe language. Unfortunately, however, the census does not indicate the language an individual is literate in. I highly recommend The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely, 1833-1849 if you are interested in these topics.
To start with, though, let’s look at how many people were going to school:
Thirty-nine students had gone to school in the previous year. There is a lot of sample-size noise in the data, but it seems like ages 7-11 (what we would call the upper-elementary years) were the prime years to attend school.
Overall, most children had not attended school within the year. Attendance rates were slightly higher for boys than for girls. White children, all from two missionary families, had a 100% attendance rate compared to 24% for the Metis and “Civilized Indian” children.
We should remember, however, that not attending school within the year is not the same as having never attended school. Twelve-year-old Eliza Morrin (later Morrison) is among the number that didn’t attend school, but she was educated enough to write her memoirs in English, which was her second language. They were published in 2002 as A Little History of My Forest Life, a fascinating account of Metis life in the decades following 1854.
Eliza’s parents were among the La Pointe adults who could read and write. Her aunt, uncle, and adult cousins in the neighboring Bosquet (Buskey) house were not. Overall, just over half of adults over 20 were illiterate without a significant gender imbalance. Splitting by birthplace, however, shows the literacy rate for Wisconsin-born (i.e. Metis and “Civilized Indian”) was only 30%, down from the overall male literacy rate of 48%. For Wisconsin-born women, the drop is only three points, from 47% to 44%. This suggests Metis women were learning to read while their husbands and brothers (perhaps en voyage) were not.
And this is exactly what the data say when we split by occupation. The literacy rate for voyageurs was only 13%. This beats fisherman–all four were illiterate–but lagged far behind all other types of work.
If education was going to be a factor in the economic mobility of unemployed voyageurs, the trends weren’t looking good.
Odds and Ends
Two marriages were reported as occurring in the year previous to the census: Peter and Caroline Vanderventer and Pierre and Marguerite Robideaux (ak.a. Peter and Margaret Rabideaux). Though married, however, Caroline was not living with her husband, a 32-year old grocer from New York. She (along with their infant daughter) was still in the home of her parents Benjamin and Margaret Moreau (Morrow). The Vanderventers eventually built a home together and went on to have several more children. It appears their grandson George Vanderventer married Julia Rabideaux, the granddaughter of Peter and Margaret.
I say appears in the case of George and Julia, because Metis genealogy can be tricky. It requires lots of double and triple checking. Here’s what I came across when I once tried to find an unidentified voyageur known only as Baptiste:
Sometimes it feels like for every Souverain Denis or Argapit Archambeau, there are at least 15 Jean-Baptiste Cadottes, 12 Charles Bresettes, 10 Francois Belangers and 8 Joseph DeFoes. Those old Canadian names had a way of persisting through the generations. If you were a voyageur at La Pointe in 1850, there was nearly a 30% chance your name was Jean-Baptiste. To your friends you might be John-Baptist, Shabadis, John, JB, or Battisens, and you might be called something else entirely when the census taker came around.
The final column on Daniel Johnson’s census asked whether the enumerated person was “deaf and dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, pauper, or convict.” 20 year-old Isabella Tremble, living in the household of Charles Oakes, received the unfortunate designation of idiotic. 26-year-old Francois DeCouteau did not have a mark in that column, but had “Invalid” entered in for his occupation. It’s fair to say we’ve made some progress in the treatment of people with disabilities.
Final Thoughts
I am not usually a numbers person when it comes to history. I’ll always prefer a good narrative story, to charts, tables, and cold numbers. Sometimes, though, the numbers help tell the story. They can help us understand why when Louis Gurnoe was killed, no one was held accountable. At the very least, they can help show us that the society he lived in was under significant stress, that the once-prestigious occupation of his forefathers would no longer sustain a family, and that the new American power structure didn’t really understand or care who his people were.
Ultimately, the census is about America describes itself. From the very beginning, it’s never been entirely clear if in E. pluribus unum we should emphasize the pluribus or the unum. We struggled with that in 1850, and we still struggle today. To follow the Department of Commerce v. New York citizenship case, I recommend Scotusblog. For more census posts about this area in the 19th century, keep following Chequamegon History.
Sources, Data, and Further Reading
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Paap, Howard D. Red Cliff, Wisconsin a History of an Ojibwe Community ; Volume 1 The Earliest Years: the Origin to 1854. North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc., 1854.
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Satz, Ronald N. Chippewa Treaty Rights: the Reserved Rights of Wisconsin’s Chippewa Indians in Historical Perspective. University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
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Original Census Act of May 23, 1850 (includes form and instructions for marshals). (PDF)
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Compiled data spreadsheets (Google Drive Folder) I’ll make these a lot more user friendly in future census posts. By the time it occurred to me that I should include my tables in this post, most of them were already done in tally marks on scrap paper.
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Finally, these are the original pages, scanned from microfilm by FamilySearch.com. I included the image for Fond du Lac (presumably those living on the Wisconsin side of the St. Louis River) even though I did not include it in any of the data above.
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- Bad River
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- Fond du Lac (not included in above data)
19th-Century Deer in the Headlights
January 18, 2015
By Leo
Deer Hunting by Torchlight in Bark Canoes 1846-1848 by George Catlin (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
Chequamegon History doesn’t usually deal with current events, preferring to stay in the 18th and 19th centuries, but I heard a radio program last week that prompted me to dig out some old sources related to a timely topic: off-reservation deer hunting at night by the Lake Superior Chippewa bands.
The State of Wisconsin’s January 7th, 2015 decision to appeal a lower-court decision in favor of Chippewa off-reservation night hunting prompted an edition of Wisconsin Public Radio’s Central Time on the topic that aired later that afternoon. The Ojibwe case in favor of night hunting is briefly, but thoughtfully, presented by the hosts, by Brandon Thoms for the Lac du Flambeau Band and by Richard Monette, Director of the Great Lakes Indian Law Center at UW-Madison.
Though Monette and Thoms touched briefly on the historical and ethical role in Ojibwe communities, the program wasn’t long enough for them to go into much depth. Since night hunting is something that brings controversy, and with it misinformation, I am hoping these historical documents can help promote three points of understanding among those of us who live in the ceded territory of the 21st century.
1. Ojibwe hunters used bright light as a means to harvest deer at night long before the creation of the current reservations.
2. Hunting at night was historically an efficient and effective means of obtaining food.
3. Controversy over the ethics of “shining” stems more from differences in historical and cultural hunting values than on real environmental values and sustainable practices.
“Modern” Technology
In Northern Wisconsin, the idea of night-hunting deer is often associated with the term “shining.” Often used pejoratively, the word tends to conjure up the image of hunters shooting deer out the windows of mud-covered trucks equipped with high-powered electrical spotlights.
Since deer tend to freeze in place when bright light is shone in their eyes, this makes it possible to get close enough to make an accurate shot in darkness. I’ve heard the argument that “shining” relies on modern technology and therefore isn’t fair to the deer.
However, this argument isn’t true. North American hunters used bright light as a means to harvest deer long before the invention of electric spotlights. An 1804 journal entry from the British-Canadian fur-trader George Nelson explains how it worked. Nelson, a teenager trading on the Chippewa River under Simon Charette for the XY Company, participated in such a hunt with his Ojibwe companions just south of Clam Lake. This entry appears on page 158-160 of the 2002 Minnesota Historical Press Edition of the Nelson journals, edited by Laura Lynn Peers and Theresa Schenck:
Monday 29th [May 1804] Sorel & I go to get our small canoe that we left above in this small river not being able to bring it down with our fish upon our backs the river being too rapidous. As soon as we arrived at our camp we set off & encamped at a small portage not very distant. We had no sooner carried our things across the Portage, then I embarked with the indian to hunt deer to night with a Candle[*]. We ascended the river about 2 leagues further than our encampment where we seen a large Buck which we frightened away by sneezing – : However at dusk we light our candle & about an hour after hearing something puddling in the water we let ourselves drift ’till within 8 or ten yards when we found it to be several deer, the indian wounded one & the others immediately run off – we debarked & seen much blood having our candle, dispairing however of finding it we reembarked – but misfortunately we upset our canoe just getting in, consequently our candle not being well secured fell over board & a terrible shower of rain falling just at this momment obliged us to shelter ourselves under a large pine (Epinette) ’till next morning when after some search we found the deer dead – We returned to our people [–& then continued our course up this same river]
At the end of this journal, Nelson added the following (in footnote on same pages of the published edition):
*(To Page 29 – May 29th) The indians from about the 15th of May ’till about the 20th of August kill a great number of deer every night by this means, the skins of which they gather & sell or trade them in the fall with the traders – The means they employ are these, they raise about 4 foot long of pine, elm, or any other strong bark which they double in such a manner as to make the lower part serve as a shelf & upon this the Candle rests, while the rest or upper part off the bark serves as a kind of screen behind which they set unperceived; for the candle that is upon the lower part of the shelf does not leave any part of the canoe visable for it is fastened to the bow of the canoe between the first bar & the curve – it is tied fast & high enough to put the Gun under below. When there is any deer (for they never fail coming every night to the borders of the small lakes & rivers where they eat weeds & remain in the water on account of the muskatas that are no less numerous than troublesome) it is easily known; for indians in General have as sharp an ear as their sight; & can tell where to direct when he hears the least puddling in the water. The deer whenever they see a light of this kind never stir but keep looking upon it ’till sometimes they are not more than three yards distant when the indian shoots them with shot, but if the least noise be made, by striking upon the canoe or its bars, sneezing, caughing, or even by touching your paddle upon a stone or stick in the bottom of the river they scamper off immediately…
And in a later consolidation of his journals, he added this to the account:
…At another place, a young indian & I went out to hunt deer. We made a Candle by chewing tallow, of which we had plenty & wrapped over a piece of cotton shirt as a wick, & placed it conveniently in the bow of the Canoe, where a screen had been erected with a piece of Spruce bark so large as to completely cover the indian, yet so as he could see what was going on before. We saw Several Deer. At dark, we drifted down -frightened off one party of deer. We soon found another, who attracted by the Candles, kept staring upon it alone: we drifted slowly only the lad shot one, & off the others ran…
Similar accounts can be found in other sources, and it seems this method of hunting was widespread and the most common way to hunt deer in spring and summer. The practice almost certainly predates the arrival of whites in the Lake Superior country, and hopefully these journals can put to bed the idea that night-hunting only became possible with the advent of electricity.
The Sport in Shining
Sir Edward Robert Sullivan, 5th Baronet, as depicted by Carlo Pelligrini for Vanity Fair in 1885 (National Portrait Gallery; London)
Some criticism of night hunting comes from the idea that it is too easy, and therefore, not sporting or fair to the deer. An 1850 account from the St. Croix River near present-day Gordon shows some of this sentiment. Sir Edward Robert Sullivan Bart., an English noble came here during a trip throughout the Americas described in the 1852 work, Rambles and Scrambles in North and South America. Although it comes two years before Carl Scherzer’s account of La Pointe (translated into English for the time first here on Chequamegon History) the Brule and the St. Croix, Rambles and Scrambles is not nearly as interesting as the German work. Sullivan took the same route to Stillwater, and even engaged the same La Pointe voyageur (Souverain Denis) as a guide, but the work is generally disappointing. Rather than Scherzer’s curiosity and deep ethnographic detail, Sullivan’s text is largely filled with the haughty superiority one might expect from the most stereotypical Victorian gentleman colonialist.
pg. 76
pg. 77
This account of Ojibwe hunting contrasts humorously with Sullivan’s earlier account from the lakeshore (probably near Sand Bay) of his own attempt at hunting the Northwoods:
pg. 67
pg. 68
The image of the pompous British gentleman hunter walking in panicked circles, is made all the more hilarious by the fact that one of his companions would do the exact same thing the next evening at Iron River. One imagines the thoughts going through the minds of the Ojibwe-French mix-blood guides as they had to rescue two mighty Zhaaganash sportsmen out of the woods in two days.
And that brings me to my point. As hard as it may be to admit, much of the prevailing American conservation ethic comes from this British notion of hunting for sport. This comes from a time in Europe when hunting was forbidden to the common people. A peasant might be arrested for poaching a deer to feed his family, while the gamekeepers kept the forests preserved so men like Sullivan could bring home trophies. In such a viewpoint, something like shining might be condemned for being too easy, effective, and unromantic.
On the other hand, the Ojibwe husband and wife on the St. Croix were not looking for a splendid evening of recreation. They needed venison to feed the village. It didn’t matter if it was summer and the buck’s antlers weren’t as impressive as they might get in November. Hunting was necessary work for survival, and it was done using the most efficient and effective means possible. In describing the Ojibwe idea of the afterlife five years later in 1855, the German ethnographer Johann Kohl writes:
…But, even if we wished to represent the buffalo-covered prairies as a paradise for the hunter, it is still questionable to me whether hunting forms a material feature of the Indian paradise. To us Europeans hunting is more or less an amusement, but to the Indian it is a toil, and frequently a most fatiguing mode of life. In many Indian dialects the words “hunter” and “hunting” are synonymous with “work” and “working.” A good hunter is a clever and industrious workman. As, then, the idea entertained by most nations of paradise is, that it will be without toil or labour, it is to me more than doubtful whether they regard the chase as an element of their paradisiac existence. Among the Ojibbeways I never heard that they held such a view. I once asked a man of their tribe, who was describing paradise to me, and did not at all allude to hunting, “And then you will go every day to hunt and kill a countless number of animals?” “Oh no!” he replied, dryly, “there is no hunting or labour in paradise (212-13).”
I would argue that most deer hunters in Northern Wisconsin today, both Native and non-Native, derive food, pleasure, and a sense of tradition from hunting. However, the relative importance of each can vary greatly from hunter to hunter in both communities.
I know many white hunters who hunt mainly to fill the freezer rather rather than for sport, and with it, there is a certain conservation ethic that has descended from those peasant poachers. In this viewpoint, you respect and value the lives of animals because they gave their lives to keep you alive, not because you came up with some convoluted “sporting” method of harvesting them. The ethics that would have you break the law to keep and eat a dying undersized fish aren’t the same ethics of the Teddy Roosevelts and Ernest Hemingways of the world, but they are conservation ethics nonetheless.
In my mind, these two viewpoints on the role and purpose of hunting are central to the debate over “shining,” and I think examination of history might find Ojibwe and non-Ojibwe residents of the ceded territory having more in common with each other than they do with Scott Walker and his Deer Czar.
Environmental Impact of Night Hunting
While on the subject of conservation, it is worth looking at whether or not night hunting is bad for the environment. Let’s put aside for a minute the fact that the off-reservation night harvest would be minuscule compared to the regular Wisconsin deer hunt or the amount of deer who die at night after being inadvertently “shined” on the highways. And let’s forget for a minute how “divide and conquer” politicians in the eighties used the environment as red herring to turn whites and Indians against each other over the issue of spearfishing or how the walleye populations in the ceded territory are kept up in large part by tribal conservation efforts. Finally, let’s stop puzzling over how Native people managed to survive on this continent for tens of thousands of years before whites came to teach them how to manage resources. Yes, let’s forget about those things and go back to the historical record.
If Nelson’s journals show that hunting out of a canoe by torchlight was well established at the outset of the 1800s, and Sullivan’s Rambles and Scrambles, show it being used at mid-century, we can close out the 19th century with an account from Minnesota.
Reverend Joseph Gillfillan, was a Christian missionary to the Ojibwe people in the areas around Red, Cass, and Leech lakes. In an 1895 letter to the Minnesota Forestry Department and a subsequent article, The Ojibways in Minnesota, presented in 1896 and published in 1901, we hear a familiar story.
Gillfillan doesn’t describe the Lake Superior Chippewa cessions, specifically, but it shows that Ojibwe hunters continued to night at hunt, by canoe, on off-reservation ceded territory:
pg. 100
This account, well into the reservation period, is highly critical of Ojibwe hunting techniques. In it, we see parallels to the earlier elite European hunting ethic and today’s concerns over shining. However, we must remember that the goal of Christian missionaries at that time was not only spreading Christianity but also the assimilation of Native people into white culture. Gillfillan sees success at hunting as an impediment to the settled agricultural life he desires. “The Great Spirit always provid[ing] for their wants,” is a direct threat to his mission. So, rather than admit that maybe the increasing deer population was due to sustainable hunting practices, he tries to come up with outside explanations while condemning the hunt as wasteful.
Changing the Narrative
In presenting these historical documents, I’m not necessarily trying to convince people to change their views on off-reservation night hunting. However, I do want people to have their facts straight. The use of bright lights at the bow of a canoe was a traditional Ojibwe technique for hunting deer long before the land was ceded, and it continues to be to this day.
In my opinion, whether it is a wooden torch or a battery-powered flashlight shining at the deer is immaterial. It serves the same ends.
I don’t expect this to end the conversation on night hunting. I didn’t bring up the safety argument, which is a key part of the State’s opposition (though the DNR has sanctioned other types of night hunting with firearms). I will say, however, that despite its widespread use, I haven’t found any examples of the torch technique being dangerous (unless you count George Nelson capsizing his canoe). I will post one if I come across it.
So, as the ethics of “shining” continue to be debated, I call on those of both sides of this argument to examine where their personal conservation ethics come from. Is hunting primarily for sport or food? How traditional is night hunting, and how sustainable is it? Finally, how have those in power used similar issues in the past to divide different groups of hunters and fishermen, and what motives do they have for doing so?
Think about it.
~LF
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While I can’t promise this post will lead to more writing from Leo anytime soon, Chequamegon History will keep producing! Amorin Mello has agreed to contribute a series of articles related to the original land claims, frauds, and mining operations in the Penokee Mountains. For a fascinating preview of what’s coming, check out 0:37-1:24 of this video clip from Indian Country Television’s coverage of the recent Penokee conference at Legendary Waters in Red Cliff. Thank you Amorin for this outstanding research, for the upcoming posts, and for giving Chequamegon History its first mention on TV!
Sources
Gilfillan, Rev. Joseph A. The Ojibways in Minnesota, Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, Vol. 9 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1901) 72.
Kohl, J. G. Kitchi-Gami: Life among the Lake Superior Ojibway. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1985. Print.
Minnesota. Forestry Commissioner. Forestry. Annual Report. N.p.: n.p., 1895. Print.
Nelson, George, Laura L. Peers, and Theresa M. Schenck. My First Years in the Fur Trade: The Journals of 1802-1804. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society, 2002. Print.
Sullivan, Edward Robert. Rambles and Scrambles in North and South America. London: R. Bentley, 1852. Print.
Ishkigamizigedaa! Bad River Sugar Camps 1844
March 15, 2014
Indian Sugar Camp by Seth Eastman c.1850 (Minnesota Historical Society)
Since we’re into the middle of March 2014 and a couple of warm days have had people asking, “Is it too early to tap?” I thought it might be a good time to transcribe a document I’ve been hanging onto for a while.
170 years ago, that question would have been on everyone’s mind. The maple sugar season was perhaps the most joyous time of the year. The starving times of February and early March were on the way out, and food would be readily available again. Friends and relatives, separated during the winter hunts, might join back together in sugar camp, play music around the fire as the sap boiled, and catch up on the winter’s news.
Probably the only person around here who probably didn’t like the sugar season was the Rev. Sherman Hall. Hall, who ran the La Pointe mission and school, aimed to convert Madeline Island’s Native and non-Native inhabitants to Protestantism. To him, Christianity and “civilization” went hand and hand with hard labor and settling down in one place to farm the land. When, at this time of the year, all his students abandoned the Island with everyone else, for sugar camps at Bad River and elsewhere on the mainland and other islands, he saw it as an impediment to their progress as civilized Christians.
Rev. Leonard Wheeler, who joined Hall in 1841, shared many of his ethnocentric attitudes toward Ojibwe culture. However, over the next two decades Wheeler would show himself much more willing than Hall and other A.B.C.F.M. missionaries to meet Ojibwe people on their own cultural turf. It was Wheeler who ultimately relocated from La Pointe to Bad River, where most of the La Pointe Band now stayed, partly to avoid the missionaries, where he ultimately befriended some of the staunchest traditionalists among the Ojibwe leadership. And while he never came close to accepting the validity of Ojibwe religion and culture, he would go on to become a critical ally of the La Pointe Band during the Sandy Lake Tragedy and other attempted land grabs and broken Government promises of the 1850s and ’60s.
In 1844, however, Wheeler was still living on the island and still relatively new to the area. Coming from New England, he knew the process and language of making sugar–it’s remarkable how little the sugar-bush vocabulary has changed in the last 170 years–but he would see some unfamiliar practices as he followed the people of La Pointe to camp in Bad River. Although there is some condescending language in his written account, not all of his comparisons are unfavorable to his Ojibwe neighbors.
Of course, I may have a blind spot for Wheeler. Regular readers might not be surprised that I can identify with his scattered thoughts, run-on sentences, and irregular punctuation. Maybe for that reason, I thought this was a document that deserved to see the light of day. Enjoy:
Bad River Monday March 25, 1844
We are now comfortably quartered at the sugar camps, Myself, wife, son and Indian Boy. Here we have been just three weeks today.
I came myself the middle of the week previous and commenced building a log cabin to live in with the aid of two men , we succeeded in putting up a few logs and the week following our house was completed built of logs 12 by 18 feet long and 4 feet high in the walls, covered with cedar birch bark of most miserable quality so cracked as to let in the wind and rain in all parts of the roof. We lived in a lodge the first week till Saturday when we moved into our new house. Here we have, with the exception of a few very cold days, been quite comfortable. We brought some boards with us to make a floor–a part of this is covered with a piece of carpeting–we have a small cooking stove with which we have succeeded in warming our room very well. Our house we partitioned off putting the best of the bark over the best part we live in, the other part we use as a sort of storeroom and woodhouse.
We have had meetings during on the Sabbath and those who have been accustomed to meet with us have generally been present. We have had a public meeting in the foreroom at Roberts sugar bush lodge immediately after which my wife has had a meeting with the women or a sabbath school at our house. Thus far our people have seemed to keep up their interest in Religion.
They have thus far generally remembered the Sabbath and in this respect set a good example to their neighbors, who both (pagan) Indians and Catholics generally work upon the Sabbath as upon other days. If our being here can be the means of preventing these from declension in respect to religion and from falling into temptation, (especially) in respect to the Sabbath, an important end will be gained.
The sugar making season is a great temptation to them to break the sabbath. It is quite a test upon their faith to see their sap buckets running over with sap and they yet be restrained from gathering it out of respect to the sabbath, especially should their neighbors work in the same day. Yet they generally abstain from Labor on the Sabbath. In so doing however they are not often obliged to make much sacrifice. By gathering all the sap Saturday night, their sap buckets do not ordinarily make them fill in one day, and when the sap is gathered monday morning.
They do not in this respect suffer much loss. In other respects, they are called to make no more sacrifice by observing the sabbath than the people of N.E. do during the season of haying. We are now living more strictly in the Indian country among an Indian community than ever before. We are almost the only persons among a population of some 5 or 600 people who speak the English language. We have therefore a better opportunity to observe Indian manners and customs than heretofore, as well as to make proficiency in speaking the language.
Process of making sugar and skillful use of birch bark.
The process of making sugar from the (maple) sap is in general as that practiced elsewhere where this kind of sugar is make, and yet in some respects the modus operandi is very different. The sugar making season is the most an important event to the Indians every year. Every year about the middle of March the Indians, French and halfbreeds all leave the Islands for the sugar camps. As they move off in bodies from the La Pointe, sometimes in companies of 8, 10, 12 or 20 families, they make a very singular appearance.
Upon some pleasant morning about sunrise you will see these, by families, first perhaps a Frenchman with his horse team carrying his apuckuais for his lodge–provisions kettles, etc., and perhaps in addition some one or two of the [squaw?] helpers of his family. The next will be a dog train with two or three dogs with a similar load driven by some Indians. The next would be a similar train drawn by a man with a squaw pushing behind carrying a little child on her back and two or three little children trudging behind on foot. The next load in order might be a squaw drawn by dogs or a man upon a sled at each end. This forms about the variety that will be witnessed in the modes of conveyance. To see such a ([raucous?] company) [motley process?] moving off, and then listen to the Frenchmen whipping his horse, which from his hard fare is but poorly able to carry himself, and to hear the yelping of the dogs, the (crying of) the children, and the jabbering in french and Indian. And if you never saw the like before you have before you the loud and singular spectacle of the Indians going to the sugar bush.
“Frame of Lodge Used For Storage and Boiling Sap;” undated (Densmore Collection: Smithsonian)
One night they are obliged to camp out before they reach the place of making sugar. This however is counted no hardship the Indian carries his house with him. When they have made one days march it might when they come to a place where they wish to camp, all hands set to work to make to make a lodge. Some shovel away the snow another cut a few poles. Another cuts up some wood to make a fire. Another gets some pine, cedar or hemlock (boughs) to spread upon the ground for floor and carpet. By the time the snow is shoveled away the poles are ready, which the women set around in a circular form at the bottom–crossed at the top. These are covered with a few apuckuais, and while one or two are covering the putting up the house another is making a fire, & perhaps is spreading down the boughs. The blankets, provisions, etc. are then brought in the course of 20 or ½ an hour from the time they stop, the whole company are seated in their lodge around a comfortable fire, and if they are French men you will see them with their pipes in their mouths. After supper, when they have anything to eat, each one wraps himself in a blanket and is soon snoring asleep. The next day they are again under way and when they arrive at the sugar camp they live in their a lodge again till they have some time to build a more substantial (building) lodge for making sugar. A sugar camp is a large high lodge or a sort of a frame of poles covered with flagg and Birch apuckuais open at the top. In the center is a long fire with two rows of kettles suspended on wooden forks for boiling sap. As Robert (our hired man) sugar makes (the best kind of) sugar and does business upon rather a large scale in quite a systematic manner. I will describe his camp as a mode of procedure, as an illustration of the manner in which the best kind of sugar is made. His camp is some 25 or 30 feet square, made of a sort of frame of poles with a high roof open at the (top) the whole length coming down with in about (4 feet) of the ground. This frame is covered around the sides at the bottom with Flag apukuais. The outside and roof is covered with birch (bark) apukuais. Upon each side next to the wall are laid some raised poles, the whole length of the (lodge) wall. Upon these poles are laid some pine & cedar boughs. Upon these two platforms are places all the household furniture, bedding, etc. Here also they sleep at night. In the middle of the lodge is a long fire where he has two rows of kettles 16 in number for boiling sap. He has also a large trough, one end of it coming into the lodge holding several Barrels, as a sort of reservoir for sap, beside several barrels reserved for the same purpose. The sap when it is gathered is put into this trough and barrels, which are kept covered up to prevent the exposure of the sap to the wind and light and heat, as the sap when exposed sours very quick. For the same reason also when the sap and well the kettles are kept boiling night and day, as the sap kept in the best way will undergo some changes if it be not immediately boild. The sap after it is boild down to about the consistency of molases it is strained into a barrel through a wollen blanket. After standing 3 or 4 days to give it an opportunity to settle, some day, when the sap does not run very well, is then set aside for sugaring off. When two or 3 kettles are hung over the fire a small fire built directly under the bottom. A few quarts of molasses are then put into the kettles. When this is boiled enough to make sugar one kettle is taken off by Robert, by the side of which he sets down and begins to stir it with a small paddle stick. After stirring it a few moments it begins to grow all white, swells up with a peculiar tenacious kind of foam. Then it begins to grain and soon becomes hard like [?] Indian pudding. Then by a peculiar moulding for some time with a wooden large wooden spoon it becomes white as the nicest brown sugar and very clean, in this state, while it is yet warm, it is packed down into large birch bark mukoks made of holding from 50 to a hundred lbs.
Makak: a semi-rigid or rigid container: a basket (especially one of birch bark), a box (Ojibwe People’s Dictionary) Photo: Densmore Collection; SmithsonianCertainly no sugar can be more cleaner than that made here, though it is not all the sugar that is made as nice. The Indians do not stop for all this long process of making sugar. Some of (their) sorup does not pass through anything in the shape of a strainer–much less is it left to stand and settle after straining, but is boiled down immediately into sugar, sticks, soot, dirt and all. Sometimes they strain their sorup through the meshes of their snow shoe, which is but little better than it would be to strain it through a ladder. Their sugar of course has rather a darker hue. The season for making sugar is the most industrious season in the whole year. If the season be favorable, every man wom and child is set to work. And the departments of labor are so various that every able bodied person can find something to do.
The British missionary John Williams describes the coconut on page 493 of his A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands (1837). (Wikimedia Commons)In the business of making sugar also we have a striking illustration of the skillful and varied use the Indians make of birch bark. A few years since I was forcibly struck, in reading Williams missionary enterprises of the South Seas, with some annals of his in regard to the use of the cocoanut tree illustrated of the goodness and wisdom of God in so wonderfully providing for their condition and wants (of men). His remarks as near as I can recollect are in substance as follows. The cocoanut tree furnishes the native with timber to make his house, canoe, his fire and in short for most of the purposes for which they want wood. The fruit furnishes his most substantial article of food, and what is still more remarkable as illustrating that principle of compensation by which the Lord in his good providence suplies the want of one blessing by the bestowment of another to take its place. On the low islands their are no springs of water to supply the place of this. The native has but to climb the cocoanut tree growing near his door and pluckes the fruit where in each shall he find from ¼ a pint to a kind of a most agreeable drink to slake his thirst. His tree bearing fruit every month in year, fresh springs of water are supplied the growing upon the trees before his own door. Although the birch bark does not supply the same wants throughout to the Indian, yet they supply wants as numerous and in some respects nearly as important to their mode of living as does the cocoanut to the Inhabitants of the South Sea Islands.
Biskitenaagan: a sap bucket of folded birch bark (Ojibwe People’s Dictionary) Photo: Waugh Collection; SmithsonianIt is with the bark he covers his house. With this bark he makes his canoe. What could the Indian do without his wigwam and his canoe? The first use (of the bark) we notice in the sugar making business what is called the piscatanagun, or vessel for catching sap in. The Indian is not to the expence or trouble of making troughs or procuring buckets to catch the sap at the trees. A piece of birch bark some 14 inches wide and 18 or 20 inches wide in the shape of a pane of glass by a peculiar fold at each end kept in place by a stitch of bark string makes a vessel for catching sap called a piskitenagun. These are light, cheap, easily made and with careful usage will last several years. When I first saw these vessels, it struck me as being the most skillful use of the bark I had seen. It contrasted so beautifully with the clumsy trough or the more expensive bucket I had seen used in N.E. This bark is not only used to catch the sap in but also to carry it in to the sugar camps, a substitute for pails, though lighter and much more convenient for this purpose than a pail.
“Chippewa Bucket and Trays Made of Birch Bark” (In making a sap bucket bark of a more substantial kind is used than for the piskatanaguns. They made large at the bottom small at the top, to prevent the sap from spilling out by the motion of carrying. They are sewed up with bark the seams gummed and a hoop about the top to keep them in shape and a lid. But we are not yet done with the bark at the sugar bush. In boiling sap in the evening thin strips are rolled tight together, which is a good substitute for a candle. Every once in a little while the matron of the lodge may be seen with her little torch in hand walking around the fire taking a survey of her kettles. Lastly when the sugar is made it is finally deposited in large firmly wrought mukuks, which are made of bark. This however is not the end of bark. It is used for a variety of other purposes. Besides being a substitute in many cases for plates, [bearers & etc.?], it is upon birch bark that the most important events in history are recorded–National records–songs, & etc. are written in hieroglific characters (upon this article) and carefully preserved by many of the Indians.
And finally the most surprising use of bark of which I have heard or could conceive of, is before the acquaintance of the Indians with the whites, the bark was used as a substitute for kettles in cooking, not exactly for bake kettles but for (kettles for) boiling fish, potatoes, & etc. This fact we have from undoubted authority. Some of the Indians now living have used it for this purpose themselves, and many of them say their fathers tell them it was used by their ancestors before iron kettles were obtained from the whites. One kettle of bark however would not answer but for a single use.
Transcription note: Spelling and grammatical errors have been maintained except where ambiguous in the original text. Original struck out text has been maintained, when legible, and inserted text is shown in parentheses. Brackets indicate illegible or ambiguous text and are not part of the original nor are the bolded words and phrases, which were added to draw attention to the sidebars.
The original document is held by the Wisconsin Historical Society in the Wheeler Family Papers at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center in Ashland.
Reconstructing the “Martell” Delegation through Newspapers
November 2, 2013
Symbolic Petition of the Chippewa Chiefs: This pictographic petition was brought to Washington D.C. by a delegation of Ojibwe chiefs and their interpreter J.B. Martell. This one, representing the band of Chief Oshkaabewis, is the most famous, but their were several others copied from birch bark by Seth Eastman and published in the works of Henry Schoolcraft. For more, follow this link.
Henry Schoolcraft. William W. Warren. George Copway. These names are familiar to any scholar of mid-19th-century Ojibwe history. They are three of the most referenced historians of the era, and their works provide a great deal of historical material that is not available in any other written sources. Copway was Ojibwe, Warren was a mix-blood Ojibwe, and Schoolcraft was married to the granddaughter of the great Chequamegon chief Waabojiig, so each is seen, to some extent, as providing an insider’s point of view. This could lead one to conclude that when all three agree on something, it must be accurate. However, there is a danger in over-relying on these early historians in that we forget that they were often active participants in the history they recorded.
This point was made clear to me once again as I tried to sort out my lingering questions about the 1848-49 “Martell” Delegation to Washington. If you are a regular reader, you may remember that this delegation was the subject of the first post on this website. You may also remember from this post, that the group did not have money to get to Washington and had to reach out to the people they encountered along the way.
The goal of the Martell Delegation was to get the United States to cede back title to the lands surrounding the major Lake Superior Ojibwe villages. The Ojibwe had given this land up in the Treaty of 1842 with the guarantee that they could remain on it. However, by 1848 there were rumors of removal of all the bands east of the Mississippi to unceded land in Minnesota. That removal was eventually attempted, in 1850-51, in what is now called the Sandy Lake Tragedy.
The Martell Delegation remains a little-known part of the removal story, although the pictographs remain popular. Those petitions are remembered because they were published in Henry Schoolcrafts’ Historical and statistical information respecting the history, condition, and prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States (1851) along with the most accessible primary account of the delegation:
In the month of January, 1849, a delegation of eleven Chippewas, from Lake Superior, presented themselves at Washington, who, amid other matters not well digested in their minds, asked the government for a retrocession of some portion of the lands which the nation had formerly ceded to the United States, at a treaty concluded at Lapointe, in Lake Superior, in 1842. They were headed by Oshcabawiss, a chief from a part of the forest-country, called by them Monomonecau, on the head-waters of the River Wisconsin. Some minor chiefs accompanied them, together with a Sioux and two boisbrules, or half-breeds, from the Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. The principal of the latter was a person called Martell, who appeared to be the master-spirit and prime mover of the visit, and of the motions of the entire party. His motives in originating and conducting the party, were questioned in letters and verbal representations from persons on the frontiers. He was freely pronounced an adventurer, and a person who had other objects to fulfil, of higher interest to himself than the advancement of the civilization and industry of the Indians. Yet these were the ostensible objects put forward, though it was known that he had exhibited the Indians in various parts of the Union for gain, and had set out with the purpose of carrying them, for the same object, to England. However this may be, much interest in, and sympathy for them, was excited. Officially, indeed, their object was blocked up. The party were not accredited by their local agent. They brought no letter from the acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs on that frontier. The journey had not been authorized in any manner by the department. It was, in fine, wholly voluntary, and the expenses of it had been defrayed, as already indicated, chiefly from contributions made by citizens on the way, and from the avails of their exhibitions in the towns through which they passed; in which, arrayed in their national costume, they exhibited their peculiar dances, and native implements of war and music. What was wanting, in addition to these sources, had been supplied by borrowing from individuals.
Engraving of Henry Schoolcraft by Wellstood and Peters (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Martell, who acted as their conductor and interpreter, brought private letters from several persons to members of Congress and others, which procured respect. After a visit, protracted through seven or eight weeks, an act was passed by Congress to defray the expenses of the party, including the repayment of the sums borrowed of citizens, and sufficient to carry them back, with every requisite comfort, to their homes in the north-west. While in Washington, the presence of the party at private houses, at levees, and places of public resort, and at the halls of Congress, attracted much interest; and this was not a little heightened by their aptness in the native ceremonies, dancing, and their orderly conduct and easy manners, united to the attraction of their neat and well-preserved costume, which helped forward the object of their mission.
The visit, although it has been stated, from respectable sources, to have had its origin wholly in private motives, in the carrying out of which the natives were made to play the part of mere subordinates, was concluded in a manner which reflects the highest credit on the liberal feelings and sentiments of Congress. The plan of retrocession of territory, on which some of the natives expressed a wish to settle and adopt the modes of civilized life, appeared to want the sanction of the several states in which the lands asked for lie. No action upon it could therefore be well had, until the legislatures of these states could be consulted (pg. 414-416, pictographic plates follow).
I have always had trouble with Schoolcraft’s interpretation of these events. It wasn’t that I had evidence to contradict his argument, but rather that I had a hard time believing that all these chiefs would make so weighty a decision as to go to Washington simply because their interpreter was trying to get rich. The petitions asked for a permanent homeland in the traditional villages east of the Mississippi. This was the major political goal of the Lake Superior Ojibwe leadership at that time and would remain so in all the years leading up to 1854. Furthermore, chiefs continued to ask for, or go “uninvited” on, diplomatic missions to the president in the years that followed.
I explored some of this in the post about the pictograph, but a number of lingering questions remained:
What route did this group take to Washington?
Who was Major John Baptiste Martell?
Did he manipulate the chiefs into working for him, or was he working for them?
Was the Naaganab who went with this group the well-known Fond du Lac chief or the warrior from Lake Chetek with the same name?
Did any chiefs from the La Pointe band go?
Why was Martell criticized so much? Did he steal the money?
What became of Martell after the expedition?
How did the “Martell Expedition” of 1848-49 impact the Ojibwe removal of 1850-51?
Lacking access to the really good archives on this subject, I decided to focus on newspapers, and since this expedition received so much attention and publicity, this was a good choice. Enjoy:
Indiana Palladium. Vevay, IN. Dec. 2, 1848
Capt. Seth Eastman of the U.S. Army took note of the delegation as it traveled down the Mississippi from Fort Snelling to St. Louis. Eastman, a famous painter of American Indians, copied the birch bark petitions for publication in the works of his collaborator Henry Schoolcraft. At least one St. Louis paper also noticed these unique pictographic documents.
Lafayette Courier. Lafayette, IN. Dec. 8, 1848.
The delegation made its way up the Ohio River to Cincinnati, where Gezhiiyaash’s illness led to a chance encounter with some Ohio Freemasons. I won’t repeat it here, but I covered this unusual story in this post from August.
At Cincinnati, they left the river and headed toward Columbus. Just east of that city, on the way to Pittsburgh, one of the Ojibwe men offered some sound advice to the women of Hartford, Ohio, but he received only ridicule in return.
Madison Weekly Courier. Madison, IN. Jan. 24, 1849
It’s unclear how quickly reports of the delegation came back to the Lake Superior country. William Warren’s letter to his cousin George, written in March after the delegation had already left Washington, still spoke of St. Louis:
William W. Warren (Wikimedia Images)
“…About Martells Chiefs. They were according to last accounts dancing the pipe dance at St. Louis. They have been making monkeys of themselves to fill the pockets of some cute Yankee who has got hold of them. Black bird returned from Cleveland where he caught scarlet fever and clap. He has behaved uncommon well since his return…” (Schenck, pg. 49)
From this letter, we learn that Blackbird, the La Pointe chief, was originally part of the group. In evaluating Warren’s critical tone, we must remember that he was working closely with the very government officials who withheld their permission. Of the La Pointe chiefs, Blackbird was probably the least accepting of American colonial power. However, we see in the obituary of Naaganab, Blackbird’s rival at the 1855 annuity payment, that the Fond du Lac chief was also there.
New York World. New York. July 22, 1894
Before finding this obituary, I had thought that the Naaganab who signed the petition was more likely the headman from Lake Chetek. Instead, this information suggests it was the more famous Fond du Lac chief. This matters because in 1848, Naaganab was considered the speaker for his cousin Zhingob, the leading chief at Fond du Lac. Blackbird, according to his son James, was the pipe carrier for Buffalo. While these chiefs had their differences with each other, it seems likely that they were representing their bands in an official capacity. This means that the support for this delegation was not only from “minor chiefs” as Schoolcraft described them, or “Martells Chiefs” as Warren did, from Lac du Flambeau and Michigan. I would argue that the presence of Blackbird and Naaganab suggests widespread support from the Lake Superior bands. I would guess that there was much discussion of the merits of a Washington delegation by Buffalo and others during the summer of 1848, and that the trip being a hasty money-making scheme by Martell seems much less likely.
Madison Daily Banner. Madison, IN. Jan. 3, 1849.
From Pittsburgh, the delegation made it to Philadelphia, and finally Washington. They attracted a lot of attention in the nation’s capital. Some of their adventures and trials: Oshkaabewis and his wife Pammawaygeonenoqua losing an infant child, the group hunting rabbits along the Potomac, and the chiefs taking over Congress, are included this post from March, so they aren’t repeated here.
Adams Sentinel. Gettysburg, PA. Feb. 5, 1849.
According to Ronald Satz, the delegation was received by both Congress and President Polk with “kindly feelings” and the expectation of “good treatment in the future” if they “behaved themselves (Satz 51).” Their petition was added to the Congressional Record, but the reservations were not granted at the time. However, Congress did take up the issue of paying for the debts accrued by the Ojibwe along the way.
George Copway (Wikimedia Commons)
Kah-Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh (George Copway), a Mississauga Ojibwe and Methodist missionary, was the person “belonging to one of the Canada Bands of Chippewas,” who wrote the anti-Martell letter to Indian Commissioner William Medill. This is most likely the letter Schoolcraft referred to in 1851. In addition to being upset about the drinking, Copway was against reservations in Wisconsin. He wanted the government to create a huge pan-Indian colony at the headwaters of the Missouri River.
William Medill (Wikimedia Commons)
Iowa State Gazette. Burlington, IA. April 4, 1849
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Weekly Wisconsin. Milwaukee. Feb. 28, 1849.
With $6000 (or did they only get $5000?), a substantial sum for the antebellum Federal Government, the group prepared to head back west with the ability to pay back their creditors.
It appears the chiefs returned to their villages by going back though the Great Lakes to Green Bay and then overland.
The Chippewa Delegation, who have been on a visit to see their “great fathers” in Washington, passed through this place on Saturday last, on their way to their homes near Lake Superior. From the accounts of the newspapers, they have been lionized during their whole journey, and particularly in Washington, where many presents were made them, among the most substantial of which was six boxed of silver ($6,000) to pay their expenses. They were loaded with presents, and we noticed one with a modern style trunk strapped to his back. They all looked well and in good spirits (qtd. in Paap, pg. 205).
Green Bay Gazette. April 4, 1849
So, it hardly seems that the Ojibwe chiefs returned to their villages feeling ripped off by their interpreter. Martell himself returned to the Soo, and found a community about to be ravaged by a epidemic of cholera.
Weekly Wisconsin. Milwaukee. Sep. 5, 1849.
Martell appears in the 1850 census on the record of those deceased in the past year. Whether he was a major in the Mexican War, whether he was in the United States or Canadian military, or whether it was even a real title, remains a mystery. His death record lists his birthplace as Minnesota, which probably connects him to the Martells of Red Lake and Red River, but little else is known about his early years. And while we can’t say for certain whether he led the group purely out of self-interest, or whether he genuinely supported the cause, John Baptiste Martell must be remembered as a key figure in the struggle for a permanent Ojibwe homeland in Wisconsin and Michigan. He didn’t live to see his fortieth birthday, but he made the 1848-49 Washington delegation possible.
So how do we sort all this out?
To refresh, my unanswered questions from the other posts about this delegation were:
1) What route did this group take to Washington?
2) Who was Major John Baptiste Martell?
3) Did he manipulate the chiefs into working for him, or was he working for them?
4) Was the Naaganab who went with this group the well-known Fond du Lac chief or the warrior from Lake Chetek with the same name?
5) Did any chiefs from the La Pointe band go?
6) Why was Martell criticized so much? Did he steal the money?
7) What became of Martell after the expedition?
8) How did the “Martell Expedition” of 1848-49 impact the Ojibwe removal of 1850-51?
We’ll start with the easiest and work our way to the hardest. We know that the primary route to Washington was down the Brule, St. Croix, and Mississippi to St. Louis, and from there up the Ohio. The return trip appears to have been via the Great Lakes.
We still don’t know how Martell became a major, but we do know what became of him after the diplomatic mission. He didn’t survive to see the end of 1849.
The Fond du Lac chief Naaganab, and the La Pointe chief Blackbird, were part of the group. This indicates that a wide swath of the Lake Superior Ojibwe leadership supported the delegation, and casts serious doubt on the notion that it was a few minor chiefs in Michigan manipulated by Martell.
Until further evidence surfaces, there is no reason to support Schoolcraft’s accusations toward Martell. Even though these allegations are seemingly validated by Warren and Copway, we need to remember how these three men fit into the story. Schoolcraft had moved to Washington D.C. by this point and was no longer Ojibwe agent, but he obviously supported the power of the Indian agents and favored the assimilation of his mother-in-law’s people. Copway and Warren also worked closely with the Government, and both supported removal as a way to separate the Ojibwe from the destructive influences of the encroaching white population. These views were completely opposed to what the chiefs were asking for: permanent reservations at the traditional villages. Because of this, we need to consider that Schoolcraft, Warren, and Copway would be negatively biased toward this group and its interpreter.
Finally there’s the question Howard Paap raises in Red Cliff, Wisconsin. How did this delegation impact the political developments of the early 1850s? In one sense the chiefs were clearly pleased with the results of the trip. They made many friends in Congress, in the media, and in several American cities. They came home smiling with gifts and money to spread to their people. However, they didn’t obtain their primary goal: reservations east of the Mississippi, and for this reason, the following statement in Schoolcraft’s account stands out:
The plan of retrocession of territory, on which some of the natives expressed a wish to settle and adopt the modes of civilized life, appeared to want the sanction of the several states in which the lands asked for lie. No action upon it could therefore be well had, until the legislatures of these states could be consulted.
“Kindly feelings” from President Polk didn’t mean much when Zachary Taylor and a new Whig administration were on the way in. Meanwhile, Congress and the media were so wrapped up in the national debate over slavery that they forgot all about the concerns of the Ojibwes of Lake Superior. This allowed a handful of Indian Department officials, corrupt traders, and a crooked, incompetent Minnesota Territorial governor named Alexander Ramsey to force a removal in 1850 that resulted in the deaths of 400 Ojibwe people in the Sandy Lake Tragedy.
It is hard to know how the chiefs felt about their 1848-49 diplomatic mission after Sandy Lake. Certainly their must have been a strong sense that they were betrayed and abandoned by a Government that had indicated it would support them, but the idea of bypassing the agents and territorial officials and going directly to the seat of government remained strong. Another, much more famous, “uninvited” delegation brought Buffalo and Oshogay to Washington in 1852, and ultimately the Federal Government did step in to grant the Ojibwe the reservations. Almost all of the chiefs who made the journey, or were shown in the pictographs, signed the Treaty of 1854 that made them.
Sources:
McClurken, James M., and Charles E. Cleland. Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights / James M. McClurken, Compiler ; with Charles E. Cleland … [et Al.]. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2000. 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.
Vincent Roy Jr. (From Life and Labors of Rt. Rev. Frederic Baraga by Chrysostom Verwyst: Digitized by Google Books)
Chief Buffalo’s 1852 delegation to Washington D.C. is an iconic moment in the history of the Chequamegon region. As the story goes, the 92 year-old chief made the difficult journey by canoe, steamship, rail and foot all the way to the capital city, met with President Millard Fillmore, and came back with an order to stop the removal of the Wisconsin Ojibwe. Despite its continuing popularity, and its special importance to the Red Cliff community, recent scholarship has called into question several key details of this story. Central to this controversy is whether or not Buffalo actually met the president. However, I recently found a document in the archives of an early Red Cliff resident, Vincent Roy Jr. It confirms what Red Cliff residents already know. Chief Buffalo did travel to Washington and met the president in June of 1852.
Benjamin Armstrong
According to the popular Buffalo story, some of the young men of the La Pointe Band were ready to fight the United States in early 1852. The government removal efforts that led to the Sandy Lake Tragedy in the fall of 1850 were ongoing, and the future of the Ojibwe bands in Wisconsin was in doubt. To maintain the peace, and gain title to reservations in Wisconsin, Buffalo and a small group of chiefs and headmen (including Oshogay Buffalo’s speaker and Benjamin Armstrong his interpreter), left La Pointe that spring. They encountered bad weather and negative government officials along the way, but they were able to gather signatures on their petition from several prominent Lake Superior whites. In New York and Washington, they ran short on money and had to count on the kindness of wealthy Americans who were amazed by the culture and appearance of the Ojibwe from the western country. In Washington, the Indian Affairs department refused to hear their petition and ordered them to return to La Pointe, but through luck, they met a congressman who arranged a special meeting with the president. As the story goes, Buffalo smoked with Fillmore and Oshogay delivered a long speech laying out the Ojibwe grievances. In a second meeting, Fillmore declared the removal efforts over. The delegation then returned to La Pointe via St. Paul and stopped at several Ojibwe villages causing “great rejoicing” as they announced the news. Two years later the Treaty of La Pointe (1854) confirmed forever the promises made to Buffalo by Fillmore.
Washington Delegation, June 22 1852: The man in the upper right is assumed to be Armstrong. (Engraved from unknown photograph by Marr and Richards Co. for B. Armstrong Early Life Among the Indians). Look for an upcoming post about this image
The hero, along with Buffalo, in this version story is often Benjamin Armstrong. That shouldn’t be too surprising because all the details of it come from Armstrong’s 1891 memoir Early Life Among the Indians. This entire work is freely available online on the website of the Wisconsin Historical Society. Another well-made website, chiefbuffalo.com, has several additional primary documents related to Buffalo and Armstrong. I consider Early Life required reading for anyone who lives in the Chequamegon Bay area. However, the reader has to be careful with Armstrong. As I mentioned in the post on Hanging Cloud, the female warrior of the Chippewa River country, the memoir should be treated like a work of literature rather than scholarly piece. It wasn’t unusual for 19th-century autobiographies to contain fictional parts, and Early Life is no exception. The details that the elderly Armstrong (who admitted to a fuzzy memory) dictated to Thomas P. Wentworth in 1891, don’t always match the details found in the documents of the 1850s. This is the case with the Buffalo-Fillmore story.
Recent Scholarly Work and Primary Sources about the 1852 Delegation
In his extremely thorough scholarly overview of the pro-Treaty Rights position, Chippewa Treaty Rights (1991), Ronald Satz admitted that “Armstrong’s reminiscences contain some factual errors” and that anti-Treaty Rights anthropologist James Clifton attacked Armstrong’s credibility in an attempt to undermine the Treaty Rights argument. Still, Satz’ story of the 1852 delegation is straight out of Armstrong with the admission that “Scholars have not located a decree by Fillmore specifically rescinding President Taylor’s removal order.” Patty Loew’s Indian Nations of Wisconsin (2001) also gives the story Chief Buffalo’s journey largely the way it appeared in Armstrong. At that time, it appeared that the popular story, the Armstrong story, and the mainstream scholarship all matched up.
However, recent years have seen a shift in the interpretation of the Buffalo story Bruce M. White’s The Regional Context of the Removal Order of 1850, published in Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights (2000; Michigan State University Press), is a highly comprehensive account of the time period and the players involved. He devotes an entire chapter to the 1852 delegation. He does not dismiss Armstrong entirely, writing:
Some questions have been raised about the accuracy of Armstrong’s account. Some details, including dates, in Armstrong’s memories of events that had occurred 40 years before, appear to be mistaken. This, of course, is true of many autobiographical accounts written without the benefit of written documentation. Nonetheless, many key features of Armstrong’s account find corroboration in Indian office records, though not always in the exact way or order in which Armstrong describes them. (pg. 245)
Despite this nod to Armstrong, White’s examination of historical records from the National Archives, the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, Minnesota Territorial records, and other sources, paint a different picture from that in Early Life Among the Indians. He produces letters from federal officials saying the Indian Office sent the delegation home “with a flea in their ear,” while John Watrous, the Indian Agent the delegation came to complain about, received “flying colors.” White also uncovered a letter that Bad River missionary Leonard Wheeler wrote after Buffalo’s return to La Pointe. It stated the delegation “accomplished nothing.” Most significantly, on page 253, White reproduces a letter from Buffalo and Oshogay to Minnesota Territorial governor Alexander Ramsey. The letter is written in July 1852, after the delegation returned. The chiefs inform the governor that the decision is his whether or not to remove the Ojibwe. They plead with Ramsey to let them stay on the lake shore. This a far cry from the situation described by Armstrong where Buffalo received a promise from Fillmore and spread “rejoicing” to all the Ojibwe bands.
In fact, the very existence of the Buffalo-Fillmore meeting is called into question. For all the documents White produces saying the delegation was unsuccessful, he fails to produce one that even speaks of a meeting with the president. He leaves the possibility open for such a meeting, using some notations indicating chain of custody of the delegation’s petition as circumstantial evidence. However he uses language like “Whether or not the Ojibwe actually met with Fillmore…” for an important symbolic event taken for granted in Ojibwe history up until that point.
If White’s investigation of the original sources calls into question the success of the delegation and its ability to meet the president, Theresa Schenck’s William W. Warren: The Life, Letters, and Times of an Ojibwe Leader (2007; U. of Nebraska Press) makes one question Armstrong’s importance in the group. In Early Life Among the Indians, Armstrong is the star of the show. He claims the delegation was his idea, that he conducted it, made all the arrangements along the way, and was generally responsible for its success. The historical record does not back these claims up. Even before the Sandy Lake Tragedy, Ojibwe chiefs were doubting the truth of the removal order as stated by Agent Watrous and Governor Ramsey. They demanded to hear it directly from the president himself. By the end of 1852, after seeing hundreds of their fellow Ojibwe die in two botched removal attempts, and having missed out on two crucial years of annuity payments, the demands of the chiefs for a meeting with the president grew louder. It was William Warren who wanted to lead and interpret for an officially-sanctioned delegation. As Ramsey used stalling tactics, Warren’s health failed, and the hope of official approval waned, Buffalo took matters into his own hands and arranged his own delegation. The elderly chief wanted to bring Leonard Wheeler along, but the missionary objected to the inclusion of a certain “half-breed” who was “incapable of doing justice to their affairs.” White speculates that Wheeler meant Armstrong, but Armstrong was a white man from Alabama. A June 24, 1852 letter, from William Warren to his cousin George, reveals who the mix-blooded interpreter likely was. This letter, as quoted in Schenck (2007) reads:
…Old Beauf [Buffalo] with others having V. Roy Jr for Intpr have gone on to Washington. All nonsense. They can effect nothing going off like fools with poor interpreters and representing only the Lapointe band (pg. 162).
Warren had included Vincent Roy Jr. in his original plan for a Washington delegation, so it seems his objections to Buffalo’s choice of interpreter have more to do with the chief not following Warren’s plan than on any reflection on the merits of Roy himself. Roy, who later in life was described as a man of outstanding character, may have earned the enmity of Wheeler because he was a strong Catholic. Wheeler and the other ABCFM missionaries were working intensely at this time to counter Roman Catholic influence in the area. In either case, Armstrong isn’t even mentioned. Though his presence isn’t supported by these documents, I believe the details of Armstrong’s memoir show he was part of the delegation. However, the claims that he “conducted” it seem grossly exaggerated.
Local Response to the Questioning of the Chief Buffalo Story
Bruce White’s primary goal was to argue the Mille Lacs Treaty-Rights case rather than maintain the popular history of this area, and Theresa Schenck has never been one to shy away from challenging long-cherished myths, but what do scholars with a bigger stake in the Chief Buffalo story say?
On the Chequamegon History website, I’ve written a lot on Buffalo, and I’ve taken part in various projects related to Buffalo’s trip, so I was disappointed when I first heard from Dr. Schenck that our region’s defining historical event may have never happened. Unfortunately, my primary research only seemed to confirm that the 1852 trip was a failure. The only new document I could find was an untranslated German travelogue Reisen in Nordamerika in den Jahren 1852 and 1853 (Travels in North America in the Years 1852 and 1853) by the noted Austrian travel writers Moritz Wagner and Karl Ritter von Scherzer. On page 336 of Volume 2, Wagner and Scherzer describe meeting Buffalo. I don’t read German, so I had to work through Google Translate:
From page 336 of Reisen in Nordamerika Vol. 2 by Wagner and Scherzer. Look for an upcoming post with more from this obscure 19th-century travelogue (Digitized by Google Books).
“The Indian chief, worthy by his age, heredity, and his imposing figure, told us he was born near the island and left the area only once to travel in the matters of his tribe to the Great Father [president] in Washington. His stay was accompanied by words of comfort but little success.” (My rough Google-aided translation of above)
This source, combined with the work of Schenck and White, and other issues I’ve had with Armstrong, led me to believe that perhaps the Chief Buffalo story was just a myth. Then, this summer saw two locally-linked authors publish works.
This summer, Patty Loew released an updated version of her fantastic introduction to Wisconsin Indian history, Indian Nations of Wisconsin. It revises the Armstrong-based section on the 1852 trip from the first edition to admit that Buffalo may not have met the president. Loew lives in Madison but is a Bad River tribal member and a Chief Buffalo fan.
Howard Paap, who is married into the Red Cliff community, has written extensively about it. His new book, Red Cliff, Wisconsin: A History of an Ojibwe Community, also came out this summer. He extends White’s arguments and thoroughly evaluates Armstrong’s story against the other primary sources. Paap’s conclusions are bold for someone writing a history on behalf of a reservation community established for Buffalo’s descendants:
We are left with the question of whether or not the Buffalo and Oshaga delegation really did have an audience with President Fillmore in the summer of 1852, and if so, what actually transpired during such a meeting…
…perhaps the easiest solution to the question of whether or not such a meeting occurred is to believe Benjamin Armstrong’s recollections, along with contemporary Ojibwe oral traditions about the trip, and leave it at that.
However, given the reality of the errors in Armstrong’s memoir, and much more importantly, the hard evidence of the trip’s paper trail as recently uncovered by Charles Cleland and Bruce White, we are confronted with a dilemma. In today’s popular history the scene of Buffalo and President Fillmore standing eye to eye, as crafted in the Carl Gawboy painting wherein Fillmore is handing Buffalo a paper canceling the removal order, is compelling, but the surviving papers that document another scenario cannot be ignored (pg. 241).
Paap goes on to describe the Buffalo story as “folkloric,” but he suggests that while the 1852 delegation did not single-handedly end the threat of Ojibwe removal, the most symbolic part of the myth remains the meeting with the president. Following White, Paap admits the possibility that the Buffalo-Fillmore meeting happened, reiterating that primary sources suggested the delegation did not achieve its objectives, but there was nothing that explicitly said there was no meeting with the president.
The Vincent Roy Jr. Account of the 1852 Trip
In browsing the online catalog of the Wisconsin Historical Society archives this spring, I discovered the society had some of Vincent Roy Jr.’s papers. The catalog description mentioned a fur trade journal, a description of early ships on Lake Superior, and some manuscript biographies of Roy from some Catholic priests. Roy, who was raised in an Ojibwe-French mix-blood family, was a fur trader and government interpreter in his early years. Still a young man at the time of the Treaty of 1854, he lived into the 20th century and was notable for several reasons including making multiple trips to Washington with Ojibwe delegations, being the namesake of Roy’s Point in Red Cliff, leading area mix-blooded Ojibwe in the cause of the “half-breed land claims,” and being one of the earliest and wealthiest settlers of Superior. He was a commanding figure in the Catholic Church and Democratic Party of Wisconsin, and there is a lot out there about him.
The wonderful staff at Wisconsin Historical Society Research Center in Ashland agreed to have the papers sent up from Madison for me. The arrived in early August, mere days after I had the chance to read Paap and Loew. Since the scope of Chequamegon History is pre-1860, I went in mostly interested in seeing the fur trade journal. I assumed the biography would be identical to the biographical information about Roy published in Life and Labors of Rt. Rev. Frederic Baraga by Chrysostom Verwyst. The Holland-born Verwyst was a priest who knew Roy personally and considered him “The Greatest Indian of the Northwest.” I didn’t think there would be anything new in this part of the archive, but I was wrong:
[Letter accompanying manuscript biography written in Verwyst’s hand]
St. Agnes’ Church
205 E. FRONT ST.
Ashland, Wis., June 27, 1903
Reuben G. Thwaites,
Sec. Wis. Hist. Soc. Madison, Wis.
Dear Sir,
I herewith send you personal memories of Hon. Vincent Roy, lately deceased, as put together by Rev. Father Valentine O.F.M. Should your society find them of sufficient historical interest to warrant their publication, you will please correct them properly before getting them printed.
Yours very respectfully,
Fr Chrysostom Verwyst O.F.M.
[From Page one of manuscript biography in Valentine’s handwriting]
~ Biographical Sketch – Vincent Roy ~
~ T. Apr. 2. 1896 – Superior Wis. ~
[Sections 1-3 (Roy’s early years) omitted. Transcription picks up on page 5 (section 4). Valentine lists his sources in the left margin. I will put them in parentheses before each paragraph].
(Mr. Roy to V.)
IV. His first Visit to Washington, D.C. – The Treaty of La Pointe.
At the instance of Chief Buffalo and in his company Vincent made his first trip to Washington, D.C. It was in the spring of the year 1852. Buffalo (Kechewaishke), head chief of the Lake Superior Ojibways had seen the day when his people, according to indian estimation, was wealthy and powerful, but now he was old and his people sickly and starving poor. Vincent referring once to the incidents of that time spoke about in this way “He (Buffalo) and the other old men of the tribe, his advisers, saw quite well that things could not go on much longer in the way they had done. The whites were crowding in upon them from all sides and the U.S. government said and did nothing. It appeared to these indians their land might be taken from them without they ever getting anything for it. They were scant of food and clothing and the annuities resulting from the sale of their land might keep them alive yet for a while. The desire became loud that it might be tried to push the matter at Washington admitting that they had to give up the land but insisting they be paid for it. Buffalo was willing to go but there was no one to go with him. He asked me to go with him. As I had no other business just then on hand I went along.”
(Sources: Cournoyer or Mr. Roy to V.) [Vincent Cournoyer was V. Roy’s brother-in-law]
They went by way of the lakes. Arriving in Washington, they found the City and the capitol in a garb of mourning and business suspended. Henry Clay, the great statesman and orator, had died (June 29) and his body was lying in state. Vincent said: “we shook hands and spoke with the President (Fillmore) and with some of the headmen of the government. They told us that they could not do anything at the moment, but that our petition should be attended to as soon as possible. Unable to obtain any more, we looked around a few days and returned home.” The trip had entailed a considerable drain on their private purses and the result towards the point at issue for them, the selling of the land of the indians, was not very apparent.
(the treaty doct.)
After repeated urging and an interval of over two years, during which Franklin Pierce had become President of the United States, the affairs of these Indians were at last taken up and dealt with at La Pointe by Henry C. Gilbert and David B. Herriman, commissioners on the part of the United States. A treaty was concluded, September 30th 1854. The Lake Superior Ojibways thereby relinquished their last claims to the soil of north west Michigan, north east Wisconsin, and an adjoining part of Minnesota, and, whilst it was understood that the reserves at L’Anse Michigan, Odanah, Court Oreille Wisconsin and Fondulac Minnesota were set apart for them, they received in consideration of the rest the aggregate sum of about four hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, which, specified as to money and material, ran into twenty years rations.
(Cournoyer)
Chief Buffalo in consideration of services rendered was allowed his choice of a section of land anywhere in the ceded terrain. The choice he made, it is said, were the heights of the city of Duluth, but never complying with the incident law formalities, it matters little that the land became the site of a city, his heirs never got the benefit of it. Of Vincent who had been also of service to the indians from the first to the last of the deal, it can only be said that he remained not just without all benefit from it. A clause was inserted in the treaty (Art. 2. n. 7.) by which heads of families and single persons over twenty one years of mixed blood were each entitled to take and hold free of further charge eighty acres of the ceded lands:- this overruled in a simple and direct way the difficulties Vincent had met with of late in trying to make good his claim to such a property. The advantages here gained was however common to others with him. For the sacrifices he made of time and money in going with Chief Buffalo to Washington he was not reimbursed, so it is believed, and is very likely true judgeing from what was the case when later on he made the same trip a second time.
[End of Section 4, middle of page 7 of Valentine’s manuscript]
In my mind, this document is proof that the Buffalo-Fillmore meeting did happen. We know Roy went on the trip, and his account (unlike Armstrong’s) supports rather than contradicts the documents from the time period. It wasn’t two scheduled ceremonial meetings that permanently settled the removal question. In fact, it may have only been a handshake and a few words, but the central image of the two leaders, ogimaa and president, meeting remains part of the Chief Buffalo story.
Identified as Vincent Cournoyer and Vincent Roy Jr. c. 1880 in photo at Bayfield Library. See the Photos, Photos, Photos post for an alternative identification. (Charles Bell, Washington: Collections of the Smithsonian Institution)
For Vincent Roy Jr., I hope this inquiry will lead to more attention. His life spanned two key eras in Ojibwe history and he was often at the center of it. His name is all over the primary sources, but compared with Armstrong, the Warrens, and the Beaulieus, we don’t see him much in the secondary scholarship.
For Benjamin Armstrong, I think the Roy documents require us to take a fresh look at Early Life Among the Indians. If the Fillmore meeting can be verified after a long look, there’s a good chance some of the other details in the memoir can be as well. I’m a Benjamin Armstrong fan, and he’s taken a beating in this post and some of the recent scholarship, but I still maintain that there is a lot of truth in Early Life.
For Chief Buffalo, it is gratifying to find out that the 1852 meeting with the president isn’t complete fiction. Buffalo may not have been satisfied with the results of his trip, but I feel the ultimate appeal of his story is the fight to keep an Ojibwe homeland in Wisconsin. We may not be able to point to a single event and say, “That’s where the removal died,” but ultimately, the Ojibwe leadership prevailed. For that reason, we should continue to celebrate the 1852 delegation, all the people who were part of it, and all those who were part of the larger struggle for justice it represented.
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.
Loew, Patty. Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 2001. Print.
———— Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal. 2nd ed. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 2013. Print.
McClurken, James M., and Charles E. Cleland. Fish in the Lakes, Wild Rice, and Game in Abundance: Testimony on Behalf of Mille Lacs Ojibwe Hunting and Fishing Rights / James M. McClurken, Compiler ; with Charles E. Cleland … [et Al.]. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2000. 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.
Verwyst, Chrysostom and Father Valentine. Biographical Sketch – Vincent Roy Jr. 1896-1903. MS. Vincent Roy Jr. Papers. Wisconsin Historical Society Archives, n.p.
Verwyst, Chrysostom. Life and Labors of Rt. Rev. Frederic Baraga: First Bishop of Marquette, Mich., to Which Are Added Short Sketches of the Lives and Labors of Other Indian Missionaries of the Northwest. Milwaukee, WI: M.H. Wiltzius, 1900. 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.
Thank you to Theresa Schenck, Howard Paap, Linda Mittlestadt, Pam Ekholm, Larry Balber, and Betty Johnson for help and encouragement in this research.
Chief Buffalo Picture Search: The Capitol Busts
July 17, 2013
This post is one of several that seek to determine how many images exist of Great Buffalo, the famous La Pointe Ojibwe chief who died in 1855. To learn why this is necessary, please read this post introducing the Great Chief Buffalo Picture Search.
Posts on Chequamegon History are generally of the obscure variety and are probably only interesting to a handful of people. I anticipate this one could cause some controversy as it concerns an object that holds a lot of importance to many people who live in our area. All I can say about that is that this post represents my research into original historical documents. I did not set out to prove anybody right or wrong, and I don’t think this has to be the last word on the subject. This post is simply my reasoned conclusions based on the evidence I’ve seen. Take from it what you will.
Be sheekee, or Buffalo by Francis Vincenti, Marble, Modeled 1855, Carved 1856 (United States Senate)
Be Sheekee: A Chippewa Warrior from the Sources of the Mississippi, bronze, by Joseph Lassalle after Francis Vincenti, House wing of the United States Capitol (U.S. Capitol Historical Society).
“A Chippewa Warrior from the Sources of the Mississippi”
There is no image that has been more widely identified with Chief Buffalo from La Pointe than the marble bust and bronze copy in the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C. Red Cliff leaders make a point of visiting the statues on trips to the capital city, the tribe uses the image in advertising and educational materials, and literature from the United States Senate about the bust includes a short biography of the La Pointe chief.
I can trace the connection between the bust and the La Pointe chief to 1973, when John O. Holzhueter, editor of the Wisconsin Magazine of History wrote an article for the magazine titled Chief Buffalo and Other Wisconsin-Related Art in the National Capitol. From Holzhueterʼs notes we can tell that in 1973, the rediscovery of the story of the La Pointe Buffalo was just beginning at the Wisconsin Historical Society (the publisher of the magazine). Holzhueter deserves credit for helping to rekindle interest in the chief. However, he made a critical error.
English: Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay ojibwa chief (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In the article he briefly discusses Eshkibagikoonzhe (Flat Mouth), the chief of the Leech Lake or Pillager Ojibwe from northern Minnesota. Roughly the same age as Buffalo, Flat Mouth is as prominent a chief in the history of the upper Mississippi as Buffalo is for the Lake Superior bands. Had Holzhueter investigated further into the life of Flat Mouth, he may have discovered that at the time the bust was carved, the Pillagers had another leader who had risen to prominence, a war chief named Buffalo.
Holzhueter clearly was not aware that there was more than one Buffalo, and thus, he had to invent facts to make the history fit the art. According to the article (and a book published by Holzhueter the next year) the La Pointe Buffalo visited President Pierce in Washington in January of 1855. Buffalo did visit Washington in 1852 in the aftermath of the Sandy Lake Tragedy, but the old chief was nowhere near Washington in 1855. In fact, he was at home on the island in declining health having secured reservations for his people in Wisconsin the previous summer. He would die in September of 1855. The Buffalo who met with Pierce, of course, was the war chief from Leech Lake.
“He wore in his headdress 5 war-eagle feathers“
The Pillager Buffalo was in Washington for treaty negotiations that would transfer most of the remaining Ojibwe land in northern Minnesota to the United States and create reservations at the principal villages. The minutes of the February 1855 negotiations between the Minnesota chiefs and Indian Commissioner George Manypenny are filled with Ojibwe frustration at Manypennyʼs condescending tone. The chiefs, included the powerful young Hole-in-the-Day, the respected elder Flat Mouth, and Buffalo, who was growing in experience and age, though he was still considerably younger than Flat Mouth or the La Pointe Buffalo. The men were used to being called “red children” in communications with their “fathers” in the government, but Manypennyʼs paternalism brought it to a new low. Buffalo used his clothing to communicate to the commissioner that his message of assimilation to white ways was not something that all Ojibwes desired. Manypennyʼs words and Buffaloʼs responses as interpreted by the mix- blooded trader Paul Beaulieu follow:
The commissioner remarked to Buffalo, that if he was a young man he would insist upon his dispensing with his headdress of feathers, but that, as he was old, he would not disturb a custom which habit had endeared to him.
Buffalo repoled ithat the feathered plume among the Chippewas was a badge of honor. Those who were successful in fighting with or conquering their enemies were entitled to wear plumes as marks of distinction, and as the reward of meritorious actions.The commissioner asked him how old he was.
Buffalo said that was a question which he could not answer exactly. If he guessed right, however, he supposed he was about fifty. (He looked, and was doubtless, much
older).Commissioner. I would think, my firend, you were older than that. I would like to philosophise with you about that headdress, and desired to know if he had a farm, a house, stock, and other comforts about him.
Buffalo. I have none of those things which you have mentioned. I live like other members of the tribe.
Commissioner. How long have you been in the habit of painting—thirty years or more?
Buffalo. I can not tell the number of years. It may have been more or it may have been less. I have distinguished myself in war as well as in peace among my people and the whites, and am entitled to the distinction which the practice implies.
Commissioner. While you, my firend, have been spending your time and money in painting your face, how many of your white brothers have started without a dollar in the world and acquired all those things mentioned so necessary to your comfort and independent support. The paint, with the exception of what is now on my friend’s face, has disappeared, but the white persons to whom I alluded by way of contrast are surrounded by all the comforts of life, the legitimate fruits of their well-directed industry. This illustrates the difference between civilized and savage life, and the importance of our red brothers changing their habits and pursuits for those of the white.
Major General Montgomery C. Meigs was a Captain before the Civil War and was in charge of the Capitol restoration, As with Thomas McKenney in the 1820s, Meigs was hoping to capture the look of the “vanishing Indian.” He commissioned the busts of the Leech Lake chiefs during the 1855 Treaty negotiations. (Wikimedia Images)
While Manypenny clearly did not like the Ojibwe way of life or Buffaloʼs style of dress, it did catch the attention of the authorities in charge of building an extension on the U.S. Capitol. Captain Montgomery Meigs, the supervisor, had hired numerous artists and much like Thomas McKenney two decades earlier, was looking for examples of the indigenous cultures that were assumed to be vanishing. On February 17th, Meigs received word from Seth Eastman that the Ojibwe delegation was in town.
The Captain met Bizhiki and described him in his journal:
“He is a fine-looking Indian, with character strongly marked. He wore in his headdress 5 war-eagle feathers, the sign of that many enemies put to death by his hand, and sat up, an old murderer, as proud of his feathers as a Frenchman of his Cross of the Legion of Honor. He is a leading warrior rather than a chief, but he has a good head, one which would not lead one, if he were in the Senate, to think he was not fit to be the companion of the wise of the land.”
Buffalo was paid $5.00 and sat for three days with the skilled Italian sculptor Francis Vincenti. Meigs recorded:
“Vincenti is making a good likeness of a fine bust of Buffalo. I think I will have it put into marble and placed in a proper situation in the Capitol as a record of the Indian culture. 500 years hence it will be interesting.”
Vincenti first formed clay models of both Buffalo and Flat Mouth. The marbles would not be finished until the next year. A bronze replica of Buffalo was finished by Joseph Lassalle in 1859. The marble was put into the Senate wing of the Capitol, and the bronze was placed in the House wing.
Clues in the Marble
The sculptures themselves hold further clues that the man depicted is not the La Pointe Buffalo. Multiple records describe the La Pointe chief as a very large man. In his obituary, recorded the same year the statue was modeled, Morse writes:
Any one would recognize in the person of the Buffalo chief, a man of superiority. About the middle height, a face remarkably grave and dignified, indicating great thoughtfulness; neat in his native attire; short neck, very large head, and the most capacious chest of any human subject we ever saw.
At the time of his death, he was thought to have been over ninety years old. The man in the sculpture is lean and not ninety. In addition, there is another clue that got by Holzhueter even though he printed it in his article. There is a medallion around the neck of the bronze bust that reads, “Beeshekee, the BUFFALO; A Chippewa Warrior from the Sources of the Mississippi…” This description works for a war chief from Leech Lake, but makes no sense for a civil chief and orator from La Pointe.
Another Image of the Leech Lake Bizhiki
Be-She-Kee (Buffalo), Head Chief of the Leech Lake Chippewas (Whitney and Zimmerman St. Paul)
The Treaty of 1855 was signed on February 22, and the Leech Lake chiefs returned to Minnesota. By the outbreak of the Civil War, Flat Mouth had died leaving Buffalo as the most prominent Pillager chief. Indian-White relations in Minnesota grew violent in 1862 as the U.S.- Dakota War (also called the Sioux Uprising) broke out in the southern part of the state. The Gull Lake chief, Hole in the Day, who had claimed the title of head of the Ojibwes, was making noise about an Ojibwe uprising as well. When he tried to use the Pillagers in his plan, Buffalo voiced skepticism and Hole in the Dayʼs plans petered out. In 1863, Buffalo returned to Washington for a new treaty. Ironically, he was still very much alive in the midst of complicated politics in a city where his bust was on display as monument to the vanishing race.
At some point during these years, the Pillager Buffalo had his photograph taken by Whitneyʼs Gallery in St. Paul. Although the La Pointe Buffalo was dead by this time, internet sites will occasional connect it with him even with an original caption that reads “Head Chief of the Leech Lake Chippewas.”
The Verdict
Although it wasn’t the outcome I was hoping for, my research leads me to definitively conclude that the busts in the U.S. Capitol are of Buffalo the Leech Lake war chief. It’s disappointing for our area to lose this Washington connection, but our loss it Leech Lake’s gain. Though less well-known than the La Pointe band’s chief, their chief Buffalo should also be remembered for his role in history.
Not Chief Buffalo from La Pointe: This is Chief Buffalo from Leech Lake.
Not Chief Buffalo from La Pointe: This is Chief Buffalo from Leech Lake.
Not Chief Buffalo from La Pointe: This is Chief Buffalo from Leech Lake.
Sources:
Holzhueter, John O. “Chief Buffalo and Other Wisconsin-Related Art in the National Capitol.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 56.4 (1973): 284-89. Print.
———– Madeline Island & the Chequamegon Region. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1974. 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/>.
Kloss, William, Diane K. Skvarla, and Jane R. McGoldrick. United States Senate Catalogue of Fine Art. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O., 2002. Print.
Legendary Waters Resort and Casino. Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, 2012. Web. 28 June 2012. <http://www.legendarywaters.com/>.
Minutes of the 1855 Treaty. 1855. MS. Bureau of Indian Affairs, Washington. Gibagdinamaagoom. White Earth Tribal and Community College Et. Al. Web. 28 June 2012. <gibagadinamaagoom.info/images/1855TreatyMinutes.pdf>.
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.
Schenck, Theresa M. William W. Warren: The Life, Letters, and times of an Ojibwe Leader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2007. Print.
Treuer, Anton. The Assassination of Hole in the Day. St. Paul, MN: Borealis, 2010. Print.
Warren, William W., and Theresa M. Schenck. History of the Ojibway People. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2009. Print.
Whitney’s Gallery. Be-she-kee (Buffalo). c.1860. Photograph. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. MHS Visual Resource Database. Minnesota Historical Society, 2012. Web. 28 June 2012. <http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresources/>.
Wolff, Wendy, ed. Capitol Builder: The Shorthand Journals of Montgomery C. Meigs, 1853-1859, 1861. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC: 2001. Print.
Fun With Maps
June 28, 2013
I’m someone who loves a good historical map, so one of my favorite websites is memory.loc.gov, the digital collections of the Library of Congress. You can spend hours zooming in on neat vintage maps. This post has snippets from eleven of them, stretching from 1674 to 1843. They are full of cool old inaccuracies, but they also highlight important historical trends and eras in our history. This should not be considered an exhaustive survey of the best maps out there, nor is it representative of all the LOC maps. Really, it’s just 11 semi-random maps with my observations on what I found interesting. Click on any map to go to the Library of Congress site where you can browse more of it. Enjoy:
French 1674
Nouvelle decouverte de plusieurs nations dans la Nouvelle France en l’année 1673 et 1674 by Louis Joliet. Joliet famously traveled from the Great Lakes down the Mississippi with the Jesuit Jacques Marquette in 1673.
- Cool trees.
- Baye des Puans: The French called the Ho-Chunk Puans, “Stinky People.” That was a translation of the Ojibwe word Wiinibiigoo (Winnebago), which means “stinky water people.” Green Bay is “green” in summer because of the stinky green algae that covers it. It’s not surprising that the Ho-Chunk no longer wish to be called the Winnebago or Puans.
- 8tagami: The French used 8 in Indian words for the English sound “W.” 8tagami (Odagami) is the Ojibwe/Odawa/Potawatomi word for the Meskwaki (Fox) People.
- Nations du Nord: To the French, the country between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay was the home of “an infinity of nations,” (check out this book by that title) small bands speaking dialects of Ojibwe, Cree, and Assiniboine Sioux.
- The Keweenaw is pretty small, but Lake Superior has generally the right shape.
French 1688
Carte de l’Amerique Septentrionnale by Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin: Franquelin created dozens of maps as the royal cartographer and hydrographer of New France.
- Lake Superior is remarkably accurate for this time period.
- Nations sous le nom d’Outouacs: “Nations under the name of Ottawas”–the French had a tendency to lump all Anishinaabe peoples in the west (Ojibwe, Ottawa, Potawatomi, etc.) under the name Outouais or Outouacs.
- River names, some are the same and some have changed. Bois Brule (Brule River) in French is “burnt wood” a translation of the Ojibwe wiisakode. I see ouatsicoto inside the name of the Brule on this map (Neouatsicoton), but I’m not 100% sure that’s wiisakode. Piouabic (biwaabik is Ojibwe word for Iron) for the Iron River is still around. Mosquesisipi (Mashkiziibi) or Swampy River is the Ojibwe for the Bad River.
- Madeline Island is Ile. St. Michel, showing that it was known at “Michael’s Island” a century before Michel Cadotte established his fur post.
- Ance Chagoüamigon: Point Chequamegon
French 1703
Carte de la riviere Longue : et de quelques autres, qui se dechargent dans le grand fleuve de Missisipi [sic] … by Louis Armand the Baron de Lahontan. Baron Lahontan was a military officer of New France who explored the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys.
- Lake Superior looks quite strange.
- “Sauteurs” and Jesuits at Sault Ste. Marie: the French called the Anishinaabe people at Sault Ste. Marie (mostly Crane Clan) the Sauteurs or Saulteaux, meaning “people of the falls.” This term came to encompass most of the people who would now be called Ojibwe.
- Fort Dulhut: This is not Duluth, Minnesota, but rather Kaministiquia (modern-day Thunder Bay). It is named for the same person–Daniel Greysolon, the Sieur du Lhut (Duluth).
- Riviere Du Tombeau: “The River of Tombs” at the west end of the Lake is the St. Croix River, which does not actually flow into Lake Superior but connects it to the Mississippi over a short portage from the Brule River.
- Chagouamigon (Chequamegon) is placed much too far to the east.
- The Fox River is gigantic flowing due east rather than north into Green Bay. We see the “Savage friends of the French:” Outagamis (Meskwaki/Fox), Malumins (Menominee), and Kikapous (Kickapoo).
French 1742
Carte des lacs du Canada by Jacques N. Bellin 1742. Bellin was a famous European mapmaker who compiled various maps together. The top map is a detail from the Carte de Lacs. The bottom one is from a slightly later map.
- Of the maps shown so far, this has the best depiction of Chequamegon, but Lake Superior as a whole is much less accurate than on Franquelin’s map from fifty years earlier.
- The mysterious “Isle Phillipeaux,” a second large island southeast of Isle Royale shows prominently on this map. Isle Phillipeaux is one of those cartographic oddities that pops up on maps for decades after it first appears even though it doesn’t exist.
- Cool river names not shown on Franquelin’s map: Atokas (Cranberry River) and Fond Plat “Flat-bottom” (Sand River)
- The region west of today’s Herbster, Wisconsin is lablled “Papoishika.” I did an extensive post about an area called Ka-puk-wi-e-kah in that same location.
- Ici etoit une Bourgade Considerable: “Here there was a large village.” This in reference to when Chequamegon was a center for the Huron, Ottawa (Odawa) and other refugee nations of the Iroquois Wars in the mid-1600s.
- “La Petite Fille”: Little Girl’s Point.
- Chequamegon Bay is Baye St. Charles
- Catagane: Kakagon, Maxisipi: Mashkizibi
- The islands are “The 12 Apostles.”
British 1778
A new map of North America, from the latest discoveries 1778. Engrav’d for Carver’s Travels. In 1766 Jonathan Carver became one of the first Englishmen to pass through this region. His narrative is a key source for the time period directly following the conquest of New France, when the British claimed dominion over the Great Lakes.
- Lake Superior still has two giant islands in the middle of it.
- The Chipeway (Ojibwe), Ottaway (Odawa), and Ottagamie (Meskwaki/Fox) seem to have neatly delineated nations. The reality was much more complex. By 1778, the Ojibwe had moved inland from Lake Superior and were firmly in control of areas like Lac du Flambeau and Lac Courte Oreilles, which had formerly been contested by the Meskwaki.
Dutch 1805
Charte von den Vereinigten Staaten von Nord-America nebst Louisiana by F.L. Gussefeld: Published in Europe.
- The Dutch never had a claim to this region. In fact, this is a copy of a German map. However, it was too cool-looking to pass up.
- Over 100 years after Franquelin’s fairly-accurate outline of Lake Superior, much of Europe was still looking at this junk.
- “Ober See” and Tschippeweer” are funny to me.
- Isle Phillipeau is hanging on strong into the nineteenth century.
American 1805
A map of Lewis and Clark’s track across the western portion of North America, from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean : by order of the executive of the United States in 1804, 5 & 6 / copied by Samuel Lewis from the original drawing of Wm. Clark. This map was compiled from the manuscript maps of Lewis and Clark.
- The Chequamegon Region supposedly became American territory with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The reality on the ground, however, was that the Ojibwe held sovereignty over their lands. The fur companies operating in the area were British-Canadian, and they employed mostly French-Ojibwe mix-bloods in the industry.
- This is a lovely-looking map, but it shows just how little the Americans knew about this area. Ironically, British Canada is very well-detailed, as is the route of Lewis and Clark and parts of the Mississippi that had just been visited by the American, Lt. Zebulon Pike.
- “Point Cheganega” is a crude islandless depiction of what we would call Point Detour.
- The Montreal River is huge and sprawling, but the Brule, Bad, and Ontonagon Rivers do not exist.
- To this map’s credit, there is only one Isle Royale. Goodbye Isle Phillipeaux. It was fun knowing you.
- It is striking how the American’s had access to decent maps of the British-Canadian areas of Lake Superior, but not of what was supposedly their own territory.
English 1811
A new map of North America from the latest authorities By John Cary of London. This map was published just before the outbreak of war between Britain and the United States.
- These maps are starting to look modern. The rivers are getting more accurate and the shape of Lake Superior is much better–though the shoreline isn’t done very well.
- Burntwood=Brule, Donagan=Ontonagon
- The big red line across Lake Superior is the US-British border. This map shows Isle Royale in Canada. The line stops at Rainy Lake because the fate of the parts of Minnesota and North Dakota in the Hudson Bay Watershed (claimed by the Hudson Bay Company) was not yet settled.
- “About this place a settlement of the North West Company”: This is Michel Cadotte’s trading post at La Pointe on Madeline Island. Cadotte was the son of a French trader and an Anishinaabe woman, and he traded for the British North West Company.
- It is striking that a London-made map created for mass consumption would so blatantly show a British company operating on the American side of the line. This was one of the issues that sparked the War of 1812. The Indian nations of the Great Lakes weren’t party to the Treaty of Paris and certainly did not recognize American sovereignty over their lands. They maintained the right to have British traders. America didn’t see it that way.
American 1820
Map of the United States of America : with the contiguous British and Spanish possessions / compiled from the latest & best authorities by John Melish
- Lake Superior shape and shoreline are looking much better.
- Bad River is “Red River.” I’ve never seen that as an alternate name for the Bad. I’m wondering if it’s a typo from a misreading of “bad”
- Copper mines are shown on the Donagon (Ontonagon) River. Serious copper mining in that region was still over a decade away. This probably references the ancient Indian copper-mining culture of Lake Superior or the handful of exploratory attempts by the French and British.
- The Brule-St. Croix portage is marked “Carrying Place.”
- No mention of Chequamegon or any of the Apostle Islands–just Sand Point.
- Isle Phillipeaux lives! All the way into the 1820s! But, it’s starting to settle into being what it probably was all along–the end of the Keweenaw mistakenly viewed from Isle Royale as an island rather than a peninsula.
American 1839 
From the Map of Michigan and part of Wisconsin Territory, part of the American Atlas produced under the direction of U.S. Postmaster General David H. Burr.
- Three years before the Ojibwe cede the Lake Superior shoreline of Wisconsin, we see how rapidly American knowledge of this area is growing in the 1830s.
- The shoreline is looking much better, but the islands are odd. Stockton (Presque Isle) and Outer Island have merged into a huge dinosaur foot while Madeline Island has lost its north end.
- Weird river names: Flagg River is Spencer’s, Siskiwit River is Heron, and Sand River is Santeaux. Fish Creek is the gigantic Talking Fish River, and “Raspberry” appears to be labeling the Sioux River rather than the farther-north Raspberry River.
- Points: Bark Point is Birch Bark, Detour is Detour, and Houghton is Cold Point. Chequamegon Point is Chegoimegon Point, but the bay is just “The Bay.”
- The “Factory” at Madeline Island and the other on Long Island refers to a fur post. This usage is common in Canada: Moose Factory, York Factory, etc. At this time period, the only Factory would have been on Madeline.
- The Indian Village is shown at Odanah six years before Protestant missionaries supposedly founded Odanah. A commonly-heard misconception is that the La Pointe Band split into Island and Bad River factions in the 1840s. In reality, the Ojibwe didn’t have fixed villages. They moved throughout the region based on the seasonal availability of food. The traders were on the island, and it provided access to good fishing, but the gardens, wild rice, and other food sources were more abundant near the Kakagon sloughs. Yes, those Ojibwe married into the trading families clustered more often on the Island, and those who got sick of the missionaries stayed more often at Bad River (at least until the missionaries followed them there), but there was no hard and fast split of the La Pointe Band until long after Bad River and Red Cliff were established as separate reservations.
American 1843
Hydrographical basin of the upper Mississippi River from astronomical and barometrical observations, surveys, and information by Joseph Nicollet. Nicollet is considered the first to accurately map the basin of the Upper Mississippi. His Chequamegon Region is pretty good also.
- You may notice this map decorating the sides of the Chequamegon History website.
- This post mentions this map and the usage of Apakwa for the Bark River.
- As with the 1839 map, this map’s Raspberry River appears to be the Sioux rather than the Miskomin (Raspberry) River.
- Madeline Island has a little tail, but the Islands have their familiar shapes.
- Shagwamigon, another variant spelling
- Mashkeg River: in Ojibwe the Bad River is Mashkizibi (Swamp River). Mashkiig is the Ojibwe word for swamp. In the boreal forests of North America, this word had migrated into English as muskeg. It’s interesting how Nicollet labels the forks, with the White River fork being the most prominent.
That’s all for now folks. Thanks for covering 200 years of history with me through these maps. If you have any questions, or have any cool observations of your own, go ahead and post them in the comments.
This post is on of several that seeks to determine how many images exist of Great Buffalo, the famous La Pointe Ojibwe chief who died in 1855. To learn why this is necessary, read this post introducing the Great Chief Buffalo Picture Search.
Today’s post looks at two paintings from the 1820s of Ojibwe men named Bizhiki (Buffalo). The originals are lost forever, but the images still exist in the lithographs that follow.
Pee-che-kir: A Chippewa Chief Lithograph from McKenney and Hall’s History of the Indian Tribes of North America based on destroyed original by Charles Bird King; 1824. (Wikimedia Images)
Pe-shick-ee: A Celebrated Chippeway Chief from the Aboriginal Port-Folio by James Otto Lewis. The original painting was done by Lewis at Prairie du Chien or Fond du Lac of Lake Superior in 1825 or 1826 (Wisconsin Historical Society).
1824 Delegation to Washington
Chronologically, the first known image to show an Ojibwe chief named Buffalo appeared in the mid-1820s at time when the Ojibwe and the United States government were still getting to know each other. Prior to the 1820s, the Americans viewed the Ojibwe as a large and powerful nation. They had an uncomfortably close history with the British, who were till lurking over the border in Canada, but they otherwise inhabited a remote country unfit for white settlement. To the Ojibwe, the Americans were chimookomaan, “long knives,” in reference to the swords carried by the military officers who were the first Americans to come into their country. It was one of these long knives, Thomas McKenney, who set in motion the gathering of hundreds of paintings of Indians. Two of these showed men named Buffalo (Bizhiki).
Charles Bird King: Self portrait 1815 (Wikimedia Images)
McKenney was appointed the first Superintendent of Indian Affairs in 1824. Indian Affairs was under the Department of War at that time, and McKenneyʼs men in the West were mostly soldiers. He, like many in his day, believed that the Indian nations of North America were destined for extinction within a matter of decades. To preserve a record of these peoples, he commissioned over 100 portraits of various Indian delegates who came to Washington from all over the U.S. states and territories. Most of the painting work fell to Charles Bird King, a skilled Washington portrait artist. Beginning in 1822, King painted Indian portraits for two decades. He would paint famous men like Black Hawk, Red Jacket, Joseph Brandt, and Major Ridge, but Kingʼs primary goal was not to record the stories of important individuals so much as it was to capture the look of a vanishing race.
No-tin copied from 1824 Charles Bird King original by Henry Inman. Noodin (Wind) was a prominent chief from the St. Croix country. King’s painting of Buffalo from St. Croix was probably also copied by Inman, but its location is unknown (Wikimedia Images).
In July of 1824, William Clark, the famous companion of Meriwether Lewis, brought a delegation of Sauks, Foxes, and Ioways to Washington to negotiate land cessions. Lawrence Taliaferro, the Indian agent at Fort St. Anthony (now Minneapolis), brought representatives of the Sioux, Menominee, and Ojibwe to observe the treaty process. The St. Croix chiefs Buffalo and Noodin (Wind) represented the Ojibwe.
Charles Bird King painted portraits of most of the Indians listed here in the the 1824 Washington group by Niles’ Weekly Register, July 31, 1824. (Google Books)
The St. Croix chiefs were treated well: taken to shows, and to visit the sights of the eastern cities. However, there was a more sinister motivation behind the governmentʼs actions. McKenney made sure the chiefs saw the size and scope of the U.S. Military facilities in Washington, the unspoken message being that resistance to American expansion was impossible. This message seems to have resonated with Buffalo and Noodin of St. Croix as it is referred to repeatedly in the official record. McKenney pointed Buffalo out as a witness to American power at the Treaty of Fond du Lac (1826). Schoolcraft and Allen mention Buffalo’s trip in their own ill-fated journey up the St. Croix in 1832 (see it in this post), and Noodin talks about the soldiers he saw in Washington in the treaty deliberations in the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters.
While in Washington, Buffalo, Noodin, and most of the other Indians in the group sat with King for portraits in oil. Buffalo was shown wearing a white shirt and cloak, holding a pipe, with his face painted red. The paintings were hung in the offices of the Department of War, and the chiefs returned to their villages.
James Otto Lewis
The following summer, St. Croix Buffalo and Noodin joined chiefs from villages throughout the Ojibwe country, as well as from the Sioux, Sac and Fox, Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Ioway, Ottawa, and Potawatomi at Prairie du Chien. The Americans had called them there to sign a treaty to establish firm borders between their nations. The stated goal was to end the wars between the Sioux and Ojibwe, but it also provided the government an opportunity to assert its authority over the country and to set the stage for future land cessions.
McKenney did not attend the Treaty of Prairie du Chien leaving it to Clark and Lewis Cass to act as commissioners. A quick scan of the Ojibwe signatories shows “Pee-see- ker or buffalo, St. Croix Band,” toward the bottom. Looking up to the third signature, we see “Gitspee Waskee, or le boeuf of la pointe lake Superior,” so both the St. Croix and La Pointe Buffalos were present among the dozens of signatures. One of the government witnesses listed was an artist from Philadelphia named James Otto Lewis. Over the several days of negotiation, Lewis painted scenes of the treaty grounds as well as portraits of various chiefs. These were sent back to Washington, some were copied and improved by King or other artists, and they were added to the collection of the War Department.
The following year, 1826, McKenney himself traveled to Fond du Lac at the western end of Lake Superior to make a new treaty with the Ojibwe concerning mineral exploration on the south shore. Lewis accompanied him and continued to create images. At some point in these two years, a Lewis portrait of an Ojibwe chief named Pe-schick-ee (Bizhiki) appeared in McKenneyʼs growing War Department collection.
Lithographs
By 1830, McKenney had been dismissed from his position and turned his attention to publishing a portfolio of lithographs from the paintings in the War Department collection. Hoping to cash in his own paintings by beating McKenney to the lithograph market, Lewis released The Aboriginal Port Folio in May of 1835. It included 72 color plates, one of which was Pe-schick-ee: A Celebrated Chippeway Chief.
Pencil sketch of Pee-che-kir by Charles Bird King. King made these sketches after his original paintings to assist in making copies. (Herman J. Viola, The Indian Legacy of Charles Bird King.)
Due to financial issues The History of the Indian Tribes of North America, by McKenney with James Hall, would not come out in full release until the mid 1840s. The three-volume work became a bestseller and included color plates of 120 Indians, 95 of which are accompanied by short biographies. Most of the lithographs were derived from works by King, but some were from Lewis and other artists. Kingʼs portrait of Pee-Che-Kir: A Chippewa Chief was included among them, unfortunately without a biography. However, we know its source as the painting of the St. Croix Buffalo in 1824. Noodin and several others from that delegation also made it into lithograph form. The original War Department paintings, including both Pee-Che-Kir and Pe-schick-ee were sent to the Smithsonian, where they were destroyed in a fire in 1858. Oil copies of some of the originals, including Henry Inmanʼs copy of Kingʼs portrait of Noodin, survive, but the lithographs remain the only known versions of the Buffalo portraits other than a pencil sketch of the head of Pee-Che-Kir done by King.
The man in the Lewis lithograph is difficult to identify. The only potential clue we get from the image itself is the title of “A Celebrated Chippeway Chief,” and information that it was painted at Prairie du Chien in 1825. To many, “celebrated” would indicate Buffalo from La Pointe, but in 1825, he was largely unknown to the Americans while the St. Croix Buffalo had been to Washington. In the 1820s, La Pointe Buffaloʼs stature was nowhere near what it would become. However, he was a noted speaker from a prominent family and his signature is featured prominently in the treaty. Any assumptions about which chief was more “celebrated” are difficult.
In dress and pose, the man painted by Lewis resembles the King portrait of St. Croix Buffalo. This has caused some to claim that the Lewis is simply the original version of the King. King did copy and improve several of Lewisʼ works, but the copies tended to preserve in some degree the grotesque, almost cartoonish, facial features that are characteristic of the self-taught Lewis (see this post for another Lewis portrait). The classically-trained King painted highly realistic faces, and side-by-side comparison of the lithographs shows very little facial resemblance between Kingʼs Pee-Che-Kir and Lewisʼ Pe-schick-ee.
Thomas L. McKenney painted in 1856 by Charles Loring Elliott (Wikimedia Images)
Of the 147 War Department Indian portraits cataloged by William J. Rhees of the Smithsonian prior to the fire, 26 are described as being painted by “King from Lewis,” all of which are from 1826 or after. Most of the rest are attributed solely to King. Almost all the members of the 1824 trip to Washington are represented in the catalog. “Pee-che-ker, Buffalo, Chief of the Chippeways.” does not have an artist listed, but Noodin and several of the others from the 1824 group are listed as King, and it is safe to assume Buffalo’s should be as well. The published lithograph of Pee-che-kir was attributed solely to King, and not “King from Lewis” as others are. This further suggests that the two Buffalo lithographs are separate portraits from separate sittings, and potentially of separate chiefs.
Even without all this evidence, we can be confident that the King is not a copy of the Lewis because the King portrait was painted in 1824, and the Lewis was painted no earlier than 1825. There is, however, some debate about when the Lewis was painted. From the historical record, we know that Lewis was present at both Prairie du Chien and Fond du Lac along with both the La Pointe Buffalo and the St. Croix Buffalo. When Pe- schick-ee was released, Lewis identified it as being painted at Prairie du Chien. However, the work has also been placed at Fond du Lac.
The modern identification of Pee-che-kir as a copy of Pe-schick-ee seems to have originated with the work of James D. Horan. In his 1972 book, The McKenney-Hall Portrait Gallery of American Indians, he reproduces all the images from History of the Indian Tribes, and adds his own analysis. On page 206, he describes the King portrait of Pee-che-kir with:
“Peechekir (or Peechekor, Buffalo) was “a solid, straight formed Indian,” Colonel McKenney recalled many years after the Fond du Lac treaty where he had met the chief. Apparently the Chippewa played a minor role at the council.
Original by James Otto Lewis, Fond du Lac council, 1826, later copied in Washington by Charles Bird King.”
Presumably, the original he refers to would be the Lewis portrait of Pe-schick-ee. However, Horanʼs statement that McKenney met St. Croix Buffalo at Fond du Lac is false. As we already know, the two men met in 1824 in Washington. It is puzzling how Horan did not know this considering he includes the following account on page 68:
The first Indian to step out of the closely packed lines of stone-faced red men made McKenney feel at home; it was a chief he had met a few years before in Washington. The Indian held up his hand in a sign of peace and called out:
“Washigton [sic]… Washington… McKenney shook hands with the chief and nodded to Lewis but the artist had already started to sketch.”
McKenneyʼs original account identifies this chief as none other than St. Croix Buffalo:
In half an hour after, another band came in who commenced, as did the others, by shaking hands, followed, of course, by smoking. In this second band I recognized Pee-che-kee, or rather he recognized me–a chief who had been at Washington, and whose likeness hangs in my office there. I noticed that his eye was upon me, and that he smiled, and was busily employed speaking to an Indian who sat beside him, and no doubt about me. His first word on coming up to speak to me was, “Washington”–pointing to the east. The substance of his address was, that he was glad to see me–he felt his heart jump when he first saw me–it made him think of Washington, of his great father, of the good living he had when he visited us–how kind we all were to him, and that he should never forget any of it.
From this, Horan should have known not only that the two men knew each other, but also that a portrait of the chief (Kingʼs) already was part of the War Department collection and therefore existed before the Lewis portrait. Horanʼs description of Lewis already beginning his sketch does not appear in McKenneyʼs account and seems to invented. This is not the only instance where Horan confuses facts or takes wide license with Ojibwe history. His statement quoted above that the Ojibwe “played a minor role” in the Treaty of Fond du Lac, when they were the only Indian nation present and greatly outnumbered the Americans, should disqualify Horan from being treated as any kind of authority on the topic. However, he is not the only one to place the Lewis portrait of Pe-schick-ee at Fond du Lac rather than Prairie du Chien.
Between, 1835 and 1838 Lewis released 80 lithographs, mostly of individual Indians, in a set of ten installments. He had intended to include an eleventh with biographies. However, a dispute with the publisher prevented the final installment from coming out immediately. His London edition, released in 1844 by another publisher, included a few short biographies but none for Pe-schick-ee. Most scholars assumed that he never released the promised eleventh installment. However, one copy of a self-published 1850 pamphlet donated by Lewisʼs grandson exists in the Free Library of Philadelphia. In it are the remaining biographies. Number 30 reads:
No. 30. Pe-shisk-Kee. A Chippewa warrior from Lake Huron, noted for his attachment to the British, with whom he always sided. At the treaty held at Fond du Lac, when the Council opened, he appeared with a British medal of George the III. on his breast, and carrying a British flag, which Gen. Cass, one of the Commissioners, promptly and indignantly placed under his feet, and pointing to the stars and stripes, floating above them, informed him that that was the only one permitted to wave there.
The Chief haughtily refused to participate in the business of the Council, until, by gifts, he became partly conciliated, when he joined in their deliberations. Painted at Fond du Lac, in 1826.
This new evidence further clouds the story. Initially, this description does not seem to fit what we know about either the La Pointe or the St. Croix Buffalo, as both were born near Lake Superior and lived in Wisconsin. Both men were also inclined to be friendly toward the American government. The St. Croix Buffalo had recently been to Washington, and the La Pointe Buffalo frequently spoke of his desire for good relations with the United States in later years. It is also troubling that Lewis contradicts his earlier identification of the location of the portrait at Prairie du Chien.
It is unlikely that Pe-schick-ee depicts a third chief given that no men named Buffalo other than the two mentioned signed the Treaty of Fond du Lac, and the far-eastern bands of Ojibwe from Lake Huron were not part of treaty councils with the Lake Superior bands. One can speculate that perhaps Lewis, writing 25 years after the original painting, mistook the story of Pe-schick-ee with that one of the many other chiefs he met in his travels, but there are some suggestions that it might, in fact, be La Pointe Buffalo.
The La Pointe Band traded with the British in the other side of Lake Superior for years after the War of 1812 supposedly confirmed Chequamegon as American territory. If you’ve read this post, you’ll know that Buffalo from La Pointe was a follower of Tenskwatawa, whose brother Tecumseh fought beside the British. On July 22, 1822, Schoolcraft writes:
At that place [Chequamegon] lived, in comparatively modern times, Wabojeeg and Andaigweos, and there still lives one of their descendants in Gitchee Waishkee, the Great First-born, or, as he is familiarly called, Pezhickee, or the Buffalo, a chief decorated with British insignia. His band is estimated at one hundred and eighteen souls, of whom thirty-four are adult males, forty-one females, and forty-three children.
It’s possible that it was La Pointe Buffalo with the British flag. Archival research into the Treaty of Fond du Lac could potentially clear this up. If I stumble across any, I’ll be sure to add it here. For now, we can’t say one way or the other which Buffalo is in the Lewis portrait.
The Verdict
Not Chief Buffalo from La Pointe: This is Chief Buffalo from St. Croix.
Inconclusive: This could be Buffalo from La Pointe or Buffalo from St. Croix.
Sources:
Horan, James David, and Thomas Loraine McKenney. The McKenney-Hall Portrait Gallery of American Indians. New York, NY: Bramhall House, 1986. 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/>.
Lewis, James O., The Aboriginal Port-Folio: A Collection of Portraits of the Most Celebrated Chiefs of the North American Indians. Philadelphia: J.O. Lewis, 1835-1838. Print.
———– Catalogue of the Indian Gallery,. New York: J.O. Lewis, 1850. Print.
Loew, Patty. Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal.
Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 2001. Print.
McKenney, Thomas Loraine. Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes of the Character and Customs of the Chippeway Indians, and of Incidents Connected with the Treaty of Fond Du Lac. Baltimore: F. Lucas, Jun’r., 1827. Print.
McKenney, Thomas Loraine, and James Hall. Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of Ninety-five of 120 Principal Chiefs from the Indian Tribes of North America. Washington: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1967. Print.
Moore, Robert J. Native Americans: A Portrait : The Art and Travels of Charles Bird King, George Catlin, and Karl Bodmer. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1997. Print.
Niles, Hezekiah, William O. Niles, Jeremiah Hughes, and George Beatty, eds. “Indians.” Niles’ Weekly Register [Baltimore] 31 July 1824, Miscellaneous sec.: 363. Print.
Rhees, William J. An Account of the Smithsonian Institution. Washington: T. McGill, 1859. 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.
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, and Philip P. Mason. Expedition to Lake Itasca; the Discovery of the Source of the Mississippi,. [East Lansing]: Michigan State UP, 1958. Print.
Schoolcraft, Henry R. Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers: With Brief Notices of Passing Events, Facts, and Opinions, A.D. 1812 to A.D. 1842. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo and, 1851. Print.
Viola, Herman J. The Indian Legacy of Charles Bird King. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1976. Print.
Warren, William W., and Theresa M. Schenck. History of the Ojibway People. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2009. Print.
Special thanks to Theresa Schenck of the University of Wisconsin and Charles Lippert for helping me work through this information, and to Michael Edmonds of the Wisconsin Historical Society, and Alice Cornell (formerly of the University of Cincinnati) for tracking down the single copy of the unpublished James Otto Lewis catalog.
In the Fall of 1850, the Lake Superior Ojibwe (Chippewa) bands were called to receive their annual payments at Sandy Lake on the Mississippi River. The money was compensation for the cession of most of northern Wisconsin, Upper Michigan, and parts of Minnesota in the treaties of 1837 and 1842. Before that, payments had always taken place in summer at La Pointe. That year they were switched to Sandy Lake as part of a government effort to remove the entire nation from Wisconsin and Michigan in blatant disregard of promises made to the Ojibwe just a few years earlier.
There isn’t enough space in this post to detail the entire Sandy Lake Tragedy (I’ll cover more at a later date), but the payments were not made, and 130-150 Ojibwe people, mostly men, died that fall and winter at Sandy Lake. Over 250 more died that December and January, trying to return to their villages without food or money.
George Warren (b.1823) was the son of Truman Warren and Charlotte Cadotte and the cousin of William Warren. (photo source unclear, found on Canku Ota Newsletter)
If you are a regular reader of Chequamegon History, you will recognize the name of William Warren as the writer of History of the Ojibway People. William’s father, Lyman, was an American fur trader at La Pointe. His mother, Mary Cadotte was a member of the influential Ojibwe-French Cadotte family of Madeline Island. William, his siblings, and cousins were prominent in this era as interpreters and guides. They were people who could navigate between the Ojibwe and mix-blood cultures that had been in this area for centuries, and the ever-encroaching Anglo-American culture.
The Warrens have a mixed legacy when it comes to the Sandy Lake Tragedy. They initially supported the removal efforts, and profited from them as government employees, even though removal was completely against the wishes of their Ojibwe relatives. However, one could argue this support for the government came from a misguided sense of humanitarianism. I strongly recommend William W. Warren: The Life, Letters, and Times of an Ojibwe Leader by Theresa Schenck if you are interested in Warren family and their motivations. The Wisconsin Historical Society has also digitized several Warren family letters, and that’s what prompted this post. I decided to transcribe and analyze two of these letters–one from before the tragedy and one from after it.
The first letter is from Leonard Wheeler, a missionary at Bad River, to William Warren. Initially, I chose to transcribe this one because I wanted to get familiar with Wheeler’s handwriting. The Historical Society has his papers in Ashland, and I’m planning to do some work with them this summer. This letter has historical value beyond handwriting, however. It shows the uncertainty that was in the air prior to the removal. Wheeler doesn’t know whether he will have to move his mission to Minnesota or not, even though it is only a month before the payments are scheduled.
Sept 6, 1850
Dear Friend,
I have time to write you but a few lines, which I do chiefly to fulfill my promise to Hole in the Day’s son. Will you please tell him I and my family are expecting to go Below and visit our friends this winter and return again in the spring. We heard at Sandy Lake, on our way home, that this chief told [Rev.?] Spates that he was expecting a teacher from St. Peters’ if so, the Band will not need another missionary. I was some what surprised that the man could express a desire to have me come and live among his people, and then afterwards tell Rev Spates he was expecting a teacher this fall from St. Peters’. I thought perhaps there was some where a little misunderstanding. Mr Hall and myself are entirely undecided what we shall do next Spring. We shall wait a little and see what are to be the movements of gov. Mary we shall leave with Mr Hall, to go to school during the winter. We think she will have a better opportunity for improvement there, than any where else in the country. We reached our home in safety, and found our families all well. My wife wishes a kind remembrance and joins me in kind regards to your wife, Charlotte and all the members of your family. If Truman is now with you please remember us to him also. Tomorrow we are expecting to go to La Pointe and take the Steam Boat for the Sault monday. I can scarcely realize that nine years have passed away since in company with yourself and Pa[?] Edward[?] we came into the country.
Mary is now well and will probably write you by the bearer of this.
Very truly yours
L. H. Wheeler
By the 1850s, Young Hole in the Day was positioning himself to the government as “head chief of all the Chippewas,” but to the people of this area, he was still Gwiiwiizens (Boy), his famous father’s son. (Minnesota Historical Society)Samuel Spates was a missionary at Sandy Lake. Sherman Hall started as a missionary at La Pointe and later moved to Crow Wing.
Mary, Charlotte, and Truman Warren are William’s siblings.
The Wheeler letter is interesting for what it reveals about the position of Protestant missionaries in the 1850s Chequamegon region. From the 1820s onward, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent missionaries, mostly Congregationalists and Presbyterians from New England, to the Lake Superior Country. Their names, Wheeler, Hall, Ely, Boutwell, Ayer, etc. are very familiar to historians, because they produced hundreds of pages of letters and diaries that reveal a great deal about this time period.
Leonard H. Wheeler (Wisconsin Historical Society)
Ojibwe people reacted to these missionaries in different ways. A few were openly hostile, while others were friendly and visited prayer, song, and school meetings. Many more just ignored them or regarded them as a simple nuisance. In forty-plus years, the amount of Ojibwe people converted to Protestantism could be counted on one hand, so in that sense the missions were a spectacular failure. However, they did play a role in colonization as a vanguard for Anglo-American culture in the region. Unlike the traders, who generally married into Ojibwe communities and adapted to local ways to some degree, the missionaries made a point of trying to recreate “civilization in the wilderness.” They brought their wives, their books, and their art with them. Because they were not working for the government or the Fur Company, and because they were highly respected in white-American society, there were times when certain missionaries were able to help the Ojibwe advance their politics. The aftermath of the Sandy Lake Tragedy was such a time for Wheeler.
This letter comes before the tragedy, however, and there are two things I want to point out. First, Wheeler and Sherman Hall don’t know the tragedy is coming. They were aware of the removal, and tentatively supported it on the grounds that it might speed up the assimilation and conversion of the Ojibwe, but they are clearly out of the loop on the government’s plans.
Second, it seems to me that Hole in the Day is giving the missionaries the runaround on purpose. While Wheeler and Spates were not powerful themselves, being hostile to them would not help the Ojibwe argument against the removal. However, most Ojibwe did not really want what the missionaries had to offer. Rather than reject them outright and cause a rift, the chief is confusing them. I say this because this would not be the only instance in the records of Ojibwe people giving ambiguous messages to avoid having their children taken.
Anyway, that’s my guess on what’s going on with the school comment, but you can’t be sure from one letter. Young Hole in the Day was a political genius, and I strongly recommend Anton Treuer’s The Assassination of Hole in the Day if you aren’t familiar with him.
I read this as “passed away since in company with yourself and Pa[?] Edward we came into the country.” Who was Wheeler’s companion when a young William guided him to La Pointe? I intend to find out and fix this quote. (from original in the digital collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society)
In 1851, Warren was in failing health and desperately trying to earn money for his family. He accepted the position of government interpreter and conductor of the removal of the Chippewa River bands. He feels removing is still the best course of action for the Ojibwe, but he has serious doubts about the government’s competence. He hears the desires of the chiefs to meet with the president, and sees the need for a full rice harvest before making the journey to La Pointe. Warren decides to stall at Lac Courte Oreilles until all the Ojibwe bands can unite and act as one, and does not proceed to Lake Superior as ordered by Watrous. The agent is getting very nervous.
Clement and Paul (pictured) Hudon Beaulieu, and Edward Conner, were mix-blooded traders who like the Warrens were capable of navigating Anglo-American culture while maintaining close kin relationships in several Ojibwe communities. Clement Beaulieu and William Warren had been fierce rivals ever since Beaulieu’s faction drove Lyman Warren out of the American Fur Company. (Photo original unknown: uploaded to findadagrave.com by Joan Edmonson)For more on Cob-wa-wis (Oshkaabewis) and his Wisconsin River band, see this post.
“Perish” is what I see, but I don’t know who that might be. Is there a “Parrish”, or possibly a “Bineshii” who could have carried Watrous’ letter? I’m on the lookout. (from original in the digital collections of the Wisconsin Historical Society)
Aug 9th 1851
Friend Warren
I am now very anxiously waiting the arrival of yourself and the Indians that are embraced in your division to come out to this place.
Mr. C. H. Beaulieu has arrived from the Lake Du Flambeau with nearly all that quarter and by an express sent on in advance I am informed that P. H. Beaulieu and Edward Conner will be here with Cob-wa-wis and they say the entire Wisconsin band, there had some 32 of the Pillican Lake band come out and some now are in Conner’s Party.
I want you should be here without fail in 10 days from this as I cannot remain longer, I shall leave at the expiration of this time for Crow Wing to make the payment to the St. Croix Bands who have all removed as I learn from letters just received from the St. Croix. I want your assistance very much in making the Crow Wing payment and immediately after the completion of this, (which will not take over two days[)] shall proceed to Sandy Lake to make the payment to the Mississippi and Lake Bands.
The goods are all at Sandy Lake and I shall make the entire payment without delay, and as much dispatch as can be made it; will be quite lots enough for the poor Indians. Perish[?] is the bearer of this and he can tell you all my plans better then I can write them. give My respects to your cousin George and beli[e]ve me
Your friend
J. S. Watrous
W. W. Warren Esq.}
P. S. Inform the Indians that if they are not here by the time they will be struck from the roll. I am daily expecting a company of Infantry to be stationed at this place.
JSW
Sources:
Schenck, Theresa M., William W. Warren: The Life, Letters, and times of an Ojibwe Leader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2007. Print.
Treuer, Anton. The Assassination of Hole in the Day. St. Paul, MN: Borealis, 2010. Print.
Warren, William W., and Theresa M. Schenck. History of the Ojibway People. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2009. Print.
Chief Buffalo Picture Search: Introduction
May 26, 2013
Click the question mark under the picture to see if it shows Chief Buffalo.
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Buffalo, the 19th-century chief of the La Pointe Ojibwe, is arguably the most locally-famous person in history of the Chequamegon region. He is best known for his 1852 trip to Washington D.C., undertaken when he was thought to be over ninety years old. Buffalo looms large in the written records of the time, and makes many appearances on this website.
He is especially important to the people of Red Cliff. He is the founding father of their small community at the northern tip of Wisconsin in the sense that in the Treaty of 1854, he negotiated for Red Cliff (then called the Buffalo Estate or the Buffalo Bay Reservation) as a separate entity from the main La Pointe Band reservation at Bad River. Buffalo is a direct ancestor to several of the main families of Red Cliff, and many tribal members will proudly tell of how they connect back to him. Finally, Buffaloʼs fight to keep the Ojibwe in Wisconsin, in the face of a government that wanted to move them west, has served as an inspiration to those who try to maintain their cultural traditions and treaty rights. It is unfortunate, then, that through honest mistakes and scholarly carelessness, there is a lot of inaccurate information out there about him.
During the early twentieth century, the people of Red Cliff maintained oral traditions about about his life while the written records were largely being forgotten by mainstream historians. However, the 1960s and ʻ70s brought a renewed interest in American Indian history and the written records came back to light. With them came no fewer than seven purported images of Buffalo, some of them vouched for by such prestigious institutions as the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the U.S. Capitol. These images, ranged from well-known lithographs produced during Buffaloʼs lifetime, to a photograph taken five years after he died, to a symbolic representation of a clan animal originally drawn on birch bark. These images continue to appear connected to Buffalo in both scholarly and mainstream works. However, there is no proof that any of them show the La Pointe chief, and there is clear evidence that several of them do not show him.
The problem this has created is not merely one of mistaken identity in pictures. To reconcile incorrect pictures with ill-fitting facts, multiple authors have attempted to create back stories where none exist, placing Buffalo where he wasnʼt, in order for the pictures to make sense. This spiral of compounding misinformation has begun to obscure the legacy of this important man, and therefore, this study attempts to sort it out.
Bizhikiwag
The confusion over the images stems from the fact that there was more than one Ojibwe leader in the mid-nineteenth century named Bizhiki (Buffalo). Because Ojibwe names are descriptive, and often come from dreams, visions, or life experiences, one can be lead to believe that each name was wholly unique. However, this is not the case. Names were frequently repeated within families or even outside of families. Waabojiig (White Fisher) and Bugone-Giizhig (Hole in the Day) are prominent examples of names from Buffaloʼs lifetime that were given to unrelated men from different villages and clans. Buffalo himself carried two names, neither of which was particularly unique. Whites usually referred to him as Buffalo, Great Buffalo, or LaBoeuf, translations of his name Bizhiki. In Ojibwe, he is just as often recorded by the name Gichi-Weshkii. Weshkii, literally “new one,” was a name often given to firstborn sons in Ojibwe families. Gichi is a prefix meaning “big” or “great,” both of which could be used to describe Buffalo.
Nichols and Nyholm translate Bizhiki (Besheke, Peezhickee, Bezhike, etc.) as both “cow” and “buffalo.” Originally it meant “buffalo” in Ojibwe. As cattle became more common in Ojibwe country, the term expanded to include both animals to the point where the primary meaning of the word today is “cow” in some dialects. These dialects will use Mashkodebizhiki (Prairie Cow) to mean buffalo. However, this term is a more recent addition to the language and was not used by individuals named Buffalo in the mid- nineteenth century. (National Park Service photo)
One glance at the 1837 Treaty of St. Peters shows three Buffalos. Pe-zhe-kins (Bizhikiins) or “Young Buffalo” signed as a warrior from Leech Lake. “Pe-zhe-ke, or the Buffalo” was the first chief to sign from the St. Croix region. Finally, the familiar Buffalo is listed as the first name under those from La Pointe on Lake Superior. It is these two other Buffalos, from St. Croix and Leech Lake, whose faces grace several of the images supposedly showing Buffalo of La Pointe. All three of these men were chiefs, all three were Ojibwe, and all three represented their people in Washington D.C. Because they share a name, their histories have unfortunately been mashed together.
Who were these three men?
Treaty of St. Peters (1837) For more on Dagwagaane (Ta-qua-ga-na), check out the People Index.
The familiar Buffalo was born at La Pointe in the middle of the 18th century. He was a member of the Loon Clan, which had become a chiefly clan under the leadership of his grandfather Andeg-wiiyas (Crowʼs Meat). Although he was already elderly by the time the Lake Superior Ojibwe entered into their treaty relationship with the United States, his skills as an orator were such that by the Treaty of 1854, one year before his death, Buffalo was the most influential leader not only of La Pointe, but of the whole Lake Superior country.
Treaty of St. Peters (1837) For more on Gaa-bimabi (Ka-be-ma-be), check out the People Index.
William Warren, describes the St. Croix Buffalo as a member of the Bear Clan who originally came to the St. Croix from Sault Ste. Marie after committing a murder. He goes on to declare that this Buffaloʼs chieftainship came only as a reward from traders who appreciated his trapping skills. Warren does admit, however, that Buffaloʼs influence grew and surpassed that of the hereditary St. Croix leaders.
Treaty of St. Peters (1837) For more on Flat Mouth, check out the People Index.
The “Young Buffalo,” of the Pillager or Leech Lake Ojibwe of northern Minnesota was a war chief who also belonged to the Bear Clan and was considerably younger than the other two Buffalos (the La Pointe and St. Croix chiefs were about the same age). As Biizhikiins grew into his later adulthood, he was known simply as Bizhiki (Buffalo). His mark on history came largely after the La Pointe Buffaloʼs death, during the politics surrounding the various Ojibwe treaties in Minnesota and in the events surrounding the US-Dakota War of 1862.
The Picture Search
In the coming months, I will devote several posts to analyzing the reported images of Chief Buffalo that I am aware of. The first post on this site can be considered the first in the series. Keep checking back for more.
Chequamegon History 