Wisconsin's Past and Present

Wisconsin's Sesquicentennial was celebrated in 1998 with the publication of Wisconsin's Past and Present: A Historical Atlas (University of Wisconsin Press). The Wisconsin Cartographer's Guild (author of the book) managed to simplify the coming of the New York Indians to Wisconsin in the graphic below (page 7 in the book). I wish they hadn't referred to the Brothertown nation as "Brotherton," and some of the years given could be debated, but overall the map is accurate enough.




The purpose of this second map (also on page 7) is to diagram lands lost by the Menominee, an Algonkian Nation that once covered much of Wisconsin. The Stockbridge and Brothertown Reservations of the 1830's on the east shore of Lake Winnebago are outlined - they were a carve-out of Menominee lands. In 1854, the Menominee Nation signed a treaty which gave them a rectangular reservation (approximately in the center of this map) and only two years later, the Stockbridge Mohicans' new reservation was another Menominee carve-out.

This map shows Wisconsin in 1998. Reservations are denoted by a dull purple color - they include the Lac Courte Oreilles, Bad River, Lac du Flambeau, Menominee, Stockbridge, and, of course, the Oneida reservation (the Oneidas also came from New York but they spoke an Iroquois dialect). Maybe you can also see the Red Cliff Reservation which looks like a thick line on the shore of Lake Superior. The Mole Lake Sokoagan Band has such a small reservation that it doesn't show up on this map. Also the Forest County Potawotami and the Ho-Chunk (formerly known as Winnebago) have checkerboard land holdings that are impossible to depict on this kind of a map.