What was Captain Hendrick's Role in the Western Expansion of the United States?

In researching the life of Captain Hendrick Aupaumut, chief of the Stockbridge Mohicans and also an official of the United States government, I've had to accept that there are a lot of grey areas and a lot of blanks that will never be filled in. I have no doubt that he was "a man of integrity," fighting for what he believed in.  The historians that called him "befuddled" or a "stooge" for the United States must have been missing something.

Then again, Captain Hendrick helped facilitate treaties in Ohio and Indiana that turned Indian land over to the US government.  My thinking is that he knew that there would be white expansion and believed that tribes would continue to lose their land and suffer until they adopted Christianity and "civilization."  This is pretty much the same as what you will read in the three scholarly articles written about him (see below for citation), so I thank James and Jeanne Ronda, Alan Taylor, and Rachel Wheeler for their work on this topic.

My recent posts about the White River Delawares and Tenskawatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, are the context in which Captain Hendrick worked.  President Jefferson's administration hired Captain Hendrick to serve as the Delawares' "Civilizing Agent" from 1809 until the War of 1812 temporarily forced them to a safer location.  During that time he did what he could to stop the Shawnee Prophet's movement and John Sergeant (Jr.), the Stockbridges' missionary, gave him credit for doing exactly that:

“through the judicious arrangements of Capt. Hendrick, the influence of the Prophet is nearly at an end.” 

That statement was preserved for us in a book written by Electa Jones of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, printed in 1854.  Unfortunately, Jones doesn't say when John Sergeant made that statement, making it more difficult to prove its relevance in the course of American history.

We do know that Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, became less important between 1809 and 1813.  Until recently the showdown over western expansion of the United States that was going on was seen as a battle personified by the conflict between William Henry Harrison and Tecumseh.  But current historians recognize that Tecumseh didn't become important in his brother's movement until it became political. 

Will Captain Hendrick someday also be recognized in the same way that historians remember Harrison and the Shawnee brothers?  I think that is unlikely.  There are just too many grey areas and too many blanks that will never be filled in.





Sources:

Ronda, James and Jeanne. "'As They Were Faithful': Chief Hendrick Aupaumut and the Struggle for Stockbridge Survival, 1757-1830," American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 3, 1979: 43-55.

Taylor, Alan. Captain Hendrick Auapaumut: The Dilemmas of an Intercultural Broker,"  Ethnohistory, Summer, 1996.

Wheeler, Rachel.  "Hendrick Aupaumut, Christian-Mahican Prophet,"

Journal of the Early Republic; Summer 2005, Vol. 25 Issue 2, p187

The Gods of Prophetstown - with Comments from the Author

In a recent post, I told about the Delaware witch purge of 1806.  This witch hunt/purge is the topic of one chapter of a new book by University of Auburn history professor Adam Jortner.  The full title is The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier.

Essentially the book contrasts William Henry Harrison - as a Deist - with Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet.  I think it tells the story very well and corrects a number of assumptions made by historians in the past.  One of those assumptions had to do with witchcraft; and in particular, the "role" it might play in a community.  In the past, historians have asserted that witch hunts allow a comunity to set boundaries of appropriate behavior or somehow aid in conflict resolution, but Adam Jortner doesn't buy it.  In an e-mail to me he said:

[I]f religious ideas only have social functions, then religion basically *is* sociology, when you get down to it, and although religion has many social functions, I don't think it's ALL social functions.
So I don't think the witch hunt had a "role." I think the Delawares...had fears about witches, and the purpose of the hunt was to initiate a supernatural war against them. I think Tenskwatawa was invited because of his presumed supernatural powers, and while he benefitted politically from the event, I don't think he manipulated the proceedings--I think he also was concerned about witches.
In my opinion, the witch hunts aren't a front for something else--they are just hunts for witches.

I get the impression from reading the book that Adam Jortner, on the one hand, has a lot of respect for religion, but, on the other hand, he doesn't study religion per se.  What he studies is people's religious beliefs that make up the contents of American history.

I feature lots of books on this blog that I don't (explicitly) recommend to you, the reader.  Unfortunately, lots of books written by history professors don't make for good reads for those of us who aren't history professors.  I think The Gods of Prophetstown is an exception.  It is more readable than the vast majority of books of its kind.

See the book review and author interview in Indian Country Today magazine.

A Map of Statesburg (now Kaukauna, WI) in 1826

 Maps can tell us a lot about history. This one of Statesburg, the Stockbridge Mohican's first settlement in what is now Wisconsin, is no exception. (Hint: for better viewing, click on the map to enlarge it)

The community was first settled by fifty Stockbridge Indians in 1822.  Since there were problems with the treaties of 1821 and 1822, the tribe had to move again in the mid-1830's.  (To get the bigger picture, see this map of Wisconsin.)

The map that you see a portion of above is different from most in that south is "up" and north is "down." So although most of the buildings are "above" the Fox River, it actually means that they are to the south of the river.  The city of Kaukauna, Wisconsin is now located here, but it is on both shores of the Fox River (not just the south shore as Statesburg was).

I'd like to thank Craig Lahm of the Kaukauna Historical Society for requesting the map from the Library of Congress and sharing it with me.  Thanks also go to Tom Duescher, also of the Kauakuna Historical Society, for annotating the map.  That is, he inserted the red labels which make the map decipherable to us today.

Thanks again Tom and Craig!

The Shawnee Prophet Predicts an Eclipse

When William Henry Harrison, the governor of Indiana Territory, heard of the Delaware witch purge of 1806 he sent the tribe a letter demanding that they denounce the Shawnee prophet as an "imposter."  He did so with poetic language:

If he really is a prophet, ask of him to cause the sun to stand still - the moon to alter its course - the rivers to cease to flow - or the dead to arise from their graves.  if he does these things, you may then believe he has been sent from God.

The prophet, still known as Lalawethika at that time, claimed to receive revelations from the "Master of Life," his term for the Great Spirit.  He answered Governor Harrison's challenge by predicting that the Master of Life would turn the sun black on June 16, 1806.

Incredibly, a solar eclipse really did occur that day.  And, as one might imagine, it did something for the prophet's reputation.  The Native confederacy that nowadays is usually identified with the prophet's brother, Tecumseh, owed a lot to Lalawethika/Tenskwatawa.

By predicting the eclipse did the Shawnee prophet prove that he was not an "imposter"?
Not necessarily.  There were scientists around Lake Erie in 1806 positioning themselves for a good view of the eclipse.  Some of them may have talked to the prophet or his followers.  There were also white farmers in the area that kept almanacs with information about eclipses and other astronomical events.  The prophet's brother,Tecumseh, could read English and may have come across an almanac.


Sources:

A speech of Governor Harrison to the Delawares "Early in 1806" as printed in Esarey, Logan (Editor) Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison (vol.1, pages 182-184).  New York: Arno Press, 1975.  See this book on the Internet Archive.

Eclipse Chasers website: Tecumseh and the Eclipse of 1806

Cave, Alfred (2006) Prophets of the Great Spirit pages 87-88

The Delaware Witch Purge of 1806

Above:  An artist's conception of the Purge of 1806.  The Shawnee Prophet, later known as Tenskwatawa,is depicted second from right (the rightmost "fully drawn" person). 

After Beata withdrew her witch-finding services, the White River Delawares brought in an emerging spiritual leader from the Shawnee tribe.  The man's name was Lalawethika.  He'd been an alcoholic and his face was deformed from a hunting accident, but in May of 1805 he went into a trance and experienced a vision, which convinced him to stop drinking and started his career as a prophet in much the same way as the careers of other Native prophets began.

The Shawnee prophet arrived at White River on March 15, 1806.  Those accused of witchcraft were brought before him and he performed ceremonies before passing judgement.  Outwardly, Lalawethika made a big deal about being against aspects of traditional Algonkian religion, but the victims of the 1806 purge were the more acculturated Indians; they may have either been Christians or had done business with the United States.

Confessions were induced through torture.  An old woman named Coltos, aka Anne Charity was the first to confess her guilt and was put to death.  Then the elderly chief Tetepachsit met the same fate, and the Moravian missionaries witnessed his body being burned.  Tetepachsit's nephew Billy Patterson is said to have died "Bible in hand, praying, chanting hymns, and defying the power of evil until his voice was stifled" (Cave quotes Jacob Dunn's True Indian Stories 1909, page 67, but appears to doubt the accuracy of the statement).  Finally Joshua, the Moravians interpreter, was also executed.

Another round of excecutions was set to take place on April 9th.  The first of eight accused Indians was the last surviving chief, Hockingpompsga.  But this time, as the executioners put their hands on the old chief; his friends grabbed their weapons and put a stop to the killings.


Sources:

Cave, Alfred (2006) Prophets of the Great Spirit pages 81-85.

Miller, Jay.  "The 1806 Purge among the Indiana Delaware: Sorcery, Gender, Boundaries and Legitimacy"  Ethnohistory, Spring, 1994 pages 246-266.

Beata: The Munsee Prophet

The parents of John Henry Kluge were Moravian missionaries at White River.  John Henry appears to have been born during Beata's career as a Native prophet.

For a number of reasons - including that her career as a prophet may have been short - we don't know much about Beata.  We don't even know her Indian name.  She was given the name Beata at her baptism, apparently when she was a young woman. Like other Munsee Delawares, Beata left Ohio for the White River in present-day Indiana.  She also turned away from her Christian faith as was common among her people after the Gnaddenhutten Massacre.

The careers of Native prophets tend to begin with visions. Beata's career is no exception. Her vision was recorded in one of the diaries of the White River Moravians in a February, 1805 erntry:

There had appeared to her one evening while she was alone in front of her house , two men, whom she could not recognize,  and whose voice alone she could hear.  These told her..... "We came to tell you that God is not satisfied with you Indians, because at your sacrifices you do so many strange things with wampum and all kinds of juggling.....You Indians will have to live together again as in olden times, and love one another sincerely.  If you do not do this, a terrible storm will arise and break down all the trees in the woods, and all the Indians will lose their lives in it."

It so happened that "a bilious fever was raging" and it took the lives of many White River Delawares in the period of just a few days.  Knowing little about modern medicine, the Delawares blamed the fever and deaths on witchcraft.  For some time Beata was believed to be a good witch finder.  But before long Beata felt that witchcraft had become so rampant that the task of witch-finding was overwhelming.  This ended her career as a spiritual leader and from then on we hear no more about her.

Sources:

Gipson L. H. (Editor). Moravian Indian Mission on the White River: Diaries and Letters, May 5, 1799 to November 12, 1806;  page 333.

Cave, Alfred (2006).  Prophets of the Great Spirit: Native American Revitalization in Eastern North America.  Page 81

The Delaware Indians on Indiana's White River

This graphic was "borrowed" from Wikipedia's entry on Delaware County, Indiana.

The scene of my next few posts was known many years ago simply as "the White River."  Now, more than two hundred years later, it is part of the state of Indiana and a county that is fittingly named after the Delaware Indians.  The county seat is called "Muncie," a different spelling than we now use to refer to the Munsee Delawares.  (Supposedly all the Delawares living north of the Raritan River during a certain period of time spoke the Munsee dialect.)  By the 1780's many of the Delawares - we can assume they included not only Munsees, but also Unamis, and Unalachtigoes - were settling in six villages along the White River. 

Some of these Delawares had been associated with Moravian missionaries, but no longer had a taste for the "white people's religion" after the Gnadenhutten massacre.  It goes without saying that the militiamen that committed the murders were not "good Christians," and maybe not practicing Christians at all, but the horrible event nevertheless set some of the Delawares on a path away from Christianity.  The idea was that the  Moravian missionaries had made their kinsmen "tame" and thus vulnerable.  A better explanation for the vulnerability, however, was simply their location, but that didn't matter, Christianity had lost its appeal for them.    

The White River Delawares were the subject of Roger J. Ferguson's Ed D. dissertation while he studied at Ball State University (which is in Muncie, Indiana, by the way).  According to Ferguson (page 80) the Delawares "were frantically striving for tribal solidarity and identity and thus resisted assimilation."  Since you and I are tolerant, modern people, that doesn't necessarily sound bad, they should have been allowed to do their own thing, right?  Well, Ferguson also says (page 70) that the Delawares were "one of the least self-sufficient tribes in the [old] Northwest."  In other words, they were not doing well from the 1790's to well linto the 1810's.  

Alfred Cave Describes Handsome Lake's 2nd Vision

Alfred Cave's Prophets of the Great Spirit: Native American Revitalization Movements in Eastern North America is a remarkable book. I also found it to be readable.

According to Cave, Native Prophets transformed their communities and essentially created new religions that were somewhere between their tribe's traditional religion and Christianity. Each prophet was unique, of course, but - in the Indian way - their movements began with some kind of a vision.

Of particular interest for me was Cave's description of the Seneca Prophet, Handsome Lake. It was Handsome Lake's second vision that became "the core of the new religion's theology" (page 195).
The vision came to Handsome Lake when he was in the midst of a deep trance that lasted seven hours. Here is what happened in the vision (all from page 195):

1. The Milky Way descended from heaven and Handsome Lake and his guide walked up it.
2. They passed a jail and saw handcuffs, a whip and a hangman's rope inside, symbolizing the severity of the white man's law.
3. A church with no doors or windows was very hot inside and the people confined to it were "crying in distress."
4. Further up the road "they met Jesus, who showed them the nail scars in his hands and feet and his bloody spear wound. Whites did this to me, Jesus cried, and then warned Handsome Lake that Indians must not trust white people."

There is a lot more in Cave's book about Handsome Lake and about many other prophets.

The Dawes Act: Was it Good for Indians?

Blogger's note: March 19/2012 - I can understand that some peopole are too busy to read a whole blogpost - especially if they think the blogger disagrees with the opinions they hold dear. So I'll say up front that I think the Dawes Act was NOT good for Indians (as a whole). If you're still with me, read on to find out why.



Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes hands the first constitution issued under the Indian Reorganization Act to delegates of the Confederated Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation (Montana), 1935. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION)

Scott Seaborne's guest post favoring the Dawes Act and Allotment over the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) made some valid points about responsibility and ownership and that kind of thing. I would not be the person to argue that personal responsibility isn't important and I really don't have much to say about the IRA. The Stockbridge Mohicans used it to regain their status as a federally recognized Native community. They seemed to like it. Others didn't but I doubt that there are any laws that are good for everybody.

For me the question of whether or not the Dawes Act and Allotment Era - on the whole - was good or bad for Indians can be answered in one sentance:

Land owned by Indians decreased from 138 million acres (560,000 km2) in 1887 to 48 million acres (190,000 km2) in 1934.

I took that from Wikipedia, but I remember seeing the same numbers in my notes recently.

So in 57 years, a race of people lost the majority of their land. To me that is too much. Those numbers alone tell me that the Dawes Act wasn't good for Indians as a whole.

Scott also sent me a Forbes article "Why Are Indians So Poor? A Look at the Bottom 1%." Here again, I don't want to go negative on a well-written article; It makes some valid points; in particular, it notes that no private ownership and no credit leads to poverty.


Then there's the question about natural resources. The author laments that Indians don't want to "develop" their natural resources. Now, you might say that the Menominees have been "developing" their wonderful old growth forest for many, many years. But I don't think that is the kind of development that our friends at Forbes are thinking about when they say "developing natural resources."


They are thinking about the building of mines and oil wells.


My opinion: If Indians don't want polluting mines and oil wells on their reservations I say more power to them.


.

Ohio 1818: "The most interesting day in this place"

Thanks to the Google Books digitization project, a lot of old material is available to people like me who don't live near the libraries of major universities.

In searching the old Congregational publication called the Panoplist, I came upon a truly remarkable blurb taken from a letter written by an Ohio clergyman in 1818. Here it is:

In September seventy or eighty of the Stockbridge tribe of Indians passed through this place on their way to the White River, Indiana. By sickness they were detained over the Sabbath, and asked if there was to be any meeting which they could attend. They were informed that there would be a meeting and that the Lord's supper was to be administered; at which they expressed great joy, and inquired if they could be admitted. On questioning them it was found that their cheif and nine others were regularly formed into a church; and their credentials and appearance gave us satisfactory evidence of their peity. A number of them attended public worship, dressed in the Indian habit, and six came forward to the communion table. They conducted with the utmost propriety and solemnity; and some were bathed in tears. When a psalm was named they all took out their books, and turned to it. It was the most interesting day in this place.

The excerpt continues:

On Monday I visited them, conversed and prayed with them and never was more kindly and cordially received. I found that a large proportion of them had Bibles and could read. The Chief had Scott's Family Bible. they also had other religious books..... They are going to live with the Delawares, who are intimately connected with several other tribes. It appears to me that the hand of God is visible in their removal...

The "chief," was John Metoxen. The minister in Ohio way back then may well have been right when he said that "the hand of God is visible in their removal," if, that is, he meant that they were conducting themselves in a manner that spoke well of Christian Indians. However, unfortunately, the result of their journey, I'm sorry to say, was a disappointment. The land in Indiana offered by the Delawares and Miamis was ceded to the United States for white settlement at about the same time the group left their settlement in New York State.

Use this link to read the original document for yourself.

The Dawes Act: A Guest Post

The following is a guest post by Scott Seaborne, a reader of the blog. The views exppressed are his and I may chime in on this topic in a future post.



The Dawes Act allotment of Indian reservations was originally considered a necessary part of the then accepted federal Indian policy called “assimilation”. While today this policy is universally criticized, at the time it was adopted as the best and most humane way to treat our Indian neighbors. It wasn’t until the Merriam Report in 1928 that Congress began to see the problems associated with the Dawes Act policies and it wasn’t until 1934 with the passage if the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) that the Dawes Act was repudiated and the assimilation policy was officially abandoned.

The Dawes Act allotments are seen today as coercive policy forced upon all Indian people against their will and therefore can be deemed as universally as bad policy. That view would be too simplistic. The Dawes Act had both positive and negative effects depending on the circumstances of the individual tribes and tribal members. Not all reservations were allotted and not all tribes opposed allotment.

I recommend the book, “The Indian Reorganization Act Congresses and Bills” edited by Vine Deloria. It documents the effort Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) made under John Collier to write and pass the IRA. The IRA reversed the prior federal policy of ending tribal societies and returned their role to protecting and supporting tribal communities. This book presents the transcripts of the congresses (meetings) held around the County preceding the Congressional vote on the IRA (Wheeler-Howard Act). I would characterize this effort as a promotional tour to sell the Tribes on Collier’s new Indian program. You can read in this book the testimony of tribal representatives who had taken allotments under the Dawes Act but took pride in their ownership of fee title lands and enjoyed the rewards of individual ownership. Many had become farmers or ranchers and respected business people in their communities. Many complained they feared IRA was attempt to “return the Indian to the blanket”. During the period that preceded the IRA, the federal policy to break up tribal governments and make Indians citizens, while not without controversy, but was supported by a large portion of Indian people. Tribes could vote for against the IRA. Of the 258 tribes that voted, 77 or about 30% voted to reject the IRA!

The idea of supporting inviolate tribal sovereignty as a federal policy is relatively recent. John Collier and his legal staff at the OIA wrote the bill text and designed this new policy with little or no input from Indian people. (For those who might be interested, I can supply a list of books on the subject.) There are today, many tribal members who are deeply critical of the IRA “boiler plate” tribal constitutions that Collier and the OIA pressured tribes to adopt. The IRA today is still controversial among Indian scholars and lawyers as to whether it does more good than harm.

Following WWII when many tribal members returned home from valiant service in the US armed forces, it seemed a bit odd to some Indian veterans that, at home, they were deemed to be wards under federal supervision. By the later forties the federal policy began to switch back to reducing federal controls which was supported by segments of tribal communities. Thus was born the federal “termination policy” which lasted until July, 1970 when then President Nixon announced his new Indian self-determination policy which became law in 1975.

It’s important to remember that current Nixon federal Indian policy is only 40 years old. When one looks at the wild swings in federal Indian policy it makes one wonder if we will ever find a policy that satisfies Indian communities.

I guess my point is Indian people aren’t monolithic and, like the rest us, won’t agree on everything. How will relying on federal policies resolve that?

Brothertown Drum Returns to Annual Fond du Lac Event

I haven't kept in touch with any of my Brothertown contacts. The last I'd heard was that they were denied recognition by the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. Although I'm sure they are dissappointed, the setback hasn't stopped them from doing their thing.

A case in point was last weekend's Celebrate CommUNITY event at the County Expo Center in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.




According to the Fond du Lac Reporter, the "Gordon Williams Gii Tass'se Brothertown Drummers" participated in an opening flag ceremony that heralded "a multi-cultural parade of people dressed in traditional clothing."



A number of photos - including the one above - were taken of Jeff Huebel. Although the newspaper said that Jeff is from the town of Stockbridge, it actually should have said that he is a Stockbridge Indian helping out the Brothertown people.