NY Indian Removal Wrap-up

New York Indian Removal, Part XX:
New York Indian Removal Wrap-up

It is time to put an end to the New York Indian Removal Series in Algonkian Church History. Most of the scholarship related to the New York Indians is primarily about the Iroquois tribes and there's a good reason for that - the Iroquois nations occupied more land than the Algonkians when the state was working to rid itself of the Natives. This series of posts points the way to existing Iroquois-focused resources and features my own research about the New York Algonkians. Let me give you a summary of the series:

Part I: The Stockbridges Attempt a Move to Indiana. A letter from Thomas Jefferson is not honored by officials of later administrations.

Part II: Eleazar Williams. A missionary among the Oneidas (see photo above), of mixed race (part Mohawk), is hungry for power, and envisions being the leader of a grand confederacy in the west.

Part III: Why did They Leave? (The answer, of course, has a lot more to do with the intentions of white Americans than with the Indians themselves.)

Part IV: Conspiracy of Interests. A book by Professor Laurence Hauptman describes the factors that led to the removal of New York Indians - he doesn't, however, have a lot to say about the Algonkians.

Part V: Jedidiah Morse. A Congregational minister has some influence in Washington D.C.

Part VI: Negotiations and Arrivals. Good historians have gotten some of this wrong. If you need to know what-happened-when vis-a-vis the negitiations and arrivals of the New York Indians in Wisconsin, this is an important post.

Part VII: Metoxen Takes Center Stage. The New York Indians were set up against the Wisconsin Natives. This post includes a link to a remarkable speech John Metoxen made at the Council of 1830.

Part VIII: The Disaffected Party. Are the New York Indians going to be pushed further west? This question and other issues arouse tribal factionalism for the Stockbridge Mohicans.

Part IX: Ellis Describes More Negotiations. If Andrew Jackson (pictured above riding a horse) wanted the Stockbridge, Munsee, and Brothertown Indians to move to some swampy land, how did they wind up on the good farmland east of Lake Winnebago?

Part X: The Need for a Constitution. Seeing how the U.S. government handles other tribes appears to have motivated John W. Quinney to write a tribal constitution for the Stockbridge Mohicans.

Part XI: Munsee Removal and the Quinney's Perspective. The arrival of roughly 200 Munsees prompt John W. and Austin E. Quinney to write a letter to the U.S. Secretary of War.

Part XII: The First Permanent Split in the Stockbridge Tribal Church. The Disaffected Party beaks away from Calvinist missionary Cutting Marsh's church. They hold their own Baptist services.

Part XIII: More About the Munsees. The "partnership" between the Stockbridges and the Munsees is an on-again-off-again kind of thing.

Part XIV: The Treaty of 1839. Half the Stockbridge reservation in Calumet County is sold to the federal government. Members of the Disaffected party and the Munsees head to what is now Kansas.

Part XV: They Left on the Sabbath. Puritan author Electa Jones describes the emmigration to Kansas.

Part XVI: On to Minnesota? The treaty of 1848 was supposed to provide a new reservation to a faction of the Stockbridge Indians - but details were never agreed upon.

Part XVII: Jotham Meeker and the Two Minute Books. We find members of the Disaffected Party and Munsees continuing on in the Baptist faith west of the Missouri River.

Part XVIII: Establishment of the Shawano County Reservation. The treaty of 1856 established a new reservation - but the land is not good for farming.

Part XIX: The Munseees: According to an Indian Party Brief. Munsee Indians came and went. How many Munsees were with the Stockbridge Indians in the late 1800's? (hint: count them on your fingers).