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.

Scott's Family Bible

Do you remember that the Stockbridge Mohicans attempted to settle at Indiana's White River before they came to what is now Wisconsin?

Do you remember that John Metoxen was the leader of the band that left New Stockbridge, New York in 1818 and settled at Wisconsin's Fox River in 1822?

Do you remember that they worshipped with a white congregation at a stop along the way?

Some have called Metoxen's band the Stockbridge Christian Party. Although no missionary traveled with them, they still kept the Sabbath in the old Calvinist way. On Sunday mornings, John Metoxen would read from Scott's Family Bible. I was able to find photos of the six-volume set online. (Use this link if you want to buy a copy in good condition, for less than $600.)

On page 129 of An American Bible, Paul Gutjahr tells us that Scott's Family Bible was "immensely popular" and "helped shore up Calvinist Orthodoxy."

Marsh's Opinion of Sergeant's Ministry

Right: A modern road map of east-central Wisconsin. The Stockbridge Mohicans lived at modern-day Kaukauna (known then as Statesburg or Grand Kawkawlin) in the 1820's and at Stockbridge in the 1830's and 1840's. Note that Brothertown is south of Stockbridge.



In my February 8 post, I shared with you a long quote from a letter by John Sergeant [Jr.] in which he promoted the preservation of Native languages. Sergeant felt that bi-lingual literacy and the use of "white" agricultural technology was best for the Indians' welfare. He doesn't come across as a stubborn or pushy type, his belief that Indians would choose the appropriate level of "civilization" was based on his own experience, almost his entire life was lived among the Stockbridge Indians.

Things were different with Rev. Cutting Marsh. His life experience was different and his thinking was different. His efforts to push "civilization" amongst Indians who had already adopted as many white ways as they wanted, caused him some frustration. He discussed this issue with John Metoxen and later shared the conversation with the ABCFM in a letter to David Greene (10/19/1842).

...He [Metoxen] furthermore said that 'Mr. Sergeant was with them 50 years and never got discouraged in all of that time.' ....from all I have learnt of the result of his labors and of all the instruction in schools during that half century, no advances whatever were made in the Nation in knowledge and civilization, all remained precisely in status quo. But I put this question to the old man. If, the Lord when he gives the gospel to a people and expects and requires improvement, is it wrong for his servants [missionaries] to expect the same?

....Metoxen has often made [the] foolish expression that 'speaking the English language is what has made so many of the Brothertown people infidels.' Some, I know not how many, have never been pleased with me because I have not learnt their language so as to speak it. But this I have done from principle. This was one thing on account of which they liked Mr. Sergeant so well.

Metoxen Takes Center Stage

New York Indian Removal, Part VII:

Metoxen Takes Center Stage

Although New York removal and Wisconsin settlement isn't exactly the same thing, this post about the New York Indians' first years in what is now Wisconsin will give you a better idea of the ins-and-outs of the removal.

Metoxen's grave. Stockbridge, Wisconsin.

Several bands of New York Indians migrated to present-day Wisconsin over a period of years. In March of 1823 President James Monroe recognized the New York Indians' right to occupy two million acres that had formerly belonged to Wisconsin Natives, mostly to the Algonkian-speaking Menominees, some to the Souixan-speaking Winnebagoes or Ho-Chunk. Unlike James Monroe, the Menominee and Ho-Chunk leaders viewed the treaties of 1821 and 1822 as fraudulent, they claimed that their true leaders were not present for the negotiations. There were other problems with the treaties; suffice it to say that they were open to misinterpretations and misunderstandings.

In 1827 John Quincy Adams' administration negotiated the Treaty of Little Butte des Morts with the Ho-Chunk and Chief Oshkosh of the Menominees. With this new treaty, the United States purchased some of the land from the Menominees that the New York Indians believed they had purchased from them a few years earlier. In an effort to resolve the confusion, an eight-day council was held in the summer of 1830, not long after Andrew Jackson became president.

While new administrations in Washington D.C. might be blamed for a lack of consistency in Indian policy, it can also be said that the old "divide and conquer" strategy was in place, this time pitting the "civilized" Stockbridges, Oneidas and other New York Indians against the Menominees and Ho-Chunk. But John Metoxen, Deacon of the the Stockbridge Mohican's tribal church, and their Chief Sachem (see Mohican News, 2/1/2005), didn't take the bait. Although the Wisconsin Indians refused to budge in the eight-day council, he made a concluding speech that made it clear that he knew the score and hoped the Wisconsin Natives would recognize his people as brothers and sisters. An observer from the east, Rev. Calvin Colton, managed to transcribe Metoxen's speech.

Negotiations and Arrivals

New York Indian Removal, Part VI:
Negotiations and Arrivals

When it comes to negotiations, dates of arrival, and similar details related to the New York Indians in Wisconsin, it is very easy to go down the wrong path. So bear with me: Since good historians have already gotten this stuff wrong, I'm going to tell you where I'm getting my data.

I have Annie Heloise Abel to thank for including a copy of a July 28, 1820 Detroit Gazette article in her book. The Gazette reported that Eleazar Williams and some of the Oneida men arrived "last Saturday" in the steamboat Walk-in-the-water, intending to "visit the Indians in this Territory" to promote Christianity and "to find a suitable tract of country within the Territory" which, at that time, included all of what is now Wisconsin.

Some kind of agreement was made in Green Bay in the summer of 1820, but various parties made various objections to it and President Monroe never submitted it to Congress. Nevertheless, a June 9, 1821 letter from the Stockbridge Mohicans (signed by Hendrick Aupaumut, Jacob Konkapot, Abner Hendricks, and Solomon U. Hendricks) to the Episcopal Bishop Hobart makes it clear that the Stockbridges wanted to be part of that agreement.

Solomon U. Hendricks led a delegation of four Stockbridge Mohicans, the first Stockbridges to set foot on Wisconsin soil, in August of 1821 (Lion Miles, e-mail to Jeff Siemers, 5/10/2006). Once again, according to a Detroit Gazette article (7/13/1821, quoted in Ellis, p.423) they cruised the Great Lakes on the Walk-in-the-water. Albert Ellis in his "Recollections of Rev. Eleazar Williams" (in Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol.VIII, p.333) characterized the larger New York Indian delegation of 1821:

"Excepting those of the first Christian party of the Oneidas, and the Stockbridges, all these delegates, to wit: one from Onondaga, one from Tuscarora, one from the Senecas, and one, Mr. Williams himself, from St. Regis [Mohawk] went on their own private responsibility, without any authority from their tribes."

A letter from John C. Calhoun to Territorial Governor Lewis Cass adds: "The Munsees also sent a delegate, who, by the special permission of the Government, was included in the Stockbridge contingent." This, I believe, is the first official recognition of Stockbridge-Munsee partnership.

To make a long story shorter, treaties were made between Wisconsin Natives and the New York Indians in 1821 and 1822. The first permanent settlement of New York Indians in Wisconsin occurred in 1822, "when fifty Christianized Stockbridges" located themselves on the north side of the Fox River at Grand Kaukaulin, which is now the city of Kaukauna (WI Historical Collections, vol.XIV, p.423). These first settlers included John Metoxen's Band (the Indians that had left New York in 1818 and never turned back), plus twenty more that came directly from New Stockbridge, New York (e-mail from Lion Miles, 5/10/2006).

Sac & Fox Mission Trip, Part II

Use this link to read Part I of this series of posts.



Maps in this post are from Roger Nichols' thesis, Cutting Marsh: Missionary to the Stockbridges, 1830-1848.


In 1834, John Metoxen, John N. Chicks, two other Stockbridge Mohicans, and Rev. Cutting Marsh traveled by birchbark canoe up the Fox River, and then portaged to the Wisconsin and paddled down to the Mississippi. From there they continued south, spending time in what is now Iowa.

This was their mission trip to the Sac and Fox Indians. Unlike the Stockbridges, the Sac and Fox didn't speak an Algonquin language. From the Stockbridges' point of view, it was also significant that the Sac and Fox weren't "civilized" Indians.

When the delegation arrived in what would become the city of Davenport the next year, Cutting Marsh had a long talk with one of the city's founders, George Davenport, a trader. Marsh, of course, was trying to talk Davenport into getting a Calvinist mission established there. Davenport was noncommittal. He told Marsh that the Sac and Fox were "happy...in their present state."

Meanwhile, John Metoxen was fortunate to speak with Chief Blackhawk through a good interpreter. Unfortunately, we only have a second-hand account of the conversation written down by Cutting Marsh. However, the conversation must have started out well with Blackhawk telling Metoxen how he appreciated the level of sobriety he'd seen among the Stockbridge Mohicans during his visit to Statesburg a year earlier. This was probably the opening that Metoxen wanted. Marsh's reconstruction of the discussion from there is not quite believable, but it is all we have:

Blackhawk: "Now what do you think is best about receiving missionaries &c?"
Metoxen: "By all means, receive them...for they will do you good."
Blackhawk: But the trader, Mr. D, told me not to have anything to do with them..."

As contrived as that dialog seems, it likely reflects the larger truth that George Davenport's livelihood as a trader would have been threatened by a mission that would teach the local Indians to become "civilized farmers."

Sources:
*Letter from Marsh of Sept. 5th 1834 letter in the ABCFM Papers.
*Marsh's 1834 Report to the Society in Scotland for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SSPCK).

This series will continue.

Mission Trip to the Sac & Fox, Part I

In 1833, one year after being defeated by the United States in a war that was named after him, Chief Blackhawk (pictured here) visited the Stockbridge Mohicans at their Statesburg settlement (located in present-day Kaukauna, Wisconsin). Blackhawk invited the Stockbridges to visit him and other Sac and Fox Indians in what is now Iowa. The trip that came out of this invitation was at least to some extent a scouting trip since the small Native nation expected to have to move again. But they also thought of the trip they were preparing to make as a mission to spread Christianity and "civilization" among members of their own race. This is how they presented the trip in an October 14, 1833 letter to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM):

Fathers, we ask if there is not some way we can make our visit subserve, in some degree at least, the great object of your society? Cannot we tell them that your society is ready to send teachers if they are willing to receive them?

The letter, signed by Jacob Cheekthaucon, John Metoxen, Austin E. Quinney, Thomas Hendrick, Andrew Miller, Timothy Jordan, Cornelius Charles, John W. Quinney, Samuel Miller, and Josiah W. Miller asked if a missionary could accompany them. The commissioners in Boston decided to support the trip and gave Rev. Cutting Marsh permission to travel with the delegation.

The letter described is part of the ABCFM Papers.

The Stockbridge Story

In the early 1980's, three residents of Calumet County, Wisconsin, wrote and published a book called The Stockbridge Story. It was, of course, a book about the history of Stockbridge, Wisconsin, and since one of the co-authors, Elaine Doxtator Raddatz, is a Stockbridge Mohican, this book has information about that tribe that (until now) doesn't appear to have been repeated elsewhere.

In the book, Raddatz points out (and this is consistent with what academic historians have written) that "[s]everal trips over seven years were needed to accomplish the complete resettlement of the tribe from New York to Wisconsin"(page 17). The first band to leave New York State, of course, was John Metoxen's band (see my post of 11/19/08). In 1822 another band "loaded their covered wagons at New Stockbridge, N.Y., and hitched them up to teams of oxen and headed west"(page 16). Raddatz then tells us a remarkable thing that happened to those travelers:

In White River Territory of Indiana, where Metoxen's contingent had stopped about four years earlier, they sat with their brothers, the Delaware. Here, they were pursued by hostile Indians, who understood neither the English the Stockbridge spoke, nor their reason for dressing like the white man. By this time - after generations of association with the white man - the Stockbridge had lost much of their Indian culture.

I've talked to Elaine Doxtator Raddatz over the phone, and I don't think she was able to give me any specifics about that incident. It is just one more example of "civilized" Indians not having an easy time fitting in with other groups of people.

The Panoplist, (October, 1818)

If you know the history of the Stockbridge Mohicans, you know that they had to make a number of moves. Very briefly, I will mention the plan to move from New York State to the White River of Indiana. Essentially, a promise made to the Stockbridges by Thomas Jefferson was not honored by those who came after him, including William Henry Harrison, the governor of Indiana Territory (and an "Indian fighter"). As a result, only one Stockbridge band stopped off at Indiana and only for a few years.

Anyway, John Metoxen was the chief or headman of the band that left New York and headed for Indiana in 1818. Of course, in those days, that part of the country was a wild frontier, but Metoxen's band was able to take a short break from their travels in a little town in Ohio. A clergyman met them there and described the experience in a letter to the editor of The Panoplist, (the October 1818 issue of the mission publication). Here's what he said:

They "arrived in September on their way to White River, Indiana, stopped over the Sabbath, asked to attend a meeting, [and] asked if the Lord's Supper would be administered and expressed great joy and inquired if they could be admitted. On questioning them it was found their Chief and others were regularly formed into a [Calvinist] church. Their credentials and appearance gave a satisfactory evidence of their piety. A number of them attended the public worship dressed in 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 ever in this place."

He continues, "On Monday I visited them and then 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 a Scott's Family Bible. They also had other religious books."

Whenever I hear somebody say that Indians are "spiritual but not religious," or that they "just went through the motions" in order to receive handouts from missionaries, I think of a few documents, one being that letter in the Panoplist. Probably the best place to get a photocopy from The Panoplist would be through the Congregational Library in Boston, call them at (617) 523-0470.