A Milestone - Algonkian Church History's 300th post

A lot of Algonkian Church History posts lead readers to other sites or to books or other resources.
But today - with our 300th post - Algonkian Church History is honoring itself!

According to Google, ACH has received over 80,000 page views since it began on November 5th, 2008. As the creator of almost all of the posts, I've been surprised when some posts are viewed by many - while others that I've worked hard on are seen by only a few.

Anyway, here's a list of some ACH posts that were popular, and others that deserve special mention:

Most Viewed Posts:

3rd Place: Occom's Short Narrative of My Life (1735 views to date)

2nd Place: Bury My Heart at the Monastery: The Menominee Takeover of the Novitiate
This well-illustrated post includes links to relevant sites. The standoff between a dissident faction of Menominees and the federal government was probably the most newsworthy event for Wisconsin Indians in the 1970's. The post now has 2039 views.

1st Place: The High Point of Stockbridge Calvinism
Don't get me wrong, this was not a bad post, but I suspect that it has received 2405 views partly by accident. Many web surfers undoubtedly came to this post by clicking on the symbol you see below on Google images:

Least Viewed Post:

NPR Asks Who Is an Indian? The once-broken link to the NPR segment now works. And, as before, this post is graced with a photo of a reader of this blog, Darren Kroenke.



Most Humorous Post:

Who Taught the Stockbridge Indians to Moon? This one needs no introduction.



Most Controversial Post:

Racial Identity Among the New York Indians: Chris Geherin Looks at "New Guinea"
I was thrown out of an online community after this post appeared. Even now, some people who self-identify as Indians are not willing to accept that they may also have some African blood. Get over it!



Most Viewed Series of Posts:

The New York Indian Removal Series Thanks to a link from the New York History blog, this series of twenty posts had a reasonably large audience.

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).

The Munsees: According to an Indian Party Brief

New York Indian Removal, Part XIX:
The Munsees: According to an Indian Party Brief

I've made some references to an "Indian Party Brief" in past posts. It is a document that was once written up on behalf of the federally recognized faction of the Stockbridge Mohicans, more commonly known as the Indian Party. I am not aware of the "Indian Party Brief" existing anywhere today aside from the source I got it from, which is the January 1932 issue of Concordia Historical Institute Quarterly. The authors of the document appear to be Edwin Willits, J. H. McGowan, Samuel Shelleboyer, and Jeremiah M. Wilson (McGowan was a member of the U. S. House of Representatives in the 1890's).

Here is what they have to say about the Munsees:

Under...[the] Treaty of 1856...there was an enrollment of 409 souls, of whom 58 were of the Munsees of New York, included in the Treaty of September 3, 1839, who had never emigrated from New York to Wisconsin and whose connection with the tribe had from that time been declared sundered by the Stockbridge tribe....

and here's another quote that will give you an idea of which Indians lived on the Shawano County reservation at certain points in time:

The Indian Party, not having removed until 1859, were paid nothing until after their removal, and the withholding of the payment was one of the strong inducements that led them to acquiesce in the removal. After these moneys had been paid, and about in the years 1859 and 1860, the Citizen's Party as a body (with one or two exceptions),and the Munsee Party, a few of whom came West to receive their money (with the exception of one family), abandoned the reservation, leaving on it the Indian Party proper...one family of Munsees, and two of the Citizen Party, to wit, Stephen Gardner and his father, William Gardner....

There will be more about the Gardners in future posts, but in regards to the vast majority of the 58 New York Munsees, the best guess I have is that they went back to where they came from. (For a number of years, but not "permanently.")

I've also found a government document from 1875 that confims that the remnant of Munsees living among the Stockbridge Mohicans numbered "About a half dozen" at that time. (Source: Records of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1875, you'll have to scroll a long way to get to "Munsees").

Establishment of the Shawano County Reservation

New York Indian Removal, Part XVIII:
Establishment of the Shawano County Reservation

In authorizing Superintendent Francis Huebschmann to make the treaty of 1856, Commissioner of Indian Affairs George Manypenny noted that attempts at a compromise to somehow re-create the Stockbridge reservation on the east shore of Lake Winnebago had proved futile. Manypenny decided there should be a new reservation which would "be a home alike for the Stockbridges, whether known as 'citizens' or 'Indians,' and the Munsee parties to the treaty of September 3rd, 1839, wherever they may now be"(letter from Manypenny to Huebschmann of January 7, 1856, in the John C. Adams Papers).

The new reservation would essentially be purchased with proceeds from the 1848 sale of the old reservation. As a result, the Indian party objected to the idea of sharing a new reservation with members of the Citizen party, Munsees, and those who left for Kansas after the treaty of 1839 was signed. They were splitting the new reservation among 409 people instead of the 177 Indian party family members recognized in the 1848 census. The Indian party argued that members of the Citizen party had already taken allotments or payment for their land and that the federal government only had an obligation to treat with their relatively small party.

Many Indian party members, led by Austin E. Quinney, refused to move to the new reservation until 1859. The Arvid E. Miller Memorial Library/Museum (the Stockbridge-Munsee Community's tribal museum) in Shawano County possesses a large peace medal which was given to Austin E. Quinney by the federal government. Although the museum staff told me they have no idea why it was awarded to Quinney, my guess is that he received it after he gave up his protest and showed up at the new reservation.

Anyway, the "Citizen vs. Indian" conflict truly was a bitter one - and a complicated one. But the establishment of the new reservation in Shawano County is about more than that.


Shawano County, Wisconsin: The treaty of 1856 established a new reservation for the Stockbridge and Munsee Indians in the townships of Red Springs and Bartelme.

By 1856 Jeremiah Slingerland was one of the Stockbridge Mohicans' most powerful leaders. Slingerland and Superintendent Francis Huebschmann butted heads over exactly where the new reservation would be located. (In fact, they accused each other of being dishonest. I prefer to think they just misunderstood each other, and I doubt that enough written evidence exists for any solid conclusions to be made.)

As Oberly points out (on page 89), the treaty of 1856 didn't actually define where the new reservation would be located (nor even how large it would be). As a result, it was largely up to Superintendent Huebschmann to determine where the Stockbridge Indians would wind up. While Huebschmann may have been honest, he stuck the tribe with a reservation on the swampy and sandy land of the Wolf River Batholith. How could he have justified that?

The Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and their descendants in New York and Wisconsin had made the transition to an agricultural economy much like that of white Americans. It was one of the things they were supposed to do to become "civilized." But after the treaty of 1856, those who wanted to continue farming showed up on the reservation to get their annuity payments and rented better land in nearby counties. Others did their best on the new reservation, trying to make a go of it by some combination of farming, logging, trapping, berry picking, hunting and fishing, and seasonal labor.

Sources:
*An "Indian Party Brief," (as reprinted in the Concordia Historical Quarterly).
*James Oberly, A Nation of Statesmen. University of Oklahoma Press, 2005.
*The John C. Adams Papers. Wisconsin State Historical Society, Madison, WI.
*Joseph Schafer, The Winnebago-Horicon Basin, (see especially page 75).

Jotham Meeker and the Two Minute Books

New York Indian Removal, Part XVII:
Jotham Meeker and the Two Minute Books

Maybe you're wondering if we have any record of the Indians who left Cutting Marsh's church and then left Wisconsin after signing the treaty of 1839. The answer is: do we ever!...thanks to a Baptist missionary named Jotham Meeker....who owned a printing press!

Meeker learned a number of Algonkian languages and printed various scriptures, hymns, and other religious works in many small books during his career. Another Baptist missionary, John G. Pratt, also knew the printing trade. It seems Pratt was more directly involved in what we might call the church of the Hendricks-Konkapot faction.

As you may have already figured, having two missionary-printers around in a small church community meant that our old friends from "the Disaffected party" may have gotten a little more exposure than they should have. Actually, I don't know if church minutes were ever actually printed (or 'published') by Meeker or Pratt, but it seems that the preservation of Meeker's body of work led to the publication of "Two Minute Books of Kansas Missions in the Forties" in the Kansas Historical Quarterly (August 1933, Vol 2, no. 3), and it is now online.

As the Kansas Historical Society described it, the Minute Books "show that faith was weak at times, and temptation strong, but zeal burned like a bright white flame."

The last page of the Two Minute Books lists the members of the congregation as of 1848 (although some were recently deceased or excluded).
The Baptist contingent of Algonkian church history:

Stockbridge Mohicans: Hannah Konkapot, Eli Hendrick, Sally Hendrick, Jacob Littleman, Nancy Konkapot, Louisa Littleman, Susan Charles, Cornelius Charles.

Munsee Delawares: Joseph Killbuck, Abigail Killbuck, James Rain, Susan Killbuck, Sally Johnnycake, Charles Johnycake, Jane Johnycake, William Kaleb.

Other church members (tribal affiliation and, in some cases, race, is unknown): Betsy Ziegler, Francis Pokelas, Eunice Eaton,
Ar-nark-tun-dut, Wul-lun-da-nat-o'kwa, Hipelas, Hannah Hipelas, Macharch, Mrs. Jacob Skicket, E.S. Morse.

On to Minnesota?

New York Indian Removal, Part XVI
On to Minnesota?

Before we can wrap up the New York Indian Removal Series, treaties made between the United States and the Stockbridge Mohicans in 1848 and 1856 should be addressed. I would be the first to tell you that you aren't going to fully appreciate those treaties unless you understand the Indian party vs. Citizen party controversy. But at the same time, I don't feel obligated to flesh out that controversy here because James Oberly handled it very well in A Nation of Statesmen (see pages 71-78).

Nevertheless, I'll give you the basics. Members of the Chicks family and their political allies petitioned the government to be made citizens and the request was granted in an act of Congress in 1843, not only to those who wanted it, but to all the Stockbridge Mohicans. The reservation was allotted and Indians began selling land to whites. But lobbying by John W. Quinney and his allies resulted in an 1846 act of Congress, which reversed the act of 1843. Now the Stockbridges were recognized as Indians once again by the federal government. Then in 1848, the government recognized only the members of the Indian party in making a treaty that was to send them on to Minnesota.



<---Edward Thomas's painting of Fort Snelling, near today's "Twin Cities" of Minnesota.




In 1849 Jeremiah Slingerland, Austin E. Quinney, Elisha and Joel Konkapot, Moses Charles, and Thomas Snake visited the area around Fort Snelling (Jones, page 114). Electa Jones asserted this would be the location of the tribe's "Last Removal" in her 1854 book.... But here's what really happened: The Federal government and the Indian Party never came to an agreement as to where specifically the new reservation would be located (see Oberly, 79-82).

The Signing of the Treaty of Traverse de Sioux. This painting by Francis Millet was done in 1905, based on sketches made by an artist present at the signing of the treaty in 1851.

In 1851 the United States acquired land from the Dakota Sioux. They expected the Stockbridge Mohican signers of the treaty of 1848 to make their new reservation on that land. But the Indian Party refused to move. According to an "Indian Party Brief" that was later printed in the Concordia Historical Quarterly (page 121, volume unknown), the Indian party claimed that the treaty of 1848 required that their new land should have been made available to them sooner.

They Left on the Sabbath

New York Indian Removal, Part XV:
They Left on the Sabbath

Andrew Jackson's plans to remove all Indians westward were not abandoned by his successor, Martin Van Buren.


The treaty of 1839 may have been written up in good faith. Half of the reservation was sold to the U.S. because Thomas Hendricks and Robert Konkapot had convinced federal officials that about half of the tribe wanted to remove to the Little Osage River in what is now Kansas. Instead we have reports that "70 or 80" Stockbridge Mohicans separated from the tribe (Jones, 106). James Oberly (page 67) also quotes Cutting Marsh as saying that the remaining Canadian Munsees went with them (but it is not clear where he gets that quote).

Although the federal government did a miserable job of implementing the treaty of 1839, the emigrants appear to have added to the problem by ignoring instructions to wait until the treaty was approved by the president and ratified by the Senate. Oberly describes the result:

Unfortunately the Emigrants lacked enough money and supplies to reach their destination.... At St. Louis they became public charity cases and had to be rescued by the U.S. Indian agent there.

Writing from Stockbridge, Massachusetts fifteen years later, Electa Jones was getting her information about the Emigrant party second-hand from Chauncey Hall, an ABCFM schoolteacher. Furthermore, she had no sympathy for the Emigrant party, pointing out "it has been creditably reported that they started on the Sabbath"(emphasis is Jones', page 106). My response is that maybe Chauncey Hall never told Electa Jones that the Hendricks-Konkapot faction left Cutting Marsh's Calvinist (that is, Sabbath-observing) church and started their own Baptist church.....or, from a modern perspective, maybe Ms. Jones was too much of an ideologue to be writing history "creditably."

Those of the so-called Disaffected party who made it safely to the new reservation continued to worship in the Baptist way. Meanwhile, the payments promised in the treaty of 1839 didn't come until after "a tedious delay of between 2 & 3 years"(Cutting Marsh in Wisconsin Historical Collections, XV, page 180).

The Treaty of 1839

New York Indian Removal, Part XIV:
The Treaty of 1839
This modern map of Calumet County, Wisconsin, shows that the eastern half of the Stockbridge Mohicans' two-township reservation became the township of Chilton after the tribe sold it to the federal government in the treaty of 1839.


Not being in the decision-making loop, people like Robert Konkapot may not have really known the things that were going on in the Stockbridge Mohicans' tribal government. The allegations he made (see my previous post) against tribal officials and Rev. Cutting Marsh aren't necessarily accurate. Nevertheless, a deal to sell a township (or one-half of the Stockbridge Reservation), did occur. Ironically, when the actual deal was made with the federal government, the Hendricks-Konkapot faction were involved in the negotiations and it was agreed that the proceeds of the sale of that good land would go towards the moving expenses of their "Emigrant" party.

We would assume that losing half of their good land would be highly upsetting to the Stockbridge Mohicans. However, I have seen no evidence that they were forced into the treaty of 1839. Rather the treaty was something that the two rival factions had negotiated for. As James Oberly (page 66) notes, Austin E. and John W. Quinney spent time in Washington D.C. in 1838 and their visit prompted Thomas Hendricks to tell the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, "Whatever Quinney proposes, we oppose."

So is it true that the two factions wanted to be rid of each other so badly that they voluntarily made a treaty which gave up half (the better half) of their reservation? Not exactly. If the treaty would have been properly implemented by the federal government, the emigration to what is now Kansas could have been successful. As it was, however, at least some and possibly many Indians died along the way and others eventually found their way back to Wisconsin. Others succeeded amongst other tribes in Kansas and Oklahoma.

Further reading:
Read the treaty online.
See pages 66-67 of James Oberly's A Nation of Statesmen.

More About the Munsees

New York Indian Removal, Part XIII:
More About the Munsees

This flag represents the cultural preservation of the Munsee Delaware Indians. It doesn't stand for any geographical or political entity. --->


Not a lot has been written about the comings and goings of the Munsee Delaware Indians in relation to the Stockbridge Mohicans. The Stockbridge-Munsee "partnership," when not made official by the federal government, seems to have been informal enough so as to have been an unwritten one for many years - and it appears to have been an "on-again-off-again" kind of thing.

I believe there were Munsees settled in present-day Wisconsin as early as 1823, but I've been having a hard time locating specific and conclusive documentation of it (I'll keep looking through my papers). Maybe there were a significant number of "New York" Munsees in Wisconsin in the 1820's, but if there were, they don't appear to have stayed through the next decade. Cutting Marsh reported "only one Munsee family is at present on the ground" in a September 21, 1836 letter in the ABCFM Papers.

As I explained in a previous post, about 200 Munsees showed up at the Stockbridge Reservation in 1837, but as "Canadian" Munsees, I cannot say for sure whether or not they were in any way associated with the "New York" Munsees who had settled along the Fox River more than ten years earlier. My guess is that they weren't the Munsees that John W. Quinney had in mind when he went to Washington D.C. to negotiate for new land. That would explain why he complained to the Secretary of War about their arrival. Maybe it also explains why he left the Munsees out of his 1837 constitution.


When the tribe is referred to as the Stockbridge- Munsee Mohicans, it is easy to forget that the Munsees weren't Mohicans. ---->


Anyway, after some months at the Stockbridge Reservation, about 70 of the Munsees continued on to the Delaware Reservation in what is now Kansas. Did the rest stay permanently? Some historians appear to assume that they did. But I have my doubts: when the treaty of 1839 provided an official framework for the Hendricks-Konkapot faction to move to the Delaware Reservation, it is likely that the rest of the Canadian Munsees went with them.

When the migration to the Delaware reservation didn't quite work out, the treaty of 1856 not only allowed members of the Hendricks-Konkapot faction into the new reservation that was created, but also made it official that the Munsees would be included. But how many Munsees came to live on the new reservation in Shawano County, Wisconsin? I really don't think anybody knows for sure. [Some information on that can be found in a post written several weeks after this one: "The Munsees: According to an Indian Party Brief."]

The First Permanent Split in the Stockbridge Tribal Church

New York Indian Removal, Part XII:
The First Permanent Split in the Stockbridge Tribal Church

An understanding of this post depends upon my posts of Part X and Part XI of the New York Indian Removal series.

This illustration of the westward migration of the Delaware Indians acknowledges the Munsees in Canada, but doesn't recognize their stopoff at the Stockbridge Reservation in Wisconsin.
It is unfortunate that there is a lot more data available and known to historians from the point of view of the Quinneys and Rev. Cutting Marsh than there is from the point of view of Thomas Hendricks and Robert Konkapot. In the most politically correct terminology, they were the leaders of the "Emigrant party." Cutting Marsh, of course, called it the "Disaffected party," and I have also used that term, not as a slight to Hendricks, Konkapot, or others in the party, but because I suspect that one of the main reasons that they were so willing to leave good agricultural land for a drier climate to the west (present-day Kansas), is that they had had enough of the Quinney-led, missionary-backed tribal government.

As I have outlined before, various historians have offered various explanations for the origin of the factional conflict, but I think that my "Crime and Punishment" post [see the comment where I give due credit to Roger Nichols for my viewpoint] best explains how Hendricks and Konkapot emerged as leaders. They were also, of course, members of the tribe's other leading families and that may have something to do with their "disaffection."

In my last post you read that the Quinneys had accused Thomas Hendricks and Robert Konkapot of bringing roughly 200 Munsees to the Stockbridge Reservation in Wisconsin so they could cash in on the $500 offered in the 1836 Schermerhorn treaty. Instead, it is more likely that their main intention was to add numbers to their "disaffected" party.

Since there wasn't a lot of separation between church and state in the tribe from 1734 up until the 1830's, events in the tribal church are significant benchmarks in following the conflict. In a May 28th, 1838 letter to David Greene of the ABCFM, Cutting Marsh reported that he had suspended Thomas Hendricks from the tribal church and excommunicated Robert Konkapot for "slander, lying and dishonesty."

Marsh's next letter to the ABCFM (11/29/1838) marks the first permanent split in the tribal church of the Stockbridge Mohicans. (An earlier split was reconciled when Samson Occom died and members of his congregation re-joined John Sergeant[Jr.]'s congregation). Marsh had the nerve to tell his supporters that it seemed "as though the adversary [meaning Satan] had sent two Baptists to help them." Somehow Hendricks and Konkapot got in touch with two Baptist Indians who had ties with the tribe, brought them to the reservation and held their own worship services to rival those of Cutting Marsh and the tribe's regular leaders.

Munsee Removal and the Quinneys' Perspective

New York Indian Removal, Part XI:
Munsee Removal and the Quinneys' Perspective


This painting of Austin E. Quinney is owned by the Wisconsin State Historical Society. --->


To missionary Cutting Marsh, there was nothing wrong with the 1837 Tribal Constitution of the Stockbridge Mohicans (reprinted on pages 209-213 of James Oberly's
A Nation of Statesmen). So when members of the Hendricks and Konkapot faction - also known as the Disaffected party - opposed it, Marsh felt that they just weren't ready to adhere to the laws that "all civilized nations" had in common (letter from Marsh to Green, December 13, 1838 ABCFM Papers).

Marsh wasn't specific about what the Hendricks and Konkapot faction were doing to oppose the new constitution. However, after considering the Schermerhorn treaty of 1836 and a hand-written copy of an old letter I found in the John C. Adams Papers (at the Historical Society in Madison, WI) I have concluded that it had a lot to do with the Munsee Delawares.

The treaty the United States made with the Menominees in 1832 set aside two townships on the east shore of Lake Winnebago for the Stockbridge and Munsee Indians, but the vast majority of Munsees remained either in New York State or in southern [southeastern] Ontario, Canada. By the 1830's, present-day Wisconsin was a popular destination for white settlement and instead of removing New York Indians to Wisconsin, the federal government aimed to move them west of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. As a result, the Schermerhorn treaty of 1836 contained a clause in which any chief who would "remove his Tribe or any party of not less than 100 persons [would receive] $500 for his services"(the treaty is reprinted in Oberly, pages 243-246).

As you may remember, the tribal leaders (aka leaders of the "Wiskonsin party") had seen the land west of the Missouri River and decided not to make the move. While John W. Quinney was lobbying Congress not to ratify the Schermerhorn treaty, Thomas Hendricks and Robert Konkapot were lobbying Congress to ratify it (see Oberly, 62).

A handwritten, undated letter, addressed only to "the Honorable Secretary of War," and signed by John W. Quinney and Austin E. Quinney, alleged that Thomas Hendricks and Robert Konkapot left their reservation and met up with roughly 200 Canadian Munsees near Detroit. According to the Quinneys, Hendricks and Konkapot persuaded the Munsees to "come round by the way of Green Bay, telling them that that was the easiest and they would be provided with everything necessary by the government in this route to the end of the journey." Furthermore, the Quinneys claimed that Hendricks and Konkapot induced the Munsees by telling them that there were Munsee lands near the Stockbridge settlement which had recently been sold and they could receive some of the proceeds of that sale if they showed up.


<------ Joel Poinsett, U.S. Secretary of War, 1837-1841. An amateur botanist, Poinsett imported a plant from the Aztecs that was named after him (the Poinsettia).


As the Quinneys tell it in their letter, nearly all the Munsees wanted to continue on their way to what is now Kansas, but they were "persuaded to remain until the [Schermerhorn] treaty was ratified." In other words, the Quinneys were alleging that Hendricks and Konkapot worked to keep the Munsees on the Stockbridge reservation in order to collect the $500 payoff promised in the treaty. They even pointed out that these were "Canadian" Munsees, not the New York Munsee Indians that the government was so eager to see gone.

Was it worth $500 for the two leaders of the "Disaffected party"? You'll see in my next post that Hendricks and Konkapot may have been motivated by more than that.

The Need for a Constitution

New York Indian Removal, Part X:
The Need for a Constitution

This map of the Wisconsin Territory (from the David Rumsey Map collection) shows that the move from Grand Kawkawlin (Statesburg) to Stockbridge in Calumet County wasn't a long one.


As you may recall from my previous post, the negotiations that brought the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians to their reservation on the east shore of Lake Winnebago involved a rather large delegation of Menominees, but there were only two representatives for the Oneidas, and John W. Quinney - whether it was his intent or not - bargained on behalf of not only the Stockbridge Mohicans, but also the Munsee and Brothertown Indians.

In a September, 21, 1836 letter to ABCFM officer David Green, Cutting Marsh explained that the treaty that brought the Stockbridges to their current reservation had also set aside a share of it for the Munsees. Some Munsees, apparently a small number, had already settled along the Fox River in the 1820's (and most people assume they went along with the Stockbridges to their next reservation on Lake Winnebago), but the bulk of them remained in New York and the southern part of Ontario, Canada.

According to James Oberly, John W. Quinney wrote the Stockbridge Mohicans' first constitution as protection against the removal policies of the federal government. That conclusion fits in with some significant data, namely things that were happening to other Native nations and the sequence of signing the Schermerhorn treaty in 1836 but later seeing the land and deciding that it was not fit to move onto.

The first constitution of the Stockbridge Mohicans, written sometime in 1837, does appear to have been one of Quinney's ways of protecting his people from treaties, including Schermerhorn's. However, the plot thickens when the rise of the Disaffected party and the Munsees remaining in New York and present-day Ontario are thrown into the mix. Stay tuned.

Ellis Describes More Negotiations

New York Indian Removal, Part IX:
Ellis Describes More Negotiations

Let's back up a little ways. Remember the treaties of 1821 and 1822? Remember how they were sloppily done and appear to have aimed to set up conflict between the New York Indians and the Wisconsin Natives? Remember how the summer council of 1830 didn't resolve anything? (See this post if you don't remember.)

To take us further, I think the best source is Albert G. Ellis' "Advent of the New York Indians Into Wisconsin," (originally printed in Wisconsin Historical Collections, Volume II, pages 415-449). (Ellis is pictured on the left.)

The new Indian agent in the Green Bay region, Colonel Samuel C. Stambaugh, was denied permission to take ten Menominee Chiefs to negotiate a new treaty in Washington, D.C. Instead, Stambaugh left Green Bay with fourteen Menominees on November 8, 1830. Three weeks later they arrived at Detroit where they picked up Eleazar Williams and Daniel Bread who would represent the Oneidas. The party of sixteen Indians and a few federal officials finally made it to Washington on December 11th, and were joined by John W. Quinney of the Stockbridge Mohicans (Ellis, page 433).

John W. Quinney -->

As Ellis tells it (433-434), the officials of Andrew Jackson's administration worked with the Menominees and essentially ignored the New York Indians. The first treaty that was written up (he refers to it as "the Stambaugh treaty") didn't allow the New York Indians the quality nor the quantity of land they wanted. Senators from New York opposed that treaty. They wanted enough land set aside not only for the New York Indians that were already in Wisconsin, but also for the Senecas and other Indians that had stayed put up to that point.

So the Senate never bothered to vote on whether to ratify the Stambaugh treaty. In the next session of Congress, however, a treaty was passed with more favorable terms for the New York Indians. On page 440 Ellis reveals the terms of that treaty relevant to the Stockbridge, Munsee, and Brothertown Indians.

Sure the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians would have to move again, but instead of the swampy land on the west bank of the Fox River that Andrew Jackson's administration wanted them to go to, they were moving to good land on the east shore of Lake Winnebago. John W. Quinney's negotiations had paid off!

The Disaffected Party

New York Indian Removal, Part VIII: The Disaffected Party

In an 1869 sermon, Rev. L. P. Norcross said it started with the theft of a cow. James Oberly, author of A Nation of Statesmen portrays the conflict as largely about where different Indians wanted to live. But Roger Nichols (in his unpublished thesis) appears to have understood the rise of the Disaffected party the best.
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In the 1830's, conditions were in place to push more Indians out of New York State. (Posts III and IV of the New York Indian Removal series provide some explanation and recommendations for further reading.) At the same time, present day Wisconsin was becoming a popular destination for white settlers, becoming a territory by itself in 1836. The government's goal was now to remove all "New York Indians," whether in New York State or Wisconsin Territory to a new reservation in what is now Kansas. As I understand it, it was at this point that the Brothertown Indians chose to give up their relationship with the federal government and become U.S. citizens. However, I will focus on the Stockbridge Mohicans in this post.


Rev. John Schermerhorn was the Indian Agent who made the treaty which ultimately sent the Cherokee Nation packing for their infamous Trail of Tears. Unfortunately, Schermerhorn also got involved in the further removal of the New York Indians. In September of 1836, Schermerhorn met with the Stockbridge Mohicans and succeeded in getting the tribal leaders (including John Metoxen, John W. Quinney, Austin E. Quinney, and Jacob Chicks) to sign a treaty that would bring about one more removal.

Schermerhorn arrived only weeks after the debacle of crime and punishment which I related in my previous post. When the two murderers managed to escape, some Stockbridges expressed doubt that their nation of roughly 320 people was big enough to govern itself effectively. If not, wouldn't it be to their advantage to combine with the other New York Indians on one large reservation? Furthermore, although it wasn't that long ago that some had said the Green Bay area would be reserved exclusively for Indians, it wasn't necessarily naive for some to hope that moving to an all-Indian territory would eliminate alcohol-related murders and other problems associated with white-encroachment.


Five of the established tribal leaders went with John Schermerhorn to look at the new land to the southwest offered in the treaty, but they found it unfavorable on account of the hardness of the water and scarcity of wood among other things (Marsh to Green, December, 13, 1837). The established tribal leaders and those who supported them became known as the "Wiskonsin Party" because they wanted to stay put.

The party that opposed them was led by Thomas Hendricks and Robert Konkapot. They were know as the "Emigrant party," the "Missouri party," and Cutting Marsh also referred to them as the "Disaffected party." There were a number of possible reasons why they might have been disaffected. Maybe cattle ownership and the pros and cons of relocating again were part of the conflict. And, as James Oberly pointed out, a key aspect of Schermerhorn's strategy was to stir up conflict between tribal factions. But Cutting Marsh and John Metoxen felt that the murder that summer and its aftermath is what led the Stockbridge Mohicans down the wrong path. Roger Nichols put more weight on their opinion and so do I.

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).

Jedidiah Morse

New York Indian Removal, Part V: Jedidiah Morse
As I write this, the Wikipedia article for Jedidiah Morse is relatively short, but it is on-target in portraying him as a clergyman, geographer, and scientist, as well as the father of Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph. I am not aware of Morse doing any direct mission work among American Indians, but rather, he held some kind of administrative post in the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM).

As I've said before, for many years there wasn't much separation between church and state when it came to Indian missions. So it shouldn't be too surprising that Rev. Morse also worked as a consultant or advisor to the United States Secretary of War. In 1820, Morse made a tour of many tribes and filed a 496-page report which was printed in 1822 and recently made available online. One of the notable events of Morse's 1820 tour was a sermon preached at Fort Howard (located near the modern city of Green Bay, WI). That sermon has been recognized as the first protestant sermon preached in what is now Wisconsin and it helped pave the way for the New York Indians, many of whom were protestant Christians.

According to Google Images, this map is probably Morse's own work, and he is known as the "father of American Geography." The map is taken from his Report to the Secretary of War.

Morse's report promotes the "civilizing" of American Indians. While you may remember that I once wrote that the "civilizing" process was harmful to Native cultures, I still think that Rev. Morse deserves a certain amount of recognition as an advocate for Indians. Why? Well, it doesn't seem like there was much diversity sensitivity back then. By advocating for "civilizing" the Indians, Morse was way ahead of other white Americans who wanted to exterminate them.

Some, I will hope...that the number is small, have...said, 'Indians are not worth saving. They are perishing - let them perish. The sooner they are gone the better.' ....A sufficient answer to such of these objections.... will be found, I conceive, in the facts collected in the Appendix of this work. It is too late to say that Indians cannot be civilized (page 81).

and he continues on page 82:

Indians are of the same nature and original, and of one blood, with ourselves [white people]; of intellectual powers as strong, and capable of cultivation, as ours. they as well as ourselves, are made to be immortal. To look down upon them, therefore as an inferior race, as untameable, and to profit by their ignorance and weakness; to take their property from them for a small part of its real value, and in other ways to oppress them; is undoubtedly wrong, and highly displeasing to our common Creator, Lawgiver and final Judge.

There were some whose urging of the New York Indians to remove west came across as self-serving, but Morse really had nothing to gain by their leaving. Morse and others - quite possibly this includes many of the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians - felt that Indians would have a better chance to prosper if they were segregated from whites, particularly from the kind who would sell them alcohol.

Conspiracy of Interests

New York Indian Removal, Part IV: Conspiracy of Interests

This series of posts on the removal of the New York Indians is not close to being over yet. Lots of material is out there on the subject, and the vast majority of it is about the Iroquois Six Nations. Some of this Iroquois-focused material can be helpful for us in understanding Algonkian church history.
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Industrial projects like the Erie Canal and powerful organizations like the Ogden Land Company were major forces that pushed the New York Natives westward. But of course, those projects and organizations didn't do it by themselves, they were aided by corrupt federal and state officials. If you want to know just how it happened, I recommend that you read Laurence Hauptman's book, Conspiracy of Interests: Iroquois Dispossession and the Rise of New York State (1999, Syracuse University Press). As the title suggests, Hauptman has little to say about the Stockbridges and the Brothertowners, but I don't mind that. He gave me just enough to tell you about in this post.

On page 72, Hauptman says John Sergeant [Jr.] was a good advocate not only for the Stockbridge Mohicans, but for their neighbors too. He reports that Sergeant questioned the motives of state officials, warned people about the dangers facing the the New York Indians, and insisted that "state and federal negotiations with the Oneidas violated federal laws." The thing that surprised me, however, was that at one point, Sergeant dared to criticize Samuel Kirkland, one of his counterparts among the Oneidas.

On page 176, Hauptman describes the Treaty of Buffalo Creek of 1838, as a "fraudulent treaty consummated as a result of bribery, forgery, the use of alcohol, and other nefarious methods." Hauptman noted that the 1838 treaty required not only the Iroquois, but also the Stockbridge and Munsee Indians to remove to a roughly 1.8 million-acre reservation in what is now Kansas. I look forward to explaining how the Stockbridge and some of the Munsee Indians (and, of course, the Brothertowners) managed to remain in what is now Wisconsin, despite the Treaty of Buffalo Creek.

New York Indian Removal: "Why did they Leave?"

New York Indian Removal, Part III: "Why did they Leave?"

Some of the Oneidas remain in New York to this day. [They are an Iroquois-speaking nation, not the Algonkian-speaking people that this blog ususally focuses on.]

Recent historians don't put much weight on Eleazar Williams' influence in the removal of the New York Indians. Nor do those same historians view the removal as being about doing Indians a favor by keeping them away from the white frontier. That may sound like a ridiculous rationalization to some people now, but it was based on real reports from well-meaning people like missionary John Sergeant [Jr.], who, in 1821 wrote that the Stockbridge Mohicans were

[S]urrounded by a white population many of whom are greedy after [the Indians'] money and property, and in a secret way contrary to the Laws of the state are constantly supplying them with a liquor called whiskey which is a great grief to the serious people, on which account many of the Indians are willing to remove to some distant country, if they can get away from the white heathen, as the whiskey traders are commonly called (quoted in a 2/1/2006 Mohican News article by Lion Miles).

According to Laurence Hauptman and L. Gordon McLester III, authors of Chief Daniel Bread and the Oneida Nation of Indians in Wisconsin, federal officials used "religious rhetoric," sometimes borrowed from accurate reports, such as the one you just read, to cover up what really pushed many, but not all of the New York Indians westward. As we will see, the real reasons were "land interests" and "national defense concerns"(page 32).

Hauptman and McLester tell us that by February of 1817, at least one federal Indian agent (Charles Jouett) felt that removing the New York Indians to the upper Midwest would "destroy British influence with the Indians north and west of the settlements," and also "free up rich agricultural lands in New York for white settlement."

Hauptman and McLester believe that the thought of being forced to leave their homeland was hurtful to all the New York Indians. Furthermore, they remind us that the Oneidas and the Stockbridges had fought for the colonies in the Revolutionary War (and again for the United States in the War of 1812). It appears that loyalty to the United States made no difference to the Monroe administration. They presented their policy of removal to the chiefs of New York's Native nations as inevitable.

The Stockbridge Mohicans, of course, had already been pushed out of their town in Massachusetts by the 1780's. I am of the impression that their leaders never intended to permanently reside among the Oneidas in New York. In the case of the Stockbridge Mohicans, the hurtful thing seems to have been that they were not allowed to make their long-anticipated move to live among the Delawares and other Algonkians at Indiana's White River.

Eleazar Williams

New York Indian Removal, Part II: Eleazar Williams

New York State was the home of the Iroquois Six Nations. Did they actually want to leave their home? Generally speaking, they didn't, but one man of mixed race was able to persuade a few of the younger chiefs of each tribe that moving west would be a great opportunity. That man was Eleazar Williams.

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There is a picture of Rev. Stephen Williams in my post of 1/25/09 ("The Housatonics Accept a Mission"). When Stephen Williams was still a boy, he and his family were taken captive by the Mohawks in the Deerfield [MA] raid of 1704. Some Deerfield residents, including Williams' mother, were tomahawked to death (Frazier, 17), others were released, but Stephen's sister, Eunice, was adopted by the St. Francis Mohawks[Frazier says she was five at the time, another account says she was seven] . Use this link to learn more about the Deerfield raid.

Although she was given a number of opportunities to return to Deerfield (with her family), Eunice Williams began to speak and think in the Iroquois way, and married one of the Indians in her village. Her husband took the Williams name. You can read more about Eunice Williams here and here.

Eleazar Williams, a slick character, if not an all-out charlatan, was the great-grandson of Eunice Williams. Although Eleazer would later claim not to remember the first twelve or thirteen years of his life, most historians believe he was born and raised among the Mohawks (his parents were St. Regis Mohawks with "white blood"). As a teen, he attended Moor's Charity School (the one which began with Eleazar Wheelock teaching Samson Occom). His Canadian connections led to work as a spy for the United States in the War of 1812 (see Ellis, 418-419).






In his later years, Eleazar Williams claimed he was the lost Dauphin of France.





Eleazar Williams made a tour of the Iroquois Six Nations in 1816 and was well received by the Oneidas. Williams then obtained the blessing of Bishop Hobart to become the Oneidas' lay minister. When Williams began his work, an estimated four-fifths of the Oneidas belonged to the Pagan Party. But after only a few weeks of Williams' efforts, that party made a formal renunciation of "Paganism" and declared Episcopal Christianity to be the one true faith (see Ellis, 420).

Great influence over a tribe of fifteen hundred Indians would be enough to satisfy most, but Eleazar Williams had a strong desire for power. He came up with a scheme, a "Utopian dream of an Indian Empire"(Abel, 311).

Although Williams claimed that the plan of an Indian state was his original idea, it was pretty much the same idea that Rev. Jedidiah Morse had also come up with. By 1818 Williams was promoting the idea of moving all Indians in New York State, as well as many in Canada, to the region of Green Bay in what is now Wisconsin. There they would form a grand confederacy. As Albert Ellis describes it, Williams got a few young men from each of the Iroquois Six Nations to subscribe to his plans by "holding out dazzling prizes of future glory and aggrandizement"(page 421). Satisfied that he could exaggerate the support his scheme had from the other New York Indians, Williams went to Washington over the winter of 1818-1819 to take part in the federal government's plans to remove the New York Indians westward.