Headline: United States Fails in Honest Attempt to Help New York Indians

Native American activists have made the claim that the United States intentionally pitted the Menominee Indians against the New York Indians that wanted to emigrate to their country in the 1820's. I can see that. But as more research has been done and the details are spelled out more clearly by historians, I think it is more accurate to say that the United States government was just too sloppy, unorganized, and maybe even too incompetent to properly broker a legal arrangement between the two parties.


James Duane Doty was the federal judge who served as legal counsel on behalf of the Menominees in the Council of Butte des Morts in August, 1827. At issue then were the negotiations that had been made between the various tribes in 1821 and 1822. Doty would later go on to be the second Governor of the Wisconsin Territory (1841-1844) and the fifth Governor of the Utah Territtory (1863-1865).



In my last two posts, I have already made the point that in order to make a proper treaty, the official leaders of the parties involved must be present. And although you'd think that was something more basic than Diplomacy 101, somehow, despite the fact that the Menominees didn't have an official leader, treaties were still produced and signed.

I've mentioned the treaties made in 1821 and 1822 before (see "Negotiations and Arrivals" and see "Ellis Describes More Negotiations"). Those documents, of course, gave the Brothertown, Oneida and Stockbridge Indians the opportunity to move to what is now the state of Wisconsin. However, for good reasons, the two treaties were never ratified by Congress. According to the Milwaukee Public Museum, the opposition to the treaties from both the Menominee and the Ho-Chunk (or "Winnebago") Indians was what prevented their ratification. Congress somehow sensed that something was wrong back then, and thanks to the work of Brad Jarvis, The Brothertown Nation of Indians, we know a lot more about it.

Jarvis' sixth chapter (pages 179-215) is about the negotiations between the Wisconsin Indians and the New York Indians. The chapter title is "A Tedious, Perplexing and Harassing Dispute," if you've already read my NY Indian Removal series of posts I think you'll be able to read it without finding it tedious or perplexing.

How was the United States sloppy or even incompetent in assisting the New York Indians in purchasing land from the Wisconsin Natives? This quote may give you a good idea:
.

The United States had sent Charles Trowbridge, a young government surveyor, with the 1821 New York Indian delegation in order to keep a report of the council. Trowbridge's report...illustrates much of the confusion in the negotiations. Upon arrival in Green Bay the contingent from New York found both the agent and the interpreter absent. Despite the fact that the lack of a translator would prove difficult in negotiating a land cession, the New York Indians decided to proceed anyway (Jarvis, pages 198-199).

And later, Charles Trowbridge "stepped outside of his role as an observer and tried to convince the Ho-Chunks to cede the Menominee lands in place of the Menominee." (That's right, Trowbridge asked the Ho-Chunks to give away something that wasn't theirs to give.)

To say the least, the negotiations started off on the wrong foot.

Jack Campisi's Brief History of the Brothertown Indians of Wisconsin, Part 2

The Brothertown Indians' Tribal Storyteller, Dick Welch, shows his daughter, Shelley Dekker, a historical display at the Fond du Lac Public Library (in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin). Jack Campisi gives credit to Samson Occom for persuading the following Native villages or communities to join together and move west to live near the Oneidas: "Mohegan, Mashantucket, Stonington, and Farmington in Connecticut; Charleston and Niantic in Rhode Island; and Montawk [or Montauk] on Long Island."

However, it was not long after the first group completed their migration that they were forced to flee as a result of the Revolutionary War. It was not safe for them to return until 1783. However, by as early 1785, white land speculators started to pressure the tribe to sell its land.

Despite being somewhat involved with the earlier removal plans of the Stockbridge Indians and Eleazar Williams, Campisi tells us that it was not until 1831 that bands of Brothertown Indians began to move from New York to Wisconsin. He adds that the migration happened gradually, with"members still joining as late as 1841."

Campisi's next two paragraphs are very important for understanding Brothertown history:

The tribe was hardly settled in its new location [in Calumet County, WI] having been pressured out of New York and pushed off its land in Kaukauna [aka Statesburg], when a new threat appeared. The federal government entered into negotiations with the tribes in New York and Wisconsin to exchange their lands for land in the Indian Territory of Kansas. On January 15, 1838, the United States concluded the Treaty of Buffalo Creek.

Once again the Brothertown tribe was in danger of being uprooted and forced to move. Once again, it was apparent that the cause of the problem was the manner in which the tribe held its land. By a perversity of law, as long as the land was held in common and inalienable, it was subject to loss by government action. The remedy, some thought, was to protect it in the same manner as the property of non-Indians was protected; through private ownership.

And so the Brothertown Indians chose to become citizens.


This series will continue.

John Sergeant III: Indian Agent

The Old Capitol Building in Albany, NY. Built in 1806-08. (Photograph from the Division of Visual Instruction Lanern [Lantern?] Slides, State Education Department, New York State Archives.)
In this blog I use the abbreviations "Sr." (for Senior), and "Jr." (for Junior), after the name "John Sergeant," to keep readers from getting confused. But in all the documents that I've ever looked at, I've never found any evidence to suggest that those abbreviations were used to distinguish between those two men during their lifetimes. The first John Sergeant died before the age of forty and his son John was too young to have any memory of his father.

But there is a third John Sergeant in Algonkian Church History. When Captain Hendrick Aupaumut refers to a "Mr. John M. Sergeant, Jr.," he is clearly referring to the grandson and not the son of the Stockbridge Mohicans first missionary.

Transcripts of a series of documents that were recently sent to me by the Harvard University Library system are about the man who we'll call John Sergeant III. Of this series of documents, the one which best explains the controversy at hand was written by "the undersigned chiefs and principal men of the Stockbridge tribe of Indians," [specifically "Chief HENDRICK AUPAUMUT, ELIJAH PYE, SAMPSON MARQUIS, THOMAS S. HENDRICK, AARON RONKJOOT [Konkapot?], ABRAM M'KOWN [Metoxen?], JOHN M. BALDWIN, JACOB JEHOIAKIM, [and] JOHN W. NEWCOMB"] and addressed to the legislature of the State of New York.

The Indians' letter is consistent with the other documents sent to me (including a letter written by a John Sergeant dated 1829, proving that he was the son of the Sergeant who died in 1824). Allow me to summarize the Stockbridge Indians' letter to the New York legislature.

The tribe needed the assistance of a white man to move west. They asked John Sergeant III to serve as their agent and he resisted, fearing he might impoverish himself as a result. (Apparently only whites could apply for loans at that time, plus there were travel and other expenses.) However, Sergeant was encouraged by state officials. Sergeant was appointed by Governor De Witt Clinton and worked on the tribe's behalf for four years. It was agreed that 500 acres was a fair payment, but by no fault of the Stockbridge Indians, the land designated for him went to somebody else. The papers sent to me, then, are all documents that vouch for Sergeant's honesty and advocate that the state pay him the money he was owed.

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!

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.

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.

*****

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.

The Stockbridges Attempt a Move to Indiana

Author's note: This is the first of a series about the removal of the New York Indians.

Part I: The Stockbridges Attempt a Move to Indiana

The John C. Adams Papers at the State Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin, includes a hand-copied letter from President Thomas Jefferson to "Whom it may Concern," dated December 21, 1808. Captain Hendrick Aupaumut had asked the President to acknowledge a longstanding oral agreement between tribes. The letter was Jefferson's approval of the Stockbridge Mohicans' plan to move from New Stockbridge, New York, to live amongst the Delawares and other tribes at Indiana's White River. If the Stockbridges had moved when Jefferson was still president, I believe he would have kept his promise.
However, the Stockbridge Mohicans remained at New Stockbridge, New York, until the presidency of James Monroe. Monroe's administration included men like Andrew Jackson, and John C. Calhoun, who were in favor of "vigorous measures" when it came to Indian policy.

About 70 Stockbridges left New York State for Indiana's White River in August, 1818. Along the way, they learned from a Boston newspaper of a treaty being negotiated for the lands that were referred to in Jefferson's letter. The traveling Indians immediately wrote the Delawares for confirmation or denial of the report. The Delawares replied that the Stockbridges should continue on their way. But, tragically, the treaty of St. Mary's was signed on October 6th. John Sergeant [Jr], the Stockbridge missionary, wrote to Rev. Jedidiah Morse (on 12/15/1818) of the sad news:

We have had direct information of the Treaty with the Indians, and it is reported that 'the Delawares were forced to sell, and to sign the Treaty;' and that 'the poor Delawares had not a friend to support their cause!!'

Captain Hendrick Aupaumut sent his son, Solomon U. Hendricks, to Washington over the winter to make their grievance to Congress. Rev. Morse had worked with the older Captain Hendrick and now he supported the son. However, as you may have guessed, Congress made no efforts to alter the Treaty of St. Mary's - no matter that it broke the promise of a former President.

It was clear that the Stockbridge Indians, some remaining in New York State, and others temporarily in the Midwest, would have to find a homeland somewhere else.

Meanwhile, Rev. Morse managed to pass in and out of the fuzzy line that didn't really divide church and state when it came to U.S. Indian policy. He made a personal appeal to President Monroe, "urging that a tract in the Northwest Territory [now Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and part of Minnesota] be given to the Stockbridges, in compensation for the one they had lost"(Abel, pages 310-311).
Source:

The story of the removal of the New York Indians has been called a conspiracy of interests. One thread of interest began with Morse's collaboration with Captain Hendrick, Solomon U. Hendricks, and John Sergeant [Jr.]. In upcoming posts, I'll be writing about them, but also about other major players, including Eleazar Williams, John Schermerhorn, and others.

The NY Indian Historical Timeline, 1750-1817

I introduced the New York Indian Historical Timeline in my last post. That post includes a selection of ten events occurring between 1650 and 1750. Here's my "Chosen Ten" from the years 1750 to 1810:

1. 1754-1763: French and Indian War with the English [aka the Seven Years War].
2. 1758: Stephen Calvin [a New Jersey (Brotherton) Delaware] is interpreter for the church and schoolmaster for Indian school near Cranbury, NJ.
3. Threatened with mob violence, Moravian and Quaker missions in Pennsylvania evacuate their converts.
4. 1763: British proclamation halts all settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.
5. 1778: Oneida women bring food to Washington's starving army at Valley Forge, PA. [Read about the statue pictured at right and see the full image.]
6. 1782: First group moves to Brothertown, New York.
7. 1785: Brothertown name adopted, note that this is different from the Brainerd's Brotherton community.
8. 1795: Greenville Treaty denies Munsees to be in Ohio, they move to White River, Indiana.
9. 1810: Holland Land Company sells pre-emption right of purchase of Indian lands to the Ogden Land Company.
10. 1817: Eleazer Williams organizes the [Oneida's] First Christian Party; Pagan Party becomes the Second Christian Party.

Getting Started on the New York Indians

The map below was taken from the Languages of the Americas website.
Please see the post which introduces this excellent resource.

You may also want to read what they have to say about their historical maps.

The push to remove New York Indians to what is now Wisconsin and then west of the Mississippi is a topic I want to address in future posts. Who moved, who stayed, and what happened along the way all goes to make up a huge and significant piece of American history.

But first...

I have a document called the "New York Indian Historical Timeline." I must have originally found it in pdf or "Word" format on the web, because there is no URL on the bottom of the page...and no author's name to be found anywhere (I wonder if it was a group project). It is a little bit sloppy, I question some of the dates and numbers. Nevertheless, I believe the ones I've chosen to share with you are correct (arguably oversimplified, but that comes with the timeline format). I guess I cannot really call this a "Top Ten" list because some of these events were truly devastating, so here's my "Chosen List of Ten" from 1650 to 1750:

1. 1653: Iroquois practically exterminate the Erie.
2. 1654-1657: Smallpox epidemic.
3. 1664: Mohawks make peace with the Mohicans.
4. 1675-1676: King Philip's War, virtual extermination of the Wampanoag, Nipmuc, and Narragansett.
5. 1676: Over 200 enslaved Indians sold in the Caribbean.
6. 1689-1696: Many Delawares killed in King William's War.
7. 1737: The "Walking Purchase," sons of William Penn cheat Delawares out of 1200 square miles - while the Iroquois support the British.
8. 1740: Mohegans become members of David Jewett's Congregational church.
9. 1744-1748: King George's War
10. 1744: Presbyterian missionaries David and John Brainerd begin proselytizing among the Delaware.

New York Indians in Wisconsin and Elsewhere

Every federally recognized Indian nation has an enrollment officer, a tribal employee who uses census records and various other historical and genealogical sources to determine who has a sufficient blood quantum to be enrolled in that particular tribe. The situation has brought on controversy throughout Indian country for a number of reasons. Possibly the most controversial aspect of the blood quantum issue is that it doesn't really matter how much "Indian blood" you have, but rather what percentage of your ancestry belonged to the particular tribe that you want to be enrolled in.

The enrollment issue is further complicated by tribes such as the Stockbridge Mohicans who base their 1/4 blood quantum not on having 1/4 "Mohican" blood, but rather it is based on having 1/4 of your blood traceable back to the Stockbridge-Munsee Census of 1906 (or was it the census of 1895?, I'll have to check on that). Anyway, I already addressed the question of how "Mohican" the Stockbridge Indians are, so right now I want to share a genealogical resource that applies to all the New York Indians that came to Wisconsin.

Indians From New York in Wisconsin and Elsewhere: A Genealogy Reference compiled or edited by Toni Jollay Prevost is a book that I can only recommend with reservations (no pun intended). I looked at this book a couple years ago and remembered it as being "homemade," because of the "classic typewriter font" that is used. However, when I located the book today in my public library I found that it was published by Heritage Books in 1995. I had to wonder if the typewriter font was some kind of a marketing tool to get families to purchase a corporate project. Well, I know what they say about not judging a book by its cover (or its font), but I believe this is a book that has its share of errors. For example, if you wanted to know the chief sachem of the Stockbridge Mohicans in the 1820's where would you look? Ms. Prevost used a book about the Oneidas to get that information and as a result she claims that a Samuel W. Hendricks was the chief. (The author of the book on the Oneidas must have been referring to Solomon U. Hendricks, a chief for a few years before his early death.)

Anyway, I do recommend New York Indians in Wisconsin and Elsewhere for its duplication of census records and other lists. Included are census records from Brown, Shawano, and Calumet Counties in Wisconsin and Bucks County in Pennsylvania, census records of the Oneidas and Stockbridges, and a list of Iroquois Indians at boarding schools in Virginia, Kansas (Haskell) and Pennsylvania (Carlisle).

The Stockbridge Iroquois?

In the last few decades, many of the Stockbridge Mohicans have gone from shortening the name of their people from the "Stockbridges" to the "Mohicans." Of course, there are reasons for this. First of all, the word "Stockbridge" couldn't have been picked by Indians. The name "Stockbridge" was taken from an English town with that name. And now that Indians can be proud of being Indians, why not refer to themselves by an authentic Indian name?

Now I'm going argue that the name "Stockbridge Indians," though not as romantic as "Mohicans," is more historically or genealogically accurate. It is a rather simple argument, really. Many of the Indians that joined the Stockbridge community over the years, were non-Mohicans. It began with Algonkians that had lived among or been politically influenced by the Mohicans since the 1600's. These groups would include (probably the Schaghticoke's and) the Wappingers. In 1756 the remnant of the Wappingers, numbering 227 souls, joined the Stockbridge community. At that time there were probably only about 200 Stockbridge "Mohicans," but the community became larger by taking on the Wappingers.

Then of course, there are the Munsees, they are not Mohicans. There are the Brotherton Delawares (but they might not have many descendants left among the Stockbridges). And the Gardner family were Narrangansetts.

So far, I've only mentioned other Algonkians, but there were also Indians from Iroquois nations who joined the Stockbridge community. The treaty of 1856 included language that encouraged the Munsees and all other Indians that were still in New York State to settle in the new Stockbridge-Munsee reservation. Some of the New York Iroquois took the government up on this. J.N. Davidson (page 44) says he was told that Senecas, Onondagas, and Cayugas, "about eighty in all," joined the Stockbridge community in the 1850's.

There were also escaped slaves and others with African blood marrying into the Stockbridge community, and white people, what about the white people?! There is a lot of German and other white blood among those who are members of the Stockbridge community. Maybe they could call themselves the Stockbridge Tri-racial Community - If you can think of something more genealogically accurate than that, please let me know.

Wisconsin's Past and Present

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




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

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

Who Was Dorothy Ripley?

I just looked Dorothy Ripley up on Wikipedia and it says that she was an Enlishwoman who "spent thirty years in the United States trying to secure better conditions for slaves." It also says that she may have been the first woman to ever address the Congress of the United States. But the Wikipedia article doesn't say anything about Ripley's acitivity in the course of Algonkian church history.

Like Samson Occom, Dorothy Ripley is a hero because she managed to have a career as a preacher at a time when mission societies rarely gave any kind of support to anybody that wasn't a white male. In an upcoming post, I'll describe how Ripley preached to the New York Indians, including the Stockbridges and Brothertowns, in 1805. (I'm also going to keep the title of her book under wraps for now - so it can be the title of the upcoming post.)

I chose five verses of a poem Ripley wrote that appear to illustrate her life:

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.