Appenoose Declines Mission Opportunity

It may come as a surprise to many, but the Stockbridge Mohicans were such devout Christians that they initiated a mission trip to their fellow Algonkians, the Sauk and Fox (aka Sac and Fox) Indians.  At that time, 1834, the Sauk and Fox Indians were living in Iowa and along the western edge of northern Illinois.  Due to their lack of funds, the Stockbridge Mohicans asked the mission society that supported their church, the ABCFM (American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions) to help pay for the trip.  They also asked if a missionary could accompany them.  

Not surprisingly, the ABCFM liked the idea and they instructed the Stockbridges' missionary, Cutting Marsh, to make the trip.  The Stockbridges were living at Statesburg back then (present-day Kaukauna, Wisconsin), so the delegation took a birch-bark canoe up the Fox River, then portaged onto the Wisconsin River which they took down to the Mississippi.  From there they traveled by steamboat, horse and maybe again by canoe.

The record we have of the mission trip comes from Cutting Marsh's journals.  He unfortunately didn't have much to say about the four Stockbridge Mohicans that traveled with him.  Nevertheless, Marsh's descriptions make for a rather good read.

Even better - I think - is the summary of the trip written by Marsh's biographer, Roger Nichols.  Nichols' re-telling of Marsh's attempts to get the Sauk Chief Appenoose to bring Christianity and "civilization" to his people is worth quoting at length.

After a week, Appenoose agreed to confer with [Marsh] on August 7.  They had already talked informally about the possibility of establishing a school or mission, and the chief seemed interested.  His apparent cooperation caused Marsh to become very optimistic, but their planned meeting was never held.  That afternoon an Indian trader brought several kegs of whiskey to the village and in a few hours all was badlam.  The chief, as well as most of the tribe became drunk and Marsh lost this opportunity.  He retired early, complained bitterly about the lack of dependability among the Indians, and blamed the white men who brought whiskey to the village.....

The following morning Marsh and Appenoose conferred about the establishment of a school at the village.  They were unable to reach an agreement, partly because the chief was suffering from the effects of his drunken spree.....the Indians managed to treat Marsh with some courtesy and still, in effect, refuse his offer.

Nichols tells us that Marsh did some preaching and persuading over the next two days but made little headway and, feeling sorry for himself, he went into the woods to be alone.  Nichols continues:

While [Marsh] was gone the traders brought another canoe with whiskey, and the merriment began again.  Marsh was disgusted by the drunken revelry and savage yelling in the village, and remained away until late in the evening.  

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians - Anton Treuer's New Book

Wow!  I really would be afraid to ask a lot of the questions that make up the headings of Anton Treuer's new book.  Here's a sample:

Why do Indians have long hair?
Why does getting the Columbus story right matter?
What is blood quantum, what is tribal enrollment, and how are they related?
What is Indian religion?


Treuer doesn't make the claim that he can speak for all Indians. Instead, his contacts with people from other tribes give the reader an idea of the diversity of Indigenous peoples in this hemisphere.

Here's an excerpt that shows Treuer's expertise and also his willingness to "tell it like it is":

What is "Indian Time"?
Indian time is...a terrible misconception widely held in Indian Country. Today the concept is used as an excuse to be late or lazy.  But Native Americans in former times were neither. If you woke up late or took a lazy day your children often went hungry. People worked hard and were physically fit to in order to survive. [from page 46]

Buy Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But were Afraid to Ask from the Minnesota Historical Society.

The Mohicans and the Stockbridge Mohicans

The word "Mohican" in the names of this park and other places in Ohio, reflects the fact that Mohicans were leaving their homeland and moving into the Ohio River Valley as early as the late 1600's.



By 1740 most Mohicans had disappeared from the Hudson River Valley. In fact, many of them had been living in the Ohio River Valley for generations. Over time, these "western" Mohicans intermarried with tribes like the Miami, the Delaware, or possibly with frontier whites. Ultimately, they did not maintain their Mohican identity.


Meanwhile, back in their homeland, the once-mighty Mohican nation was struggling to survive as a result of the changes brought about by over one hundred years of white contact. The fur trade brought about a dependence on white goods, problems with alcohol, an increased competition with other Native nations for resources, bloodier warfare, and, of course, devastating European-imported diseases like smallpox.


So by the 1740's, changes in both the natural environment and the surviving population resulted in the once-mighty Mohican nation being spread out in small, scattered communities.


The history of the Stockbridge Mohicans began when two Mohican villages along the Housatonic River in what is now Massachusetts, decided to accept a Christian mission. The residents of those two villages got more than they bargained for: instead of just teaching a new religion and teaching the children to read, the Indians' British neighbors imposed the structure of white culture upon them. Most notably, the two villages were soon gathered into one town which the British called Stockbridge.


The popularity of Stockbridge, Massachusetts - for both religious and non-religious reasons - made it the Council Fire - in other words, the capital city - of what was left of the Mohican Nation. However, it bears noting that many of the Indians that joined the Stockbridge community were Wappingers or other non-Mohican Indians.

Or were they?

The way some people now use the term "Mohican," anybody who is descended from the Stockbridge Indians is a Mohican, so it doesn't then matter if your ancestors were Naragansetts or some mix of Algonkian-speaking refugees: As long as you are descended from the Indians of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, New Stockbridge, New York, and/or Stockbridge, Wisconsin, you can call yourself a "Mohican."

And why not?

My point is not to prevent a group of people from calling themselves whatever they want, but rather to end the confusion and the talking past one another that often results from cases like this where one word means two different things.


Or do I have it completely wrong?


You tell me.







Sources:


Dunn, Shirley. (2000) The Mohican World, 1680-1750


Frazier, Patrick. (1992) The Mohicans of Stockbridge


Sultzman, Lee. Mahican History
.
.
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The Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: "Come Over and Help Us"

As James De Jong and other authors have observed, the official seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (see above) depicted an Indian who was saying "come over and help us." I will not bother to repeat what others have observed that that statement may represent in terms of ethnocentricity. Instead, I want to point out, as De Jong does (on page 32 of As the Waters Cover the Sea), that "come over and help us" is a Biblically inspired statement. It comes from Acts 16:9:

And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: There stood a man of Macedonia and prayed him, saying 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.'

The point is not whether or not the American Indians ever asked for missionaries, instead, the point is that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was incorporated under the pretense of helping the native Algonkian-speaking people, or at least it was founded under the pretense of converting those natives to the Christian religion.

Although there were exceptions (notably John Eliot's work and the towns of "praying Indians"), the tone that was set in colonial New England was more about improving the whites' standard of living than about mission work. Here's what Patrick Frazier said about this topic:

Converting the American natives to Christianity had ostensibly been the principal aim of the Massachusetts Bay settlement, according to the charter of 1628. A century later some believed that this aim had been forgotten. Solomon Stoddard, a respected clergyman, suggested in 1723 that recent epidemics, Indian wars, and Indian alliances with the French might be signs of God's anger with the English for failing to spread the gospel among the natives (The Mohicans of Stockbridge, page 18).

People of the Wild Rice

To your right is part of a drawing that was digitized for the Wisconsin State Historical Society's
"Turning Points in Wisconsin History" collection. It had appeared in the American Anthropologist many years before that.



Unlike some topics covered in this blog, there is no shortage of media coverage on wild rice (and in most cases, one of the first things mentioned is that it is not technically rice). Wild rice is such a healthy food that it is recommended by people like Dr. Andrew Weil. Although the Indians that lived in the Great Lakes region before white contact didn't have nutritionists, or dieticians, they knew the value of their special food.

As a matter of fact, they fought wars over it.

In the August, 1974 National Geographic article about the Menominees, a caption on page 239 explains that the Indian word for wild rice is "manomen," and the Menominees got their name from it. And so I came to think of the Menominees as the people of the wild rice.

However, a couple years ago when I was driving through the Bad River Chippewa reservation on my way to Ashland (WI), I saw a hand-painted sign that said "Manomen." I turned my vehicle around and went back to the house that had that sign along the side of the highway. The man selling the authentic wild rice was taking a nap, so I wound up talking to his college-age nephews for a little while. When I said something about how the Menominees were the "people of the wild rice," the two men became animated. They were emphatic, no they said, "we are the people of the wild rice! They were here but we kicked their [---]! Yeah we kicked their [---], that was before you guys [white people] were here." So I guess I didn't need to read about the wild rice wars, I learned it orally.




This photo, taken by a National Park Service employee, illustrates Wikipedia's entry on the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians.





The Lost tribes theory is one aspect of Algonkian Church History that I've been somewhat neglectful of. In future posts, I will present evidence that at least some of the Stockbridge Mohicans believed that they were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel (white people actually advanced that theory first and that is documented in some of my earlier posts). Anyway, when I first heard of the lost tribes theory it seemed ridiculous to me. But there are a few pieces of evidence that have made me seriously wonder about it lately. One is just the Algonkian word "Manomen." It is awfully close to the word "Manna." The special food that the Great Spirit gave to the Menominees sounds an awful lot like the special food that the Old Testament's God sent to the ancient Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness.

Sultzman's "Compact History" of the Menominee Indians

I introduced Lee Sultzman's "compact histories," in my December 31, 2008 post. Today's post is about Sultzman's compact history of the Menominees.


Which tribes lived on the land that is now Wisconsin back in 1600?

That's right, the Menominees were one.... and some of you will remember the Ho-Chunk (Winnebagoes) and the Ojibwe (Chippewa). Who were the others?

According to Sultzman, the Dakota Sioux were in the northwest, the Illinois were in the south and - surprise - the (Algonkian-speaking) Cheyenne were in the west-central part of what is now Wisconsin!


Sultzman says that the Menominees were never a huge nation - estimates of their pre-contact population range from 2,000 to 4,000 members. They were far from the only small nation in the midwest but the Menominees were different in that they

survived while the others disappeared or were absorbed by the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and the Menominee themselves. The Menominee, however, came very close to sharing this fate. When the French reached Green Bay in 1667, wars and epidemics which had swept Wisconsin after refugee tribes arrived in the 1650s had reduced the Menominee to about 400.

Here's what I didn't know about the Menominees:

Although the federal government helped them establish their successful sawmill, the government didn't always oversee the sawmill business in the Menominee's best interests. As a result, the tribe took the federal government to court and won a $9.5 million judgement. Sultzman says it is no coincidence that the tribe's federal recognition was terminated soon after they won that judgement.

Read Lee Sultzman's compact history of the Menominees.

Jack Campisi's Brief History of the Brothertown Indian Nation, Part 1

I wasn't able to find a photo of Jack Campisi, retired history professor and author of the pamphlet I'm blogging about today. However, since Jack Campisi is a consultant for the Mashantucket Pequot Museum in Mashantucket, Connecticut, I thought it would be a good chance to let you see some photos of that museum. From all that I can tell, the Pequot's casino money has gone to good use in helping to educate the public about eastern Algonkians. (For full disclosure, I must admit that I've never been to that museum myself. Nevertheless, if you live in or near Connecticut, please check it out and tell me how you liked it.)

An aerial view of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket, Connecticut.








The Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin, a Brief History, is a pamphlet written by Jack Campisi in 1991. It was given to me by Dick Welch, the tribe's official storyteller. Although the pamphlet is well-written, readable, and authoritative, it has only been distributed informally. What I mean by that is that you cannot purchase it at a bookstore, or through Amazon.com, nor can you ask your local librarian to get it for you as an interlibrary loan. You can get a copy of the pamphlet from the tribe, or by reading about it here on Algonkian Church History.




The Brothertown Nation, as you may know, was formed from the remnants of a number of Native communities. To make it simple, they were from tribes in present-day eastern Connecticut and western Rhode Island. According to Campisi, most of today's Brothertowns are descendants of the "Mohegan-Pequots." Campisi explains how the fur trade led to competition and eventually wars between various groups. The Pequots were nearly destroyed by the Pequot War of 1637 and most of their land was taken over by the English in its aftermath.



The Mohegans and Narragansetts faced similar problems with losing their land and losing their warriors in battle. Few Indians succeeeded in making the transition to an agricultural economy and the result was frustration and the "social pathologies" that go with it, alcoholism being one of them.

Details vary from tribe to tribe, but, from a more general standpoint, Campisi's early-contact history of the tribes that make up today's Brothertown Nation sure sounds a lot like the early-contact history of the Mohicans.

American Creation

American Creation is a history blog that I occasionally look at. It is about the role of religion in the founding of our country (the United States of America). I wouldn't call the authors anti-Christian, but they sometimes take a few rips at people like televangelism pioneer Pat Robertson. Only a few of their posts are about Native Americans. Here are three that I consider to have some relevance to Algonkian Church History:


1. Should We Celebrate Columbus Day? Answer: whether we do or not, you should remember this: He was a Really Bad Person. He used the Bible to justify violence and enslaving the Taino people for his own economic gain.



2. American Indians and Property If you think American Indians had no concept of property, you're guilty of looking upon them as "noble savages." To me, the post would have been better if historic/anthropological details were discussed, rather than just a discussion about European philosophers and what they said or wrote. Nevertheless, I agree that the Algonkians did have notions of property. But they weren't quite the same as those of the whites, were they? The Indians (of course) had an economy, but it was more of a communal one than that of the whites.


3. Native Americans and the Lost Tribes of Israel This is American Creation's take on the Lost Tribes theory.

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.

The Shawnee

Note to readers: This post was edited after a reader corrected me on something (see comments if you want to know more about that).

The Shawnee nation seems to be different from other Native nations in that historically they didn't have a land base.

Although there is plenty of material out there about the brief careers of Tecumseh and/or his brother, the prophet, it is another thing to find something about the long history of the Shawnee tribe. Lee Sultzman's Shawnee page, for example, consists of little more than a quote form Tecumseh.

Nevertheless, here's a few items that can fill you in about Shawnee history:

"Shawnee Indians," an article from the Online Encyclopedia of Ohio History.

"The Culture of Ohio's Shawnee Indian Tribe" by Cindy Wright.

Henry Harvey's History of the Shawnee Indians from the Year 1681 to 1854 Inclusive.This offering of Google Books was originally published in 1855. Of course you'll want to be careful reading anything by a white author from that era - keep your eyes open for biases.

If you're a seasoned scholar working on a serious project, you already know that you'll have to find information from sources outside of the internet. Randolph Noe's The Shawnee Indians: An Annotated Bibliography will lead you to over 2700 other relevant sources. Since it currently costs over $110 on Amazon, I encourage you to ask your local library if they can get you a copy.

On your left is a My Space photo of a woman who claims Shawnee ancestry.

Divide and Conquer

Above: Chief Tecumseh and his brother, the Shawnee Prophet.







Right:
William Henry Harrison,
Governor of the Territory of Indiana







The policy of the United States was to make treaties on a "nation to nation" basis. The British liked to do it the same way. That explains why they liked to refer to the Indian chiefs as "kings." For example, when Etowaukaum and three Iroquois chiefs went to London to meet with Queen Anne, they became known as "The Four Indian Kings." Another "king" was "King Ben" Kokhkewenaunaunt who is believed to have moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts in the 1740's (as a result, the town of Stockbridge became the main council fire, or capital city of the Mohicans). And of course, around that same period of time, the British had given Konkapot the title of Captain and Umpachenee the title of Lieutenant.

The difference between white governments and Indian governments was that the Indian chiefs had no coercive power over their people. So white leaders gave the chiefs prestigious political or military titles, hoping that the chiefs would be willing to speak for all of their people. The white leaders didn't want to have to get every Indian's permission before making something official, they wanted to negotiate with one leader, so they gave him a fancy title.

Maybe that is also why even the smallest of tribes became known as nations. Would a community of 200 or 300 white people ever be considered a nation? Probably not, but the Stockbridges were no bigger than that in the 1800's.

Anyway, the United States deliberately chose to fight many Indian nations of various sizes - that was their "divide and conquer" strategy. Tecumseh - and other leaders before him - tried to give Indians a better chance by getting as many tribes as possible to form a confederation. But white Indian fighters like William Henry Harrison succeeded in getting the small "nations" to sign treaties, exchanging their good land for annuities or poorer land in the west.

Want to know more?
Read about the Treaty of St. Mary's.
Read about the Treaty of Greenville.
Read about the Battle of Tippecanoe.
Read "Indian Removals in Indiana."
The United States employed a Native diplomat who was opposed to Tecumseh's confederacy.

Smithsonian "Error" Corrected: Etowaukaum not an Iroquois

The headline in the 1/15/2009 issue of Mohican News which I received today is "Descendant Finds Error in National Historical Exhibit - Seeks Correction." The item in question: a variation of the portrait you see on the right. Depicted is Etowaukaum (or "Etow oh Koam" if you prefer the Smithsonian's spelling), Chief Sachem of the Mohican Nation in 1710. That year he joined three Iroquois Chief Sachems on a trip across the Atlantic where they appealed to England's "Queen Anne to send a force against the French and Indians there"(see Frazier, 1992, page 9).

The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery appears to have erred by referring to Etowaukaum as being one of the four Indian "Kings" leading the Iroquois Confederacy. The question of whether they should have been referred to as "Kings" is something that I'll save for another post, the error the Mohican News is referring to, of course, is that as a Mohican, Etowaukaum belonged to the Algonkian or Algonquin language/cultural group, not the Iroquois language/cultural group.

The Mohican News tells how Terry Shepard (whose father was Rev. Gordon Shepard, an enrolled member of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians), alerted the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery of their alleged error via e-mail and copied the Canadian National Portrait Gallery in on the message. Here the plot thickens. According to Mohican News, Madeleine Trudeau, the Acting Curator at the Canadian National Portrait Gallery, sent Shepard a reply which explains added complexity: in 1710 the Mohicans were politically in alliance with their former enemies, the Mohawks. As a result, referring to Etowaukaum as a leader of the Iroquois Confederacy can be regarded as accurate, at least from a political or military standpoint. (Trudeau's claim is backed up by Patrick Frazier, who, on page 7 says that the "two tribes now spoke of each other in kinship terms. The Mohicans called the Mohawks uncle and they showed deference to their uncle.")

Mohican News reported that Shepard returned to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery for a follow-up visit on January 4th and observed that the portrait in question now identifies Etowaukaum as a Mohican but he continues to have other "issues with the overall exhibit" and up to that point, he didn't find any changes on their website.

(The screencapture below is from that website on January 15th, 2009)
Mohican News relates that another bone of contention brought up by Shepard is that Etowaukaum is referred to as Chief of "the River Nation," which Shepard complained about - not for being inaccurate - but for being "an Anglicization." Of course, the word "Mohican," is also an Anglicization of "Muhheconnuck," but may I point out that - according to Patrick Frazier - "Mohicans" and "River Indians" aren't exactly the same. On page 6, Frazier says that the "Mohicans and the Indians at Schaticoke were collectively called 'River Indians' by their allies" (emphasis added). If Frazier is correct, then it likely is more accurate to say that Etowaukaum was representing the River Indians than the Mohicans.

The past can be so complex that we have to split hairs to understand where other people are coming from...but in the end, pride matters and too many people have only read the word "Mohican" as a reference to an old novel. So...

Let it be known that Etowaukaum was a Mohican!

Brief Abenaki History

The State of Vermont is commemorating the 400th Anniversary of French explorer Samuel de Champlain's visit to the lake that was named after him. They have put out a website that features an article about Abenaki history by Frederick Wiseman. [See comments below for a significant criticism of Wiseman's article.]

You may also want to read Lee Sultzman's compact history of the Abenaki.

Or use this link to visit the Abenaki Tribal Museum.

The picture above of two Abenaki women is from Maggiemac's History of American Women blog.

"Compact History" of the Mohicans

An ambitious project was started a while back by Lee Sultzman. The idea was to write "about 240 compact tribal histories." Although I doubt that he's finished 240 histories, the ones that Sultzman did write are well done and in the spirit of the internet, he asks us, his readers, for feedback.

The first paragraph of the "History" section that Sultzman has on the Mahicans [Mohicans] is consistent with everything that I've read and consistent with the idea that it was not missionaries, but rather another European industry that brought on the downfall of the Mohicans and other once-mighty Native nations.

Throughout the 1500s, European sea captains rode the Gulf Stream north along the east coast of the United States on their return to Europe. It became common practice to add some last minute profit to their voyage by stopping enroute to capture native slaves. For this reason, many coastal tribes became hostile to the pale-faced men from the big ships, but the Mahican lived well-inland and had no such experience. Employed by the Dutch East India Company to search for the Northwest Passage (a fabled shortcut to China), Henry Hudson sailed through the Verrazano strait and entered the Hudson River in September, 1609. For the reasons mentioned, the Wappinger on the lower river proved hostile, but Hudson continued upstream until stopped by shallow water near the Mahican villages just below Albany. The Mahican were not only friendly but eager to trade. Hudson exhausted his trade goods and returned to Holland with a cargo of valuable furs which immediately attracted Dutch merchants to the area. The first Dutch fur traders arrived on the Hudson River the following year to trade with the Mahican. Besides exposing them to European epidemics, the fur trade destabilized the region, and rather than prosperity, it brought the Mahican death and destruction.

Click here to continue reading.

Thanksgiving....a little historical perspective

Marge Bruchac, is an Abanaki Indian and a professional museum consultant. A few months ago I received something she wrote in 1998 and posted to some kind of online community in 1999. She called it "Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks in New England" - a little historical perspective (I'll try to find a link so you can read the whole thing). Here's some of what she had to say:

For centuries, all the Algonquian Indian peoples of New England have practiced rituals of feasting and giving thanks throughout the year, in every season, for every harvest [including Maple sugar harvest, strawberry harvest, and squash harvest]. Native beliefs and customs of hospitality called for sharing with relatives and strangers including the Pilgrims.

Bruchac informs us that the people that we call "Pilgrims" actually referred to themselves as "saints," because they were Separatists (see my previous post for an explanation of Separatism). In fact, they didn't call any feast they enjoyed a "Thanksgiving." According to Bruchac, that term wasn't used by whites until the 1800's. Nevertheless, a feast shared by Pilgrims and Indians really did happen. Bruchac acknowledges that "Massasoit and 90 warriors showed up to eat and drink," and although she tells us that 19th century "romantics rescripted [sic] the past to suit their fantasies," I still think there must have been something special about what most Americans now refer to as "the first Thanksgiving."
Why else would we continue to celebrate it for so many years?