A History in Indigenous Voices

– Welcome to “History Sandwiched In.”
Before we get started and I hand the show over to Dr. Cornelius, I do have a few opening notes and remarks and some gentle reminders.
To begin with, though, my name is Jenny Pederson, and I am the public programs manager with the Wisconsin Historical Society.
We do have a little bit of a caution just in general.
Always, the opinions expressed today are those of the presenter and not necessarily those of the Wisconsin Historical Society or the society’s employees.
I do want to thank the Wisconsin Historical Society Press, as well, for being a huge help in, these two guys up here, for being a huge help in recruiting and contacting a lot of our speakers this year.
Without their help, we would not have some of the string of speakers we have, including Dr. Cornelius.
So before I hand it over, I do have a little bit of a biography of and an introduction for Dr. Cornelius.
Dr. Carol Cornelius, PhD of Cornell, 1992, of the Oneida Turtle Clan is from the Oneida, Mohican, and Montauk nations.
Dr. Cornelius taught at UGB for three years, and, after 15 years, retired as Area Manager of the Oneida Cultural Heritage Department.
Since retiring, she has taught one course per semester, alternating with College of Menominee Nation and the University of Green Bay.
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
She is currently one of the Oral Tradition Scholars in Residence at the University of Wisconsin, First Nations Department, Green Bay.
Every other year, she also teaches Indigenous pedagogy for the doctorate in First Nations Education program.
Her first book was published by State University of New York, SUNY Press, in 1999, titled Iroquois Corn in a Culture-Based Curriculum: A Framework for Respectfully Teaching about Cultures.
In 2024, A History in Indigenous Voices: Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Oneida, Stockbridge, and Brothertown Interactions in the Removal Era was presented with the Book of Merit Award from the Wisconsin Historical Society Board of Curators.
Over the course of her work, she has gathered historical documents containing Indigenous voices during the time before Wisconsin became a state and was entirely populated by Indigenous nations.
Her research reveals Indigenous voices involved in making treaties, which resulted in Oneida, Mohican, and Montauk nations being removed to Menominee and Ho-Chunk lands in what is now Wisconsin.
The loss of these lands resulted in current-day reservations.
Please join me in welcoming Dr. Cornelius and please enjoy the presentation.
[audience applauding] – Dr. Carol Cornelius: Oh, my microphone.
– Jenny: [laughing] I won’t take it away with me.
Not very helpful of me, is it?
All right.
– Carol: Will it stay in there?
Okay.
[Carol laughing] Shekoli swakwe-ku.
[speaking Oneida] Greetings to all of you.
And I’m happy to see your smiling faces here.
It just encourages me when I look at the audience and I see those smiles, and I think, “Oh, people are interested.”
[all laughing] [speaking Oneida] In our language, that’s, my name is Kanehekolu, which means “a little bit of water.”
Water is precious, and I am of the Turtle Clan.
And if we look at the title of our book here, I am Oneida.
It says “Stockbridge” on it.
That’s what they called us at that point, but we’ve gone back to our own word, name for ourselves is Muhhekunneuw.
And it’s funny, when I would find Muhhekunneuw in the historical documents, when they were going as a nation, and the Brothertown, there were seven nations that lived along the East Coast in Long Island that were so decimated by war and disease that they joined together and became the Brothertown.
And one of those nations was the Montauk.
And I was interviewing the chairman of the Brothertown nation, June Ezold, years ago.
and she sent me this genealogy from the 1600s, and I’m going through it and through it and went, “Whoa!”
And finally I got to 1900, and there was my grandma.
[audience exclaiming] [Carol laughing] We always knew she was 7/8 Stockbridge.
We didn’t know what the other little bit was, but now we know it was Montauk.
So they were from Long Island.
So I have that rich history.
Now, usually when I’m at the university, then I step over here and I say, “I’m Dr. Cornelius with a PhD from Cornell, and I’ve “published several books, and I’ve been a professor, and I love to research.”
So I’m part of both worlds, and that’s me.
[laughing] That’s kind of who I am.
So this book came about because I wanted to hear…
Okay, how do I say it?
The Menominee and Ho-Chunk, this is their land.
Where we are right now is Ho-Chunk land, I believe.
And so the Stockbridge and the Brothertown and Oneida, we were removed from New York State because the United States wanted all Indians west of the Mississippi.
And there’s treaties, and then I found some treaties that aren’t generally available, but I wanted to know, “What did they say to each other?”
I expected to find a whole bunch of arguments, and I didn’t.
Unless they didn’t write it down.
[chuckling] But there was– The politeness just astounds me.
But in spite of the Menominee and Ho-Chunk objections to our coming here, it happened anyway.
What you see through here is the long fingers of the United States manipulating all the way through.
What I did– And I’ve read many books written by other people.
And once in a while, there would be a quote from one of our elders, and it said just one sentence or so.
And I thought, “What else did they say?
“Was it written down?
Is it documented?”
And that’s what got me started on this, ’cause I wanted to see how our people interacted with each other.
And I spent about 10 years researching and then found out.
I just, I called myself a gatherer because what I was doing was gathering the voices of our ancestors.
And then finally, I decided I’d better do something with all of this and then put it together, ’cause I was finding such wonderful stuff.
And the things are in…
This audience might know what microfilm is.
Microfiche.
[all laughing] Our younger audiences have no idea.
They look at me blank.
[all laughing] I have to try to explain it to ’em.
But a lot of these are handwritten letters on the microfilm, and thankfully, they have, at UW-Green Bay and the Brown County Library, a machine where you can put that on there, that tape on there, and you can see it.
And if it’s the letter that you want, you can print it.
So that was good.
But I spent years trying to decipher.
And then you get through a long letter, and there’s three or four words you have no idea what they were.
But as you keep going and looking at what they’re talking about, then sometimes you can go back and figure out what it was, but sometimes not.
Sometimes, I have no idea what that word was.
The handwriting was not all that great.
[chuckling] “Land, land.
It’s all about land.”
This is a quote from Loretta Metoxen, Oneida historian, who has passed just recently.
And she would come in from, just stomping from meetings and just full of steam and talking about how things were wrong and all of that.
And that’s what she would come in saying.
“It’s land, it’s all about the land!”
And she’d be so upset, we’d have to talk with her and calm her down a little bit.
But she’s so dedicated to our people and finding out about our land and keeping it.
There were Indian Nation to Indian Nation treaties that we made in 1821 and 1822.
And after that, all the treaties are made with the United States government.
And there was a lot of U.S. government not wanting to acknowledge the Indian Nations, the Indian Nation treaties.
The United States Constitution, Article VI, second paragraph.
“The Constitution, and the Laws of the United States “which shall be made in Pursuance, thereof; “and all treaties made, or what shall be made, “under the authority of the United States, Shall be the supreme law of the land.”
Were we taught that when we were in grade school, when we were in high school?
Most of us not.
And that’s the amazing thing I get from audiences coming back, is, “Why didn’t we know this?
Why weren’t we taught this?”
But that’s in the U.S. Constitution.
And because then when we assert our treaty rights, people get all upset and say, “Oh, those are old.”
And I always tell ’em, “Constitution’s about the same age.
Should we throw that out because it’s old?”
You know, that usually settles them down a little bit.
[chuckling] But treaties are the supreme law of the land.
They are valid.
And we’re not taught that.
In 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed by Congress, and Jackson signed it.
The goal, at that point, they wanted to move all Native people out of the East and across the Mississippi River.
And they didn’t move us that far.
Moved us to Wisconsin.
But that’s 1830.
And they’d already been removing us here in the 1820s, and they continued trying to remove us, even after all of these treaties.
Into the 1850s, there’s still treaties, and some treaties were signed because people were afraid, “If we don’t sign this, we’ll get removed.”
That was part of the fear and the coercion in there.
This is a map of Indian lands in Wisconsin before any Europeans were here.
Did we see that one in our textbook?
No.
I love it when I find these things.
I get so excited.
So right where we are would be Winnebago lands.
This one is in the 1820s, and the slanted lines up towards the top are pretty much Ojibwe.
And then the up and down, straight up and down lines, is Menominee lands, and the dark black, that’s the Winnebago or Ho-Chunk lands, and the slanted across would be the, there were Sioux people here in the earlier days, but that’s how it kind of worked out over time.
And this is, like, before the treaties started.
We had these vast areas of land.
Here’s what we have today.
And a big part of my book is the story of, how did this happen?
How did we go?
The Menominee had, like, 252,000 acres there, and the little corner of it is two townships for the Stockbridge-Munsee from millions of acres of land.
And the same thing that happened here happened to us in New York.
It’s part of why we moved here, because in 1788, they did a treaty that took 6 million, 7 million acres and left us 250,000 acres.
And then they kept making treaties and taking that and taking that.
And that was part of our ancestors’ motive motive and encouragement in moving here was to, so we could survive as a nation.
So these are the present-day reservations.
I found this great thing, Menominee villages in 1820.
And I like to include it because if you look up past the Bay of Green Bay, and here’s Menominee, Menominee, Menominee.
You see up there?
It gives you that sense of– There’s this stereotype that the settlers could come and take our lands because it wasn’t well occupied.
Well, the evidence shows different.
And there’s a book called Atlas of Great Lakes Indians.
And it’s a bigger book, but she has a ton of these, and cites where she found the villages and documented that.
And this is just a few of those.
But there’s also, if you go on the Google to “Menominee creation story,” and that comes up, and then you go to, there’s a little header in there.
It says “maps,” and it comes up.
What they did with UW-Stevens Point and the Menominee, they worked together.
And it was astounding because the Menominees remembered the names of these villages in the Menominee language.
And there’s a whole bunch more than this.
So when they’re saying, “We don’t want to sign a treaty “because we don’t have enough land for our people as it is now,” and then you wonder because you see how huge it was.
But there were villages all the way through there.
And the only incorrect thing on this is Oneida.
We weren’t here in 1820.
And then down here, you have Mohican.
And we weren’t… We were just coming here at that point.
So in 1821, we did a Treaty of Green Bay with the Menominee and the Winnebago, and the U.S. government lumped us all together and called us the New York Indians.
And the Menominees called us the Nautoways.
That means “people from the East.”
And we made a treaty with both the Menominee and the Winnebago for a small area down towards Little Chute by Appleton and Kaukauna, down in that area.
And that wasn’t enough, because the whole Six Nations was going to move out here.
But, so in 1822, we made another treaty with the Menominee.
And it was, it’s really, that one’s hard to find.
If Loretta Metoxen hadn’t found it, I wouldn’t know it existed, so I’m really always grateful to her ’cause she found it.
But where?
[chuckling] She didn’t know where it came from.
But we found it finally in the footnotes in a journal.
So, so much of these are source documents you gotta go to that are journals that, of treaties, they’re documents that were sent to the Senate for confirmation of these.
There’s letters to the president, letters to the head of a state, to missionaries.
There’s all kinds of different sources, places to find these.
So I finally found that 1822 treaty, and that one was with the New York Indians and the Menominee.
Winnebagoes didn’t want any part of this anymore.
And in 1824 and ’25, now the New York Indians made a treaty with the Brothertown, because the Brothertown had not been included, or been part of the negotiations for these earlier treaties.
So it was another Indian Nation to Indian Nation treaty, ’cause we wanted land from them, and they agreed to pay the Menominees $950 for the land.
And there’s a town that’s called Brothertown and a town called Stockbridge.
Those were the places, when we first came to Wisconsin, where we lived.
Indian Nation to Indian Nation treaties were not subject to Congressional approval.
They’re nation to nation treaties.
President Monroe signed these treaties.
We have the documents.
He signed these treaties, so they’re approved at the presidential level.
And there’s also a letter in there that says that because they were Indian Nation to Indian Nation treaties, the treaty didn’t have to go to Congress for approval.
So it just went right on to the president, and he signed it.
So those get questioned and questioned, and, oh, they get really fierce about, “Those aren’t valid,” all kinds of things like that over time.
But we have them.
And treaties are the supreme law of the land, right?
[chuckling] So in 1819, 1820, they were talking to, New York Indians were talking about coming out here to look at the land.
And while they were talking with that and getting ready for that trip, the Indian agent here, the Menominee Indian agent, was, Bowyer he was called, and he made a treaty in 1819 with the Menominee that took all their land.
And the Menominee objected to that big time.
And it was their letters saying to the president, “Don’t approve it, don’t ever approve it, ’cause this this guy really shouldn’t have done that.”
He really wasn’t authorized to make a treaty with the people.
So this was the Menominee statement in 1820.
“We disapprove of what has been done by the Agent, “and of the conduct of those of our nation, who treated with him, and sold our lands without our consent.”
Just a side note there.
What the United States did, and I found this throughout treaties throughout history.
If the chiefs of the tribe will not sign the treaty, then the U.S. goes around them and finds other people and says, “Now you’re chief, you can sign the treaty.”
And that’s what happened in that 1819.
So here the chiefs are saying, “They didn’t have our consent.”
“They were informed that Mr. Williams, “with a number of the Chiefs of the Six Nations, “were on their way to Green Bay, “to look out for a place of settlement for themselves, “and such others of their tribes, as might be disposed “to migrate and settle with them.
“Should they be pleased with the country, they were asked, “will you sell, or give them lands on which they may settle?
“Father, In regard to the Delegates from the Six Nations, “we Menominee have no enemies.
“We are ready to give them our hand.
“But in regard to a piece of land to give them, “we know not what to say, our Territory is so small.
“Father, I listen always to what the white people say, “but I do not want to do “as some of our foolish people have done.
“I do not want to take on myself, “or to have those with me of the disposition, to steal a piece of land…” And he’s alluding to the sale of that 1819 treaty.
“…but if all our nation were together, we would know what to do.”
And there he’s telling you, Menominee governmental procedures were violated.
“And if we’re going to do this, “there are chiefs that are assigned.
“This is their position, “to be the representatives of our nation.
And they have the authority of our people to sign treaties.”
But that’s not who the agent had signed those treaties.
This was in a missionary journal, I think it was, where I found this one.
I was really surprised to find it.
I’m glad, too, to find it.
The New York Indians replied, ’cause they got as far as Detroit.
And then they were told that Bowyer had made this treaty and so they shouldn’t come any farther.
So they turned around, and they went back.
And people that write about us have said that that 1819 Bowyer treaty was “lost to antiquity.”
I found it.
[all laughing] It’s up in the archives at UW-GB.
It’s there.
[laughing] So the New York Indians’ reply to all of this was, “Our Great Father, “The President of the United States gave to the Six Nations “his consent that they should move to the west, “if they could obtain lands from their brothers there.
“We have been informed on good authority “that the lands at Green Bay, which we hope to obtain, “have been purchased by the Great Father’s Agent “at that place.
“We shall expect that you, Father, and our Great Father, “the President of the United States, “will remove these obstacles out of the way, “that your children may get quiet possession of the land “which they have been encouraged to expect.
“Father, We wish peace– “we wish to obtain a place to get our foot on peaceably, “and to live in friendship with our brothers of the west, and our Great Father, the President.”
Lots of politeness here.
I’ve always said our people are so polite.
Okay.
The 1821 treaty was between Menominee and Winnebago nations, August 18, 1821.
Okay, see if you can figure out where this is.
These are the boundaries in the 1821 treaty.
“Beginning at the Foot of the Rapid of the Fox River, “usually called the Grand Kakalin, “thence up said River to the Rapids at Winnebago Lake, “and from the River extending “back in this width on each side, to the Northwest “and to the Northeast, “equidistant with the lands claimed by the said Menomine and Winnebago nations of Indians.”
Article two says the Menominees and the Winnebagoes “shall reserve to themselves the right to occupy “a necessary portion of the Lands hereby ceded, for the purpose of hunting, and also the right of fishing.”
What I do when I’m teaching is I give the students a blank map with just Kaukauna and Little Chute and different, the lakes, the Fox River and that on.
And I ask them to find the boundaries on this.
[audience chuckling] And after they get totally frustrated, then I tell them I couldn’t do it either.
[all chuckling] We don’t have enough parameters here.
“Equidistant on each side of the Fox River?”
What does that mean?
And later on, I found in a journal that that meant six miles on each side of the Fox River.
But this wasn’t written in the treaty.
And then the 1822 treaty shows us the New York Indians.
It lists who’s present for Mucheconnuk.
There were four people.
And here, Oneida, First Christian Party of Oneida Nation.
Now, there’s another story.
At this point, our nation had been divided into the First Christian Party, the Second Christian Party, later called the Orchard Party, and the Pagan Party.
And it was the young folks in the First Christian Party who were willing to listen to Eleazer Williams and to come out here.
So the treaties are made, the First Christian Party.
And the next day, there’d be one with the Second Christian Party, and the next day, there’s a treaty with the Pagan Party.
So they recognized we had all these different governmental entities and made the treaties that way.
Tuscarora Nation, there was one person, Eleazer Williams.
Now, we were taught growing up, Eleazer Williams, who was an Episcopal minister, came to Oneida in New York and Christianized everybody and brought us out here.
“We all gladly followed him out here.”
That’s not the story.
[chuckling] In fact, those who did follow him, very quickly, when we got here, figured out: “This is a pretty fishy guy here,” and got rid of him.
[all chuckling] But he said he represented St. Regis.
That was the Mohawks.
And I have yet to find anything in the Mohawk documents that authorized him to do this.
So he’s kind of doing this on his own.
And then the Munsee Nation, one representative, and the chiefs and head men of the Menominee Nation.
Article two of the 1822 treaty says, “The Stockbridge, Oneida, Tuscarora, St. Regis, “and Munsee nations aforesaid, do promise and agree to “and with the said Menominies, that they, the said Menominies, “shall have the free permission and privilege “of occupying and residing upon the lands hereby ceded in common with them…” And this covered 4 million or 5 million acres.
“In common with them.”
The understanding was…
The Menominee thought that they agreed to share the land and hold something in common.
You’re sharing.
But the New York Indians thought that they had purchased the land, and certainly all the documents approving from the United States president, the Secretary of War to the Indian agents, all of those approved and pushed us out here and said we should move out there.
So now we’ve got a controversy.
Oh, then the Indian Nation to Indian Nation treaties were disputed in all of the controversy.
In 1824, the Menominee wrote this wonderful letter to the Secretary of War.
“The Memorial and petition of the undersigned chiefs “and principal men of the Menominee nation of Indians, “residing with the Michigan Territory, represents: “That when the New York Indians, or Nautoways, “first came to this country, “they asked the Menominees to sell them “a small piece of their lands.
“That the Menominee replied to them that “they had no land to sell; “that their country was already too small for their numbers, “and that they were themselves compelled to hunt “upon other Indians’ lands.
“Notwithstanding this answer, the Nautoways held a treaty “with some of the men of the Menominee Nation, “at which none of the principal chiefs attended “and purchased, or pretended to purchase, “a part of the Menominees’ country, the boundaries of which they knew nothing about.”
That’s the controversy.
And these statements are there, and they’re hidden on that microfilm.
[chuckling] And I really got to a point in the research where I thought, “I’ve gotta put this in a book.
“I gotta put this together, give people access to our voices,” because otherwise it was that one little paragraph, one little sentence in somebody else’s book about us.
So I’m really, really, been strong about that.
And I thought this was a powerful statement from the Menominee.
Then we started making treaties with the United States.
They did two treaties, one in 1825 and one in 1827 with the Menominee.
They did not include the New York Indians in those.
And what they said was they wanted to stop wars between these tribes.
What they wanted was the boundaries.
They wanted to define the boundaries, so they knew when they made a treaty who to make the treaty with.
That was the whole purpose of that.
And we were not invited or included in that.
Okay.
The New York Indians said with astonishment that they, that the United States was selling and buying the land from the Menominees that we had purchased, made in the treaty of 1821 and 1822.
Then they said this purchase by the United States, now in their treaties, “was made, not only without our consent “and contrary to our most earnest wishes, “but also without even consulting us at all!
“We were not allowed a hearing, nor even asked whether we would consent to sell or not.”
So there you see the long fingers of the United States government manipulating things.
In 1829, there was a petition by John Metoxen and Austin Quinney, they were Stockbridge, representing the New York Indians, and they said, “A second permission was obtained “of the President of the United States to make a second treaty,” in 1822, “to purchase land, “and we purchased of the Menominee Indians “a large tract of land lying on both sides of the Fox River “and Green Bay, to be occupied in common with us.
“They have the right to settle thereon, wherever it should be “agreeable, not interfering with our settlements.
“But how great was our surprise and sorrow, “when at the late treaty held by Excellency Governor L. Cass, “and Colonel Thomas L. McKenney at Little Butte de Morts “(in 1827), our lands were purchased by them “as Commissioners of the United States, and thus our hopes of security in this last refuge destroyed.”
So we’ve got a lot of stuff going on here between the nations.
And it’s interesting because I believe the people understood, “This is the United States manipulating us.”
I found one reference to, in the 1822 treaty, when the Menominees did the whole big area of their land, that what they were saying to each other, the Menominees and New York Indians, was the Menominees were saying to the New York Indians that “You have more experience dealing with treaties, “dealing with the white man and his treaties, “and we want you to help protect us, “because when he puts his long fingers on our lands, he just takes it all.”
So that’s why they agreed to it, to hold that land in common, because the New York Indians are going to help to stave off the U.S. government.
So that never really got acknowledged either.
But in the 1827 treaty, no agreements could be done.
So based in the treaty, it says that they leave the final decision of land for the New York Indians to the United States President to decide.
So what he does is he sends three commissioners out here to represent him and to come up with– He’s supposed to come up with boundaries for the lands.
Evidence presented by the New York Indians to support their claims.
This document is 32 pages long, and you would think a lawyer had written it.
And it’s from the chiefs and the New York Indians, so each of their tribes and them being together and counseling, and they came up with this long, long document.
And I thought about it and I said, “That’s going in the book,” because it blew my mind.
And I’ll go into this a little bit about what they’re doing.
He said there are three main reasons they’re opposed to this: Presumptive.
“He provides “a sophisticated discussion “on the doctrine of discovery “and the precepts of Western civilization.
“Presumptive means supposed presumptions “made about civilized and barbarous peoples.
“He asks if it is presumed the New York Indians “would leave their climate in New York State in exchange ‘for an insecure abode in this inhospitable region.'”
I thought when he’s talking about “the doctrine of discovery,” I’m going, “Wow, all right.”
They were very clear.
They understood what was happening with these treaties.
Very clear.
He really lays it out.
Circumstantial.
Or was, surrounding the treaties that when a white man puts his– Here it is: “‘when a white man puts his fingers upon our lands, “‘he had long nails, and they go deep.
“‘and is hard to get them out.
“‘You have had sad experiences, that this is true.
“‘You have told us, the white people have got your lands.
“‘And you have come to seek an asylum among us.
“For which we are glad, that you thought of us.’
A tenancy in common was agreed upon between the parties.”
So they’re keeping it very clear.
“We agreed to hold us in common.”
And the documents refer to the conditions surrounding the treaties.
Who signed it?
Were they valid?
Were they not valid?
In one case, McKenney, the Indian agent, says to the Menominees that “You don’t have one person who speaks for you, “and you seem to keep having to wait “’til all the chiefs from all of your villages “come together to make decisions.
“We want you to pick out one person to be your chief.
And if you don’t pick one out, we will pick one out for you.”
And the next day, they did.
That’s how Chief Oshkosh.
He was a very, very young man at that point.
But they put a medal over his head and made him a chief.
So it shows their total ignoring of our principles and our forms of government.
I always wonder if he even understood.
So all of this leads to two treaties, 1831 and 1832, with the Menominee.
This is the United States making these treaties, not us.
The United States making these treaties with the Menominees.
And what they agreed to was 500,000 acres for the New York Indians.
But it was like from Oconto, north of Oconto, coming down towards Green Bay.
And we said, “We’re farmers, we plant.
And that’s not a good environment up there.”
So he wanted to exchange 200,000 acres on one side of that 500,000 acres for 200,000 on the lower side, more towards Appleton and Little Chute and better agricultural land.
And this is in the first treaty, where they designated two townships for the Stockbridge and one township for the Brothertown.
And that’s where those towns are, where they settle.
That’s the names of those towns.
That’s where that came about.
Despite opposition, the United States continued making treaties to remove the New York Indians to the West.
This just went on.
There was such a threat of removal.
This Oneida treaties.
But in 1836, Suydam was the Indian agent, made treaties with the Stockbridge and the Oneida for removal to the West.
And it looks like a document that you just fill in the blanks.
He did that and filled in “Stockbridge,” and then next week he went to the Oneidas and had them sign the same thing.
And those, for some reason, those treaties never made it to Congress.
So they’re just kind of hidden, but they were there.
But in 1838, the United States did the Buffalo Creek Treaty to do the final treaty to remove all New York Indians west of the Mississippi.
And they outline each nation and that they’re going to send them to Missouri.
They’re going to give them some land to get, money to get there, some land for their first year of being there.
And each nation got a certain amount of money to do this, to remove their whole nation there.
That was on January 15, 1838.
Two weeks later, on February 3, 1838, the Oneida figured this all out, and they went to Washington, and they made their– That’s the final treaty that they made that defined our reservation.
And it’s interesting ’cause it doesn’t define the boundaries.
It just says there’ll be 100 acres per individual, and there were 654 Oneidas here.
So we have 65,400 acres.
That’s how that was decided.
Still, they wanted to remove us.
Now, what happened with the… With this Suydam treaty here and the Buffalo Creek Treaty, the Brothertown were so… [sighing] disgusted and afraid maybe that they’re gonna get removed again, so their thought was that “If we become United States citizens, then we can keep our land and we can stay together.”
So they did.
They signed a document that they would be U.S. citizens, and that took away all of their treaty rights.
And to this day, they’re trying to get that reinstated.
And wonderful people– I went to a Tribal Council meeting, and it was like sitting around the kitchen table, listening to your grandparents talk with all of the– And the chairman would throw out an issue, and they’d all talk for a while, and then he’d bring them back together and say, “Do we have a decision?
What’s the feelings on this?”
Everybody kind of gave what they thought and they said, “Well, we need to talk some more.”
And they would talk some more and bring it back together.
Wow, wow!
I don’t think I heard Robert’s Rules of Order in that meeting at all.
[audience laughing] I call it Robert’s Rules of Chaos.
If you know how to manipulate it, you can get through it.
This… And I won’t go through each of them, but to give– I want you to see how many treaties were made with each of the nations with the…
When we talk about the 1831 and 1832 treaties and Buffalo.
Then in 1836, the Treaty of Cedars took 4 million acres of Menominee land.
There was, 1848, a treaty of Lake Poygan, and they were supposed to move to Minnesota.
And the chiefs said, “Well, “we need to go look at that land you want us to go to and see if it’s suitable.”
And they went and looked and they came back and said, “No, it’s not suitable, we’re not moving.”
And they didn’t.
So in 1854, they had their treaty on the Wolf River, where they are now, with 270,000 acres.
And in 1856, two townships, that little corner I showed you of the Menominee reservation was put aside.
That’s for the Stockbridge now.
That’s where the Stockbridge reservation is.
Stockbridge treaties.
Oh, my goodness, I talked to you about First Christian, Second Christian Party and the Oneidas.
The Stockbridge had a Pagan Party, the Citizens’ Party, and the religious parties.
They had all kinds of parties and all kinds of arguments.
And in one full act, they were terminated, their land was all taken, they were made citizens.
And they protested.
And three years later, they got reinstated.
And they’re still there as the Mohican Nation.
But they got moved around a whole lot ’til we wound up where we are, up by Bowler, where Stockbridge Reservation is today.
But that was just astounding to look and see how they pitted each other towards each other, too, at each other to get that.
The Ho-Chunk, oh!
If you wanna cry, just read the Ho-Chunk history.
There is a map that, you can Google and get it, of how many times they were moved from their place to here, over to southern Wisconsin, to northern Illinois, up into the Dakotas, and back down into Nebraska.
Just over and over again, they were removed.
It just breaks your heart.
Here’s some more.
In 1974– Gonna go back one more.
In 1963, the Winnebago Constitution was ratified, which ensured the federal recognition.
And in 1974, they won a $4.6 million Indian Claims Commission to “compensate the tribe for its lands lost through fraudulent treaties.”
Today, their land base is 3,535 acres of land.
Here’s the Brothertown, where their treaties, where they were settled along the east side of Lake Winnebago, and before that, they had been up more towards Kaukauna, up in that area where those two townships, and their…
They decided to become U.S. citizens.
And they’re still battling for that.
This is a statement made by Colonel Stambaugh in the 1830 treaty.
“I believe the Menominee tribe of Indians “have been most shamefully deceived “both by the agents of the New York Indians “and by their own agents and advisers.
“I believe the New York Indians have been duped and deceived “by their own agents, “and I am sorry to say, the Government appears to have participated in the deception.”
Mm-hmm.
He wrote that September 8, 1830.
And with that, I’ll see if you have questions.
Okay, thank you.
[audience applauding]