Tribal Histories

Potawatomi History

[music]

– I’d like to say welcome. I wanted to share a little bit of information about the center here, why it exists. I’m hoping that we can get more people to start learning. That’s one of the things we see here in our community is a lot of people are not wanting to learn, to learn their language. I really hate to say that, but our language is in danger. We’re forgetting who we are. Here at the museum, school groups come here, and that’s something I always try to convey is that real story. Because today in America, schools aren’t really teaching about our history. They’re not talking about treaties that were broken with the tribes. They don’t talk about the boarding schools, how our ancestors were put in these places, beaten for talking their language. They’re not talking about removal, that Potawatomi trail of death. It’s sad for me to talk about that. It’s sad for me to share that. I’m hoping we can get more young people involved. You know, this is the real story about our people. This is what this building is all about, is telling that story.

– Potawatomi History was funded in part by Irene Daniell Kress, the Evjue Foundation, a charitable arm of the Capital Times, Ron and Patty Anderson, the Wisconsin History Fund with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

– Bo sho.

[speaking in Potawatomi]

My name is Mike Alloway, Sr.

– My name is Jim Thunder. I’m a member of the Forest County Potawatomi.

Right now, I do a lot of teaching of the language and other things as I’m asked to do. I talk about the history as it was told by my people. I think those of us that do that have all this responsibility. If somebody wants it, we’re there, or try to be there. I thought at one point by this time I’d be actually retired and traveling. As you can see, I’m not.

[laughs]

– Part of the stories that I’ve been told was that at one time the Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa, we were all one large tribe that split up in the 16th century near the Straits of Mackinaw. These old stories were passed down to me from our elders. According to them, each tribe, when they came to be, were given tasks. The Potawatomi were to be the Keepers of the Fire, –. That’s what our name originated from, Bodewadami, Potawatomi. The Ojibwe were given the task of Keepers of the Faith. In fact, that word Ojibwe as we know it, refers to a term known as –, which is the spirit of you and I at the present, living. The term Odawa originally meant –, to sell something, or to trade something. They were to be the people that kept the trade routes alive along the –, which we refer to ourselves as the original people. All of our language is pretty close, but there are some differences.

[recording of Potawatomi]

[repeating Potawatomi]

– If you’re raised up speaking like I do, you can understand a lot of it, most of it. I never had to really try to learn it or anything. I just understand it. Even if I’ve never heard it I know what they’re talking about. Our ceremonies pretty much remained the same, except Odawa are a little bit more removed than we were because they were more dominated by the white people, and Ojibwe, to a certain extent. They’re a separate entity. They still had their alliance. They called it Three Fires. As long as they’re maintaining their individual fires we’re still together.

– It is said that when we split up, up in Sault Ste. Marie. The Ojibwe traveled westward through Madeline Island, and today much of them reside in that general area. The Odawa pretty much stayed near the straits, and are now located up in Upper Michigan. The Potawatomi went further southward into lower Michigan, parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. A lot of those towns that are located down in southern Wisconsin bear the names of what were once Potawatomi villages. Waukesha, in our language that refers to a fox, which is –. Wauwatosa is another one. It’s –, meaning firefly. A little further south is what we now know as the city of Mukwonago, Muk, meaning beaver, beaver den. There’s a lot of history of our people along the western shores of Lake Michigan, all the way up towards Washington Island. At one time that was called Potawatomi Island. According to some of our elders, they still go up there and collect medicines up there. But our history seems to be difficult to talk about at times because of the removals that were made back in 1837, I believe, when a lot of tribes were being moved westward. Some moved into Canada. They kept going northward. During that removal too, it’s said that some Potawatomi went southward. They kept going south. Today, they live among the Mexican Kickapoo Indians.

– The Trail of Death, my great-grandfather was on that march, and as they were being forced out by the government, the removal policy, Andrew Jackson. Somewhere along the line they escaped, several of them, and my great-grandfather among them. They joined up with a group of Kickapoo who were fleeing to Mexico. They fled to Mexico and lived in Mexico. My grandfather was born there. After several years the US Army sent soldiers into the interior of Mexico to round up the Potawatomi because they had escaped. On their first night back after they crossed the Rio Grande back into the States, in Texas, my grandfather and them escaped again, a bunch of them. The soldiers were busy partying. I think he let their horses loose and fled. My grandfather talks about being up in probably the only tree in Texas, and the soldiers rode up, an officer and a non-com. All the able-bodied men were out hunting. They left an old man there to take care of the camp. So they shot the old man. The ladies, a couple of them, had skillets in their hands. They knocked the soldiers off their horses. They really did a number on them. They had to bury them. They turned their horses loose. They couldn’t keep them because of the horseshoes. They just had to flee right there. My grandfather, he was a little boy by this time, he talks about, you know, traveling by night. They kept pretty still during the day. They made their way to Kansas. My grandfather was a young man when he came from Kansas back to Wisconsin. A lot of them made their way up to the Sheboygan area, that had also escaped from the removal. So as the soldiers got closer, they just fled deeper into the woods from Sheboygan. They finally moved up into Forest County there. There were already Potawatomi living all over, just nobody knew where they were. Everybody was in hiding, because we fought the soldiers.

– Around in the late 1800s, a gentleman by the name of Erik Morstad, who was a Lutheran missionary, learned that there were Potawatomi in northern Wisconsin that were living here and there. He decided to help the Potawatomi through the Homestead Act. With that he also worked with other attorneys to secure monies from the Treaty at Chicago. A lot of that money was used to purchase lands up here in Forest County. So we started to organize after the Indian Reorganization Act in 1934. We officially became the Forest County Potawatomi in 1937.

– Where we were raised, upstream from my grandfather’s homestead. My dad had put a log house up there. Then later on, more children came, we added a shanty to one end of it as a kitchen and a dining area. They all slept in the log house. They preferred their log houses because they were much warmer. When the government first came and built these government homes, frame houses, they almost froze. A lot of them moved back to these log houses during the winter. One old man they talk about, he lived in a hogan all his life, and the people in nearby towns scraped up some lumber and built him a house. Then he had a nice barn.

[laughs]

– The total population here of the Forest County Potawatomi, I believe, is pretty close to around 1,400, maybe a little bit more. They say we’re the smallest of all the eight recognized bands of the Potawatomi Nation. A lot of the bands today kind of look at us as that band that has retained a lot of the traditions, being that we were the ones that hid from the removal process. A lot of our elderly today are being called upon by the other bands to assist with their language instruction. What we do is, like any other person would do, we try to help them as much as we can. Because, you know, according to a lot of our elders, there are probably, right now in this day and age in this band, probably about five fluent speakers left of the Potawatomi language.

– Without our language, we cease to be Indian.

[recording of Potawatomi]

[repeating Potawatomi]

I spent a lot of time teaching language. Pride comes in, and the old ways that are being ignored, the respect for each other, our children. You know, in white culture, you hear, they teach their children, “respect your parents!” With us it’s respect your children.

– He passed that language down to our younger generation so that they can carry that on. The Potawatomi language is the very definition of a people.

It is the core. When Europeans came across the ocean they encountered a unique people that had their ways of pretty much governing themselves, through clans, through their language. That language is very sacred to our people. If it dies off, it is the end of the Potawatomi. Because when you’re not using your language, you don’t know anything about yourself. You don’t know anything about your culture. You’re outside of it.

– My mother did not speak English. My dad only spoke enough to get by. He didn’t care to improve. It wasn’t his language. My uncles and my aunts never spoke it. When we visited we had to use the language, particularly if we talked with the elders. They didn’t understand English. I would say something to my mother in English and she’d tell me to talk Indian. “That is not your language!”

There’s a lot of things getting in the way nowadays, even for us. The ceremonies, we try to keep alive. Again, that’s part of being Potawatomi, the ceremonies, and the biggest part of that, listening so you can learn.

– With the addition of the museum which was built around 1998, it provided a means for our community to kind of get together more. It’s a place where a lot people can come together and learn about the old crafts that were back in the day. We have worked with several people to bring black ash basket making back into the community. We’ve had various classes there, flute making, working with copper, bead working techniques.

– There’s a lot of things that we have lost. The great bullrush, I’ve seen those mats and the bags they’re made out of. My mother, she said they cut it with a scythe, laid it out on the shore to turn color, to yellow. Then they were able to pound it and separate the fibers that they used to make these mats and bags. She said it was a long time ago that she remembered doing that. But I didn’t quite ask her what the process was for doing this. There’s another one called moosewood. It’s also called leatherwood. It’s really strong. You can take little piece like that and you wouldn’t be able to break it. I’ve showed my people that here. They were unaware of it. But this is what we learn by living way back out in the sticks.

– In every family, there are stories, and all of those stories are meant to be shared. Last year, we had hosted wintertime stories here. Some of the general stories can be told right now, but some of the sacred stories are usually told in the wintertime, because everything is dormant. Grandmother Earth, — we say, is sleeping, so some of the sacred stories are told then. The moon of the bear, –, or February, –. We had a lot of our elders come in an talk about those in the language. One of the unique things is that after the story in Potawatomi, they shared it in English. They gave those people in attendance that opportunity to actually think about what they were talking about. So that cultural center museum that is an avenue today for our community in which to kind of give back. It creates, also, that ability for not only our tribal members, but that place were local people are given that chance to learn more about our history. I think in the past there’s been so much controversy and racism that we had to live through. I remember back as a child, attending local school here in Crandon, that it was very difficult. There was absolutely no understanding, or no knowledge of our history or anything like that. The impact of Indian gaming created a better life for a lot of tribal members. I know that there are things in the past that we wish we could have done, and now we’re able to do it. You know, we have a natural resources department. They’re actually monitoring our wolf population within the reservation boundaries. We have them also monitoring these waters here, ensuring that this is going to be available for the next generation.

– Just when you start thinking it’s all lost, then you get people who are really interested in a lot of these things, ceremonies, our language. My mother told me that once we lose the language, we cease to be Anishinaabe, which is Indian. Then she said, the creator looks down here when we do a ceremony to hear us speak our language. When he no longer hears that language, or sees moccasin tracks, then he will think about ending the world again.

– Our elders are doing what they can to ensure that, you know, what they leave is going to be picked up by some of our younger generation. They’ll get back to teaching the history, the culture of our people, focus on a lot of the old ceremonies. Our belief of why the Potawatomi were given that task of keeping that fire was that a lot of the ceremonies include that sacred fire that’s built. Some of the old people, I’ve heard them talking about that spirit that’s within that fire there. They refer to that spirit as –, the fire spirit. One who tends a fire is known as –, and that’s always been within the families, that have carried on that tradition among our people.

– The social Pow Wows you hear advertised all over. People with their moccasins. They’re still making moccasins tracks. So that has a purpose. That’s what my mother told me when I asked her why they were doing this. I’d never seen that done when I was growing up. It was all ceremony. She told me, it has a purpose now, because that’s when young people and everybody wear their moccasins. They’re dancing around. The creator looks down and, oh, they’re still down there.

[laughs]

[singing in Potawatomi]

[music]

– To learn more about the sovereign Indian nations in Wisconsin visit wisconsinact31.org. To purchase a DVD of this and other Tribal Histories programs visit wpt.org or call 800-422-9707.

– Potawatomi History was funded in part by Irene Daniell Kress, the Evjue Foundation, a charitable arm of the Capital Times, Ron and Patty Anderson, the Wisconsin History Fund with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.