Who Was Jean Baptiste Richardville?

Jean Baptiste Richardville's father was a French trader. His mother, Tacumwah, aka Mary Louise, was a Miami Indian. Tacumwah's brother Pacanne was a chief and they may have also been related to Little Turtle. Born in present-day Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1761, Richardville benefitted from a Catholic education and knowledge of trade thanks to his father and also benefitted from his mother's high status in her tribe as well as her control of trade at the portage that connected the Maumee and Wabash rivers.

Anyway, Jean Baptiste Richardville started life out as more of a Euro-American and as he got older and became chief of his mother's people, he was more of an Indian, known by the Miami name of Pechewa, the Wild Cat.

It wasn't until 1816 that Richardville succeeded his uncle as tribal chief. Historian Donald Gaff (150) describes what his life was like until then.

While many faced a harsh existence, Richardville wore fine European clothing and dined with what would have been the high society of the frontier. One contemporary described days filled with drinking, card playing, and concerts. If that were not European enough, Richardville joined a newly formed society named "Most Light Honorable Society of Monks," known later as "Friars of St. Andrew." He also threw parties at his house , including one for Mardi Gras. All of these activities enhanced his business dealings with Europeans and Americans.

And he was the wealthiest Indian in America. Inside his house there was French wallpaper, silk curtains, chandeliers and imported carpets. Outside there was a wharf on the St. Mary's River, as well as a barn and a racetrack (Gaff, 151).

Despite all of his wealth, the younger Richardville was still a Miami and he represented the tribe at treaties. In fact, that is where his great wealth came from. Did Richardville skim more of the wealth from his negotiations off the top than the Miami intended? Indian agent John Tipton observed that "the utmost confidence is reposed in him [by the tribe]." Instead of resenting their half-white brother for his success,  the Miami respected his oratorical skill and his ability to maneuver in negotiations with the United States (Gaff, 151).

When he died in 1841, Richardville was the richest man in Indiana. His negotiations allowed Miami descendants to remain in Indiana on privately owned land for many years after treaties had officially removed the tribe.

 

Source:

Gaff, Donald H.  "Three Men from Three Rivers: Navigating between Native and American Identity in the Old Northwest Territory." Printed in The Boundaries between Us, Daniel P. Barr, editor. Kent State University Press, 2006: Kent, Ohio.

Dorothy Ripley's Mission to the New York Indians (part 2)

[caption id="attachment_9025" align="alignright" width="231"] Independent missionary Dorothy Ripley self-published her journal as "The Bank of Faith and Works United."[/caption]

As we saw in part 1, Englishwoman Dorothy Ripley's 1805 mission to the New York Indians included preaching to the Stockbridge Mohicans and the Oneidas.

After being put up in the home of a white Quaker, Ms. Ripley went on to minister to the Brothertown Indians. She found these Christian Indians - like Christian whites of that time - to be divided on the question of who can be saved.

I went to Brothertown to collect the Indians there together, in the school-house.... Those Indians were Baptists, divided into two classes, one part believed in election, and the other in free salvation. Where I was, they had refused their minister, because they said "They would not worship such a cruel God as he served, as He only took care of a part of his creatures," and drew this comparison, by asking a question concerning their women: "Would not she be a cruel mother, who having two children, took one and nursed it; and left the other to perish? So we will worship a God who takes care of all His children;" which I think was an excellent conclusion and a sound argument was advanced to show how far an Indian is capable of believing in the Living and True God.

A couple days later Dorothy Ripley was back in New Stockbridge, New York.

A meeting was held again in Stockbridge, for the instruction of the poor Natives, who are dear to me. There are some of the [Delaware] Jersey Indians among this tribe, and the whole number here, are rising three hundred... This day two of the missionaries, and a young clergyman were present, while my soul was earnestly engaged for the good of the Indians; but I verily believe by their proceedings it was their opinion that a woman ought not to preach: for one of them said afterwards, had I "come to teach them to knit and sew it would be very well."

At the moment of her departure, the women of the tribe presented Dorothy Ripley with an address, which had actually been written by Captain Hendrick, the Mohican chief that was serving as her interpreter:

Dear Sister,
We the poor women of the Muhheconnuk nation, wish to speak [a] few words to you to inform you that while our forefathers were sitting by the side of their ancient fireplace, about eighty years ago, our father, Rev. Mr. Sergeant's father, came amongst them with the message of the Great and Good Spirit, which he then began to deliver to them. He was the first minister of the gospel that ever preached to our fathers, and the Great and Good Spirit blessed his labors, by which means many of our poor natives were turned from darkness to light....

You can continue reading this on page 111 of The Bank of Faith and Works United.

Dorothy Ripley's Mission to the New York Indians in 1805 (part 1)

[caption id="attachment_9014" align="aligncenter" width="672"] Known as "New Stockbridge" in 1805, the present-day village of Stockbridge, New York has retained it's rural character for more than 200 years.[/caption]

 

Born in 1767 in the quaint seaside town of Whitby, in Yorkshire, England, Dorothy Ripley felt called to the ministry as a teenager (or perhaps sooner). Since she did not work under the auspices of an organized church or mission society, her remarkable career is not particularly well-documented. We know that she made at least ten and possibly as many as nineteen mission trips across the Atlantic. Perhaps her specialty was slaves and free blacks in the south. But she ministered to other Americans, including  prisoners, and, the New York Indians.

Ripley's journal, published by her as The Bank of Faith and Works United is worth reading for anybody trying to understand what it meant to be a Christian Indian in 1805. Here she tells of her meeting with the Stockbridge Mohicans.

I went to their church, which is distinguished by a steeple, that you can see some distance off. It is a neat, clean wood building, with glass windows and a handsome entrance, having a gallery some distance off. It is a neat, clean, wood building, with glass windows and a handsome entrance, having a gallery all round excepting where the minister sits. The minister took his seat in the pulpit, desiring me to sit in a pew underneath, where three of his daughters sat alongside of me, dressed as fashionable as any women in middle rank, although there were but few to see them, except the Indians who all came with a blanket round them, unless it were the young men and women who were foolishly hung with feathers, and head tires of bright tin mettle. The Indians fantastically dressed, sung a psalm feelingly which moved my passion of love, so that I wept all the time tears of joy. After this [Rev. John Sergeant] prayed in Indian and then in English, and gave out a second psalm, which was sung as the other admirably. The minister then read part of the fourteenth chapter of Mark, which Captain Hendrick, a Chief, also read in Indian; and I was at liberty to preach to them as long as I thought proper, or in other words, while my master furnished me with matter for the occasion, having desired Him to be both Mouth and Wisdom to me..... (100-101)

Ripley may have spent more time writing about her preaching and how she felt about it than about the Indians she was preaching to. After she was done preaching

Many of the Indians gladly took my by the hand, which affectionately I saluted after the same manner, knowing One God was our Father, Redeemer, and Sanctifier of all (102).

Later that week, Dorothy Ripley was with the Oneidas. She confirmed something that male missionaries had previously noted. Only one of the Oneida men, an old chief named Skanando, was an active Christian. The way Ripley says this sounds judgmental to my modern ears:

The women are much better than the men and have a greater knowledge of God before their eyes, which preserves them from intoxication, and other evils, that the men are liable to be overtaken with, when they are deprived of their reason by strong drink.

Stay tuned. Later that week we'll see what happens when Dorothy Ripley visits the Brothertown Indians.

Causes and Consequences of King Philip's War

 

[caption id="attachment_9004" align="aligncenter" width="461"] "Early American Conflict" is by an unknown artist who was not a witness to King Philip's War.[/caption]

In my previous post, we saw that the New England Indians in the 1600's were selective at first in what aspects of white culture and Christianity they would take on.

But, as often happens, one thing led to another and the once tentative converts gradually became the praying Indians, taking on more white ways than before. So missionaries like John Eliot and other influential English people helped the converted Indians gain status outside of traditional Native social systems. And that created tensions - or intensified existing tensions - between the praying Indians and the Indians who were still trying to walk a traditional path.

 

Exactly why King Philip (aka Metacomet, a Wampanoag chief) decided to attack the English is a complex question, but his intention of doing so didn't start the war. As word spread among that Natives that King Philip was preparing to fight, John Eliot's scribe, a Natick Indian named John Sassamon, warned his white friends. Sassamon was murdered. Three Indians were accused and tried based on the testimony of only one witness. Maybe a war over race and culture would have happened anyway, but the murder of Sassamon and the trial that came after it made war a sure thing.

And, as I stated in an earlier post, King Philip's War was one of the bloodiest in American history. It was devastating to the "traditional" Indians, devastating to the praying Indians and devastating to the English. Harold Van Lonkhuyzen tells us that King Philip's War:

changed the context of English-Indian relations and terminated the special relationship that had allowed the two communities to derive mutual benefits from each other. Engendering a wave of vicious anti-Indian feeling, the war encouraged the English to believe that all Indians were 'fiendish sons of Satan' and threats to God's people.

And the hard feelings were mutual. The Christian Indians never regained the trust they had for the English.

The Praying Indians: The Unlikely and Tenuous Survival of John Eliot's Converts

As of about 1670, about one-fourth of New England's Natives were Christians. They lived in fourteen towns, the first and most important being Natick, Massachusetts.

Like Christian Indians that would come generations after them, the so-called praying Indians were "neither fish nor foul." It is hard to put them in a category. Although they had adopted some white ways, they weren't actually trying to be white. And although they were genuine Natives, they were living in "towns" instead of villages, so they weren't recognized as political units in any larger Native nation.



So the uniquely vulnerable praying Indians became refugees - or maybe it would be more accurate to say they were prisoners of war. Here's how the praying Indians website describes it.

In the winter of 1675, fueled by fears of King Phillip (Metacom), [the] mighty Wampanoag Chief, the colonists removed the Natick Praying Indians to Deer Island. At midnight in the month of October, holding their Bibles and with [their missionary, John] Eliot seeking to comfort them, they were taken to Deer Island in Boston Harbor where they were confined. The first Praying Indian Village of Natick suffered severely. Abandoned by their colonial Christian brethren, the Natick Praying Indians were left unprotected on the frigid Island. A month later the Praying Indian Villages of Ponkapoag (Stoughton, MA) and Nashoba (Littleton, MA) were added to the tragic confinement from 1675-1676. By this time the other villages received news of the imprisonment and either fled or joined Metacom, the Wompanoag Chief also known as King Phillip by the colonists for his military prowess. Natives captured were also placed on Long Island in Boston Harbor. However [due to factors such as] little clothing, starvation and enforced deprivation including being forbidden to light fires, hunt game or build shelters, most lives were lost. The young, the old, the pregnant and the weak could not survive. Most of the Indians died of cold and starvation. The sad story is documented of the elderly Eliot going by boat to bring supplies to the Natives and being capsized by angered colonists. During the Island imprisonment some of the praying Indians were coerced into spying and fighting for the colonist. History would eventually misconstrue this bid for the freedom of death and suffering...as weakness and dishonorable betrayal to their Native heritage.

It was long believed that King Philip's War wiped out the praying Indians. Instead, their loss in numbers weakened them to the point that they became invisible. But they lived on, remaining in the east, and they arguably still exist, at least to the point of having a website.

Without a doubt, the praying Indians stayed together at least until 1790, as the subtitle of a book about them makes clear. The Amazon page for Jean M. O'Brien's Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790 was used as a source for this post.

 

Children at LCO's Waadookodaading School Sing for Senator Tammy Baldwin

Senator Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin) and Senator Jon Tester (Montana, Chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee) visited the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation yesterday (October 23rd). The LCO reservation is near Hayward, Wisconsin.

The children of the Waadookodaading School sang for the two senators in the Ojibwe language. A video clip is now on Facebook.

By the way, the Lac Courte Oreilles (pronounced "La Coot Ah-Ray") have a good website which includes a page devoted to their school which is, unfortunately, in the midst of something of a funding crisis right now.

In the video clip below, Senator Baldwin talks about her visit to the LCO reservation and school:

John Brown's Place in American History

Once very controversial and now largely forgotten, John Brown certainly deserves acknowledgement as a great American freedom fighter.

But he was an outlaw who opposed the law of the land. (Slavery.)

But he advocated to bring about change through violence. (That isn't cool.)

And, although he may have tried as hard to end slavery as anybody, he was white, so he isn't likely to get mentioned during Black History Month. (There isn't time to honor a white man during Black History Month, is there?)

Who was John Brown and how does he now fit into American History?

Five years ago, John Hendrix gathered up all the recent work historians were doing on John Brown, interpreted it into clear language, drew up illustrations, and the result is an outstanding childrens' book:

John Brown: His Fight for Freedom

 

Since this blog is about church history, I should point out that John Brown's religion motivated him to work to abolish slavery. Hendrix gets even more specific than that.

Behold the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no comforter, and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. -Ecclesiastes 4:1

This Bible passage caused something to happen inside John Brown's chest and he made an oath to fight slavery then and there (page 9).

When Kansas was set to vote on becoming a free state or a slave state, pro-slavery "ruffians" destroyed crops, burned settlements and killed people who got in their way. When the ruffians made threats towards John Brown he wouldn't stand for it. He and his sons took five pro-slavery settlers to a creek and killed them with broadswords (page 15).

From that point on, John Brown wasn't just an outlaw to the federal government, he was a crazed madman to many but a folk hero to others.

Violence - even used for a good cause - is what it is. But, by its own nature, slavery required violence and perpetuated more violence. John Hendrix makes the point that many, many free people were opposed to slavery before the Civil War, but not many people were doing much about it. Except talking. And talking didn't get it done. However, at the same time, Hendrix says "John didn't believe bloodshed was the answer."

Anyway, the reason I wrote this post today is that today is the 155th anniversary of John Brown's famous raid of the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. Unfortunately, I don't have space here to summarize the raid. Instead, I recommend that you either read about it at U.S. history.org or, better yet, get your hands on Hendrix's book and read pages 18 to 35.

How Was Lead Mined by the Ho-Chunk?

My last post was about one particular lead mine worked by Ho-Chunk Indians for fifteen years before it was sold to a white man. White miners were probably using picks and shovels when they first settled in the lead district which is now made up of parts of Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. Unfortunately, I don't have a complete description of their processes.

On the other hand, Moses Meeker in his "Early History of the Lead Region of Wisconsin" (page 281) gives us a pretty thorough description of Ho-Chunk lead mining.

Their tools were a hoe made for the Indian trade , an axe, and a crowbar, made of an old gun barrel flattened at the breach, which they used for removing the rock. Their mode of blasting was rather tedious to be sure; they got dry wood, kindled a fire along the rock as far as they wished to break it. After getting the rock hot, they poured cold water upon it which so cracked it that they could pry it up.

White miners would eventually dominate the lead district. I have read a rather vague statement somewhere that the white miners used technology to force the Indians out of lead mining. However, other factors are also noted by Meeker: 1) the Indians' tendency to view mining as "women's work" meant that their physically strongest people weren't digging or blasting, and 2) although Indians were skilled at discovering sites to mine lead, the same Indians were also often willing to show white miners these sites in exchange for whiskey (page 290).



As evidenced by the state flag, mining was still an essential part of Wisconsin's economy when it became a state in 1848.

The Old Buck Lead Mine

Old Buck was a Ho-Chunk Indian who spoke broken English well enough to deal with his white neighbors.

He lived in the area that we would now call Illinois, but present-day Wisconsin and Iowa were also part of his stomping grounds.

Moses Meeker, was qualified to write "Early History of [the] Lead Region of Wisconsin" because he was active in lead mining in the 1820's. The title of Meeker's recollection, of course, is problematic, because, first of all, our current state boundaries were not yet established at that time and also because lead mining went on, not only in present-day Wisconsin, but also in present-day Illinois and Iowa.

[caption id="attachment_7994" align="aligncenter" width="577"] An artist's conception of Galena [Illinois] after Indians stopped working in the mines.[/caption]For the most part, Meeker capably describes the early days of lead mining in Wisconsin. My only complaint is that he is somewhat inexact or inconsistent on page 281.

There were about five hundred Indians; their women quite industrious miners, but their men would not work.

He must have meant that to be a relative statement because he later tells us that "Old Buck was reputed to be the best miner among the Indians" (and Old Buck, of course, was a man).

Old Buck discovered a lead deposit less than two miles from where Galena, Illinois now stands. He and his wife and their friends worked that spot for fifteen years. It must have been a particularly good place to mine. On page 281-282 Meeker states that Old Buck sold his mine to Colonel J. Johnson in 1833 for $300. Johnson continued to operate The Old Buck Lead Mine for a number of years.

Was Old Buck cheated by Johnson? Well, looking back on it now, we might guess that he was. But in those days, whites engaged in maneuvers that forced Natives out of the mining industry. White technology was used as an economic weapon. So by paying Old Buck real money for his mine - even if it wasn't what we'd call "full value," the colonel was probably being more ethical than a lot of the other whites were in the pre-statehood lead mining days.

Bishop Jackson Kemper

By the time he was 42 years old, the Episcopal priest, Jackson Kemper, had been married twice, and made a widower twice.

He'd been born in New York State in 1789 and from 1811 to 1831 he served three parishes in Philadelphia. Being a single clergyman with plenty of pastoral experience - including mission experience he picked up during vacations from his regular position - qualified Jackson Tremper to serve on the frontier. (Academic degrees, of course, were also considered to be a qualification, and Kemper was a Doctor of Divinity and had been the valedictorian of his class at Columbia College.)

In 1834, Kemper left the settled east and arrived at what is now known as Wisconsin. On behalf of a mission society that was affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church, he was charged with making a report on a mission that was started in 1827 by Rev. Richard Cadle, and his sister, Miss Sarah Cadle. This mission was an essential part of a settlement known as "Shantytown" (now part of DePere). Unsurprisingly, the Episcopal mission had not gotten off to a good start. To the Indians, the Cadles' discipline was rigid, perhaps even oppressively rigid. Furthermore, the kind of Christianity that had existed in the Green Bay area among French traders and others for many years was Roman Catholicism - let's not forget that back in the 1800's Catholics and Protestants didn't get along.

In 1832, Richard Cadle - who was discouraged by the lack of success he was having - asked the mission society that was supporting himself and his sister to relieve them of their burden. Somehow, the mission society persuaded the Cadles to carry on with their work in Shantytown by promising more support for the mission. Jackson Kemper traveled to what was known as "the Northwest" back then, in order to see the Cadles' Shantytown mission firsthand and report back to the mission society. Jackson Kemper kept a diary on that trip which - along with footnotes provided by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin - is the source used in this blogpost. [Access Kemper's diary here.]

To make a long story short, in Kemper's opinion, the Cadles' mission was at least successful enough to be worth the effort:

Is it nothing to have rescued more than 200 ch[ildren] from
degradation & vice & ignorance & death—to teach them the arts &
feelings of civilized life and the principles of the Gospel? * * * Many of
these chld are real Indians born in our ch, but who would be ignorant of
knowledge & our language were it not for this school. And many born
heathen exhibit by their conduct & writings an evidence of the Gospel
upon their souls. Here, in this mission the Ch is exerting herself & has an
opportunity of doing good to heathen. If we give up this, we abandon the
only post we have among the heathen. We have more Indian child here
than they have at Macanaw—& the schools of the ch[urch] Miss[ionary]
Soc[iety] among the N W Indians are principally composed of the children
of white traders. Some of the chld here in 2 yrs have in addition to a
knowledge of the language acquired as much school information i. e.
made as much progress in spelling, reading, writing, composition,
geography, grammar & arithmetic as chld of similar age in the district
school of Connecticut.

In 1835 Jackson Kemper was elected the first missionary Bishop of his denomination.



You can read a more complete biography of Bishop Jackson Kemper on Harry Allagee's Good Heart blog (the visual above is taken from that site).

 

The Mormons and the Strangites of Beaver Island

I addressed the beginnings of Mormonism in a previous post.

 

Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church, was also the mayor of Nauvoo, Illinois (and, according to some, he was even a candidate for President of the US) when he was attacked and killed by an angry mob. He was imprisoned in Carthage, Illinois at the time, but bullets from the mob's firearms reached him. That, by itself, could be the topic of a blogpost, but instead, it is only the opening hook.

After Joseph Smith died, there was a struggle for power between Brigham Young, Sidney Rigdon, and James Strang. All three men (and later a fourth, Joseph Smith III) felt they were entitled to lead the Mormon church. Most Americans don't realize that not all of Joseph Smith's followers got behind Brigham Young and headed west for Salt Lake City. Rigdon and Strang and later Joseph Smith III each had their own followers and their own churches.

 

The Strangites, followers of James Strang, established their community on Beaver Island, in the northern part of Lake Michigan.

[caption id="attachment_7617" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] Thanks to Citynoise for making this graphic available via Wikimedia commons:[/caption]

 

James Strang had only been a Mormon for about a year when he claimed to be the rightful leader of the church. He'd actually once declared himself "the perfect atheist"(Gilbert in Smithsonian, August, 1995, page 86). So it would not be unfair to look at Strang's career cynically. He was more than ambitious, he was hungry for power.

 

It was in 1843 that the young James Strang and his new wife, Mary, settled near Burlington, Wisconsin, an area close enough to Illinois to have Mormon settlers at that time. As Bil Gilbert points out in his Smithsonian article, Strang probably looked upon the earnest and zealous Mormons as potential followers. A biography written by James Strang's own grandson, imagines that Stang (the grandfather), when he came upon the credulous Mormons felt

like a prospector who has finally struck it rich[. He] knew that he had found his listening audience.

While Joseph Smith started Mormonism by claiming to have discovered gold plates with divine revelation written in "Egyptian Hieroglyphics," James Strang claimed to have found the same kind of revelation written on brass plates that he found in southern Wisconsin. Strang added to his remnant of Mormons by active recruiting.

That is how it began. The things that actually happened on Beaver Island during the short time that it was James Strang's kingdom are covered well in Bil Gilbert's 1995 article in Smithsonian Magazine.

The "teaser" for Smithsonian's website reads

About 145 years ago, a former attorney and future polygamist named James Strang had himself crowned the King of Beaver Island, Michigan. His reign was short and ended violently but while he ruled he did so the old-fashioned way: by divine right as the ultimate lawgiver, political authority and arbiter of morals.

Like Joseph Smith before him, you might say that James Strang had bitten off more than any American can safely chew.

Near the end of Gilbert's article he tells us that Strang's devoted followers scattered after his death.

During the next several weeks, hundreds of destitute Strangites were deposited haphazardly on the docks of Chicago, Detroit, Racine, and Green Bay.... Without [Strang] his flock was incapable of taking determined action.

Nevertheless, Strang's "original" Church of Latter-Day Saints still exists to this day. They have their own website, in which the Book of the Law of the Lord... first translated from the brass plates onto paper, is now displayed in digital format:


Checkout the Strangites website.

Don't Let the Sun Step Over You: Stories Told by Eva Watt, an Apache

Eva Tulene Watt (1913-2009) was the first Apache to get actively involved in preserving her people's history. Prior to 2002, when her book was published, white historians tried their best to do right by the Apaches, but, as you might imagine, those accounts left a lot to be desired.

Don't Let the Sun Step Over You contains many, many stories, and they are Mrs. Watt's personal stories, stories about her family. Although each story can pretty much stand by itself, as you read more and more, you start to get a fuller picture of what it was like to be an Apache between the years 1860 and 1975.

Mrs. Watt collaborated with Keith Basso, an anthropologist and decided that the book should be printed in English because, unfortunately, not many young Apaches were fluent in their native language. However, since English was not Mrs. Watt's first language, the book is not what it could have been if we could understand Apache.

Anyway, I'm going to try to give you one of Eva Watts' stories. Here goes:

William Gashoney, I think some kind of a great uncle of Mrs. Watt (although she called him her grandpa), was a medicine man, and was once stuck by lightning. He believed that he "became a lightning myself"(page 26), which seems to have given him some power towards making it rain in Arizona. But it seems that he also had to have people with him and they had to sing a rain song (26-28). It might have taken a few nights of singing, but eventually there was a lot of rain (28).

On page 29, Mrs. Watt begins another story in this thread. She says

They had no rain for a long time. The people were worried. The rivers were drying up. The springs in the mountains were drying up too (29).

So the traders and the storekeeper got a lot of groceries and brought them out to William Gashoney. And he started to sing.

It was dry! Hot! He sang four songs. Then some people were just mean to my grandpa. "I don't think he knows what he's doing," they said. "The way he's going, I don't think it's ever going to rain." He knew right away what the people were saying about him. so after four songs, he stood up. He told the people "Nobody must talk against me. Nobody must say, 'he can't do it' or 'he's not praying right,' or anything like that. I don't want no part of that, not here. You can say it far away, if you want to, but not right here." Then he said, "I'm not doing this for myself. I'm doing it for everything - our land, our horses, our farms, our deer, our birds." He mentioned everything. Then he said, "If you don't believe, go away from here." That's what he said.

He started singing again, him and the mens [sic] that were helping him. Close to midnight, the wind started blowing. It started blowing this way real hard! There's lots and lots of dust! Pretty soon it started blowing. It started blowing backwards the other way. Then the wind stopped blowing and the dust storm went away. He stopped singing again and the fourth song he was singing is when it started dropping water. Then the thunder started, and pretty soon it started raining hard! That's when everybody got too excited. They were yelling their heads off! They were dancing in there! They were really dancing!(30-31).

That was maybe the climax, but not the end of that particular story. Maybe enough to give you an idea of what this unique book is about.

 

Non-Indians of Stockbridge, MA: Josiah Jones

In 1730 Jonathan Belcher, the Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, conceived the notion of an "Indian Town" where just a few white families would live. The idea was that, in addition to a minister and a teacher; tradesmen and housewives would also demonstrate "civilized" Christian living to a predominantly Native community. The previous "praying towns" of New England had not been integrated that way and as a result, those early Christian Indians were vulnerable to attacks from both whites and Indians.

Belcher's plan appears to have worked for about three years. But when Ephraim Williams moved his family to Indian Town it was the beginning of the end. At Williams' urging, "Indian Town" became incorporated as "Stockbridge" in 1739. The incorporation of the town (including the name change that went with it) was just one of many steps towards a segregated and secular town. And segregation and secular goals (also known as prosperity and/or greed) were exactly what pushed the Stockbridge Mohicans out of town after about fifty years.

I understand that Indians lost their land to whites over and over across the course of American history. But a good historian will tell you that just because something happened doesn't mean that it had to happen.

This is where Josiah Jones comes in. Jones and his wife, Anna, were two of the very first whites to settle at Indian Town and they really were the kind of pious Christians that Governor Belcher had in mind when he conceived his plan. As Electa Jones (probably not a relative) puts it in Stockbridge, Past and Present (149), Josiah Jones

learned the Indian language and was long remembered by a few of their tribe. They always spoke of him as "Good man, always kind to Indian."

He was in his early thirties when he first came to Indian Town. And we know that Josiah Jones lived into his eighties because he was still around when the poor Indians - dispossessed of their land - knew it was time to leave the town that was set up for their benefit.

[caption id="attachment_7052" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Josiah and Anna Jones had a son whose name was also Josiah, and this is the son's gravestone.[/caption]

When the tribe left Stockbridge, they presented him, as a token of their affection, the Old Conch Shell which had always been used to summon them to their place of worship, and also a beautiful belt of wampum (Jones, 149).

Josiah Jones and his family appear to have been exceptionally "good" people. But Ephraim Williams and his family seem to have been exceptionally "bad" people.  I often think of the overall failure of the mission at Stockbridge, Massachusetts as a triumph of bad over good. What do you think?

 

Non-Indians of Stockbridge, MA; African Population, Part 2: Agrippa Hull

 

By focusing on non-Indians, we're already off on a tangent, so I'll resist the temptation to go into detail about slavery in Massachusetts or how it came to an end in the 1780's.

Instead I'll stick to telling you about the non-Indians who lived among the Mohican Indians of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. My previous post featured an African American couple, Rose and Joab, who were slaves belonging to none other than the missionary, Jonathan Edwards. With Edwards death in 1758, or perhaps before it, Joab and Rose were given their freedom. In the mid-1760's, Joab brought a six-year-old boy to Stockbridge. The boy's name was Agrippa Hull. Hull had been born to free blacks. Unfortunately, his father died when he was still an infant. His mother, being too poor to support her child, apparently made arrangements for him to go with Joab.

[caption id="attachment_7007" align="aligncenter" width="640"] This painting depicts an 85-year-old Agrippa Hull. It hangs in the public library of Stockbridge, Massachusetts.[/caption]

When Agrippa Hull was eighteen years old, he enlisted in the Continental Army where he served as an orderly, first to General Patterson, and later to the Polish General Kosciuszko. Hull survived the winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge and when he mustered out in 1783, his discharge papers were signed by General George Washington. (His career in the military is spelled out more fully in the Black Past site.)

Hull returned to Stockbridge, went to work for Judge Sedgewick, and married Jane, who had been a slave and left her master soon after the Massachusetts courts ruled against slavery (this was more of a process than an event, see the Emancipation in Massachusetts page).  In 1785 Hull purchased a half-acre plot just across the river from Stockbridge, and over the years added to it. His farm and continued service to Judge Sedgewick made him prosperous, in fact, Blackpast.org states  "Agrippa Hull lived out [President] Jefferson’s ideal of a self-disciplined, civic-minded, and self-sustaining yeoman farmer."

Electa Jones, a contemporary of Hull, has some things to add about him (page 241). She described his character as "unique" but not "eccentric." According to Jones, whose book, Stockbridge, Past and Present was published only six years after Hull's death, "He was witty, and his presence at weddings seemed almost a necessity."

On page 242 Jones shares an anecdote which I've seen quoted or paraphrased elsewhere on the web:

Once, when servant to a man who was haughty and overbearing, both to Agrippa and his master attended the same church, to listen to a discourse from a distinguished mulatto preacher. On coming out of the house, the gentleman said to Agrippa, "Well, how do you like n[-----] preaching?" "Sir," he promptly retorted, "he was half black and half white; I liked my half, how did you like yours?"

O

Non-Indian Residents of Stockbridge, Massachusetts: African Population, Part 1

[caption id="attachment_6953" align="aligncenter" width="784"] Go to Wikipedia's "Slavery in the United States" page for a series of maps like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States[/caption]

Electa Jones, the author of Stockbridge, Past and Present (alternate title: The Records of an Old Mission Station), compiled and wrote her history in the early 1850's. On the issue of slavery, she - like us today - knew it was immoral, and she also believed that even worse than simply owning slaves was the use of "bondage" to keep them in one's possession. On page 238, Jones tells us that there is no question that slaves were kept in Stockbridge, [present-day Massachusetts], and there was even reason to suspect (but no written proof) "that Africans were held in bondage." (Unless otherwise noted, my source for this entire post is page 238 of Jones' Stockbridge, Past and Present).

A person who was supposed to be setting a good example of Christian living to the Indians - the missionary, Reverend Jonathan Edwards - is the first slaveholder of the town of Stockbridge known to history. In an interview for a church history magazine several years ago, Edwards' award-winning biographer, George Marsden, referred to Edwards' keeping of slaves as a moral "blind spot."

Although I'm tempted to say that owning slaves is too nasty an offense to be written off as a "blind spot," I know that we 21st century Americans have our own blind spots. Most of us aren't thinking about the wars we're voluntarily waging, the mercury in the batteries that we toss out, the thousands of acres of rainforests cleared, etc. etc. (And even if we say we disapprove, are we doing anything to stop these atrocities?) Feel free to comment about Edwards, slavery, ethics, the environment, etc.

Let's get back to "what happens next."

As you may know, Rev. Jonathan Edwards, before coming to Stockbridge, was pastor of the church at Northampton. The Edwards family owned a slave named Rose, who was said to have been stolen from Africa as a child, when she was "getting water at a spring." Rose was married to Joab, also a slave. Joab's master was a "Mr. Hunt" of Northampton.

Edwards was something of a celebrity, but - like a lot of celebrities - he was also controversial. This resulted in his being thrown out of his congregation. As you might imagine, it isn't always easy to throw a celebrity preacher out of a congregation. I'm not quite familiar with the process of throwing Edwards out, but one of the inducements to Edwards was that Mr. Hunt "released" his slave Joab to the minister so Edwards couldn't use the breaking up of a slave marriage as an excuse to try to keep his job as the church's pastor.

Who Were the "Red Sticks"?

The Red Sticks were Creek Indians from present-day Alabama. They resisted the western expansion of the United States at the same time that Tenskwatawa's movement and his brother Tecumseh's confederacy were resisting the United States in the Great Lakes region.

According to the Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (443), there were a total of about 4,000 Red Sticks coming from sixty townships. (The townships were loosely organized into a confederacy.)

Despite having two centuries of contact with white "civilization," the Red Sticks had largely "held firm to their traditional religious beliefs"(444).

Why were they called Red Sticks?

According to Gregory Evans Dowd (A Spirited Resistance, 147), they were named after their war clubs. However, another answer (that I prefer to believe) comes from the Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (444).

The name "Red Stick" evidently derived from the Creek practice of counting down the days to an important event (such as the advent of war) by remvoing sticks from a red stick bundle.

 

[caption id="attachment_3006" align="aligncenter" width="471"] This section of a map of the War of 1812 was originally produced by the WW Norton company and is re-used here under fair use for commentary.[/caption]


To read about the Red Sticks' Creek War of 1813-1814 - one part of the War of 1812 - see The Warfare Historian.


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Quanah Parker: A Leader in Changing Times

[caption id="attachment_1953" align="aligncenter" width="346"] This photo of Quanah Parker was recently shared by somebody over the Google+ network.[/caption]

A good article about Comanche Chief Quanah Parker appeared in the February 2014 issue of American History magazine. I cannot give you a link to that particular article, but this short biography is also a good read.

Like Little Turtle and other chiefs described in Algonkian Church History, Quanah Parker succeeded in straddling two different worlds. He led the Comanches both in war and in peace.

Parker took his last name from his mother who - as a nine-year-old white girl - was captured by the Comanches and eventually grew to love them and their way of life.

He was also a shrewd businessman, striking deals with cattle ranchers that would bring over $200,000 a year to the Comanche, Kiowa and Apache Indians by 1900 (page 32 of the article, see citation at the bottom of this post).

My favorite part of the American History article is a paragraph that pithily describes the middle road that Quanah Parker took. On one hand, it mentions he sent his children to "Carlisle and other Indian schools in Comanche territory." On the other hand, "when asked by one official to end the parctice of polygamy by choosing among his seven wives, Quanah teased that he was willing to pick one, 'but you must tell the others'" (page 34).

 

Source: Frankel, Glenn. "Between Two Worlds: Quanah Parker, Son of a Comanche Warrior and a White Woman, Gracefully Bridged a Cultural Divide," in American History, vol 48, no. 6 (February, 2014), pages 30-35.

 

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Did the British try to Spread Smallpox to Indians Using Infected Blankets?

[caption id="attachment_1019" align="aligncenter" width="510"] Joshua Reynolds was the artist for this 1766 painting of Jeffery Amherst. Amherst is the villain in this blogpost.[/caption]

There's a piece of history that gets talked about online sometimes and - the way things normally happen on the internet - claims are made but evidence is not given to back up those claims.

In this blogpost I'm going to deal with the question of whether or not the British intentionally spread smallpox to Native Americans with infected blankets.

The shortest and most "fair" answer to that question - as it often is - is that we don't know for sure.

We do know for sure, however, that spreading smallpox was discussed among the highest officers in the British army. More about that later in this post.

But the question of whether they really tried to pull off such a genocidal scheme is different from discussing it as a possibility.

In one chapter of The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814, Matthew C. Ward deals with our question. According to Ward

There is little direct evidence that the British army ever consciously used "germ warfare." In the eighteenth century, the process of disease transmission remained a mystery and while the Fort Pitt garrison may have redistributed a few blankets from the smallpox hospital... most of the Indian headmen who would have accepted such gifts would have been pro-British, the group whom Amherst and other commanders would not have wanted to undermine (page 64).

In Ward's chapter, "The Microbes of War: The British Army and Epidemic Disease among the Ohio Indians, 1758-1765," he also points out how some of the logistics of primitive germ warfare make it unlikely that the idea was "successfully" carried out - at least given the context of when and where it was proposed.

The smallpox virus Variola Major can, under certain conditions, exist in a dried state. However, it prefers cool and dry conditions, hardly those of mid-summer in the Ohio Valley. Although the chances of its long-term survival are slight, its transmission via infected blankets is thus at least potentially feasible.

So there may have actually been an atttempt to distribute infected blankets at one point and it is even possible that Indians contracted smallpox and even died from blankets distributed by the British, but possible is the keyword. The claim cannot be made with any degree of certainty that the British attempted or managed to kill Indians by distributing blankets that were infected with smallpox.

Nevertheless, Jeffery Amherst, the Commander in Chief of the British forces in North America, did propose the genocidal, eighteenth century germ warfare scheme that we've been discussing here. And Ward quotes two letters written by Amherst to Colonel Henry Bouquet, who was stationed in the Ohio Valley, where Pontiac's War (sometimes known as "Pontiac's Rebellion") had broken out. Amherst wrote the first letter in July of 1763.

[C]ould it not be contrived to Send the Small Pox among those Disaffected Tribes of Indians? We must, on this occasion, Use Every Strategem in our power to Reduce them.

The second letter was written only a week later.

You will Do well to try to Innoculate the Indians, by means of Blankets, as well as to Try every other Method, that can Serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race (both of these quotes are on page 64).

Historians are generally in agreement that more Indians died from diseases imported from Europe than from the wars that went on during the same period of time. Although Matthew Ward was able to write a whole chapter about the interplay between germs and the British military in the Sixty Years' War, the idea of killing Indians with infected blankets is only discussed in the first two pages of the chapter. Amherst's statements as quoted above, are very remarkable in their own right, even if it is unlikely that anybody followed through with his proposal.

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How Does Black Hoof Compare with Other Chiefs?

[caption id="attachment_897" align="alignnone" width="233"] Painting of Black Hoof by Hal Sherman, 2010.[/caption]

We Americans have named towns, libraries, and a brand of small engines after Tecumseh, the Shawnee war chief. An essential part of Tecumseh's popular appeal, of course, is that he fits into the "noble savage" stereotype. He was a traditionalist. And there is something appealing about that to both Indians and non-Indians in today's modern world.

But Tecumseh was only one of many Native leaders that had integrity. For example, Captain Hendrick Aupaumut of the Stockbridge Mohicans had integrity. He wanted to keep his people away from alcohol, and wanted them to learn to read and farm. To Captain Hendrick, "civilization" was the way to bring his people out of bad times. The fact that he turned to alcohol late in life was really not due to any weakness of his own, but rather to his discouragement over not being given a fair chance to establish an all-Indian territory at Indiana's White River - despite his loyalty to the United States.

The Miami war chief Little Turtle is another relatively unsung hero of roughly the same times and places as Tecumseh and Captain Hendrick. A brilliant military tactician, Little Turtle routed both the French and the United States on the battlefield. When he became an advocate for peace with the United States, it was a practical judgement based first on an improved US fighting force and later on an appreciation of the whites "civilization" and the possibility that the Miamis could succeed as farmers.

 

The two most well-known Shawnees are the war chief Tecumseh and his younger brother, Tenskwatawa, known often simply as "the Shawnee Prophet." The Shawnee brothers' opposition to the United States in the War of 1812 certainly gives them an important place in American History and nobody can take that away.

On the other hand, in a book chapter called "Forgotten Allies: The Loyal Shawnees and the War of 1812," R. David Edmunds points out that the majority of the Shawnees supported the United States.

Understandably, of course, many Shawnees tried to remain neutral as long as they could. Also, by 1800 most of the Shawnees were already west of the Mississippi (here, of course, we're only concerned with the Shawnees that remained in the Great Lakes region).

Edmunds points out that in the October 1813 Battle of the Thames, "more Shawnee warriors served in [William Henry] Harrison's army than fought with Tecumseh" (338).*

Why? well, we need to back up several years. By 1795 the Shawnees had been at war for over twenty years and many of them were sick and tired of fighting. As a part of what we might call the Miami confederacy, the Shawnees were on the losing side at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. This loss led to the 1795 Treaty of Greenville in which most of Ohio was ceded to the United States.

While the treaty of Greenville was distasteful to Tecumseh and other more militant or traditional Shawnees,  the terms of that same treaty were welcomed by those who were ready to stop fighting. Once a feared warrior, but now in his fifties, Black Hoof was the chief that the peace-oriented Shawnees followed. According to Edmunds

[Black Hoof] subscribed to the government's acculturation programs. In response, federal Indian agents recognized him as the spokesperson for the Shawnees, and channeled their annuities through his village.... In the decade following the Treaty of Greenville, he visited Baltimore and Washington upon several occasions, repeatedly soliciting agricultural assistance both from federal officials, and from the Society of Friends.... By June, 1808, Black Hoof's people had split rail fences, erected log cabins, and planted over 500 acres with traditional crops such as corn, beans and squash and pumpkins, but they also planted turnips, cabbage, and potatoes. In addition, they nurtured several small orchards of apples and had acquired a herd of hogs, three cattle, and two yokes of oxen.... Construction was begun on both a sawmill and a gristmill and...travelers... described the Shawnees' well-groomed fields and 'comfortable houses of hewn logs with chimneys.' Others commented upon the Shawnees' sobriety ("a matter of surprise to those who are acquainted with Indians"), and, in the fall of 1808, the War Department received a petition from white citizens near Dayton who praised the Shawnees and commented that "We find them sober and civil... and look upon them as a watchful safeguard to our habitations (339-340).*

Maybe those things are not as romantic as the things that Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were up to during that same time, but maybe chiefs like Black Hoof should also be admired - or at least respected - for their integrity and leadership.

 

*Source:

Edmunds' chapter (Forgotten Allies: The Loyal Shawnees and the War of 1812) is on pages 337-341 in

Skaggs, David Curtis, and Larry L. Nelson. The Sixty Years' War for the Great
Lakes, 1754-1814. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001.



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One More Time: The Munsee Indians in Wisconsin[?]

This map is from the official site of the Delaware Tribe of Indians.

As discussed earlier, the people that I call the Stockbridge Mohicans have a number of other names. Their 1939 constitution gave them the handle "The Stockbridge-Munsee Community."

For a while I was telling my white friends that I was researching the history of the "Stockbridge-Munsee Indians." As a result, they completely missed the point that the tribe identifies mostly with being Mohican. You can be both Mohican and something else, but if you're talking to somebody, does that person (or persons) give you enough time to say "Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians? The answer is no. So you shorten the name, and "Stockbridge Mohicans" works for me.

In my research I've come across a lot of sources that say things about "the Munsees" and certainly there were still groups of Munsees that stayed together after the Lenape or Delaware Indians had been pushed out of their homeland. One of the Munsee groups that stuck together became guests of the Stockbridge Mohicans (from 1837 to 1839) at Stockbridge, Wisconsin. But many of the Munsees didn't stick together. Many generations ago, a large portion of the  Munsees had already begun to disperse across the face of Turtle Island, often marrying into other tribes.

I won't make the claim that no Munsees joined the Stockbridge Mohicans in the 1800's, of course some did. Big Deer is one. John Killsnake is another. And the Mohawk family, they were Munsees and my guess is they took on the name "Mohawk" because they had been living among Mohawks in New York before coming to Wisconsin.

But if the word "Munsee" deserves to be in the tribe's name at all - and I questioned that in Proud and Determined - it is for two reasons, 1) the Munsees and the Mohicans intermarried a lot starting at about 1670, and 2) about two hundred Wappinger Munsees moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts during the French and Indian War. But the Mohicans didn't change the name then. The "Munsee" part of the tribe's name was added by the United States federal government in the next century - that is something for another blogpost entirely.

Anyway, Robert Grumet's The Munsee Indians gives us a lot of insight into the consequences of the Munsees being mixed-in with various other tribes.

The need to choose one's nationality after marriage made things even more difficult for Munsees living in multicultural communities after 1767.... Decisions to adopt spouse's nationalities played major roles in turning many Munsee family names into surnames later primarily found in other Indian communities. The Munsee Nimham family name, for example, gradually became the prominent Oneida Ninham surname after Munsee Nimham men loosened from the ties of their matrilineages adopted the nationalities of their Oneida wives (pages 274-275).

Probably another family that is in a similar situation is the Metoxens. Maybe you know some other examples?

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