Migrations of Native Christian Communities Recorded by W. DeLoss Love

[caption id="attachment_9101" align="aligncenter" width="300"] The red dot is the location of the Brothertown Reservation in the 1830's.[/caption]

W. DeLoss Love's 1899 book, Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New England, is, of course more than just a biography. It is still one of the best places to go for the history of the Brothertown Indians. Plus, chapter XIII is called "Indian Friends at Stockbridge." It bears repeating here that the Brothertown Indians had started their settlement in New York State prior to the Revolutionary War, but, finding that location to be unsafe, they retreated to West Stockbridge, Massachusetts for six years. According to Love (page 243), it was the friendships formed during those years that resulted in the Stockbridge Mohicans becoming neighbors with the Brothertown and  Oneida Indians in New York State starting in the 1780's. (As you may know, the move for the Stockbridges was necessary, because they had lost their land - much of it in fraudulent ways.)

Love correctly notes that some of the Stockbridge Mohicans moved to Indiana in 1818.

At this time they began to sell their lands, and this continued until they were all established again beside their friends, the Brothertown Indians, on the east side of Winnebago Lake, in Wisconsin (page 245).

Chapter XXVII, The Last Remove, discusses that in much more detail. On pages 316-317 Love describes the New York Indians' attempted move to Indiana's White River.

It had been determined at Brothertown in 1812 to begin a settlement at White River. [War] deterred them, and many of their number enlisted in the United States service. Some never returned. Finally, when peace had been restored, the town voted, January 13, 1817, to choose five men to go there "in pursuit of a tract of land heretofore sought for by their delegates sent there in the year 1809, and to get a title to it." The Stockbridge tribe also were preparing to remove. Two families went in 1817 and more the next season. On the twenty-fourth of July, 1818, Rev. John Sergeant assembled the tribe in anticipation of this pilgrimage. the old church then dismissed and formed into a new body eleven of their number, for whom he transcribed the Confession of Faith and Covenant in English, adding in their own language a Covenant especially adapted to their circumstances. On the fifteenth of August following, some having gone and more being then ready to depart, another meeting was held, at which the chief, Hendrick Aupaumut, in a "large speech" presented to them from the old church a copy of Scott's Bible "to read on Lord's Days and at other religious meetings." So they said farewell and were gone to return no more.

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.

Jeremiah Slingerland's Lament: "Our People Have Sinned and God is Punishing them"

Cornell University's Special Collections includes the Stockbridge Indian Papers.  The finding aid, including an introduction to this remarkable set of documents, is available online.

Item 38 of the Stockbridge Indian Papers is a July 10th, 1844 letter from Jeremiah Slingerland to his uncle John W. Quinney. Slingerland was a student at Bangor Theological Seminary at Bangor, Maine at the time.

How did the young Slingerland interpret the history - as well as the current state - of his people, the Stockbridge Mohicans? Well, you'll see, because I'm going to quote him at length. Do I completely agree with him? No, not by a long shot. The fact is, Jeremiah Slingerland didn't have access to the books and papers that I refer to in my posts. So, think of his historical discussion as one part history and several parts theology. One possible explanation for the hard times of the Stockbridge Mohicans was that they were sinners being punished. That is not my view, but it was the view of a young Jeremiah Slingerland. I think his viewpoint changed and evolved at least to some extent as he got older and became involved in tribal politics himself. Anyway, as promised, here's how Jeremiah Slingerland interpreted tribal history in 1844 as the Citizen versus Indian partisanship began:

Our people have sinned and God is punishing them by allowing a fractious spirit to rise among them. They have had superior privileges but they have abused them. They have had excellent teachers but they have quarreled with them. I look back upon their past history and what unnumbered favors have covered their westward march. I cast my eye backward to 1734, to behold among them the first missionary. He toils, wears out his life and dies, yet our people feel no gratitude. Another comes and fills his place - now our people are honored by the presence & instructions of one of the most eminent divines New England ever produced. [Illegible] Edwards. But still our people know it not. Thus has the Lord honored them in furnishing teacher after teacher until, I fear, he has now almost given them up to themselves to bring about their own extinction. May he have mercy upon them and spare them!

Once again, the quote and Slingerland's thinking reflects a dearth of historical knowledge. They didn't have the internet back then. They didn't have a lot of books or even cheap and plentiful paper like we do now.

But even in our own times, even in the information age, when so much historical data is out there, people still have a hard time leaving their ideological biases out of how they interpret history. To this day, many historical accounts are still distorted by one belief system or another. But the other extreme might be just as bad. History might risk losing its humanity if scholars manage to take all the subjectivity out of it.

Electa Quinney: Stockbridge Teacher

I frequently feature books in my blogposts, but seldom actually recommend them. However, here is a book that I am recommending: Electa Quinney: Stockbridge Teacher should be purchased by all the middle school libraries in Wisconsin. Although the focus is on Electa Quinney, the author does a good job of giving readers the context of the woman's life, which is a remarkable stage. The reality that Native nations like the Stockbridge Mohicans fought amongst themselves is not lost on the author, Karyn Saemann. At the same time, harsh realities like the Indian Removal Act are not sugar-coated. And, of much importance to historians of Native Christianity like myself, religion was not scrubbed out of this portrait. The negative stereotype of missionaries is not reinforced. (Electa Quinney's first husband, Daniel Adams, was a Native preacher.)

Frontier America in the 1800's is broken down into simple enough language for middle schoolers to be able to comprehend Electa Quinney: Stockbridge Teacher. Saemann also encourages students to form their own viewpoints of what Electa Quinney may have thought and felt. I really appreciate how the author admitted up front that history is like a puzzle and there are missing pieces. It appears that most of the letters that Electa wrote were not preserved for posterity. (The discovery of Electa's son's remarkable collection of papers in an old trunk in 1932 was rightfully featured in the book.)

The quality of the body of the book makes it worth reading not only for schoolchildren but also adults interested in American history. People like me will be disappointed that the book doesn't have notes or a bibliography that can be used to track down the sources used by the author, but remember, the book was not written for adult scholars.

Factual errors? I think that every book has a few. Let me speak to that.
On pages 10-11, the author repeats the error made by others that John W. Quinney and Austin E. Quinney were brothers. According to the tribe's current enrollment officer, the two men were cousins.
On page 10, the author acknowledges "we can't say for sure who Electa's father was." Then she guesses that Electa probably had the same father as John W. Quinney. (We already know that John W. Quinney and Electa had the same mother.) In minutes of an Indian Party meeting contained in the John C. Adams Papers, I found that John P. Quinney objected to Electa Quinney's membership in the Indian Party because, as John P. put it, "her father was not an Indian."
In a post I wrote before Saemann's book was published, I addressed the question of whether or not Electa Quinney was the first public school teacher in Wisconsin. To summarize that post, Electa Quinney - contrary to what some books say - did not teach school at Statesburg in 1828. Augustus T. Ambler, who Saemann acknowledges on page 41, did teach the Stockbridge school at Statesburg in that year and then, as Saemann notes, Electa Quinney took over for Ambler. So how is E. Quinney still the Wisconsin's first public schoolteacher? Saemann's view is that Augustus T. Ambler's school was private, while Electa Quinney's school was public. Of course, she knows it was the same students being taught in the same building. On pages 38-39 she has a section where she explains the difference between public and private schools - she says it is about where the money comes from. I suppose that is a legitimate definition, but I'm not convinced that the school that was taught by Ambler one term and by Quinney the next was funded by two different sources of money in those two terms. Saemann asserts that public schools are supported by taxes, but the 1794 Treaty of Canadaigua was supposed to support a tribal school. Without Electa Quinney being the first public schoolteacher in Wisconsin, you still have an important biography and a significant role model.

In conclusion, Electa Quinney: Stockbridge Teacher is a good read. While the focus and the intended audiences are different, the subject matter of this book may overlap as much with my own Proud and Determined, as any other book. I recommend that you read both.

Daniel Whitney and Daniel M. Whitney

[caption id="attachment_7594" align="aligncenter" width="423"] Daniel Whitney (1795-1862). Image credit: FC Pierce (Descendants of John Whitney (genealogy)) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons[/caption]Genealogists and historians of all stripes have found out the hard way that two people with the same name (or roughly the same name) can cause problems in their research. When you come upon a name in a document there is rarely any indication that the name belongs to more than one possible person. You might be reading about two different people and not realize it. So it has been with Daniel Whitney and his nephew Daniel M. Whitney. (And by the way, Daniel also had a son named Daniel, but the son is of no importance to us here.)

Both Daniel Whitney and Daniel M. Whitney were important actors in the lives of the Stockbridge Mohicans. The Daniel that was born in 1795 was, by anybody's standards, an ambitious, enterprising captain of industry. It probably would be no exaggeration to say that Daniel Whitney brought capitalism to present-day Wisconsin. What we now call Wisconsin and northeast Minnesota were part of the Michigan Territory in 1820, which was when Daniel Whitney started supplying Green Bay residents and small-time traders with the things they needed. Prior to that time, the so-called "factory system" was in place. In other words, there were "factors" at forts who represented the United States and supplied Indians and "frontiersmen" with goods at a regulated price. You might call it benign patriarchy; it was the federal government's way of protecting the Indians and frontiersmen from being cheated by unscrupulous traders.

Whitney (the uncle) started off his career by embarking on trade expeditions, including one trip from what is now Minneapolis to Detroit in which he hauled goods on a toboggan. The successful trade expeditions led to the establishment of general stores, one of them being at Statesburg, the first settlement of the Stockbridge Mohicans in present-day Wisconsin (the Stockbridges began settling at Statesburg in 1822, twenty-six years before Wisconsin became a state).

Daniel M. Whitney was born in New York State in 1815. He came west to Green Bay in 1833, and was employed by his uncle for many years, in a number of capacities, but most notably, Daniel M. ran the general store at Statesburg and moved with the Stockbridge Mohicans to their settlement on the eastern shores of Lake Winnebago (aka Stockbridge, Wisconsin).

When an 1843 act of Congress made the Stockbridges citizens, the land that had once belonged to the whole tribe was allotted into private parcels. And the Indians began selling their land. Daniel Whitney (the uncle) was the biggest buyer of Stockbridge land between February 1844 and February 1846. According to historian Alice E. Smith, he acquired "nearly 2,500 acres, mostly in 60-acre tracts"(Wisconsin Magazine of History, March, 1941, page 294).

The interaction between the Whitneys and the Stockbridges, I suspect, is a complicated one. Within a politically correct mindset, it would be difficult to think of Daniel Whitney (the uncle) as a positive factor in the lives of the Stockbridge Indians. However, he is said to have employed a lot of them in his business ventures. Meanwhile, Daniel M. Whitney, the storekeeper, was said to be a great friend to the Indians - at least in his obituary where people always say good things about you.

Clearly the topic of the Whitneys and the Stockbridge Indians has great potential for more historical research.

A Brief and Somewhat Politically Incorrect History of Calumet County, Wisconsin

[caption id="attachment_5470" align="aligncenter" width="241"] The Calumet County seal, or insignia, as copied from Orrin W. Meyer's booklet, Se Souvenir.[/caption]

On the east shore of Lake Winnebago, Calumet County was home to the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians both before and after Wisconsin became a state. Of course, before those "New York Indians" came on the scene, people were already living in what is now Calumet County, Wisconsin.

In 1964, Orrin W. Meyer, the Calumet County Agricultural agent (he may have already been retired by that time), typed up a history of Calumet County.  Se Souvenir was the title of his booklet. On the first page, Meyer tells us about the original Natives in the area.

What is Calumet County now was,  at various times, the home of six Indian Nations. These were the Menominee, Chippewa, Sac, Fox, Potawatomi and Winnebago. All were of eastern Algonquian stock except the Winnebagoes [now known as Ho-Chunk]. The Winnebagoes [Ho-Chunk] migrated from the west and were of the Dakotas, tracing their lineage to the Sioux. the Algonquians were peaceful and easy going....

Not so with the Winnebagoes [Ho-Chunk]. They were war-like, treacherous and scheming.

I don't know enough about the Ho-Chunk to comment directly on that authoritatively (but my gut reaction is that it is a harsh judgment). Maybe Meyer should have left that part out of his history. However, I should point out that Meyer probably wasn't just taking a jab at the Ho-Chunk for absolutely no reason. At least in his mind, he was setting up his explanation for the naming of Calumet County.

The coming of the white man plus the six Indian Nations took some doing to get along. Many councils were held on the east shore of Lake Winnebago. Many times the pipe of peace was passed from chief to chief as he made a solemn pledge and puffed on the calumet, a reed pipe. The French would likewise council with the Indians and it was they who called the peace pipe the calumet. It is by this derivation that Calumet County gets its name (pages 1-2).

In future posts I'll have more from Se Souvenir by Orrin Meyer.

A Map of the Stockbridge Mohicans' "Trail of Tears"

[caption id="attachment_999" align="aligncenter" width="604"] This map outlines the migrations of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians. Click on the image to enlarge it.[/caption]

 

Above is my best visual representation of the Stockbridge Mohicans' "Trail of Tears," and the only reason that I put that in quotation marks is because the phrase has long been associated with removals of the southeastern Native nations. If you've read my book, Proud and Determined, you already know that the people now known as the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians endured many, many years of hard times. And their migrations were an essential part of those hard times.

Many of the migrations don't have an exact date, instead, they happened over a range of years. Below is a summary of the Trail of Tears of the Stockbridge Mohicans:

 

The tribe started leaving Massachusetts in 1785 and that move was two-thirds complete by 1787. They made a treaty with the Menominees and Ho-Chunk (sometimes known as the Winnebago Indians) in 1821 and another one in 1822 (which will be the subject of an upcoming blogpost). One band, led by John Metoxen, left New Stockbridge, New York in 1818, but, by the time they reached their destination, Indiana's White River, they were told that the land had been sold by the Delaware, Miami and other tribes.

Although the Metoxen band did their best to establish farms on the White River for about four years, they could not stay and in 1822 they headed up to Detroit. There they met up with about twenty of their tribesmen who had taken a steamship, the Walk-in-the-Water, from Buffalo. This larger band landed in Green Bay and made their way up the Fox River, settling Statesburg, which is now the south part of Kaukauna, Wisconsin. The long migration had really only started in 1822. Several bands made their own separate moves from New Stockbridge, New York to Statesburg between 1822 and 1829.

The treaties that were made in 1821 and 1822 were not well-thought-out and, understandably, the Menominee Indians put up a protest against them. For quite a few years the United States tried to get the Menominees and the New York Indians to make some kind of agreement or compromise regarding the two sloppily created treaties. The end result was that the Stockbridges had to move again. Their next home was on the east shore of Lake Winnebago, not particularly far south of Statesburg.

The move from Statesburg to their next settlement, known as Stockbridge, Wisconsin was made in 1834 and 1835. A number of sources will confirm this, the one that I have to share with you now is from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, or ABCFM, the ABCFM received very detailed reports from Rev. Cutting Marsh, several times a year (we get the ABCFM's report here via Roger Nichols' biography of Rev. Cutting Marsh).



 

It goes without saying that each time Indians were told that they would have to move it was a disincentive for clearing land for farming. Unfortunately, in this brief summary, there is little space to go into any detail other than the "wheres" and "whens" of each move.

Something I intentionally left out of the map was the 1839 departure of less than one hundred Indians from Stockbridge, Wisconsin to what is now Kansas. This "Emmigrant Party," was made up of members of the Hendrick family, the Konkapot family and the Brotherton Delawares, a group of Natives who sold their reservation in New Jersey and moved to New Stockbridge, New York in 1802 (or, possibly 1803).

Two townships were purchased from the Menominees and those two twonships became the Stockbridge Mohicans' reservation per an 1856 treaty. The Citizen Party began moving to the Shawano County Reservation within months of having thedetails worked out. On the other hand, many of the Indian Party Stockbridges protested the tereaty of 1856, some of them not moving until 1860. In fact, given that the soil of the new reservation was poor for farming, many Indians would be "absentees" from the rez for many years.

Arguably, the tribe still had more moving to do. But, for the sake of simplicity, I'll just say that the current reservation of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians exists on the same two townships in Shawano County that the Citizen Party started moving to in 1856.

My thanks to Bart Putzer from Bart Putzer Design, for creating the graphics for the map in this post.

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April 17, 2014 - Note: I want to acknowledge here that the Stockbridge-Munsee Historical Committee has their own map - which I have seen but didn't use as a source. (They also used the title "....Trail of Tears.") If their map shows the same places, routes and dates (and I really don't know if it does or not), it only means that my research agrees with theirs.

A Review of Stockbridge Past and Present

Yesterday I wrote - and posted to the Amazon website - a book review for Electa Jones' 1854 book Stockbridge, Past and Present, or, Records of an Old Mission Station.

With no further adieu, here it is:

This book has been very valuable to historians. It contains quite a few valuable nuggets of history that otherwise would not have been recorded. As such, it has been cited in a number of histories of the Stockbridge Mohican Indians.

In the preface, EWB Canning states "The author laid no claims to profound erudition. She was a plain, sensible woman."
That may be a somewhat euphemistic way to describe Electa Jones' work to modern readers. It might be more accurate to say that she was neither a particularly good author, nor a particularly reliable historian.

It may not be fair to compare Ms. Jones's book with more recent works whose authors had the benefit of a lot more sources, both primary and secondary. Nevertheless, you, as a reader are deciding what you want to read next, so the comparison is apt.

The first thing a prospective reader of this book should know is the author's biases. She was an English-speaking, white Calvinist from the 19th century (1800's). While it would be inexact to say she was a Puritan (true Puritanism was confined to an earlier period), that word may describe her better than any other. It is one thing to have an opinion, but Ms. Jones has no conception of an audience that is not Calvinist. When she states that the Stockbridge Indians' Emigrant Party left Stockbridge, Wisconsin for new lands in present-day Kansas in 1839, a significant point (to her) seems to be that "they started [left] on the Sabbath," and therefore, their leaving was no loss to the tribe. This comes across as judgemental to the modern reader who doesn't think of travelling on Sunday as a sin.

The second thing to keep in mind is that the author accepted some things uncritically from her sources. To put it simply, Ms. Jones didn't have the luxury to follow the Stockbridge Indians to their settlements in New York or Wisconsin. She still manages to include quite a few anecdotes about the tribe after they left Massachusetts, but they cannot be relied on. Fortunately, historians have other sources available that either corroborate or discredit some of these post-Massachusetts anecdotes.

There are other issues. The book isn't organized into much of a narrative. It is largely non-chronological, tending to be organized instead around topics. Typos and/or misspellings are a problem - as is antiquated language. Sometimes Ms. Jones' writing simply lacks clarity.

If you want to read a good book about the Stockbridge Indians in Massachusetts, Patrick Frazier's The Mohicans of Stockbridge (1993) is undoubtedly the best. My own Proud and Determined covers the Stockbridge Mohicans history from 1734 to 2014. I would recommend Stockbridge, Past and Present to you if you are a serious historian. But if you want to read one "good" book about the Stockbridge Indians, this isn't the one.

By the way, Stockbridge Past and Present is available free as an e-book from Google books.

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West Point Recognizes Stockbridge Mohican Warriors

Not only does Jaeger's Battalion re-enact the French and Indian War, but their focus is on  Rogers' Rangers.

The United States Military Academy is commonly known simply as "West Point," because that is where it is located. The academy created a report that was designed to be used to help the Army consult with Native tribes and indidviduals, particularly as it relates to NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990.

The title of the 2006 report is Native American Historic Context for the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. Diane K. Mann is the author. Citing Patrick Frazier's The Mohicans of Stockbridge as her source, Mann makes it known that the Native allies of the British in the French and Indian War were co-founders of the Army Rangers.



The Indians that lived in the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts weren't known as the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe back then, but somehow, the author is aware of the offical modern name of the tribe that is made up of their descendants. On page 21 she declares:

The proud and illustrious tradition of the United States Army Rangers was in large part created by warriors of the Stockbridge Munsee tribe fighting alongside American and British soldiers commanded by Robert Rogers and Captain Jacob [Naunauphtaunk] and Lieutenant Solomon [Uhhaunauwaunmut].

That quote, for me, is clearly the most remarkable part of Diane Mann's work. At the same time, there is a lot more in the document that I'll be not only reading, but also using to continue my ongoing research of the Stockbridge Mohicans and their friends and neighbors.

By the way, Diane Mann also notes that Jacob Cheeksaunkun eventually was promoted to Captain in the British army. While that is not disputed, where she may go wrong is in claiming that Cheeksaunkun was Jacob Naunauphtaunk's son. I'll have to look into that, but I have my doubts.
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Little Turtle and Austin E. Quinney: Native Dairy Pioneers Whose Cows were Killed

Little Turtle was a great war chief for the Miami Indians. After beating the rather small and unorganized armies of the United States twice in the 1790's, he became a leader of his people in peace. As a result, Little Turtle had the opportunity to do some traveling and meet some famous white Americans. In fact, George Washington took a liking to the Miami chief and invited him to stay at his house over the winter of 1796-1797. Other friends encouraged Little Turtle to move to Philadelphia permanently. However, Turtle knew he did not have a skillset that he could use to make a living in the city, so he returned to his own people.


This artist's rendering of Little Turtle is historically correct in that he wore a bear claw necklace and George Washington gave him a large medal that had his own likeness engraved on one side and Little Turtle's on the other.

But when he returned, Little Turtle wasn't the same old Indian that he'd been before. Not all the changes can be touched on here, but one thing that is important is that Little Turtle developed such a taste for milk that he brought a cow back with him to Indian Country. He even got his wife to make butter!

These kinds of anecdotes can be amusing to us in the 21st century. But serious historical analysis takes it farther.  In "Three Men from Three Rivers" (a chapter out of The Boundaries Between Us), Donald Graff writes about how frontier whites and Indians managed to slide between the two racial identities. Graff observed that cow ownership was a prime example of Little Turtle's "Americanization":

[H]is first cow, a flagrantly Euro-American symbol, was maliciously killed. Publicly, Little Turtle expressed a belief that the cow had been diseased, but the message sent by its death was as clear then as it is today.

Not all of Little Turtle's tribesmen agreed that peace was the way to go. Not all of them were proud of the fact that he had been "pal-ing around" with people like George Washington. And so they made a political statement by killing his cow. As a chief, Little Turtle knew his power was based on his approval rating, so he let it go. He wasn't going to be baited. Making a stink over what had happened could lead to other arguments that might ultimately strip him of whatever political power he still had with his own people.

Fast forward to Stockbridge, Wisconsin Territory in 1838. A similar thing happened to Austin E. Quinney's cow. This is from my own book, Proud and Determined:

When one of Austin E. Quinney's cows died, he alleged that it was killed "in a clandestine manner" by Thomas Hendrick. Witnesses were called and the case proceeded according to the new [tribal] constitution. It could not have seemed fair to Hendrick that one of the judges was the plaintiff's cousin, John W. Quinney. He and the other judge ruled in favor of Austin E. Quinney.

So the shoe was on the other foot. Not only were the "civilized" Stockbridge Mohicans in favor of adopting the agricultural practices of white Americans, but their leaders were willing and able to protect livestock with a written constitution and a court system that was similar to that of the whites. As I mentioned in my previous post, Thomas Hendrick - the one who allegedly killed Quinney's cow - was a leader of the more tradional Emigrant Party Stockbridges. They made use of the treaty of 1839 to leave the tribe and move to the Delaware Tract in present-day Kansas.

Sadly (but unavoidably, it seems) the Quinneys and other more "civilized" Indians were glad to see them go.



 
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"I was murdered by the Stockbridge Indians"

The words "I was murdered by the Stockbridge Indians" were carved upon Joseph Palmer's grave, the "oldest grave in the cemetery" according to Letters Home from the Brothertown Boys, written by former Brothertown genealogist Caroline Andler and Andrea Brucker.



Another book tells us the rather gory details of Mr. Palmer's last day:

The tragedy occurred July 3, 1837 [sic], at the house of Peter and Jacob Konkopot, two Stockbridge Indians. They had already reduced to small measure an immoderate supply of whiskey, when Joseph Palmer, a Brothertown Indian, in company with another of his tribe and a white man, entered their cabin. The latter party had just returned from the Fox River with a full jug, "fire-water" being then an unknown commodity of sale in Calumet County. They drank together several times, but with this fresh supply the Konkapots' loud demands for more continued and increased beyond the bounds of reason or considerate fellowship. Palmer, therefore, refused to be robbed further of his " Fourth of July," whereupon he and his comrades were assaulted by their crazed and unreasonable companions, one wielding an ax and the other a club. Being unarmed the former were unable to defend themselves. Palmer was liberally hacked and beaten to pieces. The other two escaped. Without going into details, the murderers were arrested, tried in October before a commission chosen from both tribes, and sentenced to be hanged near the dividing line between the two reservations. On the day preceding that fixed for the execution (October 24), they escaped across Lake Winnebago in a boat furnished by friends, and were never recaptured.

--The History of Northern Wisconsin, accessed from Ancestry.com

 

 Palmer's grave
This photo gives the correct date of Palmer's death as July 3, 1836 (not 1837 as the quote above asserts).

Somewhere - I cannot find it now, but somewhere - I read that Joseph Palmer's epitaph was symbolic of a period of tension between the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians. And it makes a lot of sense too, I mean, they could have chosen other epitaphs:

Murdered in a drunken accident

Manslaughtered by the Stockbridge Indians

Killed by the Konkapots

 

Or they could have decided on something more generic:

Rest in Peace

Beloved Husband and Father

or add your own here.
I don't mean to make light of what happened. I was just trying to make the point that we should assume that the exact words of the epitaph should not be dismissed or disregarded. It said "Murdered by the Stockbridge Indians" because that is what his family wanted it to say.

Here are my own thoughts about the murder:

Alcohol was a factor in Joseph Palmer's death, that cannot be disputed and, in fact, the Stockbridge schoolteacher at that time, Chauncey Hall, wrote his employer (the ABCFM), that he felt the white trader who sold the whiskey should be brought to justice as an accomplice in the murder.

But the epitaph doesn't single out alcohol or the Konkapots, it really tries to lay the blame on "the Stockbridge Indians." Why exactly, we'll never know for certain.

But we do know that Peter and Jacob Konkapot's father, Robert, and Thomas Hendrick became the leaders of a party of Stockbridge Mohicans who didn't want the assailants to hang and somehow helped them to escape.

Roger Nichols was probably the first historian to note that this "Hendrick-Konkapot faction," later became the Emigrant Party, using the treaty of 1839 to leave Stockbridge, Wisconsin Territory for the Delaware Tract in what is now Kansas.

Again, we don't know all the details, but an overarching theme of conflict within tribes was the extent to which people wanted to adopt white ways.  The Hendrick-Konkapot faction are believed to have been more "traditional" than the elected leaders of the tribe that they left behind. Meanwhile, the Brothertown Indians, were farther along in the process of losing their Native culture. They were made up of remnants who spoke various languages, so they adopted English as their offical language early on. Maybe the fact that the Brothertown Indians were more "assimilated" or less "traditional" than many of the Stockbridge Indians was a key element in their conflict.

 
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What is the Difference between the Stockbridge and the Brothertown Indians?

What is the difference between the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians?

Admittedly, that is a complicated question, going back to a time before either of those amalgamated tribes was formed, but it seems that the biggest difference came to me in a flash while I was at the Calumet County courthouse yesterday.



Stockbridge, Wisconsin and Brothertown, Wisconsin are Calumet County villages that were once populated by the "civilized" New York Indian tribes bearing those names. Today the Stockbridges (also known as "Mohicans" or the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians), have a federally recognized tribal government and reservation in Shawano County, Wisconsin. But the Brothertowns are just doing their best to stay organized. They aren't recognized by the federal government,  but, thanks to their efforts, they have a relationship with Calumet County (see Darren Kroenke's comment below).

The Calumet County Courthouse holds two record books. One for the Brothertowns from 1839 and one for the Stockbridge Mohicans from 1843. Each record book does the same thing for its respective Native nation: it allots their reservation, that is, each record book documents the dividing up of what had been a reservation into individually-owned plots of land. With these record books, each tribe was giving up their tribal government and becoming citizens of the United States.



The two record books, of course, establish that both tribes went through the process of allotment at roughly the same time.

So what was different?

The whole time the allotment process was happening, the Stockbridges had an "Indian Party," made up of some of their leading men: John W. Quinney, Austin E. Quinney, and John Metoxen. Although the Stockbridge record book of 1843 makes no mention of any objections to what the elected commissioners (members of the Stockbridge "Citizen Party") were doing, John W. Quinney had contacts in Washington D.C. and that is where he took his fight - and won. In 1846 new legislation was enacted that re-created the Stockbridge nation and reservation.

There would be more challenges ahead for the Stockbridge Mohicans, but they dodged an awfully big bullet in the 1840's.

In my opinion, Congress' Act of 1846 - and the Stockbridge Indian Party's ability to make it happen - is, more than anything else, the big difference between the Stockbridge Indians and the Brothertown Indians.