Wisconsin: A Natural Laboratory for North American Indian Studies
Author(s): Nancy Oestreich Lurie
Source: The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Autumn, 1969), pp. 2-20
Published by: Wisconsin Historical Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4634482
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A Natural Laboratoryfor North
WISCONSIN:
AmericanIndian Studies
By NANCY OESTREICH LURIE
There are three formal intertribal organizations in the city, one of which is over thirty
years old, and a number of informal tribal
associations providing social activities, material assistance, and useful information to Indian people. Although most of the urban Indians come from northern Wisconsin, the city
also attractsIndians from all over the country.
Similarly, Wisconsin Indian people can be
found in all the other major urban Indian communities: Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Dallas, Detroit, Cleveland,and New
York.
Generally lost to view in the cities, Indians
are often deemed by the public at large and
even the Indian Bureau as assimilated and no
longer part of the so-called "Indian problem."
Although a certain percentage of Indians do
assimilate, city Indians for the most part must
still be counted as Indians. They are travelers,
visitors, and communtersexploiting urban, industrial opportunities without the same commitment of other Americans, white and black,
whose historic traditions define migration to
the city as a radical, irreversiblechange in life
style.
We tend to forget that at the time of European contact and right up through the early
treaty period which created the reservations,
North American Indians were hunters and
gatherers or, in the perspective of the worldwide diffusion of agriculture, they were but
recent food producers. Gardenersrather than
farmers, they were still dependent on the hunt
for animal protein and used many natural resources for a variety of purposes. Individual
ROM treaty to termination the boundaries
of the state of Wisconsin encompass an
astonishingly representativeillustration of the
total developmentof federal Indian policy and
Indian adaptation and resistance to it. The
Wisconsin Indian population today-at least
15,000 people-is the third largest east of the
Mississippi River. North Carolina and New
York have more Indians, but Wisconsin includes a greater variety of tribal and linguistic
proveniencesand administrativecomplications.
Many western states, of course, have much
larger Indian populations than Wisconsin but
only a few-notably Oklahoma,Arizona, New
Mexico, and California-offer more diversity
than Wisconsin's three major linguistic stocks,
six broad tribal affiliations, and twelve separately identifiableIndian societies covering the
range of experimentsin Indian policy from the
founding of the republic to the present day.
In Wisconsin, as elsewhere, a quarter to a
half or more of the Indian populationresides in
cities. The intertribalpopulation of Milwaukee
alone is in the neighborhood of 4,000 people.'
F
EDITOR'S NOTE: In slightly different form this
paper was presented at the 123rd annual meeting of
the State Historical Society of Wisconsin at Lawrence
University, Appleton, June 19-21, 1969.
'Statistics on Indian population can only be approximate. I have interpolated from 1960 census data,
the Erdman Handbook cited in the bibliography, and
some observations. Even the definition of Indian is
equivocal. There are people who do not qualify to
be counted by the usual one-fourth Indian ancestry
required for tribal rolls but who are sociologically
more Indian in behavior, identity, and attitude than
some "full-bloods" who have cast off Indian identity
in their way of life.
3
-..M
ff
*
County are fair-sized areas according to the
boundaries shown on standard maps, ranging
from 125,000 acres for Bad River and 70,000
for the other two. Yet close inspection reveals
a checkerboard within the boundaries of as
much or more white-ownedproperty, taxed by
the state, as there is federally protected Indian
land. Furthermore, title to the Indian land is
held in some cases by individuals and in others
by the tribe. The Chippewareservationsof Red
Cliff in Bayfield County and Mole Lake in Forest County are tiny, under 10,000 and 2,000
acres, respectively.All of Mole Lake is tribally
held land, but a third of Red Cliff is held under
individual Indian title. The St. Croix reservation, also tribal land and embracing about the
same acreage as Mole Lake, is scattered in five
small parcels across Burnett, Polk, and Barron
counties. Each Chippewa reservation is separately administeredwith its own locally elected
tribal governing organization.
Other Chippewa communities are scattered
from the St. LawrenceRiver in Canada, across
northern Michigan and Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and Saskatchewan.The distribution reflects a westerly expansion of Chippewa, largely in historic times, to find new furtrapping resources.
Near the Mole Lake Chippewareservation in
Forest County there are Potawatomi Indians
who also have tribally held and federally protected land, but the Indian residences are dispersed over some twenty miles, with white
neighbors in betweenthem. It thus differs from
the discontinuous St. Croix reservation of five
little settlement holdings. These Potawatomi
have their own tribal organization like that of
the Chippewa, and the situation is best described as a quasi-reservation. Southwest of
these Potawatomi, in Wood County, there are
a few families of Potawatomi who live on
rented or purchased property like their white
neighbors. They are, nevertheless, federally
recognized Indians and though resident in Wisconsin for several generations they continue to
he enrolled at the Potawatomi reservation at
Mayetta,Kansas. Potawatomi communities are
also found in Canada,Upper and Lower Michigan, and Oklahoma.The Potawatomiexpanded
along both the eastern and western shores of
Lake Michigan, partly in response to the fur
trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-
.e
-_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~..
..
.......t:
:
Society's Iconographic Collection
An unidentijied family of Wisconsin Indians in their
birchbark canoe.
mobility,
resourcefulness,
and
adaptability,
coupled with a strong sense of responsibility to
the community were necessary to survive. Economics of family life were centripetal in contrast to the centrifugal nature of the agrarian
household. Individuals and task groups in
North America moved out frequently and for
varying lengths of time from the settled village
or semipermanentcamp to exploit the environment in diverse ways and to bring the results
of their efforts back to the home place. Archeological and ethnohistoricalevidence make clear
that there was also widespread travel for purposes of trade.
Although increasing numbers of Indian people now spend more time in the cities this is not
a new phenomenon
but rather a function
of In-
dian population growth exceeding the more
localized community resources, necessitating
foraging on a wider scale. Thus, there are often
enormousdiscrepanciesbetweenthe numberof
people listed on the tribal roll and those actually resident in the tribal settlementat any one
time. Yet, to understandfully the Indian scene
and its historical antecedents a close account
must be taken of the tribal communities as
fundamentalsocial and cultural foci of Indian
life.
CROSSTHE northernpart of the state
t there are six Chippewa (Ojibwa) reservations. Bad River in Ashland County, Lac du
Flambeau largely in Vilas but partly in Iron
County, and Lac Court Oreilles in Sawyer
4
northeasterntribes by the British colonists in
the latter half of the seventeenth century. In
their trek westward, which was a voluntary
effort to find a new homeland,they were joined
by a band of Delaware,the Munsee,in Indiana.
Another small, eastern Algonkian group, the
Brothertown,moved west with the Stockbridge,
but they opted for citizenship over a century
ago and have assimilated into the StockbridgeMunsee and white populations. For all that,
there are still a few individuals in Wisconsin
who claim Indian identity as Brothertown.
The Stockbridgereservationis similar to the
three large Chippewa reservations insofar as
the marked boundaries encompass the same
kind of checkerboard of Indian and white
lands. What Indian land remains, about 15,000
acres of an original 65,000, is administeredas
tribal land by the Indian Bureau.A curious and
troublesome complication for the Stockbridge
is that title to about 13,000 of their tribal acres
is held by the Departmentof Agriculture. The
equivocal title makes planning in the community interest difficultfor the tribal government.
Close to GreenBay in Brown and Outagamie
counties is the Oneida reservation, twelve
square miles around the boundaries with only
a little over 2,500 acres within actually being
Oneida land. Most of this Indian land is under
tribal title. The Oneida are a member-tribeof
the historic League of the Iroquois. The other
five tribes, Seneca, Cayuga, Mohawk, Onondaga, and Tuscarora are found in their homelands in New York and Canada, with outlier
communities of Seneca and Cayuga in Oklahoma, having moved there during the treaty
period. Many Oneida live and work in Green
Bay but take an active interest in reservation
affairs and in plans by the tribal governing
body to develop local employment opportunities. The Oneidalanguage, still spoken by older
people, is Iroquoian, a major language stock
entirely distinct from the varied but related
Algonkian languages of the other tribes described so far.
A third distinct language stock, Siouan, is
represented by the Winnebago who probably
have more bilinguals, including the very young,
than any other Indian group in the state. The
Winnebagowill tell you that they are not reservation people,thatthey are descendantsof those
Winnebagowho refused to leave Wisconsin for
ries. They gradually replaced the Ottawa as
middlemen in the trade between other tribes
and Europeans.However, having moved south
they acquired a dependence on gardening and
an emphasison settledvillages, with consequent
increasing complexity of tribal organization.
Legend connects Potawatomi, Chippewa, and
Ottawa as the "Three Fires" springing from a
common origin, but this has been questioned
in view of both linguistic diversity and social
organizational patterns which distinguish the
Potawatomi sharply from Ottawa and Chippewa. Potawatomi located west of the Mississippi River were removed there by the government during the treaty period.
In the east-centralpart of Wisconsin is located Menominee County, formerly the reservation of the Menominipeople. Officially,as far
as the federal government is concerned, the
Menomini are no longer Indians because federal responsibility over their lands was terminated in 1961. A tribal corporationadministers
some of the land, but much of it is being developed by white capital which is doing, literally,
a land-officebusiness selling vacation property
to whites and establishing tourist attractionsto
make Menominee County a white man's summerplayground.Full-pagecolor advertisements
in urban newspaperstout the woodsy romance
of living in Indian country and how pleased
the Menomini are to welcome the white man.
The Menomini look pretty glum about it all.
The Menomini are the oldest known Indian
residents of Wisconsin and remain an exclusively Wisconsin tribe, still living in a portion
of their original homeland.
Fitting roughly into a jog in the corner of
Menominee County, but actually in Shawano
County,is the Stockbridge-Munseereservation.
Like the Chippewa,Menomini, and Potawatomi, the Stockbridge-Munseeare of Algonkian
linguistic background, but unlike the others
they have long been entirely English-speaking.
The people will tell you that they take their
name from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, from
whence they originally came. Local legend refers to them as truly the last of the Mohegans,
but as a matter of fact they are basically Mahican, once neighbors and close relatives of the
Mohegansand Pequots of the Connecticut-New
York-Massachusettsregion. Their settlementat
Stockbridge developed after the defeat of the
5
doned in prehistoric times, is another example
of an intrusive Mississippian group, presumably also Siouan-speaking.Besides a distinctive
language, the Winnebago possessed an aboriginal culturequite differentfrom the surrounding
Algonkians in sophistication of religious cosmology, dual chieftainship which divided civil
and police functions,and especiallystrong commitment to gardens and large villages. They
became increasingly Algonkianized in cultural
traits as the result of catastrophes, war, and
some kind of epidemic disease, at about the
time of European contact in Wisconsin. Both
the influence of intermarriage with surrounding Algonkians and the economics of the fur
trade encouraged dispersal and expansion of
the tribe into smallervillage units. They gradually withdrew from their first location along
the Green Bay-LakeWinnebago area to fill the
lands vacated during the eighteenth century by
the Sauk, Fox, and Kickapoo.
~~~~~~~~~t
-
/~~~~~~~~~~~~
Society's Iconographic Collection
Chief Yellow Thunder, from a series of stereographs
entitled "Among the Winnebago Indians," taken by
H. H. Bennett between 1900 and 1905.
a western reservation. Their tribal governing
organization is separate from that of the reservation Winnebago in Nebraska, but people in
the two areas visit each other frequently and
even intermarry,enrolling their children in one
group or the other as seems feasible. Officially
nonreservation Indians, the Wisconsin Winnebago neverthelessare recognized as Indians by
the Indian Bureau. Furthermore,they have individually and tribally held land. Scattered in
communities and isolated households across
some ten counties with major settlements at
Wittenberg, Wisconsin Rapids, Black River
Falls, and the Tomah-LaCrosse and Wisconsin
Dells areas, their situation partakes of aspects
of the St. Croix Chippewa, the Forest County
and Wood CountyPotawatomi,with additional
complications of their own-old Indian homestead land.
A few Winnebago families are located on
homesteads in Minnesota, just across the Mississippi. Old residents of Wisconsin, the Winnebago representa thrust of Siouan-speakersfrom
the lower Mississippi valley who entered Wisconsin a few centuriesbefore Europeancontact.
The historic Iowa, also Siouan-speaking,were
also part of this migration but were moving
west out of Wisconsin by the seventeenth century. Othersclassified as Sioux lingered in Wisconsin until somewhat after the end of the
eighteenth century. The site of Aztalan, aban-
TWO STRIKINGFACTSemergefrom the
contemporary Wisconsin Indian scene.
First, it appearsthat no matterwhat the government tried and no matter which tribe was involved, the result is dismal uniformity and
shockingly prevalent low standards of living.
Second, although the various kinds of Indian
settlements look very much alike to the outsider, the perceptive observer notes that there
is something definably and distinctively Indian
about these generally poor communities and
that each community has its own local distinctiveness.
In terms of general conditions, most Wisconsin Indian children now attend public schools
in or near Indian communities.There is a high
drop-outrate. Few mission schools remain and
the last governmentboarding school at Tomah
was convertedto a veterans'hospital at the time
of World War I. Law and order are under state
jurisdiction. All the federally recognized tribes
have elected officersbut there is little real community self-determination.Tribal officersspend
much of their effort manipulating the Indian
Bureau, getting what they can with the least
damage to the community interest. Recently,
the same process has developed with the Office
of Economic Opportunityas well. The communities are seldom able to plan and carry out
programs representing real local consensus
6
is increasingly important. A few people in all
the Indian groups still do a little trapping, and
many families depend on the deer season to
supply the larder with substantial quantities
of meat. City relatives are very likely to get
home for deer season. A constant controversy
goes on with the fish and game authorities,who
feel Indians should abide by state game seasons
and limits, and the Indians who believe their
treaties entitle them to hunt, trap, and fish on
their own land. This is an especially sensitive
issue to the terminated Menomini. A recent
United States Supreme Court decision favored
the Menominis' contention, but the rapid loss
of Menomini land makes the decision rather
meaningless.
Some of the Winnebago, Oneida, Potawatomi, and Menomini raise small garden patches,
particularly Indian corn. Prepared in traditional ways it is symbolically important as a
special Indian food, but hardly a staple crop.
Wild rice figures similarly among the Chippewa, and the fall ricing season brings many
city Indians home to enjoy the harvest activities
and take back a supply of wild rice to the city.
In bumper years the Chippewa make a little
extra money selling surplus wild rice.
either because they lack capital or their capital
is managed according to rigid Bureau or OEO
formats. People fall out among themselves in
trying to find ways to manage under such circumstances.The situation is not much different
for the terminatedMenomini whose tribal corporation and county affairs are dominated by
white directors and financial interests. Tribal
politics tends to degenerateinto alternationsof
the various factions holding office.
A recent spate of housing projects brightens
up the Indian settlements a bit at present, but
like many such low-cost units built at earlier
dates they are arranged and constructed with
little consultation with the people who will live
in them. They will soon deteriorate.2 Indian
problems have come to public attention as a
national scandal. This happens periodically.
Help is extended frantically to solve the Indians' most immediate and pressing problems
with the expectation that this will do for all
time. What appears to the outsider as a crisis
requiringemergencymeasuresis an old, chronic condition for the Indians and can only be
changed by understanding and listening carefully to Indian advice before taking action.
For all the local Indian groups various forms
of public relief are necessary to maintain life.
A few tribes have timber resources,but because
of the broken nature of their land holdings
these cannot be effectively utilized. Some tribes
derive income for local welfare from leasing
land to whites, but the amount of money is not
great.
Guiding,performingIndian dances at tourist
centers, and selling handcraftas well as various
kinds of wage work contribute in varying proportions to Indian family incomes from time
to time and place to place. Wage work is usually
crop harvesting, timbering, and road maintenance. Sporadic or regular urban employment
Tribal enterpriseswhich Indian people would
really like to develop to create more employment close to home are tried here and there,
but the results are disappointing even if the
efforts do not fail completely. A few small
assembly plants are owned and controlled by
whites under contract through the Indian Bureau. They are not really Indian enterprises.
Offered such opportunitieswithout the chance
for adequate discussion or choice of alternatives, the Indian groups who accept them do so
without much enthusiasm and the low pay
scales do little to stimulate commitment to
steady work. It is silly to stick with a job just
because it is steady if some other more interesting and rewarding, albeit probably temporary, opportunity appears. Indians know that
they have survived this long by a philosophy
which values flexibility,adaptability,and being
able to recognize and use the main chance
ratherthan a philosophy which values work for
its own sake, deferment of rewards, and the
keeping of schedules as a religious virtue good
for the soul. Lacking a peasant tradition of upand-to-bed-with-the-chickens,
Indians really are
a Tragic confirmation of this prediction was supplied shortly after this paper was originally prepared.
Although the housing project for the Winnebago at
Wisconsin Dells was made possible by dint of the
tribe's own effort to obtain the required land, the
tribe was unable to exercise any choice in the design
of the houses. They complained about the materials
and high windows among other things. On July 15,
1969, one of houses caught fire, whether due to
a defective stove or the insulation under it or to
children playing with matches is as yet undetermined. The structure went up like tinder. Five small
children were overcome and burned to death, and
only the two larger children in the house were able
to escape.
7
In regard to religion, Wisconsin Indians
have been convertedto Roman Catholicismand
various protestantdenominations,usually managing to make their local churchesdistinctively
Indian, communityinstitutions. However, with
the exception of the Oneida and Stockbridge
who were long Christianizedin the East, all the
other major tribal groups in Wisconsin have
active factions of traditionalistswho hold their
ancient rites in quiet but deep defiance of the
white man's religions. Furthermore,there are
congregations of both the Drum or Dream
Dance religion found among the Potawatomi,
Chippewa, and Menomini, and the peyote religion, chartered as the Native American
Church, which is strongest among the Winnebago but has diffusedto the Algonkian-speaking
tribes, with the exception of the Stockbridge.
These major pan-Indian revitalization or nativistic movements originated farther west during the nineteenthcentury as self-helpeffortsto
unite and uplift Indians spiritually and morally
in a time of crisis and despair. They are still
gaining converts.
remarkably well adapted to industrial work.
Indians will work the unpopularshifts and holidays, if this pays more, in order to make the
necessary income in the least amount of time.
This is important when jobs and home are so
far apart.
One tribal enterprisein Wisconsin should be
singled out. Several years ago the University of
Wisconsin Extension approached various Indian groups with the idea of a handcraftindustry. The offer was acceptedby the Stockbridge
who, unlike all the other tribes, had absolutely
no crafts of their own and the project appealed
to them as validating Indianness in an area in
which they were embarrassingly deficient.
Loom weaving and block printing were developed with an effort to resurrect anything that
might conceivably be Stockbridge by way of
design. It is the kind of work that can be sandwiched in between other job opportunities,
child care, and deer hunting.
Unfortunately, the project has not been of
substantial economic value to the community
because the white people most directly involved
with the Indians were artists. They at least
appreciatedthe need for flexibility about schedules, but concerned with techniques of production, quality, and creativity, they gave little
thought to systematic marketing. The Stockbridge items are lovely but costly. Indians long
experienced in handcraft know that what
might be junk from an esthetic point of view
is apt to sell best. They reserve their artistry
for producing powwow and ritual finery of
value to themselves and good craft items for
the few discriminating tourists. But it is the
tin-cantom-tomsand garish wooden spearsand
tomahawksthat put the fry bread on the table.
However, the Stockbridge project comes the
closest to the few projects which have been
successful outside Wisconsin where Indians
managed to get started on their own. Light
manufacturing with an assured market where
managementand labor are the same people and
the factory is run on Indian time holds real
hope for improving Indian life. Likewise, a few
tribes have managed to keep control of tourist
enterprises as tribally owned and managed
businesses and avoided the exploitation of Indians and their ethnicity by white entrepreneurs such as occurs at the Dells and elsewhere
in Wisconsin.
THE QUESTIONARISES:Howdid all this
come about? American policy towards Indians derives directly from British colonial
precedents,including treaties,reservations,and
superintendents.Originally Indian affairs were
officiallya concern of the crown and not of the
colonies or individual colonists. Similarly, Indian affairs became a federal responsibility
under the third article of the United States
Constitution. Although intended primarily to
control trade with the Indians, the government
actually concerned itself with making treaties
to buy land, containing tribes on reservations,
and administering their affairs. To deal with
the mounting volume of Indian business a special Indian Office was created in the Department of War in 1824. Graduallyenlarged and
renamed the Bureau of Indian Affairs, it was
transferredto the newly created Departmentof
the Interior in 1849. Even though the average
price paid for Indian land in the treaty period
was only about ten cents an acre, the Indians
were supposed to be paid for any land they
gave up. Contraryto the common impression,
the defeat, buying off, removal, and containment of Indians was no orderly progression as
the frontier moved west. Indians resisted, not
9
just by overt hostilities, but also by endless bargaining and an ineffable talent for obfuscation.
Few tribes sold all their land at once, but under
pressurethey relinquishedparcels,endeavoring
to hold out on reduced land bases until frequently there was no alternative but to move
out completely and accept new land elsewhere.
Althoughthe treatiescontained imagery that
appealed to Indians - "As long as the rivers
run"-the governmentobviously did not expect
to be held to account eternally or even for very
long on such poetic grounds. By the nineteenth
century Indians were dying off faster than they
were reproducing, and they had become dependenton a wide array of white-manufactured
goods. What the treaty makers did not anticipate was that by 1900 the demographic trend
would change and the Indian populationwould
begin making a comeback. Furthermore,confident of their cultural superiority, few whites
noticed that Indians acquired new items in the
old spirit of hunter adaptability. They picked
and chose what they could rework to make
peculiarly their own. Tribes had always used
trade items they could not produce themselves,
as witness shells from the Gulf of Mexico found
by archeologists as far north as Minnesota and
Lake Superiorcopperfound in the Ohio Valley.
Indian people had discovered new resources
and adapted to new conditions ever since they
crossed Bering Strait as Arctic and Sub-Arctic
hunters, spreading out to survive and increase
in temperateand tropical zones.
The period in which the United States entered
into treatieswith Indians lasted from the founding of the Republic to 1871. In Wisconsin, as
had happened farther east and was to happen
later in the West, lands one tribe agreed to
vacate by treaty were sometimes effectively
used and occupied by another tribe before
white settlementcould take over. Thus, land in
southernWisconsin and northernIllinois, duly
bought by treaty from the Sauk and Fox in
1804, had to be repurchasedin smaller parcels
between 1816 and 1833 from the Winnebago
and Potawatomi, Ottawa and Chippewa.Some
of the Sauk had been in no hurry to move out
and only the bloody hostilities of the Black
Hawk War of 1832 saw their final retreatfrom
Wisconsin.
It should be noted that the Potawatomi and
Winnebago, like the Sauk, Fox, Menomini,
10
Oneida, and even the Stockbridge were true
tribes with an overall sense of loyalty and unity
and more or less well-developed concepts of
chieftainship. The Ottawa and Chippewawere
band societies, collectivities of virtually autonomous local groups. Acknowledging a common
ancestry only, bands broke off to form new
independent communities as population exceeded local resources.Thus, when a few bands
of Ottawa and Chippewahad wandered south
and establishedfriendly relationswith the Potawatomi, living as their neighbors, they were
included in the treaties, but their behavior had
no bearing on the activities of other Chippewa
or Ottawa bands. A similar situation occurred
near Green Bay in 1827 when a band of Chippewa signed a treaty along with Menominiactually the regular residents in the area-and
the Winnebago, whose prior occupancy and
interest were still honored by the Menomini.
The component village communities of the
real tribal groups felt a common concern in any
treatiesenteredinto-villagers outside a cession
being as much involved as those living in a
ceded area. It was often difficultto get consensus among the various villages in regardto land
sales, so that treaty makers often settled for
what seemed to them a majority of signatures
of important men in the tribe. Dissatisfaction
with treaties or even particularterms of treaties
led to dissident factions who simply withdrew
their co-operation, expecting to work with the
whole as a tribe on future occasions when consensus might be reached. Removal of the faction abiding by a treaty often resulted in a
breakdown of communication with the dissidents who were obliged to look out for themselves. Eventually they might be treated as a
separateentity by the governmenton the order
of the treatment accorded band-organized
groups.
Although the governmentbegan entering into
treaties in the Wisconsin-Illinoisregion before
the War of 1812 and immediatelythereafterto
win Indian allies away from the British, the
treaty period heralding significant land loss
leading to the presentsituation really began for
Wisconsin Indians in 1825. A great intertribal
council was called at Prairie du Chien to get
Indians to agree on their boundaries among
themselves as a preliminary to negotiations
with the specific tribes for their lands.
Sauk
&X
Fox
(Map 1) INDIANLANDSALESIN WISCONSIN
()Land ceded by Chippewa, Menomini and Winnebago in 1827 for use of
the New York Indians but because of irregularities in the treaty, the Menomini
who were actually resident in the area in 1827 repudiated any claim of the
New YorkIndians.In 1831,the area designated(b) was ceded by the Menomini
for the use of the New York Indians and the present Oneida reservation was
granted in the southeastern end of this tract in 1838. Meanwhile, in 1831,
the Stockbridge-Munsee and Brothertown were granted areas (d) and (e).
In 1839 they ceded the eastern half (f) of their total holdings and in 1848 they
ceded the western half (g). At that time the Brothertown opted for citizenship but the Stockbridge-Munsee chose to remain under federal jurisdiction.
Like a number of other Wisconsin tribes they were supposed to move to a
reservation in Minnesota but this plan was not carried out, and in 1856 the
Stockbridge received their present reservation. The dates of cession are those
when treaties were signed; ratification by the Senate WalSin some cases delayed
for a year or more.
Prior to the treaty of Prairie du Chien the
Winnebago and Menomini had a glimpse of
things to come as negotiations were opened
with them unofficiallyby representativesof the
New York Indians and the Stockbridgein 1822
and 1823. These eastern Indians tried to relocate themselves as white pressures for their
homelands mounted.
Map 1 notes actual cessions and their dates,
but there were also many unsuccessfulnegotia11
Society's Iconographic Collection
Fair being held on the Oneida Indian Reservation,September,1899.
tions for the differenttribes' lands.3The major
losses began with the Potawatomi and some of
the Ottawa and Chippewa, as already noted,
and with the Menomini andWinnebago. Ceding
their southern areas, the Winnebago were
granted additional land on the west bank of the
Mississippi River in Iowa. Overrun by lead
miners and settlers, the villagers in this area
of southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern
Illinois had no recourse but to move west, since
the remaining land to the north could not support them. Ultimately they sought sanctuary
among the Omaha,where they were allowed to
take up their present reservation after successive treaties and four removals through Minnesota and South Dakota between 1846 and 1863.
The entire tribe was agreed that the cession of
1837 was invalid since unauthorized Winnebago had been pressured into signing it, and
those Winnebago resident in the region simply
refused to move. Gathered up by soldiers on
four occasions, they always came back to their
old haunts. After the last removal of 1874 they
were able to avail themselves of the provisions
of the Indian HomesteadAct of 1875 (amended, 1881) in order to remain in Wisconsin. The
idea of the act was to scatter Indians generally
among white neighbors and hasten their assimilation, but provisions to protect them from land
loss allowed the Winnebago to remain under
federal jurisdiction. In 1881 the government
made a separate roll of the Wisconsin people,
and these dissidents became, in effect, a tribe
separate from the people in Nebraska. A similar provision, but largely in terms of tribal land
rather than homesteads, was made in 1913 for
the Forest County Potawatomi-dissidents in
regard to the Treaty of Chicago of 1833. The
Wood County Potawatomi never broke their
official tie with the Kansas reservation when
they began drifting back east.
At the time of the controversial Winnebago
treaty of 1837, the governmentnegotiated successfully with the Santee Sioux to relinquish
all claim to any Wisconsin land just north of
the Winnebago. By then the Sioux had pretty
well decamped anyway and Winnebago and
Chippewawere regularlyhunting in their area.
The Chippewa also gave up land in western
Wisconsin in 1837.
By 1848 all Indian land in Wisconsin had
been ceded by treaty except for the Oneida
reservation established ten years before. However, in the northernareas the Indians were not
under great pressure to leave as there were not
yet many white settlers, although the intent was
to move them west. Biding for time, the Menomini and the Chippewabands at Flambeau,
Bad River, Court Oreilles, and Red Cliff, as
well as the Stockbridge were able to sign
treaties between 1854 and 1856 assigning them
3 The accompanying
maps are based on Royce and
Thomas, Kappler, and Erdman.
12
reservations in Wisconsin which, except for
Stockbridge,were parts of their old homelands.
This developmentreflected a change in policy
due to events across the Mississippi. Although
the eastern Indians were effectively pacified,
they were still disgruntled, and the long struggle to defeat the Plains tribes was just getting
under way. Settling all the tribes in one great
western Indian Territory posed dangers, as
they might unite in common cause. Earlier
alliances under Pontiac and Tecumseh,though
defeated,were proof of the possibility. The new
policy sought to settle tribes safely separated
from one another,even in their own homelands
if feasible, as it was costly to move them west.
However,there were some administrativeloose
ends in Wisconsin, as elsewhere. The St. Croix
Chippewahad been left out of the negotiations
in 1854 and, characteristically, none of the
otherChippewabands could negotiatefor them.
They simply remained in the state as landless
Indians. The Sakaogon band (Mole Lake)
Chippewa were also neglected in 1854, but a
treaty with them in 1855 promised a reservation of twelve square miles of land. For some
reason the government never got around to
setting up this reservation, and the Mole Lake
people also remained a landless band eking out
a living as best they could.
OVER THEYEARSthe reservationsystem
ment, was dusted off with a new but never
legally established meaning. Bureau superintendents and other personnel came to interpret
their role increasingly as actual guardianshandling all the affairsand making all the decisions
for individual minor children who were both
recalcitrantand slow to learn. As Indian people
struggled to get on their feet as communities,
the Bureauworkedjust as hard to de-Indianize
and disperse them as individualizedfarm families. When it became ever more obvious that
Indians were not phasing out according to
schedule,effortsto assimilatethemwere stepped
up. Childrenwere hauled off summarilyto distant boarding schools where they were severely
punished for speaking their own languages.
Tribal language barrierswere crossed by learning English in the boarding schools, and the
former studentsbecamethe intellectualnucleus
of pan-Indian and intertribal resistance to
white policy.4
By 1871 the governmentdecided unilaterally
that no more treaties would be entered into
with Indians. Most Indian land had been acquired anyway, and the Indians had been
located on reservations. The key to dealing
with Indians was to be vigorous repression of
things Indian, including customary religion,
leadership, and even hair and clothing styles.
The consequentsullen apathy, irresponsibility,
drinking,and delinquencyon reservationswere
became firmly structured with regional
superintendentsand local agencies on the larger
reservations.The GreatLakes Superintendency
is at Ashland. It is under the jurisdiction of
the MinneapolisArea Office,one of a half dozen
such offices set up across the country in the
1950's. Until reforms were instituted at the
close of the century, putting the Bureau under
civil service, appointments were a matter of
political patronage.The work did not pay well,
but it was not hard and there were always
opportunitiesto manipulateIndian funds. There
were, however, many dedicated people in the
Indian service, but they could accomplishlittle
given the uncertaintyof their tenure and a distant Congress, indifferent to the critical needs
of people who were expected to vanish soon.
In the 1860's the unfortunate term "ward,"
first used in 1831 by Chief Justice John Marshall in a vague analogy defining the relationship between tribes and the federal govern-
tained by visits after leaving boarding school and
exchanges of letters. By the time of the Second
World War, educated Indian people developed formal
organizations such as the National Congress of American Indians to act as a clearing house of information useful to Indians, to unify them, and to bring
political pressures to bear in the Indian interest.
Added to this was the development of nationwide
intertribal powwows in which Indian people have
been gathering since the nineteenth century for a
few days to a week or more at a time. Ostensibly
only social affairs, the powwows have been an important medium for the creation and diffusion of
an Indian political ideology and growing sense of
unity of purpose. In recent years, Indian people have
also sought resources beyond the BIA, other federal
agencies and religious denominations with mission
programs to forward their interests. By far the most
sensitive and co-operative response has come from
institutions of higher learning. Wisconsin has been
typical of these developments in the holding of conferences and workshops requested by Indian people
at several of the more northerly State Universities,
and the active interest of the University of WisconsinMilwaukee in the problems and goals of Indian
people in the city.
13
4At
first, widespread intertribal ties were main-
Society's Iconographic Collection
Victory celebration held at Reserve, Wisconsin, July 19, 1919, by the Chippewa
to honor tribal members who had served in World War I. The man in the
foreground is the Chippewa interpreter, Ira 0. Isham.
The scheme had built-in shortcomings. The
Indian problem was to be solved with small,
self-sufficient,diversified family farming at the
very time that large-scale, mechanized, singlecrop agriculturewas becoming the order of the
day. Experienced white farmers were already
being squeezedout economically and migrating
to the city factories. Futhermore, by 1900 Indians began increasing so that the remaining
Indian allotments were divided among ever
more heirs with people inheriting small pieces
of different allotments, widely separated from
each other. The poem by Lew Sarett, "Little
CaribouMakesBig Talk," is recited every summer night as a dramatic reading at the Dells
Indian Ceremonial.Little Caribou, a querulous
old man, complains in amusing broken English
about his land being scattered, "Lak leaves
she's blow by wind." The bitter irony of the
humor is probably lost on most of the white
audience who do not know that Little Caribou
is talking about the effects of the Allotment Act
of 1887. Map 2 shows the effects of allotment
in statistical terms at Bad River, Flambeau,
Court Oreilles, and even tiny Red Cliff which
did not suffer land loss, but the tribal holding
was broken and inefficiently redistributed by
heirship, Oneida and Stockbridge.
When the United States entered the First
World War Indians under federal jurisdiction
for the most part were not eligible to be drafted,
but they volunteered in large numbers and
attributedby reformersto denial of individual
freedom of enterprise. How, they asked, could
Indians succeed as farmers when their land
was held tribally: The Indian Homestead Act
was useful only to members of landless tribes
or individuals who had already learned to manage as farmers. The final solution to the Indian
problem was to be (but did not become) the
Dawes or Allotment Act of 1887, based on an
act which had been devised specifically for the
Omaha five years before. It planned for division of reservations into individual holdings
which would be inalienable and tax free for a
generation, by which time Indians were expected to have broken the tribal tie and turned
into ordinary white farmers. After everyone
got his allotment, totaling about 180 acres per
nuclear family, the rest of the land would be
thrown open to public sale and the proceeds
used to buy the necessities for Indians to get
started as farmers. That some Indians might
need more or even less than a generation was
recognized, and later provisions required that
the Indian be declared competent, no matter
how long the time since he got his allotment,
before he received his fee patent. The great
Indian land grab was on as the competency
provision was regularly abused by land-hungry
whites, sometimes in connivance with unscrupulous superintendents-or land could be acquired quite honestly from the public sales of
unallotted land.
14
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2)
i'/'7
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a,1
RESERVATIONSAND OTHER INDIAN SETTLEMENTS, SHOWING
PAST AND PRESENT FEDERALLYPROTECTEDLAND
Land loss from time of treaty to present day is due to the effects of allotment,
except for Winnebago and Menomini.
WVinnebago homesteads were reduced
The Menomini
through sales much on the order of the results of allotment.
lost their entire reservation by termination in 1961, and though some land is
held corporately by the tribe it is not under federal protection but taxed by
the state of Wisconsin.
ough and reached some surprising conclusions
and recommendations.The report pointed out
that as bad as conditions were, the only reason
they were not worse was that Indian people
somehow managed some semblance of community cohesion to give meaning and direction to
life. The continuous loss of land through provisions of the AllotmentAct was singled out as
a primary cause of Indian despair, demoralization, and inability to progress materially.
Harsh policies of stamping out everything Indian were criticized since adequate substitutes
were not provided and-a radical suggestionnot everything Indian was necessarily bad.
The election of Franklin Roosevelt also saw
a "New Deal" for Indians with the appointment
achieved a remarkablerecord of heroism.Their
deeds and the fact of dreadfulconditions on the
reservationsmadethe headlines,and an aroused
public prompted Congress to grant all Indians
full citizenship, with particular stress on the
right to vote. Some traditional Indians are still
pretty damn mad about it. Of course they volunteered; they were allies to the United States
by treaty. The new fiat of 1924 undercut their
special status as Indians even more.
More to the point, as a result of the publicity
after the war, was a major investigation of Indian problems undertaken at government expense by a private, impartialresearchorganization, the Brookings Institution. The Brookings
Report, published in 1928, was ruthlessly thor15
~~~~~~~~~4<~~~~~~~~~~~~~-
Society's Iconographic Collection
Chippewafamily outside their wigwam near Lac du
Flambeauabout 1905. Note that the men are holding
woven baskets and miniaturecanoes for future sale.
of John Collier, Sr., as Commissionerof Indian
Affairs. Guided by the Brookings Report and
his own extensive familiarity with Indian problems, Collier did an unprecedented thing for
a commissioner. He went out and talked to Indians to get their opinions on policy. The result
was the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934,
whereby Indian tribes could organize under
their own constitutions and charters and enter
into contractsas self-determiningcommunities.
Collier was criticized both for trying to turn the
clock backward and for imposing too many
white bureaucraticconcepts on Indian communities rather than letting them develop their
own formats for political and economic action.
That the Indian ReorganizationAct worked at
all and as well as it did and inspired such optimism among the deeply disenchanted and suspicious Indians is all the more amazing, considering that it was in real effect for only seven
years-1934 to the outbreak of war in 1941.
The major shortcoming was that final veto
power was still held by the local Bureau superintendentswho were supposed to act as watchdogs of the Indian interest against unscrupulous whites. But Collier had to work with an
inherited bureaucracy which, while honest
thanksto Civil Service, was committedwithout
question for the most part to the ancient objective of de-Indianization and assimilation. On
the other hand, Bureau personnel had also begun to make sure they would not work themselves out of jobs and justified their existence
by meticulous managing of all the Indians'
affairs. Collier threatened the very nature of
their universe, and they often came down with
a heavy hand at the local level, stifling innovations and having no patience with Indian methods of reaching decisions by long discussion
and consensus.
Collier's good faith was clear to Indians,
however, when he brought to a grinding halt
the rapid loss of their land. More important,he
restored tribally held land as noted for Wisconsin on the aforementioned map (map 2).
The Mole Lake Chippewa received a reservation of 1,750 acres-far short of the twelve
square miles promised in 1855, but the first
attempt to honor their treaty in nearly a century. The so-called "Lost Band" of St. Croix
Chippewa also received a reservation of the
same size but in scattered parcels because the
Collier administration had to take up land
where available (see also Stockbridge and
Oneida) .5
All the Wisconsin tribes but the Winnebago
opted for tribal constitutions permitting them
to elect their own officers. An abiding suspiciousness and problems of neglect rather than
overadministrationmade IRA less attractiveto
them than to other tribes. Most important,they
did not want to commit themselves to any plan
which might be charged against them and prevent their ever collecting unpaid treaty money.
As early as the 1920's they had tried to get a
settlement, but without success, through the
Court of Claims.
Theirs was not an unique grievance as the
Brookings Report noted, along with a recommendation that the many unsettled Indian
claims be handled by some more expeditious
means than the cumbersome and costly procedures of the Court of Claims. In 1946 the
Indian Claims Commission was finally established whereby tribes could file claims until
1951. Some 850 were registered and hearings
are still being held. The Indian Claims Commission can be looked upon as the last legislation of the pro-Indian, Collier era, or the
first overt evidence of the Indian policy which
'Administrative terminologyhas been generalized
in the interests of clarity and brevity. There are
subclassificationsin types of reservations,individual
and tribal lands underfederal protection,and bureaucratic organization.
16
was to characterize the 1950's. Although the
ICCAct of 1946 contains the broadest grounds
for suit of any Americanlegislation, it has been
construed as narrowly as possible. The government has worked slowly-claims average well
over ten years from filing to appropriation of
money - and the smallest amounts possible
have been allowed.
W
HENtheUnitedStatesenteredtheSecond
'
n^,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~...
World War in 1941 the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, like other offices,had to cut back while
a large proportion of the federal budget went
into the war effort. But more was involved as
Congressturned a deaf ear to Collier'spleas to
keep alive programs and prepare for the problems of Indians in peacetime. However, with so
many Indians in the armed services or in the
cities working in defense industries and sending money home, problems of Indian poverty
were temporarily alleviated. Congress considered the Indians' problemspermanentlysolved.
But, as Collier knew would be the case, when
the war was over the Indians came back home.
There had also been an Indian baby boom.
Already limited and undeveloped reservation
resources were now totally inadequate. But the
war had been a mass educational experience
and Indians returned with widespread understanding of what could be done on the reservations and how to do it through the mechanism
of IRA. All that was needed was adequate
funding to get started.
It gave Congress pause that Indians were
obviously worse off than ever and that vast
amountsof money would be needed to get communities on their feet and regain ground lost
during the war when nascent programs were
allowed to atrophy without funds. Congress
conveniently blamed John Collier for the crisis
in Indian affairs because he had turned aside
from the time-honoredprinciple of assimilating
the Indians. The cry was on to "desegregate"
and even "free" the Indians and "get the governmentout of the Indian business."Ironically,
as the Black Movement for civil rights gained
momentum, the words of new hope for black
people were a chilling threat to Indians. The
reservations were not segregated ghettosallowed to deteriorate by indifferent landlords
-but Indian property they had struggled to
protect from illegal appropriation by whites
Milwaukee Journal
Two elaborately caparisonedIndians in Milwaukee
show a boy how to use a bird call whistle.
and which they wanted to develop as a basis of
healthy community life. No one denied the
Indians the vote. Quite the contrary! Indians
experienced little racial prejudice. They had
always been free as individuals to be dropped
from the tribal rolls by their own choice.
Collier was finally forced to resign in 1946
and by 1950 a total change had occurred in
Indian policy, based on the pre-Collierphilosophy. Two major endeavorswere mountedas the
final solution (again!) to the Indian problem:
termination of the reservations and relocation
of Indians in cities. Wisconsin, as usual, was a
primary laboratory to tinker around in.
Noting that Indians went to the cities and
adapted well to industrial work although they
kept returning home and maintaining tribal
ties, the VoluntaryRelocationProgram(dubbed
"Operation Relocation" by the Indians) provided fare to cities, preferably as far from the
Indian's home community as possible, as well
as a first job and housing. Little screening was
done and with the slight recession of the mid1950's many Indians were left in destitute condition, unable to get local public relief because
of residence requirements,no longer a responsibility of the relocation offices, and unable to
get back home. Old intertribalorganizations in
17
'
~
~~~~
4
7~~~~~~7
--i--_,--.-.
Madison Capital Times
GovernorGaylordNelson surroundedby tribal officials and othersas he signs the biU creatingMenominee County,July 31, 1959.
cities were swamped with hardship cases and
many new Indian centers were establishedwith
church and other private funding, and in some
cases with help from local universities. Gradually, many people drifted back home. Fortunately, Indian resistance to the termination
program meant that for most tribes there still
was a home community where they could get
help. However,the governmentwas determined
to push termination wherever possible, and it
happened that in 1928 the Menomini in Wisconsin, as well as the Klamath in Oregon, were
singled out as soon ready to manage their own
affairs without federal supervision. Developed
lumberingenterpriseshad forestalled allotment
as inappropriateto these reservations.In 1951
the Menomini had won a judgment of
$8,500,000 on proof of mismanagement of
their forests by the government. They voted to
invest a good part in community development
and reserved part to divide into per capita
payments, about $1,500 per person. Organized
under the Indian Reorganization Act, the Menomini were just beginning to grasp the principles and potentialities of real self-government,
but despite the Brookings Report recommendation, the Bureau had made no effort to train
Menomini in business management or gradually turn tribal affairs fully over to the Menomini people. The Brookings Report had envisioned a self-sustaining tribal community
free of federal interference,but the objective of
18
termination proceedings in the 1950's was to
destroy tribal entities. Although they had misgivings, the Menomini actually voted for termination, understandingthat it would be along
lines intended in the Brookings Report and
also because they were deceived into believing
that payment of their per capitas depended on
termination.
When the true nature of the situation became apparent, they played for time, getting
the date for termination moved from 1958 to
1961. Co-operationby the state in designating
the reservation a new county also helped to
maintain communityidentity. But the state was
less experienced than even the Bureau in dealing with Indian communities and brought in
private industry, even less informed about Indians, to help the Menominimake the transition
to terminated status. It is not possible to cite
here all the legal and social complications, and
it must also be said that at least some of the
misguided efforts by outsiders, ostensibly in
behalf of the Menomini, were not done viciously. But the worst abuses arising out of the
AllotmentAct and resulting in land loss, Indian
impoverishment, and personal and social despair and demoralization pale in comparison
to what is happening to the Menomini-the
oldest continuously resident tribe in the state.
By the time of the presidential campaign of
1960, both major parties recognized that Indian affairs were in a terrible mess and required study and new direction. When John
Kennedy was elected, he appointeda task force
to meet and talk with Indians as a basis for
future policy. Philleo Nash, who headed the
task force, was subsequently appointed Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Nash, an anthropologist, inspired real hope as a new Collier.
Moving cautiously at first in the face of continuing assimilationist sentiment in Congress,
Nash nevertheless operated on the principle
that Indians were here to stay. He stressedcommunity developmentand humanizedthe relocation program for Indians who desired to avail
themselves of it. Nash understood that Indians
were interested in raising the general community level and needed to explore opportunities
to reach consensus on plans. But he was deemed
too slow by his superiors,who saw Indian community development in terms of cheap labor
pools for white capital. Nash's tenure lasted
just half as long as Collier's. His successor,
Robert L. Bennett, a mixed-blood Oneida, was
committed to the Indian interest in his public
statements but could do little to forward it,
given the powerful forces which had succeeded
in ousting Nash. With the change in party administration, Bennett, too, was obliged to resign, leaving the situation very unstructured.
There was a long delay in choosing a new Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and during a sixmonthperiod half a dozen candidatespromoted
by such organizationsas the National Congress
of American Indians were rejected. On August
8, 1969, it was announcedthat Louis R. Bruce,
a New York Mohawk,had been appointed.Mr.
Bruce, a Republican, has lived and worked in
Manhattanas an advertising executive with little active involvementin national Indian affairs.
ATSH'S brief tenure had a profound effect
for at least one Wisconsin tribe. In 1961
the Winnebago developed an acting business
committee out of a claims committee which
had been establishedby election at the time the
tribal claim was filed in 1949. Seeing the advantages of formal organization, they became
the first tribe in the entire country since the
early 1940's to apply for and be granted the
right to organize under the Indian Reorganization Act. Permission to organize was delayed
because they were not a reservation tribe, but
the discovery that an individual homesteadhad
reverted to tribal trust land status because the
owner died without heirs qualified them with
a forty-acre "reservation."
This curious technicality inspired the new
Wisconsin Winnebago Business Committee to
acquire land in order to avail themselves of
housing programs undertaken on the reservations in co-operationbetweenthe BIA and PHA
during the 1960's. Their efforts included petitioning for a change of title of federal land
which the Winnebagohad been given the use of
for a WPA housing project during Collier's
administration, soliciting donations of land,
and raising money to buy land. The Nash administration was agreeable to having the acreage declared tribal trust land. Thus, a year
after termination had become a fact for the
Menomini,the Winnebago were in a process of
extending federal responsibility over new Indian land. The attitude of the Nash administra19
tion also benefitedthe Oneida, who in the mid1960's began procedures whereby a share of
an old allotment, just under thirty acres, was
transferred from individual Indian land to
tribal trust status. Located in the Green Bay
area, it is valuable property and the tribe is
drawing up plans for an industrial enterprise.
The 1960's saw another important development in Wisconsin, typical of what is happening across the country where there are concentrations of different tribal groups. In 1961, the
Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council was formed
by the governing bodies of the various tribes in
the state. Fearful of the Menomini experience
they desired to retain their federal ties, but
hoped that through intertribalunity they could
develop their own community programs, seek
outside funds, and gain some real leverage in
dealing with the Indian Bureau. While still in
its formative stage and handicappedby the fact
that its component governing bodies did not
always command the confidence of their local
constituents to carry out promises of community development, GLIT responded to the request of OEO to act as the central agency for
work among Wisconsin Indians. The present
question is whether OEO will control the Wisconsin Indians on an intertribal level as the
Bureauhas done for so many years on the local
level. OEO's record in Indian work across the
country is spotty and in Wisconsin seems to be
proving even less enlightened than the Bureau
has been in recent years in delegating decisionmaking power to the Indian communities and
opportunitiesto take real and direct responsibility in program planning and fiscal matters.
One of the most promising recent developments
is the GreatLakes Inter-TribalCouncil'sefforts
to obtain its own funding from foundationsand
other private sources for projects geared specifically to the needs of local tribes.
In addition to providing a naturallaboratory
for testing theories in history, anthropology,
sociology, political science, and economics in
regardto the AmericanIndian scene in general,
Wisconsin offers an unique opportunityfor all
its citizens to benefit from the presence of a
wide range of recently tribal people in our
midst. As Collier suggested over thirty years
ago, Indians do not need do-gooders or people
to tell them how to manage their lives so as to
becomejust like the rest of us, but they do need
st
t
T
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Society Museum Collection
Great Lakes Indian Agency grade and high school, Lac du Flambeau
friends who will trust their judgment and support them politically and financially to make
their own experiments, in community life.
Choosing, innovating, and adapting in regard
to the modern technological world, Indian
groups can develop formats which would never
occur to those of us who have evolved gradually
from a peasant to an industrial tradition. Our
own adaptations are perhaps too narrow and
specialized, as our way of life is admittedly
fraught with many problems.
A cardinal premise of evolution, biological
or cultural, is that variation is necessary to
survival,so that when the environmentbecomes
threateningthere are variant forms fortuitously
adapted to meet new challenges to perpetuate
life. It can do no harm and might do us all a
lot of good to hearken to what Indian people
may have to tell us. Despite more than a century
of pressure to cease being identifiable Indians,
Indians are still very much with us, as exemplified in the case of Wisconsin. Such persistence
suggests that they have something going for
them that they find worth maintaining, while
readily availing themselves of modern technology.
Bi'bliography
Brookings Institution. Institute for GovernmentResearch, The Problem of Indian Administration (Baltimore, 1928).
Joyce Erdman, Handbook on Wisconsin Indians (Madison, 1961).
Charles J. Kappler (comp. and ed.), Indian Laws and Treaties (2
vols., Washington, 1904.): vol. 2, Indian Treaties.
Nancy OestreichLurie, "HistoricalBackground,"in StuartLevine and
Nancy Oestreich Lurie (eds.), The American Indian Today (Deland, Florida, 1968), 25-45. This volume provides a more exhaustive bibliography on the development of federal Indian policy. It
will be available as a Penguin paperbackby the fall of 1969.
Charles C. Royce and Cyrus Thomas, "Indian Land Cessions in the
United States," in Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report
(Washington, 1896-1897), vol. 18, pt. 2. In addition to citing all
cessions, giving tribes, dates, and descriptions of metes and bounds,
this volume has excellent reference maps keyed to the text.
Lew Sarett, "Little Caribou Makes Big Talk," in Collected Poems of
Lew Sarett (New York, 1941), 200-202.
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