Chippewa Treaty Rights
Many Chippewa Indians and whites in Wisconsin enjoyed a good relationship
during the years immediately following the 1842 treaty according to anthropologists
Charles Cleland and James Clifton. Lake Superior Chippewa men increasingly
engaged in commercial fishing, either with their own equipment or as seasonal
laborers for white Americans, and Chippewa women cleaned the fish before
packing
it in salt as American entrepreneurs sought to create a national market for
this
product from the Lake Superior country. As mining developed, numerous Chippewa
men transported supplies, acted as guides, cut and supplied mine timber,
or delivered
fish, venison, furs, hides, rice, and maple sugar (the major sweetener used
in the
United States before 1860). Chippewa women traded surplus fruits and vegetables
to miners. In the interior, some Chippewa men and women became attuned to
the
labor and material requirements of the lumber industry. Both along the southern
shore of Lake Superior and in the interior of Wisconsin, the Chippewas delivered
services and goods that created economic and social bonds, which in turn
created
potential allies. In addition, removal of the Chippewas from Wisconsin would
have
deprived many loggers and miners of female companions (Cleland 1985, 14-17;
Clifton 1987, 18-19).
While contemporary evidence suggests that Wisconsin Chippewas participated
in the kinds of activities described by Cleland and Clifton (Ramsey 1850,
53-54),
some may have tried to avoid contact with whites whenever possible. In September
of 1843, for example, White Crow from Lac du Flambeau and chiefs from several
other interior bands requested their annuity payments be made at the falls
of the
Chippewa River rather than at Bad River to the north. "If we go
to Bad
river {sic},"
they protested, "we are near to the white men, who work the copper
mines-we
sold twelve moons ago. We do not wish to be near them. Whenever we are near
white men we are sure to have trouble. " Yet the chiefs understood
that
total isolation
from whites was not the answer. Although they asserted that "the
great
Spirit never
made the Red men and white men to live together," the chiefs nevertheless
ac-
knowledged their dependence on whites for some things by pleading for the
res-
toration of the blacksmith shop and the model farm that had been moved from
Chippewa Falls to distant northern locations (Chippewa Chiefs 1843). Whether
they
sought to avoid contact with whites or whether they enjoyed a good working
relationship with them, the Chippewas had no intention of leaving Wisconsin.
Events
of the mid- and late-1840s, however, brought considerable pressure for removal
reminiscent of Andrew Jackson's handling of the Southern tribes in the 1830s.
The return of the Democrats to the White House in 1845 elevated avowed
ex-
pansionist William Medill to the position of commissioner of Indian affairs.
Medill
soon began planning for the establishment of a northern "Indian
colony"
on the
headwaters of the Mississippi River. He argued that the creation of such
a colony,
together with the concentration of Indians on the desirable lands north of
the Kansas
River to the area west of Missouri and Kansas, would permit a safe corridor
for
emigrants to the west coast (Satz 1988; Medill 1846a, 1848, 388-90).
Territorial acquisitions in the Far West after the Mexican War had led
many
American officials including Medill to realize the Indian removal policy
so vig-
orously pursued by Andrew Jackson and his successors had ironically established
by the mid-1 840s what Napoleon in the 1790s and the British at the Treaty
of Ghent
in 1814 had failed to achieve-namely, the construction of an Indian barrier
to
American continental expansion. This barrier stretched from Canada in the
North
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