RACIALIZING INDIGENOUS SOCIETY: NATIVE AMERICANS, EURO-AMERICANS, AND THE STRUGGLE FOR AUTHORITY IN GREATER MACKINAC By Michael Jared Albani A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of History – Doctor of Philosophy 2025 ABSTRACT Long before they were incorporated into the fledgling United States, many contested spaces existed throughout North America where Native Americans and Euro-Americans both intermingled and grappled for dominance. A region that this study refers to as Greater Mackinac – anchored in the Indigenous villages of Mackinac Island, Waganawkezee (L’Arbe Croche), Baawitigong (Sault Ste. Marie), and Mooningwanekaaning (Madeline Island) – emerged as an arena where Anishinaabeg engaged commercially and diplomatically with Euro-American newcomers while forging kinship ties that gave birth to new peoples. As the United States seized larger swathes of Indigenous Homeland during the nineteenth century, it simultaneously sought to codify Anishinaabeg and their children of mixed ancestry who lived there as racialized “others.” This study explores how Greater Mackinac became a meaningful political unit that afforded unique opportunities for Anishinaabe women and their mixed-ancestry kin to broaden the scope of their autonomy and authority. The complex contours of shifting sovereignty in the nineteenth-century Great Lakes Borderlands deserve greater scholastic scrutiny. “Racializing Indigenous Society” contributes to this scholarship by illustrating the extent to which resistance to the American settler-colonial project could germinate in the growing nation’s peripheries. At this study’s core are the stories of four Anishinaabe women – Magdelaine La Framboise, Agatha Biddle, Jane Schoolcraft, and Susan Davenport – who arose from different nodes of Greater Mackinac to become critical cross-cultural intermediaries. Analyzing their life experiences and those of their interracial families reveals how socially and culturally nebulous spaces could empower Anishinaabe women and their mixed-ancestry kin if they were savvy enough to weave between Indigenous and Euro-American worlds. It also enhances understanding of how mixed- ancestry people came to conceptualize and manipulate their own racial identities during the nineteenth century. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Public intellectual Howard Zinn, whose A People’s History of the United States was one of the first books I read as a freshman history major at Albion College, often said, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” From the time I entered Michigan State University as a graduate student in the fall of 2016 to when I completed this dissertation in the winter of 2024, I have found myself recalling that quotation over and over again. Seismic shifts have rocked both the institution that welcomed me as a historian in the making and the world around me over the past eight years. Thus, I owe some incredibly deep debts of gratitude to a myriad of people who have helped save the figurative train that has been my professional and personal life from careening off its tracks. First and foremost, I could never have finished this dissertation without the guidance of Dr. Emily Conroy-Krutz. After completing the comprehensive examinations that stood between me and ABD status, I found myself feeling intellectually spent. It was Dr. Conroy-Krutz who pulled me out of the embers of my burnout and helped reignite the passion I had for my project. Over the next several years, she read countless drafts and challenged me in the most constructive ways to hone the scattershot series of disparate ideas I presented into a cohesive piece of scholarship. All the while, she continued to remind me that I am my own harshest critic. I fear words will never be able to fully capture how thankful I am for her empathetic mentorship and her assertions that I have a perspective and scholarly voice worth sharing. Along with Dr. Conroy-Krutz, I am deeply indebted to the oversight of Dr. Lisa Fine, Dr. Michael Stamm, and Dr. Nakia Parker. Before I asked her to serve on my guidance committee, Dr. Fine taught a historiography course I took in the spring of 2018 that radically influenced my perspectives on both women’s and gender history and labor history. She has pushed me to think iv deeply about the place that my own scholarship inhabits and the other historians with whom it converses. Dr. Stamm, meanwhile, had the chance to supervise my work as a teaching assistant in the spring of 2021 where he witnessed firsthand how my perfectionism could often hinder my productivity. He has influenced me greatly as an intellectual but has perhaps been even more instrumental in helping reshape me as a writer who is able to prioritize finishing what I start. Next to Dr. Conroy-Krutz, Dr. Parker has maybe seen more of my dissertation in a raw, unpolished form than anyone else. While presenting to our History Department’s Long Nineteenth-Century Americanist Workshop, I was always amazed by how Dr. Parker could identify portions of my chapters with value that my shaky self-confidence rarely permitted me to see. I will also always appreciate how she drove me to consider perspectives from my sources that I had never considered before. On that note, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge feedback from all the History Department’s Long Nineteenth-Century Americanist Workshop participants for helping to improve my project. I am beholden to the advice of Jen Andrella and Ramya Swayamprakash, two members of my graduate school cohort who were there to see my dissertation grow from its infancy, as well as Dr. Peter Berg, Dr. Sharon Leon, Dr. Thomas Summerhill, Dr. Helen Veit, Dr. Brooks Winfree, and the late Dr. Steven M. Stowe. Also foundational to my formation as a scholar was Dr. Susan Sleeper-Smith. She was the first to see potential in me and invited me to join MSU’s History Department where she provided innumerable opportunities for professional growth. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank Aaron Luedtke. Aaron and I shared an office together in the Old Horticulture Building for many years, so he was regularly the first person to hear about my triumphs and witness my frustrations. His kindness left an indelible impression that I will not soon forget. v Outside the History Department, there are other Spartans who deserve my gratitude, namely my cohort from MSU’s Cultural Heritage Informatics Initiative. In 2020, I earned a CHI Graduate Fellowship that supported me in developing a digital cultural heritage project on nineteenth-century Land cession treaties. The conclusions I drew from that project helped shape the second chapter of my dissertation, and considerable credit must go to the guidance of Dr. Ethan Watrall as well as feedback from Marwa Bakabas, Andra Durham, Ezgi Karaoglu, Sari Saba-Sadiya, Micayla Spiros, and Lillian Young. Along with all the people at MSU who have aided me on my scholarly journey, I must also extend my deepest appreciation to the Graduate Employees Union. For seven of my eight years as a graduate student, I also worked as a teaching assistant and instructor in a variety of undergraduate classrooms. I would not have been able to muster nearly as much vigor for my work without the community of equally dedicated educators laboring alongside me. Amidst all the anxiety and stress that I have had to overcome, GEU has been a constant ally. Also instrumental have been the archives, libraries, and museums that opened their doors to me as a researcher. The heartiest thanks must first go to Mackinac State Historic Parks. Before I decided that being a historian would be my vocation, I worked for two summers as a historic interpreter at Colonial Michilimackinac. These summers under the tutelage of historian Craig Wilson were what first inspired my love and appreciation for Mackinac Island and stoked my curiosity over its broader historical significance. Next, I extend my deepest regards for the generous support of the American Philosophical Society and the Newberry Library. Without the faith that these institutions put in me in the form of their financial awards, I would never have been able to access some of the archival collections that proved paramount to my project. To the Newberry Library I extend extra thanks for supporting a trip to the Peabody Museum of vi Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University as part of its NCAIS Summer Institute in 2018. During this summer, I received spectacular guidance from Dr. Patricia Capone and Dr. Castle McLaughlin as well as remarkable collaboration from members my cohort including Randizia Chrisostomo, Agléška Cohen-Rencountre, Beth Eby, Scarlett Engle, Alana Faagai, Victoria Funk, Franchesca Hebert-Spence, Molli Pauliot, Sarah Sadlier, Bruno Seraphin, Summer Sutton, and Katharine Williams. Outside the institutions where I studied, I received assistance from independent researcher Larry Wyckoff. His transcriptions of confoundingly penned primary sources from the National Archives saved me countless hours, and his correspondence led me down many fascinating research rabbit holes. Additionally, almost all the chapters of this dissertation began life or were refined as conference presentations. Therefore, I would like to acknowledge what a privilege it was to receive such valuable feedback from conference chairs including Dr. Richard Boles, Dr. John Bowes, Dr. Justin M. Carroll, Dr. Mary Jane McCallum, and Dr. Ashley Riley Sousa. Finally, I must extend my deepest appreciation to family and friends. Above all, my parents deserve more thanks that words will ever be able to fully express. They were there to rescue me from the mire of my own self-doubt countless times, and they continue to drive me to be a better scholar and a better person. Their love for me and the immense support they provided during my lowest of low points saved this dissertation. Any reader who finds value in it owes a debt of gratitude to Jessie and Tony Albani. Also there to offer a helping hand were the friends who have been with me since my days as an undergraduate including Joe Barden, Andrew Kercher, Gretchen Turonek, Erin Sovansky Winter, and Marc Winter. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 CHAPTER ONE: INTERMEDIARY LIVES IN GREATER MACKINAC: MAGDELAINE LA FRAMBOISE, AGATHA BIDDLE, JANE SCHOOLCRAFT, AND SUSAN DAVENPORT. 36 CHAPTER TWO: “MAKING PROVISION FOR THEIR HALF-BREED RELATIVES”: GENDER, RACE, AND TREATY NEGOTIATIONS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY GREATER MACKINAC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 CHAPTER THREE: GOVERNANCE ON THE PERIPHERY: STATE FORMATIONS AND FLUID AUTHORITY IN ANTEBELLUM GREATER MACKINAC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138 CHAPTER FOUR: A NEW GENERATION EMERGES: RACIAL IDENTITY AND SHIFTING LABOR PATTERNS FOR SCIONS OF GREATER MACKINAC. . . . . . . . . . . .188 CHAPTER FIVE: A NEW GENERATION PERSISTS: THE LANGUAGE OF KINSHIP IN POSTBELLUM GREATER MACKINAC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .216 CONCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 BIBLIOGRAPHY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS APS American Philosophical Society ASPIA American State Papers: Indian Affairs ASPPL American State Papers: Public Lands CSS United States Congressional Serial Set HRSP Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Papers LOC M1 M21 Library of Congress Records of the Michigan Superintendency of Indian Affairs, 1814-1851 Letters Sent by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824-1881 M234 Letters Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824-1881 M348 Report Books of the Office of Indian Affairs, 1838-1885 M432 Seventh Census of the United States, 1850 M593 Ninth Census of the United States, 1870 M653 Eighth Census of the United States, 1860 MHC Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society MHS Minnesota Historical Society MPHC Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections NAM National Archives Microfilm Publication PMAE Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology RBSCP Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation T9 Tenth Census of the United States, 1880 TPUS Territorial Papers of the United States WHC Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin ix WHS Wisconsin Historical Society x INTRODUCTION In the summer of 1905, Horace B. Durant travelled to Northern Michigan to compile a census of its Native American and mixed-ancestry populace. At the turn of the century, a group of Odawa leaders sued the U.S. government, arguing that it had failed to meet its responsibility to continue distributing annuity payments promised under the 1855 Treaty of Detroit.1 The case of Petoskey, Abraham, Kewakendo, et al., v. the United States secured a $131,000 payout (equivalent to approximately $4,700,000 in 2024) for Odawa communities, but as Anishinaabe legal scholar Matthew L.M. Fletcher asserts, the cash settlement represented only a small facet of the legal victory’s significance. According to Fletcher, the U.S. government neglected to meet the terms of its treaty because it operated under the assumption that the document would quickly “dissolve” Anishinaabe population centers that remained in the state of Michigan.2 That did not happen. Instead of melting away into surrounding white communities and allowing their culture, language, and lifeways to evaporate, Michigan Anishinaabeg remained solid, and their legal victory forced the U.S. government to take notice of this fact. So solid were Michigan Anishinaabeg, in fact, that Bureau of Indian Affairs agent Charles McNichols became overwhelmed with the volume of persons who could claim direct descent from original beneficiaries of the 1855 treaty. Thus, he offloaded the responsibility of claim assessment to Durant, a junior official. Durant compiled field notes on all the bands he visited, and in correspondence with his superiors, he lingered on a description of one on Mackinac Island. Situated in the straits separating what are now Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas, this modestly sized isle (approximately eight miles in circumference) was home to a 1 “Treaty with the Ottawa and Chippewa, 1855,” in Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, vol. 2, ed. Charles J. Kappler (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1904), 729. 2 Matthew L.M. Fletcher, The Eagle Returns: The Legal History of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012), 91-92. 1 group whose presence on American annuity rolls traced back to the early nineteenth century. In the late 1830s, the U.S. government recognized prominent Anishinaabe ogimaa Augustin Hamlin, Jr. as the band’s chief, but by the late 1860s chieftainship shifted to a Mackinac Island resident named Agatha Biddle.3 This fact surprised Durant since ogimaag, the civil and religious leaders in Anishinaabe communities, were almost exclusively men.4 Equally fascinating was the composition of what became known as the Agatha Biddle Band. According to Durant, it included “66 families or 168 persons, all of whom with but two exceptions, are women […] so foreign to Indian custom […] older Indians […] told me that band of women were half breeds, who had married white husbands, and were given a right in this last payment by the chiefs and headmen.”5 Representative of the intriguing nature of the Agatha Biddle Band was another Mackinac Island resident named Susan Davenport. Born in 1804, a Quaker journalist who met Susan in the early 1880s remarked that she “prefers the Chippewayan speech” even in her advanced age while her “children’s children yet abide in unprogressive content.”6 The journalist did not elaborate on what they meant by “unprogressive content.” By the 1880s, several Davenport children held stable, government-appointed positions as lighthouse keepers across the Great Lakes.7 It is certainly not difficult to infer, however, that white Americans viewed Indigeneity as antithetical to “progress.” So antithetical was it that Susan’s Anishinaabe identification affected more than 3 “Appointment,” May 3, 1835, in MPHC, vol. 12 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1888), 621-22. For more on Augustin Hamlin, Jr., see James M. McClurken, “Augustin Hamlin, Jr.: Ottawa Identity and the Politics of Persistence,” in Being and Becoming Indian: Biographical Studies of North American Frontiers, ed. James A. Clifton (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1989), 82-111. 4 Cary Miller, Ogimaag: Anishinaabeg Leadership, 1760-1845 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 66. 5 Horace B. Durant to Robert G. Valentine, July 3, 1909, NAM M2039, Correspondence, Field Notes, and the Census Roll of All Members or Descendants of Members Who Were on the Roll of the Ottawa and the Chippewa Tribes of Michigan in 1870, and Living on March 4, 1907 (Durant Roll), Roll 4, 490-01. 6 S.R., “The American Fur Company at Mackinaw,” Friends’ Intelligencer 39, no. 28 (August 26, 1882), 444. 7 Melinda Beyne, “The Davenport Family,” in Memories of Mackinaw: A Bicentennial Project of Mackinaw City Public Library and Mackinaw City Woman’s Club, ed. Judy Ranville and Nancy A. Campbell (Mackinaw City, MI: Mackinaw City Public Library, 1976), 107; and Timothy Harrison, “The Davenport Lighthouse Legacy,” Lighthouse Digest (2008). 2 just her children and grandchildren. Shortly before his death, census takers marked down that Susan’s husband Ambrose Davenport, Jr., who possessed no Indigenous ancestry whatsoever, was an Indian in their 1870 enumeration tables.8 The complex circumstances surrounding this classification will receive greater attention later, but suffice it to say for now that the story of Susan Davenport and her family illustrates how the nebulousness of racial identities interwoven through Indigenous customs and practices across the Great Lakes persisted well into the nineteenth century. Amplifying Mackinac Island’s eminence were the links it shared with many other Indigenous communities. Mooningwanekaaning (Madeline Island) to its west was the birthplace of Susan Davenport, who was connected by kinship to both the Odawa village of Waganawkezee (L’Arbe Croche) in the south and the Ojibwe village of Baawitigong (Sault Ste. Marie) in the north. Myriad mixed-ancestry people shared stories like Susan’s characterized by migration and intermingling among multiple villages and nations. In regions that the U.S. government considered peripheral, space and proximity to Indigenous peoples influenced status and racial classifications. “Racializing Indigenous Society” explores how Indigenous and mixed-ancestry people came to conceptualize and manipulate their own racial identities in one such peripheral region during the nineteenth century. This region includes the four communities embedded into the background of Susan Davenport of the Agatha Biddle Band, nodes in a network across Anishinaabewaki, the Homelands of the Anishinaabe, that this study will refer to as Greater Mackinac. 8 U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census, 1870; Mackinac County, MI, Holmes Township, page 24, dwelling 182, family 170; NAM M593, Roll 687. 3 I. Greater Mackinac Figure i: Nodes of Greater Mackinac “What is Greater Mackinac?” readers may ask. Answering this question first requires providing some background two areas: Anishinaabewaki and Michilimackinac. The former refers to a space larger than Greater Mackinac, the Homeland of the Anishinaabeg that the U.S. government renamed the Michigan Territory and eventually partitioned into the states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota.9 Michilimackinac, meanwhile, is a space within Anishinaabewaki unequivocally deserving of greater scholastic scrutiny. As the map above (Figure i) indicates, Michilimackinac was the zone in modern-day Northern Michigan where French colonizers first encountered Anishinaabe 9 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 325. 4 peoples in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. The French established a fortified community for fur traders and Jesuit missionaries on the southernmost point of Michigan’s lower peninsula (modern-day St. Ignace) known as Fort de Buade, which a modest military unit garrisoned between 1683 and 1701. To the northernmost point of Michigan’s lower peninsula (modern-day Mackinaw City) French forces moved and constructed the larger and more significant Fort Michilimackinac in 1715. This post flourished as a fur trading nexus throughout the eighteenth century largely due to its centralized position between European-connected commercial centers to the east and fur-laden Indian Country to the west. British fur trader Alexander Henry recounted in his memoir, “Michilimackinac is the place of deposit and point of departure between the upper countries and the lower. Here the outfits are prepared for the countries of Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, Lake Superior, and the Northwest; and here the returns in furs are collected and embarked for Montreal.”10 In a few succinct sentences, Henry summarizes the paramount position of the Straits of Mackinac as a commercial crossroads. The barricaded community acted as a meeting place where proprietors of independent fur trading partnerships could conduct business with their voyageur employees in proximity to their Aboriginal associates. Anthropologist Jessica Lynn Yann adds that Fort Michilimackinac “is somewhat unique in that while Michilimackinac was a huge hub for trade, even during the British period, it was largely occupied by French traders […] Much like Detroit, traders who traded out of Michilimackinac could be connected to trade routes throughout the 10 David A. Armour, ed., Attack at Michilimackinac 1763: Alexander Henry’s Travels and Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories Between the Years 1760 and 1764 (Mackinac Island, MI: Mackinac State Historic Parks, 1995), 24. 5 Great Lakes and Ohio River Valleys.”11 Thus, the area’s importance only increased as the fur trade more intensely entangled relationships between European colonists and the Anishinaabe. After seizing the reigns of New France following the First Anglo-Indian War, Great Britain gained control over Fort Michilimackinac and upwards of a dozen other fortified fur trading stations, amassing what it considered unprecedented territorial sovereignty in North America.12 Fort Michilimackinac became one of many arms of British authority on the Great Lakes in an age when their military presence on the continent was most widespread. This was, of course, until the American Revolution when the British feared that Gen. George Rogers Clark’s campaign across the Old Northwest would terminate with Michilimackinac’s conquest.13 To prevent this, the British military purchased Mackinac Island from local Ojibwe in 1781 and drove the civilian community to resettle there as they moved their fort board by board across the icy straits. From that point onward, Mackinac Island endured shifting governance by Great Britain (1781-1796), the United States (1796-1812), Great Britain once more (1812-1815), and ultimately the United States (1815-present). As this brief outline of Michilimackinac’s history suggests, much of the scholarship centering the space has been either thematically bound to the realm of military history or temporally bound to epochs of conflict between Euro-American powers. The most 11 Jessica Lynn Yann, “To ‘Avail Ourselves of Those Extensive Channels of Trade’: An Examination of Trade Practices and Political Dynamics within the Great Lakes Region” (PhD diss., East Lansing, Michigan State University, 2019), 37-38. 12 By the First Anglo-Indian War, the author is referring to the conflict that many historians call the French and Indian War, the North American theater of the Seven Years’ War. Historian Michael A. McDonnell asserts that the historical framing that names such as the French and Indian War produces is one in which “Native Americans are driven by European concerns, mere auxiliaries of the French or (very rarely) the British.” The purpose of adopting new terminology that places Indigenous peoples on equal footing with European belligerents is to help rectify this. See Michael A. McDonnell, Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015), 161. 13 David A. Armour and Keith R. Widder, At the Crossroads: Michilimackinac During the American Revolution (Mackinac Island, MI: Mackinac Island State Park Commission, 1986), 89-90. 6 comprehensive text on Fort Michilimackinac from its construction to its move to Mackinac Island is David A. Armour and Keith R. Widder’s At the Crossroads. Published in 1986, this book offers valuable insights on the lives of Euro-American soldiers, fur traders, and clergy members who inhabited the fort walls and surrounding suburbs. Although it offers some consideration of Indigenous peoples who interacted with colonizers and settlers, focusing on their agency was not the monograph’s main objective upon its initial release. Likewise, texts on Mackinac Island life during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have largely concerned themselves with the social history of soldiering.14 A cursory glance at the publishers of existing texts on Michilimackinac will illuminate why military history has captured so much attention through the present day. In 1875, the United States designated Mackinac Island a national park, only the second in the nation’s history, and the fort overlooking the island community became its capstone as a tourist destination. This status persisted until 1895 when the federal government transferred park stewardship to the state of Michigan, transforming it into Michigan’s first state park.15 The Mackinac Island State Park Commission (later Mackinac State Historic Parks) continually allowed visitors to tour the grounds of Fort Mackinac through the twentieth century when it expanded its operations in nearby Mackinaw City. In 1959, the commission oversaw the launch of what would become the longest ongoing archaeological project in North America by excavating the site of Fort Michilimackinac and reconstructing the base on its original foundations. Modern efforts by Mackinac State Historic Parks have sought to paint a nuanced picture of the region and reinforce 14 See, for example, Keith R. Widder, Reveille Till Taps: Soldier Life at Fort Mackinac, 1780-1895 (Mackinac Island, MI: Mackinac Island State Park Commission, 1972); and Phil Porter, The Soldiers of Fort Mackinac: An Illustrated History (Mackinac Island, MI: Mackinac State Historic Parks, 2018). 15 Kathy S. Mason, Natural Museums: U.S. National Parks, 1872-1916 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004), 29, 39-40. 7 its significance to Indigenous peoples, but this mission has met with challenges. As interpretive staff seek to reframe Michilimackinac as a multicultural site where many different peoples met and interacted, anthropologist Laura Peers has found that park guests often push back with preconceived notions of relations between Euro-Americans and Native Americans as primarily adversarial.16 Furthermore, the fact remains that the two largest sites Mackinac Stat Historic Parks stewards are, indeed, military instillations that draw audiences interested in depictions of military life and martial prowess. It makes sense, then, that it has prioritized research into military history for many of its publications. Luckily, this has begun to change in recent years. An example of more thoughtful scholarship that Mackinac State Historic Parks has helped produce has been Widder’s Beyond Pontiac’s Shadow. During the summer of 1763, charismatic Odawa leader Pontiac inspired Anishinaabe across the Great Lakes to attack British outposts in a historical episode that most scholars call Pontiac’s Uprising, but what Widder and historian Michael A. McDonnell assert should be rethought of as the Second Anglo-Indian War.17 The causes of the conflict were, of course, manifold, but they can largely be interpreted as deriving from irreconcilable discrepancies between Native and newcomer economic philosophies. The Anishinaabe hunting economy was irreversibly transformed as their Homeland became more distinguished as a borderland (discussed in greater detail in the next section), and Aboriginal groups across the Great Lakes depended upon conciliatory European gift-giving for subsistence and survival more than ever. The French government understood both the economic 16 Laura Peers, Playing Ourselves: Interpreting Native Histories at Historic Reconstructions (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2007), 21-23, 98-104. 17 “While the first was primarily an attempt to rebalance power between the English and the French,” says McDonnell, “the second conflict aimed to rebalance power between Native Americans and the English.” See McDonnell, Masters of Empire, 216. 8 and cultural significance of gift-giving among Anishinaabeg, so they funded the practice to ensure strong diplomatic alliances. British administrators, in contrast, were not as exuberant. One of governor general Jeffery Amherst’s first actions as overseer of Great Britain’s new North American domain was urging Indian Department officials to drastically curtail the number of gifts they allocated.18 This blatant affront to Anishinaabe economic agency left violent action as their only perceived means of overcoming the discrimination of their indignant Euro-American trading partners. On June 2, 1763, between 400 and 600 local Ojibwe and visiting Sauk met outside Fort Michilimackinac’s southern gate for a game of baggataway. Several hours into the competition, an Ojibwe player sliced the ball toward the feet of the fort’s commanding officer. Dozens of Ojibwe dashed toward it, but instead of continuing the athletic contest they cast down their sticks and initiated a full-scale siege of the stronghold. Some warriors seized the bewildered commandant while others made their way to spectating Ojibwe women who had draped themselves in thick wool blankets. Beneath the blankets, the women concealed knives, tomahawks, and other weapons that they quickly distributed to their male counterparts. From his window, Henry witnessed the next phase of the subterfuge. He said he heard a “noise of general confusion” and before long, “a crowd of Indians [was] within the fort furiously cutting down and scalping every Englishman they found.”19 In correspondence with his superiors shortly after the attack, the commanding officer downplayed British culpability in the outbreak of violence. Widder’s monograph offers a powerful corrective to past examinations of military activity at Michilimackinac by centering the agency of Indigenous peoples. “Indians would 18 Keith R. Widder, Beyond Pontiac’s Shadow: Michilimackinac and the Anglo-Indian War of 1763 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 104-05. 19 Armour, ed., Attack at Michilimackinac 1763, 49. 9 continue to wield military and economic power throughout the Michilimackinac borderland,” Widder emphasizes, adding that Indigenous dominance was “a reality that the British came to acknowledge only after having to relearn it over and over again.”20 It was only through ongoing action that they solidified this point.21 In doing so, Widder’s book aligns with work of scholars like Gregory Evans Dowd whose pioneering text on nativism upholds that Indigenous unity drew from a diverse series of customs to coalesce into an identity that could counter Euro-American incursion.22 It also takes seriously the complexities of Anishinaabe leadership as illuminated in the transformative work of Cary Miller.23 Even with the impressive interventions Beyond Pontiac’s Shadow makes, room still exists to reexamine and reinterpret episodes like the Second Anglo-Indian War. Obviously, to storm the British stronghold and smuggle in the implements of war so pronounced in Henry’s narrative, women’s agency was essential. They should be re-emphasized as crucial agents in a form of direct labor action. It was not Indigenous men’s labor related to trapping alone that made the fur trade possible, after all. If they lent their physical labor to the production of furs, historians must acknowledge the agency of women in the shared Indigenous struggle against Euro-American efforts to extract extra value from their labor. Beyond its significance as a labor struggle, the attack on Fort Michilimackinac had geopolitical ramifications. The most crucial was the Proclamation of 1763, which reaffirmed Native American rights to their Homeland west of the Appalachian Mountains free from colonial 20 Widder, Beyond Pontiac’s Shadow, xviii. 21 A new generation of historians is further complicating perceptions of Michilimackinac as a space dominated by Euro-American powers. For example, John William Nelson’s illuminating case study of Anishinaabe headman Sigenauk highlights how Indigenous power could grow amid revolutionary tensions in North America. See John William Nelson, “Sigenauk’s War of Independence: Anishinaabe Resurgence and the Making of Indigenous Authority in the Borderlands of Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 78, no. 4 (2021), 653-86. 22 Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), xxii. 23 Miller, Ogimaag, 5-6. 10 incursion. This enraged British colonists, setting the stage for their fight for independence. Again, despite its meager dimensions, disruptions rippling from Mackinac Island grew into a tsunami that washed away Great Britain. Although the Anishinaabe women at the center of this study would not have been alive to witness this event, their forebears would have been. They would have also heard stories about it passed down orally if they did not absorb it through the osmosis from their neighbors on Mackinac Island. Consequently, Anishinaabe women would have examples, even if their names were obscured, of other women putting their weight behind a labor struggle with transnational significance a lesson they could pass onto their children. Even with all this considered, there remains much about the Indigenous history of the space to explore. Despite acknowledgement that Michilimackinac’s position opened connections to other Indigenous communities, few studies have fully grappled with the connections that most assuredly existed. Fully understanding how Greater Mackinac arose as a meaningful political unit and a socially and culturally nebulous space that could offer unique opportunities for Anishinaabe women and their mixed-ancestry kin is an objective of “Racializing Indigenous Society.” It also answers several calls for new scholarship. Historian Jon K. Lauck, for example, asserts that importance in the Old Northwest can be found in how it “helps explain the course of foundational events in North America” as well as “the political and social foundations of the American republic.”24 Hence, “Racializing Indigenous Society” aligns with a growing body of texts taking the Old Northwest more seriously as an influential region in United States history which, nevertheless, beg for greater Indigenous representation. Additionally, it picks up batons that scholars Daniel K. Richter and Karen J. Travers are passing. The former implores greater reorientation of modern views of the past from an Indigenous point of view while the latter 24 Jon K. Lauck, The Lost Region: Toward a Revival of Midwestern History (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013), 14. 11 highlights the paucity of studies on the emergence of mixed-ancestry people across the Great Lakes.25 Pioneering work certainly exists that points to Michilimackinac as a site worthy of greater scholastic scrutiny. Using genealogical data from far-reaching fur trade communities, Jaqueline Peterson has illustrated how Native American women and their mixed-ancestry progeny were ubiquitous facets of the colonial cultural landscape. Between 1765 and 1838, over 50% of marriages recorded at Michilimackinac were between Euro-Americans and people of mixed ancestry with nearly 15% more between Euro-Americans and Native Americans.26 Women of Indigenous ancestry did not have to (and did not) remain on the fringes of European settlements in the Great Lakes during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Hence, the children of these unions could navigate nebulous multicultural middle ground where European men and women could not even tread. Figure ii: Red Sky’s Migration Chart27 Long before European contact, Mackinac Island was a preeminent Anishinaabe religious site. Oral tradition upholds that the straits where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron converge 25 Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 8; Karen J. Travers, “The Drummond Island Voyageurs and the Search for Great Lakes Métis Identity,” in The Long Journey of a Forgotten People: Métis Identities and Family Histories, eds. Ute Lischke and David T. McNab (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007), 220. 26 Jacqueline Peterson, “Prelude to Red River: A Social Portrait of the Great Lakes Métis,” Ethnohistory 25, no. 1 (1978), 50; and Jacqueline Peterson, “Many Roads to Red River: Métis Genesis in the Great Lakes Region, 1680- 1815,” in The New Peoples: Being and Becoming Métis in North America, eds. Jacqueline Peterson and Jennifer S.H. Brown (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001), 53. 27 Charles E. Cleland, Rites of Conquest: The History and Culture of Michigan’s Native Americans (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 9. 12 served as the point from which the Anishinaabe world emerged, where life sprung anew after an apocalyptic flood washed away the world that came before it.28 Mackinac Island was also a site along the primeval Anishinaabe migration pathway. Chronicled in oral history and illustrated on artifacts such as the birch bark scroll of Red Sky (Figure ii), Anishinaabe tradition upholds that the ancestors of the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi migrated from the eastern seaboard of North America through the Great Lakes, pausing at points in their journey that modern Anishinaabeg would hold with reverence and Euro-Americans would recognize as demanding their attention. Along with Mackinac Island were Baawitigong and an assortment of communities like Mooningwanekaaning that would form around Chequamegon Bay. Michilimackinac’s importance is especially perceptible when viewed alongside the first failed attempt to transform Detroit into a colonial capital. French imperial officials initially hoped to hold dominion over the vast swaths of territory around the Great Lakes. However, the strength of the region’s Indigenous inhabitants quashed such grandiose ambitions. A prime example illustrating the comparatively weak degree of French influence in the Great Lakes can be found in Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac’s disastrous attempt to realign the region’s balance of power toward Detroit. Much like at the Straits of Mackinac, an Indigenous presence existed around Detroit (or le détroit), the straits connecting Lake Huron and Lake Erie, long before European contact. Cadillac, however, attempted to resettle an assortment of Aboriginal groups around his newly constructed fort, leading the community there to quickly become what historian Richard White called the “most volatile, regional bloc” in the Great Lakes region.29 Cadillac failed to factor long-standing intertribal animosities into his designs. Thus, when Fox warriors he 28 Cleland, Rites of Conquest, 3-4, 35. 29 White, The Middle Ground, 146. 13 invited attacked bands of Ojibwe from Lake Superior in the early 1700s, the Odawa rushed to seek retribution for their allies.30 The Fox Wars that erupted shortly after Detroit’s founding led to what historian Brett Rushforth has described as a “bloody contest [that] exacted a costly toll from the Foxes.”31 Over a span of just two decades, the Ojibwe decimated the Fox population, reducing it to only a few hundred and enmeshing them into Indigenous enslavement practices. The greatest differences between late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Detroit and Michilimackinac was that the latter’s Indigenous community arose organically in a familiar space of strategic and cosmological significance while the former’s was stitched together. Thus, Michilimackinac remained an epicenter of Indigenous influence and flourished as a fur trading nexus from 1670 through the 1700s.32 Michilimackinac was no patchwork capital, so it did not face as much disruption as other spaces within an otherwise erratic geopolitical landscape.33 Anishinaabe historian Michael Witgen’s An Infinity of Nations offers a refined lens through which to view Michilimackinac. He argues, “In order for there to be a middle ground there must have been a Native New World that developed alongside the Atlantic New World.”34 Thus, one of the most transformative aspects of this monograph is that it situates the Anishinaabeg into a much broader geographic arena. Even though White asserts that the middle ground was regionally restrictive, Anishinaabewaki was not isolated from the rest of the world. 30 Brett Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 201. 31 Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance, 220. 32 McDonnell, Masters of Empire, 51. 33 This is not to suggest that Detroit was bereft of Indigenous power. Indeed, significant trade networks emerged at Detroit in the eighteenth century largely through the labor of Indigenous women. See Karen L. Marrero, Detroit’s Hidden Channels: The Power of French-Indigenous Families in the Eighteenth Century (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2020). 34 Michael Witgen, An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 114. 14 Through the fur trade especially, the Anishinaabe contended with forces stretching far across the Atlantic Ocean, and if European traders desired American furs they had to operate within the parameters of Anishinaabe social structures.35 A vast web of rivers and inland seas connected the Great Lakes to the ocean that Euro-Americans claimed as their sole domain. Therefore, it is only logical that more studies should emerge analyzing how Anishinaabe agency impacted the world beyond Anishinaabewaki. The most ambitious analysis of Michilimackinac – and the one most foundational to this dissertation – can be found in McDonnell’s monograph Masters of Empire. McDonnell attests that Michilimackinac’s story can be reinterpreted as a “Native-driven story” that “emphasizes strength and expansion in the midst of empire.”36 He approaches this through the entry point of Charles Langlade, a mixed-ancestry military man who parlayed the connections he accrued through his Odawa mother’s kinship network into battlefield success and aptitude in the fur trade. II. Space, Race, and Gender For most Native American and Indigenous Studies scholars as well as historians of the United States and Canada, descriptions of Greater Mackinac will no doubt conjure associations with the “middle ground” that historian Richard White explores in his titular landmark monograph. For this reason, it is crucial to consider White’s arguments that continue to loom large in this region’s history, how other scholars have complicated those arguments, and how this study will contribute to a richer understanding of a consequential space. In The Middle Ground, White contends that native-newcomer negotiations in the eighteenth-century Great Lakes region, along with the accommodating compromises they produced, irreparably ruptured Indigenous 35 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 194. 36 McDonnell, Masters of Empire, 15. 15 communities across the Great Lakes. He solemnly concludes that Great Lakes tribal agency began to irreversibly atrophy after the War of 1812.37 Although French incursion disrupted Indigenous lives, fracturing some peoples and leading to their absorption into new villages, subsequent scholarship has contested the extent to which the resulting “middle ground” found both Euro-Americans and Native Americans in vulnerable states.38 Many scholars, in fact, question whether a “middle ground” represents the most appropriate descriptor for areas where Indigenous peoples greatly outnumbered their Euro- American counterparts and imperial forces from the other side of the Atlantic lacked the capacity to force compliance from Aboriginal groups. Going by the definition of borderland that historians Jeremy Adleman and Stephen Aron provide – a “contested boundaries between colonial domains” – the late eighteenth century saw Greater Mackinac turn into a quintessential example.39 When considering this region from a solely Euro-American perspective, its significance diminished throughout the nineteenth century as the political center of gravity in what Americans reclassified as the Northwest Territory shifted to larger population centers such as Detroit. If taking the advice of Pekka Hämäläinen and Samuel Truett to “link borderlands to European and indigenous power, envision new cores, and embrace more nuanced definitions of power,” though, Greater Mackinac most assuredly remained significant.40 37 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 519. It is because of the temporal boundaries of White’s study that subsequent historical analysis has deemed the term inappropriate for the era after 1815. Historian Alan Taylor, for instance, substitutes “divided” for “middle” because his work “attends to the later efforts by natives to cope with an invasion of settlers, coming in great and growing numbers to divide the land into farms, reservations, and nations.” See Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), 11. 38 White, The Middle Ground, 19. 39 Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (1999), 816. 40 Pekka Hämäläinen and Samuel Truett, “On Borderlands,” Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (2011), 352. 16 Witgen also critiques how Adleman and Aron characterize the Great Lakes region as a borderland. The reason their definition is so problematic, Witgen argues, is because “Indian peoples are empowered and autonomous only so long as they have rival European colonial powers to exploit […] According to this logic, without competing colonial powers Native peoples become politically irrelevant."41 In this quotation, Witgen calls on Native Americanists to not solely assess how Anishinaabeg exploited imperial competition. In doing so, historians could risk misrepresenting the Great Lakes region as a realm Euro-Americans could overtake at any time. Nevertheless, the principal continuity binding works from White to Witgen is that for some time (the period being contested), the Old Northwest was beyond absolute European mastery. Many historians have begun to focus on Native Americans within the context of borderlands studies as national actors. In her article “Geographies of Power,” Juliana Barr argues that aboriginal groups in early America demarcated land claims and considered themselves sovereigns of specific swaths of territory, and that “Euro-American maps functioned as geopolitical ‘statements of territorial appropriation’ and erased American Indian geography by replacing American Indian domains with blank spaces of pristine wilderness awaiting colonial development.”42 Likewise, Sami Lakomäki, concentrating on the nineteenth-century Great Lakes, argues that “[e]xamining Shawnee borders underlines the complexity and contingency of the transformation of the Great Lakes country from an intercolonial ‘borderlands’ into the ‘bordered lands’ of the emerging nation-states during the early nineteenth century.”43 The 41 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 216-17. 42 Juliana Barr, “Geographies of Power: Mapping Indian Borders in the Borderlands of the Early Southwest,” William and Mary Quarterly 68, no. 1 (2011), 6-7. 43 Sami Lakomäki, “‘Our Line’: The Shawnees, the United States, and Competing Borders on the Great Lakes ‘Borderlands,’” 1795-1832,” Journal of the Early Republic 34, no. 4 (2014), 598. 17 Shawnee, in other words, engaged in a process akin to state formation in the sense that they attempted to draw borders at the same time as their U.S. and Canadian counterparts. While McDonnell’s work refocuses Mackinac Island and Waganawkezee into sites where Anishinaabe people could navigate the interests of Euro-American empires, the scholarship of Karl Hele adds a compelling transnational angle in his work on Baawitigong.44 A process that it leaves understudied is that of racializing Indigenous peoples. As its title suggests, “Racializing Indigenous Society” will analyze the process of state formation to show how Americans came to codify Native Americans as racialized “others,” and how Native Americans not only responded to the types of racial categories being imposed upon them but how they often subverted racialized stereotypes to exert agency and promote authority around Michilimackinac and beyond. As a study of state formation, “Racializing Indigenous Society” engages with historian Kathleen DuVal and her assertion that “Contrary to assumptions that only Europeans drew borders, Indians across the continent defined, defended, and disputed geographic and metaphoric borders long before Europeans arrived.”45 It also compliments and expands the scope of the work of historian Bethel Saler, who asserts that more intimate strategies of imposing hegemony such as “reform of local economies, religious conversion by missionaries, and the regulation of marriage and family were all foundational aspects of state formation in and of themselves.”46 In other words, state formation carried a cultural component. Along with erecting the infrastructure of formal institutions and mechanism of governance, state formation also consisted of inventing categories for who to include and who to exclude. It also contends 44 Karl Hele, “The Anishinaabeg and Métis in the Sault Ste. Marie Borderlands: Confronting a Line Drawn Upon the Water,” in Lines Drawn Upon the Water: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands, ed. Karl Hele (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008), 76-77. 45 Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 28. 46 Bethel Saler, The Settlers’ Empire: Colonialism and State Formation in America’s Old Northwest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 8. 18 with Ojibwe historian Erik M. Redix, who identifies Mooningwanekaaning as a preeminently important site.47 Finally, in conceptualizing the place of Anishinaabe peoples in American state formation, this project also reinforces historian Claudio Saunt’s argument that expulsion from their Homelands was “far from inevitable.”48 In Unworthy Republic, Saunt makes the case that the methods and scale of the exterminationist project of Indian Removal made it unprecedented in world history.49 There certainly exist some work addressing this subject matter, examining how Euro- Americans formulated racial categories and confronted the contingency of race in contested spaces. In Native American Whalemen and the World historian Nancy Shoemaker scrutinizes the spatial dimensions of American Indian racial formation. In this work, Shoemaker “explores the variable configurations of race that nineteenth-century New England whalemen encountered, the uneven and often contrary application of racial assertions in different settings, and the constant disjunctions between racial ideas and lived experiences.”50 Individuals aboard whaling ships needed to rely on each other for the whole crew to succeed, so according to Shoemaker, as long as Indigenous crewmembers demonstrated aptitude in hunting whales, they could either stand as equals or rise to become superiors of their white counterparts. Overall, “[r]ank was so crucial, there was no room for race to operate simultaneously as an alternative, competing social hierarchy.”51 In the spatial context of whaling ships, then, Native Americans could embrace an Indigenous racial identity without confronting much conflict. Conversely, on the American 47 Erik M. Redix, The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014), 3. 48 Claudio Saunt, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2020), xviii. 49 Saunt, Unworthy Republic, xv. 50 Nancy Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World: Indigenous Encounters and the Contingency of Race (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 6. 51 Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World, 75-76. 19 mainland, nineteenth-century New Englanders justified relocating Native Americans to reservations by characterizing them as “inept and childlike,” implying that they lacked a certain degree of “civilization.”52 “Racializing Indigenous Society” raises the question of how Anishinaabeg in Greater Mackinac maintained authority in the nineteenth century even as a perceived lack of “civilization” placed them in a less advantageous racial category from the perspective of their Euro-American neighbors. In what ways did the Anishinaabeg transgress racial boundaries? How did people of mixed Indigenous and non-Indigenous descent come to conceptualize their racial identities? By addressing the latter question, this dissertation also engages with whiteness studies, a field pioneered by such scholars as David R. Roediger and Matthew Frye Jacobson and complemented by Shoemaker. A Strange Likeness explores how the human body transformed from a vector that Native Americans and Euro-Americans could use to “circumnavigate their more obscure and difficult cultural differences” to one which demarcated differences.53 By the nineteenth century, Roediger notes how “Native Americans served poorly as foils against which whites could measure themselves as workers.”54 Yet Roediger’s work emphasizes the degree to which white workers viewed Native Americans as imbued with far too much independence whereas this study will analyze how fear of dependence factored into white Americans distinguishing themselves from American Indians. Conflict emerged between white workers and people of other skin colors because, as Roediger contends building upon the framework of W.E.B. Du Bois, the privileges whiteness conferred acted as a benefit to wage labor.55 Jacobson 52 Shoemaker, Native American Whalemen and the World, 192. 53 Nancy Shoemaker, A Strange Likeness: Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 125-40. 54 David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, 3rd ed. (London: Verso, 2007), 21. 55 Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness, 13. 20 identified that “republicanism would favor or exclude certain peoples on the basis of their ‘fitness for self-government,’ as the phrase went, and some questionable peoples would win inclusion based upon an alchemic reaction attending Euro-American contact with peoples of color.”56 Expansion also became a cornerstone to defining race.57 New studies could more explicitly follow the trajectory that scholars such as Van Kirk, Jacqueline Peterson, and Jennifer S.H. Brown pioneered in the 1980s by exploring the intersection between American Indian and Indigenous Studies and gender history, a trajectory that historians such as Susan Sleeper-Smith and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy have held strong to the present day. During the earliest phase of contact between Euro-Americans and Native Americans in the Great Lakes Borderlands, the most enterprising Euro-Americans recognized right away that navigating Anishinaabe kinship networks that could link individuals of diverse national origins to bonds of mutual obligation was essential to gaining business and maintaining influence. In her foundational monograph Many Tender Ties, Sylvia Van Kirk explains how common it was for Euro-American men and Native American women to enter a marriage à la façon du pays, or “marriage in the custom of the country.”58 Their children could then serve as invaluable agents of commerce because they could navigate the uncertain and often tumultuous racial boundaries that characterized their Homelands. Van Kirk argues that marriages à la façon du pays allowed Euro-American fur traders to be initiated into Aboriginal kinship networks where women held primacy. It was through Native women that men made their profitable business partnerships, and women – particularly the 56 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 17. 57 Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 215-19. 58 Sylvia Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties: Women in Fur-Trade Society, 1670-1870 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 28-29. 21 mixed-ancestry children of interracial unions – acted as intercultural intermediaries bridging the divide of two distinct continents.59 Scholars in a broad array of fields have now widely acknowledged how the labor women put into preparing furs for market made commercial exchanges with Euro-Americans possible, myriad works of scholarship demonstrating “Indian women playing an active role in the promotion of the material and, to some extent, cultural change brought about by the fur trade.”60 Along with preparing furs, women’s labor also extended into well-respected rights over maple sugar bushes as well as collective control over wild rice patches that formed a staple of the Anishinaabe diet. Van Kirk asserts, “Fur-trade society was not static and the shifting influence of its dual cultural roots was mirrored in the experience of successive generations of mixed-blood girls.”61 Sleeper-Smith’s Indian Women and French Men both complements and complicates earlier literature on Native Americans in the Great Lakes. She does not altogether disregard the concept of space playing a role in multicultural mediation but insists that locations beyond borders were far from the only elements shaping dynamics of power between the manifold groups invested in fur trade society. Native American women operated as cross-cultural agents both within national boundaries and inside instructions traditionally deemed patriarchal. Sleeper- Smith counters that Indigenous peoples, especially women, continued to exert autonomy after the War of 1812 and well into the nineteenth century.62 59 For more examples of foundational scholarship centering mixed-ancestry people, see Jennifer S.H. Brown, Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980); and Gary Clayton Anderson, Kinsmen of Another Kind: Dakota-White Relations in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1650-1862 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984). 60 Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties, 75. 61 Van Kirk, Many Tender Ties, 5. 62 For more examples of scholarship in the vein, see Brenda J. Child, Holding Our World Together: Ojibwe Women and the Survival of Community (New York: Penguin Books, 2012); and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy, Great Lakes Creoles: A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie Du Chien, 1750-1860 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 22 III. Inawemaaganag and the National Family Thomas Jefferson “foresaw Americans and their ‘red brethren’ forming a single great family, connected by the most intimate ties of consanguinity.”63 When William Henry Harrison was governor of the Indiana Territory, Jefferson ordered him to do everything in his power to “consolidate our whole country into one nation only.”64 Appropriating the Land that Aboriginal peoples populated in this way would do more than increase the literal dimensions of the fledgling nation. It would expand the metaphorical size of the national family’s home while creating categories of people unwelcome within it. Nevertheless, “Jeffersonian and Jacksonian policy makers were concerned about the expanding mixed-blood population; they were Indians, some were adapting bourgeoise values, and all defended Indian land claims.”65 William Hull warned the Odawa and Ojibwe to disassociate themselves from the British under whom “miseries you have suffered will be a warning to you in future” and accept that they now belonged to an “American Family.”66 Anishinaabeg and Americans viewed relations between human beings in incongruent ways. As Anishinaabe scholar-activist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson asserts, Anishinaabe culture “allowed for strong individual autonomy and freedom, while at the same time the needs of the collective were paramount. There was a belief that good governance and political relationships begin with individuals and how they relate to each other in families.”67 White has 63 Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 51. 64 Thomas Jefferson to William Henry Harrison, February 27, 1803, in TPUS, vol. 7, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter, (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1939), 92. 65 Thomas N. Ingersoll, To Intermix with Our White Brothers: Indian Mixed Bloods in the United States from Earliest Times to the Indian Removals (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 157. 66 William Hull, “Address to the Indians,” August 28, 1809, in MPHC, vol. 8 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1886), 569. 67 Leanne Simpson, “Looking after Gdoo-Naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg Diplomatic and Treaty Relationships,” Wicazo Sa Review 23, no. 2 (2008), 32. 23 argued that the village was the chief organizational structure in Anishinaabe society, yet the doodem was more fundamental. For this reason, Anishinaabeg placed meaning into terms that distinguished between family members and those outside the family. Historian Heidi Bohaker argues that the greatest expression of Anishinaabe kinship can be found in “the idea of shared souls, not shared blood.”68 Witgen asserts that the two major categories that held meaning in Anishinaabe communities included the inawemaagen (relative) and the meyaagizid (foreigner).69 For the first Euro-Americans who stumbled into Anishinaabewaki, learning how to become inawemaaganag was essential. After all, “ally,” “friend,” and other English terms with congenial connotations were absent from the Anishinaabe lexicon.70 According to Sleeper-Smith, “Kinship permutations were endless, and, in this already complex world, a new kinship structure grew out of the marriage of French fur traders to Native women that not only incorporated their mixed ancestry offspring.”71 Although marriages à la façon du pays were by no means casual unions, it would not take long to determine that they alone could not transform a Euro-American meyaagizid into an inawemaagen.72 Accessing an Anishinaabe kinship network required accepting a diverse array of mutual obligations, as reciprocity cemented the foundations of relations between relatives. “People who were related,” Witgen explains, “fed one another, sharing whatever sustenance they had when they met.” This emphasis on food should not be construed as too rudimentary, as scholarship analyzing how “eatables shaped social relations and political alignments” both among and 68 Heidi Bohaker, Doodem and Council Fire: Anishinaabe Governance through Alliance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), 53. 69 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 31. 70 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 377. 71 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 43. 72 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 168. 24 between Native Americans and Euro-Americans has greatly expanded.73 Likewise, inawemaaganag agreed to support each other in a broad array of affairs ranging from lucrative economic exchanges to perilous military conflicts. The primacy Anishinaabe inawemaaganag placed on reciprocity contrasts with the structure of what social theorist Patricia Hill Collins calls the U.S. “national family.” She argues that American family units have traditionally served a “dual function as an ideological construction and as a fundamental principle of social organization.”74 In other words, the nation has relied upon family units from its inception to both introduce and reinforce features that it uses to manage its inhabitants. Rigid hierarchy is one such feature which is normalized within family units through the enforcement of deference based on seniority. Collins attests that while “[i]deas such as these seem to be benign and fair notions for creating an equitable, normal authority structure,” they can easily become oppressive when uncritically mapped onto other social structures.75 This is certainly not to suggest that Anishinaabe communities lacked hierarchies or that they placed no value on hereditary lineages. On the contrary, patrilineal clans represented by doodemag were crucial to Anishinaabe governance. Evidence exists suggesting that some Anishinaabe men could force women from their families into marriages with Euro-American men for their own gain, yet there is just as much competing evidence showcasing how Anishinaabe could actively identify Euro-American men as parties (either knowing or unknowing) to their persistence. In contrast, Collins asserts that the United States has traditionally upheld the notion that “real” families must be “linked by blood.” Within the “national family,” this has meant that 73 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 275. 74 Patricia Hill Collins, “It’s All in the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation,” Hypatia 13, no. 3 (1998), 63. 75 Patricia Hill Collins, “Like One of the Family: Race, Ethnicity, and the Paradox of US National Identity,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 24, no. 1 (2001), 13. 25 “those lacking biological similarities became defined as family outsiders.”76 As settler colonial studies pioneer Patrick Wolfe and intersectionality studies authority Evelyn Nakano Glenn remind us, intermarriage emerged as a potential tool for absorbing Native Americans into the “national family.”77 Something that made mixed-ancestry people so threatening to the dominant Euro- American society was that they were intrinsically boundary crossers. They threatened neat, dichotomous (or tripartite) categories that neatly classified and allowed for hierarchal stratification. Historian Ann Laura Stoler further contributes that debates about “mixedness” were supreme “sites of imperial anxieties in colonial contexts.78 Collins provides equally critical analysis of space, arguing that “The multiple meanings attached to the concept of ‘home’ […] speak to its significance within family as a privileged exemplar of intersectionality.”79 Thus, while the national family of the United States may have used the predominantly homogenous and hierarchal structure of individual families as models to support social divisions based on race, it also used the concept of the home to reinforce social ranking on the basis of gender. Furthermore, Collins contends that the concept of the home directly relates to the history of widespread appropriation of Native American Land. She states that from the time of its founding, “the United States pursued a sustained imperialist policy in order to acquire much of the land that defines its current borders. This history of conquest illustrates the significance of property in relations of space, place, and territory.”80 As a colonial 76 Collins, “It’s All in the Family,” 70. 77 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006), 400; Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 248. 78 Ann Laura Stoler, “Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies,” in Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. Ann Laura Stoler (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 28. 79 Collins, “It’s All in the Family,” 67. 80 Collins, “It’s All in the Family,” 68. 26 project, therefore, the acquisition of lands populated by Aboriginal peoples did more than literally increase the dimensions of the United States. It metaphorically augmented the size of the national family’s home, and created categories of people who were not welcome inside it. In Ties That Bind, historian Tiya Miles contends with the evolution of Native American racial identities within two larger national families, both the Cherokee Nation and the United States. Drawing inspiration directly from Collins, she asserts that “the process of family making and the state regulation of family units can illuminate the values and dictates of the communities and nations in which families live.”81 In the Cherokee Nation, there were two serious challenges that prevented Doll, an enslaved African woman, from earning benefits as a member of Shoe Boots’s family. First, she lacked a connection to Cherokee any clan. Clans represented pivotal units of social organization for the Cherokee, and they were structured in a matrilineal manner.82 Therefore, without a connection to a Cherokee matriarch through either birth or adoption, Doll and her children initially had little hope of becoming full citizens in the Cherokee Nation. Additionally, as Shoemaker previously demonstrated, the racial hierarchy that Cherokees devised during eighteenth-century diplomatic and trade negotiations with Euro-Americans placed people of African ancestry at the bottom. Moving into the nineteenth century, Cherokee leaders reinforced this racial hierarchy with legislation formally defining African Americans and American Indians as separate entities.83 These factors coalesced to essentially render Doll, “a satellite to the community: that is, she was recognized but not accepted into the full circle of kinship.”84 This only changed when the Cherokee national family underwent a radical 81 Tiya Miles, Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 3. 82 Miles, Ties That Bind, 50-51. 83 Miles, Ties That Bind, 110. 84 Miles, Ties That Bind, 57. 27 restructuring in the nineteenth century. The Cherokee Nation’s adoption of a constitutional form of government formally subordinated Cherokee women who had previously held varying degrees of political power through their preeminence positions in kinship networks. Ironically, Cherokee women’s diminishing prominence provided Shoe Boots with the opportunity he needed to claim citizenship for his Afro-Cherokee progeny, enveloping them into his own clan.85 Only through alterations to this Indigenous national family could these multiracial children successfully claim Native American identities. Indigenous women who navigated between Native American and Euro-American worlds found themselves in advantageous positions where they could resist the most destructive consequences of American state formation. Having a relative of mixed ancestry opened new avenues for forging advantageous kinship networks because persons of mixed Euro-American and Native American descent could more effectively navigate through and negotiate in Aboriginal spheres of influence. In Empires, Nations, and Families, historian Anne F. Hyde synthesizes research on the Great Lakes with the American West to construct an “updated version of ‘great man’ history.”86 Hyde simply uses the term “great man” history, but it would not be inappropriate to also assert that her book challenges “great white man” history. Indeed, the actors in her work stretch across racial as well as gender boundaries, following their movement and development while traversing the nation in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase and constructing kinship networks with Indigenous peoples therein. The families that Hyde follow provide a valuable vehicle for reinterpreting the nature of American expansion. 85 Miles, Ties That Bind, 127-28. 86 Anne F. Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 21. 28 Among these are a cohort that has revisited the site and used it – along with families who inhabited it – to reveal lessons about grander historical patterns. Justin M. Carroll and Elizabeth Sherburn Demers, meanwhile, have composed compelling studies of the Askin family of Michilimackinac and its relationship to Native American and African American slaveholding across the Great Lakes. Shortly after arriving at Fort Michilimackinac in the 1760s, British subject John Askin purchased an enslaved Native American woman known only as Manette.87 Regrettably, her representation in historical records is largely one of silence, and Askin only manumitted her after she became the mother of his first three children. The eldest offspring, John Askin, Jr., would go on to act as an interpreter who aided Great Britain in its repossession of Mackinac Island during the War of 1812.88 Askin cherished his mixed-ancestry child. This is apparent not only in the fact that he shared his full name with him, but also in how he ensured that the boy would receive the best education British North America could provide.89 One could cynically interpret these efforts as an outgrowth of Askin’s profit-driven ambitions. He undeniably stood to gain from his progeny’s participation in his ventures. However, Askin appeared to look upon his son not as a racially inferior subordinate to exploit, but as a legitimate heir to mentor and a partner with whom to collaborate. Introducing the Askin family is useful in demonstrating how British and French colonizers recognized the necessity of navigating Anishinaabe kinship networks or the networks of other Lakes Indians.90 87 Elizabeth Sherburn Demers, “Keeping a Store: The Social and Commercial Worlds of John Askin in the Eighteenth-Century Great Lakes, 1763-1796” (PhD diss., East Lansing, Michigan State University, 2010), 397-98. 88 Justin M. Carroll, The Merchant John Askin: Furs and Empire at British Michilimackinac (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017), 144-45. 89 Carroll, The Merchant John Askin, 90. 90 For further evidence of the viability of utilizing family history as an inroads to greater understanding of broader topics, see Theresa Schenck, “The Cadottes: Five Generations of Fur Traders on Lake Superior,” in The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991, ed. Jennifer S.H. Brown, W.J. Eccles, and Donald P. Heldman (East Lansing: Michigan State University 29 IV. Chapter Overview “Racializing Indigenous Society” is organized thematically and in rough chronological order between 1780 and 1888. The reasoning behind these temporal bounds is that the historical developments this dissertation traces occurred within the lifetimes of the study’s four main subjects: Magdelaine La Framboise, Agatha Biddle, Jane Schoolcraft, and Susan Davenport. La Framboise was born earliest among the four in 1780 while Davenport lived the longest until 1888. The first chapter overviews the lives of these four cross-cultural intermediaries while centering on the theme of property acquisition. It contends that during the first few decades of the nineteenth century, race had yet to meaningfully factor into the interpersonal lives of the La Framboise, Biddle, Schoolcraft, and Davenport families. In Greater Mackinac, Indigenous people could capture positions of authority among white newcomers, and maintaining property helped them hold onto these positions as white incursion into their Homelands increased. For Magdelaine and Agatha, being widowed permitted opportunities to control their own estates and uphold permanent bases for their families that Euro-American laws could not disturb. Jane and Susan, meanwhile, acquired persistent land bases through their Euro-American partners that secured space for their kin. The second chapter contends with Land cession treaties that Indigenous nations signed with the United States between 1795 and 1855. Of these, the 1836 Treaty of Washington was the most consequential for the amount of territory at stake in the document and its impact on race relations in Indian Country. As the chapter will illustrate, the language white Americans used to refer to mixed-ancestry people began to change in the 1830s, becoming increasingly racialized Press, 1994), 189-98; and Robert Silbernagel, The Cadottes: A Fur Trade Family on Lake Superior (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2020). 30 and raising new challenges for the progeny of Greater Mackinac’s cross-cultural intermediaries. That said, the chapter also argues that Anishinaabe women remained able to influence their male counterparts during treaty negotiations, and a broader view of the nineteenth-century treating- making process can reveal a great deal about the extent of their power. The third chapter analyzes a period conterminous with the second chapter, and it delves into new survival strategies that the children of Greater Mackinac’s cross-cultural intermediaries adopted as the U.S. government sought to codify them as racialized “others.” It explains why Lakes Indians did not unify into a single polity under a single flag in the mid-nineteenth century and instead upheld a decentralized leadership structure even as the U.S. etched itself deeper into the landscape of Indian Country. Furthermore, it argues that Euro-American forms of political engagement such as petitioning and voting could prove effective in combating the most deleterious effects of racialization. Electoral engagement throughout the Old Northwest, in fact, was an arena in which Indigenous voices could hold particular sway. The fourth chapter centers on the theme of labor, both physical and intellectual. It asserts that even as the profitability of the fur trade waned in Greater Mackinac, mixed-ancestry people secured effective means of improving their material conditions in the 1840s and 1850s. For Joseph La Framboise, son of Magdelaine La Framboise, guiding white visitors into portions of the Great Lakes Borderlands that remain contested provided for a prosperous life and sustained connections with Anishinaabe and Dakota kin. Members of the Davenport and Schoolcraft families, meanwhile, embraced religious vocations that permitted them to persist in speaking and propagating their ancestral languages. The fifth and final chapter brings the scions of Greater Mackinac into the postbellum United States. It addresses new challenges that mixed-ancestry people faced, including the 31 emergence of scientific racism, deportations to unfamiliar territory, and the commercialization of Indigeneity. Although this period represented an especially trying time for the La Framboise, Biddle, Schoolcraft, and Davenport families, the chapter illustrates how they continued to maintain connections to their progenitors. A tightening grip on Greater Mackinac by American institutions did not represent an absolute stranglehold, this chapter argues. Rather, mixed- ancestry peoples adeptly prepared to leave legacies that would persist long after their passings. V. Terminology When it comes to terminology referring to Indigenous peoples living in North America, there is no universal consensus. At public speaking engagements, the author has often heard Eric Hemenway, the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians’ Director of Repatriations, Archives and Records, relate that if he were to ask 100 Native Americans how they self-identify as human beings, he would likely receive 100 different answers. This study, therefore, strives to employ language that will be most respectful to its subjects as well as the least confusing to its audience. As political scientist Kevin Bruyneel underscores, “The words Indian and American Indian, like Native American, aboriginal, and indigenous, emerged as a product of a co- constitutive relationship with terms such as colonizers, settler, and American.”91 The principle historical agents with whom this study engages are Anishinaabe (or Anishinaabeg in plural form). This can be translated to mean “first” or “original” human being(s) and will be the term the author employs most often when referring to the progenitors of Magdelaine La Framboise, Agatha Biddle, Jane Schoolcraft, and Susan Davenport as well as their Indigenous kin who resided throughout Greater Mackinac. Anishinaabe is a collective term that refers to the Odawa (or Ottawa), Ojibwe (or Chippewa), and Boodewaadamii (or 91 Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), ix. 32 Potawatomi) peoples, and the author will also utilize these names when more precise identification is appropriate or when quoting from primary sources.92 On the subject of space, readers will often encounter the words Land(s) and Homeland(s) spelled with capital Ls and Hs, respectively, in association with areas Indigenous people inhabited. This is intentional. As Anishinaabe scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer explains, “In the settler mind, land was property, real estate, capital, or natural resources. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us […] it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold.”93 In other words, Land (as opposed to land) is meant to embody more than just the areas Indigenous people inhabited and tangible goods upon them that Euro- Americans aimed to harvest, mine, or otherwise extract. This study’s conception of land aligns with Sandra Styres’s understanding that “Land expresses a duality that refers not only to place as a physical geographic space but also to the underlying conceptual principles, philosophies, and ontologies of that space.”94 Land (as opposed to land) is meant to carry spiritual and familial connotations. Likewise, Homeland (as opposed to homeland) conveys a sense of relational closeness deserving of proper noun status. This study will also make use of the term Aboriginal. Although a truly transnational analysis is beyond the scope of this study, it is meant to identify elements of state formation that can translate to both sides of the border between the United States and Canada. It will predominantly employ terminology commonly associated with Indigenous people in the United 92 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 13-14. 93 Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013), 17. 94 Sandra Styres, “Literacies of Land: Decolonizing Narratives, Storying, and Literature,” in Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View, eds. Linda Tuhiwai Smith et al. (New York: Routledge, 2019), 27. 33 States (e.g., Native American, American Indian), but seeks to be thoughtful to First Nations peoples as well. The author has also found utility for the term “Lakes Indians” that historian David Andrew Nichols employs to refer to “Native American peoples of the six American states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin) located south and west of Lakes Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior, and of those parts of Ontario situated north and east of Lakes Huron, Ontario, and Superior.”95 This term is useful for referring to the collective actions of Indigenous groups in Anishinaabewaki composed of more than Anishinaabeg. Finally, this study will avoid the use of métis outside of quotations from other authors. This is to avoid confusion between the mixed-ancestry subjects of this study, whose Aboriginal forbearers could have originated on both sides of U.S.-Canada border, and the Métis (again, note the capital M), who emerged as a distinct racial and political unit in Canada. Travers describes métis people in the Great Lakes region as “a group that historically can be defined as a people with a distinct yet shared culture, history, and way of life.”96 “Racializing Indigenous Society” does not seek to pinpoint the emergence of an exceptional population within Greater Mackinac who conceived of themselves as ethnically separate from their forebears. By prioritizing the use of terms such as mixed-ancestry and people of mixed descent, this study aligns with the understanding of scholars such as Tanis C. Thorne, who seek to avoid confusion with a distinct Canadian political unit.97 In contemporary evaluations of her own body of scholarship, Peterson 95 David Andrew Nichols, Peoples of the Inland Sea: Native Americans and Newcomers in the Great Lakes Region, 1600-1870 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2018), 9. 96 Travers, “The Drummond Island Voyageurs and the Search for Great Lakes Métis Identity,” 222. 97 Tanis C. Thorne, The Many Hands of My Relations: French and Indians on the Lower Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996), 11-12. 34 concurs with this approach, identifying métis as a term that scholars began to adopt in the 1980s to pinpoint similar ethnogenic phenomena that shared similarities with Red River.98 98 Jacqueline Peterson, “Red River Redux: Métis Ethnogenesis and the Great Lakes Region,” in Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility, and History, eds. Nicole St-Onge et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012), 26. Also see Kerry A. Trask, “Settlement in a Half-Savage Land: Life and Loss in the Metis Community of La Baye,” Michigan Historical Review 15, no. 1 (1989), 1-27. 35 CHAPTER ONE: INTERMEDIARY LIVES IN GREATER MACKINAC: MAGDELAINE LA FRAMBOISE, AGATHA BIDDLE, JANE SCHOOLCRAFT, AND SUSAN DAVENPORT In 1817, the rays of summer sun that vanquished the last remnants of ice from the Straits of Mackinac ushered in more than just safe passage for an annual procession of birch bark canoes packed with peltry, trade goods, and Canadian voyageurs. They also brought a jubilant mood to Mackinac Island where Capt. Benjamin K. Pierce was awaiting the arrival of his bride, Josette La Framboise. Capt. Pierce, commanding officer of the local U.S. Army garrison (and brother of future president Franklin Pierce), had already joined Josette in matrimony in a modest civil ceremony on April 2, 1816, but the two now prepared for a livelier celebration to reaffirm their vows.99 Their second wedding took place within the grandest home on Mackinac Island, a two-story dwelling in the heart of the fur trading community that employed the energies of several servants to maintain. This was not the home of an American trader, though. On the contrary, it belonged to Elizabeth Bertrand Mitchell, a woman of French and Ojibwe descent renowned for her “exceptional business faculties.”100 Alongside Elizabeth sat another “shrewd woman of business” adorned in what one contemporary described as “full Indian costume.”101 She was Magdelaine Marcot La Framboise, Elizabeth’s protégé and the mother of the bride who proudly accentuated her own Anishinaabe ancestry. Based on his new mother-in-law’s attire alone, Capt. Pierce surely knew that he had married a young woman who many white acquaintances in his home state of New Hampshire 99 Keith R. Widder, “Magdelaine Laframboise: The First Lady of Mackinac Island,” Mackinac History 4, no. 1 (2007), 6; Porter, The Soldiers of Fort Mackinac, 23. 100 Elizabeth Thérèse Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1898), 37. 101 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 41; Margaret Fuller, Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1844), 250. 36 would have dismissively described as a “half-breed.” Nevertheless, he did not seem to mind. Peripheral spaces like Mackinac Island afforded Native Americans and their mixed-ancestry kin protections from Euro-Americans’ increasingly aggressive efforts to recast them as racialized “others” and marginalize them throughout the nineteenth century. In Greater Mackinac, Anishinaabe women were especially well-equipped to resist the often-violent process of racialization that went hand in hand with the settler-colonial project of American state formation. On the furthest outskirts of the fledgling United States, they could weave between worlds, acting as cross-cultural intermediaries to expand the scope of their own autonomy and authority. Strategies that these cross-cultural intermediaries employed changed over time as Greater Mackinac transitioned from a space where American authorities hesitated to tread into a portion of the Northwest Territory. Historian Peter S. Onuf explains that the 1787 Northwest Ordinance that set forth boundaries for the Northwest Territory and stipulated what qualifications territories needed to meet to become new states established a new paradigm for the Euro-American colonization of North America. He states, “Settlement and economic development would come first, enabling Americans to exploit the vast new opportunities opening to their west while promoting the wealth and power of the entire nation.”102 In other words, the U.S. government largely offloaded the task of carving the Old Northwest into new administrative units onto fortune-seeking white Americans who hoped to amass wealth by moving westward and plundering whatever resources they could seize from Indigenous Homelands along the way. This would ultimately result in the admission of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to the Union. 102 Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), 59. 37 An underexplored strategy that helps explain how Magdelaine La Framboise as well as Agatha Biddle, Jane Schoolcraft, and Susan Davenport could establish enduring legacies for their families amidst the Old Northwest’s partitioning is property acquisition. To some extent, it makes sense how Anishinaabe property acquisition could escape sweeping scholastic scrutiny. Not all nineteenth-century Anishinaabe, after all, embraced this practice wholeheartedly. In an 1850 letter on the subject, Odawa ogimaa Andrew J. Blackbird asked, “what profit have we derived from converting our valuable soil, and beloved native home, into specie?” To this rhetorical question, he responded, “Nothing and worse than nothing.”103 In sharing this perspective, Blackbird expressed unease over the adoption of Euro-American property acquisition practices potentially leading to dispossession. Blackbird’s concerns were most assuredly valid. In his book Theft Is Property!, political theorist Robert Nichols argues that dispossession occurs in two stages. The process is “not (only) about the transfer of property,” he asserts, “but the transformation into property.”104 In other words, American authorities’ ambitions to evict Indigenous peoples from their Homelands hinged on their ability to radically transform relations to those Homelands. Chapter Two will delve much deeper into this topic but suffice it to say for now that Native Americans first needed to possess property in forms that Euro-Americans understood before they could be deprived of it. 103 Andrew J. Blackbird Letter, May 15, 1850, quoted in Lucius V. Bierce Historical Reminiscences of Summit County (Akron, OH: T. and H.G. Canfield, 1854), 156. It is worth noting that Blackbird did not oppose all forms of Euro-American influence in Anishinaabewaki. He was a longtime advocate of Euro-American education, for example, supporting Indian boarding schools and Native American entry to American public and private schools alongside white students. See Theodore J. Karamanski, Blackbird’s Song: Andrew J. Blackbird and the Odawa People (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012), 110-16. 104 Robert Nichols, Theft Is Property!: Dispossession and Critical Theory (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), 31. 38 Thus, at the core of Blackbird’s dread was a belief that adopting proprietary relations to Land would serve as a prelude to removal.105 All that said, some scholars have explored how Anishinaabeg navigated the treacherous terrain of property acquisition to successfully resist removal. Both James M. McClurken and Theodore J. Karamanski elaborate on how Odawa in Northern Michigan funneled cash they collected from treaty annuities into thousands of acres of land purchases between the 1830s and 1850s.106 American officials identified the Odawa objective by the late 1830s, but by then it was too late for them to implement countermeasures.107 While they brutally expelled Indigenous peoples from their Homelands elsewhere in the United States, Northern Michigan Odawa and their mixed-ancestry kin largely endured in areas where they always lived. In summation, property acquisition was a serious and viable survival strategy at least in early nineteenth-century Greater Mackinac. Even then, it remains somewhat understandable why scholars have yet to fully assess the extent to which Native American women could employ this survival strategy, especially if they were married to Euro-American men. Under the doctrine of coverture woven into relations between couples in the United States, married women possessed little to no property rights. Husbands assumed the position of primary legal entities within their families, absorbing ownership of their wives’ possessions and the value of their labor.108 This left married women 105 For more on the relationship between property acquisition and dispossession, see Gregory Ablavsky, Federal Ground: Governing Property and Violence in the First U.S. Territories (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 81-83. 106 James M. McClurken, “Ottawa Adaptive Strategies to Indian Removal,” Michigan Historical Review 12, no. 1 (1986), 47; Theodore J. Karamanski, “State Citizenship as a Tool of Indian Persistence: A Case Study of the Anishinaabeg of Michigan,” Michigan Historical Review 37, no. 1 (2011), 123. 107 Henry R. Schoolcraft to Carey A. Harris, September 30, 1838, NAM M234, Roll 423, 180. 108 Glenn, Unequal Freedom, 70. 39 without legal means to independently amass or move assets, including property.109 Greater Mackinac was unlike other parts of the United States, though. Coverture was not a facet of the marriages à la façon du pays that permeated the region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries because these unions occurred outside Euro-American institutions. Indigenous wives could separate from or completely sever their connections with their husbands.110 Even Euro- American observers who failed to fully grasp the complexities of Indigenous social structures could not help but notice that the “contracts” of marriages in Indian Country “are binding no longer than both parties are willing.”111 Thus, the villages of Mackinac Island, Waganawkezee, Baawitigong, and Mooningwanekaaning afforded women greater flexibility in their unions than areas where American structures were more deeply embedded. Furthermore, Greater Mackinac Anishinaabeg had more time to learn about the intricacies of property acquisition under the U.S. regime before they acted. Native American wives could absorb lessons alongside their Euro-American husbands and determine the most effective methods they had available to carve out spaces from which colonizers would struggle to dislodge them. Magdelaine La Framboise, Agatha Biddle, Jane Schoolcraft, and Susan Davenport followed unique paths. Magdelaine and Agatha amassed their own estates as widows while Jane embraced lessons on Land management from her multicultural parents and Susan learned from her war hero father-in-law. As individuals, these four offer compelling stories that demonstrate how Indigenous women could adapt to practices newcomers introduced and ply 109 Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 11. 110 Child, Holding Our World Together, 9. 111 John McIntosh, The Origin of the North American Indians: With a Faithful Description of Their Manners and Customs, Both Civil and Military, Their Religions, Languages, Dress, and Ornaments (New York: Nafis and Cornish, 1844), 119. 40 them for the sake of their survival. When viewed together, though, the experiences of these women reveal something more. Recall the episode that opened this chapter. While watching her daughter marry an American soldier, La Framboise put her Indigenous ancestry on full display. Past work analyzing Indigenous women in relation to property acquisition has characterized the practice as a component of façade building. Sleeper-Smith, for instance, acknowledges that “[p]ersistence necessitated permanent housing” in early nineteenth-century Indiana.112 Subjects in her study felt that land and home ownership was instrumental to “pass” as white, to avoid the ire of settlers by “hiding in plain view” even as the process of racializing Indigenous peoples was in its infancy.113 Looking just a bit further north, early nineteenth-century Greater Mackinac provides an example of a space where racial passing had yet to become necessary and Anishinaabe women could promulgate the continuity of their culture openly. I. In the Heart of Greater Mackinac: Magdelaine La Framboise (née Marcot) and Mackinac Island, 1780-1846 In the opening decade of the nineteenth century, there would have likely been little upon which William Henry Harrison and Gordon Drummond could concur. These two men held militarily significant positions on opposite sides of a brittle border that an impending war would all but shatter. Yet despite their loyalties to opposing belligerents, they agreed that Michilimackinac was critical to both their countries and the Indigenous people who resided there. Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory that briefly encompassed western portions of Greater Mackinac, shared this belief in correspondence with Secretary of War William Eustis in 1809. “Michilimackinac is of considerable importance,” he stated plainly, adding that if the 112 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 120. 113 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 139-40. For more on “passing” as white, see Allyson Hobbs, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014). 41 United States were ever to clash with Great Britain again, “it will be their first object to furnish the Tribes who espouse their cause [there] with a sufficiency of arms and ammunition to render them independent of a supply from us for several years.”114 Likewise, Drummond, a lieutenant governor of Upper Canada during the War of 1812, identified Michilimackinac as “Key to the Country of the Western Indians.”115 Both men shared paternalistic outlooks on American Indians with Harrison being especially vocal with his view that they were less agents of their own agendas and more instruments of British imperial designs.116 Nevertheless, they were pragmatic enough to recognize how Indigenous power centered on Michilimackinac could tip the scales in contests between them. Into this zone of imperial contestation entered Magdelaine Marcot. Born in 1780, Magdelaine came of age in an Odawa village in the Grand River Valley where as many as 3,000 Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi peoples headquartered every summer along Grand River and its tributaries.117 The Odawa were populated especially densely, and denizens of their villages 114 William Henry Harrison to William Eustis, July 5, 1809, in Governors Messages and Letters: Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison, vol. 1, ed. Logan Esarey (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Commission, 1922), 351-52. 115 Gordon Drummond to Henry Bathurst, August 27, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 25 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1896), 632. 116 When rumors surfaced of Shawnee religious leader Tenskwatawa’s anti-American sermons spreading through the Great Lakes in 1807, Harrison remarked, “I really fear that this said Prophet is an engine set to work by the British for some bad purpose.” He was far from alone in holding this opinion. Future Missouri governor Frederick Bates, for example, wrote to Harrison later that year that in the event of war with Great Britain, “the influence of the agents of that government will be exerted” among all Native Americans. Shortly before the siege of Fort Mackinac, William Hull also warned in a proclamation, “If the barbarous and Savage policy of Great Britain be pursued, and the savages are let loose to murder our Citizens and butcher our women and children, this war will be a war of extermination.” His insinuation that Great Britain could “let loose” Indigenous belligerents undercut the existence of any agency of their own. See William Henry Harrison to Henry Dearborn, July 11, 1807, in Governors Messages and Letters, vol. 1, 223; Frederick Bates to William Henry Harrison, September 16, 1807, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, Miscellaneous Manuscript Collections – Historical Societies: Missouri, APS, Philadelphia, PA; and William Hull, “A Proclamation,” July 13, 1812, in MPHC, vol. 15 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1889), 107. 117 Albert Baxter, “Some Fragments of Beginnings in the Grand River Valley,” in MPHC, vol. 17 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1892), 325-26. 42 cultivated approximately 2,500 acres of crops and orchards where over 3,000 trees bore fruit.118 Despite the richness of the valley’s soil, Magdelaine’s father Jean-Baptiste possessed little aptitude for agriculture, so the French-Canadian capitalized on his Odawa wife’s kinship connections to forge a career for himself in the flourishing fur trade. Unfortunately, this career would prove to be short-lived, as Jean-Baptiste died at the hands of a Native American adversary in 1783.119 Youngest among the Marcot children (see Figure 1.1), Magdelaine returned to the Grand River Valley with her mother and siblings where they were fortunate to find support from her grandfather, Kewinaquot, an Odawa leader of great repute.120 Under the tutelage of Kewinaquot and her mother, Magdelaine learned a multitude of lessons, including how important Michilimackinac would be to her future. Although Magdelaine spent much of her childhood in the Grand River Valley, her family traveled back and forth to Michilimackinac frequently. One of the earliest records of Magdelaine visiting Mackinac Island can be found in an August 1, 1786 entry in the Register of Ste. Anne’s Catholic Church. On that day, the island’s priest baptized six-year-old Magdelaine and her ten-year-old sister, Thérèse, into the religion that would be instrumental to her life and success.121 Equally crucial would be the physical fortitude Magdelaine developed traveling by canoe. She took up a paddle herself, and by all accounts became an expert in navigating the myriad waterways of the Old Northwest’s inland seas.122 118 Helen Hornbeck Tanner, ed., Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 133. 119 John E. McDowell, “Therese Schindler of Mackinac: Upward Mobility in the Great Lakes Fur Trade,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 61, no. 2 (1977-1978), 126-27. 120 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 40. 121 “The Mackinac Register of Baptisms and Interments, 1695-1821,” in WHC, vol. 19, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1910), 86. 122 Emily Macgillivray, “Indigenous Trading Women of the Borderland Great Lakes, 1740 to 1845” (PhD diss., Ann Arbor, University of Michigan, 2017), 261. 43 Figure 1.1: Magdelaine La Framboise Genealogy After coming of age among her Anishinaabe relatives, Magdelaine married French- Canadian fur trader Joseph La Framboise in 1796. Their union was then sanctified in a Catholic ceremony on July 11, 1804.123 Joseph’s family held business connections in Montreal and several outposts across the Old Northwest, but just as important was the adroitness he displayed in stocking goods to trade with Aboriginal customers. Nineteenth-century historian Lyman Copeland Draper noted that Joseph routinely carried “Mackinaw blankets, ammunition, cheap and coarse calicoes, cloths, tobacco, pipes, knives, awls, needles and vermillion paint.”124 While this list suggests that no exceptional items sat alongside Joseph’s wares, it demonstrates that he 123 “The Mackinac Register of Marriages, 1725-1821,” in WHC, vol. 18, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1908), 507. 124 Lyman Copeland Draper, “Antoine Le Clair’s Statement,” in WHC, vol. 11, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites, (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1888), 239. 44 was savvy enough to keep an ample supply of textiles on hand. Indeed, cloth was such a coveted item in transactions between Euro-Americans and Native Americans that Sleeper-Smith asserts, “We might as well call the fur trade the cloth trade.”125 Seeing the amount of cloth that flowed from Joseph’s inventory would have reinforced what Magdelaine no doubt already knew about Anishinaabe demands of fur traders by the autumn of 1806 when tragedy struck again. Like Magdelaine’s father, Joseph lost his life in an altercation with a Native American man, leaving her a widow with two young children, Josette and Joseph. Rather than remarry, Magdelaine reentered the fur trade herself, assuming control of her late husband’s operations in the Grand River Valley and establishing a summer home on Mackinac Island. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, approximately three-fifths of fur trade activity in the Old Northwest passed through Mackinac Island. Voyageurs returning from their winter treks to western Anishinaabe villages in canoes brimming with peltry needed to pass through the Straits of Mackinac on their way to Montreal while incoming fur traders viewed Mackinac Island as the threshold to Chicago, Green Bay, and the manifold posts that dotted the upper Mississippi River.126 This made it an ideal base for the newly independent Madame La Framboise. Even in peripheral portions of the fledgling United States, being a widow carried its share of challenges, especially if a marriage à la façon du pays turned into a type of marriage that a Euro-American institution recognized. As Murphy explains, Indigenous and mixed-ancestry women familiar with the customs of their kin or French-Canadian legal protocols witnessed the 125 Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 170. 126 Brad Devin Edward Jarvis, “A ‘Woman Much to Be Respected’: Madeline Laframboise and the Redefinition of a Métis Identity” (master’s thesis, East Lansing, Michigan State University, 1998), 61; John Denis Haeger, John Jacob Astor: Business and Finance in the Early Republic (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991), 51. 45 amount they could access from their late husbands’ estates dwindle. Widows could only expect to receive one-third of their late husbands’ assets under American law in contrast to the one-half Canada guaranteed.127 However, liberation from the yoke of coverture also came to widows who could return to representing themselves as legal entities and potentially amass new estates under their own names. Indeed, Magdelaine entered her greatest period of economic success only after she could procure her own trading license. Between 1806 and 1818, Magdelaine cultivated a reputation as an astute businesswoman capable of brokering deals among Anishinaabe between the Grand River Valley and Mackinac Island. While no ledgers from her time in the fur trade have survived to the present, evidence of her considerable business acumen can be gleaned from her relationship with John Jacob Astor.128 Founder of the American Fur Company (AFC), Astor was a commanding force in the Straits of Mackinac as well as Washington, D.C. Through the fortune he amassed in the fur trade and his company’s expansion to nearly monopolistic proportions, he became a financier and advisor to many early nineteenth-century politicians including Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin and President James Monroe.129 Such connections often allowed him to bend American laws for his benefit. For example, he successfully lobbied Congress to dismantle the government’s network of fur trade factories that challenged his private enterprise.130 Madame La Framboise, however, remained a challenge to AFC supremacy. On January 24, 1818, AFC agents Ramsay Crooks and Robert Stuart wrote to Astor, accusing Magdelaine of the “clandestine introduction of Spiritous liquors” among fur trade 127 Murphy, Great Lakes Creoles, 155-56. 128 Susan Sleeper-Smith, “‘[A]n Unpleasant Transaction on This Frontier’: Challenging Female Autonomy and Authority at Michilimackinac,” Journal of the Early Republic 25, no. 3 (2005), 435. 129 Haeger, John Jacob Astor, 199. 130 David Andrew Nichols, Engines of Diplomacy: Indian Trading Factories and the Negotiation of American Empire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 10-11. 46 clientele, leading to “the injury [of] our outfits.”131 Whether there was any truth in this accusation is immaterial to the fact that Crooks and Stuart mentioning “Mrs. Laframboise (a half breed) from Mackinaw” by name signaled that they saw her as a rival. Astor must have agreed because that same year he reached out to Magdelaine and invited her to manage an AFC trading post near modern-day Ada, Michigan. It was certainly not unprecedented for the AFC to absorb independent fur trading outfits into its corporate structure, but it is noteworthy that it identified an Anishinaabe woman’s entrepreneurial efforts as potentially more deleterious than those of many Euro-American male contemporaries. In the same letter where Crooks and Stuart complained about Magdelaine, they mentioned another fur trader named Jacob Smith cutting into their interests in Saginaw Bay. Yet the AFC did not extend the same courtesy to Smith as it did to Madame La Framboise.132 Not only did the AFC consider recruiting Magdelaine to be the most viable response to her competition, but it demonstrated faith in her abilities that it did not afford to all the other men in its employ by permitting her to act on her “own account and risk” in the Grand River Valley.133 This meant that she was free to operate among her kin without corporate supervision until she elected to retire and sell her post to fur trader and future Michigan state senator Rix Robinson in 1822.134 Her career in the fur trade concluded, Magdelaine settled in a permanent home on Mackinac Island where lessons from a new mentor would influence the remainder of her life. Elizabeth Bertrand, mentioned in the vignette that opened this chapter, grew up in the Odawa village of Waganawkezee, another node of Greater Mackinac. There she lived until she met 131 Ramsay Crooks and Robert Stuart to John Jacob Astor, January 24, 1818, in WHC, vol. 20, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1911), 21. 132 Kim Crawford, The Daring Trader: Jacob Smith in the Michigan Territory, 1802-1825 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012), 131-35. 133 “American Fur Company Invoices, 1821-22,” in WHC, vol. 11, 372-75. 134 George H. White, “Sketch of the Life of Hon. Rix Robinson, a Pioneer of Western Michigan,” in MPHC, vol. 11 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1888), 193. 47 David Mitchell, a military surgeon who served with the British before they transported Fort Michilimackinac to Mackinac Island. Dr. Mitchell was an enterprising individual in his own right, but Elizabeth’s kinship network bolstered the couple’s reputation and propelled them to becoming a prosperous fur trading duo. Local Anishinaabe revered Elizabeth so greatly that “the Indian proprietors of the small Isle Ronde close to Mackinac unanimously presented it to Mrs. Mitchell for her long continued kindness to them.”135 This illustrates how women like Elizabeth could exert great influence in Indian Country and lay claims to Land that Euro-American governments desired. More precious to Elizabeth than Round Island, however, was the homestead she built with Dr. Mitchell on Mackinac Island which “sat on a sizable plot that Elizabeth diligently cultivated” (Figure 1.2).136 Magdelaine would have certainly taken note of the care Elizabeth put into maintaining this space along with how she utilized it as a cross-cultural gathering place than ingratiated her among both her Indigenous and Euro-American neighbors. It is surely no coincidence that when Magdelaine constructed her own home (Figure 1.3) she ensured that there would be ample room for large meetings and comfortable accommodations for multiple guests with four bedrooms, eight fireplaces, and a spacious parlor.137 135 Robert McDouall to Frederick Philipse Robinson, December 2, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 16 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1890), 400. 136 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 35-36. 137 Kathleen Marie Way Thomas, “‘Their Habits Were Startling’: The Perceptions, Strategies, and Erasing of a Mixed-Heritage Family in the Old Northwest” (PhD diss., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 2005), 164. 48 Figure 1.2: Mitchell House138 Figure 1.3: La Framboise House139 138 Eugene T. Petersen, Mackinac Island: Its History in Pictures (Mackinac Island, MI: Mackinac Island State Park Commission, 1973), 16. 139 Petersen, Mackinac Island, 20. 49 Magdelaine would have also witnessed some of Elizabeth’s missteps in her relations with the U.S. government beginning on September 9, 1815. That morning, U.S. Indian Agent William Henry Puthuff stormed through the streets of Mackinac Island toward Ste. Anne’s Catholic Church. It had only been a few months at that point since American authorities returned to Mackinac Island following the War of 1812, and Puthuff was determined to eliminate any residual British influences. Dr. Mitchell had already absconded to attend to the medical needs of the British garrison on nearby Drummond Island, but Elizabeth remained to continue overseeing her beloved home.140 When Puthuff reached Ste. Anne’s, he nailed a memorandum to the front door accusing Elizabeth of “advising with and persuading” local Native Americans in the “adoption of measures injurious to their real interests and that of the American government.”141 He alleged that she could not be trusted because she had acted as a mediator between British and Anishinaabe forces in the preceding years of international conflict. Dr. Mitchell readily admitted that when the War of 1812 erupted, his wife “was extremely active in encouraging the Indians to defend their country.”142 No quantitative record of Elizabeth’s recruitment efforts seems to exist, but an allowance that the British Indian Department awarded her after the war suggests that she was quite effective.143 Like Harrison and other American officials, though, Puthuff refused to recognize Indigenous agency or autonomy. Elizabeth’s husband was British, so Puthuff concluded that she must have aligned wholly with British aims. In reality, Elizabeth and her husband were not in lockstep when it came to their views on Americans. Fur trader Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard asserted in his autobiography that 140 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 35. 141 William Henry Puthuff, “Advertizment Posted on the Church Door,” September 9, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 16, 252. 142 Remarks by David Mitchell on William Henry Puthuff to George Mitchell, September 9, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 16, 253. 143 John Johnson to William Claus, May 12, 1816, in MPHC, vol. 16, 455. 50 Dr. Mitchell held “strong prejudices” against Americans and “would hold no social interaction with them” while Elizabeth was “rather partial to the ‘Yankees.’”144 Yet Puthuff expressed vitriol toward Elizabeth along with one of her mixed-ancestry sons. Ensign George Mitchell had not seen his mother in over a decade, but Puthuff castigated him when he arrived for a visit to Mackinac Island in 1815. The Indian Agent accused the ensign of “sauntering about through the village mixing with the savages who visit this part.”145 This statement, along with his dogged indictment of a mixed-ancestry woman, suggests Puthuff possessed strong prejudices against American Indians, although Crooks and Stuart alleged that he still maintained professional relations with them. In correspondence with Astor, the two AFC agents professed that Puthuff, “sent an Indian Woman (who is now at Mackinaw) in the fall of 1816, to the Ottawas Village at L’arbre Croche […] with Spirits to trade for Corn […] The only reason he gave for this extraordinary proceeding, was, that the Indian Department wanted Corn and Corn must be obtained.”146 The mere presence of American Indians on American soil, then, was not enough to enrage Puthuff. On the contrary, American officials like him in the Great Lakes Borderlands were more cautious that Britons and Native Americans could occupy covalent categories. This was certainly Dr. Mitchell’s assessment, for he stated, “it is only necessary to observe that the young man [Ensign Mitchell] cannot speak a word of the Indian Language that he has been absent from his family twelve years; but the true reason for the rascally treatment that he received was that he wears a Red Coat.”147 144 Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, The Autobiography of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard: Pa-Pa-Ma-Ta-Be, “The Swift Walker” (Chicago: R.R. Donnelley and Sons Company, 1911), 22. 145 William Henry Puthuff to George Mitchell, September 9, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 16, 253. 146 Ramsay Crooks and Robert Stuart to John Jacob Astor, January 24, 1818, in WHC, vol. 20, 21. 147 Remarks by David Mitchell on William Henry Puthuff to George Mitchell, September 9, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 16, 253. 51 Elizabeth, meanwhile, could neither speak nor write in her own defense. Despite her heightened social standing on Mackinac Island, contemporaries found that “[h]er speech was peculiar. English she could not speak at all, but would mix the French with her own language, which was neither Ottawa nor Chippewa. There were not many who could understand her.”148 Thus, a war of words concerning Elizabeth’s continued residence ignited between Puthuff, Dr. Mitchell, and Lt. Col. Robert McDouall, commanding officer of the British post on Drummond Island. Lt. Col. McDouall spiritedly defended Elizabeth, asserting that she had “been treated with gross indignity – accused of the most absurd falsehoods.”149 He even made sure to emphasize how she “continued at that place [Mackinac Island] to protect their sole remaining property, Farm Garden &c which have notwithstanding suffered greatly from depredations.”150 Puthuff refused to relent, though, and Elizabeth had to covertly flee or risk arrest. Dr. Mitchell lamented the coercive environment on Mackinac Island under Puthuff, asserting, “there is much more of true Liberty at Algiers than at present at Michilimackinac.”151 In relaying the story of Elizabeth’s ouster from Mackinac Island, historians such as Sleeper-Smith and Alan Taylor have connected her inability to directly repudiate Puthuff with the collapse of the “middle ground,” which White identified crumbling to pieces by the War of 1812’s end.152 Yet some details complicate this morose reading of Elizabeth’s exile. Most importantly, her exile was not permanent. By 1818, Puthuff drew the ire of Astor by routinely 148 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 37. 149 Robert McDouall to Colley Lyons Lucas Foster, October 10, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 16, 327. 150 Robert McDouall to Frederick Philipse Robinson, September 24, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 16, 289. 151 Remarks by David Mitchell on William Henry Puthuff to Daniel Mitchell, October 5, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 16, 255. 152 For Sleeper-Smith and Taylor’s outlooks on Eliabeth’s story, see Sleeper-Smith, “‘[A]n Unpleasant Transaction on This Frontier,’” 443; and Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 427-28, respectively. Regarding the collapse of the “middle ground,” White argues that after the War of 1812, Native Americans “could no longer pose a major threat or be a major asset to an empire or a republic, and even their economic consequence declined with the fur trade.” See White, The Middle Ground, 517. 52 criticizing the fur trade magnate in correspondence with superiors. “I wish to god the President knew this man Astor as well as he is known here,” Puthuff wrote in one letter, bemoaning how “[l]icenses would not be placed at his descretion [sic]” if only higher powers reckoned with how much leeway he received.153 After this, a single missive to Secretary of War John C. Calhoun was all Astor needed to ensure Puthuff’s swift removal from office.154 With Puthuff gone, Elizabeth returned to Mackinac Island where she retook her homestead and resumed her fur trading operations. One contemporary described Elizabeth in 1818 as “a very considerable Trader among the Indians” who “is in opulent circumstances, & has a shop or Store at Michilimackinac in the American Territory.”155 American antagonism, then, failed to leave her destitute. Puthuff may have disrupted Elizabeth’s life on Mackinac Island, but he lacked the power to destroy it. Aboriginal identity did not alienate her from the prevailing social structure of Mackinac Island, nor, for that matter, did it deprive her children of opportunities on the Canadian side of Greater Mackinac. After Elizabeth passed away in 1827, her son Andrew bolstered the Mitchell family fur trading business. He launched expansion efforts from Drummond Island, which Travers explains kept close connections to approximately two dozen other villages throughout the Great Lakes Borderlands including Mackinac Island and Baawitigong. Entrenching Andrew deeper into Greater Mackinac was his alliance with Jean-Baptiste Assiginack, a Waganawkezee Odawa leader who assigned a trusted member of his cohort to act as Andrew’s interpreter.156 This was until the winter of 1828 when the British government responded to a new land survey that placed 153 William Henry Puthuff to Lewis Cass, June 20, 1816, in WHC, vol. 19, 423. 154 Haeger, John Jacob Astor, 196-97. 155 Thomas Howard to Colley Lyons Lucas Foster, July 18, 1818, in MPHC, vol. 16, 620. 156 Janet E. Chute, The Legacy of Shingwaukonse: A Century of Native Leadership (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 66. 53 Drummond Island on the American side of the U.S.-Canada border by ordering the Drummond Island community moved to nearby Penetanguishene.157 Andrew helped spearhead residents’ mass migration to the new site and eventually rose to become Penetanguishene’s first postmaster.158 Overall, the Mitchell family remained connected and stable in Canada, although the degree to which contingency affected their ability to traverse the border with the U.S. should not be overlooked. What if American authority held a stronger grasp on Mackinac Island? What if Puthuff had not come into conflict with Astor and sealed his own fate? What if Puthuff’s replacement more aggressively exercised what power the United States did possess? Such counterfactuals were, in fact, questions Madame La Framboise needed to consider for her own sake and the wellbeing of her mixed-ancestry children. Luckily, the example that Elizabeth’s precarious situation cemented in Magdelaine’s mind how dangerous failing to communicate and advocate for oneself could be when dealing with Euro-American colonizers. Magdelaine recognized that her survival and success required linguistic skills. At the time of her mentor’s ordeal, she already spoke French fluently. Stuart, the AFC agent threatened by Magdelaine’s commercial practices, even admitted that “her diction was as pure as that of a Parisian.”159 More crucially, though, Magdelaine committed to learning how to read and write after being deprived of such an opportunity as a child. It is clear that she was unable to write as late as 1820 because she was unable to provide a signature to the Mackinac Register when she became godmother to the son of American fur trader John Dousman.160 “When she was between 157 Travers, “The Drummond Island Voyageurs and the Search for Great Lakes Métis Identity,” 222-23. 158 A.C. Osborne, “The Migration of Voyageurs from Drummond Island to Penetanguishene in 1828,” in Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records, vol. 3 (Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1901), 143. 159 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 40. 160 “The Mackinac Register of Baptisms and Interments,” in WHC, vol. 19, 146. 54 forty and fifty years of age, she taught herself to read,” reported one contemporary, adding, “[i]t was no indifferent piece of work either, as she became able to read any French book she could obtain.”161 Hubbard corroborated this claim, observing that Magdelaine “could read and write, and was a perfect lady in her manners and conversation.”162 Again, Madame La Framboise ascertained how the ability or inability to effectively communicate could either save or condemn women of Anishinaabe heritage in Greater Mackinac, and she did not keep this revelation to herself. Having amassed a fortune in the fur trade, Magdelaine promoted literacy among Anishinaabe children by sharing her wealth with Mackinac Island’s Catholic community. Catholicism was critical to the Francophonic Great Lakes. It was no coincidence, after all, that Puthuff nailed his memorandum against Elizabeth to the door of Ste. Anne’s Catholic Church. That structure was so important to French-Canadian voyageurs that it became the first building British officer Patrick Sinclair ordered moved from Fort Michilimackinac to downtown Mackinac Island.163 Voyageurs assumed much of the physical responsibility of propelling the Great Lakes economy. Every summer, they travelled literally hundreds of miles hauling thousands of pounds of cargo in canoes from the Atlantic port city of Montreal to the transshipment epicenter of Michilimackinac to the Native American fur harvesting regions extending throughout the west.164 These workers were predominantly Catholic, and the full practice of their faith required a physical location for their alter. From this fact, Magdelaine surely deduced how Euro-Americans could tie meaning to certain physical locations. Thus, one 161 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 41. 162 Hubbard, The Autobiography of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard, 22. 163 Armour and Widder, At the Crossroads, 132. 164 Carolyn Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 93-97, 101-14. 55 of the donations she made to the Catholic Church was a new plot of land for Ste. Anne’s next to her own home. In return, the parish honored Magdelaine by interring her body beneath the church after her death. Many Indigenous women like Magdelaine were liable to embrace Catholicism in the Great Lakes Borderlands because the faith opened a new avenue for creating kinship networks, one which was maternally conceived. As Sleeper-Smith argues, “Catholicism and the fur trade encouraged the formation and perpetuation of matrifocal households.”165 This made the religion an alluring option for Indigenous women who desired higher degrees of respect and authority. Furthermore, kinship networks that Catholics forged through such practices as godparenting shared similarities with kinship networks paramount in Indigenous societies.166 Magdelaine’s commitment to Catholicism was most assuredly sincere. She had her daughter baptized in 1799, and she chastised her son whenever he strayed from tenants of the faith.167 Outrage poured from her pen into an 1845 piece of correspondence, for instance, when she heard news that young Joseph was practicing polygamy.168 Polyamorous relations were not uncommon in Indian Country, but many of the examples of it that Euro-Americans saw fit to record were not those that took the consent of all parties into account. Moreover, Magdelaine viewed Joseph’s disregard for monogamy fitting of corrective intervention that necessitated a return to Mackinac Island. There was, however, multidimensionality to Madame La Framboise’s conversion to Catholicism. Like many other Indigenous women who embraced the faith, Magdelaine surely 165 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 30. 166 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 48-50. 167 “The Mackinac Register of Baptisms and Interments,” in WHC, vol. 19, 109. 168 Magdelaine La Framboise to Elizabeth Thérèse Baird, April 26, 1845, Henry and Elizabeth Baird Papers, Box 1, Folder 9, WHS, Madison, WI; Also see Thomas, “‘Their Habits Were Startling,’” 171. 56 viewed it as “a means of accommodation rather than transformation.”169 In other words, Magdelaine and women like her could retain crucial aspects of their Anishinaabe culture while honing and passing on skills such as reading and writing in Euro-American languages. For Magdelaine, her status as a homeowner and her desire to educate Indigenous youth intersected. Juliette Kinzie reported that it was Magdelaine’s “custom to receive a class of young pupils daily at her house, that she might give them lessons in the branches mentioned [reading and writing], and also in the principles of the Catholic religion, to which she was deeply devoted.”170 A descendant of one of Magdelaine’s adoptive children, Sophia Bailly, likewise related that the former brought the latter into her home to ensure that she “received a liberal education in French.”171 Indeed, Peterson indicates that the La Framboise House was representative of one of the “finely crafted educational cells” that dotted the Great Lakes Borderlands designed to produce more cross-cultural intermediaries.172 Magdelaine considered language training so critical that she was even amicable to collaboration with Mackinac Island Protestants. Protestant institutions, after all, could broaden the survival skills of Anishinaabe children by also aiding them in understanding the English language. As historian Michelle Cassidy argues, institutions that embraced revivalist elements even allowed Native Americans to “make sense of Christianity from an indigenous perspective.”173 Perhaps it was for this reason that Magdelaine welcomed Rev. William Montague Ferry and his wife Amanda of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) into her home as boarders during the winter of 1823.174 The ABCFM was a 169 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 76. 170 Juliette Kinzie, Wau-Bun: The “Early Day” in the North-West (New York: Derby and Jackson, 1856), 23. 171 John C. Wright, The Crooked Tree: Indian Legends (Harbor Springs, MI: John C. Wright, 1917), 19. 172 Peterson, “Prelude to Red River,” 56. 173 Michelle Cassidy, “‘The More Noise They Make’: Odawa and Ojibwe Encounters with American Missionaries in Northern Michigan, 1837-1871,” Michigan Historical Review 38, no. 2 (2012), 15. 174 Widder, “Magdelaine Laframboise,” 6. 57 mostly Congregationalist and Presbyterian missionary organization, and the Mackinaw Mission School it founded led Schoolcraft to characterize Mackinac Island as “the nucleus of Christianity in the northwest.”175 Magdelaine’s willingness to place mixed-ancestry children under the influence of Protestants demonstrates a degree of pragmatism and thoughtfulness regarding what skills would be most beneficial for them. Then again, she likely possessed confidence in her ability to attract wayward souls back into the Catholic fold as well. While many Indigenous youth who wrote about their experiences at the Mackinaw Mission School professed a sincere acceptance of Protestantism, they also admitted that a substantial benefit they received from their time there was language training. Therese La Chapelle, for example, expressed her interest in learning how to speak English, stating, “When I arrived there I did not understand English a tall [sic] but now I can understand most every word that I hear.”176 Ultimately, about 95% of the children who passed through the Mackinaw Mission School ended up participating in Catholic revivals.177 Meanwhile, Magdelaine put the skills she impressed upon Indigenous youth to work for herself as a home and landowner. According to Sleeper-Smith, she “filed legal papers to claim her husband’s property” just as she “acquired fur trade licenses following her husband’s death.”178 Perhaps the greatest piece of evidence pointing to Magdelaine’s regard for property acquisition, though, can be found in a donation of land that a dozen Anishinaabe headmen made to the La Framboise family in April 1823. Indeed, the leaders made known in the document that they were “desirous of doing good unto her [La Framboise] and her descendants,” delineating 175 Henry R. Schoolcraft to David Greene, November 3, 1834, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 11, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 176 Therese La Chapelle to David Greene, February 11, 1830, quoted in Keith R. Widder, Battle for the Soul: Métis Children Encounter Evangelical Protestants at Mackinaw Mission, 1823-1837 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1999), 156. 177 Widder, Battle for the Soul, xiii-24. 178 Sleeper-Smith, “‘[A]n Unpleasant Transaction on This Frontier,’” 434. 58 segments of land to bequeath to Magdelaine as well as her son Joseph and the two children of her late daughter Josette.179 Magdelaine most assuredly desired documentation to assure she could legally pass these plots along to her descendants. II. To the South of Greater Mackinac: Agatha Biddle (née de LaVigne) and Waganawkezee, 1797-1873 Figure 1.4: Agatha Biddle (Courtesy of Mackinac State Historic Parks) On August 12, 1823, Odawa from the village of Waganawkezee gathered to produce a petition for President James Monroe. Appealing to the head of state’s “paternal affection,” the document humbly requested the dispatch of a Jesuit priest. Odawa petitioners declared, “During a great many years they [Jesuits] have resided amongst us, occupied and cultivated a field our own ground, and instructed our fathers in the first principles of Christianity and agriculture.”180 At first glance, this would appear to be an admission on the part of the Odawa that they desired 179 “Donation of Indian Chiefs to Madilon Lafrombois,” April 28, 1823, Henry and Elizabeth Baird Papers, Box 6, Folder 1, WHS, Madison, WI. 180 “Petition of the Ottawa Indians to Congress Praying That a Teacher or Minister of the Gospel of the Order of Jesuits Be Sent Them,” American Catholic Historical Researches 11, no. 2 (1894), 93. 59 Americanization.181 As Chapter Two will explore further, Christianity and agriculture were the two pillars that American colonizers hoped to use to uplift the mixed-ancestry populace of Greater Mackinac into “proper” U.S. citizens. Deeper reflection, however, reveals that this appeal was a clever tool the Odawa concocted to protect themselves from Indian Removal and promote cultural continuity. As scholar Jason Sprague asserts, “The Odawas’ end goal […] was to learn about and incorporate some aspects of Western culture into their societies in order to survive while still retaining aspects of their culture.”182 By the 1820s, Odawa had inhabited Waganawkezee for close to a century. Past generations who had already become adept at fishing the waters of the Straits of Mackinac moved to the region where fertile soil allowed them to grow crops.183 Indeed, a British visitor to Waganawkezee in the 1830s found what she considered “orderly and industrious inhabitants” there who were “employed chiefly in agriculture.”184 It became the core of the Odawa presence in the Great Lakes Borderlands. Waganawkezee was also core to the life of Agatha de la Vigne, who was born in 1797 and came of age in the village. Agatha’s early life shares many parallels with that of Magdelaine. First, both women lost their fathers at young ages, although Agatha’s mother Marie remarried. Joseph Bailly, a prominent fur trader around both Mackinac Island and Montreal became Agatha’s stepfather, helping to raise her until he relocated his business to the Calumet River in Indiana by 1820.185 181 By Americanization, this study uses Widder’s definition of “the process whereby people living in the United States created, implemented, and built institutions that conformed to both the Constitution of the United States and to the customs and beliefs of Americans.” See Widder, Battle for the Soul, xv. 182 Jason Sprague, “‘The Shadow of a Cross’: Odawa Catholicism in Waganakising, 1765-1829” (PhD diss., Iowa City, University of Iowa, 2019), 229. 183 McDonnell, Masters of Empire, 8. 184 Harriet Martineau, Society in America, vol. 2 (London: Saunders and Otley, 1837), 18. 185 Theresa L. Weller, The Founding Mothers of Mackinac Island: The Agatha Biddle Band of 1870 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2021), 11. 60 By that time, Agatha married fur trader Edward Biddle whose connections were well rooted in the American political class. Among Edward’s relations was his brother Nicholas, who became the President of the Second Bank of the United States. There was also John Biddle, who served as mayor of Detroit and was the Whig nominee to be Michigan’s first governor in 1835. Edward also entered political life at a local level, taking up several civil service posts including warden or borough president for Mackinac Island in 1831 and 1844.186 For these reasons, Agatha’s stepfather was reportedly “more noisy than ever, over this marriage […] such a marriage and connection was more than he could bear quietly.”187 The noise he made was jubilant. Absorbing Edward into Agatha’s kinship network would eliminate him as a competitor. Bailly was, in the words of historian Bethany Fleming, “assured that competition with the enthusiastic American would not be a problem.”188 Edward also seemed to express little interest in Americanizing his new wife. Another Biddle brother characterized Edward as someone well acquainted with Indigenous peoples.189 He was an adept Anishinaabemowin speaker.190 Furthermore, he did not coerce Agatha into following him on his spiritual journey. Edward was a Protestant while Agatha remained a Catholic, and the two were even buried in different cemeteries on Mackinac Island.191 Contemporaries described Agatha as being an “Indian of queenly appearance,” with a fair complexion and eyes that “were very black, and her hair equally so and of the thickest and 186 Dwight H. Kelton, Annals of Fort Mackinac (Chicago: Fergus Printing Company, 1882), 15. 187 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 45. 188 Bethany Fleming, “Mediating Mackinac: Métis Women’s Cultural Persistence in the Upper Great Lakes,” in Gender, Race and Religion in the Colonization of the Americas, ed. Nora E. Jaffary (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 131. 189 James W. Biddle, “Recollections of Green Bay in 1816-17,” in WHC, vol. 1, ed. Lyman Copeland Draper (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1903), 49-63. 190 Morgan, “Editor’s Correspondence,” Daily Union, Washington, D.C., July 16, 1845, 2, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, LOC, Washington, D.C. 191 Weller, The Founding Mothers of Mackinac Island, 11. 61 longest.”192 Throughout her life, she dressed in both Euro-American and Native American styles. One relative asserted, “The garb which she wore was understood by all, no one considered her an uncivilized savage on account of her garments, these proclaimed her to be a Christian widow.”193 Others said her attire featured “the finest black or blue broadcloth, beautifully ornamented with silk and moose-hair work.”194 Like Magdelaine, Agatha became heavily invested in the Catholic Church. One relative described her as “well known at Mackinac and highly respected” for her dedication to “a life of prayer and good works.” 195 Figure 1.5: Biddle Genealogy 192 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 44. 193 Frances R. Howe, The Story of a French Homestead in the Old Northwest (Columbus: Press of Nitschke Brothers, 1907), 144. 194 John R. Bailey, Mackinac, Formerly Michilimackinac (Lansing: Darius D. Thorp, 1895), 180. 195 Howe, The Story of a French Homestead in the Old Northwest, 144. 62 Figure 1.6: Biddle House (Courtesy of Mackinac State Historic Parks) As Magdelaine’s goddaughter, Agatha was also one of her protégés, and among the crucial lessons she learned, charity was among the most consequential.196 La Framboise and Biddle shared a master/apprentice relationship much like Mitchell and La Framboise.197 Agatha was one of the goddaughters of La Framboise along with Sophia Bailly, the namesake for Agatha’s own daughter.198 According to another contemporary, Biddle was “thought to understand English, but will not speak it; she wears the Indian costume of her tribe, using, however, only the finest materials.”199 There were times when withholding how much English one understood could be beneficial. A writer who frequented Pottawatomi summer encampments during the 1830s assessed many he encountered being “sharp at a bargain,” as “the Indians were often supposed to 196 Murphy, Great Lakes Creoles, 170-73. 197 Mary Siisip Geniusz, Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask: Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings, ed. Wendy Makoons Geniusz (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 20. 198 Mark Langenfeld, “People from Everywhere: Metis Identity, Kinship and Mobility, 1600s-1800s” (PhD diss., Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, 2021), 152. 199 James Silk Buckingham, The Eastern and Western States of America, vol. 3 (London: Fisher, Son, and Company, 1842), 355. 63 understand the language of the whites better than they pretended to, in order to profit by the communication of the whites with each other.”200 In other words, they would capitalize on the assumptions of white traders speaking directly in front of them. Yet the value of Agatha’s real estate seems to have dwindled because of her status as a widow. Enumeration tables for the 1850 U.S. Census indicated the value of Biddle family real estate to be $10,000 (equivalent to approximately $404,000 in 2024). After Edward’s death, the next decade’s enumeration tables record a value of merely $1,200 with a personal estate value of $2,200 (a combined equivalent of approximately $129,000 in 2024)201 All that said, enumerated census records reveal Agatha listed as the head of her household in 1860 and 1870.202 Archaeological evidence reinforces that Biddle produced (or at least kept in her home) Aboriginal ornaments, but she had no issues with Euro-American styles of dress. From her home, Biddle also “worked with birch bark and made and used moccasins. Archaeological evidence from the outhouse site used by the Biddle family in the 1820s and 30s reveals numerous pieces of birch bark and quill work, suggesting that Agatha engaged in such native birch bark basketry and quill artistry and used native items, such as mococks, in her everyday life.”203 Such fine attire attests to the connections between the fur trade, cloth, and jewelry, all materials that fur trader Edward Biddle was sure to stock.204 200 A.B. Copley, “The Pottawattomies,” in MPHC, vol. 14 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1890), 262. 201 U.S. Census Bureau, Seventh Census, 1850; Michilimackinac County, MI, page 59, dwelling 367, family 374; NAM M432, Roll 357; U.S. Census Bureau, Eighth Census, 1860; Michilimackinac County, MI, Holmes Township, page 75, dwelling 836, family 465; NAM M653, Roll 542. 202 U.S. Census Bureau, Eighth Census, 1860; Michilimackinac County, MI, Holmes Township, page 75, dwelling 836, family 465; NAM M653, Roll 542; U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census, 1870; Mackinac County, MI, Holmes Township, page 9, dwelling 59, family 61; NAM M593, Roll 687. 203 Fleming, “Mediating Mackinac,” 133. 204 “Invoices from Biddle and Drew,” December 29, 1834, in MPHC, vol. 37 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1909), 309-11. 64 III. To the North of Greater Mackinac: Jane Schoolcraft (née Johnston) and Baawitigong, 1800-1842 Figure 1.7: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library) Figure 1.8: Henry R. Schoolcraft205 On June 16, 1820, Lewis Cass arrived at the southern bank of the St. Mary’s River that divides the United States from Canada, and with about twenty soldiers he sauntered into the Ojibwe village of Baawitigong. Considering its proximity to the border with Canada, he hoped to secure a site nearby where Americans could construct a new fort. When he convened a council with leaders of the Ojibwe community, though, a warrior named Sassaba repudiated him. According to fur trader George Johnston, “Sessaba [sic], stepping inside the marque, shoved the tobacco lying on the ground with his foot, and addressing himself to the head man who was cutting the tobacco, and with a frown, said to him: ‘How dare you accept of tobacco thrown on the ground as bones to dogs.’”206 Sassaba declared that his community needed to stand against 205 “Portrait of Henry R. Schoolcraft,” in The Indian Tribes of the United States: Their History, Antiquities, Customs, Religion, Arts, Language, Traditions, Oral Legends, and Myths, vol. 1, ed. Francis S. Drake, (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Company, 1884), Frontispiece. 206 Surely, Sassaba’s choice to refer to fellow Ojibweg as “dogs” was not one he made lightly. Historian Brett Rushforth explains that Anishinaabeg used “terms and phrases relating to slavery […] which expressed the metaphor of slaves as domestic animals” with one major chronicler of Anishinaabe language identifying that “the verb to 65 Americans’ northward advance so they could instead sustain strong relations with nearby British forces. Located along the St. Mary’s River that emptied Lake Superior’s waters into Lake Huron, Baawitigong functioned as a gathering place for Ojibwe families for centuries.207 While the fur trade remained a viable economic venture throughout much of the nineteenth century, Baawitigong became more peripheral from a Euro-American perspective with Detroit becoming the political and commercial center of gravity in the Michigan Territory. When he first visited during an 1820 expedition, Cass “found a settlement of 15 to 20 buildings occupied by five or six families.”208 Henry R. Schoolcraft counted between 40 and 50 lodges in the village that he estimated housed approximately 200 people.209 What both these men failed to take into account was how the village’s population surged to over 3,000 during summers when Indigenous men ensnared fish from the adjoining rapids that they could smoke and store for the impending winters.210 Meanwhile, Indigenous women prepared for annual treks to their sugar bushes where enslave (nit’aouakara) […] literally meant to make someone a dog.” George Johnston, “Reminiscences by Geo. Johnston, of Sault Ste. Marys, 1815,” in MPHC, vol. 12, 609; Also see Rushforth, Bonds of Alliance, 36. 207 Robert E. Bieder, “Sault Ste. Marie and the War of 1812: A World Turned Upside Down in the Old Northwest,” Indiana Magazine of History 95, no. 1 (1999), 1-2. 208 Charles E. Cleland, “Cass, Sassaba and Ozhaw-Guscoday-Wa-Guay: History, Ethnohistory and Historical Reality,” in Entering the 90s: The North American Experience (Proceedings from the Native American Studies Conference at Lake Superior State University, October 27-28, 1989), ed. Thomas E. Schirer (Sault Ste. Marie, MI: Lake Superior State University Press, 1991), 74. 209 Mentor L. Williams, ed., Schoolcraft’s Narrative Journal of Travels through the Northwestern Regions of the United States Extending from Detroit through the Great Chain of American Lakes to the Sources of the Mississippi River in the Year 1820 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1992), 95-96; The number of permanent residents seems to have fluctuated greatly throughout the nineteenth century. When visiting the village in 1846, journalist William Cullen Bryant commented that “since the world has begun to talk of the copper mines of Lake Superior, settlers flock into the place; carpenters are busy in knocking up houses with all haste on the government lands.” Just over a decade later artist Paul Kane visited and purportedly found it populated by between 600 and 700 people. See William Cullen Bryant to Evening Post, August 15, 1846, in The Letters of William Cullen Bryant, vol. 2, eds., William Cullen Bryant II and Thomas G. Voss (New York: Fordham University Press, 1977), 456; and Paul Kane, Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America from Canada to Vancouver’s Island and Oregon through the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Territory and Back Again (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1859), 46. 210 Tanner, ed., Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History, 130-32. 66 they could collect hundreds of gallons of maple syrup to refine into the maple sugar that served as a staple of the Anishinaabe diet.211 Jane Johnston was the daughter of John Johnston, an Irish fur trader who arrived in North America in 1790 and settled in Baawitigong shortly after his marriage to Ozhaguscodaywayquay in 1793.212 Along with Ozhaguscodaywayquay came several of her relatives, including her brother Iauna Wadick, a former headman at Mooningwanekaaning.213 Johnston had befriended the father of Wabojeeg (White Fisher) and eventually asked Wabojeeg for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Though Wabojeeg had initially been reluctant to approve the union and forced the couple to wait a year, he eventually demanded that his daughter marry the trader.214 Since he felt his Ojibwe wife would not prosper in Ireland, Johnston permanently relocated to Baawitigong in 1793. There, Ozhaguscodaywayquay continued to adorn herself in Indigenous attire long after her marriage to a Euro-American man. One contemporary described her as dressed in “a blue petticoat of cloth, a short gown of calico with leggings worked with beads and moccasins”215 She was “an object of great veneration among the Indians around, who, in all their miseries, maladies, and difficulties, apply to her for aid or for counsel.”216 Though she learned some 211 Child, Holding Our World Together, 20-22. 212 Robert Dale Parker, “Introduction: The World and Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft,” in The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, ed. Robert Dale Parker (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 9; Charles E. Cleland, The Place of the Pike (Gnoozhekaaning): A History of the Bay Mills Indian Community (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 15. 213 Theresa Schenck, All Our Relations: Chippewa Mixed-Bloods and the Treaty of 1837 (Madison: Amik Press, 2010), 114. 214 Marjorie Cahn Brazer, Harps Upon the Willows: The Johnston Family of the Old Northwest (Ann Arbor: Historical Society of Michigan, 1993), 49-50. 215 Thomas L. McKenney, Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, of the Character and Customs of the Chippeway Indians, and of Incidents Connected with the Treaty of Fond Du Lac (Baltimore: Fielding Lucas Jr., 1827), 182. 216 Anna Brownell Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1839), 246. Although Jameson offers some valuable insights into the inner lives of women in the Johnston family, the author cites her here cautiously. As scholars Maureen Konkle and Erin Akerman note, Jane protested several key aspects of Jameson’s depiction of Indigenous women. See Maureen Konkle, “Recovering Jane Schoolcraft’s Cultural Activism in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature, eds. James H. Cox and Daniel Heath Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 94; and Erin Akerman, 67 English, she chose to speak only Ojibwemowin, as did some of her children.217 This linguistic skill in the next generation would be quite important. Indeed, Johnston boasted that his daughter Jane possessed “perfect knowledge of the Chippeway language,” and he relied on her “for correct information” on all matters concerning Ojibwe customs and culture.218 She was also skillful in English, having been educated in England and Ireland in 1809. One contemporary would praise her writing for its “pathos of style” and “the singular felicity of expression.”219 His confidence in Jane was so great that she became one of the first people he turned to when an opportunity for retribution against the Americans arose during the War of 1812. Following the demoralizing capture of Fort Mackinac, the U.S. government resolved to retake their stronghold and the isle it occupied. By July 1814, American forces were gaining momentum, propelling themselves northward and burning homes and storage facilities of British fur traders along the way. Among the casualties of this campaign was the Johnston dwelling, which American troops incinerated after stealing “a quantity of dry goods sugar and spirits.”220 Jane accompanied her father and a party of approximately 100 Anishinaabe warriors to Mackinac Island to add to the British, Canadian, and Indigenous defense force that easily repelled the American invasion.221 The Johnston family’s position seemed to carry weight during the War of 1812. Schoolcraft credits the “decisive interposition” of John Johnston in preventing an outbreak of “Unsettling Sympathy: Indigenous and Settler Conversations from the Great Lakes Region, 1820-1860” (PhD diss., London, Ontario, University of Western Ontario, 2021), 150-52. 217 McKenney, Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, 150. 218 John Johnston to Lewis Cass, January 28, 1822, NAM M1, Roll 10, 49. 219 C.C. Trowbridge to Henry R. Schoolcraft, May 11, 1827, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 7, LOC, Washington, D.C. 220 Ramsay Crooks to John Jacob Astor, August 21, 1814, in WHC, vol. 19, 361. 221 Konkle, “Recovering Jane Schoolcraft’s Cultural Activism in the Nineteenth Century,” 86. 68 violence among assembled Native American warriors.222 Indeed, correspondence from John Askin, Jr. corroborates the taciturn tone of events that followed the successful siege of Fort Mackinac. According to Askin, in taking control of Mackinac Island, “not a single person has been injured nor even kill’d a single fowl belonging to any person whatever.”223 Figure 1.9: Johnston/Schoolcraft Genealogy Less than a decade later, Jane was married to U.S. Indian Agent Schoolcraft. Her husband, too, discovered that Jane’s presence on his journeys conferred considerable credibility. He remarked on one trip that he was received “with a degree of confidence and cordiality by the 222 Henry R. Schoolcraft, “Memoir of John Johnston,” ed. J. Sharpless Fox, in MPHC, vol. 36 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1908), 66. 223 Apparently the restraint Native American warriors showed in not slaughtering American animals was especially impressive to Askin. He emphasized in various pieces of correspondence how this was “a thing never Known before.” See John Askin, Jr. to John Askin, July 19, 1812, in MPHC, vol. 32 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1903), 482; and John Askin, Jr. Letter, July 18, 1812, in MPHC, vol. 15, 113. 69 Indians, which I had not expected.”224 Furthermore, Schoolcraft identified the wellspring of knowledge Jane possessed as key to his future. One contemporary who met Schoolcraft when he was “making a collection of the moral tales of the Chippewas” remarked upon at least one story “taken down by Mrs. S. verbatim, from the lips of an old Chippewa woman.”225 Jane contributed poems and translated Ojibwe oral traditions to The Literary Voyager, which Schoolcraft circulated amongst friends and acquaintances during the winter of 1826-27, but even in these printed materials her identity remained obscured by the pen names “Rosa” and “Leelinau.” Jane also showcased keenness in acting as a peacemaker, like when she reestablished congenial relations after her brother-in-law maneuvering to marry her sister.226 By all accounts, “James Schoolcraft drank heavily, gambled energetically, and womanized, or so rumor had it. In 1830 he stabbed a man and escaped from jail. Some reports indicate that he spent his last earthly morning sleeping off a night on the town.”227 Surely this was a quality Jane learned from her mother, as contemporaries widely attested to Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s persuasiveness. Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s patrilineal lineage was surely one source of her daughter’s power and influence. American officials recognized Waubojeeg’s authority, and Schoolcraft extolled him as one “as much noted for his skill as a hunter, as for his prowess and daring as a warrior.”228 Jane Johnston expounded upon such praise in her poetry. Outraged by rumors that 224 Henry R. Schoolcraft, Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers: With Brief Notices of Passing Events, Facts, and Opinions, A.D. 1812 to A.D. 1842 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo and Company, 1851), 195. 225 Chandler Robbins Gilman, Life on the Lakes: Being Tales and Sketches Collected During a Trip to the Pictured Rocks of Lake Superior, vol. 1 (New York: George Dearborn, 1836), 159. 226 James L. Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, February 14, 1834, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 39, LOC, Washington, D.C.; Jane Johnston Schoolcraft to Charlotte Johnston McMurray, March 4, 1834, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 12, LOC, Washington, D.C. 227 Gregory Evans Dowd, Groundless: Rumors, Legends, and Hoaxes on the Early American Frontier (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 269. 228 Henry R. Schoolcraft, “Waub Ojeeg, or The Tradition of the Outagami and Chippewa War No. 3,” in The Literary Voyager, 53. 70 her grandfather was really a Dakota and, hence, descended from traditional Ojibwe rivals, Jane responded to this presumptuous appropriation of her family’s past by calling on Waubojeeg himself to revive his prowess as a warrior and a noted singer and storyteller. In some pieces, Jane described her grandfather as “a chief of fame” whose talents raised him to a “simple forest throne.”229 In others such as “Invocation,” she accentuated Waubojeeg’s valor, proclaiming, “Can the warrior forget how sublimely you rose? / Like a star in the west, / When the sun’s sunk to rest, / That shines in bright splendour to dazzle our foes? / Thy arm and thy yell, / Once the tale could repel.”230 She was much more animated in this piece, although her apoplectic response to the insinuation that Waubojeeg possessed Dakota ancestry is intriguing. In fact, Waubojeeg shared a distant kinship connection with Dakota war leader Wabasha, who shared close connections with the British military installed at Fort Michilimackinac during the American Revolution.231 Also important to Jane and her siblings was her mother’s lineage from the Crane clan.232 According to scholar Victor P. Lytwyn, these were the among the first peoples to settle at Baawitigong long before European contact.233 Under the name Susan Johnston, Ozhaguscodaywayquay maintained one foot in her Homeland while digging another into the Euro-American world of commerce and gender relations. A contemporary described Ozhaguscodaywayquay as possessing “pure Indian blood” while being a woman “whose talents 229 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, “Otagamiad,” in The Literary Voyager, or, Muzzeniegun, ed. Philip P. Mason (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1962), 139. 230 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, “Invocation to My Maternal Grandfather on Hearing His Descent from Chippewa Ancestors Misrepresented,” in The Literary Voyager, 143. 231 Arent Schuyler DePeyster, Miscellanies by an Officer (Dumfries: C. Munro, 1813), 38-39; Also see Armour and Widder, At the Crossroads, 97-98. 232 Anne F. Hyde, Born of Lakes and Plains: Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2022), 121. 233 Victor P. Lytwyn, “Echo of the Crane: Tracing Anishnawbek and Métis Title to Bawating (Sault Ste. Marie),” in New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada’s Native Pasts, ed. Ted Binnema and Susan Neylan (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2007), 42. 71 and domestic virtue commanded the highest respect.”234 The place where she could exhibit such “domestic virtue” was in the Johnston family mansion known as Elmwood. Here, Schoolcraft remarked that the “hospitality and politeness” of the Johnstons was “sufficient to obliterate the effect of the fatigues and privations of traveling.”235 She exhibited qualities that white visitors deemed respectable. Similarly revealing are pieces Jane produced that referenced Elmwood, her family’s “hall.”236 The presence of this homestead permeated her poetry, like one piece entitled “The Contrast.” This poem directly addresses the ongoing marginalization of mixed-ancestry people in Baawitigong while referencing its “elm-wood shade.” In this poem, Jane alludes to the presence of Anishinaabemowin all around her and idealizes it. She reminiscences, “So mild and gentle were their words / It seemed as soft as song of birds.”237 Also revealing are a pair of couplets, “How changed, since full of strife and fear, / The world hath sent its votaries here. / The tree cut down – the cot removed, / The cot the simple Indian loved.”238 The “simple Indian” appears here as a figure separate from Jane, yet she shares the dismay at the ecological transformation that increasing Euro-American encroachment brought. Along with the trepidation she shares for physical changes to the landscape, she also expresses consternation of the economic transformations that Euro-American encroachment will bring. In particular, she identifies trades in the final couple of her poem’s penultimate stanza that strive for “one sordid bit of gold,” namely those engaged in “lawsuits, meetings, courts and toil.”239 234 Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, 224. 235 Williams, ed., Schoolcraft’s Narrative Journal, 95. 236 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, “Amid the Still Retreat of Elmwood’s Shade,” in The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky, 124. 237 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, “The Contrast,” in The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky, 118. 238 Schoolcraft, “The Contrast,” in The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky, 118. 239 Schoolcraft, “The Contrast,” in The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky, 118. 72 The final stanza is rich enough that it deserves quotation here in full before further analysis. It reads: Adieu, to days of homebred ease, When many a rural care could please, We trim our sail anew, to steer By shoals we never knew were here, And with the star flag, raised on high Discover a new dominion nigh, And half in joy, half in fear, Welcome the proud Republic here.240 Jane’s mixed identity is perhaps best encapsulated in her expression that the incoming influence of the United States was one she would face “half in joy, half in fear.” As the wife of a prominent American official, Jane held a position of privilege not shared even by others who could claim European ancestry and present themselves as white. She was unlikely to meet with the same degree of state-sanctioned violence as other people of mixed descent in the Age of Indian Removal. Yet the installation of American institutions would inevitably introduce change in her life to which she would have to bear witness and respond.241 Distance from Baawitigong also acquainted Jane with racism for the first time, especially among denizens of the nation’s capital. A fellow boarder with the Schoolcraft family in Detroit remarked that Jane “found herself cut by some of the white ladies when at Washington, [and] she could never get over it, but rather retired from company.”242 Likewise, Jane expressed consternation when she faced challenges managing the sizable estate. After John’s death in 1828, “Mrs. [Susan] Johnston, consistently admirable, carried on ably for the family despite the straitened circumstances in which she had been left. From the land 240 Schoolcraft, “The Contrast,” in The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky, 118. 241 For further analysis of this poem, see Christine R. Cavalier, “Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s Sentimental Lessons: Native Literary Collaboration and Resistance,” MELUS 38, no. 1 (2013), 104-07. 242 Kate Ball Powers, Flora Ball Hopkins, and Lucy Ball, eds., Autobiography of John Ball (Grand Rapids, MI: Dean-Hicks Company, 1925), 146-47. 73 reserved to her personally, by treaty, she manufactured maple sugar – thirty-five hundred pounds of it in 1837 […] Widowed and self-supporting, she gave the first building to the Sault Ste. Marie Presbyterian Church in 1832.”243 IV. West Through Greater Mackinac: Susan Davenport (née Des Carreaux) and Mooningwanekaaning, 1804-1888 Figure 1.10: Ambrose and Susan Davenport244 Ambrose Davenport, Jr. was no stranger to hunger. In 1823, an American military officer on a surveying mission around Rainy Lake – which straddles the modern border between Minnesota and Ontario – found him in charge of a trading post.245 The latter reportedly “spoke 243 Chase S. Osborn and Stellanova Osborn, Schoolcraft, Longfellow, Hiawatha (Lancaster, PA: Jaques Cattell Press, 1942), 539-40. 244 Timothy Cochrane, Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais: Early Accounts of the Anishinaabeg and the North Shore Fur Trade (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 57. 245 Although the fur trader is only named “Mr. Davenport” in this source, Schenck notes that the coincides with one in which Ambrose was active in the same area. See Schenck, All Our Relations, 57. The author has succeeded in identifying records of Ambrose and his younger brother William’s licensing as fur traders between the 1825-26 and the 1833-34 seasons. See “Abstract of Licenses Issued within the Superintendency of Lewis Cass, Governor of Michigan Territory, Between the 1st Day of September 1825 and the 1st Day of September 1826,” NAM M234, Roll 419, 635; and “H.R. Doc. No. 97: Letter from the Secretary of War, Transmitting Abstracts of Licenses Granted to Trade with the Indians within the Year Terminating on the 10th March, 1834,” in House of Representatives Documents, Twenty-Third Congress, Second Session, vol. 3, CSS 273 (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1835), 8. 74 with much sang froid upon the subject, as if used to it” but he wanted a message relayed to Mackinac that “they were starving, and could attend to no other business than their subsistence.”246 The winter brought him to Grand Marais where superior Bela Chapman noted in his logbook how frost and hunger had led him to “bewail my own deplorable situation with tears in my eyes,”247 The 1834 season likely represented the high water mark of his career, as AFC records designated him among the more highly paid clerks with an annual income of $500.248 By 1840, he was in a position to be a dispenser of sustenance. In a June entry of his 1840 journal, Detroit merchant Charles W. Penny noted a meeting with a personable and loquacious Davenport who “sent us this morning fresh fish, potatoes and milk. The potatoes tasted sweeter than sugar plums to children.”249 Mooningwanekaaning was a preeminently important site. Its position was far enough removed from the Haudenosaunee to the east and Dakota to the west.250 If Mackinac Island allowed for command of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, Mooningwanekaaning provided for command of Lake Superior.251 In the 1820s it also became a regional headquarters for the American Fur Company. While the heyday of Mackinac Island as a direct base of operations ended, it retained connections via various nodes through Indian Country. To Euro-Americans, Mooningwanekaaning became Madeline Island, named for Madeline Cadotte, an Anishinaabe woman of the Crane clan.252 Along with being another 246 Joseph Delafield, The Unfortified Boundary: A Diary of the First Survey of the Canadian Boundary Line from St. Regis to the Lake of the Woods, eds. Robert McElroy and Thomas Riggs (New York, 1943), 434. 247 Cochrane, Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais, 166. 248 Cochrane, Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais, 57. 249 James L. Carter and Ernest H. Rankin, eds., North to Lake Superior: The Journal of Charles W. Penny, 1840 (Marquette, MI: John M. Longyear Research Library, 1970), 38. 250 John Nelson Davidson, “Missions on Chequamegon Bay,” in WHC, vol. 12, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1892), 436. 251 Child, Holding Our World Together, 36. 252 Child, Holding Our World Together, 32. 75 important trading hub, Mooningwanekaaning, was a center of spiritual gravity in the Ojibwe world where as many as a dozen bands returned yearly for Midewiwin, or Grand Medicine Lodge ceremonies.253 Along with being the birthplace of Waubojeeg, Mooningwanekaaning shared a myriad of attributes that connected it to Mackinac Island in the eyes of both Euro-Americans and Native Americans. According to Protestant missionaries, “It is the most central place that can be selected. The people who go to the borders of the Ojibwa country from Fond du Lac, Yellow Lake, and Lac du Flambeau, pass directly by this place, or near it. More or less of the Indians from all these places visit La Pointe every year.”254 Furthermore, “There are more Indians here and in the vicinity through the year than can probably be found at any other place in the country.”255 For Indigenous people, especially Ojibwe, Mooningwanekaaning represented a terminal point in their historic migration from the Atlantic Ocean westward. Figure 1.11: Davenport/Schoolcraft Genealogy 253 Patty Loew, Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal, 2nd ed. (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2013), 62, 76. 254 Sherman Hall and William Thurston Boutwell, “Report to Prudential Committee – No. 3,” February 7, 1833, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 255 Sherman Hall and William Thurston Boutwell, “Report to Prudential Committee – No. 4,” February 7, 1833, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 76 Susan Davenport was the daughter of a French father and Ojibwe mother, the latter of whom was also a daughter of Waubojeeg. She was also known by the Ojibwe name O-gee-em-a- qua. This closely resembles the Anishinaabe word ogimaakwe, meaning “chief woman.” In Anishinaabe communities, ogimaakwe acted as leaders who “reported the women’s consensus to the men’s council in the presence of all women.”256 We know less about Davenport than about the other women under study here. Whereas La Framboise married a Euro-American fur trader of modest means and rose to economic prosperity through her own initiative and both Biddle and Schoolcraft aligned with Euro-American men who possessed familial and political connections that helped parlay into upper-class positions, the Davenports had a comparatively lower-class status. Accordingly, many details of their lives are obscure. It is unknown, for example, when they met, although is undeniable that they became intimately acquainted before their wedding. By 1835, they already had several children. Figure 1.12: Davenport Genealogy 256 Miller, Ogimaag, 67. 77 To enjoin herself to her husband, Susan surely needed to confront the bigotry of the Davenport family. Ambrose Davenport, Sr. was a Virginian who first arrived on Mackinac Island as a sergeant with the U.S. Army in 1796. Documentary records related to Ambrose Davenport, Sr. exist, but few correspond to his life before the War of 1812. His wartime exploits, however, earned him widespread acclaim. Shortly before his death, the New York Tribune interviewed him, capturing some aspects of his early life in the process. One aspect of his life that Ambrose, Sr. accentuated in his interview was his record as an Indian fighter. The author states that Ambrose, Sr. “was with Harrison’s army at the Battle of the Thames,” the battle in which American forces killed the Shawnee war leader Tecumseh.257 Ambrose, Sr. also underscored his participation in the Battle of Mackinac Island in 1814. The New York Tribune article became such an enduring account of the War of 1812 on Mackinac Island that when author Edwin O. Wood compiled his two-volume history of the community in 1918, he essentially paraphrased Ambrose, Sr.’s entire autobiographical sketch.258 Ambrose, Sr. continually complained about how his reward for military service should have been more substantial to the point where Schoolcraft remarked after a house call, “For his sufferings and losses he ought to have been remunerated by the Government, whom he faithfully served.”259 Indeed, accounts of contemporaries suggest that Ambrose, Sr. continued to work well into his 70s. Just as Schoolcraft was familiar with Ambrose, Sr. he knew Ambrose Jr. as well, successful maneuvering to appoint him as an interpreter at Mackinac Island in 1837.260 As an 257 “Mackinac (from the New York Tribune of 1859),” in MPHC, vol. 7 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1886), 200. 258 Edwin O. Wood, Historic Mackinac: The Historical, Picturesque and Legendary Features of the Mackinac Country, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1918), 526-27. 259 Schoolcraft, Personal Memoirs, 464. 260 Henry R. Schoolcraft to Carey A. Harris, September 14, 1837, NAM M234, Roll 402, 457; Carey A. Harris to Henry R. Schoolcraft, October 13, 1837, NAM M21, Roll 22, 239. 78 AFC trader, Ambrose, Jr.’s fortunes vacillated. During his early career, he amassed intimate experiences throughout his travels in the furthest reaches of Greater Mackinac with frequent references to starvation. As the United States voraciously appropriated land from Aboriginal groups across Michigan throughout the nineteenth century, Susan sought to preserve her Indigenous identity through a marital alliance with Ambrose, Jr. He possessed several attractive attributes that Susan could have easily identified. First, the American fur trader had a mastery of the English language that Susan never obtained, even after she accepted the name Susan. Ambrose, Jr.’s religious affiliation offered one way for her and her family to gain such skills as competency in the English language. Ambrose, Sr. was already a founding member of Mackinac Island’s Presbyterian church.261 Perhaps spiritual sustenance was something Ambrose, Jr. found to be an adequate supplement to physical nourishment. He shared a close bond with missionary Edmund F. Ely, and he eventually married his mixed-ancestry partner in a Presbyterian ceremony that fellow missionary Sherman Hall officiated. During the 1830s, Davenport wintered with Ely, and his sons William and Henry were educated under the reverend’s care.262 A biographical sketch of A.J. Davenport, the pair’s youngest child, suggests that they preferred having their children educated close to home because he was both “reared and educated on Mackinaw island.”263 Fur 261 Widder, Battle for the Soul, 70. 262 Theresa Schenck, ed., The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely, 1833-1849 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), 34, 52. 263 John Brandt Mansfield, “A.J. Davenport,” in History of the Great Lakes, vol. 2 (Chicago: J.H. Beers and Company, 1899), 1062; A.J. would have been too young to attend Mackinac Island’s mission school since it closed in 1837, but Ambrose, Jr. could have easily sent some of the older Davenport children there. No Davenport children appear on surviving lists of children who boarded at this school, but that is to be expected considering that the Davenports were permanent island residents. See Widder, Battle for the Soul, 137-43. 79 traders “were mainly interested in the education of their mixed-blood children, and it was the mixed-bloods who became the primary subjects of instruction”264 Susan may have depended upon Ambrose, Jr. to communicate in English, but that did not mean she intended to allow her native language to die with her. In enumerated census records between 1850 and 1880, she is always listed as being unable to read or write.265 As for the remainder of the Davenport family, they became more comfortable with Indigenous and mixed- ancestry people. Susan Davenport, sister of Ambrose Davenport, Sr., married William Johnston, brother of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, further entangling the web of kinship descended from Wabujeeg.266 Susan’s younger brother Henry Blatchford (born Francois Des Carreaux, Jr.) was a student at the mission school on Mackinac Island. Anishinaabe children remarked upon how a substantial benefit they received from the school on Mackinac Island was language training. Jane Anderson, for example, celebrated the fact that “I have not been long enough in the Mission to learn to speak the English language well I used to speak little but never wrote a letter before I came here.”267 Attempts to Americanize them did not completely expunge their Indigenous identities, though. While these children may have accepted a new religion, they never lost sight of obtaining the survival tool of the English language that would assist their families. Concerns surrounding mission schools certainly existed among Indigenous children and their families. In a 264 Schenck, ed., The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely, 1833-1849, xiii. 265 U.S. Census Bureau, Seventh Census, 1850; Michilimackinac County, MI, page 65, dwelling 412, family 420; NAM M432, Roll 357; U.S. Census Bureau, Eighth Census, 1860; Michilimackinac County, MI, Holmes Township, page 67, dwelling 775, family 414; NAM M653, Roll 542; U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census, 1870; Mackinac Co., MI, Holmes Township, p. 24, dwell. 182, fam. 170; NAM M593, Roll 687; U.S. Census Bureau, Tenth Census, 1880; Mackinac County, MI, Holmes Township, page 32, enumeration district 43, dwelling 234, family 244; NAM T9, Roll 592. 266 Brazer, Harps Upon the Willows, 281. 267 Jane Anderson to the Young Ladies in Miss Grants School, in “Letters from the Mackinaw Mission School,” ed. Marla De Rosa, New England Quarterly 83, no. 4 (2010), 712. 80 report, J.D. Stevens commented that Native Americans he encountered “had strong prejudice against a school having heard exagerated [sic] statements about the infliction of punishment on the children at Mackinaw by boys, half breeds from this place who were scholars there.”268 The mission school was not solely a spiritual site, after all. These institutions operated with the sanction of the U.S. government, meaning that their other major function was Americanization. Susan likely admired Ambrose, Jr.’s initiate to secure their family title to a home from which the U.S. government could not dislodge them, an initiative he clearly learned from his father. Ambrose, Sr. appears in documentary records in 1823 when he submitted a claim for “a tract of land situate on the island of Michilimackinac, Michigan Territory […] on the south by Lake Huron,” asserting that his family had been cultivating it during his island exile.269 This tract, however, did not go uncontested. Samuel Lasley, a fur trader who swore fealty to Great Britain in 1812, staked a claim that overlapped with Ambrose, Sr.’s, leading to a subtle war of words before Michigan’s territorial government. The legitimacy of both claimants principally hinged upon their ability to demonstrate devotion to the United States. Lasley argued that he had only feigned allegiance to the Crown to remain on Mackinac Island and protect his family while Ambrose, Sr. abandoned his wife and six young children.270 Ambrose, Sr., however, dispatched a series of influential acquaintances to support him. He was able to outmaneuver his opponent in this instance only because of the alliances of friends and close colleagues willing to defend his wartime decision to embrace his national affiliation over his immediate family.271 268 J.D. Stevens to David Greene, January 27, 1836, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 11, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 269 “Land Claims in Michigan – Book No. 6,” in ASPPL, vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1860), 223. 270 Brian Leigh Dunnigan, A Picturesque Situation: Mackinac Before Photography, 1615-1860 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 189. 271 As Ray De Bruler, Jr. notes, claims like this could be “maddeningly vague” as claimants for farmland, for example, did not seem to need to specify what crops grew on the land or in what quantities. See De Bruler, Jr., 81 Luckily, John Dousman was available to testify that Davenport was “in the possession and cultivation” of the land he desired.272 Meanwhile, John’s brother, Michael, testified against the competing claimant, asserting that he had been treacherous during the War of 1812 and even fought for the British.273 Lasley remained an influential figure on Mackinac Island, but the Dousman brothers chose not to place roadblocks in Ambrose the Elder’s way. Some witnesses even stepped forward to question the dimensions of Ambrose, Sr.’s supposed tract, including two men who contended “that the house on the same land was built by A.R. Davenport in 1822; and further, that John Dousman has made a present of from five to seven panel of his fenced-in land.”274 Despite this accusation of bribery, the Michigan Territory ultimately granted Ambrose, Sr. his land claim while rejecting Lasley’s. V. Conclusion Shortly before the War of 1812’s conclusion, American forces set forth to recapture Mackinac Island. As the first fixture of American authority to fall to a coalition of British soldiers, Canadian volunteers, and Indigenous warriors during the conflict, Mackinac Island held substantial symbolic as well as strategic significance. Both contemporary and retrospective observers agree, however, that the attempt Americans made in the summer of 1814 was a colossal blunder. Considering the Battle of Mackinac Island solely from an American perspective paints an especially bloody picture of Indigenous warriors. Ambrose Davenport, Sr. claimed that during the battle, “The Indians fought with desperation, and scalped promiscously [sic] the dead and dying.”275 Over the ensuing decades, this gruesome image permeated works on “Land Use and Settlement Patterns in Michigan, 1763-1837” (PhD diss., Kalamazoo, Western Michigan University, 2007), 180. 272 “Land Claims in Michigan – Book No. 6,” in ASPPL, vol. 5, 224. 273 “Land Claims in Michigan – Book No. 6,” in ASPPL, vol. 5, 245. 274 “Land Claims in Michigan – Book No. 6,” in ASPPL, vol. 5, 224. 275 “Mackinac,” in MPHC, vol. 7, 201. 82 the island’s history. In his 1870 book Old and New Mackinac, for example, author J.A. Van Fleet characterizes Aboriginal warfare during the Battle of Mackinac Island as a series of “shocking barbarities […] practiced on the bodies of the slain. They were literally cut to pieces by their savage conquerors.”276 What these retellings neglect to include are some of the acts of kindness that Greater Mackinac’s cross-cultural intermediaries performed. In a set of notes that he compiled for a memoir on his wife, Henry R. Schoolcraft wrote that as fighting on the island waned, Jane sewed shirts for two captured American soldiers before the British returned the prisoners of war to their countrymen. Working alongside Jane in this task was Josette La Framboise, whose story began this chapter.277 There is much to unpack about this interaction. First, the collaboration between one mixed-ancestry woman from Mackinac Island and another from Baawitigong illustrates how interpersonal connections tied together nodes of Greater Mackinac. Second, the fact that Jane, whose father allied himself with the British, performed such a gracious act for opposing combatants is intriguing. Could this have simply been an example of a kind young girl exerting magnanimity for two whom she considered less fortunate? Additionally, what could she have been talking about with Josette as the two were sewing together? The answer to this question is, unfortunately, unknown, but there were certainly qualities that connected Jane and Josette. They both came from higher social classes in their respective communities and families with enough income to own property. Their families also witnessed the Euro-American powers who projected themselves at the helm of the Great Lakes Borderlands vacillate over the years, and they needed to contend with this as few spaces in the young United States were more contested than Greater Mackinac. Perhaps Jane and Josette 276 J.A. Van Fleet, Old and New Mackinac: With Copious Extracts from Marquette, Hennepin, La Houtan, Cadillac, Alexander Henry, and Others (Ann Arbor: Courier Steam Printing-House, 1870), 118. 277 Henry R. Schoolcraft, “Notes for Memoir of Mrs. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft,” in MPHC, vol. 36, 99. 83 were not merely sewing shirts. They may have, in fact, been sewing connections that would keep them stitched to their Homelands. With nodes separated by great distances from major Euro-American geopolitical centers, Greater Mackinac was a colonial periphery where navigating Anishinaabe kinship networks that linked individuals of diverse national origins to bonds of mutual obligation was essential to both gaining and maintaining influence. As this chapter has demonstrated, Magdelaine La Framboise, Agatha Biddle, Jane Schoolcraft, and Susan Davenport, four cross-cultural intermediaries from this contested space, recognized how Euro-American power could rapidly shift during the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Although the United States attempted to exert authority over Greater Mackinac following the War of 1812, the conflict’s conclusion did not (as some scholars insinuate) signal an immediate pivot in the fortunes of Native Americans. Greater Mackinac’s cross-cultural intermediaries identified property acquisition as a feasible pathway to overcoming potentially devastating impacts of American incursion. In this regard, Magdelaine La Framboise and Agatha Biddle were the most successful. As widows, both women broke free from the bonds of coverture that could have greatly restricted their independence when marriages before Euro-American institutions became more common than the marriages à la façon du pays of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Both Magdelaine and Agatha held property as heads of their households until they were laid to rest. For Jane Schoolcraft and Susan Davenport, meanwhile, different paths directed them to property acquisition, namely astute observations of the Euro-American men in their orbits who upheld property as a source of prestige and permanence. Between the 1830s and 1850s, all four cross- cultural intermediaries would next learn the importance of diplomatic survival strategies as they entered the Age of Indian Removal. 84 CHAPTER TWO: “MAKING PROVISION FOR THEIR HALF-BREED RELATIVES”: GENDER, RACE, AND TREATY NEGOTIATIONS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY GREATER MACKINAC In March 1836, Anishinaabe diplomats from across the Michigan Territory converged on Washington, D.C. to negotiate perhaps the most consequential treaty in their history. By signing what would come to be called the Treaty of Washington, Odawa and Ojibwe ogimaag expected to secure permanent reservations and perpetual protection from removal in exchange for over one third of the land that would constitute the state of Michigan. They were appalled when U.S. treaty commissioner Henry R. Schoolcraft revealed that after the Anishinaabe delegation left the capital, the Senate altered their agreement to only guarantee reservations for five years while provisioning for possible removal west of the Missouri River.278 Outrage erupted throughout Greater Mackinac. Andrew J. Blackbird reported that Waganawkezee Odawa felt they were “cheated out of their lands by the crafty and cunning management of the pale faces.”279 He argued that his kin “were compelled to sign blindly and ignorant of the true spirit of the treaty and the true import of some of its conditions.”280 Many Baawitigong Ojibwe shared sentiments like this. In fact, modern Ojibwe communities still maintain that the 1836 compact initiated the “darkest days our […] ancestors ever faced.”281 Despite the duplicitous aims that clearly animated American negotiators, the final version of the Treaty of Washington includes some provisions that warrant greater scholastic scrutiny. 278 Fletcher, The Eagle Returns, 27. 279 Andrew J. Blackbird Letter, May 15, 1850, quoted in Bierce, Historical Reminiscences of Summit County, 156. 280 Andrew J. Blackbird, History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan: A Grammar of Their Language, and Personal and Family History of the Author (Ypsilanti, MI: Ypsilantian Job Printing House, 1887), 97. 281 Charmaine M. Benz and R. Todd Williamson, eds., Diba Jimooyung, Telling Our Story: A History of the Saginaw Ojibwe Anishinabek (Mt. Pleasant, MI: Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, 2005), 48. 85 This treaty’s sixth article is especially significant because it authorized the distribution of payments from a $150,000 Department of War fund (equivalent to approximately $5,000,000 in 2024) among the Michigan Territory’s mixed-ancestry populace. Along with asserting needs for their own annuities, Anishinaabe negotiators, the article professed, were “desirous of making provision for their half-breed relatives.”282 Voices of Anishinaabe negotiators alive in federal documentation demonstrate that this was no case of Americans putting words into Indigenous mouths. During negotiations for the Treaty of St. Peters the next year, Ojibwe war leader Ma- ghe-ga-bo expressed, “Our women have brought the half breeds among us. They are poor, and we wish them to be provided for […] We wish to divide with them all.”283 Care for mixed- ancestry people most assuredly remained crucial to Anishinaabe kinship networks. Cementing Anishinaabe acceptance of their mixed-ancestry kin were other articles like the Treaty of Washington’s sixth that became more commonplace in Land cession treaties between the United States and Greater Mackinac Anishinaabeg over the next few decades. In the 1842 Treaty of La Pointe, for example, a nearly identical article affirmed the “strong desire” of Mooningwanekaaning Ojibwe “to have some provision made for their half breed relatives.”284 Similarly, the 1847 Treaty of Fond du Lac’s fourth article confirmed that “half or mixed bloods of the Chippewas” would be eligible for the annuity payments it allocated while the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe’s fourth article authorized the distribution of Euro-American tools “among the mixed bloods of said nation.”285 Again, such articles illustrate how concerns for mixed-ancestry 282 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1836,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 452. 283 “Proceedings of a Council Held by Governor Henry Dodge, with the Chiefs and Principal Men, of the Chippewa Nation of Indians Near Fort Snelling, at the Confluence of the St. Peters and Mississippi Rivers, Commensing on the 20th Day of July 1837,” July 1837, Ratified Treaty No. 223: Documents Relating to the Negotiation of the Treaty of July 29, 1837, with the Chippewa Indians, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 284 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1842,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 543. 285 “Treaty with the Chippewa of the Mississippi and Lake Superior, 1847,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 568; “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1854,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 649. 86 people consistently motivated the Anishinaabe even as the dominant terminology that U.S. officials used to denote them changed, becoming more racialized over time. Consider the treaty articles cited above once more. Mixed-ancestry people first appear as “half-breeds” in diplomatic accords and accompanying documentation in the 1830s. Anishinaabe scholar Jill Doerfler notes that this term originated in English common law and at first lacked racial connotations. Indeed, she argues that Anishinaabe treaty negotiators did not necessarily differentiate “half-breeds” from themselves or agree with how Americans characterized them.286 Yet “half-breed” seems to be what American authorities settled upon after years of experimenting with terminology. In the 1817 Treaty of Maumee Rapids, they classified mixed- ancestry people for whom the Anishinaabe urged allowances as “persons ‘connected with the said Indians, by blood or adoption.’”287 Both the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw and 1821 Treaty of Chicago then classified the same kinds of people as “specified individuals and their heirs ‘all Indians by descent.’”288 These linguistic inconsistencies leading into the 1830s suggest that settlers were ill-equipped to characterize people who did not fit comfortably within the dominant tripartite racial framework of “white,” “black,” and “Indian.” By the 1840s, though, sanguine phraseology began dripping into Land cession treaties. Federal documentation shifted from describing mixed-ancestry people as “half-breeds” to “half or mixed bloods” and finally “mixed bloods” by the 1850s. These changes were certainly not Anishinaabe choices. In her study on Anishinaabe in Minnesota, Doerfler states that during the nineteenth century “it was likely that many people there had never used […] the metaphor of 286 Jill Doerfler, Those Who Belong: Identity, Family, Blood, and Citizenship Among the White Earth Anishinaabeg (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015), 8-11. 287 “Treaty with the Wyandot, Etc., 1817,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 149. 288 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1819,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 189; “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1821,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 199. 87 blood as an indication of a biological measure of race as a means to define identity within their own nation/community.”289 This was surely true in Michigan, Wisconsin, and every other corner of Anishinaabewaki as well. Conversely, many politicians in the antebellum United States upheld blood as a primary ingredient in American identity. Chief among them was Thomas Jefferson, who believed that the figurative transfusion of American blood into Native Americans could swirl them into the American family. “[Y]our blood will run in our veins,” the third president once promised a visiting delegation of Delawares, assuring them that intermarriage between members of both nations would lead to peaceful coexistence and guarantee that “we shall all be Americans.”290 The homogeneity that Jefferson suggested intimate relations between Euro- Americans and Native Americans would produce did not emerge in Greater Mackinac, though. Instead, identities remained remarkably malleable, challenging federal attempts at narrow categorization. As the first section of this chapter will demonstrate further, white settlers more aggressively sought to categorize and racialize mixed-ancestry people in tandem with their escalating encroachment onto Anishinaabewaki. In the words of historian Rebecca Kugel, mixed-ancestry people “simply had no place in the American categorization of the races they expected to find on the ‘frontier.’”291 Therefore, one objective American treaty negotiators had was to locate a place for mixed-ancestry people and bind them there. This was easier said than done for a population accustomed to effortlessly moving between worlds, and it created conflict 289 Jill Doerfler, Those Who Belong: Identity, Family, Blood, and Citizenship Among the White Earth Anishinaabeg (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2015), 9. 290 Thomas Jefferson to Captain Hendrick, the Delawares, Mohicans, and Munries, December 21, 1808, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Library Edition Containing His Autobiography, Notes on Virginia, Parliamentary Manual, Official Papers, Messages and Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private, vol. 16, eds. Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh (Washington, D.C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), 452. 291 Rebecca Kugel, “Reworking Ethnicity: Gender, Work Roles, and Contending Redefinitions of the Great Lakes Métis, 1820-42,” in Enduring Nations: Native Americans in the Midwest, ed. R. David Edmunds (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 163. 88 when it came to elements of treaty negotiations such as annuity payments. Like the Treaty of Washington, the Treaty of St. Peters set $100,000 aside in its third article and authorized the distribution of payments from this pool to “half-breeds of the Chippewa nation.”292 When former U.S. Senator Lucius Lyon ventured into Greater Mackinac to survey its mixed-ancestry populace in 1839, however, he was surprised to discover that “[t]he half-breeds themselves were at odds over who should be admitted, many of them wanting to exclude all those living outside the ceded country, even if they had been born in it and retained ties to their relatives there.”293 Other treaties vacillated on proper places for mixed-ancestry people vis-à-vis their Indigenous kin. Some treaties identified Indian Country as the natural domain in which mixed-ancestry people should reside. The fourth article in an 1867 treaty with Minnesota Anishinaabe, for example, states, “No part of the annuities provided for in this or any former treaty […] shall be paid to any half-breed or mixed-blood, except who actually live with their people upon one of the reservations belonging to the Chippewa Indians.”294 In this case, only close association with and physical proximity to Indigenous kin opened a path to deriving benefits from their compacts. Returning to the Treaty of Washington, though, U.S. official John W. Edmonds remarked in correspondence with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs that Indigenous people around Mackinac Island accepted a broader definition of “half-breed relatives” that “included those who were akin to the Indians and who had descended in part from white ancestry.”295 When it came to determining who could access shares of the $150,000 fund that the treaty’s sixth article earmarked, Edmonds eventually decided to reject any applicant who exhibited what he considered “habits and customs of the Savages,” anyone who “lived with them and as they did, 292 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1837,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 492. 293 Schenck, All Our Relations, 5. 294 “Treaty with the Chippewa of the Mississippi, 1867,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 975. 295 John W. Edmonds to Carey A. Harris, February 9, 1837, NAM M574, Roll 23. 89 were completely identified with them and were recognized fully as Indians.”296 For Edmonds, then, the category of “half-breed” carried with it some connotations of “civilization,” although the qualities that aligned with “civilization” were vague. Thus, the first section of this chapter will also analyze one vision of “civilization” that mixed-ancestry people from Greater Mackinac sought to counter during the mid-nineteenth century. This vision required physical separation from Indigenous communities as well as disconnection from relations with Land that were foundational to the Anishinaabe worldview. The following two sections of the chapter assert that Anishinaabe women could play active roles in treaty negotiations with the United States by leveraging sources of authority uniquely accessible to them in Anishinaabewaki to steer ogimaag into aiding their mixed- ancestry progeny. It is true that the negotiation process itself was a realm reserved for men, a fact well illustrated through a story that William Montague Ferry, Jr., son of the Presbyterian minister on Mackinac Island shared. According to Ferry, Baptist missionary Leonard Slater once acted as interpreter for the U.S. government during a treaty council and dutifully translated the words of an American official. When Rev. Slater finished relaying the official’s words, there was awkward silence until one Indigenous man stood up and asked, “If the Great Father sends words to men, why does he use a woman’s tongue?”297 Apparently, Rev. Slater had learned Anishinaabemowin from women in his family. Consequently, he peppered his oration with gendered terminology. Nevertheless, while the signatures of women like La Framboise, Biddle, Schoolcraft, and Davenport do not appear on any nineteenth-century Land cession treaties, they were not silent 296 John W. Edmonds to Carey A. Harris, February 9, 1837, NAM M574, Roll 23. 297 William Montague Ferry, Jr., “Ottawa’s Old Settlers,” in MPHC, vol. 30 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1906), 575. 90 figures. In fact, analyzing these accords solely from perspectives of the men who signed them means overlooking how aspects of the treaty making process were Euro-American impositions. Take the signatures of Indigenous men themselves, for example. Early documentation of diplomatic engagements with Euro-American newcomers features pictographic representations of Anishinaabe leaders’ doodemag in place of signatures. Ogimaag used these pictographs well into the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.298 Five such figures even appear on the deed that British officials arranged for Mackinac Island in 1780 (Figure 2.1). Doodemag were not symbols that Anishinaabeg invoked lightly, though. As Bohaker explains, they connected Anishinaabe to their living kin as well as their ancestors and spiritual progenitors.299 This was until the United States started privileging simple x-marks on its records. According to the provocative scholarship of Scott Richard Lyons, “The x-mark is a contaminated and coerced sign of consent made under conditions that are not of one’s making.”300 Reading treaties with the United States from an Anishinaabe perspective means recognizing that much more went into concocting the documents than what ended up on paper. 298 Bohaker, Doodem and Council Fire, 30-32, 36. 299 Bohaker, Doodem and Council Fire, 58-59. 300 Scott Richard Lyons, X-Marks: Native Signatures of Assent (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 2. 91 Figure 2.1: “Indian Deed for the Island of Mackinac”301 Indeed, Ojibwe scholar Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark argues, “The Anishinaabe did not conceptualize the treaty exclusively as a written document. Instead, they understood that the treaty consisted of the entire council proceedings coupled with the events preceding its development and following its implementation.”302 This conceptualization underpins one of the scholarly interventions of “Racializing Indigenous Society.” It contends that Anishinaabe women must be recognized as parties to Land cession treaties because they could intercede in council proceedings to influence negotiators’ priorities and gauge the degree to which Euro-Americans 301 “Indian Deed for the Island of Mackinac,” in MPHC, vol. 19 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1892), 633-34. 302 Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, “Respect, Responsibility, and Renewal: The Foundations and Anishinaable Treaty Making with the United States and Canada,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 34, no. 2 (2010), 148. 92 fulfilled responsibilities they assumed. To exclude women from discussions of nineteenth- century treaty negotiations means disregarding the fact that they represented a powerful political constituency in Anishinaabe communities.303 They invariably required cognizance of the emerging category of race and how it connected to the Land where they lived and labored. I. “Notions of Exclusive Property”: Nonhuman Kin and Intersections of Space and Race Figure 2.2: “Map of Lands Ceded by Indian Treaties”304 In 1810, an adolescent Jane Johnston experienced a feeling that would remain with her for the rest of her days. She was on a boat with her father returning to Baawitigong after nearly a year spent receiving a European education. As their vessel cruised down the Niagara River, the landscape gradually shifted into an evergreen panorama. “There pa! see those pines!” the ecstatic 303 Rebecca Kugel, To Be the Main Leaders of Our People: A History of Minnesota Ojibwe Politics, 1825-1898 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998), 71. 304 “Map of Lands Ceded by Indian Treaties,” in MPHC, vol. 26 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1896), 274. 93 girl exclaimed as she gazed upon all the trees. “[A]fter all I have seen abroad, you have nothing equal to the dear pine.”305 While merely a pleasant childhood memory on its surface, the feeling that the pine trees kindled in Jane during that moment stayed scorched in her mind. That feeling inspired one of the few surviving pieces of poetry Jane wrote in Anishinaabemowin, the language of Anishinaabe peoples, simply titled “To the Pine Tree.” Reading poems like “To the Pine Tree” and analyzing Jane’s Aboriginal diction reveals a great deal about how she and people of Anishinaabe descent like her viewed their Homelands and the natural features that filled in the landscape of Indian Country. This is significant because these sentiments invariably shaped how Anishinaabeg approached treaty negotiations with the United States throughout the nineteenth century. As this section will demonstrate, Anishinaabeg and Americans responsible for crafting diplomatic accords generally held incongruent views about land use and Land itself. During negotiations, American ambassadors operated under the notion that land was a non-sentient resource subject to humans’ whims to build upon it or extract from it. Any hope of absorbing Indigenous people and their mixed-ancestry kin into the “national family” would hinge on bringing them into alignment on this point. An impediment to this ambition was the Anishinaabe belief, which literary evidence like Jane’s poetry illustrates, that Land was more than just a resource over which they held dominion. Living in Anishinaabewaki required sharing space with human as well as nonhuman kin. According to Kimmerer, “rocks are animate, as are mountains and water and fire and places” in the grammar of Anishinaabemowin.306 Surviving pieces that Jane recorded in her native tongue effectively demonstrate this. First, consider the opening stanza of “To the Pine Tree,” which reads: 305 Schoolcraft, “Notes for Memoir of Mrs. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft,” in MPHC, vol. 36, 97. 306 Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 55. 94 Zhingwaak! Zhingwaak! Ingii-ikid, Weshki waabamag zhingwaak Dagoshinaan neyab, endanakiiyaan. Zhingwaak, zhingwaak nos sa! Azhigwa gidatisaanan Gaagige wezhaawashkozid. Pine! Pine! I said, The one I see, the pine I return back, to my homeland. The pine, the pine my father! Already you are colored Forever you are green.307 Critical in this stanza is the word “endanakiiyaan,” meaning “homeland,” at the end of the third line. There are a variety of words for “land” in Anishinaabemowin that Jane could have used to construct the compound word “homeland,” but here scholar Margaret Noodin identifies the word aki at its core. Aki, she explains, is “commonly translated as ‘land’ but closely related to akina, the term for ‘everything’ or ‘unity.’”308 That she used the word most closely associated with “everything” is telling, especially since land meant practically everything for Anishinaabe women’s power and influence. Jane uses “endanakiiyaan” to refer to her Homeland in another poem, “On Leaving My Children John and Jane at School, in the Atlantic States, and Preparing to Return to the Interior.” The most illuminating stanzas in this piece are as follows: Nyaa nindinendam Mekawiyaanin Endanakiiyaan Waasawekamig Endanakiiyaan Nidaanisens e Nigwizisens e Ishe naganagwaa Waasawekamig Oh I am thinking I am reminded Of my homeland A faraway place My homeland My little daughter My little son I leave them far behind A faraway place309 307 This analysis utilizes a retranscription and gloss of the poem produced by Margaret Noodin. See Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, “To the Pine Tree,” trans. Margaret Noodin, Ecotone 15, no. 1 (2019), 142-43. For the original transcription, see Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, “To the Pine Tree,” in The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky, 89-90. 308 Margaret Noodin, Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014), 2. 309 This analysis utilizes a retranscription and gloss of the poem produced by John Nichols. See Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, “Nindinendam (Thinking),” trans. John Nichols, Ojibwe.net, https://ojibwe.net/songs/traditional/ nindinendam-thinking. For the original transcription, see Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, “On Leaving My Children John 95 According to literary scholar Susan Berry Brill de Ramírez, “By leaving her children at school, Schoolcraft returns to a home that in the absence of her children becomes more Euro- American. The increasing distance from the school and children increases her felt distance and desired return for a clear sense of self, ancestry, culture, and homelands.”310 Amplifying the loneliness Jane surely must have felt was something that went beyond the absence of her children making the Schoolcraft homestead in Baawitigong feel like a more Euro-American space. While providing a Euro-American education, one objective of the schools Janee and John attended was to strip them of their Indigenous identities. Physical distance from their Anishinaabe kin alone could have alienated them from the culture of their upbringing but could serve as a blunter instrument of settler colonialism. Thus, Jane would have felt erasure on two sides. Westward lay a homeland where the absence of her children deprived Jane of the opportunity to pass down her cultural knowledge. Eastward her children sat in classrooms where American educators attempted to supplant the cultural knowledge Jane had already bestowed. Jane and others like her shared the belief of a Shawnee leader who stated that “The Great spirit gave us this land in common. He has not given the right to any one nation, to say to another, this land is not yours, it belongs to me.”311 “Place was not created as a possession or as the occasion for the exercise of dominium,” Witgen concurs, “but resulted from the recognition of mutual rights, obligations, and responsibilities shared by inawemaagen (relatives) living within an extensive resource base.”312 Reciprocity was paramount in Anishinaabe communities and Jane at School, in the Atlantic States, and Preparing to Return to the Interior,” in The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky, 141-43. 310 Susan Berry Brill de Ramírez, “The Anishinaabe Eco-Poetics of Language, Life, and Place in the Poetry of Schoolcraft, Noodin, Blaeser, and Henry,” in Enduring Critical Poses: The Legacy and Life of Anishinaabe Literature and Letters, ed. Gordon Henry, Jr., Margaret Noodin, and David Stirrup (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021), 83. 311 “Minutes of a Treaty [...] at Greenville” in ASPIA, vol. 1, 581; Also see Lakomäki, “‘Our Line,’” 597-624. 312 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 33. 96 because they arrived at decisions through consensus rather than coercion, including with nonhuman kin.313 As one Odawa during negotiations for the 1825 Treaty, “I never yet heard from my ancestors that anyone had an exclusive right to the soil.”314 The other inanimate kin who inhabited Anishinaabe Homelands were the bodies of their ancestors who they expected to join after they passed. As Michigan Odawa expressed to Andrew Jackson before the Treaty of Washington, “When we die we expect our bodies to rest on this land.” They emphasized to the president that “Were we desirous to make a treaty for your land you would refuse us, you would say, ‘I cannot sell the graves of my relation.’”315 Years later, Mooningwanekaaning Ojibwe expressed the same sentiment when they declared to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, “when we die we will lay our bones at La Pointe.”316 The Treaty of Greenville codified Native American usufructuary rights in its fifth article, establishing that “the Indian tribes who have a right to those lands, are quietly to enjoy them, hunting, planting, and dwelling thereon, so long as they please, without any molestation from the United States.”317 Anishinaabeg made sure to reinforce these rights in subsequent treaties with the United States. The 1807 Treaty of Detroit’s fifth article stipulates that “Indigenous nations retain hunting rights on ceded land,” drawing directly from the Treaty of Greenville’s clause upholding their usufructuary rights.318 Odawa leader Keewtagoushkum referenced the treaty 313 For further analysis of this poem, see Heid E. Erdrich, “Name’: Literary Ancestry as Presence,” in Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World through Stories, ed. Jill Doerfler, Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 20-22. 314 “Journal of the Proceedings That Took Place Under the Commission to Gen. William Clark and Gov. Lewis Cass to Treat with, and Mediate Between, the Chiefs, Head Men, and Other Representatives of the [...] Bands of Indians, to Be Assembled at Prairie Du Chien,” August 1825, Ratified Treaty No. 139: Documents Relating to the Negotiation of the Treaty of August 19, 1825, with the Sioux, Chippewa, Sauk and Fox, Menominee, Iowa, and Winnebago Indians, and Part of the Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi of the Illinois Indians, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 315 “Petition of the Chiefs of the Ottaways to Andrew Jackson,” January 27, 1836, NAM M234, Roll 422, 147. 316 Buffalo et al. to Luke Lea, November 6, 1851, NAM M234, Roll 149, 139. 317 “Treaty with the Wyandot, Etc., 1795,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 42. 318 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1807,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 93-94. 97 prior to the removal treaty in Chicago as well.319 The 1820 Treaty of Sault Ste. Marie enumerated Baawitigong Ojibweg’s “perpetual right of fishing at the falls of St. Mary’s, and also a place of encampment upon the tract hereby ceded, convenient to the fishing ground.”320 The fifth article of the 1821 treaty explicitly held that “[t]he stipulation contained in the treaty of Greenville, relative to the right of the Indians to hunt upon the land ceded while it continues the property of the United States, shall apply to this treaty.”321 In the second article of the 1842 treaty, “[t]he Indians stipulate for the right of hunting on the ceded territory, with the other usual privileges of occupancy.”322 Throughout the nineteenth century, American negotiators neglected to properly translate or communicate certain treaty stipulations. Responding to accusations of broken treaty promises, Thomas Jefferson assured Lakes Indians who invoked the Treaty of Greenville that promises they cited did not exist in written documentation on the compact.323 Surely verbal assurances the Lakes Indians received did not align with those that ultimately received Senate ratification. Records that the Lakes Indians possessed did always align with colonizer documentation either. In 1851, Anishinaabe headed by members of the Mooningwanekaaning Ojibwe band wrote to President Millard Fillmore protesting government insistence that they prepare to move westward. They explained, “We have in our possession a paper, written down by one of our missionaries at the time of the treaty, containing everything said: and it tells a different story.”324 319 McIntosh, The Origin of the North American Indians, 250. 320 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1820,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 188. 321 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1821,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 200. 322 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1842,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 542. 323 Thomas Jefferson, “Speech to the Indians,” January 31, 1809, in MPHC, vol. 40 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1929), 274-76. 324 Chippewa Chiefs to Millard Fillmore, September 1, 1851, NAM M234, Roll 149, 11. 98 Anishinaabe diplomats clearly possessed great knowledge of the Treaty of Greenville and their rights under its terms.325 During an 1807 council, for example, Saginaw Ojibwe leaders rebuked Hull’s offer to purchase their Land and referenced the Treaty of Greenville. They did not just invoke the document, though. Instead, they asserted that they held General Wayne’s negotiations in high regard, stating “We always keep his good Council in remembrance.”326 Accordingly, later treaties did not merely refer to these rights in vague terms. They were able to expertly articulate them and push for their protection and propagation. American negotiators regularly remarked upon Anishinaabeg directly quoting their rights from previous treaties, especially the usufructuary rights codified under the Treaty of Greenville. It lends credence to historian David Andrew Nichols’s assertion that “The weakness of the US Government in the Lakes region showed itself most clearly in that government’s inability to protect Indians from white settlers after the Treaty of Greenville.”327 Native Americans across the Great Lakes borderlands regularly shared their frustrations with American officials that “citizens were constantly trespassing upon their lands.”328 “In 1811, Governor Hull of Michigan Territory reported to the Secretary of War on the removal of trespassers who had settled on lands sold by Indians to the Federal Government but not resold to individuals.”329 These discussions of the Treaty of Greenville were significant for the people of Greater Mackinac. After all, Fort Michilimackinac was a special consideration among American treaty negotiators. They declared that “all the land on the island on which that post stands, and the main 325 Larry Nesper, “Our Relations…the Mixed Bloods”: Indigenous Transformation and Dispossession in the Western Great Lakes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021), 72-73. 326 “A Memorandum of a Council Held at Saguina,” June 5, 1807, in MPHC, vol. 40, 144. 327 Nichols, Peoples of the Inland Sea, 131. 328 William Henry Harrison and John Graham to William H. Crawford, September 9, 1815, in ASPIA, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1834), 16. 329 William Hull to William Eustis, April 25, 1811, in TPUS, vol. 10, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1942), 355. 99 land adjacent, of which the Indian title has been extinguished by gifts or grants to the French or English governments” along with free passage along land and water.330 Ojibwe leader Matchekewis asserted that Americans would “learn our title” to Michilimackinac.331 By pushing their communities’ representatives to demand that their usufructuary rights be upheld, Anishinaabe women endeavored to carve out spaces of cultural persistence for their kin. Even when Anishinaabeg ceded their Homelands in treaty negotiations, that did not mean they surrendered them. The U.S. government could still weaponize these documents by burying ticking time bombs within them. Such time bombs were sometimes well concealed. The 1819 Treaty of Saginaw specified that recognition of Anishinaabe usufructuary rights would extend only “while it [the ceded lands] continues the property of the United States” as opposed to private hands.332 Likewise, the 1820 Treaty of Sault Ste. Marie detailed that Ojibweg “shall not interfere with the defences of any military work which may be erected, nor with any private rights.”333 This culminated in the Treaty of Washington’s thirteenth article that granted Anishinaabe usufructuary rights only “until the land is required for settlement.”334 Such phrasing is unique among American treaties, and in the Anglophonic world, few other diplomatic arrangements with Euro-Americans so loosely defined the conditions by which Euro-Americans could squat.335 These were just a few ways American negotiators wrote in measures to undercut how much land 330 “Treaty with the Wyandot, Etc., 1795,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 40. 331 “Minutes of a Treaty with the Tribes of Indians Called the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanese, Ottawas, Chippewas, Pattawatamies, Miamies, Eel River, Kickapoos, Piankeshaws, and Kaskaskias, Begun at Greenville, on the 16th Day of June, and Ended on the 10th Day of August, 1795,” in ASPIA, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Gales and Seaton, 1832), 577. 332 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1819,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 186. 333 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1820,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 188. 334 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1836,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 454. 335 Gregory Evans Dowd, “Custom, Text, and Property: Indians, Squatters, and Political Authority in Jacksonian Michigan,” Early American Studies 18, no. 2 (2020), 211. 100 the Anishinaabe could continue to use by transferring their Homelands to private parties and reclassifying them as private property. Yet Land cession treaties could not act alone as swords to cleave Indigenous peoples from their Homelands. Even while negotiations for the 1836 Treaty of Washington were ongoing, a voracious appetite for land animated white settlers. Before the U.S. Senate approved the egregiously amended agreement, Euro-American speculators were already making their moves. They overwhelmed one chronicler, who marveled at the “feverish excitement of speculation.”336 In an 1826 report, Secretary of War James Barbour acknowledged that in the dispossession of Indigenous Homelands, “the milder qualities of justice and clemency were disregarded.”337 Likewise, he acknowledged that posterity would judge the United States harshly if the nation did not adopt more humane practices in its relations with American Indians. This, of course, did not entail restoration of Indigenous Homelands, as this was a matter Barbour already considered settled. For the settler-colonists, they viewed this process as benevolent, for that reason setting aside a “Civilization Fund” for Christian missionaries.338 The autobiography of Methodist missionary and Wisconsin politician Alfred Brunson illuminates how annuity payments proceeded, as he was present at the 1843 distribution of annuities promised by the 1842 Treaty of La Pointe. According to Brunson, the U.S. government dispatched a schooner carrying the goods and currency that the payment required. Degrees of security that accompanied such vessels could vary, although Brunson requested extra security in 1843 because he heard rumors that a cadre of “half-breeds in Canada” were planning to hijack 336 Marion Louise Hinsdill Withey, “Personal Recollections of Early Days in Kent County,” in MPHC, vol. 39 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1915), 348-49. 337 James Barbour, “Preservation and Civilization of the Indians,” February 3, 1826, in ASPIA, vol. 2, 647. 338 Emily Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism: Converting the World in the Early American Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), 106. 101 the ship.339 This conspiracy never manifested, but that did not mean fears of it were wholly unfounded. Brunson noticed among attendees people from distant environs such as Canadian “half-breeds” who had no legitimate claim to annuity payments as well as Detroit area merchants who hoped to collect on Indigenous debts. Also visible among the attendees was the influence of the Mackinaw Mission School. Bruson wrote, “A few of the mixed bloods live in refinement, being connected with the traders. There were some as accomplished ladies, wives, and daughters of traders, as I ever met with, among the mixed bloods; nor were their sons neglected.”340 The Indian Agent attributed these “improvements” to the Mackinaw Mission School that brought students by canoe from as far away as Mooningwanekaaning. Also illuminating is Brunson’s observation that “by order of the chiefs in council their relatives of mixed blood shared with the full-bloods in the payment and got their parcels of goods and money. But the goods, in many instances, were bestowed by them on the poor of their bands.”341 The Indian Agent took this as a sign that the mixed-ancestry people were merely discarding the items that did not befit their “civilized” mode of living. It did not seem to occur to him that mixed-ancestry people could have been using the annuity payments as a method of bolstering the integrity of their family bands. While serving as governor of the Michigan Territory, Cass formulated a plan to transform the Great Lakes region into a home fit for the American “national family.” In a proposal for organizing the U.S. Indian Department that he penned around 1815, Cass argued that the United States could only integrate Anishinaabewaki into the “great nation” if it were to “convert the 339 Alfred Brunson, A Western Pioneer; or, Incidents of the Life and Times of Rev. Alfred Brunson, A.M., D.D., Embracing a Period of Over Seventy Years, vol. 2 (Cincinnati: Hitchcock and Walden, 1879), 183. 340 Brunson, A Western Pioneer, vol. 2, 190. 341 Brunson, A Western Pioneer, vol. 2, 191. 102 wandering savage into a settled man by giving him notions of exclusive property.”342 Moreover, he stated that “so long as there is a community of property among […] [Native Americans], so long will they have no stimulus for exertion and no expectation of reaping the rewards of their Labour.”343 Cass considered property ownership and “productive” land use to be fundamental facets of American identity. He even admitted that within his mind “it is impossible to conceive, that any society can exist without the possession of personal property.”344 Cass built upon his arguments in this document in several North American Review essays, including one often called “Removal of the Indians.”345 To Cass and others in the American and Canadian governments, Anishinaabe land claims were merely squatters’ rights. He denied the legitimacy of Anishinaabe authority over the land. 346 Cass’s concept of property ownership also carried notions of acceptable property use and gendered labor roles acceptable upon that property. This is connected to the category of race as Wolfe describes it “among various regimes of difference that have served to distinguish dominant groups from groups whom they initially encountered in colonial contexts.”347 The extent to which Cass and Schoolcraft reinforced each other’s ideologies cannot be overstated. In a review of one of Schoolcraft’s works, Cass called the ethnographer “an accurate 342 Lewis Cass, “System for Organizing the Indian Department,” ca. 1815, Lewis Cass Papers, Ayer MS 601, Folder 1, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 343 Cass, “System for Organizing the Indian Department,” ca. 1815, Lewis Cass Papers, Ayer MS 601, Folder 1, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 344 Cass, “System for Organizing the Indian Department,” ca. 1815, Lewis Cass Papers, Ayer MS 601, Folder 1, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 345 Lewis Cass, “Documents and Proceedings Relating to the Formation [...] of a Board in the City of New York, for [...] Improvement of the Aborigines of America,” [Hereafter “Removal of the Indians”] in North American Review, vol. 30 (Boston: Gray and Bowen, 1830), 62-121. 346 Karl Hele, “Manipulating Identity: The Sault Borderlands Métis and Colonial Intervention,” in The Long Journey of a Forgotten People, 186. 347 Patrick Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001), 867. 103 and judicious observer and an enterprising traveler.”348 He failed to acknowledge the extend to was dependent on the connections of his mixed-ancestry family, calling him an example of one “who have made their way to distinction without any advantageous aid.”349 In 1828, Schoolcraft and Cass cofounded the Historical Society of Michigan, and in the addresses they delivered for the organization, they regularly enumerated a vision of Michigan’s regional identity where American Indians were a shattered people.350 During the society’s first meeting in September 1829, Cass twinned his characterization of Michigan as a “fresh and green” country with the assertion that “[o]ur only monuments are the primitive people around us. Broken and fallen as they are, they yet survive in ruins, connecting the present with the past.”351 Schoolcraft concurred in his anniversary address the next year that “their prospective future is gloomy.”352 They shared the conviction that the Anishinaabe were walking anachronisms destined to be relegated to the realm of curiosities. Surely this influenced the policy toward Native Americans that Schoolcraft championed.353 After the War of 1812, Cass initially scoffed at the suggestion that an enduring Aboriginal presence around the Great Lakes could impede American expansion because he believed “[t]he time has long expired when their hostility could threaten our existence nor is it 348 Lewis Cass, “Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley, by Henry R. Schoolcraft,” [Hereafter “Schoolcraft’s Travels”] in North American Review, vol. 26 (Boston: Frederick T. Gray, 1828), 357. 349 This is to say nothing of how Cass acted as Schoolcraft’s benefactor, the social connection affording the latter an opportunity to shift from geologist to civil servant. Cass, “Schoolcraft’s Travels” in North American Review, vol. 26, 358. 350 Terry A. Barnhart, “‘A Common Feeling’: Regional Identity and Historical Consciousness in the Old Northwest, 1820-1860,” Michigan Historical Review 29, no. 1 (2003), 55-56. 351 Lewis Cass, A Discourse, Delivered at the First Meeting of the Historical Society of Michigan, September 18, 1829 (Detroit: George L. Whitney, 1830), 7. 352 Henry R. Schoolcraft, A Discourse, Delivered on the Anniversary of the Historical Society of Michigan, June 4, 1830 (Detroit: George L. Whitney, 1830), 43. 353 For more on Schoolcraft’s advocacy for Indian Removal, see Henry R. Schoolcraft, “Our Indian Policy,” in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, vol. 14 (New York: Henry G. Langley, 1844), 169-84. 104 probable that a general confederacy will ever again be formed to oppose us.”354 His confidence in this belief, however, wavered in subsequent years. By 1819, he shared suspicions with Secretary of War John C. Calhoun that the Anishinaabe possessed the “intention of reviving the plans and policy of Tecumseh and of uniting them in a general confederacy.”355 This was an enduring fear for Americans that persisted well beyond the end of the War of 1812.356 Thomas Forsyth reported in 1825, “A young Potawatimi lad of about 17 or 18 years old has sprung up as a Prophet among the Indians living on the Illinois River; he tells the Indians that if they will throw away their medicine bags and follow his advice the wild animals will become as plenty in their Country as formerly &c. I have reason to suppose, that, this Potawatimi Prophet will follow the same creedd [sic] that the Shawanoe Prophet did previous to the last war.”357 Although he closed his remarks with the hope that this figure would not attain the same level of success, the fact that the Shawnee Prophet remained on the mind of American officials reinforces the precarity they felt with their relations with Indigenous peoples. To absorb Anishinaabeg into the “national family,” the U.S. government needed to shatter their familial bonds to both their surroundings and their spiritual relatives who resided upon them. Through dispossession, Americans could transmute Land that was teeming with life and abundantly populated by ancestors and spirits into land which only had life on a market that could be measured monetarily. Moreover, private property ownership and “productive” labor upon private property became prerequisites for whiteness, meaning that racialization was an alchemical process in which dispossession was a key ingredient. 354 Cass, “System for Organizing the Indian Department,” ca. 1815, Lewis Cass Papers, Ayer MS 601, Folder 1, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 355 Lewis Cass to John C. Calhoun, August 3, 1819, in TPUS, vol. 10, 853. 356 Robert M. Owens, Red Dreams, White Nightmares: Pan-Indian Alliances in the Anglo-American Mind, 1763- 1815 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015), 114-16. 357 Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, May 16, 1825, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, State Historical Society of Wisconsin – Draper Collection #2, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 105 Resource extraction was one acceptable form of property use, and it proved a recurring theme in nineteenth-century Land cession treaties in which American officials articulated what resources they hoped to pilfer from Anishinaabewaki. Land, therefore, became what historian Stuart Banner defines as “the intellectual apparatus by which a group of people organizes who will get to use which resources on which land.”358 In 1819, Cass informed Calhoun of the tantalizing prospect presented by “specimens of virgin copper […] from a large mass represented to weigh many tons.”359 Subsequent treaties targeted specific mineral rights such as the 1820 Treaty of L’Arbor Croche and Michilimackinac that directly noted deposits of gypsum within Odawa territory.360 In the tenth article of the 1826 Treaty of Fond du Lac, the government asserted an even broader “right to search for, and carry away, any metals or minerals from any part of […] [Ojibwe] country.”361 “Thousands of lead miners moved to Prairie du Chien in the next four years, ignoring that boundaries set at the treaty.”362 Indeed, the second article of the 1842 treaty stipulated that “The Indians residing on the Mineral district, shall be subject to removal therefrom at the pleasure of the President of the United States.”363 Correspondence from American officials confirms that deposits of lead and copper were the chief targets of this clause.364 Historian William Cronon describes how European settlers brought with them to New England a belief that the country “lay open to any that could and would improve it.”365 The 358 Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2005), 9. 359 Lewis Cass to John C. Calhoun, November 18, 1819, in ASPIA, vol. 2, 319. 360 “Treaty with the Ottawa and Chippewa, 1820,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 188. 361 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1826,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 269. 362 Case, The Relentless Business of Treaties, 74. 363 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1842,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 543. 364 George Talcott to William L. Marcy, March 17, 1845, in TPUS, vol. 28, ed. John Porter Bloom (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1975), 811. 365 William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, Rev. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2003), 56. 106 desire to commodify elements of the natural world that sprung forth from this belief led to the destruction of New England beaver populations. These living creatures were subjected to market demands that superseded concerns for the species’ continued existence. As the accords above demonstrate, friction resulting from Euro-American attempts to commodify areas and objects from the natural world can be identified in the nineteenth-century Great Lakes Borderlands as well. When the U.S. government attempted to enforce the removal of the Ojibwe, “At first they were very unwilling to go, and tried to maintain the plea that they did not sell their land, but only the mineral on it.”366 They understood the American voraciousness for the contents of their Land, but this could lead to deception regarding the Land itself. Cass’s imagination regarding gender roles in Anishinaabewaki was also limited, as he remarked with equal parts shock and disdain how “[a]mong the Indians the women are the laborers.”367 Many white contemporaries echoed Cass’s bewilderment at Anishinaabe women physically exerting themselves, likening back to early modern European notions of labor that placed activities such as wood chopping and wood working into the domain of men.368 A missionary who witnessed how an Anishinaabe woman “cut and backed […] wood for the fire” characterized it as a sign of “laziness” among Anishinaabe men.369 In one of his ethnographic texts, Schoolcraft further explained that even as some found the idea of this sort of female labor 366 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, August 27, 1851, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 367 Cass, “System for Organizing the Indian Department,” ca. 1815, Lewis Cass Papers, Ayer MS 601, Folder 1, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 368 As historians Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker assert in their exploration of “hewers of wood and drawers of water” in the Revolutionary Atlantic, “[i]f the hewers of wood were male, the drawers of water were almost inevitably female.” See The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), 47-48. 369 E.H. Day, “Sketches of the Northwest,” in MPHC, vol. 14, 211. 107 “horrific,” it was “quite true that the Indian female does chop wood.”370 Another author asserted that “On the woman is devolved every domestic charge. She erects the tent, procures wood for the fire, manages the agricultural affairs, dresses the provisions, catches fish, and makes traps for small animals.”371 Anishinaabe men, in contrast, “glory in their idleness”372 Some Euro- American women, however, shared a different perspective on Native American men’s attitudes toward their partners. Sarah Emily St. John, a daughter of Rev. Slater, asserted that Native American women “were esteemed and loved very much, the same as among the light skinned lords of creation.”373 In upholding agricultural endeavors as central, Cass echoed the sentiments of Jefferson, whose own views held that the “preservation” of Native societies relied upon “[t]he promotion of agriculture […] and household manufacture.” Jefferson wanted the government to “aid and encourage [this project] liberally.”374 The Republican government that employed Cass embraced these ideals, privileging the needs of farmer citizens over Native peoples.375 Indian Agents routinely stressed the need for Natives to adopt land cultivation as a new cornerstone for their existence. Superintendent of Inian Affairs Thomas L. McKenney, for instance, professed to Lakes Indians “you cannot prosper unless you are Industrious & till the ground, & learn how to provide for your wants.”376 370 Henry R. Schoolcraft, Oneóta, or Characteristics of the Red Race of America from Original Notes and Manuscripts (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845), 198. 371 McIntosh, The Origin of the North American Indians, 119. 372 McIntosh, The Origin of the North American Indians, 192. 373 Sarah Emily St. John, “Daily Life, Manners, and Customs of the Indians in Kalamazoo County,” in MPHC, vol. 10 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1888), 168. 374 Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Hawkins, February 18, 1803, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private, vol. 4, ed. H.A. Washington (Washington, D.C.: Taylor and Maury, 1854), 467. 375 John T. Fierst, “Rationalizing Removal: Anti-Indianism in Lewis Cass’s North American Review Essays,” Michigan Historical Review 36, no. 2 (2010), 4. 376 Thomas L. McKenney to Piankeshaw Chiefs, June 11, 1825, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, Miscellaneous Manuscript Collections – Historical Societies: Kansas, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 108 Consequently, another recurring theme in nineteenth-century Land cession treaties became the allocation of tools to spur Indigenous men into agrarian labor. In the fourth article of the 1807 Treaty of Detroit, the United States made provisions for two blacksmiths in order “to encourage the said Indians, in agriculture.”377 The 1826 Treaty was more explicit, asserting in its fourth article that its purpose was to ensure that people of mixed ancestry were “stimulated to exertion and improvement by the possession of private property and fixed residences.”378 Subsequent treaties are replete with additional examples of this. The second article of a 1828 treaty set aside $7,500 for “clearing and fencing land, erecting houses, purchasing domestic animals and farming utensils, and in the support of labourers to work for them.”379 Likewise, the Treaty of Washington’s fourth article provided $10,000 for “agricultural implements, cattle, mechanics’ tools, and such other objects as the President may deem proper.”380 The U.S. government also attempted to install permanent fixtures, agreeing in the fourth article of the 1832 Treaty of Tippecanoe, for example, “to erect a saw mill on their [Potawatomi] lands.”381 The 1833 Treaty of Chicago’s third article promised money “for purposes of education and the encouragement of the domestic arts.”382 Finally, the 1855 Treaty Detroit’s second article earmarked $75,000 for “agricultural implements and carpenters’ tools, household furniture and building materials, cattle, labor, and all such articles as may be necessary and useful for 377 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1807,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 93. 378 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1826,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 269. 379 “Treaty with the Potowatomi, 1828,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 294. 380 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1836,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 452. 381 Such a structure would have certainly not been unfamiliar in Indian Country by the early nineteenth century. Euro-American incursion into the Great Lakes region brought with it mass deforestation, even before heyday of the logging industry in Northern Michigan. In 1764, British official Patrick Sinclair ordered the construction of a pinery near present-day Port Huron, and in 1780, he dispatched Jean Baptiste Point du Sable from Fort Michilimackinac to oversee its operation. By this time, the demand for firewood alone had led to deforestation for miles around the fort itself because 17½ cords of wood – that is, 8-ft. x 4-ft. x 4-ft. piles – were required to heat a single room during the winter. “Treaty with the Potowatomi, 1832,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 368; Also see Armour and Widder, At the Crossroads, 31, 152. 382 “Treaty with the Chippewa, Etc., 1833,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 403. 109 them.”383 The third article in the 1847 treaty went even further, stipulating that “Chippewas of full or mixed blood shall be employed as teachers, blacksmiths, and laborers, when such persons can be employed who are competent to perform the duties required of them under this and all former treaties.”384 Further stipulations regarding the interest of the Anishinaabe to maintain access to their Homelands can be found in the 1854 treaty, a fact reinforced by interpreter Benjamin Armstrong. He recalled in his memoirs that Ojibwe negotiators thought that “an arrangement should be made in the treaty whereby the government should provide for our mixed-blood relations by giving to each person the head of a family or to each singe person twenty-one years a piece of land containing at least eighty acres.”385 It is notable here how “half-breed” and “mixed-blood” both come into use. Anishinaabeg used these terms interchangeably.386 Indeed, such terminology did not exist prior to the influence of U.S. federal authorities.387 Some Anishinaabeg used “mixed- blood” to distinguish those members who had left their communities and only returned during annuity payments.388 383 “Treaty with the Ottawa and Chippewa, 1855,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 728-29. 384 “Treaty with the Chippewa of the Mississippi and Lake Superior, 1847,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 568. 385 Thomas P. Wentworth, Early Life Among the Indians: Reminiscences from the Life of Benj. G. Armstrong, Treaties of 1835, 1837, 1842 and 1854, Habits and Customs of the Red Men of the Forest, Incidents, Biographical Sketches, Battles, &c. (Ashland, WI: Press of A.W. Bowron, 1892), 41. 386 Doerfler, Those Who Belong, 11. 387 Doerfler, Those Who Belong, 16. 388 Doerfler, Those Who Belong, 25. 110 II. Magnanimity, Medicine, and Maple Sugar: Sources of Power for Anishinaabe Women and Rationales for Land Cessions Figure 2.3: Ozhaguscodaywayquay (Courtesy of Bentley Historical Library) If an appetite for private property did not animate Anishinaabeg as Cass and Schoolcraft hoped it would, it is crucial for an analysis of Anishinaabe women’s relations to Land cession treaties to underscore what did. The term that best encapsulates what motivated nineteenth- century Anishinaabe is mino-bimaadiziwin. Mino-bimaadiziwin embodies the concept of life in the fullest sense. From an Anishinaabe perspective, this means a long life in good health free from misfortune.389 Consequently, Anishinaabe leaders garnered the support of their communities by demonstrating their aptitude in upholding mino-bimaadiziwin for community members. Indeed, even if ogimaag boasted impressive pedigrees, this alone would not be enough to command respect within their villages. Bonds of blood could help one seize an authoritative position, but sustaining leadership required something that ran even deeper. According to Miller, 389 Miller, Ogimaag, 25. 111 Anishinaabe leaders “received authority from their hereditary claims coupled with religious power they demonstrated through making successful choices.”390 At the core of this “religious power” were relationships with a constituency of spiritual forces known as manidoog. Euro- American observers often referred to manidoog simply as “spirits,” but such a classification is reductive. Again, Miller explains that manidoog represent “realities other than the physical ones of rock, fire, water, air, wood, and flesh.”391 Such realities transgressed boundaries. Rather than solely existing outside the mortal plane, Anishinaabeg believed nonhuman kin regularly comingled with humans, manifesting in tangible and intangible ways that could range from beneficent to ambivalent to malevolent. Thus, Anishinaabe communities viewed ogimaag’s effectiveness as more than a result of skills they inherited from their forebearers or personally cultivated. To make a decision that extended lives, promoted wellbeing, and insulated oneself and others from adversity was evidence of deep connections to otherworldly inawemaagen. For Ozhaguscodaywayquay, one manifestation of her coupling with manidoog came in the form of her dreams. Jameson recounts that when Ozhaguscodaywayquay was a girl, she experienced a vision in which she witnessed her people engulfed in a mighty conflagration. “All my relations will be burned!” she thought, only to be interrupted by a voice that assured her, “No, they will not be destroyed, they will be saved.”392 The timing of Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s vision aligns with what Miller describes as a tendency for manidoog to confer strength and knowledge upon young women to aid them in achieving mino-bimaadiziwin.393 390 Miller, Ogimaag, 110. 391 Miller, Ogimaag, 7. 392 Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, 243. 393 Cary Miller, “Every Dream Is a Prophecy: Rethinking Revitalization – Dreams, Prophets, and Routinized Cultural Evolution,” in Centering Anishinaabeg Studies, 123; Also see Cleland, “Cass, Sassaba and Ozhaw- Guscoday-Wa-Guay,” 80-81. 112 Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s ethereal experience made her a welcome presence in community decision-making at Baawitigong where consensus rather than coercion held sway. Recall that only men could hold the title of ogimaag, but Anishinaabe women could most assuredly influence their male counterparts. Ogimaakweg acted as women’s representatives in council meetings, and “[w]hen discussing political issues, any woman could rise and make her opinions known and would receive the respectful attention of all those present.”394 Evidencing the weight of women’s words are innumerable instances in Euro-American treaty documentation where Lakes Indians invoked women’s interests. During negotiations for the 1825 Treaty of Prairie du Chien, for example, Iowa leader White Cloud stated, “My Fathers, I claim no land in particular. The land I live on is enough to furnish my women & children – I go upon the lands of our friends the Socs & Focs – we alternate go upon each others land – why should we quarrel about land when we get enough on what we have.”395 In this quotation, the insistence that “land I live on is enough to furnish my women & children” is especially revealing because it relates to a more tangible source of Anishinaabe women’s influence. Ogimaag’s success in battle and diplomacy signaled their positive relations with manidoog, but the expertise ogimaakweg displayed in horticultural practices represented a blessing that afforded them notoriety. Expertise in forms of Land stewardship and understanding how to utilize products from the Land are examples of what Anishinaabe scholar Wendy Makoons Geniusz calls anishinaabe-gikendaasowin – Anishinaabe knowledge. Women transferred anishinaabe-gikendaasowin through the names of objects they interacted with and 394 Miller, Ogimaag, 67. 395 “Journal of the Proceedings […] at Prairie du Chien,” August 1825, Ratified Treaty No. 139, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 113 object histories for the purpose of promulgating mino-bimaadiziwin.396 It is this study’s contention that Anishinaabe men recognized anishinaabe-gikendaasowin as an invaluable resource, and by accessing it Anishinaabe women seized opportunities to influence community functions and diplomacy. Taking the three principal facets of mino-bimaadiziwin into account reveals three directions that took Greater Mackinac women toward positions of authority. First, by cultivating maple sugar, a staple of the Anishinaabe diet, Greater Mackinac women promoted the longevity of their communities. Second, by implementing Indigenous medical practices, Greater Mackinac women ensured the good health of their communities. Third, by engaging in magnanimous acts, Greater Mackinac women counteracted their communities’ misfortunes. A. Maple Sugar In a report dated October 1, 1815, U.S. Indian Agent B.F. Stickney made a grisly proposition. The Treaty of Ghent (signed on December 24, 1814) and the Treaty of Springwells (signed on September 8, 1815) had recently brought an end to the War of 1812, and in the former agreement British negotiators largely abandoned the interests of their Indigenous allies.397 Yet Stickney correctly predicted that Great Britain would continue to furnish gifts to American Indians from its Canadian military bases, and in imagining future international aggression he opined, “we cannot have a British war without a war with the Indians.”398 Thus, he suggested an unconventional tactic to Secretary of War William H. Crawford. “[I]t is much cheaper reducing them by meat and bread than by the force of arms,” Stickney stated. Instead of spending so much on conventional warfare, the Indian Agent argued that the United States should aggressively 396 Wendy Makoons Geniusz, Our Knowledge Is Not Primitive: Decolonizing Botanical Anishinaabe Teachings (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009), 3; For a foundational analysis on Land as an ever-present educator, see Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 38-41. 397 Taylor, The Civil War of 1812, 417-18. 398 B.F. Stickney to William H. Crawford, October 1, 1815, in ASPIA, vol. 2, 35. 114 compete with British gift-giving to ensnare Indigenous people into dependence on American rations. He calculated that “three or four months’ full feeding on meat and bread, even without ardent spirit, will bring on disease, and, in six or eight months, great mortality […] I believe more Indians might be killed with the expense of $100,000 in this way, than $1,000,000 expended in the support of armies to go against them.”399 Whether there was any accuracy in Stickney’s tabulations is irrelevant. What he was proposing was a campaign of genocidal proportions aimed at Indigenous subsistence. Even as he made this proposition, Stickney had to pause and ask, “would it be considered a proper mode of warfare?”400 After all, his words would reach the desk of the Secretary of War, and he held connections to other powerful people in Greater Mackinac. Cass, for one, expressed respect for Stickney, and the Indian Agent corresponded with the Algic Society, Schoolcraft’s missionary organization. Although the Algic Society never rose to prominence, it grew to be composed of prominent politicians and religious figures in the Michigan Territory.401 Schoolcraft had grand ambitions for this order after he experienced a religious conversion in 1830.402 William Thurston Boutwell, a missionary for the ABCFM, corroborated the extent of Schoolcraft’s conversion, writing to his superiors in 1832 that “I found him a devoted Christian. The L[ord] has not only given me a friend but a helper indeed in this man.”403 In correspondence 399 B.F. Stickney to William H. Crawford, October 1, 1815, in ASPIA, vol. 2, 36. 400 B.F. Stickney to William H. Crawford, October 1, 1815, in ASPIA, vol. 2, 36. 401 Lewis Cass to B.F. Stickney, March 9, 1818, NAM M1, Roll 3, 151; Constitution of the Algic Society, Instituted March 28, 1832, for Encouraging Missionary Effort in Evangelizing the North Western Tribes, and Promoting Education, Agriculture, Industry, Peace and Temperance, Among Them (Detroit: Cleland and Sawyer, 1833), 22-23; The word “Algic” is a portmanteau of “Allegheny” and “Atlantic” which Schoolcraft invented to describe the Native Americans he studied. See Robert Lawrence Gunn, Ethnology and Empire: Languages, Literature, and the Making of the North American Borderlands (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 33. 402 Julius H. Rubin, Perishing Heathens: Stories of Protestant Missionaries and Christian Indians in Antebellum America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 176. 403 William Thurston Boutwell to David Greene, March 7, 1832, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 115 with David Greene, he admitted that he wanted the Algic Society to act as a local auxiliary to the ABCFM.404 Ultimately, Stickney’s proposal did little to shape a formal federal policy, but the exterminationist mindset at its core deserves serious attention. Reliance on food Euro-Americans provided could have devastating consequences, as Mooningwanekaaning Ojibwe learned in 1850. That year, U.S. officials changed the distribution site for annuity payments from Mooningwanekaaning to Sandy Lake, Minnesota. Historians recognize the events that followed as the Sandy Lake Tragedy because approximately 400 Ojibwe died while trekking westward or waiting for Indian Agents to fulfill their treaty obligations.405 Disease and exposure killed many, but the reason so many others died of starvation is perhaps most alarming. Following the tragedy, Ojibwe leaders asserted that when they arrived at Sandy Lake, “Instead of having a good supply of provisions to eat, we had but little; and the pork & flour furnished us, had been washed in the water, and was so much damaged that we could not eat it.”406 In other words, food was available, but it was inedible. Federal officials were content to withhold the nutrients Ojibwe needed to survive.407 Euro-American incursion on the Great Lakes Borderlands had a devastating impact on Native American food supplies. John Johnston wrote in an 1822 report on the Ojibwe around Lake Superior, “The diminution of the wild animals is so great that the Indians can no longer produce the necessaries of life by hunting.”408 Within less than two decades, other observers 404 Henry R. Schoolcraft to David Greene, November 2, 1833, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 11, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 405 Loew, Indian Nations of Wisconsin, 67. 406 Buffalo et al. to Luke Lea, November 6, 1851, NAM M234, Roll 149, 138. 407 For more on the role of food in conflicts between Euro-Americans and Native Americans, see Rachel B. Herrmann, No Useless Mouth: Waging War and Fighting Hunger in the American Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019). 408 Bernard C. Peters, “John Johnston’s 1822 Description of the Lake Superior Chippewa,” Michigan Historical Review 20, no. 2 (1994), 33. 116 were reporting on Anishinaabe bands that “depended on the avails of their treaty to supply them necessities for the spring and summer.”409 The United States wanted to make reliance on government a norm for relations between them and American Indians. One of the greatest displays of blessing from manidoog was freedom from want. For Anishinaabe men, this meant being skilled in hunting, but for women this meant overseeing bountiful harvests. The 1837 Treaty of St. Peters’s fifth article stipulates that “the Ojibwe nation retain hunting, fishing, and gathering rights on ceded land.”410 Manoomin (wild rice) not only served as a staple of Anishinaabe diets. Its harvesting also served as a place where women’s labor was essential.411 It was, as one scholar describes, “the most visible expression of women’s autonomy in Ojibwe society.”412 Many goods passed through the stores of Ozhaguscodaywayquay, so many that in February 1836 her son William secured a promissory note for $20,000 on behalf of Baawitigong Ojibwe leaders.413 Yet it was maple sugar that conferred Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s greatest prominence among Baawitigong Ojibwe. Maple sugar could make up as much as one-sixth of the local food supply.414 Every year, Ozhaguscodaywayquay went to sugar bushes and sometimes returned with as much as two tons. Her Sugar Island camp produced over 3,000 pounds of maple sugar each year, and in one season, she produced approximately 3,500 pounds of “sugar of excellent quality.”415 Identifying her possession of this space is appropriate here 409 J.D. Stevens to David Greene, June 26, 1838, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 11, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 410 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1837,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 492. 411 Chantal Norrgard, Seasons of Change: Labor, Treaty Rights, and Ojibwe Nationhood (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 22-32. 412 Child, Holding Our World Together, 24-26. 413 William Johnston to Henry R. Schoolcraft, February 20, 1836, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 13, LOC, Washington, D.C. 414 Francis M. Carroll, A Good and Wise Measure: The Search for the Canadian-American Boundary, 1783-1842 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 138-40. 415 Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, 246. 117 because when it came to sugaring camps, they “have all an owner, and no Indian family would think of making sugar at a place where [they] had no right.”416 She was not alone, though. Along with sentiments expressed in treaty documentation, in negotiations leaders such as Flat Mouth stated, “Your children are willing to let you have their lands, but they wish to reserve the privilege of making sugar from the trees, and getting their living from the Lakes and Rivers, as they have done heretofore, and of remaining in this Country.”417 The sugar bushes were a space that Anishinaabe women controlled and managed, crafting all the materials necessary to pierce maple trees, collect their sap, and boil the collected material to distill it into maple sugar.418 Maple sugar could be added to pots to boil with meat, which would sweeten the meat while imparting flavor to the sugar.419 Sugar could be used as a seasoning or a preservative, but its significance went beyond use in food. It also had medicinal uses. As scholar Susan Wade explains, “Sap straight from the tree has diuretic properties, and syrup can be used to treat intestinal disorders. When herbal teas and decoctions were made, maple sugar sweetened the medicine. Sometimes healers placed the medicine directly into sugar cakes.”420 Trade was another crucial function of maple sugar. As Blackbird writes, it was common for Odawa to pool the sugar they produced together and provide it to the priest in order to transport it to Detroit in exchange for dry goods.421 Among the items that Lakes Indians traded 416 Johann Georg Kohl, Kitchi-Gami: Wanderings Round Lake Superior, trans. Lascelles Wraxall (London: Chapman and Hall, 1860), 421. 417 Proceedings of a Council [...] at the Confluence of the St. Peters and Mississippi Rivers,” July 1837, Ratified Treaty No. 223, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 418 Susan Wade, “Ojibwe Women and Maple Sugar Production in Anishinaabewakiing and the Red River Region, 1670-1873” (PhD diss., Milwaukee, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, 2021), 54-56. 419 Edward W. Barber, “Beginnings in Eaton County: Its Earliest Settlements and Settlers,” in MPHC, vol. 29 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1901), 347. 420 Wade, “Ojibwe Women and Maple Sugar Production,” 66. 421 Blackbird, History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan, 48. 118 besides furs, Kinzie was sure to note first how they brought “maple-sugar in abundance,” either alone or incased in ornate birchbark boxes decorated with porcupine quills.422 Schoolcraft also recognized the diplomatic element that maple sugar carried, as he made a gift of it to Andrew Jackson for Christmas in 1835.423 In the western Great Lakes, Indian women’s agricultural labor sustained the local and transient population and could be exported to other posts.424 The average family at Baawitigong generally produced 300-700 pounds in a year.425 In estimating average sugar production around Baawitigong, missionary Abel Bingham reported that during a seasons in which Anishinaabe women were “very successful in sugar making,” families produced between 200 and 1,000 pounds each.426 One year after the Treaty of Washington’s signing, Schoolcraft reported that maple sugar was a principal commodity among the Waganawkezee Odawa.427 Annual yields could be as much as 150,000 pounds. Meanwhile, Michilimackinac could ship 200,000 pounds seasonally. 428 This was a tremendous labor, but it had substantial financial benefits. An Indian agent in 1843 estimated the annual value of Ojibwe sugar above that of Ojibwe furs.429 While Ozhaguscodaywayquay sold a variety of products, maple sugar was among the most popular and profitable.430 422 Kinzie, Wau-Bun, 21. 423 Andrew Jackson Donelson to Henry R. Schoolcraft, December 25, 1835, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 40, LOC, Washington, D.C. 424 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 76. 425 Robert H. Keller, “America’s Native Sweet: Chippewa Treaties and the Right to Harvest Maple Sugar,” American Indian Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1989), 132. 426 Abel Bingham to James Ord, July 2, 1849, NAM M234, Roll 771, 304. 427 Henry R. Schoolcraft to Carey A. Harris, September 15, 1837, NAM M234, Roll 422, 729. 428 S & Co., “Two Days at Mackinaw – No. 4,” Democratic Free Press, Detroit, MI, July 31, 1847, 2. 429 Jeremy Mumford, “Mixed-Race Identity in a Nineteenth-Century Family: The Schoolcrafts of Sault Ste. Marie, 1824-27,” Michigan Historical Review 25, no. 1 (1999), 14. 430 Susan Johnston, “Account Journal of Store at Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, 1830-1831,” General Collection, Microfilm 1159, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 119 Maple sugar production could even draw Anishinaabe girls away from the Americanizing influence of missionary schools. Correspondence of the ABCFM and other religious orders are replete with reports of school operations practically ceasing during sugar-making seasons. Rev. Bingham shared a story in his annual report for the Mackinac Indian Agency of an Indigenous girl who crossed the border from Canada to Baawitigong on her own initiative because she wanted to “obtain religious instruction, and learn the art of house keeping.” The Baptist praised the “progress” she was making, but lamented how the “earnest request of her mother” induced her to leave the mission to assist in making sugar.431 Recall that during his first visit to Baawitigong, Cass would have likely come to blows with Ojibwe warrior Sassaba if not for Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s swift intervention. Mixed- ancestry fur trader George Johnston recalled how his mother “came in and with authority commanded the assembled chiefs to be quick, and suppress the follies of Sessaba.”432 Another chronicler corroborated his account, crediting Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s “luminous exposition” with preserving peace.433 Even Cass “felt himself […] under the greatest obligation to Mrs. J [Ozhaguscodaywayquay] for her co-operation at that critical moment.”434 So many commendations illustrate the influence Ozhaguscodaywayquay possessed, yet it is critical to note that her power did not derive solely from her lineage in the Crane clan.435 Just as the Johnston family provides perhaps the most explicit example of Anishinaabe women directly interceding in the organization of treaty negotiations between their community and the United States, they also provide the most explicit example of intervening in crafting 431 Abel Bingham to Henry R. Schoolcraft, August 15, 1839, NAM M1, Roll 47, 121. 432 Johnston, “Reminiscences by Geo. Johnston,” in MPHC, vol. 12, 610. 433 C.H. Chapman, “The Historic Johnston Family of the ‘Soo,’” in MPHC, vol. 32, 308. 434 McKenney, Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, 183. 435 As scholar Timothy Cochrane notes in his examination of another borderland community, some Anishinaabeg who Euro-American fur traders regularly discussed in their journals “were members of uncommon or minor clans on the North Shore.” See Cochrane, Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais, 123. 120 treaty negotiations. Since she was in Baawitigong, Schoolcraft asked Jane to enlist one of her brothers to round up a delegation to represent the Ojibwe of the eastern Lake Superior region. Jane’s brother William invited Waishkey and Waubojeeg, members of the caribou doodem, the doodem of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s grandfather.436 As Baawitigong Ojibweg would later protest, only members of the crane doodem had authority to speak for them at diplomatic engagements. Schoolcraft scoffed that it was a “somewhat amusing account.”437 According to one scholar, “to ensure that their children would receive more money than ordinary mixed- bloods, [Schoolcraft and his cohorts] came up with a scheme that would divide mixed-bloods into three classes according to the esteem in which they were held by the Indians and their ability to take care of money.”438 Under such parameters, it should come as little surprise that Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Jane Susan Schoolcraft, and John Johnston Schoolcraft – Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s wife, daughter, and son, respectively – were among the handful of applicants to receive four figure sums.439 B. Medicine Knowledge of medicinal herbs was invaluable during the nineteenth century, as even white Americans ventured into Indigenous encampments to obtain them. One such person was Joseph Cisler, a Michigander who reported that Anishinaabe medicine helped cure his sister of serious burns, and an Anishinaabe woman successfully treated him for a disease “which white doctors with the best medical education were unable to conquer.”440 436 Charles E. Cleland, Faith in Paper: The Ethnohistory and Litigation of Upper Great Lakes Indian Treaties (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 62-63. 437 Cleland, Faith in Paper, 63. 438 Theresa Schenck, “Border Identities: Métis, Halfbreed, and Mixed-Blood,” in Gathering Places: Aboriginal and Fur Trade Histories, eds. Carolyn Podruchny and Laura Peers (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2010), 237. 439 “1836 Mixed-Blood Census Register,” NAM M574, Roll 23. 440 Charles A. Weissert, “The Indians and the Trading Posts in the Northwest of Barry County, Michigan,” in MPHC, vol. 38 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1912), 667. 121 The importance of medical care can be found in an anecdote Rev. Bingham shared from his days in Baawitigong. An Anishinaabe woman related, “When I was down at your place, both you and the doctor tried your religion upon me and it did me no good; if I am a well woman it was this medicine religion that has cured me.”441 Writing about his experiences among the Dakota, Rev. Samuel W. Pond asserted, “They believed in the efficacy of medicines and made great use of them […] They had learned the medicinal qualities of a great many plants, roots etc., which they held in high estimation.”442 Anishinaabe communities also considered women’s access to unique knowledge of medicinal herbs to be gifts from manidoog. Ethnobotanist Mary Siisip Geniusz asserts that in Anishinaabe culture, “plants are thought of as beings with their own histories, stories, beliefs, and ways of life” that are meant to be passed down orally from masters to apprentices.443 The origins of these “ways of life” embedded in plants, though, emerged from more than simply personal experience. Instead, the human progenitors of this knowledge were “gifted with this knowledge by direct spirit gift.”444 Thus, a dedication to her farm and gardens represented nothing less than a display of uniquely feminine autonomy attainable in Anishinaabe culture. During her lifetime, Agatha attended to medical care as well as the proper burials of approximately 50 Indigenous people.445 Well into the nineteenth century, women of Indigenous ancestry in the Great Lakes Borderlands were able to make great use of the gift of healing, 441 Abel Bingham, “The Early Mission at Sault Ste. Marie,” in MPHC, vol. 28 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1900), 522. 442 Samuel W. Pond, “The Dakotas or Sioux in Minnesota As They Were in 1834,” in MHC, vol. 12 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1908), 476. 443 Geniusz, Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask, xiii, 20; Iain J. Davidson-Hunt et al. reinforce how this practice has continued into the modern era. See Iain J. Davidson-Hunt et al., “Iskatewizaagegan (Shoal Lake) Plant Knowledge: An Anishinaabe (Ojibway) Ethnobotany of Northwestern Ontario,” Journal of Ethnobiology 25, no. 2 (2005), 190. 444 Geniusz, Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask, 19. 445 Karlis-Shananaquet, “Agatha Biddle,” 33. 122 carving out prominent positions within their communities by drawing “upon multiple medical traditions, making their range of treatment options greater than those available to people with access to only a single medical tradition.”446 The Old Northwest is replete with examples of Native healers. During the penultimate decade of the nineteenth century, a reporter for the Friends’ Intelligencer found Susan Davenport alive on Mackinac Island. Susan was “highly valued for her gifts in the art of healing, knowing all the mysteries of Indian ‘medicine,’ and having the nerve and the faith to apply them.”447 Agatha’s charitable identity extended to her work as a horticulturalist. Odawa relocation to Waganawkezee surely taught Agatha how a readily available food supply would allow her to establish herself more stably as a charitable figure. Moreover, her dedication to her garden represented nothing less than a display of uniquely feminine autonomy attainable in Anishinaabe culture. According to Miller, expertise in horticulturalist practices afforded women considerable influence within their communities.448 Through her control over cultivation, Agatha asserted herself as mistress of the Biddle homestead. Material culture reinforces the extent to which traditional healing practices remained a viable practice for Anishinaabe women even beyond Susan’s death in 1888. To demonstrate this, it is worth lingering on the case of Ojibwe medicinal herbs preserved in the collections of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. On March 4, 1905, aspiring anthropologist Mark Raymond Harrington embarked on a trip between Michigan and Ontario to acquire objects from Anishinaabe communities for the Peabody. He first entered Pottawatomi villages in Athens and Dowagiac in southwestern Michigan before moving into 446 Murphy, Great Lakes Creoles, 167. 447 S.R., “The American Fur Company at Mackinaw,” 444. 448 Miller, Ogimaag, 66-67. 123 Indian reserves in Sarnia and Walpole Island in southwestern Ontario. The Ojibwe medicinal herbs Harrington found embody strong evidence of Anishinaabe cultural continuity from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. Among the many objects that Harrington obtained were a series of medicinal plant samples he purchased from Ojibwe women in Sarnia. He retrieved 18 vials, including a compound of seven herbs, a compound of 13 plants, and various samples of wood, roots, and vegetable material all labeled in Anishinaabemowin. He chiefly purchased plant samples from Indigenous women. Considering that two of the women that he purchased medicinal herbs from, Nellie Maville and Mary Medwayah, were only 33 and 48, respectively, Anishinaabe medical traditions were certainly not dying out. Perhaps even more important than what we can learn from Harrington’s notes, though, is what we cannot learn. While he documented the Anishinaabe names of the medicinal herbs he bought many details about them are conspicuously absent. Considering the level of detail elsewhere in Harrington’s notes, it would be unfair to assume that this was the result of apathy. Instead, it is much more likely that the individuals who he did business with simply did not believe Anishinaabe botanical knowledge should be transmitted hastily. According to Geniusz, in Anishinaabe culture, “plants are thought of as beings with their own histories, stories, beliefs, and ways of life,” and these stories are meant to be passed down orally from one person to another in the context of a master/apprentice relationship.449 No matter how respectful he may have been to the communities he travelled to, Harrington most assuredly encountered challenges to what he considered research as an outsider. Such challenges manifested explicitly in his quest for Anishinaabe medicine, as he noted that the compound of 13 plants he acquired came “From Mrs. Elizabeth Jacobs who would not tell their 449 Geniusz, Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask, xiii, 20. 124 names.”450 By restricting total access to such knowledge, Harrington may have come to the erroneous conclusion that it and the people who possessed it were vanishing. On the contrary, the number of details that the Anishinaabeg he encountered did provide demonstrate that even after facing aggressive attempts at displacement from the Old Northwest and assimilation policies on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border throughout the nineteenth century, they retained remnants of their language and traditions of oral knowledge bearing, with masters instructing apprentices on how to put plants to good use in the twentieth. While Harrington concluded that many of the Anishinaabe objects he purchased were not Aboriginal enough, the Ojibwe medicinal herbs among his findings complicate his declensionist assessment, as they demonstrate Anishinaabe peoples’ cultural continuity across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dowagiac, Michigan emerged as a crucial center of Pottawatomi settlement in the 1830s. Following the turbulent Black Hawk War in 1832, U.S. officials began to push more aggressively for the removal of Indians from the Old Northwest. Cass stated that “the overall intention was to ‘extinguish entirely’ Indian land titles.”451 The U.S. government achieved its aim through the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, which seized millions of acres of Anishinaabe land west of Lake Michigan while forcing thousands of Pottawatomi on a “trail of death” to reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma. Nearly 3,000 Pottawatomi fled across the Canadian border to Walpole Island, but others were able to resist removal by purchasing land and establishing a Catholic community in Silver Creek Township just outside Dowagiac.452 Meanwhile, the Sarnia Indian Reserve in Ontario became another major destination for 450 Mark Raymond Harrington, “Specimens Collected from the Chippewas (Ojibwe) of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada,” March 11-12, 1905, #25, Accession File 05-19, PMAE, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 451 John P. Bowes, Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 153. 452 John N. Low, Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2016), 29-30. 125 Anishinaabeg forced from their homelands on territories that the United States claimed. In the late 1830s, hundreds of Ojibwe from Saginaw, Michigan journeyed to Sarnia, more than doubling the reserve’s Native population.453 C. Magnanimity Land was, of course, not all that Magdelaine provided for her grandchildren. Her granddaughter Harriet wrote to her in 1835 that “it was you, who nursed me with care, and left not a wish unsatisfied […] I remember the many, many little acts of kindness, you were wont to do for me.”454 These included rides across the icy lakes and making her candy. “La Framboise’s behavior,” Sleeper-Smith asserts, “could be interpreted by incoming Americans as those of a charitable Christian, while simultaneously reflecting the values associated with kinship among Odawa people.”455 Schoolcraft noted such charitable behavior in 1837, stating that La Framboise gave food to a “poor decrepit Indian woman.”456 On Mackinac Island, “Agatha managed her home on Market Street in the Odawa tradition of hospitality by bestowing gifts of food, clothing, and shelter to the Native people who visited.”457 According to one Anishinaabe historian, “As the chief of one of the Mackinac bands of Odawa and Ojibway peoples, Agatha helped defend her people’s land, identity, and place as a modern people in Michigan.”458 More than that, however, Biddle possessed a “warm reputation” for her acceptance and charity aimed at Mackinac Islanders of mixed ancestry.459 According to 453 George Copway, The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation (London: Charles Gilpin, 1850), 176. 454 Harriet Pierce to Magdelaine La Framboise, April 21, 1835, Henry and Elizabeth Baird Papers, Box 1, Folder 3, WHS, Madison, WI. 455 Sleeper-Smith, “‘[A]n Unpleasant Transaction on This Frontier,’” 433. 456 Schoolcraft, Personal Memoirs, 569. 457 Jordan Karlis-Shananaquet, “Agatha Biddle: Trader, Wife, and Anishinaabe Chief,” Michigan History 102, no. 1 (2018), 33. 458 Karlis-Shananaquet, “Agatha Biddle, 34. 459 Widder, Battle for the Soul, 51-53. 126 one observer, approximately 200 guests would pass through the Biddle house and benefit from Agatha’s kindness annually with 20-30 often remaining for a week or more at a time. The observer emphasized that the Biddles did not welcome these people out of professional obligation. On the contrary, “the services were purely personal and rendered in and about Mrs. Biddle’s own house.”460 Her hospitality did not extend solely to Euro-American visitors. She was “never known […] without some Indians to a greater or less amount in her kitchen and about her private house.”461 One contemporary asserted, “that all of them were gratuitous and charitable, never paid for or otherwise compensated and many of the objects on whom they were expended were destitute and forlorn. that the food supplied was pork, fish, flour, corn and such like which the Indians helped themselves to out of the private barrels of Mr. Biddle”462 Agatha and her husband also adopted two young Indigenous girls and fostered dozens of other children. According to one Euro-American, Biddle “brought up an Indian orphan girl, named Yow-as-o-quay – the child of an Indian called Keshawa, an Ottawa from the North of Grand River,” and she ensured that “she has been clothed, fed and educated and instructed in all respects like […] [her] own children.”463 The conversion of several girls in rapid succession following the introduction of revivalist elements convinced Rev. Ferry of their efficacy. Although Biddle remained a devout Catholic, she was surely aware of the potential skills this mixed-ancestry child could develop to prepare herself for an increasingly changing world characterize by growing American incursion. 460 Charles Beaubien to J.P. King, October 16, 1837, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Special File No. 156, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 461 Weller, The Founding Mothers of Mackinac Island, 13. 462 Charles Beaubien to J.P. King, October 16, 1837, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Special File No. 156, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 463 Charles Beaubien to J.P. King, October 16, 1837, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Special File No. 156, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 127 Much like her mentor, Agatha opened her home to Aboriginal visitors and orphans. Along with her own progeny, she purportedly raised no fewer than seven other children.464 A deponent testifying to government investigators had “probably never, known Mrs. Biddle being without some Indians, to a greater or less amount in her kitchen and about her private house; that such inmates were supplied with food, lodging and fuel, when sick they were nursed, furnished with medicines and with a Doctor, if necessary, all of which was done by Mrs. Biddle.”465 III. “If the Indians Desire It”: Mixed Ancestry and Cultural Continuity in Greater Mackinac The untimely death of Jane and Henry’s first son interrupted the latter’s push for career advancement. In 1826, Ozhaguscodaywayquay headed the special schedule of the Treaty of Fond du Lac and was the only one to receive a further allotment for each grandchild. Her family’s lands were to be on Sugar Island, a prime location for maple sugar production. The treaty explicitly notes, “The locations for Oshauguscodaywayqua and her descendents [sic] shall be adjoining the lower part of the military reservation, and upon the head of Sugar Island.”466 According to historian Jeremy Mumford, Ozhaguscodaywayquay may have chosen this strategic location intentionally to keep her descendants nearby. The land grant, in other words, was designed “not to estrange him from the Chippewa tribe but to tie him to it.”467 There is certainly evidence for this assertion. She felt great affection for her grandson, calling him “penaysee or little Bird, a term of manly endearment.”468 During treaty negotiations, Shingabawossin, a Baawitigong Ojibwe leader of the Crane clan expressed that “land to be provided from my half- 464 Marion M. Davis, “Three Islands,” in Michigan History Magazine, vol. 12 (Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1928), 543. 465 Charles Beaubien to J.P. King, October 16, 1837, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Special File No. 156, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 466 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1826,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 269. 467 Mumford, “Mixed-Race Identity in a Nineteenth-Century Family, 18. 468 Henry R. Schoolcraft, “Notice of William Henry Schoolcraft,” in The Literary Voyager, 146. 128 breeds, I will select; I leave it to you to provide your reserves for your own.”469 Shingabawossin likely shared strong connections with the Schoolcraft family, as Schoolcraft praised him in his work.470 Land grants did not constitute full ownership because, under the terms of the treaty, recipients were not allowed to sell their granted land without special permission from the president.471 The land, and the people, were placed “under the protection of the United States.” As contemporary members of the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan understand, their relationship to the US government in the twenty-first century still “rests on this treaty language.”472 It is certainly worth noting that in the Treaty of Washington, Sugar Island gains specific distinction to note that “the reservation for a place of fishing and encampment, made under the treaty of St. Mary’s of the 16th of June 1820, remains unaffected by this treaty.”473 Again, Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s brother Waishkey was among the treaty party.474 All four families in this dissertation appear as beneficiaries in various treaties that shaped the Old Northwest between 1795 and 1855. That terminal date marked the Treaty of Detroit, which indicated in its second article that annuities “shall, if the Indians desire it, be paid to such of their half-breed relations as they may indicate.”475 Magdelaine and her sister Therèse retained control of their properties on Mackinac Island and claimed a $400 cash payment from the 1833 Treaty of Chicago.476 Likewise, Agatha and her children were listed as treaty annuity recipients in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, receiving a $900 cash payment. Susan Davenport is named as a 469 McKenney, Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, 459. 470 Frank Kelderman, Authorized Agents: Publication and Diplomacy in the Era of Indian Removal (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019), 177-83. 471 Mumford, “Mixed-Race Identity in a Nineteenth-Century Family, 18. 472 Benz and Williamson, eds., Diba Jimooyung, Telling Our Story, 33. 473 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1836,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 451. 474 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1826,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 270. 475 “Treaty with the Chippewa of Sault Ste. Marie, 1855,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 732. 476 “Treaty with the Chippewa, Etc., 1833,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 402. 129 beneficiary of a segment of land near the St. Mary’s River in the 1826 Treaty of Fond du Lac. Since the treaty arrangements would inevitably result in Ojibwe displacement, its fourth article stipulated that people they called “half-breeds” receive segments of a 640-acre tract. Its attached distribution schedule awarded, “To Susan Davenport, grand daughter of Misquabunoqua, and wife of Ambrose Davenport, and to each of her children, one section.”477 The Senate, however, never approved the fourth article associated with this schedule.478 Although the Davenports did not secure any land through the Treaty of Fond du Lac, the names Ambrose and Susan remained in federal documentation. When the Treaty of Washington was approved, its final version articulated that no compensation would “be allowed to any such person, who may have received any allowance at any previous Indian treaty.”479 Some could be “Anishinaabe enough to be compensated for the land cessions made by their Indigenous relatives, but white enough to be denied a reserved portion of their ancestral homeland.”480 In the Treaty of Washington, the Biddle family received “one section” of land “at the fishing grounds, at the rate of three dollars” under Edward Biddle’s name as well as “one section of land […] at two dollars and fifty cents” under Sophia Biddle.481 The receding scope of the fur trade in the mid-nineteenth century led many in Greater Mackinac, especially Mackinac Islanders, to turn to fishing for the plentiful and commercially coveted whitefish that inhabited the inland seas.482 Fishing remained critical in the westward reaches of Greater Mackinac as well, with Rev. Hall remarking that around his mission, “[t]he staple article of living is fish 477 “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1826,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 272. 478 Schenck, “Border Identities,” 236. 479 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1836,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 452. 480 Witgen, Seeing Red, 270. 481 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1836,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 454. 482 S & Co., “Two Days at Mackinaw – No. 2,” Democratic Free Press, Detroit, MI, July 29, 1847, 2; Also see Margaret Beattie Bogue, Fishing the Great Lakes: An Environmental History, 1783-1933 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 150-53. 130 which is taken out of the lake. It is of good quality and every foreigner soon becomes fond of it as an article of living.”483 In contests with Indigenous peoples, Americans frequently placed impediments between them and their ability to gather fish. Recall that when advocating on behalf of Elizabeth Mitchell, British authorities attested that Americans “prevented [her] from putting out nets to fish.”484 By the 1840s, however, fishing became the chief economic endeavor of Mackinac Island, with the number of barrels of fish being exported growing from approximately 1,700 to 20,000 in just over a decade.”485 It makes sense, then, that Ambrose, Jr. was among the former fur traders who transitioned to a fishing career, and he and several of his sons were listed as fishermen in 1870.486 Navigating the complexities of Land cession treaties was a tricky matter even for those well versed in American legal procedures. In an 1851 case that Eliza Cook brought before the Michigan Supreme Court, justices admitted regarding the Treaty of Washington that “much of the language of this treaty is so loose that to give it a strictly legal and grammatical construction, would involve the most palpable contradictions and absurdities.”487 The Supreme Court believed it reasonable to assume that any award made to the parent of a mixed-ancestry child would benefit the child, basing this on the logic that Native Americans would be “willing to rely upon the natural instinct of paternity to impel the father to do justice to his children.”488 That said, the blot of a gray area emerged from the inclusion of both Euro-American men and their mixed- ancestry children named in the treaty articles. The Supreme Court deemed it necessary to 483 Sherman Hall to David Greene, September 28, 1832, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 484 Robert McDouall to F. Chambers, October 2, 1815, in MPHC, vol. 16, 307. 485 S & Co., “Two Days at Mackinaw – No. 2,” Democratic Free Press, Detroit, MI, July 29, 1847, 2. 486 U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census, 1870; Mackinac Co., MI, Holmes Township, p. 24, dwell. 182, fam. 170; NAM M593, Roll 687. 487 “Cook et al. vs. Biddle et al.,” in Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Michigan, vol. 2, ed. George C. Gibbs (Detroit: S.D. Elwood and Company, 1854), 273. 488 “Cook et al. vs. Biddle et al.,” 274. 131 distinguish between individuals because language for a trust was not explicitly present in the document. They found that the omission of such language “was intentional, and that they were carefully excluded.”489 As Witgen argues, “the clear separation between the categories of civilized and uncivilized was something imagined […] “The definition of civilized behavior or character was expressed inconsistently by both the missionaries and territorial officials.”490 Consequently, any litmus test devised for determining degrees of “civilization” would be open to broad interpretation and subjectivity, as would meanings for terms like “half breed.” That said, as Saler notes in her work, it was common for Indian Agents to subject mixed-ancestry people they were evaluating to gendered standards.491 Amid the myriad inconsistencies that accompanied the racialization of Indian Country, Americans and Anishinaabeg frequently found that they could not agree on what qualities aligned with newly racialized categories that the former attempted to foist upon the latter. Mixed-ancestry families could derive income from multiple portions of treaties, as evidenced by the Davenport family following the Treaty of Washington. As previously stated in the opening of this chapter, the treaty’s sixth article set aside $150,000 of Department of War funds from which Ambrose Davenport, Jr. sought to collect a portion on behalf of his children with Susan. Of interest to the Davenport family as well, however, was the treaty’s fifth article. It created another pool of $300,000 (equivalent to over $10,000,000 in 2024) for the Anishinaabe “to enable them, with the aid and assistance of their agent, to adjust and pay such debts as they 489 “Cook et al. vs. Biddle et al.,” 275. 490 Michael Witgen, Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022), 178-79. 491 Saler, The Settlers’ Empire, 229. 132 may justly owe.”492 Articles like these were common in treaties between the United States and Anishinaabeg. The latter often viewed the monetary compensation treaties could afford as an avenue to free themselves from the yoke of debt to the Old Northwest’s white merchant class. Conflicts of interest were nearly ubiquitous as fur traders were regularly among the cadre of interpreters and even negotiators on behalf of the U.S. government. Meanwhile, mixed-ancestry people could see some benefit for their families, again, as exemplified by the Davenports. While Ambrose Davenport, Jr. was filing a claim for his children, his father was busy concocting his own claim to present to Schoolcraft for $1,500 in losses from the store he once operated on Mackinac Island. Between 1819 and 1821, he “traded to a considerable extent with the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians” at this store.493 Although over a decade had passed, Ambrose, Sr. was able to seek restitutions for losses he incurred as the Treaty of Washington’s only major limitations on its fifth article were that money could not be gathered for losses incurred before the War of 1812 or to settle debts with foreign agents.494 Indeed, by 1821, the Davenport family fortunes had decreased dramatically, and the elder Davenport predominantly blamed his Anishinaabe customers. Ambrose, Jr. corroborated his father’s claims, sharing the observation “that the Indians got into the habit of giving the preference of their skins to English traders.”495 There is much to unpack in this testimony Ambrose, Jr. provided. It is noteworthy that he identifies the Indigenous practice of dealing with white merchants and traders on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border as a source for his family’s economic woes. 492 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1836,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 452. 493 “Claim No. 54 – Ambrose R. Davenport,” 1836, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 41, LOC, Washington, D.C.; Although his stores may have ceased operation at this time, accounts of contemporaries suggest that he continued to work well into his 70s. See S & Co., “Two Days at Mackinaw – No. 1,” Democratic Free Press, Detroit, MI, July 28, 1847, 2. 494 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1836,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 456. 495 “Claim No. 54 – Ambrose R. Davenport,” 1836, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 41, LOC, Washington, D.C. 133 Galvanizing antipathy toward the British, he also admonishes his wife’s Anishinaabe kin. Behavior of Indigenous people is subject to further scrutiny in the testimony of Ambrose, Jr.’s brother William. According to William, many Indigenous customers, “acknowledge[d] their indebtedness, and believe[d] there is a large balance due,” but would not furnish repayment as the Davenport family account books no longer existed.496 Indeed, the lack of an account book was an impediment to the Davenport claim, as they could not provide documentation for their precise losses. Luckily for them, they found support in the form of testimony from Ozhaguscodaywayquay. The claim paperwork stated, “Mrs. Susan Johnston testifies to the destruction of the account book, which was resorted to when pattern paper &c. was required, and the leaves torn out, describes the book, which was large and such as used in Stores.”497 In the copy of the claim preserved among the Henry Rowe Schoolcraft Papers, the word “pattern” and the “&c.” symbol are squeezed onto the line on both sides of the word “paper,” as if the writer initially thought the account book pages befell an unknown sort of demise but then wanted to clarify their utility in women’s work. It is unclear what “&c.” entails, whether the paper went to use in some other craft or became mere kindling. Also unclear is if Ozhaguscodaywayquay delivered her testimony with the straightforward tone seen in the documentation, for as the previous section makes clear, she kept her own expense ledgers, and she no doubt understood and respected their value. Ultimately, Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s words carried weight, as Schoolcraft determined that the “dealing of the Claimant and the loss of his books are satisfactorily shewn.”498 A lack of 496 “Claim No. 54 – Ambrose R. Davenport,” 1836, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 41, LOC, Washington, D.C. 497 “Claim No. 54 – Ambrose R. Davenport,” 1836, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 41, LOC, Washington, D.C. 498 “Claim No. 54 – Ambrose R. Davenport,” 1836, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 41, LOC, Washington, D.C. 134 documentation, though, did carry a penalty. Ambrose Davenport, Sr.’s award was $1,000 of the $1,500 he requested, and the reason for this deduction was largely subjective. Without an account book, Schoolcraft was left to imagine what type of trade goods the Davenports dealt in. His imagination immediately drew him to consider how “it must be borne in mind that the traffic in ardent spirits was almost unrestrained, during the period referred to, and it is fair to presume that the claimant acted, in this respect, as others.”499 Based on this hunch alone, Schoolcraft deprived the Davenports of one third of the claim that he otherwise deemed legitimate. Ironically, it was Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s husband, John Johnston, who may have imparted Schoolcraft with the impression that nearly every fur trader was furnishing alcohol to their Indigenous customers. Recall from the previous section that Johnston composed a report on the state of Baawitigong in 1822, just one year after Ambrose, Sr. ceased his operations. Along with his assessment on the diminished state of game in the area, he liberally commented on alcohol consumption among American Indians, asserting that they indulged in “the most brutal excess […] so that many of them die from want and disease, and many often in the midst of their revels.”500 IV. Conclusion One month before the convergence of Anishinaabe diplomats on Washington, D.C. that the opening of this chapter describes, Henry R. Schoolcraft wrote to historian John G. Palfrey expressing his aspiration to make a scholarly mark with a sizable publication. He revealed to Palfrey that he was preparing an anthology of Indian tales that would open new avenues for 499 “Claim No. 54 – Ambrose R. Davenport,” 1836, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 41, LOC, Washington, D.C. 500 Peters, “John Johnston’s 1822 Description of the Lake Superior Chippewa,” 30; Johnston was far from the only fur trading husband of an Indigenous or mixed-ancestry woman to raise suspicion of illegally selling alcohol. In fact, Indian subagent Ramsay D. Potts confiscated goods from Edward Biddle in the summer of 1827 for this reason. See John Tipton to Ramsay D. Potts, December 15, 1826, in The John Tipton Papers, vol. 1, eds. Nellie Armstrong Robertson and Dorothy Riker (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1942), 627-28. 135 understanding the “Indian mind.”501 Surely he was referencing Algic Researches, the two- volume set of Indian stories and legends that he published three years later, peppered with his ruminations on the “Indian mind” that were far from generous. In the “General Considerations” section that opens the first volume of Algic Researches, Schoolcraft asserts that the Native Americans of which has was familiar “do not appear to have advanced an iota in their original stock of knowledge, warlike arts, or political tact, but rather fell back.”502 However, analysis of nineteenth-century Land cession treaty making reveals just how wrong the scholar was. In the arena of “political tact” especially, Greater Mackinac Anishinaabe carried themselves admirably amidst considerable efforts to fundamentally transform the nature of their relations with their nonhuman kin. Between the signings of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 and the Treaties of Detroit in 1855, Euro-American perceptions of Native Americans and their mixed-ancestry relations underwent noticeable changes. Throughout the Age of Indian Removal, figures like Cass and Schoolcraft struggled to assign labels to people outside their tripartite conceptions of race. Such confusion led to a belief that mixed-ancestry people could fit into the category of white or Indian based on the degree of “civilization” they displayed. From the perspective of Euro-American authorities in the Old Northwest, being “civilized” meant conceptualizing of natural resources as commodities rather than relations with their own stories and spiritual essences. Anishinaabe women were instrumental in upholding relations with nonhuman kin, a fact that reordering ones mindset and broadening the treaty-making process to the grander Anishinaabe world reveals. 501 Henry R. Schoolcraft to John G. Palfrey, February 25, 1836, Miscellaneous Manuscripts Collection, Mss.Ms.Coll.200, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 502 Henry R. Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, Comprising Inquiries Respecting the Mental Characteristics of the North American Indians, vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1839), 25. 136 Although they lacked permission to put marks of assent on documents alongside their male counterparts, the mothers of Greater Mackinac’s mixed-ancestry populace still possessed a voice in the treaty-making process. Whenever they appear in Land cession treaties or associated documentation, their intention of holding onto elements of their world that would allow them to promote mino-bimaadiziwin is clear. Even as Euro-American authorities increasingly strove to recast Indigeneity as an immutable, inheritable quality that could drive a wedge between mixed- ancestry people and their forebearers, Indigenous women responded by more aggressively lobbying for their mixed-ancestry kin to share long lives in good health free from misfortune with them. In turn, mixed-ancestry people followed the example of their progenitors by weaving through complex structures of Euro-American state formation beyond the 1850s. 137 CHAPTER THREE: GOVERNANCE ON THE PERIPHERY: STATE FORMATIONS AND FLUID AUTHORITY IN ANTEBELLUM GREATER MACKINAC During the summer of 1850, delegates assembled in Lansing, Michigan to rewrite the state constitution. It had only been 15 years since voters ratified the state’s first governing document, but in that short time demands for reforms already became deafening. Among the measures the delegates discussed was suffrage, and heated debate erupted over its expansion. Quarrelling began on the morning of the convention’s ninth day when Wayne County Democrat Joseph H. Bagg moved to insert the word “white” into a section enshrining that “Every person has a right to bear arms for the defense of himself and the state.”503 In Bagg’s view, the statewide right to bear arms needed to be narrowly defined because he classified “[c]olored people, negroes and Indians” as “a species at least one link beneath us.”504 Quick with a rebuke was William Norman McLeod of Mackinac County. He asserted that neither African Americans nor Native Americans should be actively deprived of rights on account of “mere accident of color,” adding that “I have known many, among both the Indians and negroes, who, in point of intelligence, virtue and personal appearance, in all that elevates a man above the brute, are at least equal to the delegate from Wayne.”505 The taunt helped bring down Bagg’s amendment, but a few weeks later McLeod had an amendment of his own to introduce. He proposed including among the state’s rightful voters “civilized persons of Indian descent, not members of any 503 Michigan Constitutional Convention, Report of the Proceedings and Debates in the Convention to Revise the Constitution of the State of Michigan (Lansing: R.W. Ingals, 1850), 62. 504 Michigan Constitutional Convention, Report of the Proceedings and Debates, 62. 505 Michigan Constitutional Convention, Report of the Proceedings and Debates, 63. 138 tribe.”506 Surely it was no coincidence that this zealous proposal came from a representative that Greater Mackinac residents elected.507 McLeod’s advocacy opened a pathway to citizenship for Native Americans in Michigan, although Greater Mackinac Anishinaabe had been paving that very pathway for years before Michigan’s second constitutional convention. In 1844, Augustin Hamlin, Jr. presented a petition to the Michigan Legislature expressing that Waganawkezee Odawa were “anxious to enjoy the rights and privileges of American citizenship.”508 At first glance, this instance may seem somewhat curious. According to legal scholar William J. Novak, citizenship was not the principal attribute that conferred rights in the antebellum United States. “What did determine the substantive rights and duties of early Americans,” he argues, “was, first, personal legal status – office, property, household position, race, gender, infirmity, and age.”509 Duties, in fact, were far more significant facets of citizenship than rights.510 Yet Waganawkezee Odawa seemed to recognize this. In their petition, they stressed how they “erected comfortable dwellings in imitation of the white men and are maintaining their families by cultivating the soil.”511 They were, therefore, fulfilling duties that the previous chapter explained Cass and Schoolcraft imagined for members of the American family vis-à-vis the Land they inhabited. In doing so they aligned with other Greater Mackinac Anishinaabe such as the Mooningwanekaaning Ojibwe 506 Michigan Constitutional Convention, Report of the Proceedings and Debates, 420. 507 For more on this debate over voting rights, see Deborah A. Rosen, American Indians and State Law: Sovereignty, Race, and Citizenship, 1790-1880 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 131-36. 508 “Petition from Chippewa Indians for American Citizenship to the Legislature of the State of Michigan,” March 11, 1844, American Indian Correspondence, RG 224, Box 8a, Folder 10, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 509 William J. Novak, “The Legal Transformation of Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century America,” in The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History, ed. Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak, and Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 105. 510 Novak, “The Legal Transformation of Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century America,” 87. 511 “Petition from Chippewa Indians for American Citizenship to the Legislature of the State of Michigan,” March 11, 1844, American Indian Correspondence, RG 224, Box 8a, Folder 10, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 139 who expressed an equal desire to “live like white men.”512 The one right they lacked was the right to remain. Attempts that Americans made to ensnare Anishinaabewaki during the mid-nineteenth century presented new challenges for Indigenous and mixed-ancestry people throughout Greater Mackinac. However, they did not initiate a period of unyielding decline. Actions of cross- cultural intermediaries like those discussed in previous chapters provided solid grounding for their kin to continue traversing spheres of Native American and Euro-American influence while meaningfully engaging in politics on American terms. The transformation of Old Northwest territories into new states certainly raised the stakes for mixed-ancestry people, but they did not merely accept the ascendence of a hegemonic Euro-American power or abandon their Native American relatives. Indeed, American officials’ messy attempts to slot mixed-ancestry people into a concrete racial category did not immediately sever them from tribal politics.513 As Witgen plainly puts it, the notion that mixed-ancestry people “held no ongoing association with their tribal communities was absurd.”514 The following three sections in this chapter explore increasingly effective strategies mixed-ancestry people learned to employ while holding onto such associations. By experimenting with alternative forms of statehood, directly petitioning the U.S. government, and both pursuing and capitalizing on enfranchisement, Anishinaabe and mixed-ancestry people from Greater Mackinac staved off the American settler-colonial project’s incursion into their Homelands to the benefit of their autonomy and authority. 512 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, June 23, 1851, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 513 Hele, “Manipulating Identity,” 170. 514 Witgen, An Infinity of Nations, 345. 140 I. Indigenous State Formations: To Centralize or Decentralize In a confidential missive to Secretary of War William L. Marcy and Commissioner of Indian Affairs William Medill, fur trader G.W. Ewing suggested some practices for the United States to employ during upcoming treaty negotiations with the Potawatomi. “The U.S. Flag should be exhibited,” he emphasized, “so as to command respect and make the proper impression.”515 Red, white, and blue regularly accompanied American officials in parlays with Indigenous people in nineteenth-century Greater Mackinac, and flags served as constant companions to Americanization efforts. When the Riggs family established the Santee Normal Training School for Dakota exiles from Minnesota (including a granddaughter of Magdelaine La Framboise) in 1870, they considered the presence of an American flag paramount. Mary B. Riggs dedicated an entire paragraph in her short book on the school to the “quite ambitious” process of erecting a 50-foot flagpole in the campus’s center and acquiring a flag to “see the stars and stripes floating at holiday times and on especial occasions.”516 Yet the sight of an unfurled flag could not stir all observers. For various Native nations, Euro-American flags held significance as gifts and even objects of spiritual import. Scholars Douglas A. Schmittou and Michael H. Logan describe how nineteenth-century Dakota, for example, treasured flags they received during diplomatic engagements and strove to capture flags from U.S. troops to absorb the martial power these symbols purportedly possessed.517 Meanwhile, Lakes Indians understood the emotional damage 515 G.W. Ewing to William L. Marcy and William Medill, March 16, 1846, Edward E. Ayer Digital Collection, Ayer MS 3067, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 516 Mary B. Riggs, Early Days at Santee: The Beginnings of Santee Normal Training School, Founded by Dr. and Mrs. A.L. Riggs in 1870 (Santee, NE: Santee Normal Training School Press, 1928), 56. 517 Douglas A. Schmittou and Michael H. Logan, “Fluidity of Meaning: Flag Imagery in Plains Indian Art,” American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 4 (2002), 564-70. 141 that displaying or desecrating certain flags could inflict.518 Recall the outburst of Lewis Cass described in the previous chapter when Ojibwe warrior Sassaba withdrew from a council with American authorities to hoist a Union Jack over his home. Either indifferent to or incapable of fathoming the consequences of his actions, Cass immediately dashed to Sassaba’s dwelling, tore down the flag, and trampled it. On the other side of the U.S.-Canada border, British authorities were equally eager to tell their Aboriginal allies that the American flag was no more than “a dirty piece of Cloth, and fitting only to wipe a persons A--- with it.” 519 As the ethos of Manifest Destiny increasingly enraptured white Americans in the nineteenth century, symbols of the state such as flags took on greater significance. In 1849, Mooningwanekaaning Ojibwe petitioned President Polk for “middling sized American Flag[s]” and medallions demonstrating that they made the long journey to visit him. They assured the president, “It will make us feel proud to see the flag of our Great Father floating gracefully over our villages.”520 These emblems held some degree of power. Before analyzing successful strategies that Anishinaabe and mixed-ancestry people from Greater Mackinac developed to preserve a place in their Homelands and uphold their cultural continuity, it will first be beneficial to address why they did not respond to rapid white migration by forming a united Anishinaabe polity under a single flag of their own. After the 1825 opening of the Erie Canal, the escalating pace of white newcomers entering the Great Lakes Borderlands 518 During the eighteenth century, it was not uncommon for Native Americans in the Great Lakes Borderlands to fly flags from multiple, competing European powers over their villages, signifying that they were the ones who held the leverage in contests between the antagonistic empires. Anishinaabeg were particularly apt to collect flags from multiple nations. During his expedition with Schoolcraft, Boutwell observed both an American and British flag hanging inside the dwelling of an Ojibwe ogimaa alongside other war trophies. See William Thurston Boutwell, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Boutwell – Leech Lake,” The Missionary Herald 30, no. 6 (June 1834), 222; Colin G. Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 332. 519 Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, June 10, 1828, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, State Historical Society of Wisconsin – Draper Collection #3, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 520 Delegation of Chippewa Head Chiefs to James K. Polk, February 5, 1849, NAM M234, Roll 390, 289. 142 would have been impossible for any Native American onlooker to ignore. New England settlers storming northwestward expanded the white population of the Michigan Territory, which numbered around 9,000 in the early 1820s, to more than 85,000 in less than a decade.521 With each passing year, these newcomers increasingly “prospected” land claims in the Lower Peninsula. As historian Susan E. Gray explains, they “moved not just to a particular area, county, or township but often to an exact tract of land already staked out by an advance party.”522 Unfortunately, this did little to decrease the chance of potentially frightful encounters between Anishinaabeg and their new white neighbors. Detroit benefitted greatly from the Erie Canal, as its merchants could use it to facilitate more efficient commerce. One observer reported that Detroit’s “importance, both as a frontier town and a place of trade, increases every day.”523 It emerged as the political center of the Michigan Territory. The canal’s construction spurred rapid white migration, though not necessarily to Mackinac Island, the focal point of the Old Northwest’s inland seas during the eighteenth century. As discussed in the previous chapter, in nineteenth-century treaty negotiations between Anishinaabe communities and the United States, the former routinely prioritized the protection of their usufructuary rights. More important than a printed title to their Homelands was assurance that they could continue to move about freely and subsist on Anishinaabewaki’s resources as they had always done. Undermining usufructuary rights were the efforts of federal and territorial governments to transfer newly ceded land from public domain into the hands of private owners. Consequently, instances of Anishinaabeg “trespassing” on the “private property” of white 521 Witgen, Seeing Red, 197. 522 Susan E. Gray, The Yankee West: Community Life on the Michigan Frontier (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 11. 523 Jameson, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, 71. 143 citizens were inevitable. Government documents from Michigan’s territorial period (1805-1837) are replete with complaints of American Indian “depredations” as well as repeated accusations of Anishinaabe bands’ dependance on “robbing the Inhabitants residing in their vicinity.”524 In directing the greatest derision toward Aboriginal groups they characterized as living “in a Vagrant state, roving from place to place,” settlers implicitly aligned themselves with Euro- American colonizers like Cass and Schoolcraft.525 It should come as little surprise, then, that calls for Indian removal often accompanied petitions for recompense following alleged misdeeds of Native Americans in the Michigan Territory and other parts of the Old Northwest. Such language was already present during treaty negotiations. The 1833 Treaty of Chicago provides examples of the threats that Americans made if land was not ceded. Michigan Territorial governor George Porter made sure that the military implications of resistance were clear when he reminded treaty negotiators of the fate of the Sac and Fox. “You have all heard of your Great Father General Jackson,” Porter said, warning that, “When his red children would not open their ears to his advice and hearken to his council, he made war against them and chastised them.”526 Language in an 1841 petition from the Wisconsin Territory shares several similarities with Michigan Territory petitions from a decade earlier, although it adds the foreboding assertion that “many of our inhabitants have threatened to take the matter into their own hands, which may endanger the lives of the whites as well as of the 524 “Petition to Governor Porter,” 1831, in MPHC, vol. 37, 227. 525 “Petitions Respecting Depredations by Chippewas,” October 9, 1831, in MPHC, vol. 37, 225. 526 “Journal of the Proceedings of a Treaty Between the United States and the United Tribes of Pottawotamies, Chippeways, and Ottowas,” 1833, Ratified Treaty No. 189: Documents Relating to the Negotiation of the Treaty of September 26, 1833, with the United Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi Indians, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 144 Indians.”527 Its tone is even more unsettling when considered alongside the indifference white settlers displayed for boundaries within Indian Country. Indeed, Rev. Hall of the ABCFM remarked that one advantage that the canal provided was that it allowed westward venturers to bypass “the trouble and inconvenience of being let at Mackinaw.”528 The canal’s new trajectory of white migration meant that Greater Mackinac’s Anishinaabe populace did not meet with the same degree of state-sanctioned violence as others during the Age of Indian Removal. This led to fewer chances of unexpected encounters between Native Americans and Euro-Americans, granting the former more time to prepare for white incursion. It should not be surprising, though, that anxieties over prospects of removal remained omnipresent. Even if Anishinaabeg in the upper reaches of the Michigan Territory did not face removal, they could likely identify kin who had. Following the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, the United States seized millions of acres from American Indians west of Lake Michigan. As discussed in the previous chapter, two of the women central to Greater Mackinac’s Anishinaabe community, Magdelaine La Framboise and Agatha Biddle, would have both been familiar with the outcome of this treaty as well as the subsequent “trail of death” Pottawatomi in Illinois, Indiana, and the southwestern Michigan Territory marched at bayonet point to reservations in present-day Kansas and Oklahoma.529 In 1840, American forces under the command of General Hugh Brady forcibly evicted more Potawatomi from their homes in Southern Michigan, and some accounts of observers are revealing. Writing about the eviction, Edward A. Foote identified that driving the “moans and 527 “Petition of the Inhabitants of Washington County Praying for the Removal of the Indians,” December 1, 1841, Wisconsin Citizen Petitions, 1836-1891, WHS, Madison, WI. 528 Sherman Hall to David Greene, July 25, 1844, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 529 “Treaty with the Chippewa, Etc., 1833,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 406; Also see Low, Imprints, 29- 30. 145 lamentations” of Potawatomi women was the discord sewn by them “leaving their corn-fields where they had worked so hard, their burial grounds, their hunting and camping grounds, their homes […] They were going to a strange land where they were told corn would only grow knee high, and pumpkins no larger than potatoes.”530 White observers began talking about Native peoples in the region in the past tense, as if their removal had been complete. Some described this as a loss. For example, in describing his ambition to work among the Ojibwe, C.T. Carrier states, “No record of history can begin to show such horrible wrongs done to our nation, as we have done to them.”531 An author speaking at an event commemorating the Ohio’s 47th year in existence asserted that “[N]o man can become the historian of the aboriginies, without performing the righteous, but arduous task, of convincing all nations that they were men of magnanimous virtues and signal greatness of soul.”532 While the tone of this speech may seem laudatory, it is telling how the author predominantly speaks of Native Americans in past tense. This relegation of Native peoples to the field of history could also be found in the work of the emergent historical societies of the early nineteenth century. Conterminously, Catholic priest Frederick Baraga began hearing rumors of removal circulating among the Odawa of the Old Northwest.533 News travelled quickly through Indian Country. Upon his elevation to the position of Indian Agent, Robert Stuart also encountered Anishinaabeg “alarmed through malicious reports, that they should be forced (at the point of the bayonet) to go west of the Mississippi.”534 Rev. Hall most assuredly saw credence in such 530 Edward A. Foote, “Historical Sketch of the Early Days of Eaton County,” July 5, 1876, in MPHC, vol. 3 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1881), 382; Also see Cleland, Rites of Conquest, 223. 531 C.T. Carrier to David Greene, November 26, 1842, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 532 Native Citizens, Celebration of the Forty-Seventh Anniversary of the First Settlement of the State of Ohio (Cincinnati: Lodge, L’Hommedieu and Company, 1835), 8. 533 Dowd, Groundless, 260. 534 Robert Stuart to T. Hartley Crawford, June 25, 1841, NAM M1, Roll 38, 259. 146 rumors, as he asserted in reports on the status of his mission to Ojibwe in the Wisconsin Territory that “[t]he tide of immigration, as you are well aware, is rapidly rolling in upon them.”535 Rumor had the power to open a chasm between marginalized peoples, including Native Americans and African Americans. One example of such a rumor can be found in Fox and Sauk leaders’ correspondence amidst the Black Hawk War. The leaders reported “fables” abounding, including one about how “a horde of negro men were to be brought from the South, to whom our wives, sisters, and daughters were to be given, for the purpose of raising a stock of Slaves to supply the demand in this country, where negroes are scarce.”536 Such a rumor played upon deleterious tropes of African American men as sexually predatory. It was within this context that Anishinaabeg began formulating creative strategies to remain in their Homelands like attempting to organize their own polities. Despite the existence of such models, the Anishinaabe quickly concluded that within the Great Lakes Borderlands, decentralization offered greater leverage against the U.S. government than a united front beholden to a single authoritative apparatus. While joining together to form more sizable geopolitical units was an attractive prospect for other Indigenous groups in North America, the Anishinaabe of Greater Mackinac associated significant risks with this strategy. By consolidating their villages into a more centralized polity, the Anishinaabe could inadvertently find themselves playing right into the hands of the U.S. government. 535 Sherman Hall to David Greene, February 10, 1847, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 536 Tai-Mah and Apanos-Okimant to William Clark, July 22, 1832, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, Sauk and Fox of Iowa – Black Hawk War, 1832 #1, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 147 American officials regularly expressed frustration with their obligation to negotiate with multiple Anishinaabe bands who represented varying regional interests. They would have certainly found it more convenient for their own state formation project to have a single body representing all Anishinaabe with which to diplomatically engage. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun stated as much, bluntly sharing his belief that “it would be better for the Indians to concentrate the population of their respective tribes, as the authority of the chiefs could them be more easily and with greater effect exercised over them, than while inhabiting detached and distant villages.”537 Likewise, Schoolcraft and Cass agreed upon the notion that packing the Anishinaabe into “a Colony in the Indian Country” would be most conducive to their “plan to civilize the Indians.”538 Missionaries concurred that restricting Anishinaabe mobility would benefit their Americanization efforts. Rev. Slater, for example, opined in 1839 that “the sale of the Indian hunting domain will eventually be in the good of the Indian, confining them to narrow limits and bringing them within the scope of civil laws.”539 Decentralization, then, could insulate the Anishinaabe from harm, as it forced the United States to weigh and contend with an assortment of separate targets for any potential attack. This has led McDonnell to conclude that, “While this kinship system often confused Europeans, its inherent flexibility was the great genius of Anishinaabe social organization and expansion.”540 Multiple attempts to carve out an Indian Buffer State between the United States and Canada arose throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially after the War of 1812. After the Treaty of Ghent ended formal hostilities between the United States and 537 John C. Calhoun to Thomas Forsyth, November 6, 1821, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, State Historical Society of Wisconsin – Draper Collection #1, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 538 Alvan Coe to Jeremiah Evarts, November 23, 1828, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 539 Leonard Slater to Henry R. Schoolcraft, August 8, 1839, NAM M1, Roll 47, 101. 540 McDonnell, Masters of Empire, 11. 148 Great Britain, places on the outskirts of Euro-American empires remain contested. Newly drawn borders remained permeable well after the War of 1812, and as historian Phil Bellfy summarizes, “the Indian Buffer State would include all of the ‘Old Northwest,’ give Britain access to a navigable portion of the Mississippi River, and include much of the Great Plains up to the Rocky Mountains. Of course, the British proposed as well that the Indian Buffer State be under their protection.”541 A. Prophetstown Prophetstown was a polity that Tenskwatawa sought to solidify prior to the War of 1812, a pan-Indian state that the Shawnee Prophet envisioned would be free from deleterious white influences. Many Shawnees, despite their reputation as a predominantly diasporic group, established and maintained their own borders to stave off American influences.542 The ethos underpinning Prophetstown’s formation migrated to Greater Mackinac. In the early 1800s, Tenskwatawa’s acolytes mingled among the Odawa of Waganawkezee, with one delivering a speech urging all Native Americans “to cultivate peace between your different Tribes that they may become one great people.”543 The orator further asserted that the United States was a malicious force that corrupted Indigenous cultures, and he called Americans “the Children of the Evil Spirit” that “grew from the Scum of the great water.”544 Just how influential was this speech? One mixed-ancestry interpreter reported just a few months after its delivery that “All the Ottawas from L’arbe au Croche [now] adhere strickly to the Shawney Prophet’s advice they do 541 Phil Bellfy, Three Fires Unity: The Anishnaabeg of the Lake Huron Borderlands (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 55. 542 Lakomäki, “‘Our Line,’” 616-17. 543 Le Maigouis, “Speech of Indian Chief to Various Tribes,” May 4, 1807, in MPHC, vol. 40, 132. 544 Le Maigouis, “Speech of Indian Chief to Various Tribes,” May 4, 1807, in MPHC, vol. 40, 129. 149 not wear Hats, Drink or Conjure.”545 Given Tenskwatawa’s influence on social practices, it is reasonable to conclude that he could also be persuasive when it came to political alignments. Of further importance is the fact that when an American agent delivered a transcription of this oration to William Hull, he commented that “this Talk is communicated in open council, where old and young of both Sexes are allowed to assemble.”546 Despite the admittance of Indigenous women to talks, Tenskwatawa’s vision for an Indigenous state was far from egalitarian. Along with expanding Indigenous men’s restrictive ability to control their wives, he also dissolved women’s councils that, in Shawnee society, represented women’s interests.547 B. The Indian Liberating Army Another example of the potential folly that Indigenous state formation could bring that is worth analyzing due to its close relation to the Schoolcraft family is the case of the Indian Liberating Army, a unit which gained the attention of George Johnston, brother of Jane Schoolcraft.548 Around 1836, a man calling himself James Dixon (as well as Montezuma II) ventured into the Great Lakes Borderlands to pitch a mission to claim California, recruiting soldiers for a filibustering army.549 Gaining support from a “half breed or ‘Brule’ of some influence,” Dixon built up enough momentum to raise alarms in Canada.550 The Detroit Daily 545 John Askin, Jr. to John Askin, September 1, 1807, in WHC, vol. 19, 322. 546 Josiah Dunham to William Hull, May 20, 1807, in MPHC, vol. 40, 124. 547 Adam Jortner, The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 134, 153. 548 Robert E. Bieder, “The Unmaking of a Gentleman: George Johnston and a Mixed-Blood Dilemma,” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies 16, no. 1-2 (2010), 126. 549 Hyde, Born of Lakes and Plains, 191; For more on filibustering, see Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5. 550 “Substance of Communications Respecting the Expedition Under the Guidance of a Person Styling Himself ‘General Dickson of the Indian Liberating Army,’” June 20, 1837, in “Documents Relating to James Dickson’s Expedition,” ed. Grace Lee Nute, Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10, no. 2 (1923), 178. 150 Advertiser characterized this campaign in its August 23, 1836 issue as “Piracy on the Lakes.” In doing so, it aligned with ongoing perception of filibusterers as pirates.551 Martin McLeod, a Minnesota fur trader who accompanied Dixon, remarked during a stop at Baawitigong, “There are here at present quite a number of Chippewas and their wigwams on their return from the island of Mackinaw where they have been to receive their annuities for land sold in this vicinity and along Lake Superior.”552 Dixon offered George Johnston a substantial salary and a place among the mixed-ancestry “gentlemen” who would rule California if he could raise a “Chippewa Cavalry” of 400 men. Ultimately, no Ojibwe joined this unit, but some of Johnson’s mixed-ancestry acquaintances did.553 When it came to Indigenous engagement with the Indian Liberating Army, Ojibwe women were among the first to have their curiosity piqued. In his diary, McLeod noted that shortly after leaving Baawitigong on September 15, 1836, his party encountered Ojibwe women who presented them with huckleberries. In return, the “soldiers” gave the women tobacco, which a group of Ojibwe men thanked them for the next day with their own gift of fish over a “parley and a smoke.”554 There is much to unpack from this encounter. First, the meeting between Euro-Americans and Native Americans centered the exchange of gifts, which were instrumental in demonstrating mutual respect and the willingness to enter reciprocal relations.555 The use of huckleberries as a gift is also significant. As historian Chantal Norrgard explains, berry picking was typically the 551 Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 170-71. 552 Grace Lee Nute, ed., “The Diary of Martin McLeod,” Minnesota History Bulletin 4, no. 7/8 (1922), 370. 553 Hyde, Born of Lakes and Plains, 192-93. 554 Nute, ed., “The Diary of Martin McLeod,” 374. 555 Bruce White, “‘Give Us a Little Milk’: The Social and Cultural Meanings of Gift Giving in the Lake Superior Fur Trade,” Minnesota History 48, no. 2 (1982), 60. 151 labor domain of Ojibwe women during the nineteenth century.556 In giving berries to the party, they were not merely delivery agents for their male counterparts. Instead, they were exercising their own agency in separating themselves from the literal fruits of their labor just as the men they accompanied gifted fish that they no doubt gathered.557 Given the gendered nature of the exchange by way of who presented which gifts, Ojibwe women’s agency cannot be ignored. Following the Indian Liberating Army’s failure, both the Johnstons and Schoolcrafts ridiculed George relentlessly for becoming so invested in what they considered a foolhardy endeavor. William Johnston, for example, sarcastically addressed George as “The Colonel.” James Schoolcraft, meanwhile, wrote about him having a “dixon war” with Henry about management of estates.558 Why would George make such a gambit, then? According to one historian, he was operating under the understanding that, “By the 1830s class and wealth were still important but not as important as race […] To the recent arrivals they [the Johnstons] were mixed-bloods and therefore more Indian than white and outside the pale of power in the newly defined settlement.”559 George’s foray into filibustering seems to be one of the actions that alienated him from Greater Mackinac Anishinaabe, although it was certainly not the only one. In 1843, Ahgosa, an Ojibwe ogimaa who signed the 1836 Treaty of Washington reported that by Johnston’s “bad conduct” in the Grand Traverse Bay “he has lost all the friends here that he 556 Chantal Norrgard, “From Berries to Orchards: Tracing the History of Berrying and Economic Transformation Among Lake Superior Ojibwe,” American Indian Quarterly 33, no. 1 (2009), 43-44. 557 The fact that these Ojibwe women were the first to enter what had the potential to be a diplomatic engagement is also significant. Among many Native Americans, women often served as symbols of peace. The presence of women among mobile parties of Indigenous people signaled peaceful intentions when they approached others. For analysis of this phenomenon among Comanche in the American Southwest, see Juliana Barr, Peace Came in the Form of a Woman: Indians and Spaniards in the Texas Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 268. 558 Hyde, Born of Lakes and Plains, 194. 559 Bieder, “The Unmaking of a Gentleman,” 128. 152 had.”560 Thus, California could have proven an even more peripheral refuge to circumvent the growing influence of American racialization. C. Crossing Borders Resisting the urge to consolidate into a single Indigenous polity with enforceable boundaries also allowed the Anishinaabe to continue their well-established practice of ignoring American laws and regulations to cross back and forth between the borders of the United States and Canada. For some, this would prove to be a one-way trip stoked by the panic that widespread removal rumors ignited. According to Blackbird, “more than half of my people fled into Canada; fled to the protection of the British government; fled, many of them, even before receiving a single copper of the promised annuities.”561 During the late 1830s, hundreds of Ojibwe from Saginaw, Michigan also journeyed to Sarnia, Ontario more than doubling the reserve’s Native population.562 Schoolcraft concurrently observed how they “transferred their residence from the U.S. territories to the Manatouline Islands,” choosing life in the British Great Lakes.563 Manitoulin Island became another viable alternative to anywhere west of the Mississippi River, although even this alternative came with challenges. In 1838, Canadian policy shifted, requiring Indians who desired presents from the British government to reside on Manitoulin Island. The next year, Schoolcraft cautioned, “A greater number of Indians have left our borders to join it, within the last twelve months, than any former period, and these immigrations embrace some of the leading chiefs & their followers.”564 The concentration of Native Americans on Manitoulin Island even caused a stir in the U.S. House of Representatives. A report before the 560 Ahgosa to Biddle and Drew, January 23, 1843, NAM M1, Roll 54, 33. 561 Blackbird, History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan, 98. 562 Copway, The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation, 176. 563 Henry R. Schoolcraft to T. Hartley Crawford, June 26, 1839, NAM M1, Roll 37, 366. 564 Henry R. Schoolcraft to Winfield Scott, July 2, 1839, NAM M1, Roll 38, 6. 153 House revealed that nearly 1,000 Aboriginal peoples came to Manitoulin Island for presents with about 400 coming from the American side of the border. The presents that the British distributed were gendered. To each woman, the report alleged, the British gave “a blanket, 2 yards of broadcloth, a pair of leggins, knife, 2 needles, comb, thread, and 3 yards of calico.”565 Again, fabric was the main resource that Indigenous women desired. The Manitoulin Island situation earned notice in Schoolcraft’s 1840 report on Indian Affairs in Michigan. He claimed that between 3,000 and 6,000 Native Americans made their way to Manitoulin Island, but a “tone of dissatisfaction is evinced by some of the returning Indians.”566 Dissatisfaction derived from the British not being able to distribute as many presents due to the larger than usual concentration of new visitors and disappointment with the land on Manitoulin Island. Lakes Indians remained abreast of international issues. In fact, Schoolcraft noted that international diplomacy drove a wedge between some Native Americans and the British. Writing about ongoing movement across the U.S.-Canada border, Schoolcraft observed, “The Sioux and Winnebagoes […] were the first to drop the intercourse and discontinue their visits. They denounced the British for abandoning them at the treaty of Ghent.”567 That said, Schoolcraft also reported that “letters were intercepted at the falls of St. Mary, which revealed a proposition by the local agents at the Manitoulins, to embrace the half-breed population of the northwest with the Indian population.”568 This quotation provides several illuminating insights in the racial understanding of both the British and Americans. For both, the 565 “H.R. Doc. No. 107: Intermeddling with the Indians,” in House of Representatives Documents, Twenty-Fifth Congress, Third Session, vol. 3, CSS 346 (Washington, D.C.: Thomas Allen, 1839), 6. 566 Henry R. Schoolcraft, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Michigan Made to the Bureau of Indian Affairs at Washington at the Close of the Fiscal Year, 30th September, 1840 (Detroit: Asahel S. Bagg, 1840), 7. 567 Henry R. Schoolcraft to Carey A. Harris, October 4, 1838, NAM M1, Roll 37, 290. 568 Schoolcraft, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Michigan, 8. 154 “half-breed population” did not merely constitution another segment of the Indigenous populace. They represented a distinct cohort who they needed to negotiate with on their own terms. Concentrating solely on fear as a motivation for voluntary migration from the United States to Canada, however, undercuts the extent to which Anishinaabe recognized this choice as more than merely the least detrimental of many poor options. Pursuing alternative economic and diplomatic arrangements with Canadian rivals could sometimes prove more advantageous. Accounts of Anishinaabe such as that of Ojibwe missionary George Copway lent credibility to the conviction that seeking material support from Canada would be a worthwhile strategy for capturing authority. Such claims seemed less and less viable within the increasingly racialized United States.569 Contributing to distribute gifts among Indigenous peoples also allowed the British to maintain a sense of moral superiority over their former colony. A British soldier who witnessed the distribution of American annuity payments on Mackinac Island commented that “agents of the American government deal most unfairly by the poor Indians” while “Not so with the British government, who do all they can to atone to the remnant left for the loss of their own legitimate soil.”570 During the early 1820s, Cass expressed concerns that “The annual distribution of goods which is made at Malden & Drummond’s Island draws periodically those places a large proportion of the most active & influential Indians, who return to their Country, bearing with them British presents & British Counsels.”571 Responding to Cass’s concerns, Schoolcraft confirmed that more Indians were crossing over to Canada during the summer of 1822 than any 569 Copway, The Traditional History and Characteristic Sketches of the Ojibway Nation, 176; For more on Copway, see Bernd C. Peyer, The Tutor’d Mind: Indian Missionary-Writers in Antebellum America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997), 224-77. 570 R.G.A. Levinge, Echoes from the Backwoods; or, Sketches of Transatlantic Life, vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn, 1846), 167. 571 Lewis Cass to Henry R. Schoolcraft, April 7, 1822, NAM M1, Roll 66, 3. 155 other season he had witnessed from his vantage at Baawitigong since the War of 1812. However, he remarked that “the great severity of the last winter” was to blame for this sizable migration rather than increased British influence.572 The material conditions of the Anishinaabe motivated their movement more than allegiance to a single Euro-American sovereign. In 1826, the Detroit Gazette estimated that approximately 2,500 American Indians gathered at Malden for the distribution of British presents.573 Admittedly, many British officials remained reluctant to unconditionally embrace Native Americans as their equals. Even Robert McDouall, who lent his support to both Elizabeth Mitchell and John Johnston, cautioned his superiors about what he saw as the “great danger of depending upon these people for the defence [sic] of this Island [because] they are as fickle as the wind.” It would be “a most difficult task to keep them with us.”574 That did not prevent other British officials from seeking Anishinaabe support when relations with the United States became particularly precarious. In 1827, Indian Agent Thomas Forsyth reported rumors of another war spreading through Indian Country due to “quarreling about an Island in the Sea.” He learned that “deputations from the different nations of Indians in this vicinity are going to Malden in Canada to hear the straight story from the British Indian Agent at that place, also the Minomenies, Chippeway, and Ottawa Indians from the Lakes are going to Drummond Island for the same purpose.” 575 For even more Indigenous people in Greater Mackinac, though, a viable survival strategy became crossing back and forth between Euro-American borders to move beyond the bounds of 572 Henry R. Schoolcraft to Lewis Cass, July 18, 1822, NAM M1, Roll 65, 10. 573 “Indians,” Detroit Gazette, Detroit, MI, July 25, 1826, 2. 574 Robert McDouall to George Prévost, August 14, 1814, in MPHC, vol. 25, 593. 575 Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, May 24, 1827, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, State Historical Society of Wisconsin – Draper Collection #3, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 156 American hegemony. A myriad of American officials observed this trend. Forsyth, for example, remarked that “Many of the Sauk and Fox Indians have for more than twenty years been in the habit of visiting the British at Malden, where they always have been liberally treated.”576 This was common for Anishinaabe as well, serving as a source of constant consternation for American officials. “The British at Malden have indirectly invited the Indians in this quarte [sic] to visit them this summer, by shewing to a Potawatimi Indian last autumn a quantity of goods which they said were for the Sauks and Foxes.”577 As they aired their grievances, American officials also downplayed Anishinaabe agency in their reports and correspondence, regularly alleging that the British acted as secret puppeteers, considering the British and Native Americans inextricably connected. From this position, local Ojibwe could also receive gifts from the British military and trade on the Canadian side of the St. Mary’s River. Indeed, this remained a viable strategy for many Indigenous groups during the early nineteenth century, with American officials referencing “Sauks who went to Drummond Island last year [who] were very cooly receive by Colonel McKay the British Superintendent.”578 One writer estimated as many 4,500 would come to Drummond Island annually.579 The next year, a British agent reported Odawa from Waganawkezee and Ojibwe from Baawitigong both coming to Drummond Island.580 Many 576 Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, May 2, 1821, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, Miscellaneous Manuscript Collections – Historical Societies: Missouri, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 577 Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, May 11, 1825, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, State Historical Society of Wisconsin – Draper Collection #2, APS, Philadelphia, PA; Forsyth affirmed that the situation remained largely unchanged the next year, stating, “There are many Indians from this country gone to Detroit and if possible will visit the British at Malden.” See Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, June 27, 1826, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, State Historical Society of Wisconsin – Draper Collection #2, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 578 Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, July 2, 1818, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, State Historical Society of Wisconsin – Draper Collection #1, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 579 Samuel F. Cook, Drummond Island: The Story of the British Occupation, 1815-1828 (Lansing: Robert Smith Printing Company, 1896), 69. 580 Thomas Gummersall Anderson, “Indian Tribes Visiting Drummond Island,” August 22, 1828, in MPHC, vol. 23 (Lansing: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1895), 151. 157 Anishinaabe expressed that they would rather move to Canada than be faced with removal west of the Mississippi River.581 Whenever Native Americans crossed the border into Canada, British officials furnished them with rations. Some quantitative measurements of peoples in pursuit of these rations can be found in reports from the Canadian government. In 1829, for instance, the superintendent at Amherstburg estimated approximately 6,500 Natives concentrating at his post, including men, women, and approximately 2,500 children. The superintendent of Penetanguishene, meanwhile, estimated an annual presence of approximately 3,800.582 The British were hesitant to provide presents to mixed-ancestry families. As William Robertson of the Storekeeper General’s Office in Quebec wrote in 1818, “Indian women who cohabit with Europeans, and their children are not, I conceive in any manner entitled to Presents, because in almost every instance the women and offspring are well provided for by the Europeans with whom they are living.”583 Some Anishinaabe families who migrated from the United States to Canada became pillars of their new communities over the ensuing decades. For example, when Harrington arrived on Walpole Island, he encountered a man named Jim Akwash, whom he described as “the leader of the pagan element.”584 This Akwash (whose surname Harrington spelled with a “kw”) was no doubt related to Aquash (spelled with a “qu”), a Pottawatomi farmer who, according to the Canadian Indian Department, lived on Walpole Island since 1836 when he and 581 John P. Durbin to Alexander H.H. Stuart, October 3, 1850, NAM M234, Roll 767, 10. 582 Duncan Campbell Napier, “Reports on Rations Issued to Indians,” December 31, 1829, in MPHC, vol. 23, 169-73. 583 William Robertson to George Bowles, October 15, 1818, in MPHC, vol. 16, 642. 584 Mark Raymond Harrington, “Specimens Collected from the Chippewa Indians of Walpole Island, Ontario, Canada,” April 19-21, 1905, #33, Accession File 05-19, PMAE, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 158 his parents relocated there from Michigan.585 Despite how well some Michiganian Anishinaabeg coalesced with their counterparts from Ontario, that did not mean that they remained stagnant. With the passage of the Indian Act in 1876, though, the Canadian government began pursuing more assertive assimilation policies designed to alienate First Nations peoples from their communities and sever connections to their languages and customs.586 Over the last few decades of the nineteenth century, in fact, Ojibwe from Walpole Island regularly traversed the U.S.- Canada border, and on multiple occasions advanced claims for Belle Isle in the Detroit River. On April 8, 1906, the Detroit Free Press even published a letter from Ojibwe Walpole Islander Thomas Sands asserting, “We never have surrendered these islands to any government whatever. We can prove it without any difficulty and we intend by legal means to reoccupy those islands ourselves.”587 II. Indigenous Petitioners: The Power in Paper, Pen, and Prayer To further illustrate this point, it is helpful to analyze another petition. In 1834, Michilimackinac Anishinaabe appealed to Andrew Jackson in expectation for a closing blacksmith shop and on account of what they described as an “impoverished condition.”588 While Greater Mackinac Anishinaabe sometimes limited their appeals to local Indian Agents, they did not hesitate to contact higher authorities. In 1835, Greater Mackinac Odawa wrote to Lewis Cass, expressing dissatisfaction with Schoolcraft over the time it was taking to secure some written order of protection for themselves and their children.589 In crafting their petition to 585 “Report on the Michigan Indians Who Migrated to Walpole Island,” Records Relating to Indian Affairs, RG 10, Volume 443, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. 586 Roger L. Nichols, Indians in the United States and Canada: A Comparative History, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 263-64, 276. 587 “Claim Island: Walpole Chippewas Declare That Detroit’s Famous Playground Belongs to Them,” Detroit Free Press, Detroit, MI, April 8, 1906, 2. 588 “Petition of the Chiefs and Headmen of the Chippewa and Ottawa Nations to Andrew Jackson,” October 15, 1834, NAM M1, Roll 69, 81. 589 Augustin Hamlin, Jr. to Lewis Cass, December 5, 1835, NAM M234, Roll 421, 723-25. 159 Jackson, assembled leaders, which included Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s brother Waishkey, referenced a provision of the Treaty of Greenville gifting the United States the island of Bois Blanc in the Straits of Mackinac.590 Their petition identified how white settlers extracted much value from the island in the form of wood. Two points of significance can be found here. First, the Anishinaabe maintained memories of acts of kindness. Second, they reinforced reciprocity as a foundational aspect of the ongoing relationship between the United States and their bands. One signer, Chusco, emphasized how the transfer of Bois Blanc Island to the United States was “an offer of friendship” but the Anishinaabe who presented it “received nothing for it.”591 Anishinaabe reciprocity meant providing for those in a state of want during a time of plenty. A Waganawkezee speaker, Pabanmitabi, drew upon an even deeper political memory. In his speech that accompanied the Odawa petition, he traced the lineage of Anishinaabe allegiances back through the French and the British, and he asserted that European regimes had maintained blacksmiths to aid the Anishinaabe. For the United States to withdraw such an offer was a tremendous affront, especially considering the gift of Bois Blanc Island.592 Those who had been part of the Greenville negotiations told the younger generation what those terms had been in order that they might go into later negotiations armed with knowledge. Did raising their voices have an impact? In the case of this grievance, it is worth noting that subsequent treaty negotiations between the Anishinaabe and the United States, even when they attempted to insert measures for removal, were explicit when it came to providing funding for blacksmith shops.593 From an Indigenous point of view, petitions were not merely corporeal demands. They constituted sacred calls. As scholar Lisa Brooks explains, “the written Native petition becomes 590 “Treaty with the Wyandot, Etc., 1795,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 40. 591 “Chusco’s Speech,” August 18, 1834, NAM M1, Roll 69, 79. 592 “Speech of Pabanmitabi of L’Arbre Croche,” August 18, 1834, NAM M1, Roll 69, 79-80. 593 See, for example, “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1837,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 484. 160 an intriguing form in which a community uses a tool that has power, writing, to make a ‘prayer’ to a political body that has power in relation to themselves, both the power to change that which afflicts them and the power of a relationship between them, on which the Native group could call.”594 White concurs that when Indigenous populations of the Great Lakes Borderlands invoked a besoin, this meant that “assertion of need for something could become a special claim on the thing needed.”595 White women had a similar understanding of petitions as somehow related to prayer, as historian Alissa Portnoy notes. The supplication required of the petition genre could take on “a form that looked disarmingly like prayer.”596 What made the language Americans expected to hear in petitions accessible to Anishinaabe women was that they believed “To be pitiable, then, seems the correct state for a person who wishes to receive a gift of power – a promise of help in getting through life.”597 Pity was at the heart of many petitions imploring aid. An 1815 petition asserted, “Our Women and Children are naked, they have Nothing to defend themselves from the Storm or to cover even those Parts which our sense of shame has always directed us to conceal.”598 Presented at the behest of Anishinaabe leaders like Hamlin, an 1844 petition offers another representative example of a document as prayer. Forms of the word prayer, in fact, appear five times throughout the document. The presence of mixed-ancestry people among the Anishinaabe becomes a major reason for them to advocate against removal. “We are allied, also, by the rite of marriage,” they say, “and by consanguinity, to many of the citizens of this state.” 594 Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 225. 595 White, The Middle Ground, 129. 596 Alisse Portnoy, Their Right to Speak: Women’s Activism in the Indian and Slave Debates (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 48. 597 Mary Black-Rogers, “Varieties of ‘Starving’: Semantics and Survival in the Subarctic Fur Trade, 1750-1850,” Ethnohistory 33, no. 4 (1986), 367. 598 “Message to the President by the Potawatomi Chief,” September 1, 1815, in TPUS, vol. 17, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1950), 228. 161 The Anishinaabe purport that the land is only suitable for them, as it is, “is not well adapted to the advanced culture of the white men.” Finally, they echo other Anishinaabe petitions in expressing a desire to “die on the soil where we have always lived, and to leave it as an inheritance to our children.”599 Petitioning was a major means through which Anishinaabe people articulated their rights and combatted white Americans’ flagrant disregard for allocations of resources owed to them under treaties they negotiated, including where those resources would be distributed. Sites where annuity payments were to take place were a source of contention not merely because these areas needed to be accessible to a variety of groups, but because Euro-Americans often gathered there to gawk and subject people who they viewed as different to their gaze, one chronicler calling it “great amusement for the white people.”600 During gatherings like this, Indigenous women could take advantage of white onlookers’ curiosity with a display of their goods. This was also a place to reinforce Anishinaabe cultural practices through displays of generosity.601 The Lakes Indians grew to become fastidious recordkeepers. As historian James Joseph Buss asserts, many leaders brought copies of older treaties with them to reference during their negotiations along with letters from sympathetic American officials.602 The desire of Indigenous people to retain written records their Euro-American counterparts produced was not limited solely to the Anishinaabe. Writing about her Dakota great-grandfather, Nancy McClure revealed that he visited Fort Snelling in 1828 and upon his arrival produced a Spanish military commission he received in 1781. “The Indians greatly prize papers of this kind,” McClure 599 “Petition of the Ottawa and Chippewa,” 1844, NAM M234, Roll 425, 601-04. 600 Withey, “Personal Recollections of Early Days in Kent County,” in MPHC, vol. 39, 348. 601 Child, Holding Our World Together, 55. 602 James Joseph Buss, Winning the West with Words: Language and Conquest in the Lower Great Lakes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), 20. 162 asserted, “and take good care of them, sometimes preserving them for many years.”603 Along with pieces of paper, Anishinaabeg also sought out symbolic adornments. Upon first being appointed as the Indian Agent at Mooningwanekaaning in the early 1840s, Brunson noted how a band he encountered expected to see physical evidence of his appointment. He produced his letter of commission, and as soon as they “saw the great seal dangling to the ribbon attached to it, they were satisfied without hearing it read.”604 Some of the most compelling (and expansive) documentation of Anishinaabe women petitioning in Greater Mackinac comes from Ozhaguscodaywayquay. After the War of 1812, Ozhaguscodaywayquay’s husband, John Johnston, lost permission to trade in the interior. Thus, he engaged in efforts to recoup his war losses by submitting claims to the British in Canada.605 Much like how Mitchell underwent her period of conflict with American authorities, Johnston garnered support for his claim from McDouall on Drummond Island.606 After his death, Ozhaguscodaywayquay, however, went even further. Twenty-one years later, in 1836, she addressed Congress in a petition that described her as the legal representative of her husband’s estate. Central to her case was her claim of “Having no longer a protector to look to.”607 She framed her petition in American terms, accusing the U.S. government of depriving her of private property. It was clear, though, that the property which she considered so critical were products of Indian Country. Among the trade goods seized were 7,000 pounds of maple sugar.608 The testimonies she gathered on her behalf noted that American soldiers made 603 Nancy McClure, “Captivity Among the Sioux: The Story of Nancy McClure,” in MHC, vol. 6, 440. 604 Brunson, A Western Pioneer, vol. 2, 157. 605 John Johnston, “Memorial of John Johnston,” December 22, 1819, in MPHC, vol. 25, 663. 606 Robert McDouall, “Certificate of Lt. Col. Robert McDouall,” December 27, 1819, in MPHC, vol. 25, 664. 607 “H.R. Doc. No. 47: John Johnston’s Administratrix,” in House of Representatives Documents, Twenty-Fourth Congress, First Session, vol. 2, CSS 287 (Washington, D.C.: Blair and Rives, 1836), 2. 608 H.R. Doc. No. 47, 24th Cong., 1st Sess., 6. 163 off with an array of household goods, including “female wearing apparel.”609 Unfortunately, the body ruled against her, finding that the “appropriation and use was improper, and probably illegal, but it was not such an use or application of goods as brings the Government under any obligation to pay their price.”610 She reinforced her case by building upon her “respectability” through the testimonies of such actors as Cass in a letter dated January 30, 1836.611 Not one to be deterred, she continued to build her case up further until the late 1840s. This committee was even harsher, though, condemning John Johnston for “putting into the hands of these savages the tomahawk and scalping knife” to enhance the “ferocity of savages in constant acts of horrible massacre and murder on the frontier settlers.”612 The case of Ozhaguscodaywayquay represents how a transition was taking place in the mid-nineteenth century, namely that Indigenous women by themselves were losing influence. Although they recognized the appropriate language to utilize, petitioning ultimately meant leaving themselves vulnerable to the capricious aims of white men. Other Indigenous women discovered this such as Sarah Leach, a member of the Brothertown Indians in Wisconsin. In 1842, she petitioned the Wisconsin Legislature for a divorce on the grounds that her husband, a white man, abandoned her. At the top of her petition, she expressed that “for the last four years she [Leach] has been obliged to provide for herself by the labour of her own hands.”613 609 H.R. Doc. No. 47, 24th Cong., 1st Sess., 9. 610 “H.R. Rep. No. 515: John Johnston’s Administratrix,” in House of Representatives Reports, Twenty-Fourth Congress, First Session, vol. 2, CSS 294 (Washington, D.C.: Blair and Rives, 1836), 3. 611 Lewis Cass to Henry R. Schoolcraft, January 30, 1836, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 41, LOC, Washington, D.C. 612 “H.R. Rep. No. 677: The Committee of Claims, to Whom Was Referred the Petition of W.H. Rockaway, Administrator of the Estate of John Johnston, Deceased,” in House of Representatives Reports, Thirtieth Congress, First Session, vol. 3, CSS 526 (Washington, D.C.: Wendell and Van Benthuysen, 1848), 2. 613 “Petition of Sarah Leach for a Divorce from Her Husband John Leach,” January 14, 1842, Wisconsin Citizen Petitions, 1836-1891, WHS, Madison, WI. 164 Since Anishinaabeg knew that Americans could also use the petition as a political tool, they scrutinized documents that mentioned themselves more intensely. Forsyth wrote to William Clark, “The Indians belonging to my Agency are always averse to signing papers, fearful that some of their land will be claimed.”614 This is most assuredly understandable when considering the breadth of inequitable arrangements that Euro-Americans hoped to ensnare Indigenous people into. One such example can be found in a petition that fur trader Hercules Dousman wrote and presented to Ojibwe for signatures with George Copway acting as interpreter. The document identified Land “being destitute of Game and unfit for Cultivation” as justification for transformation into timbering land.615 Dodge purported that Dousman offered the Ojibwe far too little for timber and instead proposes that the U.S. procure lands to avoid formation of a monopoly.616 In his book The Indian Problem from the Indian’s Standpoint, Blackbird shares two examples of how white men could target Indigenous women in this way. In his first example, Blackbird explains how a white man approached a Native American widow living in Harbor Springs, one of the towns incorporated within the bounds of Waganawkezee. He convinced the widow to sign what he claimed was a form conferring on him power of attorney so could sell her property for her. In reality, the paper was a deed. The white man quickly sold the property and skipped town, leaving the widow with nothing. Similarly, Blackbird shared how a white man coerced a Native American woman to sign “a paper which was so ingeniously constructed that 614 Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, April 3, 1823, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a, Series IX. Indian Claims, State Historical Society of Wisconsin – Draper Collection #1, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 615 “Petition to the President by Chippewa Chiefs and Head Men,” May 10, 1836, in TPUS, vol. 27, ed. John Porter Bloom (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1969), 53-55. 616 Henry Dodge to Carey A. Harris, November 23, 1836, in TPUS, vol. 27, 672-74; For more on this episode, see Chad Delano Ronnander, “Many Paths to the Pine: Mdewakanton Dakotas, Fur Traders, Ojibwes, and the United States in Wisconsin’s Chippewa Valley, 1815-1837” (PhD diss., Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 2003), 168- 71. 165 no one could the true import.” This was a property transfer document that gave the man control of the woman’s home and most of her 80-acre farm from which the county sheriff evicted her.617 Anishinaabeg also carefully paid attention to documents that made fraudulent use of leaders’ names. An episode from 1838 concerning the younger Schoolcraft brother effectively underscores this. That year, James received an appointment to lead an exploratory mission charged with advancing the “ultimate removal of the Ottawa and Chippewa nations.”618 Baawitigong Ojibwe, however, refused to accompany James on this journey. A witness to the council discussing the expedition reported one leader declaring, “We all say, our chiefs and our young men, that we will not go with the officer sent by our great father, to visit the country west of the Mississippi; we do not wish to go there; we object to it entirely.”619 Rev. Bingham agreed that the Ojibwe made a sound decision without outside coercion, especially in light of the American government failing to meet their annuity obligations from the previous fall.620 James was mortified by his inability to enthusiastically galvanize his kin, and one reason why may have been the disapproval he gained from his mother-in-law. Ozhaguscodaywayquay fervently disapproved of James’s courtship of her daughter to the point where violence emerged. Based on the experiences of herself and her daughters, Ozhaguscodaywayquay recognized that Native American women could genuinely benefit from affiliating with Euro-American men.621 However, she viewed James as wholly incapable. Nevertheless, James still proceeded with his mission. After several months, he delivered a memorandum to his superiors purportedly confirming that Michigan’s Odawa and Ojibwe 617 Andrew J. Blackbird, The Indian Problem from the Indian’s Standpoint (Ypsilanti, MI: Scharf Tag, Label and Box Company, 1900), 11-12. 618 Carey A. Harris to Henry R. Schoolcraft, May 11, 1838, NAM M21, Roll 24, 123-24. 619 James Ord to James L. Schoolcraft, June 5, 1838, NAM M234, Roll 415, 620. 620 Abel Bingham to Henry R. Schoolcraft, June 22, 1838, NAM M1, Roll 44, 216-17. 621 James L. Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, February 14, 1834, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 39, LOC, Washington, D.C. 166 would accept the land he surveyed “in the event of our emigrating from our present country.”622 However, Greater Mackinac Anishinaabe wrote this document off as bunk, affirming to the elder Schoolcraft that they “denied the power of the delegates to bind them to the location […] and expressed their determination not to remove to it.”623 People of mixed ancestry took matters into their own hands to uphold treaty promises via petitioning. In 1838, 167 mixed-ancestry people signed onto a petition to the President of the United States to urge that he “not subject them to a long as costly journey in ordering the payment to be made at any inconvenient distance.”624 It was the assessment of one American official that “The half-breeds always exercise great influence over the minds of the Indians.”625 Mixed-ancestry people’s petitions spoke to their difficulty in navigating binary racial categories, protesting that “We are regarded as Indians or white men, to suit the Exigencies of the Case.”626 A missionary reported in 1838 that “The Indians about us for several months past have manifested much dissatisfaction and restlessness, occasioned principally by a delay in carrying into effect the treaty made with them last fall.”627 This became the case for mixed-ancestry people too. In responding to the deferred payment of their promised annuities under the Treaty of 1837, mixed-ancestry petitioners made use of similar rhetorical strategies. They signed their appeal “with great deference and implicit submission to the pleasure of the President of the United States.”628 This petition was a family affair as Henry Blatchford was listed as an 622 “Memorandum of an Agreement,” August 23, 1838, NAM M234, Roll 415, 662. 623 Henry R. Schoolcraft to Carey A. Harris, September 29, 1838, NAM M1, Roll 37, 279; Historian Gregory Evans Dowd has noted several blatant inconsistencies in the memorandum James produced. See Dowd, Groundless, 363. 624 “Petition to the President by Chippewa Half-Breeds,” March 7, 1838, in TPUS, vol. 27, 934-35. 625 Henry Dodge to Carey A. Harris, October 9, 1838, in TPUS, vol. 27, 1075. 626 Chippewa Halfbreeds to Daniel P. Bushnell, July 24, 1839, in TPUS, vol. 28, 17. 627 J.D. Stevens to Henry Hill, September 12, 1838, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 11, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 628 “Petition of the Half Breeds of the Chippewa Nation,” December 20, 1838, NAM M234, Roll 387, 362. 167 interpreter for the accord while Ambrose Davenport was one of the signers. In constructing petitions this way, mixed-ancestry people articulated a dual identity.629 They considered themselves deserving a place both within the communities of their Indigenous forebearers as well as among the citizens of the United States. As Mackinac Island’s distinction as a fur trading nexus diminished, locals turned to fishing Lake Huron and Lake Michigan for the plentiful and commercially coveted whitefish that inhabited the inland seas.630 Ambrose, Jr. was among the former fur traders who shifted into this livelihood with 1870 census records documenting him and several of his sons as fishermen.631 While even a cursory glance of enumerated census tables from this period reveal that fishing was by no means a segregated profession, it is worth re-acknowledging how Anishinaabe treaty negotiators repeatedly reinforced their right to fish on ceded territory from the 1807 Treaty of Detroit through the 1820 Treaty of Sault Ste. Marie until the 1855 Treaty of Detroit in which assembled Ojibwe “surrender[ed] to the United States the right of fishing at the falls of St. Mary’s and of encampment, convenient to the fishing-ground, secured to them.”632 That said, clearly viewed the resources from the water and the water itself as intermingled. In correspondence with an acting Secretary of the Interior, George W. Manypenny asserted that they “no doubt mingled the water power into it as one principle element.”633 In the 1830s, Biddle and his trading partner, John A. Drew, worked with a supposed “chief” who had no authority to confer widespread fishing exclusivity. The Waganawkezee 629 Nesper, “Our Relations…the Mixed Bloods,” 49. 630 Bogue, Fishing the Great Lakes, 150-53. 631 U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census, 1870; Mackinac Co., MI, Holmes Township, p. 24, dwell. 182, fam. 170; NAM M593, Roll 687. 632 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1807,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 93-94; “Treaty with the Chippewa, 1820,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 188; “Treaty with the Chippewa of Sault Ste. Marie, 1855,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 732. 633 George W. Manypenny to George C. Whiting, October 14, 1856, NAM M348, Roll 9, 240. 168 Odawa acted most vocally in opposition to this gambit. McClurken identifies this incident as a key example of Ottawa actions in protecting their own economic interests.634 Despite his failed fishing monopolization scheme, Edward Biddle lent his support to Hamlin when the latter determined that it would be beneficial to seek citizenship for the Odawa. The Odawa had already been converting currency they received from the treaties they negotiated into real estate, and they surely heard the widespread murmurings that if the Anishinaabe “receive lands (in farms of their own) & become citizens of the U.S. they will be protected.”635 Anishinaabe in Cheboygan, a village south of Mackinac Island expressed “that their Great Father the President would permit them to remain and become Citizens. They say they would live like white people + to till the soil for their livelihood.”636 The most effective efforts of petitions came when paired with direct threats of labor action. Historian Peggy Pascoe attests to the significance of marriage and family in state formation, after all. She argues that throughout the Old Northwest “White men who lived with Indian women established land claims that the U.S. government helped defend by moving Indians to reservations.”637 Nevertheless, Ambrose, Jr. surely knew already how dissatisfied Anishinaabeg could interfere with Euro-American resource extraction, an understanding further cemented by an encounter with Upper Peninsula Ojibwe in 1838 in which they refused to allow an AFC crew to fish or chop wood until Ambrose, Jr. could restore the company’s credit system.638 634 James M. McClurken, “We Wish to Be Civilized: Ottawa-American Political Contests on the Michigan Frontier” (PhD diss., East Lansing, Michigan State University, 1988), 155-56. 635 Selah B. Treat to Stephen Return Riggs, May 16, 1855, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 13, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 636 H.L. Murray to Elias Murray, September 4, 1851, NAM M234, Roll 598, 46. 637 Pascoe, What Comes Naturally, 95. 638 Robert Doherty, “‘We Don’t Want Them to Hold Their Hands Over Our Heads’: The Economic Strategies of the L’Anse Chippewas, 1830-1860,” Michigan Historical Review 20, no. 2 (1994), 56. 169 The reason that putting their grievances into writing was so important was because it represented the result of an astute observation about the nature of reality under Euro-American settler-colonial rule. Namely, Anishinaabe women observed that writing things down could make them real. Consider, again, how Cass regularly insisted that it was incumbent upon Americans to instill conceptions of private property within Indigenous peoples. For Cass to believe this, he would need to believe the inverse. He would need to believe they had no notions of ownership, which Euro-Americans connoted with documentation such as deeds and probate. With no notions of ownership, dispossession was justifiable, for how could one steal from someone or some group who lacked “proper” notions of private property?639 Similarly, consider the conclusions that Schoolcraft came to in his research. As scholar Maureen Konkle bluntly summarizes, Schoolcraft believed “Indians couldn’t write, therefore they had no sense of past and present.”640 Without a written word to preserve their stories for posterity, the viability of Indigenous existence was up for debate in the minds of Euro-Americans. In conclusion, whether their efforts were successful or not, Anishinaabe women most assuredly realized that fighting for themselves and their children would be a more insurmountable challenge without writing. III. Indigenous Electorates: Anishinaabe and Mixed-Ancestry Fights for Franchise While the prospect of establishing independent polities did not prove attractive for most people of mixed ancestry in the Great Lakes Borderlands, many discovered that engaging with American electoral politics could aid them in contesting white encroachment upon their Homelands. The mixed-ancestry kin of Baawitigong Ojibwe were among those who identified potential in electoral engagement as early as the 1820s. In 1824, George Johnston was among a 639 Nichols, Theft Is Property!, 6-7. 640 Maureen Konkle, Writing Indian Nations: Native Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827-1863 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 172. 170 set of petitioners who asserted that their distance from Detroit as the seat of government for the Michigan Territory essentially disenfranchised them. The petitioners proclaimed that the region would be key to the safety of the Old Northwest in the event of war.641 Similarly, Edward Biddle was among the Euro-American residents of Mackinac Island who petitioned the territorial government to establish new courts as accommodation for the inconvenience it was to travel from Northern Michigan to the territorial capital.642 Mixed-ancestry Baawitigong residents subsequently participated in the 1825 race for Michigan’s territorial delegate to Congress. Contenders for this position included incumbent Gabriel Richard, Austin Wing, and John Biddle. Biddle, the Democratic candidate, was elected by a margin of just seven votes, but his opponents suspected malfeasance on the grounds that “persons of mixed blood, usually called half breeds […] voted at the late election.”643 The report published following an investigation into this election offers much elucidation on nineteenth- century Euro-American attitudes toward race and peoples of Aboriginal ancestry in Greater Mackinac and these attitudes’ relationship to state formation. The first noteworthy aspect of this report is how quickly it concludes that votes cast by people of African ancestry could be disregarded. While investigators conceded that determining eligibility standards for a mixed-ancestry electorate was a “matter [that] is not, perhaps, free of difficulty,” they commented that at least one contested voter “appears to have descended from Indian and Negro parents – as to him, his vote seems very clearly to have been illegally received.”644 It appears, then, that in antebellum Baawitigong, where Indigeneity was not always 641 “Petition to Congress by Inhabitants of Brown County,” September 28, 1824, in TPUS, vol. 11, 588-91. 642 “Petition to Congress by Inhabitants of Michilimackinac County,” July 24, 1821, in TPUS, vol. 11, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1943), 140-42. 643 “A Report of the Proceedings in Relation to the Contested Election for Delegate to the Nineteenth Congress, from the Territory of Michigan, Between Austin E. Wing, Gabriel Richard, and John Biddle,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 752. 644 “A Report, &c.,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 730. 171 a sanguine quality that could deprive one of citizenship, one drop of African American blood could still confer challenges.645 On a journey to Baawitigong in the late 1830s, a British chronicler noted, “It is remarkable, that although the Americans treat the negro with contumely, they have a respect for the red Indian: a well-educated half-breed Indian is not debarred from entering into society.”646 This observation deserves elaboration. Peoples of African ancestry, both enslaved and free, inhabited Greater Mackinac for as long as their European counterparts. During the late-eighteenth century, free Black fur traders such as Jean Baptiste Point du Sable resided in Fort Michilimackinac. In fact, du Sable gained the confidence from the fort’s British commanding officer, who reminisced on him in his poetry.647 Moreover, he earned the confidence of local Indigenous people who compelled British authorities to give him a position of responsibility. For example, when one Ojibwe leader grew frustrated about the current Pinery manager, he requested the British officials send du Sable to take over. This was a clear indication of the confidence the Ojibwe had in him. The management of the Pinery was no small feat, and the value of the wood was high. Armour and Widder argue Sinclair made this choice because he was, “perhaps anxious to rid himself of another remembrance of De Peyster.”648 Du Sable was sent down to the Pinery, after which he would become the founder of Chicago. The lives of people of mixed African and Native American ancestry in Greater Mackinac complicate assumptions about the application of “one drop” conceptions of Blackness for people 645 See Ariela J. Gross, What Blood Won’t Tell: A History of Race on Trial in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008); and Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 646 Frederick Marryat, A Diary in America, with Remarks on Its Institutions (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1839), 54. 647 He called him “A handsome Negro (well educated and settled in Eschecagou,) but much in the French interest.” See DePeyster, Miscellanies by an Officer, 10. 648 Armour and Widder, At the Crossroads, 152. 172 of African descent or the easier assimilation into whiteness for people of Indigenous descent. For example, George Bonga was the grandson of a Black couple who operated a tavern on Mackinac Island, and the son of an Ojibwe mother. George entered the Great Lakes fur trade via his Ojibwe kinship connections.649 As an early settler of Minnesota, he professed to be among “the first two white men that ever came into this country.”650 Such a statement is startling given prevailing assumptions about racial identity at the time. Did Bonga conceive of race as a white and Indigenous binary? If so, what induced him to place himself where he did upon this narrow continuum? Historian Mattie Marie Harper argues, “if George Bonga referred to himself as a ‘white man’ while playing the host and storyteller, he was showcasing his sharp wit and sense of irony.”651 In other words, she claims, he did not genuinely count himself as white. Many white contemporaries would have most assuredly made it difficult for him to attempt such a feat. Schoolcraft, for instance, did not hesitate to refer to Bonga’s father as “a negro,” and he condescendingly called George and his siblings “as black as the father” with “curled hair and glossy skin of the native African.”652 Then again, Bonga built alliances with prominent white citizens such as Charles E. Flandrau, who distinguished George as “a thorough gentlemen in both feeling and deportment.”653 Bonga self-identifying as white, therefore, reveals more than just how he understood the color of his skin. It illustrates how he understood the impact that both his Black and Indigenous heritages could have on his connection to the United States. While the Bongas undoubtedly owed their good fortunes to Indigenous kinship networks, George refused to be economically inhibited by American antagonism. He judged it within his best interests to 649 Schoolcraft, Personal Memoirs, 478. 650 Charles E. Flandrau, “Reminiscences of Minnesota During the Territorial Period,” in MHC, vol. 9 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1901), 199. 651 Mattie Marie Harper, “French Africans in Ojibwe Country: Negotiating Marriage, Identity and Race, 1780- 1890” (PhD diss., Berkeley, University of California, Berkeley, 2012), iii. 652 Williams, ed., Schoolcraft’s Narrative Journal, 139. 653 Flandrau, “Reminiscences of Minnesota During the Territorial Period,” in MHC, vol. 9, 199. 173 instead become American, but to do so he did not have to become white rather than Black. He had to become white rather than Native American. Such individual self-conceptions did not always matter when it came to the external considerations of election officials. While investigators were quick to dismiss any voter who they considered Black based on blood, Baawitigong’s mixed-ancestry population with Euro-American and Native American backgrounds raised more concerns. On at least some level, investigators acknowledged the Anishinaabe capacity to enter the arena of politics on similar footing as white Americans. They conceded, “the Indians within our limits occupy a separate peculiar relation to us: they have to some purposes an independent political existence: this appears throughout all the statute books of the general government. The single fact that they constitute every year parties to new treaties with this nation sufficiently shows it.”654 Nevertheless, in assessing the suitability of individuals for enfranchisement, debate repeatedly hinged upon whether mixed-ancestry persons under scrutiny “looked and acted more like a White man or an Indian.”655 At least one Michigan investigator seemed convinced that racial codification of Indigenous people should follow prevailing American logic for racial codification of Black people. “Education does not alter the cast,” he argued, “nor any mixture of blood constitute of a part Indian, a ‘free, white citizen,’ in the sense in which it is thought that expression was used.”656 Some white newcomers to Greater Mackinac shared these sentiments. In 1824, Ferry references an encounter with a blind Native American woman, “when six kisses did I receive 654 “A Report, &c.,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 730-31. 655 Hyde, Born of Lakes and Plains, 128. 656 “A Report, &c.,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 731. 174 from her black lips before she released me.”657 There are additional references to mixed-ancestry children as “black” in both curious and coarse tone. Reflecting on meeting interpreter John Tanner in the early 1830s, one settler recalled his “dirty, black half-breed children.”658 On an 1846 sojourn to Fort Laramie, historian Francis Parkman referred to people of mixed ancestry as a “mongrel race,” and he noted that other white newcomers “felt a violent prejudice against the French Indians, as they called the trappers and traders.”659 Around this same time in Baawitigong, “[l]ocal residents characterized mixed-blood children as ‘blacks’ and remarked […] that mixed-blood children tended to ‘show their blood.’”660 Mixed-ancestry people “destabilized these boundaries by exposing the inconsistencies that characterized definitions of standard racial categories,” as social scientist Lauren L. Basson explains.661 Agatha Biddle was chief among those destabilizing such categories. She “brought up another child of [an] Indian woman, whose parents were both dead […] the father of said child was a Negro and the mother a full Indian […] and she received the care and attention as one of Mrs. Biddle’s own children.”662 After six years in her care, Biddle allowed this child to enroll in the Presbyterian mission school that the ABCFM operated on Mackinac Island. Historian Keith R. Widder conjectures that the child was most likely Cornelia Fonda, as she was the only “½ 657 Amanda White Ferry Letter, January 1, 1824, in “Frontier Mackinac Island, 1823-1834: Letters of William Montague and Amanda White Ferry,” ed. Charles A. Anderson, Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 25, no. 4 (1947), 200. 658 Ann Adams, “Early Days at Red River Settlement and Fort Snelling: Reminiscences of Mrs. Ann Adams, 1821-1829,” in MHC, vol. 6 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1894), 113. 659 Francis Parkman, The California and Oregon Trail: Being Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain Life (New York: George P. Putnam, 1849), 93, 134. 660 According to Harper, “Although the hierarchies based on notions of ‘race’ and ‘civilized’ were both underpinned by colonial notions of Anglo-American superiority, these hierarchies clashed at times in Ojibwe communities.” See Harper, “French Africans in Ojibwe Country,” 98; and Bieder, “The Unmaking of a Gentleman,” 129. 661 Lauren L. Basson, White Enough to Be American?: Race Mixing, Indigenous People, and the Boundaries of State and Nation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 2. 662 Charles Beaubien to J.P. King, October 16, 1837, Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Special File No. 156, RG 75, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 175 African” girl listed in surviving school records. Amanda White Ferry, wife of ABCFM missionary Rev. William Montague Ferry, remarked approvingly how Cornelia was apparently among the mission school students who was “rejoicing in hope” and “resolved to find their Saviour.”663 Supporters of mixed-ancestry voters introduced other factors in their testimony. Schoolcraft asserted that racial distinction between mixed-ancestry people and their Indigenous ancestors could be found “in living in fixed residences or dwellings, in working as laborers for hire, and in adopting the maxims of civilized communities with regard to the rights of individuals and the acquirement and possession of property” rather than “dependence upon the spontaneous productions of the earth.”664 This is why, again, more Anishinaabeg identified land ownership to resist removal as the nineteenth century progressed. The category of “civilization” stands out in this testimony along with testimony from other white Baawitigong residents like Isaac Butterfield who claimed that his “half breed” neighbors were “not in their habits like wandering Indians […] but that they speak either the French or English language, are held accountable in law for debts contracted by them; that they are laboring men, and supply wood, hay, and other articles for this market, and cultivate the soil.”665 Unfortunately, mixed-ancestry Baawitigong resident Jean-Baptiste Piquette garnered derision because he was reportedly among the men “married to Indian women of the full blood” and “in their habits and mode of life […] assimilated entirely to Indians of the full blood, and have no habits in common with the white population.”666 This is especially significant because 663 Amanda White Ferry Letter, October 29, 1827, in “Frontier Mackinac Island, 1823-1834: Letters of William Montague and Amanda White Ferry (Continued),” ed. Charles A. Anderson, Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 26, no. 2 (1948), 107-08; Widder, Battle for the Soul, 74, 142, 201. 664 “A Report, &c.,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 752. 665 “A Report, &c.,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 749. 666 “A Report, &c.,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 742. 176 Piquette was among the signers of a petition protesting how Baawitigong men were “deprived of their suffrages.”667 In concocting a definition for “civilization,” gender played a pivotal role, as the behaviors of “civilized” men and “civilized” women differed. For the former, it was their participation in land cultivation rather than their partners which conferred a civilized air. Innumerable government officials made comments like this. One representative example is that of Forsyth, who remarked “[T]here is a half-breed Chipeway married among the Foxes who understands the use of the plough, this half-breed Chipeway is a civilised [sic] man and understands work.”668 In the judges’ assessments of the case, decisions seemed to fall along partisan lines. According to the Whigs, the “half breeds” were “assimilated entirely to Indians of the full blood, and had no habits in common with the white population.”669 One Whig stated, “It is puerile to suppose that could have intended to confer upon a Wyandot or Chippewa Indian a right to vote at our elections, or in any wise to intermeddle with our political affairs.”670 According to a Democrat, in contrast, “the half breeds (so Called) […] are not in their habits like wandering Indians, but on the contrary many of them are owners of comfortable houses, speak English or French, and dress like white men.”671 Following this election, partisan tables began to turn in the Michigan Territory and nationwide. The Indian Removal Act irreparably tethered the Democratic Party with Jackson in the White House and Cass in the Department of War to the mission of forcefully extinguishing them. “On November 20, 1835, the inhabitants of Sangamon County Illinois, petitioned Delegate 667 “Petition to the House of Representatives by Inhabitants of Sault Ste. Marie,” November 8, 1825, in TPUS, vol. 11, 781-83. 668 Thomas Forsyth to William Clark, October 1, 1829, Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.64a Series IX. Indian Claims, State Historical Society of Wisconsin – Draper Collection #3, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 669 “A Report, &c.,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 742. 670 “A Report, &c.,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 731. 671 “A Report, &c.,” in TPUS, vol. 11, 750. 177 Jones, asking legislation ‘to extinguish the Indian title in the Wisconsin Territory’ […] In addition to pointing out the value of this ‘vast rich mining country,’ the petition expresses, “we fear if we do not purchase the Indians land while Gen. Jackson is President & Mr. Cass is Secretary at War that we shall never have as good an opportunity afterwards to purchase those lands.”672 Whigs nationwide alleged that Democrats acted with “disgrace” in their “determination to carry into effect treaties which are clearly proved to have been fraudulently made, in pursuance of the ‘Indian policy,” adding “we have to record the pitiful spectacle of the violation of those made in good faith by both parties, on the part of the stronger.”673 There were surely innumerable examples of the Democratic Party’s journalistic arms commenting disdainfully on Greater Mackinac’s populace. When the Albany Argus mistakenly reported that a mixed-ancestry man from Baawitigong murdered Schoolcraft in 1846, for instance, the periodical offered a “melancholy reflection” on how “one who has contributed so much to meliorate the condition of the aborigines, and to portray their character and history, should have met his death by violence from one of them – if indeed the half-breed can be strictly classed as such.”674 In 1835, the Michigan Territory formally launched its campaign for statehood, setting the stage for the first in a series of constitutional conventions. James Lawrence Schoolcraft, younger brother of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, cast his hat into the contest to serve as a convention delegate representing Chippewa County, home to most of the connections he could access via the kinship network of his mixed-ancestry partner, Anna Maria Johnston. Shockingly, the election ended with James just two votes shy of securing the position he coveted, and he lamented this razor- 672 “Inhabitants of Sangamon County, Illinois to Delegate Jones,” November 20, 1835, in TPUS, vol. 12, 1015- 16. 673 “More Indian Troubles,” New-Hampshire Sentinel, Keene, NH, May 31, 1838, 3. 674 “Murder of Henry R. Schoolcraft (from the Albany Argus)”, Barre Patriot, Barre, MA, July 17, 1846, 2. 178 thin loss in a letter to his brother. “Men were forced to vote against their wills,” he emphatically alleged, and “[l]ies, bare faced lies, were told to influence the ignorant.”675 That the collapse of his electoral ambitions could result from the coercive and deceitful tactics he was imagining led the younger Schoolcraft to condemn Baawitigong, his family’s base of operations in the Great Lakes Borderlands where votes in his favor ultimately came up short. The elder Schoolcraft did not always refer to Baawitigong in the most praiseworthy terms, at one time even likening the site to Siberia.676 James, however, went even further, calling it “a more degraded hole than it ever was in former years.”677 Above all, he expressed frustration with “[s]ome full blood Indians, or at best ¾ breeds […] [being] allowed to vote.”678 Making a claim like this exuding with such scorn seems peculiar, and not just because Anna Maria was a woman of Native American descent. James was an even more animated partisan than his brother. In testimony to a Justice of the Peace, one Mackinac Island resident claimed that after the 1840 election, the younger Schoolcraft became intoxicated and started ambling about the village screaming obscenities about the Whigs before attacking a local Indian interpreter with a cane. The resident also accused Schoolcraft of election interference for challenging votes and even stealing a ballot box.679 Another resident alleged that Schoolcraft “said, if the Whig party got into power, he would remove to the British dominion, and never tread on American soil again.”680 675 James L. Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, May 15, 1835, in TPUS, vol. 12, ed. Clarence Edwin Carter (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1945), 920. 676 Henry R. Schoolcraft, “Sketches of the Upper Peninsula – No. 5,” HRSP, Articles, Box 63, LOC, Washington, D.C. 677 James L. Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, May 15, 1835, in TPUS, vol. 12, 920. 678 James L. Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, May 15, 1835, in TPUS, vol. 12, 920. 679 Samuel J. Drew to James O. Graves, October 30, 1841, NAM M234, Roll 424, 931. 680 John A. Drew to James O. Graves, October 28, 1841, NAM M234, Roll 424, 930. 179 AFC agent Bela Chapman attained a narrow victory when he ran for the position James coveted as a Whig.681 The regional party’s opposition to Indian removal – a policy that Democrats vocally supported throughout the 1830s – may have proven a decisive factor in this election. In evaluating the decisions of the assembled delegation, it is worth noting that Chapman’s votes were not fueled by an animus for nonwhite people. Chapman, in fact, shared deep connections with the Davenport family. Both men married Indigenous women. Then again, they both also named children after Andrew Jackson, and Susan and Ambrose, Jr. named several of their children after prominent anti-Indian political figures.682 Indeed, the Whig victory in the 1840 presidential election led to Schoolcraft’s ousting as Indian Agent. His replacement, Robert Stuart, not only shared that his “opinion has always been that M[ackinaw] will continue to be a point of importance,” but he also opposed Indian removal.683 A shift in political parties also meant a shift in fortunes for the Schoolcraft family. In correspondence with Stuart, Commissioner of Indian Affairs T. Hartley Crawford informed him that the amount that Schoolcraft paid out to his family members was sizable enough that any future claims should be “very closely scrutinized.”684 Attempting to save his position, Schoolcraft argued that Stuart’s appointment would have broader political ramifications. He expressed in correspondence with Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, that Stuart was an abolitionist affiliated with the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society. 681 Cochrane, Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais, 14. 682 Historian Caitlin Fitz makes a compelling argument about the significance of naming children after prominent political figures, particularly in the context of relations between the United States and Latin America. As Spanish colonies started fighting for their independence in the 1810s and 1820s, hundreds of American parents expressed hemispheric solidarity by naming their sons Bolivar. See Caitlin Fitz, Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2016), 125-30; Cochrane, Gichi Bitobig, Grand Marais, 130. 683 Robert Stuart to David Greene, August 2, 1835, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 11, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 684 T. Hartley Crawford to Robert Stuart and Henry Whiting, August 1, 1842, NAM M1, Roll 53, 55. 180 The outgoing Indian Agent professed that “the leading principles of the Society, could not be carried out, without rending the constitution of the Union asunder.”685 Although Stuart’s confirmation hearing was a closed-door affair, the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society publication Signal of Liberty offers some insight on the proceedings. The publication confirmed that Stuart had served as president of the Michigan Anti-Slavery Society, and it reported that he revealed this to then-Senator John C. Calhoun. Calhoun, in turn, interrupted another Southern senator (possibly Benton) who was rebuking Stuart. The South Carolinian Democrat “warned Southern Senators that if they introduced the principle that Northern men should be excluded from office for the opinion that slavery is wrong, the time might come when Southern men would be opposed on this floor for holding the opinion that slavery is right.”686 Nationwide, Whig policy lacked uniformity. The party’s nomination of William Henry Harrison for the presidency in 1840 reinforced this. For a party nominating an abolitionist to a crucial local position of power, it was curious that a slaveholder stood at the top of their ticket. Likewise, their protestations against Indian Removal (including from the Old Northwest) while running for office were undercut when Whigs achieved victories at federal level, as they continued practice of violently removing Indigenous peoples.687 Indeed, some Michiganders – who narrowly delivered the state’s three electoral votes to Harrison – were more enthralled with the theatrics that the Harrison campaign employed, including one stunt in Detroit featuring a “grand torchlight procession, a log cabin on wheels, a live coon on top, a barrel of hard cider inside, the cabin drawn through the streets by a long string of oxen.”688 Opposition to Indian 685 Henry R. Schoolcraft to Thomas Hart Benton, May 27, 1841, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 46, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 686 Emancipator, “Historical Incident,” Signal of Liberty, Ann Arbor, MI, January 19, 1846. 687 Bowes, Land Too Good for Indians, 145-48. 688 C.B. Seymour, “Early Days in Old Washtenaw County,” in MPHC, vol. 28, 398. 181 Removal, though, served the interests of national leaders, as it provided them with an opportunity to position themselves in opposition to their Jacksonian adversaries.689 Meanwhile, local Whigs such as Stuart seemed to internalize relations they shared with Native Americans and their mixed-ancestry children, and local politics separated from the personality leading the Whig ticket could be just as consequential. The gendered nature of discussions surrounding Indigenous voting rights should not be overlooked. Jane Schoolcraft, in fact, remarked about being wary of “enter[ing] into the subject of Politicks” asserting that she was content to “leave this subject to Men, altogether, as I think Women have a more appropriate sphere in domestic duties.”690 Although Jane may have carried a distaste for the partisan politics that consumed the minds of her husband and brother-in-law, the degree of petitioning that occurred throughout nineteenth-century Greater Mackinac demonstrates that Indigenous women were certainly confident in their abilities in American politics whether personally or through male proxies. For the mixed-ancestry populace of Greater Mackinac, the political could quickly turn personal. This certainly proved to be the case following Schoolcraft’s ousting from his position under a new Whig administration. Jane remarked with concern on Stuart’s children accosting her son John with the news that […].691 Schoolcraft himself directed scorn at the Whigs for his removal from office.692 Meanwhile, looking at the Minnesota Territory, Lakota scholar Jameson Sweet has demonstrated how a faction of Dakota-descended politicos known as “Moccasin Democrats” commanded great influence within their party. He argues, “[m]ixed-ancestry legislators quickly 689 Ingersoll, To Intermix with Our White Brothers, 204. 690 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, November 20, 1837, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 42, LOC, Washington, D.C. 691 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, April 24, 1841, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 46, LOC, Washington, D.C. 692 Henry R. Schoolcraft, “Memorandum for the President,” August 1846, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 48, LOC, Washington, D.C. 182 and easily took to American politics and political leadership. Their presence and power on the political landscape could not be ignored, and the influence of the […] [so-called ‘Moccasin Democrats’] as a substantial potential voting bloc led directly to Indian citizenship in the Upper Midwest.”693 Collaborating with the Democratic Party became especially consequential with Minnesota marching toward statehood, as one onlooker remarked that Democrats’ legislative leverage would ensure that they “will make the constitution […] to suit themselves.”694 This supposition proved prescient, as the participation of mixed-ancestry people in Minnesota’s first gubernatorial election tipped the scales in Democrats’ favor. Indeed, without mixed-ancestry voters, Democrats in Minnesota would become what historian William D. Green called “a veritable political irrelevancy.”695 Republicans, therefore, viewed mixed-ancestry people with suspicion.696 Henry Hastings Sibley shared a connection to Greater Mackinac, as he clerked for Ozhaguscodaywayquay early in his fur trading career.697 According to journalist Harlan P. Hall, the tipping point in the election came in the form of unanimous results for Sibley in the Cass and Pembina districts. Hall’s assessment of these results is telling. Before the election, Minnesota passed legislation that allowed “all persons of a mixture of white and Indian blood, and who shall have adopted the habits and customs of civilized men” to vote, which functionally, as Hall saw it, meant that “Indians were permitted to vote.”698 Echoes of Schoolcraft’s accusations are perceptible in this evaluation, although Hall as 693 Jameson Sweet, “Native Suffrage: Race, Citizenship, and Dakota Indians in the Upper Midwest,” Journal of the Early Republic 39, no. 1 (2019), 103. 694 Selah B. Treat to Stephen Return Riggs, June 10, 1857, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 13, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 695 William D. Green, A Peculiar Imbalance: The Fall and Rise of Racial Equality in Early Minnesota (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007), 104. 696 Green, A Peculiar Imbalance, 116. 697 Clapp and Ehringer to Henry R. Schoolcraft, April 26, 1829, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 36, LOC, Washington, D.C. 698 Harlan P. Hall, H.P. Hall’s Observations: Being More or Less a History of Political Contests in Minnesota from 1849 to 1904 (St. Paul: H.P. Hall, 1904), 51. 183 an observer rather than an office seeker lacked the scornful tone of Schoolcraft. In fact, he ultimately viewed the prospect of Indigenous people participating in the democratic process with ambivalence, judging that the fledgling state was in such need of a boost to its voter rolls that anyone would have been acceptable.699 Rev. Hall corroborated how common relationships between Native Americans and Euro-Americans were in the early 1850s, bolstering the Minnesota Territory’s mixed-ancestry population. The Ojibwe “have little aversion to forming such alliances,” he stated, adding that “This mixing the two races is multiplying the number of mixed bloods very rapidly.”700 This should not be taken as a sign of Hall’s sympathy for Indigenous suffrage, however. In the same breath that he conceded mixed-ancestry enfranchisement was a political necessity, he scoffed, “The Indian did not seem to have much gratitude for having citizenship conferred upon him, for the next year he rose up in his savage atrocity and slaughtered 600 or 700 white men, women and children on our frontier.”701 In this sentence he referred to the Dakota Uprising, which, as Chapter Five will further detail, would come to have a defining impact on the fortunes of the La Framboise family. In Rev. Hall’s assessment, “The mixed bloods generally consider themselves as citizens of the United States, and take no part with the Indians in their political councils. But still they are very closely connected with their Indian relatives, and probably the latter will never be more disposed to separate from their children and grandchildren than they are now.”702 This sentiment can be seen in a broad array of government documents, yet Hall found the language allowing for 699 Hall, H.P. Hall’s Observations, 52. 700 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, December 31, 1853, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 701 Hall, H.P. Hall’s Observations, 52. 702 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, December 31, 1853, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 184 enfranchisement of mixed-ancestry people based on “habits and customs of civilized men” to be nebulous. So loose was the definition that Hall alleged that “a tradition has come down to later generations to the effect that one pair of pants would do service for a swarm of half-breeds. One would don the trousers and go out and vote, and, soon coming back, passed the garment over to the next man, while he resumed his breech clout and blanket.”703 Attire, therefore, may have been the only accoutrement necessary to demonstrate the effects of Americanization.704 Despite the dismissive tone, it is notable how similar his description is to an episode from a Dakota mission where Julia La Framboise worked. Julia exhibited some of the charitable characteristics of her grandmother, urging the Riggs family to take in a Dakota girl whom they called Judith.705 This child held onto her Indigenous roots. She wore a hood that the Riggs gifted her around their house, but “Judith was in Indian fashion by the time she reached the school.” Riggs believed that “her courage only lasted till she was fairly out of our house,” but she may have merely wanted to wait until she was out of view of her white hosts. This was not necessarily the result of peer pressure. Grandmother and aunties “ended our too previous ambition to transform the ways and customs of an Indian maiden.”706 Again, Julia will receive greater analysis in the final chapter, but suffice it to say for now that the Indigenous people around her recognized the critical role presentation could play. IV. Conclusion During the winter of 1864, Wisconsin Ojibwe composed a sixteen-page statement describing various grievances they had with the U.S. government. Above all, the Ojibwe asserted 703 Hall, H.P. Hall’s Observations, 51. 704 For further analysis, see Bruce White, “The Power of Whiteness; or, The Life and Times of Joseph Rolette Jr.,” Minnesota History 56, no. 4 (1998-1999), 194-95. 705 Riggs, Early Days at Santee, 27. 706 Riggs, Early Days at Santee, 28. 185 that federal officials failed to meet obligations delineated in several nineteenth-century treaties, and they demanded restitution. What makes this document especially unique and compelling is that it is bilingual. The statement’s authors recorded their adversities in Anishinaabemowin on one side of each page and translated them into English on the other side. Through this bold strategy of asserting their claim in their own language, they demonstrated that key aspects of their culture endured even after the epoch of treaty-making with Lakes Indians crawled to its end in the mid-nineteenth century. Perhaps even more significant than the form this statement took, though, was whose voices it invoked. The petitioners cited testimony from an Anishinaabe woman who reported to the Indian Agent: My Father, truly I am poor, your Children the Chippewas are poor. At the time when the English People were supporting me I had plenty to wear; but when you made your appearance you who are called “Big Knives” and come among us, you told me that you would support me, that I would not be poor, that I would be better off than I had been with the English. I am now a good deal poorer than I was then. You have made me a great many promises which you have not fulfilled.707 To this, the speaker agreed, “This old woman spoke the truth. There is no perceptible change in our situation even when promises are made to us, although they are often made to us, to effect a purpose, but we never know them to be fulfilled.”708 What this demonstrates is that Anishinaabe women identified when American treaty signers failed to meet the obligations of respect, responsibility, and renewal. This made petitioning the United States government an accessible avenue for Greater Mackinac’s population as principles present in Anishinaabe pleas for assistance aligned with the rhetorical conventions of petitioning. 707 “Statement Made by the Indians: A Bilingual Petition of the Chippewas of Lake Superior,” 1864, Archives Main Stacks, WHS, Madison, WI. 708 “Statement Made by the Indians” 1864, Archives Main Stacks, WHS, Madison, WI. 186 It is true that this statement did not make a meteoric impact in Washington, D.C. as the Civil War still held most of the nation’s attention. However, it did lead to the U.S. government addressing some Ojibwe concerns. As archivist Harry Miller explains, the Ojibwe had been receiving their annuity payments in the form of paper currency with value that fluctuated widely during wartime, but the United States returned to distributing hard currency payments after the statement’s delivery.709 Thus, even as this chapter has not identified petitioning as the most effective strategy Indigenous women and their mixed-ancestry progeny adopted to counter the growing strength of the U.S. government in the Old Northwest, it still presented some viability. The overall purpose of this chapter has been to analyze how the presence of Native intermediaries like the women introduced in the first chapter and their mixed-ancestry children complicated the governance of the Great Lakes Borderlands. A study of state formation in the Old Northwest, after all, cannot solely focus on the machinations of metropolitan figures. Paramount has been the category of “civilization,” which played a significant part in racial categorization. By 1850, it became the category by which the state of Michigan – in accordance with its newly revised constitution – determined whether American Indians could enjoy the right to vote, a practice that could serve their interests greatly during the first half of the century. By adopting such practices as petition the U.S. government and voting, Greater Mackinac Anishinaabe were not giving into Americanization. On the contrary, they were merely folding forms of interaction with Euro-American states into existing cultural practices. By doing so, they set the stage for a new generation of mixed-ancestry people to emerge and endure during the 1840s and 1850s. 709 Harry Miller, “These I Do Not Sell: A Statement Made by the Indians,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 84, no. 4 (2001), 29. 187 CHAPTER FOUR: A NEW GENERATION EMERGES: RACIAL IDENTITY AND SHIFTING LABOR PATTERNS FOR SCIONS OF GREATER MACKINAC Tucked among the papers of Seneca leader Ely S. Parker in the collections of the American Philosophical Society is a humble scrap of parchment upon which he jotted some thoughts concerning prospects for Native American interpreters in the mid-nineteenth century. “You wrongly imagine that you need Indian guidance,” he ruminated, concluding that Indigenous expertise “is only required when one is embosomed in the trackless forests or engulfed in the boundless prairies, which constituted the beauties and charms of the once glorious, grand old America.”710 The sorrowful tone in Parker’s words, referring to the “glorious, grand old” state of Indian Country in past tense, is detectable in more of his unpublished writings, including a piece he entitled “Melancholy Decay of the Indians.” Characterizing the Aboriginal inhabitants of North America as a “wretched forlorn people” in that piece, he expressed remorse that zones of Indigenous influence “have disappeared, or are disappearing before the progress of civilization.”711 Notions of Native Americans as “vanishing” people undoubtedly contributed to the anxiety Parker poured into these private pieces. Government officials like Henry R. Schoolcraft were some of the most frequent propagators of such declensionist tropes. Emphasizing Schoolcraft is appropriate here because he and Parker were not merely contemporaries. In fact, the two repeatedly corresponded during the late 1840s and early 1850s, and their tones when addressing each other were generally cordial. As they aged, however, Schoolcraft’s attitude toward Parker deteriorated into one of condescension. This can be seen in 710 Ely S. Parker, “Reflections,” Ely Samuel Parker Papers, Mss.497.3.P223, Box 6, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 711 Ely S. Parker, “Melancholy Decay of the Indians,” ca. 1845, Ely Samuel Parker Papers, Mss.497.3.P223, Box 1, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 188 the notes that he wrote to himself (or the readers he imagined would later be interested in his correspondence and legacy) in May of 1851 on the back of an old letter he had received from Parker. Schoolcraft called Parker “a young man of good mind, who has received an English education,” but he undercut this praise by adding, “Though, as you will see, his grammar is not altogether faultless.”712 Apparently, he could not stop himself from critiquing this “Seneca of pure blood,” distinguishing him as an intellectual inferior. Ironically, when it came to achieving prominence in American politics, it would not be Parker who would vanish. Schoolcraft once managed the nation’s most expansive Indian Agency, but by the early 1840s his political star was rapidly fading. Conversely, Parker’s reputation only expanded, even among white contemporaries. A brief relocation to the Old Northwest, in fact, garnered him acclaim and appreciation. During a public meeting in 1857 regarding his appointment as Superintendent of Public Works in Galena, Illinois, one speaker called Parker “a perfect gentleman and a scholar, and though an Indian, whiter than many of a different color.” This description elicited applause from assembled citizens, but even louder applause reportedly followed the speaker’s assertion that “After driving the Indian race almost from the face of the continent, to still proscribe them when they become educated in, and devoted to, the institutions of the very government which has waged against them a war of extermination! To say the least of it, fellow citizens, it would be inhuman.”713 Ultimately, Parker rose to become the first American Indian to hold the position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs under the administration of Ulysses S. Grant.714 712 Ely S. Parker to Henry R. Schoolcraft, May 30, 1849, Ely Samuel Parker Papers, Mss.497.3.P223, Box 3, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 713 R.H. Jackson, “Politics and Its Corruptions in North-Western Illinois,” 1857, Ely Samuel Parker Papers, Mss.497.3.P223, Box 4, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 714 David H. DeJong, Paternalism to Partnership: The Administration of Indian Affairs, 1786-2021 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021), 139-45. 189 Despite their contrasting fortunes, it is worth considering how Parker’s perception of Native American interpreters may have changed if he came of age among the Anishinaabe of Greater Mackinac instead of the Haudenosaunee of New York. This chapter analyzes how changing racial connotations increasingly associated with terms like “half-breed” and “mixed- blood” affected the descendants of Greater Mackinac’s cross-cultural intermediaries as they took up work across the Great Lakes Borderlands as both secular and spiritual interpreters. Despite working alongside colonizers, their work was not wholly assimilationist. The stories of the subjects in this chapter, in fact, reinforce Sleeper-Smith’s argument that “while encounter changed Indigenous communities, it also encouraged the evolution of strategic behaviors that ensured cultural continuity.”715 Anishinaabe people and their children of mixed ancestry were able to burst free from the veil of dread that surrounded Parker’s views on certain professions. Examining sectors of the ongoing fur trade and the ABCFM’s evangelical efforts reveals that the physical and intellectual labor of members of the La Framboise, Biddle, Schoolcraft, and Davenport families remained invaluable even into the mid-nineteenth century. I. Navigating “Blood Earned Country”: Joseph La Framboise and Mixed-Ancestry Labor West of Greater Mackinac As memory served Henry Hastings Sibley, it was a sweltering July day when Joseph La Framboise (son of Magdelaine La Framboise) came to tea at Fort Snelling. Joseph was something of a polyglot, being able to speak as many as five languages.716 Yet on this occasion he kept uncharacteristically quiet. He simply sipped from his cup when the host began to pour a second helping for one of his companions, Francois LaBathe. LaBathe could only speak French, so he was unable to refuse the refill, and due to what Sibley called “Indian etiquette,” he needed 715 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 2. 716 Henry Hastings Sibley, “Reminiscences of the Early Days of Minnesota,” in MHC, vol. 3 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1880), 248. 190 to finish whatever food or drink someone presented to him.717 Joseph could hardly contain his glee as he watched his friend swallow cup after cup of the hot libation, scalding his throat with each successive swig. Finally, with seven cups in his belly and an eighth on the way, LaBathe sprung from his seat and screamed at Joseph in his native tongue, “La Framboise, for the love of God, why do you not tell madame that I do not wish for any more tea?”718 Uproarious laughter followed this exclamation, cementing Joseph’s reputation as a prankster in the mind of Minnesota’s future governor. While merely an amusing anecdote on its surface, this story reveals several fascinating details about Joseph and his social circles. First, it is worth unpacking what Sibley meant by the phrase “Indian etiquette.” As previous chapters have stated, gift-giving held tremendous importance among Anishinaabeg and other Lakes Indians. Through admittedly simplistic language, Sibley identified how an Indigenous perspective could imbue what a Euro-American might view as a simple act of courtesy with greater significance. Refusing nourishment, for example, could be construed as a social and diplomatic faux pas.719 Thus, LaBathe’s insistence on abiding by Indigenous principles demonstrates the extent to which they held sway through the mid-nineteenth century on the western reaches of Greater Mackinac. Significant as well are the observations Sibley makes about Joseph’s demeanor. In “Reminiscences of the Early Days of Minnesota,” he characterizes Joseph as a “practical joker,” distinguishing him as someone whose company elicited amusement and joy.720 In the same breath, though, he made sure to acknowledge his linguistic skills, suggesting there was far more to him. Janet Timmerman affirms that Joseph utilized “multiple identities and strategies drawn 717 Sibley, “Reminiscences of the Early Days of Minnesota,” in MHC, vol. 3, 248. 718 Sibley, “Reminiscences of the Early Days of Minnesota,” in MHC, vol. 3, 249. 719 White, “‘Give Us a Little Milk,’” 60. 720 Sibley, “Reminiscences of the Early Days of Minnesota,” in MHC, vol. 3, 248. 191 from Odawa, Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, and French Canadian cultures while integrating into the developing American identity.”721 Part of this integration meant developing skills that would make Euro-American travelers seek him as a guide. The breadth of interpersonal connections that mixed-ancestry people could access through the network of Greater Mackinac opened doors for individuals such as Joseph La Framboise. The next two sections will further detail how physical labor was a never-ending factor in the lives of Euro-Americans entering Indian Country. Yet any travelers must acknowledge that overcoming boredom was essential, as melancholy could overtake even the busiest of travelers. Voyageurs developed a wide array of strategies to overcome boredom. After all, Ambrose Davenport, Jr. gained renown for fiddle playing in the presence of missionaries.722 For him, such a gift may have emerged due to his regular presence among French Canadian for whom musical acumen was a celebrated attribute.723 Mackinac Island’s distinction as a fur trade nexus steadily decreased between the mid- 1830s and mid-1860s as the demand for black racoon pelts from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio eclipsed interest in beavers.724 Yet the significance of the fur trade’s ability to help bridge gaps between such longstanding rivals as the Dakota and Anishinaabe cannot be understated. For years, warfare between them had been so intense that Ojibwe historian William W. Warren deemed his people’s Land in modern-day Wisconsin and Minnesota to be “blood earned country” won in “the arena of the bloody feud.”725 Conflict persisted into the 1830s, during 721 Janet Timmerman, “Joseph LaFramboise: A Factor of Treaties, Trade, and Culture” (master’s thesis, Manhattan, Kansas State University, 2009), iii. 722 Schenck, ed., The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely, 1833-1849, 48. 723 Podruchny, Making the Voyageur World, 89-93. 724 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 129-30. 725 William W. Warren, “Answers to Inquiries Respecting the History, Present Condition and Future Prospect of the Ojibwas of Mississippi and Lake Superior,” Minnesota Pioneer, St. Paul, Minnesota Territory, December 26, 1849, 1, Chronicling America, LOC, Washington, D.C.; William W. Warren, “History of the Ojibways, Based Upon Traditions and Oral Statements,” in MHC, vol. 5 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1885), 187. 192 which time Indigenous diplomats regretfully conceded that “All the people still retain their warpath.”726 In spite of these conflicts, Joseph managed to marry into a prominent Dakota family as early as 1822.727 This afforded him chances to expand his enterprises into spaces Dakotas previously dominated such as the Minnesota Territory, where he operated until his death in 1856. Guidance from Joseph and his associates would be essential to any Euro-American hoping to safely traverse the westward reaches of Greater Mackinac. Well into the nineteenth century, mixed-ancestry people who could trace their lineages back to Mackinac Island continued to find opportunities for fur trading, allowing them to persist across the Great Lakes even after massive enterprises like the AFC ceased operation. Just as his mother had, Joseph engaged in claiming annuity payments from treaties such as an 1837 treaty that set aside in its second article a fund of $110,000 for “relatives and friends of the chiefs and braves […] having not less than one quarter of Sioux blood.”728 Like Ambrose Davenport, Joseph had mixed results when it came to claiming portions of this fund. He submitted a claim for a portion of this fund, but assessors denied him on the basis that he had no relations with the Dakota bands the treaty encapsulated.729 He made another attempt in 1841, this time submitting the names of his sons Joseph, Jr. and Alexis, but this treaty was never ratified.730 As Timmerman notes, though, the treaty negotiations ultimately benefited Joseph and his family by promulgating the continued existence of the AFC to the west of Greater Mackinac.731 726 “Chippewas Treat for Peace,” February 1838, trans. Ella Cara Deloria, American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Native American Languages Collection, Mss.497.3.B63c, Letters and Miscellaneous Materials in Dakota from the Minnesota Manuscript, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 727 Timmerman, “Joseph La Framboise,” 24-25. 728 “Treaty with the Sioux, 1837,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 493. 729 James L. Hansen, “Two Early Lists of Mixed-Blood Sioux,” Minnesota Genealogical Journal, no. 6 (1986), 527. 730 Hansen, “Two Early Lists of Mixed-Blood Sioux,” 529-30. 731 Timmerman, “Joseph LaFramboise,” 53. 193 Figure 4.1: Joseph La Framboise Genealogy Although his mother retired from commercial activities in 1821, Joseph correctly identified that knowledge of Indigenous languages and insight into the complex politics of Indian Country would still carry a premium for years to come. Given all the support that Magdelaine poured into English language training programs even when they were not run by Catholic educators, it seems reasonable to infer that Joseph’s mother had an influence on his proficiency learning languages other than the ones she raised him to speak. Could he have simply picked them up organically thanks to his profession? Perhaps. On the other hand, Joseph would have had many reminders of Mackinac Island’s impact on his upbringing. Indeed, many white Americans expressed a desire to dive into danger to bolster their constitutions and demonstrate their manhood.732 A reporter for Spirit of the Times, a nineteenth- century periodical aimed at upper-crust adventure aficionados, recommended a ramble through what would become the Minnesota Territory for these reasons, assuring young men “really desirous of getting more stamina and health” that they would benefit from the space provided 732 Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 148-51. 194 that they were, indeed, “young men, not dandies.”733 Such touting of the restorative properties of Greater Mackinac’s recesses unspoiled by Euro-American settlement presaged how boosters would advertise Mackinac Island in the ensuing decades. During Joseph’s lifetime, this inclination already existed, and the man in the field for Spirit of the Times corroborated his masculine characteristics, calling him “a very prince in hospitality, and a very Nimrod in anything appertaining to game.”734 Joseph accepted much work as an interpreter and guide for Euro-American travelers that could still be fraught with danger, catering to a broad clientele ranging from European nobles to scientists.735 While leading the party of cartographer Joseph N. Nicollet westward to a post he had established under the employ of the AFC, for example, La Framboise discovered on June 27, 1838 that “the establishment had been reduced to ashes a few weeks ago as testimony of the exploits of these Sioux marauders.”736 Just a few days later, Nicollet concluded that for surveyors like himself, “However great their vigilance and however sharp their eyes, they do not succeed in discovering those who see and follow them.”737 Luckily, La Framboise guidance was on their side, and the scion of Greater Mackinac showcased his acquaintance with a variety of peoples. There is a clear connection between these types of travelers to the upper-class readership of Spirit of the Times. White men wanted to demonstrate their manhood by trouncing through what they considered “savage” land. One can connect this to the masculine urge to filibuster and unpack the class dimensions of who could engage in these activities. Shortly before his death, 733 Rambler, “Life on the Prairies: A Buffalo Chase and Supper,” Spirit of the Times, New York, NY, October 3, 1846, 379. 734 Rambler, “Life on the Prairies,” Spirit of the Times, New York, NY, October 3, 1846, 379. 735 Francesco Arese, A Trip to the Prairies and in the Interior of North America 1837-1838, trans. Andrew Evans (New York: Harbor Press, 1934), 101-02. 736 Edmund C. Bray and Martha Coleman Bray, eds., Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies: The Expeditions of 1838-39 with Journals, Notes, and Letters (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1976), 65. 737 Bray and Bray, eds., Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies, 73. 195 another Euro-American traveler reported that Joseph’s “situation is one of the most beautiful and imposing upon the river. The land about it is of the best quality, and no farmer in Minnesota has raised finer crops than Mr. La Framboise.”738 II. “Men of Bone & Muscle”: Henry Blatchford and Labor Among Mooningwanekaaning’s Missionaries In addition to secular labors, mixed-ancestry men could also find vocational opportunities through their religious affiliations. This was especially true for members of the Davenport family. Again, Ambrose Davenport, Sr. associated strongly with fellow Americans who could corroborate his affinity for citizenship before institutions such as Michigan’s territorial government and Mackinac Island’s Presbyterian church. As an AFC agent, the son who shared his name regularly travelled alongside ABCFM missionary Edmund F. Ely during his tenure in the Wisconsin Territory.739 Meanwhile, Susan Davenport’s brother, Henry Blatchford – who was young enough to receive an education at the Mackinaw Mission School – became a renowned member of the ABCFM network.740 As Protestant missionaries set forth toward the westward reaches of Greater Mackinac hoping to throw themselves headlong into missionary labor, there were other forms of labor that they needed to consider. A common refrain in missionary correspondence of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s involved anxious pleas for more secular hands. Physical work was necessary to maintain mission facilities daily. Wood needed chopped, provisions needed restocked (usually through fishing), and an innumerable assortment of other manual tasks could divert preachers’ attention away from preaching. During an especially challenging winter in 738 Willoughby M. Babcock, ed., “Minnesota as Seen by Travelers: Up the Minnesota Valley to Fort Ridgely in 1853,” Minnesota History 11, no. 2 (1930), 175. 739 Schenck, ed., The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely, 1833-1849, 54, 58-61, 63-67, 69, 77-78, 104. 740 Widder, Battle for the Soul, 138. 196 1835, Boutwell lamented how he needed to dismiss his “lying, Sab[bath] breaking, & deceiving” French-Canadian workers. While French-Canadian labor had been foundational to the fur trade, many Euro-Americans and even mixed-ancestry people expressed a preference for Indigenous assistance. Jane wrote to Henry during the summer of 1828, “There is no dependence to be placed in any Canadian, even the best of them will not fish or take an interest in their employer’s business.”741 Missionaries in Greater Mackinac often balked at the prospect of performing their own manual labor. When Boutwell realized that letting his French-Canadian employees go would leave him to chop his own wood, he concluded, “I may as well burn down my house & return to N.E. as stay here under the embarrassment which I feel from this.”742 This would be far from the only time in which Boutwell would fear that accepting a share of responsibilities for mission maintenance would make it appear as though he was “degrading my ministerial character by manual labor.”743 Overall, he believed that an Indigenous or mixed-ancestry laborer’s hands would be more beneficial than those of a white man, writing bluntly, “I had rather encounter the Ind. a heathen, with all his superstitions, than to counteract the influence of white men, who have long been in the school of vice […] this is work, & requires men of bone & muscle.”744 Even arriving to the mission “requires an athletic constitution,” Hall and Boutwell reported to the Missionary Herald, as a missionary needed “to shoulder one’s pack and march five or six days in succession through the uninhabited wilderness, perhaps with a pair of show-shoes on the feet, 741 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, June 5, 1828, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 36, LOC, Washington, D.C. 742 William Thurston Boutwell to David Greene et al., December 16, 1835, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 743 William Thurston Boutwell to David Greene, May 10, 1846, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 744 William Thurston Boutwell to David Greene, December 18, 1833, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 197 and at night to encamp in the open air with only a blanket or two for covering.”745 Religious figures reported on sentiments preferential of Indigenous labor.746 Selah B. Treat of the ABCFM advocated to Lea that miners in his area “are in favor of having the Indians remain in their present homes. The latter can make themselves useful to their civilized neighbors in various ways, as by catching fish, raising vegetables, acting as voyagers, &c. &c.”747 Indeed, “Copper mining at rare times served as a break on Indian removal in Michigan. The Ojibwe knew where the deposits were, and their labor was needed in the mines.”748 Regarding Lake Superior Ojibwe, white petitioners asserted that “while their removal west would in our opinion be a great damage to them, it would in no means benefit the white population of the country.”749 Secular laborers needed to tend to the daily necessities of life like putting food on the missionary’s table. This was no easy task, and missionaries regularly reported their anxieties over hunger and the security of their crops. Shortly after relocating to Crow Wing in the Minnesota Territory, for instance, Hall bemoaned poor harvests, adding “The birds and cattle and Indians have taken a considerable share of what we might otherwise have realized.”750 Noteworthy in this quotation is how Hall equates Natives who did not belong to his parish with animals, insinuating that they were deleterious forces of nature. Additionally, ABCFM missions had schools attached for American Indian children, so teachers were necessary along with secular support to maintain boarding facilities. In a letter reprinted in the February 1833 issue of the Missionary Herald, Rev. Hall asserted that “There is 745 Sherman Hall and William Thurston Boutwell, “Communication from Messrs. Hall and Boutwell, Dated at La Pointe, Feb. 7th, 1833 (Continued),” The Missionary Herald, vol. 29, no. 10 (October 1833), 374. 746 John P. Durbin to Alexander H.H. Stuart, October 3, 1850, NAM M234, Roll 767, 10. 747 Selah B. Treat to Luke Lea, January 21, 1851, NAM M234, Roll 767, 252. 748 Martin Case, The Relentless Business of Treaties: How Indigenous Land Became U.S. Property (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2018), 80. 749 “Petition of the Citizens of Lake Superior to Millard Fillmore,” June 4, 1852, NAM M234, Roll 149, 313. 750 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, November 15, 1853, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 198 enough and more than enough labor required by the mission, to occupy the time of Mr. Boutwell and myself without employing it in teaching school.”751 Their demand for educators was high, and ordination was not a prerequisite. Indeed, when it came to instruction materials written in Indigenous languages, there was a deficit that Rev. Hall was especially intent on alleviating.752 Pining for “bone & muscle” remained constant, but by 1842 Blatchford had begun to fulfill what Protestant missionaries believed to be masculine tasks at one of several posts. Missionaries regularly remarked upon what a vital part Blatchford played in their missions. According to Rev. Hall, “If the Board cannot support us all, I seriously doubt whether it would not be expedient to recall one of us rather than to dismiss him.”753 In other words, they considered it preferable for one of them to be recalled if the alternative was losing Blatchford. Further indication of Blatchford’s importance to the La Pointe mission may be gleaned from ABCFM expense reports. In 1849, Sherman Hall outlined how he distributed approximately $1,700 in operating funds to ABCFM treasurer Henry Hill. Hall’s own allowance accounted for $550 of these funds while Blatchford received $290.754 He certainly earned less than Hall, then, but his portion of the missionary budget eclipsed amounts paid to three other white missionaries. Furthermore, Blatchford’s allowance was roughly equivalent to the estimated costs for teacher Charles Pulsifer to run the mission school during the next fiscal year. Hall’s expense report for 1851 allocated $300 for Blatchford, slightly higher than the sum earmarked to support Pulsifer’s family and three times more than another teacher, Abigail Spooner, earned.755 751 Sherman Hall, “Extracts from a Letter of Mr. Hall, Dated at Lake Du Flambeau, Sept. 2, 1832,” The Missionary Herald, vol. 29, no. 2 (February 1833), 63. 752 Davidson, “Missions on Chequamegon Bay,” in WHC, vol. 12, 443. 753 Sherman Hall to David Greene, February 2, 1842, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 754 Sherman Hall to Henry Hill, October 23, 1849, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 755 Sherman Hall to Henry Hill, September 18, 1851, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 199 One of the reasons that ABCFM missionaries desired the aid of an Indigenous interpreter was because Anishinaabe lifeways presented challenges to Euro-American proselytizing. Rev. Hall wrote in a letter that the Missionary Herald published, “A missionary in this country, cannot sit down and gather the heathen around him to hear the gospel […] He must go after them and preach, where he can find them.”756 In 1844, Blatchford reported, “I have most all winter visited the Indians along and have preach[ed] to them, sometimes Mr. Wheeler has gone with me but I was determine[d] to visit about without being called for every day.”757 Natives identified missionaries as carriers of Americanization. During a council, one expressed to Ely how he had observed missionary activity preceding increased white settlement and demands for removal. “We believe you to be a forerunner of the Americans,” he said, solemnly adding, “We do not hate you - we hate those who sent you here.”758 Blatchford displayed competency in a variety of roles, although an episode in May 1848 when Blatchford broke his thigh.759 This injury “laid [him] aside from active labour” suggests that he was especially appreciated for manual tasks.760 Due to his injury, “Henry Blatchford has not been able to assist much at either station in the capacity of an interpreter at our meetings.”761 For over a year, missionaries bemoaned Blatchford’s “continued lameness,” yet they deemed him far too valuable to dismiss even with his temporarily limited capacity for physical labor.762 756 Sherman Hall, “Extracts from a Letter of Mr. Hall, Dated La Pointe, June 14, 1832,” The Missionary Herald 28, no. 9 (September 1832), 292. 757 Henry Blatchford and Leonard H. Wheeler to Sherman Hall, February 21, 1844, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 758 Edmund F. Ely to David Greene, January 9, 1837, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 759 Sherman Hall to David Greene, May 13, 1848, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 760 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, August 12, 1848, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 761 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, January 9, 1849, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 762 Selah B. Treat to Sherman Hall, March 20, 1849, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 12, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 200 Meanwhile, Rev. Hall was expressing to his superiors that effective evangelizing required greater knowledge of Indigenous languages. He lamented, “We need a thorough practical knowledge of the language for purposes of intercourse with the Indians.”763 Thus, he and his compatriots quickly came to recognize not only Blatchford’s physical abilities but his intellectual capacity as well. In 1844, Blatchford himself wrote, “I have most all winter visited the Indians along and have preach[ed] to them.”764 Just a few years later, missionaries entrusted Blatchford with even more religious labor on top of his physical workload, permitting him to preside over religious services in Ojibwe.765 The role of a preacher was clearly one which required both mental and physical ability. His injury certainly hampered his efforts to refine his preaching, Ely reporting in Autumn 1848 that “[t]he question of the expediency of setting apart Henry Blatchford as a Native Preacher, was considered, & thought to be unadvisable in his present disabled condition.”766 Nevertheless, they increasingly relied on Blatchford as a “valuable assistant,” praising him for being “willing to do for the Indians all he can to bring them to a saving knowledge of the truth.”767 Blatchford surely caught Rev. Hall’s attention, as the latter obsessed over crafting a complete and refined Anishinaabe dictionary. It was Hall’s ambition to make an accessible version of the Bible for Indian Country, a task that he dove into with fervor and assistance from Native American preachers. In 1836, he reported to his superiors that he completed an Ojibwe 763 Sherman Hall to David Greene, March 23, 1835, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 764 Henry Blatchford and Leonard H. Wheeler to Sherman Hall, February 21, 1844, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 765 Sherman Hall to David Greene, February 10, 1847, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 766 Edmund F. Ely to A.B.C.F.M., September 13, 1848, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 767 Edmund F. Ely to A.B.C.F.M., September 13, 1848, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL; Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, February 14, 1849, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 201 translation of the Gospel of Luke with aid from George Copway, commenting that he “spent much labour upon it to get it as correct as possible.”768 He completed translations of the Gospel of John and Acts of the Apostles the next year.769 Observations from Edmund F. Ely reinforce why Rev. Hall was likely so invested in having physical Scripture to distribute. In 1835, Ely relayed to his superiors that he attracted attention for correctly predicting an oncoming eclipse. Amazed Anishinaabe took notice of Ely’s almanac, leading the missionary to conclude, “The most effectual means of exciting enquiry [sic], are Prints.” His experience led him to believe that successful missionary action required “something which appeals to the eye.”770 Abstract concepts could not hold a candle to matter which the Anishinaabe could examine and touch. Hence, correspondence between ABCFM missionaries and their superiors were replete with requests for written materials. They emphasized the need for language instruction materials as well as written works on other topics such as music and horticulture.771 In 1848, Rev. Hall offered Blatchford faint praise as one who “proved himself very acceptable as a speaker in his native tongue.”772 Within just a few years, however, he came to consider Blatchford an invaluable asset, asserting that “I can hardly dispense with his with his [sic] aid now.”773 Hall considered the labor of translating the Bible for the Ojibwe of such sizable 768 Sherman Hall to David Greene, October 14, 1836, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 769 Sherman Hall to David Greene, September 12, 1837, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 770 Edmund F. Ely to David Greene, December 31, 1835, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 771 Edmund F. Ely to David Greene, January 5, 1838, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 772 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, October 9, 1848, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 773 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, April 10, 1854, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 202 importance that he insisted on Blatchford’s continued residence alongside him despite the latter’s misgivings that “I dont [sic] want to stay in this co[u]ntry at all […] and Mr. Hall further remarked that he wants to translate more of the Bible, and I dont [sic] believe I can stand it as I have done.”774 Blatchford’s desire to return to Mooningwanekaaning also stoked Hall’s anxiety. “If he leaves us,” Hall insisted, “we shall not have force enough left to do much, even if we try to go on.”775 News of Blatchford’s abilities moved up the ABCFM chain of command, though, with one superior stating that his “knowledge of the language is a talent that should not be idle.”776 Indeed, he continued to serve as an Indigenous language teacher through the 1850s, shifting his service to the oversight of Leonard H. Wheeler.777 Wheeler, “believing that for Indians – and white men as well – industry is a necessary part of Christianity,” established the Odanah settlement in 1845.778 While other Anishinaabeg patronized missionaries to acquire English education, it seems that based on the relationship Blatchford shared with Rev. Hall that the former viewed his position as one that could afford him the opportunity to help halt the extinction of the Anishinaabe language. Hall found Anishinaabemowin an incredibly challenging language to learn and use to convey religious theme that he felt comfortable expressing in English.779 During his early days at Mooningwanekaaning, he expressed frustration with how his preaching lost 774 Henry Blatchford to Leonard H. Wheeler, November 28, 1853, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 775 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, December 31, 1853, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 776 Selah B. Treat to Sherman Hall, April 9, 1851, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 12, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 777 Selah B. Treat to Sherman Hall, April 29, 1854, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL; Leonard H. Wheeler to Harriet Wood Wheeler, November 22, 1858, in Woman in the Wilderness: Letters of Harriet Wood Wheeler, Missionary Wife, 1832-1892, ed. Nancy Bunge (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 127. 778 Davidson, “Missions on Chequamegon Bay,” in WHC, vol. 12, 447. 779 Sherman Hall, “Extracts from a Communication of Mr. Hall, Dated at La Pointe, Oct. 17th, 1834,” The Missionary Herald 31, no. 3 (March 1835), 119. 203 some of its power when filtered through a translator. “It does not go like breaking from the lips of one whose heart is on fire,” he professed.780 In fact, he succeeded in aiding Hall in the production of a complete Ojibwe translation of the New Testament, which one observer referred to as “[p]erhaps the only translation of the New Testament made in Wisconsin.781 The extent to which this text found distribution with quantifiable measures of its success is challenging to identify, but more than just ABCFM missionaries remarked upon it. The Methodist missionary John H. Pitezel, for instance, remarked in his autobiography that the translation Hall produced with “[w]ith the aid of native interpreters” was “invaluable to the missions” of the Old Northwest’s most westerly reaches.782 It was also republished with new editions several times.783 Furthermore, Blatchford remained devoutly Protestant and succeeded his white contemporaries in positions of leadership. An 1877 annual report from the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church recorded that Blatchford was ordained that summer and installed as pastor at a church on Madeline Island. The church reported, “great hopes are cherished of his usefulness among his own people.”784 Commodification was another aspect of Americanization that missionaries engaged in. In correspondence that the Missionary Herald published, Boutwell remarked that the “principles of political economy” should be among the chief subjects of instruction. He expressed disapproval 780 Sherman Hall, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Hall – Manner of Travelling,” The Missionary Herald 29, no. 11 (November 1833), 413. 781 Sherman Hall and Henry Blatchford, trans., The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: Translated into the Language of the Ojibwa Indians (New York: American Bible Society, 1844); Davidson, “Missions on Chequamegon Bay,” in WHC, vol. 12, 446. 782 John H. Pitezel, Lights and Shades of Missionary Life: Containing Travels, Sketches, Incidents, and Missionary Efforts During Nine Years Spent in the Region of Lake Superior (Cincinnati: Western Book Concern, 1862), 92. 783 Sherman Hall and Henry Blatchford, trans., The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: Translated into the Language of the Ojibwa Indians (New York: American Bible Society, 1856); Sherman Hall and Henry Blatchford, trans., The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: Translated into the Language of the Ojibwa Indians (New York: American Bible Society, 1875). 784 “Missions Among the Indians,” in The Fortieth Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (New York: E.O. Jenkins, 1877), 5-6. 204 on finding that the Anishinaabe “possess all things in common” and interpreted that this must have meant that they possess “nothing like personal rights or individual property.” He expressed an explicit interest in the Anishinaabe “fix[ing] a value” on the crops they cultivated for the purposes of exchange with fur traders and other Euro-Americans.785 Blatchford believed in rigid gender lines. One reason for this may have been because forcing Indigenous people to dress in manners that did not align with their gender assigned at birth could be a form punishment. An example of this is present in the biography of Methodist missionary John Clark. According to his biographer, when Cass first arrived at Sault Ste. Marie he witnessed an Ojibwe man attempt to murder his mother-in-law because she interceded in him imbibing alcohol. “The wrath of the Indian was kindled against her,” the biographer wrote, “because she had presumed to interfere with the pleasure or purpose of a man.”786 (81). In recompense, Cass decided to “make a woman of him.” He stripped the Ojibwe man of his clothes and forced him to wear a filthy old petticoat, which destroyed the Ojibwe man’s reputation. In 1886, when one of the daughters of missionary Peter Dougherty went outside in men’s clothing, he remarked, “She has lost all the respect due her from the women at this place as missionary & teacher,” adding “even boys call her little man when they see her walking anywhere.”787 In a rare piece of surviving correspondence from 1890 reproduced in Congregational author John Nelson Davidson’s book In Unnamed Wisconsin, Blatchford recalls, “When this church was first organized, the membership was up to 75 members, but in about two years from the time it was organized some began to drop off by joining an Indian dance, and some have 785 William Thurston Boutwell, “Extracts from a Letter of Mr. Boutwell, Dated at Leech Lake, Dec. 18th, 1833,” The Missionary Herald 30, no. 8 (August 1834), 306. 786 B.M. Hall, The Life of Rev. John Clark (New York: Carlton and Porter, 1856), 81. 787 Henry Blatchford to F.F. Ellinwood, August 20, 1886, quoted in Carol Devens, Countering Colonization: Native American Women and Great Lakes Missions, 1630-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 99. 205 died.”788 Given the date of the letter, this “Indian dance” was no doubt the Ghost Dance that precipitated the Lakota resistance to removal by the U.S. government. Around him, Blatchford observed the Ojibwe continuing to maintain a seasonal round, stating “Out people are not here the year round, they have to go and work in the logging camps.”789 By the late 1860s, the poor health of Rev. Wheeler left Blatchford as the de facto head of missionary activities.790 He served there until his death in his early 90s in February 1901, doing so without ever obscuring his Anishinaabe ancestry.791 Even the most flattering accounts of his contemporaries continued to characterize him as “half-breed.”792 III. “At All Events There Should Be Two”: Mixed-Ancestry Women’s Labor Across Greater Mackinac In Christian missions across Greater Mackinac, evangelists desired white women’s aid. As Boutwell asserted in an 1833 letter to ABCFM superiors, in all religious installations “[i]t is desirable that there should be three persons – at all events there should be two. A family might consist of one male & two females, the reverse would however be preferable, two males & one female.” The distinction he made along gendered lines carried with it an Americanizing intent. “If a mission family consisted of one man & two females,” he argued, “it might be difficult to eradicate from the Ind. the impression that he has two wives. Still a competent femal[e] teacher 788 John Nelson Davidson, In Unnamed Wisconsin: Studies in the History of the Region Between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi (Milwaukee: Silas Chapman, 1895), 172. 789 Davidson, In Unnamed Wisconsin, 172. 790 “Annual Survey of the Missions of the Board: North American Indians,” The Missionary Herald 65, no. 1 (January 1869), 16. 791 Some discrepancy seems to exist between accounts of his age at the time of his death. Some obituaries list his age as 91 while others list it as 93. See “The Passing of a Historic Character,” Helping Hand, Ashland, WI, February 1901, Wisconsin Local History and Biography Articles, WHS, Madison, WI; and “Nearly a Century: Rev. Henry Blatchford, 69 Years a Missionary, Dies at Age of 93,” Minneapolis Journal, Minneapolis, MN, February 22, 1901, 5, Chronicling America, LOC, Washington, D.C. 792 Stanley Edwards Lathrop, A Historical Sketch of the “Old Mission,” and Its Missionaries to the Ojibway Indians, on Madeline Island, Lake Superior, Wisconsin (Ashland, WI: Stanley Edwards Lathrop, 1905), 43. 206 would exert a far greater influence upon that class in learning them the use of the needle &c.”793 This letter provides a great deal to unpack. First, Boutwell clearly considered polygamy to be an unfortunate status quo among Aboriginal groups he encountered. Therefore, he deemed it essential for missionaries to present prospective converts with model nuclear families to emulate. Sleeper-Smith’s scholarship illustrates how Indigenous women throughout the Great Lakes Borderlands recognized that monogamy could potentially benefit them as a means of self- liberation from abusive polygamous ties as far back as the seventeenth century.794 Additionally, Indigenous women who converted to Catholicism via the monogamous marriage compacts that faith required could carve out paths toward greater independence. Madame La Framboise is a preeminent example of an Indigenous woman who bolstered her autonomy and authoritative public image on Mackinac Island through her religious devotion. Self-liberation, however, was surely not a concern for Boutwell. Although occasional notes of sympathy accent his writings, condescension for Indigenous women bellows forth much louder, especially in the journal he kept during an 1832 expedition with Schoolcraft. In a June 27 entry from that journey, he wrote, “The squaws are horribly filthy in their persons, as well as Sluttish in their habits.”795 By imploring ABCFM superiors to prioritize the inclusion of white women in their missionary dispatches, he most assuredly hoped that they could influence Native American girls to adopt new “habits,” propagating appreciation for domestic labor among them. Boutwell and missionaries like him certainly garnered aid from white women who were willing to support their proselytizing remotely. Stationed at Mooningwanekaaning in the spring 793 William Thurston Boutwell to David Greene, December 18, 1833, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 2, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 794 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 23-37. 795 William Thurston Boutwell, “The Journal of Reverend William Thurston Boutwell, June 7 to August 12, 1832,” in Schoolcraft’s Expedition to Lake Itasca: The Discovery of the Source of the Mississippi, ed. Philip P. Mason (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1993), 319. 207 of 1833, Rev. Hall reported, for instance, that his post “received a box of goods from the Female circle of Industry, Lowville, NY.”796 Even more vital to Christian missionary projects, though, were the direct contributions women made to fieldwork. Of these contributions, some of the most fascinating yet understudied were those that mixed-ancestry women soon provided alongside their white counterparts, especially in the capacities of managing missions, educating Indigenous youth, and interpreting. A. Managing Missions As previously cited correspondence from Boutwell and other missionaries suggests, there was never a lack of physical labor to perform at remote Christian missions. Mixed-ancestry men like Blatchford took on a lion’s share of the exertions that white missionaries found distasteful, but regular references to women in travelers’ accounts challenge any notion of peripheral portions of the Old Northwest being exclusively homosocial. Firstly, white and mixed-ancestry women often joined their male partners on treks across the Old Northwest. In correspondence with Jane Schoolcraft, her brother William opined that the presence of women among fur traders could be “highly injurious” because they made for extra mouths to feed. In the same breath, however, he admitted that most of the women he travelled alongside were far from burdensome. On the contrary, he called them “perfect amazons” who were capable of navigating portages with cargo – sometimes including their own children – as well as any man.797 Once they arrived at their mission sites, the number of tasks that women performed increased exponentially. Regarding the duties of missionary wives, it is worth examining a 796 Sherman Hall to David Greene, March 25, 1833, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 797 William Johnston to Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, August 4, 1833, in MPHC, vol. 37, 146. 208 lengthy quotation from the correspondence of Florantha Thompson Sproat, wife of ABCFM missionary Granville Temple Sproat: I am my own servant. I have no one to assist me, but my husband brings in wood and water. I scour my own knifes [sic], candlesticks and tin pans, which is no small job. I make my own butter which is considerable having only one cow. We are very fond of Dutch cheese in the making of which I use all my bonny-clabber. I have made soap and have had excellent luck, could have no better.798 Sproat illustrates here how considerable physical labor was necessary to keep missionary households afloat. Moreover, there was intentionality behind which jobs missionary wives like Sproat completed. To disseminate Euro-American practices among their Indigenous converts, missionary wives would often model “proper” behavior for women, sometimes individually or in a more organized fashion. The objective was to “elevate” the status of Christian converts, as “civilization” would supposedly save them from the ravages of barbarousness and savagery.799 Consider, for instance, how Sproat highlights butter churning as one of her chores. Successful preparation of Euro-American victuals like butter was one indicator that Christian missionaries used to gauge the degree of “civilization” Indigenous women embraced. When Rev. Bingham reported that Indigenous women he visited in Tahquamenon Bay had churned an ample supply of butter, he expressed great satisfaction. He was also “much pleased” to see one mother “set before her children a dish of bread and milk, which in my view seemed more to resemble the habits of a New England farmer than of an Indian of the forest.”800 Congregationalist missionary George N. Smith wrote just as contentedly of the Indian women at his school because “most of them can make a good quality of raised bread – some of them a superior article.”801 798 Florantha Thompson Sproat and Granville Temple Sproat, “La Pointe Letters,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 16, no. 1 (1932), 87. 799 Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism, 14-15. 800 Abel Bingham to James Ord, September 25, 1846, NAM M234, Roll 771, 181. 801 George N. Smith to William A. Richmond, June 30, 1845, in Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Transmitted with the Message of the President at the Opening of the First Session of the Twenty-Ninth Congress, 1845-1846 (Washington, D.C.: T. Barnard, 1846), 126. 209 A task targeting women that earned even greater coverage in missionary documentation was sewing. In his submission for an 1842 annual report, Rev. Slater proposed that “if a small number of the female pupils could be admitted in a family capacity that they might be taught to spin and weave and the various branches of domestic work and thus prepare themselves to manage a family and disclose to their country women the benefits of civilized life.”802 Presbyterian missionaries praised a similar “experiment” in the “instruction in matters of domestic economy.”803 Ultimately, sewing seemed to be one of the most accessible forms of “civilized” labor Christian missionaries propagated, as it closely aligned with existing Lakes Indian lifeways. During the 1840s, Rev. Dougherty found that sewing days attracted considerably greater attendance of Grand Traverse Anishinaabe girls as well as women who would only attend female schools on days when sewing was an available activity.804 Decades later, Mary B. Riggs reported that a gathering of women at an annual ABCFM meeting led to the formation of sewing societies that would operate in conjunction with prayer meetings at their missions.805 Many Dakota women at Riggs’s station not only rose up to join its sewing society, but they demanded positions of leadership and responsibility within it. This made it “desirable to have a plenty of officers.”806 To the consternation of many missionaries, though, sewing also proved one of the tasks that allowed Indigenous women to persist with traditional modes of work. Rev. Slater, who expressed such high hopes for the potential “civilizing” effect of sewing among Indigenous women bemoaned how at his station, “the females have made no change in their mode and habits 802 Leonard Slater to Robert Stuart, September 2, 1842, NAM M234, Roll 425, 193. 803 Peter Dougherty to William A. Richmond, October 11, 1848, NAM M234, Roll 426, 356. 804 Peter Dougherty to Charles P. Babcock, September 12, 1849, NAM M234, Roll 426, 450. 805 Riggs, Early Days at Santee, 49. 806 Riggs, Early Days at Santee, 50. 210 of life. They pursue the same avocations, and depend upon the same resources as they ever have done – namely, assist in hoeing in the field, dress the skins from the hunt, make their moccasins and garments, also, employ much of their time in making mats from rushes and bark bags, &c.”807 In at least some of the activities he critiques, the guidance of missionary wives, whether white or mixed-ancestry, could have most assuredly proved beneficial. B. Educating Youth For many women in missionary outfits (especially single women), it was just as essential to formally educate Indigenous youth as it was to informally model the “proper” behavior of a Euro-American woman.808 Mary Ann Fisher, a teacher from the Catholic mission in St. Ignace, professed in her contribution to the 1838 annual report for the Mackinac Indian Agency that among her achievements were that she stressed to Indian children “cleanliness, sound morals, and due regard for our government.”809 What other sorts of lessons did women who taught at missionary schools hope impart to their impressionable Indigenous students? Some answers can be gleaned from analyzing books that were among the curriculum at such institutions. In 1836, Mackinaw Mission School superintendent Lucius Garey shared a list of books that the teachers there employed. Especially notable among the 15 texts he names on subjects ranging from spelling and grammar to moral philosophy is Noah Webster’s History of the United States.810 What is so noteworthy about this book is how it discusses the Indigenous peoples of North America. Although it does not promote a polygenic view of human history, one which proposes that members of different races emerged on Earth almost as different species, it introduces some building blocks of racial thinking. Beginning from the Biblical viewpoint that 807 Leonard Slater to Robert Stuart, August 30, 1844, NAM M234, Roll 425, 672. 808 Conroy-Krutz, Christian Imperialism, 14-15. 809 Mary Ann Fisher to Henry R. Schoolcraft, September 14, 1838, NAM M234, Roll 423, 209. 810 Lucius Garey to Henry R. Schoolcraft, September 30, 1836, NAM M234, Roll 777, 935. 211 life on Earth began with Adam and Eve, the book divides subsequent generations of humans into neat categories, placing Europeans as the most distinguished of those categories.811 Furthermore, as chapters progress, the text only references Native Americans in past tense. Despite being published in 1835, the tome already presented Indigenous peoples as outmoded and bygone, which most assuredly had a distressing effect on Indigenous pupils whose families planned to persist well into the future. C. Interpreting Another form of labor accessible to both white and mixed-ancestry women that could declensionist impact of mission school classroom instruction was interpreting. While some missionaries like Rev. Hall preferred the assistance of men like Blatchford, another member of the Davenport family who accepted the call to perform this kind of work was Elizabeth Campbell, sister of Ambrose Davenport, Jr. Like her brother, Elizabeth wed a mixed-ancestry partner, John Campbell, a Mackinac Island blacksmith, sailor, and interpreter. Along with Ambrose Davenport, Sr., the Campbells became some of the first members of Mackinac Island’s Presbyterian church in February 1823. In the years that followed, Elizabeth’s Anishinaabe language skills improved to the point where she could translate lessons for Amanda White Ferry at the Mackinaw Mission School.812 During the 1830s, she and her family then moved from Mackinac Island to Mooningwanekaaning.813 In their 1833 report to the ABCFM’s Prudential Committee, Boutwell and Hall stated, “The mission family during the past year consisted of four persons besides Mrs. Campbell’s 811 Noah Webster, History of the United States; To Which Is Prefixed a Brief Historical Account of Our [English] Ancestors, from the Dispersion at Babel, to Their Migration to America, and of the Conquest of South America, by the Spaniards (Cincinnati: Corey, Fairbank and Webster, 1835), 14. 812 Widder, Battle for the Soul, 73. 813 Davidson, “Missions on Chequamegon Bay,” in WHC, vol. 12, 442. 212 children and an Indian boy who spent a few months in the family.”814 They considered John to be “a very useful man” fit for a wide array of mechanical tasks, but they questioned his management qualifications, saying he was “not calculated to take charge of the business.”815 Conversely, Elizabeth earned acknowledgement for her linguistic acumen. In his journal, Rev. Ely even made sure to explicitly identify her as an interpreter rather than just John’s companion.816 While Elizabeth labored for Mooningwanekaaning’s Presbyterian missionaries, the Baptist mission at Baawitigong opened its doors to Charlotte Johnston McMurray, sister of Jane Schoolcraft. Unlike Elizabeth, McMurray was a mixed-ancestry woman, and many commentators considered her heritage a noteworthy subject. One missionary who visited Baawitigong in the mid-1840s even described her as “retaining many characteristics of the race from which she had sprung.”817 Nevertheless, she soon became indispensable to the Christian presence at the village. According to Hele, McMurray began her religious career as a single woman translating the sermons of Rev. Bingham to make them accessible to an Ojibwe audience, and she proved an invaluable companion during house calls to sick and dying converts.818 That said, she was not merely subsumed by the settler-colonial intent of Americanizing her Ojibwe kin. As scholar Kelly Wisecup identifies, McMurray regularly joined 814 Sherman Hall and William Thurston Boutwell, “Report to Prudential Committee – No. 1,” February 7, 1833, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 815 Sherman Hall to David Greene, January 20, 1834, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 6, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 816 Schenck, ed., The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely, 1833-1849, 105. 817 James Beaven, Recreations of a Long Vacation; or, A Visit to Indian Missions in Upper Canada (London: James Burns, 1846), 1-2. 818 Karl Hele, “‘Fully Equal to a Mission in Herself’: Charlotte Johnston McMurray’s Missionary Labours at Bawating, 1827-1838,” in Papers of the Thirty-Ninth Algonquian Conference, eds. Karl Hele and Regna Darnell (London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, 2008), 321-23. 213 her siblings in the act of crafting and decorating birchbark books.819 Considering this alongside her profession as an interpreter paints a more nuanced picture of the opportunities that religious vocations could open to mixed-ancestry women. Alongside McMurray’s sincere devotion to her faith lay an interest in cultural preservation, ensuring that her family’s language and its mode of conveyance could persist amid white incursions. IV. Conclusion In the early 1850s, the ABCFM relocated their mission at Mooningwanekaaning to Crow Wing in the Minnesota Territory, and Sherman Hall expressed concerns over accommodations for himself and Henry Blatchford. Rev. Hall purchased a small house where took up residence, but he reported that Blatchford settled into a local Indian lodge. “We must build a house for him & soon as we possibly can,” he stressed to his superiors.820 What lay at the core of his anxiety over his assistant’s living arrangements? Did he believe that Blatchford would “relapse” into Anishinaabe lifeways if he was removed from a Euro-American setting for too long? If that was his fear, then he clearly underestimated Blatchford’s ability to inhabit distinct cultural arenas and emerge from them with key aspects of his mixed heritage intact. Blatchford and other mixed-ancestry scions of Greater Mackinac such as Joseph La Framboise and Charlotte Johnston McMurray confronted a multitude of challenges as changing racial connotations associated with terms like “half-breed” and “mixed-blood” began to affect them in the mid-nineteenth century. As this chapter has illustrated, the labor that descendants of Greater Mackinac’s cross-cultural intermediaries could engaged in changed over time. The recession of the fur trade required them to turn to other means of improving their material 819 Kelly Wisecup, Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021), 104-08. 820 Sherman Hall to Selah B. Treat, July 25, 1853, Transcripts of Letters from Missionaries Among the Indians, Ayer MS 16, Box 7, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL. 214 conditions. They could find vocational opportunities as guides to curious white visitors or through their religious affiliations. No matter what vocations they chose, however, similarities abounded. Above all, the mixed-ancestry people that this chapter analyzes retained access to the language of their forebearers. This is especially crucial for people of Anishinaabe descent because Anishinaabemowin was one of the principal gifts they believed they received from their Creator.821 Once their forebearers succeeded in anchoring them to their Homelands through property acquisition and diplomacy, it was up to Greater Mackinac’s next generation of mixed- ancestry people to ensure that gifts like their language did not fade away. In that regard, this new generation was successful, and the timing of their success was fortuitous. For some of the greatest challenges that Greater Mackinac Anishinaabe would face would emerge in the second half of the nineteenth century. 821 Miller, Ogimaag, 24. 215 CHAPTER FIVE: A NEW GENERATION PERSISTS: THE LANGUAGE OF KINSHIP IN POSTBELLUM GREATER MACKINAC In the summer of 1833, Sauk leader Black Hawk and a party of his compatriots peered out from the deck of their steamship onto the shores of Detroit only to see their own faces ablaze. “The people of Michigan,” many newspapers wrote, were “extremely hostile to gen. Black Hawk and his companions […] His excellency the general in chief, was even burnt in effigy.”822 Indeed, wounds from the recent Black Hawk War were still fresh in the minds of many Detroiters, yet one member of the city’s high society caught the attention of Black Hawk’s son more than any other.823 It was Sophia Biddle, daughter of one of Mackinac Island’s most resilient cross-cultural intermediaries. What specific qualities drew Black Hawk’s son to Sophia beyond her “handsome” appearance and “elegant manners” are, unfortunately, unknown.824 Regardless, she turned down the Sauk warrior’s romantic advances in favor of an ill-fated liaison with a future Confederate military officer that reveals much about the evolving nature of race relations in Greater Mackinac.825 Born around 1822, Sophia spent most of her youthful summers in Detroit. One acquaintance recorded, “it is true this [Mackinac Island] is her native place, but I know she is 822 Albany Argus, Albany, NY, July 30, 1833, 6. 823 Although dozens of periodicals reprinted the story of Detroiters burning Black Hawk in effigy, some publications downplayed violence that allegedly accompanied his reception by Detroit’s white residents. According to an account the Detroit Courier shared with the Albany Argus, for example, “During their stay in this city, Black Hawk and his companions were treated with the utmost kindness and attention. They visited several of the most respectable families in the place, and were visited by them in return.” While it is worthwhile to view these lines with some degree of skepticism, the notion that some Detroiters treated Black Hawk’s party hospitably would help explain how Black Hawk’s son could become acquainted with the Biddle family. Albany Argus, Albany, NY, August 16, 1833, 3. 824 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 46. 825 Friend Palmer, “Early Days in Detroit: Recollections of the Visit of the Indian Chief Black Hawk and His Stalwart Son,” Detroit Free Press, Detroit, MI, September 21, 1902, D3. 216 happier, and enjoys herself much better in Detroit.”826 In the growing metropolis, she lived among her father’s politically active relatives such as John Biddle, so she would have most assuredly heard discussions about the vanishing of Indians as a near certainty. In the “discourse” John delivered before the Historical Society of Michigan in 1832, he remarked upon the state’s original inhabitants. “Within the wide borders of this great empire,” the politician proclaimed, Indigenous peoples had “not advanced one step beyond the rudest barbarism. When he leaves the soil to be succeeded by the descendant of the European, it seems fresh from the hands of nature.”827 Of particular importance in these lines is John’s use of the word “when.” Again, for white men like him, the extinction (or at least the removal) of Indigenous peoples lay just over the horizon. Perhaps this mindset rubbed off on Sophia somewhat. Whenever Sophia returned to Mackinac Island, she brought an increasingly distant demeanor. As Baird recounts, “The foolish girl was ashamed of her blood and could not bear to have strangers see this dear, good mother of hers, because she was an Indian.”828 Consequently, she drifted from her mother’s Catholic faith. “At this time,” Baird asserts, “the Presbyterians felt that Miss Biddle would identify herself with them.”829 Beneath the surface of this religious conflict was racial tension. Given the ABCFM’s mission to Americanize Mackinac Island’s mixed-ancestry residents, they viewed Sophia’s potential conversion as an inroad to influencing her whiteness to overtake her Indigenous heritage. Indeed, it took the intervention of Magdelaine La Framboise for Sophia to reconcile with her mother and return to Catholic worship. Yet this did not bring an end to Sophia’s struggles with her racial identity. 826 Martha Tanner to Elizabeth Thérèse Baird, May 26, 1844, Henry and Elizabeth Baird Papers, Box 1, Folder 8, WHS, Madison, WI. 827 John Biddle, A Discourse, Delivered on the Anniversary of the Historical Society of Michigan, September, 1832 (Detroit: George L. Whitney, 1832), 30-31. 828 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 46. 829 Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” in WHC, vol. 14, 47. 217 Racial tension reemerged as an aspect of Sophia’s life when she began a relationship with John C. Pemberton in 1841. A fellow Pennsylvanian, Pemberton became fast friends with the Biddle family when military service brought him to Detroit, and a romance between him and Sophia rapidly blossomed. Unfortunately, their relationship came to a dramatic end when one day, as historian George S. May recounts, “Sophia was standing beside her mother, and Pemberton turned to her and exclaimed: ‘What, is this your mother!’ Shocked at the thought that he had nearly married a half-breed, he turned on his heels and left without another word.”830 Although some of this story’s details may be apocryphal, it remains significant for signaling changing attitudes towards race around the Great Lakes. Pemberton, who would go onto marry the daughter of a Virginia plantation owner and fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War, perceived Sophia as a white woman until Agatha stood beside her. Identity, then, was challenging to pinpoint and remained possible to obscure. However, prejudice toward Indigenous heritage that growing waves of white settlers brought with them into Greater Mackinac during the second half of the nineteenth century forced mixed-ancestry people to reconsider what forms embracing their Native kin could take. This final chapter assesses how associations with Indigenous communities and kinship networks either helped or hindered descendants of Greater Mackinac’s cross-cultural intermediaries in their efforts to form new familial bonds. Ultimately, racism that permeated late nineteenth-century science and literature proved a major barrier, but the resilience of members of the La Framboise, Biddle, Schoolcraft, and Davenport families allowed them to leave lasting legacies without fully abandoning their Indigeneity. 830 George S. May, “John C. Pemberton: A Pennsylvania Confederate at Fort Mackinac,” Mackinac History 1, no. 11 (1968), 4. 218 I. “All to the Indian Blood”: Scientific Racism and the Schoolcraft Siblings Figure 5.1: Janee Schoolcraft Howard831 Figure 5.2: Mary Howard Schoolcraft832 Among the bibliography of American phrenologist O.S. Fowler is a text on phrenology and marriage, one which greatly discourages mixed-race unions. In Fowler’s view, the intermingling of different races would lead to their offspring lacking the best qualities of each race and leaving the worst qualities of both. He asserts that nature “discountenances the intermixture of the different races, by depriving mulattoes of both the Negro stamina and Caucasian intelligence, besides running out their progeny, and rendering the intermarriage of Indian with white always infelicitous.”833 Although Fowler’s books may not have singularly turned him away from his children, the academic circles that embraced them surely had an impact on Schoolcraft, the aging former Indian Agent. Fowler further emphasized that interracial unions manifested in physical and behavioral imperfections for their children. Schoolcraft 831 Jacob V. Brower, The Mississippi River and Its Source: A Narrative and Critical History of the Discovery of the River and Its Headwaters, Accompanied by the Results of Detailed Hydrographic and Topographic Surveys (Minneapolis: Harrison and Smith, 1893), 151. 832 Osborn and Osborn, Schoolcraft, Longfellow, Hiawatha, 542. 833 O.S. Fowler, Matrimony, as Taught by Phrenology and Physiology (Boston: O.S. Fowler, 1859), 286. 219 became a firm believer in phenology, and even met Fowler for a phrenological examination. The American Philosophical Society has preserved part of the examination record, including Fowler’s remarks characterizing Schoolcraft as a supremely moral figure with a scholarly mind.834 Schoolcraft would have been well acquainted with phrenology early in his career, as evidenced by the knowledge base of his contemporaries. When McKenney traversed Greater Mackinac in 1826, he said of Schoolcraft’s mother-in-law that “Her eyes are black and expressive, and pretty well marked, according to the phrenologists, with the development of language. She has fine teeth; indeed her face, taken altogether, (with her high cheek-bones, and compressed forehead, and jutting brows,) denotes a vigorous intellect and great firmness of character.”835 Embracing scientific racism surely drove a wedge between Schoolcraft and his mixed-ancestry children. In Schoolcraft’s mind, American settlement “rolled steadily” and “irresistibly” into the region like an “immense tide,” and he showed little sympathy for the implications of this on the peoples who were displaced as a result. American settlement, he wrote, swept away “the feeble remains of this wretched people.”836 Schoolcraft was interested in studying them for the benefits of scientific racial classification, and he wrote to Samuel George Morton, the phrenologist, about his plans. “Two tribes receive…[annuity] payments here [at Michilimackinac], namely the Chippewas + Ottawas, whose numbers, on the pay roll of last year, are about 4,500 […] about 3,000 will receive […] [annuity] payments here. The opportunity for observing there mental + 834 O.S. Fowler, “Phrenological Chart,” 1835, Broadside Collection, 1638-1980, Mss.973.C683, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 835 McKenney, Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, 182-83. 836 Henry R. Schoolcraft, Travels in the Central Portions of the Mississippi Valley: Comprising Observations on Its Mineral Geography, Internal Resources, and Aboriginal Population (New York: Collins and Hannay, 1825), 100. 220 physical traits will be favorable.”837 As Schoolcraft grew older, any admiration he claimed to have for Indigenous minds was dampened by his dive into the emerging field of phrenology. Schoolcraft was aware of the taboo against molesting American Indian gravesites, a necessity to phrenologists, even reporting to his superiors in 1826 that the response to the desecration of such a site should be the reacquisition of the contents and “the re-enter[n]ment of the bones, in a public manner.”838 This desecration took the form of a head being removed from the body of an Anishinaabe woman, leading scholar Bernard C. Peters to postulate that the theft was meant to further phrenological research and that Schoolcraft may have helped to cover up the incident.839 During the 1840s, Schoolcraft took a more active hand in Indian grave-robbing. A benign entry in Schoolcraft’s personal memoirs describes a visit he took to Round Island in the Straits of Mackinac, which the 1836 Treaty of Washington had placed under his department’s jurisdiction.840 He casually noted that he “[e]xamined the ancient ossuaries and the scenery” with some visitors.841 One of those visitors, however, had a grislier recollection of that day’s events. Geologist George William Featherstonhaugh admitted to plundering a burial mound for a skull that would be “destined for some learned craniologist” despite admitting that “[i]f a party of Frenchmen had landed on the English coast, and had amused themselves by opening the graves 837 Henry R. Schoolcraft to Samuel George Morton, May 5, 1838, Samuel George Morton Papers, Mss.B.M843, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 838 Bernard C. Peters, “Indian-Grave Robbing at Sault Ste. Marie, 1826,” Michigan Historical Review 23, no. 2 (1997), 52. 839 Peters, “Indian-Grave Robbing at Sault Ste. Marie, 1826,” 63, 70-71. 840 “Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1836,” in Indian Affairs, vol. 2, 451. 841 Schoolcraft, Personal Memoirs, 519. 221 in the church-yard, whilst the villagers were engaged in their harvest-fields, their conduct would not have been more absurd and irrational than ours.”842 Before his death, Schoolcraft would have been able to assess Parkman’s assertion that “Some races of men seem moulded in wax, soft and melting, at once plastic and feeble. Some races, like some metals, combine the greatest flexibility with the greatest strength. But the Indian is hewn out of rock. You cannot change the form without destruction of the substance.”843 This would have been a radical rejoinder to Schoolcraft’s metallurgical understanding of race that distinguished his early interactions with Native Americans. After Jane died in 1842, Schoolcraft wed Mary Howard. Throughout their marriage, Howard authored several pro-slavery tracts. Her most noteworthy, The Black Gauntlet, contains autobiographical elements revealing how similarly “uncivilized” she considered African Americans and American Indians. It garnered praise in Southern newspapers as “an antidote for ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and kindred publications,” while modern assessments have characterized it more as “a shapeless, grotesquely self-indulgent exercise in conceit.”844 The novel’s main character, Roland Walsingham, is a renowned scholar with an Indigenous wife descended from an “Indian king” who had “for years indulged excessively in opium […] [and] had expended thousands upon thousands to gratify this insane craving.”845 The lengths to which Howard went to portray Walsingham’s wife in a negative light, as a hopeless addict corrupting the minds of her two children, led Schoolcraft’s earliest biographers to surmise that Walsingham was a thinly 842 George William Featherstonhaugh, A Canoe Voyage Up the Minnay Sotor; with an Account of the Lead and Copper Deposits in Wisconsin; of the Gold Region in the Cherokee Country; and Sketches of Popular Manners; &c. &c. &c., vol. 1 (London: Richard Bentley, 1847), 142. 843 Francis Parkman, History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac, and the War of the North American Tribes Against the English Colonies After the Conquest of Canada (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 39. 844 “The Black Gauntlet,” Alexandria Gazette, Alexandria, VA, July 13, 1860, 2; Brian W. Dippie, Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 399. 845 Mary Howard Schoolcraft, The Black Gauntlet: A Tale of Plantation Life in South Carolina (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott and Company, 1860), 488, 497. 222 veiled analogue of him, while the mixed-ancestry children Leonora and Jefferson represented his daughter and son, Janee and John Johnston, respectively.846 Scholar Laura L. Mielke argues that such depictions demonstrate how Howard viewed African Americans and Native Americans as equally inferior, believing that “the servility of the African American and the foolish pride of the American Indian are natural traits.”847 Accompanying Howard’s words was her action of holding African Americans in bondage well after her marriage to Schoolcraft and move to Washington, D.C. Views congruent with scientific racism exist in Howard’s writings as well. In The Black Gauntlet, she writes of “the celebrated craniologist, Dr. Morton” who “ascertained how much mind the North American Indian possessed, by measuring his skull with small shot, to see how much room the brain occupied.”848 As Greenberg notes, nineteenth-century phrenologists connoted the size of one’s head with the capacity for thought, and for men this also meant their martial prowess.849 She similarly used what she gleaned from phrenology to dismiss accusations of wrongdoing by slaveholders against African Americans they held in bondage. When confronted with stories of injuries to enslaved people, she retorted that “their skulls are so thick that it is doubtful whether any white man’s strength could consummate such a feat.”850 Despite keeping the company of an assortment of prominent citizens, these acquaintances often spoke poorly of Howard’s countenance behind her back. In an 1848 letter, Joseph Henry commented that Howard “looked very poorly – quite pale dressed in black lips almost blue 846 Osborn and Osborn, Schoolcraft, Longfellow, Hiawatha, 615. 847 Laura L. Mielke, Moving Encounters: Sympathy and the Indian Question in Antebellum Literature (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), 156. 848 Schoolcraft, The Black Gauntlet, 61. 849 Greenberg, Manifest Manhood, 92-93. 850 Schoolcraft, The Black Gauntlet, 61. 223 complained of pain in her side.”851 In January 1852, Frances Adeline Seward, wife of Senator (and future Secretary of State) William H. Seward, observed that Howard, “has a little slave girl of 3 years old that she is training for a her maid.”852 Despite their contrary views regarding race, class seemed to be a binding factor for Howard and the Seward family. Furthermore, she expressed doubt in her writings that the Seward family genuinely desired equality among white people and African Americans. She posited that the Senator “would not have his reputation for common sense, or philanthropy, or enlarged statesmanship, insulted, by really advocating, that all negroes in the South should be made free, and let loose upon society to indulge many of their untamed fiendish passions, their extreme laziness, and their utter incapacity for governing themselves.”853 In framing her views this way, Howard falls in line with the paternalistic mindset of many Southerners who espoused enslavement not as a necessary evil, but as a moral necessity. Furthermore, she judged Seward’s opposition to slavery as an outgrowth of the New Yorker’s opposition to Southern sectarian power. In her imagination, she could not fathom (or at least did not venture to publish) that political expediency would make advocating for abolition untenable. In calling out his desired for “enlarged statesmanship,” she judged correctly that Seward, the future candidate for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination, had ambitions for higher office. In holding such views, Howard also fell in line with some contemporary Michiganders who considered Native Americans “poor and thriftless, and I may with truth say a ‘vagabond race’ and consequently their trade was of no great value.”854 These feelings manifested even 851 Joseph Henry to Harriet Henry, August 6-7, 1848, in The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 7, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 374-75. 852 Frances Adeline Seward to Lazette Maria Worden, January 31, 1852, William Henry Seward Papers, Family Correspondence, Folder 389, RBSCP, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. 853 Mary Howard Schoolcraft, Letters on the Condition of the African Race in the United States (Philadelphia: T.K. and P.G. Collins, 1852), 6. 854 A.H. Scott, “Indians in Kalamazoo County,” in MPHC, vol. 10, 165. 224 though Janee married Benjamin Screven, Howard’s half-brother. Howard initially reacted to news of this union by lamenting that her “high souled, morally elevated, & idolized brother was to be connected to that hateful Indian race, that it seemed, death to every ambition, every hope.”855 Janee’s racial classification had a significant impact on her relationship with her stepmother. Howard generally spoke of Janee with comparatively less scorn than her brother because she possessed what Howard characterized as physical markers of “Nordic beauty.” She called Janee’s skin “white and transparent as wax-work,” and wrote approvingly of her blue eyes and “profusion of golden hair.”856 She did not share such laudatory words when it came to Janee’s brother. This perception bled into the community of Washington, D.C.’s high society, of which she always sought to garner acceptance. Both Howard and her husband seemed to view John Johnston Schoolcraft with a level of frustration, believing his behavior erratic. The boy shared a strong connection with his Uncle George, insisting on rooming with him when his father was absent.857 Reporting on John Johnston’s education, Wolcott Marsh commented favorably with only a few exceptions. He wrote that the young man “sometimes tells untruths” and he would wander outside school grounds without permission.858 Some years later, though, Schoolcraft attempted to secure letters of recommendation for his son through some of his government contacts.859 During the summer of 1852, he moved to London where he was “compelled to adopt means for procuring money 855 Mary Howard Schoolcraft to Miss Cass, February 26, 1857, HRSP, Correspondence of Mary Howard Schoolcraft, Box 55, LOC, Washington, D.C. 856 Osborn and Osborn, Schoolcraft, Longfellow, Hiawatha, 548. 857 George Johnston to Henry R. Schoolcraft, July 2, 1834, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 12, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 858 Wolcott Marsh to Henry R. Schoolcraft, May 25, 1839, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 43, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 859 Henry R. Schoolcraft to D.C. Goddard, May 25, 1850, Washington, D.C. Letters, Ayer MS 792, Folder 1, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL; Charles E. Mix to Robert McClelland, June 23, 1854, NAM M348, Roll 8, 45. 225 which I am afraid will very much surprise you,” securing a loan against his father’s name which he intimated “would place me in very embarrassing circumstances indeed” if it went unpaid.860 Within two years, he was begging to return to Washington, D.C., assuring that “once under your roof, and being guided by your counsel, I can yet be an honor to you, instead of a curse.”861 Receiving no reply, he directed correspondence to his stepmother as well, promising that he would “strive to do everything to please you and win your esteem.”862 On May 31, 1856, Schoolcraft received a letter from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, commenting that “A young gentleman called upon me a few weeks ago, and presented himself as your son; but as he brought no letter of introduction I could not be sure of the fact.”863 Literature seemed to be a subject that John hoped to bond with his father over. In an April 10, 1852 letter he wrote from Liverpool, John enclosed a leaf from a tree of William Wordsworth.864 The invaluable asset of Jane’s intellectual labor allowed the Schoolcraft family to connect with prominent literary figures of their day, one of whom Janee came close to marrying. Despite this, Schoolcraft was not one to comment positively on Native American eloquence. In a journal entry dated December 29, 1826 Schoolcraft, expressed irritation at a professor from Columbia College who inquired for samples of “Indian eloquence.” Schoolcraft balked, asserting that the world “has been “grossly misled on this subject” and that Indians possess “no sustained eloquence, no continuous trains of varying thought” despite being “surrounded by all elements of 860 John Johnston Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, August 24, 1852, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 27, LOC, Washington, D.C. 861 John Johnston Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, December 4, 1854, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 29, LOC, Washington, D.C. 862 John Johnston Schoolcraft to Mary Howard Schoolcraft, December 28, 1854, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 29, LOC, Washington, D.C. 863 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Henry R. Schoolcraft, May 31, 1856, in The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, vol. 3, ed. Andrew Hilen (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1972), 541. 864 John Johnston Schoolcraft to Henry R. Schoolcraft, April 10, 1852, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 27, LOC, Washington, D.C. 226 poetry and eloquence – tempests, woods, waters, skies.”865 The output of Schoolcraft’s own wife debunks this assertion, as do the observations of Schoolcraft’s other white contemporaries. During his time as a treaty negotiator, Caleb Atwater remarked that Indigenous speech “abounds with figures drawn from every object which nature presents to his eye.”866 Schoolcraft’s biographers state, “Among her numerous admirers, Charles Fenno Hoffman […] was her choice […] One week before the wedding day, in 1849, Hoffman became insane. He died in an asylum. Mary Howard Schoolcraft, remembering a similar tragedy in her own life and fearful of the effect upon Janee, sent her away at once to South Carolina, in company with beautiful young Sarah Rebecca Howard, who at the time was visiting the Schoolcrafts in Washington.”867 Hoffman became well acquainted with Schoolcraft and lent some verse renderings of Ojibwe material to Oneóta, another of Schoolcraft’s books.868 Mixed-ancestry women’s work in religious education continued well beyond the bounds of Greater Mackinac. Recalling Janee, Presbyterian minister Moses Drury Hoge remarked that “she was the efficient teacher of the children’s department of our Sabbath-school. She was the secretary and treasurer of the Ladies’ Benevolent Society, which she maintained in a state of the highest efficiency.”869 This was not, however, a position she was able to attain without first navigating the even more complicated and crueler arena of racial classification that existed deep within the United States. The already precarious path Janee had to walk was only shaken up further by conflict with her stepmother. 865 Schoolcraft, Personal Memoirs, 256. 866 Caleb Atwater, Remarks Made on a Tour to Prairie Du Chien; Thence to Washington City in 1829 (Columbus: Isaac N. Whiting, 1831), 120. 867 Osborn and Osborn, Schoolcraft, Longfellow, Hiawatha, 549-50. 868 See “War-Song,” “Death-Song,” and “The Loon Upon the Lake,” in Schoolcraft, Oneóta, 348-49, 350-51, 405, respectively. 869 Peyton Harrison Hoge, Moses Drury Hoge: Life and Letters (Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1899), 478. 227 Frances Adeline Seward remarked that John “took all the money he could find, and such trinkets of hers as were about, in all about $400, and disappeared they know not where – He has always been a dissipated & I suppose a dishonest young man– Mr Schoolcraft of course imputes it all to the Indian blood.”870 John Johnston fought for the Union during the Civil War despite (or perhaps because of) his stepmother’s views on slavery and race. John enlisted in the Union Army on June 20, 1861, entangling him in a conflict that tore a rift into Indian Country just as it did the United States. Moreover, he became entangled on a side that was somewhat resistant to Native American recruitment. Contacting Ely S. Parker, one recruiter admitted, “that the action of Our Gov’t. has been anything but encouraging to your people, and I now hope that those who wish to enter the Service will do so, though the Department has not formally invited them, yet they have at the 11th hour ordered the Mustering Officer at Buffalo to muster my Indian Recruits not to exceed 300.” In strictly limiting the number of Indigenous recruits he could call forth, though, the recruiter assured Parker that “Leonidus [sic] with his 300 Spartans still live in the history of their Country as heroes every one.”871 For John Johnston’s part, he was hit in the face by a shell during the Battle of Gettysburg and mustered out of the military on June 21, 1864.872 Even before being mustered out, a series of maladies befell him, including a loss of appetite that made him incapable of consuming his rations.873 870 Frances Adeline Seward to Lazette Maria Worden, April 30, 1858, William Henry Seward Papers, Family Correspondence, Folder 391, RBSCP, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. 871 John Fisk to Ely S. Parker, April 4, 1862, Ely Samuel Parker Papers, Mss.497.3.P223, Box 5, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 872 Travis W. Busey and John W. Busey, Union Casualties at Gettysburg: A Comprehensive Record (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2011), 994. 873 John Johnston Schoolcraft to Mary Howard Schoolcraft, March 7, 1864, HRSP, Correspondence of Mary Howard Schoolcraft, Box 55, LOC, Washington, D.C. 228 Seward confirmed that Howard’s “sympathies are of course on the secession side.”874 With the end of the war in sight, however, she made outward displays of allegiance to the United States a priority. This is underscored by a letter to Joseph Henry, in which she inquired as to whether the Smithsonian Institute had neglected to fly the American flag, which she characterized as “one of the strange but imperious requirements of the present day.” She further emphasized her intention to take all her own American flags and “fling them out of every window, and illuminate from Cellar, to Attic, the moment and honorable Peace, to both parties, is announced.”875 Jane Johnston Schoolcraft also died young, yet the intellectual labor she contributed to the preservation of Anishinaabe tales gained her a more long-lasting legacy than Mary Howard Schoolcraft, despite the latter’s ceaseless attempts to capitalize on her late husband’s scholarship when she was a widow. She even attempted to sell the printing plates for the multivolume work that Schoolcraft considered his magnum opus directly to Queen Victoria.876 The monarch declined. Schoolcraft’s contemporaries long shared some critique of his writing style. Commenting on the Indianness of Algic Researches, for example, Margaret Fuller complained that many Indian stories were not “written down exactly as they were received from the lips of the narrators.”877 One scholar described this book as “an ethnological curiosity – vast, disorganized, uneven, with valuable information crowding against the worthless.”878 During her 874 Frances Adeline Seward to Lazette Maria Worden, August 1861, William Henry Seward Papers, Family Correspondence, Folder 393, RBSCP, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. 875 Mary Howard Schoolcraft to Joseph Henry, April 6, 1865, in The Papers of Joseph Henry, vol. 10, ed. Marc Rothenberg (Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications/USA, 2004), 496. 876 Mary Howard Schoolcraft to Queen Victoria, September 19, 1861, HRSP, General Correspondence, Box 32, LOC, Washington, D.C. 877 Fuller, Summer on the Lakes, 31. 878 Dippie, Catlin and His Contemporaries, 306. 229 later life, Mary held a tenuous position in Washington, D.C. society with most writing about her in a pitiful tone. By 1875, a lapsed mortgage put Mary in possession of a property known as Effingham Place, former home of Civil War general and founding Howard University president Oliver Otis Howard. She advertised a sale of the property widely for between $50,000 and $60,000 but expressed her interest in parting with it for substantially less if a buyer agreed to transfer it back to Gen. Howard’s wife and children.879 In her advertisements in Christian periodicals, she appealed to readers’ sense of charity and respect for Gen. Howard’s anti-slavery sentiments. However, even as she heaped praise on Gen. Howard, she could not help but let her racist sentiments seep in. In one of the same notices where she expressed how fitting it would be for Gen. Howard to “consecrate his whole life to the African race,” she also fawned over how “the hardy labor of the slaves in the cotton, rice and sugar-cane fields of the South” as a “blessing to the whole commercial world” before African Americans “swarmed” to Washington, D.C.880 Even as she hoped to garner business from an abolitionist audience, she could not help but express her scorn for Black people by likening them to a plague. Correspondence between Mary and her old friend William Cullen Bryant suggests that she had yet to make headway on the sale over a year later.881 Around that time, another misfortune seems to have befallen Howard. The autumn of 1876 was a season of good swindling for a woman who went by the alias of Mrs. Castlemaine. Over the course of several weeks, she entered a series of boarding houses around New York and 879 Congregationalist and Boston Recorder, Boston, MA, January 21, 1875, 8. 880 Mary Howard Schoolcraft, “Gen. Howard’s Home in Washington,” Liberal Christian, New York, NY, January 16, 1875, 5. 881 William Cullen Bryant to Mary Howard Schoolcraft, April 5, 1876, in The Letters of William Cullen Bryant, vol. 6, eds. William Cullen Bryant II and Thomas G. Voss, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), 294. 230 Washington, D.C., presenting herself as a woman of high society, sometimes even the acquaintance of former Confederate generals, and incurred massive fees before disappearing.882 Howard was one among her many marks.883 II. “Without Anything Whatever of an Aboriginal Character”?: Salvage, Survival, and Julia La Framboise Figure 5.3: Julia La Framboise (Courtesy of Hennepin History Museum) In 1905, Mark Raymond Harrington and Horace B. Durant, two Euro-American visitors to Anishinaabe communities who received mention in previous chapters, came to similar conclusions about the peoples they encountered. Recall that Harrington embarked on a mission to gather Anishinaabe artefacts for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. His mentor, Frederick Ward Putnam, stressed that the Peabody would “be glad to have any genuine old objects from any of the tribes you visit. I do not think you can pick up more genuine Indian work than we should like to have, – that is if they are old.”884 Harrington 882 “A Female Swindler,” Troy Daily Times, Troy, NY, November 20, 1876, 1. 883 Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, MD, November 23, 1876, 1. 884 Frederick Ward Putnam to Mark Raymond Harrington, February 11, 1905, Accession File 05-19, PMAE, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 231 took this advice to heart, privileging pieces showing what he considered signs of advanced age. Although he added over a hundred Anishinaabe objects to the Peabody’s collection in less than two months while operating under this mindset, he lamented along his journey that it was “very hard to find anything now – most of the Indian families being without anything whatever of an aboriginal character.”885 In compiling a census of Northern Michigan’s Native American and mixed-ancestry populace, Durant voiced similar concerns. He wrote to his superiors that “a great many were enrolled in 1870 what had little, if any, Indian blood, and whose descendants are Indian in name only and by virtue of the arbitrary enrollment of their ancestors.”886 For Harrington’s part, his sorrowful reflection appears indicative of an early twentieth- century anthropologist’s desire to “salvage” material evidence of Indigenous cultures before they supposedly vanished.887 Hence, his pursuit of old Anishinaabe objects sometimes ended in disappointment or even bewilderment. While in Sarnia, George Oliver presented Harrington with a war club, leading him to remark that it was “a work of art, by far the best I ever saw, and is very old, known to be at least 50 years old.”888 Conversely, he purchased a wooden travel cup from Charlotte Rudd, but lamented that “The old woman started to ‘make it look nicer’ with a knife before I could stop her.”889 Harrington’s derisive use of quotation marks around “make it look nicer” suggests that from his perspective, any alteration to this object, even one made by an Ojibwe hand, decreased its value as a museum piece despite the fact that, as a travel cup, it was designed with resiliency in mind since it needed to withstand being regularly dropped and 885 Mark Raymond Harrington to Frederick Ward Putnam, March 27, 1905, Accession File 05-19, PMAE, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 886 Horace B. Durant to Robert G. Valentine, July 3, 1909, NAM M2039, Durant Roll, Roll 4, 490-01. 887 Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London: Cassell, 1999), 53. 888 Harrington, “Specimens Collected from the Chippewas,” March 11-12, 1905, #50, Accession File 05-19, PMAE, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 889 Harrington, “Specimens Collected from the Chippewa Indians,” April 17-19, 1905, #9, Accession File 05-19, PMAE, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 232 dunked into lakes and rivers. From Harrington’s standpoint, then, the people he visited on his transnational collecting trip apparently did not have much to offer the Peabody of a wholly “aboriginal character,” yet they clearly possessed anishinaabe-gikendaasowin. He was too busy searching for artifacts of the Anishinaabe past to recognize material evidence that they were bringing Anishinaabe knowledge into the future. During his collecting trip Harrington encountered material evidence of Native diasporas. In Dowagiac, the anthropologist purchased two bone needles, a horn, and two pieces of flint from a woman named Margaret Bushman that he remarked, “may have come from the Pottawatomis of Kansas, with whom the Bushmans intermarried,” while in Sarnia he bought three mats from Eliza Rudd and Eliza Nahmabin that originated from Saginaw.890 Such findings demonstrate the resilience of Anishinaabe kinship ties even as many Michiganian Anishinaabeg were scattered from Greater Mackinac throughout the nineteenth century. The belief that authenticity of Aboriginal forms is synonymous with advanced age is one that has, unfortunately, persisted to the present day. It is for this reason that scholars such as Christine R. Cavalier have asserted that mixed-ancestry creators are often “doubly marginalized.” By working in Euro-American mediums or genres, some critics accuse mixed- ancestry artists or writers of “offering an ‘inauthentic’ Indian voice” in what they create.891 Cavalier emphatically denies that this is the case in Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s work, and this section will demonstrate how it was not the case for Julia La Framboise’s output. To overlook the mode in which authors such as Jane and Julia wrote falls into the trope of “lasting.” As 890 Mark Raymond Harrington, “Specimens Collected from Pottawatomies,” March 5-6, 1905, #12-13, Accession File 05-19, PMAE, Cambridge, MA; Harrington, “Specimens Collected from the Chippewa Indians,” April 17-19, 1905, #2-4, Accession File 05-19, PMAE, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. 891 Cavalier, “Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s Sentimental Lessons,” 111. 233 historian Jean M. O’Brien puts it, “Historical narration implicitly argued that Indians can never be modern because they cannot be the subjects of change, only its victims.”892 Like Jane, Julia lived a notably short life. While neither lived to see the twentieth century, both managed to secure legacies through their intellectual labor of translation and cultural preservation that far outlived them. Jane’s untimely death may have cut short the intellectual legacy that would have come from her daughter who after this put her efforts into accepting religious duties in her local church. In the case of Julia, her Dakota upbringing eventually subsumed her Anishinaabe heritage, yet many remembered her more for her perceived whiteness. Born on December 11, 1842, Julia grew to put considerable effort into preserving Dakota stories while living at a Minnesota ABCFM mission. Such cultural preservation work echoes Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s endeavors to preserve Ojibwe tales in her language. Julia initially became acquainted with Presbyterianism through the ABCFM missionaries Thomas S. Williamson and Stephan Return Riggs to whom Joseph had entrusted her education. Like his mother, Joseph considered education for his children essential, so he sent nine- year-old Julia and her twelve-year-old brother Alexis to the Presbyterian Mission School.893 One of the reasons that missionaries sought children in their conversion efforts was because they could act as “little missionaries,” potentially drawing their parents into the faith. As historian Linda Clemmons reinforces, it is worthwhile to consider children as serious historical actors, as their motivations and actions were not necessarily analogous to those of their parents.894 At the Mackinaw Mission School, Indian girls wrote back to their benefactors with language that 892 O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting, 107. 893 Timmerman, “Joseph LaFramboise,” 73. 894 Linda Clemmons, “‘Our Children Are in Danger of Becoming Little Indians’: Protestant Missionary Children and Dakotas, 1835-1862,” Michigan Historical Review 25, no. 2 (1999), 71. 234 missionaries hoped they would deliver to their parents. Indeed, while ABCFM schools physically distanced Anishinaabe children from their families and communities, they did not always seek to make this separation permanent. In a report to Michigan’s territorial governor George B. Porter in 1833, Schoolcraft remarked positively on how the Mackinaw Mission School returned 15 Anishinaabe girls to their families with “a practical knowledge of housewifery” that would allow them to “sustain a respectable standing in society.”895 Another aim in allowing them back into Indian Country, then, was surely to disperse Euro-American principles of gendered labor division. In his memoir, Riggs recalled Julia being “thoroughly educated, thoroughly the lady; always loyal to her people even when they were most hated and despised; always generous in her deeds and words; always to be depended upon.”896 The phrase “her people” that Riggs employs in this description reveals that Julia’s Indigenous ancestry was common knowledge among her white contemporaries. Indeed, Nancy McClure remembered Julia being among the “mixed-blood girls” with whom she attended classes while living with the family of Robert Hopkins, another ABCFM missionary associated with Williamson and Riggs.897 Mary Huggins, a daughter of Williamson’s missionary assistant, went into greater detail, describing Julia as someone she “loved […] like a sister,” and asserting that she “had somewhat the bearing of a chieftain.”898 Nevertheless, Riggs still considered Julia “more white than most white women he knew.”899 Although a literal reading of Riggs’s words might suggest that he was simply referring to her complexion, it is worth recalling how a white Illinoisan from this chapter’s introduction praised 895 Henry R. Schoolcraft to George B. Porter, September 24, 1833, NAM M234, Roll 776, 404. 896 Stephen Return Riggs, Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux (Chicago: W.G. Holmes, 1880), 364. 897 McClure, “Captivity Among the Sioux,” in MHC, vol. 6, 445. 898 Mary Huggins Kerlinger, “Reminiscences of Missionaries Among the Dakotas,” Alexander G. Huggins and Family Papers, Box 1, MHS, St. Paul, MN. 899 Kerlinger, “Reminiscences of Missionaries Among the Dakotas,” Alexander G. Huggins and Family Papers, Box 1, MHS, St. Paul, MN. 235 Ely S. Parker by calling him “whiter than many of a different color.” For both men, the category of whiteness was surely more than skin deep. Furthermore, Riggs’s assessment of Julia’s racial classification no doubt intersected with his gendered expectations for behavior becoming of one who was “thoroughly the lady.” For Julia, her mixed French-Canadian, Odawa, and Dakota lineages added another layer of complexity. While she could call upon her mother’s Dakota lineage, did her father’s Anishinaabe background ever raise concerns? Surviving correspondence between Dakota writers and ABCFM missionaries reveal that trepidation toward the Ojibwe persisted. Addressing Huggins, Riggs, and Williamson, Wambdi Okiya stated, “You made a claim that you spoke truthfully, and you are not truthful, those things you hide about your affairs – you think I do not know those, and you keep them hidden – I want you to be kind to me, but you are not.”900 Figure 5.4: Santee Normal Training School901 Julia followed the Dakota to the Santee Agency in Nebraska after their relocation in 1870. She was an organist leading a choir of all men at church in this agency as “no one ever 900 Wambdi Okiya to Alexander Huggins et al., May 1838, trans. Ella Cara Deloria, American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Native American Languages Collection, Mss.497.3.B63c, Letters and Miscellaneous Materials in Dakota from the Minnesota Manuscript, APS, Philadelphia, PA. 901 Riggs, Early Days at Santee, 68. 236 thought of an Indian woman singing in a choir, in those days.”902 It is fascinating that Indian women were not considered for the choir, but one was capable enough to act as accompanist. She encountered some pushback related to her instructional style not fully aligning with Williamson, the missionary with whom she worked.903 That said, she produced hymns in the Dakota language, and it is fascinating that music manifested itself as a crucial component of her life.904 For Julia, music may have emerged as a natural outgrowth of her storytelling ability. Another fascinating parallel with Jane can be found in Julia’s passion for music. Jane too held an interest in Indigenous music. Her brother, William Johnston, surely knew this as he would describe Anishinaabe songs he heard in detail to her in his correspondence. In a letter from August 28, 1833, for instance, he concentrated on a war song he heard a woman singing, providing each syllable in Anishinaabemowin, an English translation, and descriptions of tempo and pitch. Another notable song he heard in a woman’s voice began with the lyrics “We sau co da we nin; - a / Yah au eyhe ce au wha yah.” The English translation William provided was, “Half breed, you come from far; Yes; I love you; Come let us kiss!”905 During her lifetime, Julia translated seven Dakota tribal narratives into English for Iapi Oaye (Word Carrier).906 These tales earned placement in twentieth-century publications funded by the U.S. government. Among the stories Julia translated was “Canktewin, the Ill-Fated Woman.” In this tale, Canktewin endures a series of tragic scenarios ranging from conflict with a murderous sister to imprisonment by a cannibal.907 902 Riggs, Early Days at Santee, 13. 903 Gretchen Alene Albers, “Boundaries of the Heart: White Women, Indigenous People, and the Christian Missions to the Dakotas, 1862-1938” (PhD diss., Calgary, University of Calgary, 2012), 147. 904 Clark Kimberling, “Native Dakota Hymn Tunes,” The Hymn 64, no. 3 (2013), 8-9. 905 William Johnston to Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, August 28, 1833, in MPHC, vol. 37, 162. 906 Gwen Westerman and Bruce White, Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2012), 203-05. 907 Julia La Framboise, trans., “Canktewin, the Ill-Fated Woman: A Dakota (Sioux) Legend,” The Folk-Lorist 1, no. 1 (1892), 37-43. 237 Antiquarians valued Julia’s work for its novelty, but the Federal Writers’ Project recognized its value in helping to preserve Dakota culture, collecting it in one of its newsletters and adding an explanatory section.908 In the Federal Writers’ Project view, the story emphasizes the title character’s amiability leading to misfortune for those around her. Is relating this to Julia’s life reading too much into the story? Surely it is not an insignificant fact that the title character survives all her encounters. Similarly, Julia’s life is one that was fraught with danger, and it even became necessary for her to survive from her own people during war between the U.S. and Dakota. At the outbreak of the Dakota Uprising, McClure signaled friction between Indians and mixed-ancestry peoples, stating “Little Crow held a council and would allow no Indians to attend it that had half-breed relatives.”909 Indeed, many mixed-ancestry people came under the watchful eye of the uprising Dakota, fearful and unsure of their ultimate loyalties. At the close of the conflict, many sought to escape American forces by using the tried-and-true method of crossing the border into Canada.910 During this time, emissaries also attempted to incite Ojibwe forces to join.911 III. American at All Hazards?: Nancy Davenport and the Memorialization of Greater Mackinac As the rising summer sun ushered in the morning of July 17, 1812, shadows loomed over Mackinac Island’s unsuspecting U.S. Army garrison. Shrouded in the dimly lit hours before daybreak, a coalition of British soldiers, Canadian volunteers, and Indigenous warriors covertly 908 Federal Writers’ Project, “Nebraska Folklore Pamphlet Twenty-One: Santee-Sioux Indian Legends,” May 1939, Special Collections, University of Nebraska at Kearney Archives and Special Collections, Kearney, NE; Also see Marilyn Irvin Holt, Nebraska During the New Deal: The Federal Writers’ Project in the Cornhusker State (Lincoln: Bison Books, 2019), 41. 909 McClure, “Captivity Among the Sioux,” in MHC, vol. 6, 453. 910 Benjamin Hoy, A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border Across Indigenous Lands (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 42-46. 911 Davidson, “Missions on Chequamegon Bay,” in WHC, vol. 12, 450. 238 crested a hill overlooking Fort Mackinac, the American stronghold imposingly entrenched upon a limestone bluff. From their even higher vantage, though, the coalition forces could easily aim a cannon downward at their foes. Before long, Capt. Charles Roberts, the British officer who coordinated this invasion, relayed a message to his American counterpart, Lieutenant Porter Hanks, threatening an “effusion of blood” if U.S. troops did not unconditionally surrender.912 Although he certainly feared artillery fire from the coalition’s high ground, Hanks also made sure to report his suspicion that Odawa and Ojibwe belligerents – whom he described as “Savages” – would embark on a “general massacre” if they encountered any resistance.913 Thus, he begrudgingly agreed to Roberts’s terms, delivering Great Britain its first victory in the War of 1812. Fear soon gave way to sorrow, however, as fur trader Ambrose Davenport watched the American colors come down and the British flag unfurl over Mackinac Island. Enveloped in the shade of the Union Jack, he wrestled with a grim decision. According to the British terms of surrender, American civilians needed to choose between pledging allegiance to the Crown or being banished from their island homes.914 Although Davenport had the wellbeing of a growing family to consider, when British soldiers approached him, he defiantly declared, “I was born in America and am determined, at all hazards, to live and die an American citizen.”915 Standing up for his status as a U.S. citizen carried consequences for the Davenport family. Years later, the fur trader would allege that during his exile his wife and children “remained on the Island, [the former] constantly annoyed and insulted by being called the wife of a Yankee rebel.”916 Such 912 Charles Roberts to Porter Hanks, July 17, 1812, in MPHC, vol. 40, 440. 913 Porter Hanks to William Hull, August 4, 1812, in MPHC, vol. 40, 431-32. 914 “Capitulation of Michilimackinac,” July 17, 1812, in MPHC, vol. 40, 442. 915 “Mackinac,” in MPHC, vol. 7, 200. 916 “Mackinac,” in MPHC, vol. 7, 200. 239 harassment at the hands of British soldiers proved formative for the son who carried on his name even after meeting Susan Davenport in Mooningwanekaaning. Previous chapters have alluded to Ambrose Davenport, Sr.’s status as a war hero, but it is relevant to share his story in full here because it became a source of prestige that reshaped the Davenport family somewhat in the late nineteenth century. Consequently, white Mackinac Islanders would commemorate, downplay, or commercialize the Indigenous peoples who had shaped the landscape for centuries. Commercialization of Indigenous peoples was certainly not a new phenomenon by the late nineteenth century. In eighteenth-century Detroit, historian Catherine Cangany identifies the presence of manufacturing for a modest but noteworthy moccasin industry. She explains, “[i]n regions characterized by few, rough roads and by lakes and rivers best navigated by canoes in summer and in snowshoes in winter, many backcountry colonists found rigid, heeled European shoes…clumsy and impractical.”917 Euro-Americans, then, adopted Native American footwear. However, as Detroit area shoemakers started crafting their own moccasins to conform to more European sensibilities, “moccasins and shoepacks became immensely popular among Detroit’s paying customers, expanding far beyond the priests, soldiers, and farmers who wore moccasins on other borderlands.”918 The craftwork of Indigenous and mixed-ancestry women was worthy of remark by non-American travelers and had long been a source of revenue. One observer asserted that if Native American women “are skilful [sic] and industrious in the manufacture of the mocassins and leggings and boxes of various kinds and toy-canoes, which go under the name of Indian Curiosities, – the place of distribution of their presents becomes a valuable market.”919 A 917 Catherine Cangany, Frontier Seaport: Detroit’s Transformation into an Atlantic Entrepôt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 73. 918 Cangany, Frontier Seaport, 87. 919 Beaven, Recreations of a Long Vacation, 137. 240 Canadian traveler added that wares that he encountered were of quality “that would astonish our English fashioners.”920 Figure 5.5: Mackinac Indian Bazaar Advertisement921 Figure 5.6: Andrew J. Davenport922 Vacationers arrived on Mackinac Island desiring goods representative of what they considered the “vanishing” race of the United States. Even before it gained its status as a national park, white visitors commented on how they could patronize “an Indian curiosity shop, buy something as a specimen of Indian ingenuity” only to quickly realize that “the article was made 920 Ross Cox, The Columbia River; or, Scenes and Adventures During a Residence of Six Years on the Western Side of the Rocky Mountains, Among Various Tribes of Indians Hitherto Unknown, Together with a Journey Across the American Continent, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1832), 300. 921 J. Disturnell, Island of Mackinac, Giving a Description of All the Objects of Interest and Places of Resort in the Straits of Mackinac and Its Vicinity (Philadelphia, 1875), 96. 922 “Andrew J. Davenport,” Candace Clifford Lighthouse Research Catalog, United States Lighthouse Society, Hansville, WA. 241 by one of our own race.”923 Thus, a market already existed for goods Indigenous people produced, and opportunities were available for white counterfeiters. Of course, interest in “authentic” Native American goods from Greater Mackinac increased in the 1870s when an assortment of travel guides began circulating, advertising Indian bazaars (Figure 5.5) and curiosity stores, and describing imaginative scenes of the island’s Aboriginal history.924 Alongside a market for Indigenous goods came a market for stories about Indigenous peoples. Previous chapters, especially Chapter Three, focused on how writing could manifest abstract concepts into reality. Yet as historian Jean M. O’Brien argues, writing and narratives could act as a mechanism by which Euro-Americans erased the presence of modern Indigenous peoples. They did this by crafting narratives that set Indigenous peoples as constantly in decline with a teleological structure that always ended in disappearance or extermination.925 Some kin to Greater Mackinac Anishinaabe, unfortunately, adopted writing to attempt to mask their Aboriginal heritage. One of Agatha Biddle’s relatives, Frances Howe, fictionalized her family portrait in this way with the novel The Story of a French Homestead in the Old Northwest.926 Howe made sure to emphasize Edward Biddle’s Pennsylvanian heritage, including his “kindly Quaker common sense.”927 Yet she was ultimately incapable of passing. A friend of hers remarked about “Knowing her to possess Indian blood,” adding that onlookers “would believe it visible in her features, which were coarse in texture.”928 923 “Mackinac,” Michigan University Magazine 3, no. 7 (April 1869), 253. 924 See, for example, J.A. Van Fleet, Summer Resorts of the Mackinaw Region, and Adjacent Localities (Detroit: Lever Print, 1882). 925 Jean M. O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 926 Sleeper-Smith, Indian Women and French Men, 156. 927 Howe, The Story of a French Homestead in the Old Northwest, 106. 928 Olga Mae Schiemann, From a Bailly Point of View: An Introduction to the First Pioneer Family of Northwestern Indiana (Chicago: Duneland Historical Society Publication, 1955), 59. 242 An illustration of the complicated kinship connection that the Davenport and Schoolcraft families shared can be found in a 1928 work of historical fiction entitled Nancy Davenport. Nancy Davenport was the wife of Caleb Sibley and namesake for the novel.929 Waubojeeg, the Ojibwe progenitor of both families, briefly appears, but there is little indication of him holding a position of authority or reverence. He merely cameos as “[a]n old Indian.”930 After consulting at least three members of the Davenport family named in the front matter, author Frances Margaret Fox composed this work about Ambrose, Sr.’s wife and children that directly contradicts several aspects of previous accounts. In the New York Tribune article about Ambrose, Sr.’s life, for example, the author asserts that “Mrs. Davenport and her six children remained on the Island, constantly annoyed and insulted by being called the wife of a Yankee rebel.”931 However, in the penultimate chapter of Nancy Davenport, Fox claims, “It is written in some histories that during the absence of her husband from the island the British soldiers annoyed Mrs. Davenport. This is far from the truth. It is a tradition in the family, handed down from father to son even in the present day, that during the British occupation of Mackinac Island Mrs. Ambrose Davenport and her children were treated with every courtesy by the officers and soldiers who then held the fort.”932 How could this conspicuous inconsistency have emerged? At such an advanced age, it is possible that Ambrose, Sr. underwent a kind of “life review” that could have influenced him to recount his past honestly with little concern for his audience's expectations.933 Nevertheless, this does not mean that the interview can simply be taken at face value. It is crucial to consider that the autobiographical sketch was integrated into a 929 Marion M. Davis, “Three Islands,” in Michigan History Magazine, vol. 12 (Lansing: Michigan Historical Commission, 1928), 531. 930 Frances Margaret Fox, Nancy Davenport (New York: Rand McNally and Company, 1928), 184. 931 “Mackinac,” in MPHC, vol. 7, 200. 932 Fox, Nancy Davenport, 251. 933 Alfred F. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), 12. 243 piece primarily intended to promote Mackinac Island tourism. By its final page, the article morphs into an overt advertisement. Furthermore, Ambrose, Sr. may have “place[d] himself closer to [what he considered] the great men of the time than is susceptible to proof” to bolster his reputation.934 Still, it is possible to wade through the laudatory prose and extract key details that Ambrose, Sr. considered foundational to his identity. All that considered, it still does not explain the genuine admiration that the character Nancy Davenport displays for Native Americans she encounters throughout the novel that shares her name. In one exchange, Nancy plainly states, “The way white folks have treated the Indians is terrible […] We have taken away their lands and cheated them and everything. And we sell them fire water, too. I am never going to be cruel to an Indian, never.”935 Nancy’s condemnation of how Americans had “taken away their lands” is especially revealing. Fox could have certainly used her protagonist as a mouthpiece to express her personal solidarity with Anishinaabeg for betrayals at various treaty negotiations, but it is equally plausible that living Davenports well acquainted with their family’s Indigenous identity intervened. Following her interview in the Friends’ Intelligencer in 1882, brief snippets in local periodicals tracked Susan Davenport’s health and chronicled how she spent her final years in the company of her children. Even her ability to sit upright after a period of illness received notice in a county periodical.936 Between at least 1886 and 1888, she lived with one of her daughters in Cross Village and received regular visits from her son James, a lighthouse keeper.937 Owing to a fall on ice during the winter of 1884, she suffered recurring bouts of serious illness.938 By this 934 Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, 13. 935 Fox, Nancy Davenport, 49. 936 “Cross Village Items,” Emmet County Democrat, Petoskey, MI, June 12, 1885, 1. 937 “Cross Village,” Northern Independent, Harbor Springs, MI, January 26, 1886, 1. 938 “Cross Village Items,” Northern Independent, Harbor Springs, MI, June 2, 1885, 1. 244 time, she was apparently familiar enough among her community that the Petoskey Record referred to her affectionately as “Grandma Davenport.” It was in this periodical where she provided one of her final quotes, attesting a few months before her death, “our blessed Savior suffered, why should I complain?”939 Subsequently, several Davenport children secured positions as lighthouse keepers, with John, James, and Andrew Jackson (A.J.) Davenport (Figure 5.6) – all of whom lived into the first decades of the twentieth century – taking up posts across Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois.940 What is especially significant about this development is that lighthouse keepers were predominantly political appointees during the nineteenth century, so it was most likely an exceptional path for someone of Indigenous ancestry to follow. However, it brought with it several benefits, including isolation from prying and perhaps judgmental eyes with only immediate family as respite.941 The seclusion of lighthouse life may have given Susan and her children a sense of peace and freed them from possible stigmas Euro-Americans associated with speaking Anishinaabemowin. Of greater significance is how between 1850 and 1880, the Davenport family’s identity transformed in ways that were sometimes subtle, but other times striking as different census takers struggled with understandings of racial identity in flux. Enumerated census records can provide invaluable data if critically analyzed. Constrained by the narrow categories of nineteenth-century enumeration tables, census takers often classified individuals not by the complex ways that they perceived themselves, but by the constricted ways that their communities distinguished them. In 1870, a census taker who visited Mackinac Island 939 “Cross Village,” Petoskey Record, Petoskey, MI, April 4, 1888, 5. 940 Harrison, “The Davenport Lighthouse Legacy.” 941 Theodore J. Karamanski, Mastering the Inland Seas: How Lighthouses, Navigational Aids, and Harbors Transformed the Great Lakes and America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), 140. 245 considered almost every member of the Davenport family to be Indians. However, the 1870 racial classification for Ambrose R. Davenport, Jr. changed. Despite having no Indigenous ancestry of his own and being labeled as white in two previous census tables, he was clearly identified as an Indian during the final decade of his life.942 IV. Conclusion Throughout his life, Ambrose Davenport, Sr. associated strongly with fellow American citizens who could corroborate his affinity for citizenship before American institutions such as Michigan’s territorial government and Mackinac Island’s Presbyterian church. Surely, he hoped that his children would follow in his patriotic footsteps, and in some ways they certainly did. The son who carried on his name, after all, embraced American citizenship like his father. However, Ambrose Davenport, Jr. did not hesitate to reveal how his wife and children were born in Indian Country when he considered such a disclosure constructive. In this way, he compromised upon his identity as wholly American. As this chapter has demonstrated, racial identities in the Great Lakes Borderlands remained remarkably malleable even through the late nineteenth century. Federal attempts to narrowly categorize mixed-ancestry people and the families that birthed them could not compete with the local efforts of individuals redefining themselves. What makes this so remarkable is that the late nineteenth century saw the emergence of scientific racism, deportations to unfamiliar territory, and the commercialization of Indigeneity even in Greater Mackinac’s most westward reaches. Thus, it undoubtedly represented the most trying time for members of the La Framboise, Biddle, Schoolcraft, and Davenport families. Nevertheless, the maw of Americanization did not consume these four families as it intended to erase the Indigeneity from all those it encountered. Especially consider Susan Davenport and 942 U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census, 1870; Mackinac Co., MI, Holmes Township, p. 24, dwell. 182, fam. 170; NAM M593, Roll 687. 246 how the reality of her Indigenous identity persisted over many decades until it influenced the entire Davenport family’s collective memory. Just as Susan’s Anishinaabe heritage did not fade with time, Anishinaabe people were not abandoning Greater Mackinac any time soon. 247 CONCLUSION Since the mid-nineteenth century, segments of white American citizenry have viewed Mackinac Island as a healthy site of solace. In 1842, physician Daniel Drake composed a guide for “invalids” from the American South proposing that they could find relief from their maladies in Northern Michigan. He lingered on a description of Mackinac Island as “the most important summer residence to which we can direct the attention of the infirm and the fashionable,” claiming that “[a]n ague […] has been known to cease even before the patient had set his foot on the island, as a bad cold evaporates under the warm sun on a voyage to Cuba.”943 There is much to unpack in this description, but perhaps most fascinating is Drake’s insistence on addressing not only “the infirm” but “the fashionable.” For all but the most economically stable Americans, a summer holiday remained an inaccessible excess. This began to change, however, in the decades following the Civil War. During the 1870s, the publication of books and tourist guides that mentioned Mackinac Island’s restorative properties increased dramatically. Author J.A. Van Fleet, for example, dedicated an entire chapter in his book Old and New Mackinac to the topic of “Mackinac as a Health Resort.” In the chapter, he stressed how “cool air and pure water” presented ideal “health- restoring circumstances” for “the invalid on this island.”944 A tourist guide from 1873 likewise lauded the isle’s “pure air” and “delightful climate,” asserting that visitors should consider it a “Newport of the West.”945 Mackinac Island garnered further acclaim as a “Gem of the Straits” when the United States designated it a national park in 1875.946 From that point on, it served as a 943 Daniel Drake, The Northern Lakes: A Summer Resort for Invalids of the South (1842) (Cedar Rapids, IA: Torch Press, 1954), 42. 944 Van Fleet, Old and New Mackinac, 148. 945 History of Cheboygan and Mackinac Counties (Detroit: Union Job Printing Company, 1873), 26. 946 Mason, Natural Museums, 29-41. 248 destination for a burgeoning tourist economy that historian Gregg Mitman contends emerged in search of a healthy respite from growing U.S. cities.947 With its conspicuous lack of “modern” trappings, Mackinac Island proved an ideal refuge for white Americans who wanted to break free from the congested atmosphere of cities, and one word that became increasingly associated with it was “pure.” Literature aimed at tourists stressed Mackinac Island’s “pure” air and “pure” water. Did something insidious lie beneath all this talk of purity, though? According to historian Mark David Spence, nineteenth-century white Americans viewed “wilderness as scenic playground, national symbol, and sacred remnant of God’s original handiwork.”948 In other words, they admired nature, but their affinity extended only to a particular kind of nature. For these sojourners, nature in its “purest” form was nature bereft of the human agents who helped shaped it, namely Indigenous peoples. Unlike the Euro- Americans of the early nineteenth century who converged on Greater Mackinac to engage commercially, diplomatically, and interpersonally with Anishinaabe communities, Euro- Americans of the late nineteenth century seemed to expect an absence of Indigenous peoples and culture outside the scattered shops that sold them souvenirs or “curiosities.” In reality, the Anishinaabe never disappeared. They endured all manner of American maneuvering to remove them from their Homeland and remain in Greater Mackinac to the present. The life experiences of Magdelaine La Framboise, Agatha Biddle, Jane Schoolcraft, and Susan Davenport, are illustrative of Anishinaabe resiliency amidst American attempts to codify their mixed-ancestry children as racialized “others” and marginalize them throughout the nineteenth century. 947 Gregg Mitman, Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 11. 948 Mark David Spence, Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 107. 249 First, consider Magdelaine La Framboise and her family. Magdelaine earned an unquestionable position of authority on Mackinac Island during her lifetime, and this only became possible for her after her husband’s death. She amassed her own fortune in the fur trade and was able to parlay her wealth into property acquisition and education for innumerable Indigenous children. She was savvy enough to recognize that language training could held young Indigenous people counteract some of the most potentially deleterious impacts of American incursion. She transmitted this lesson not only to her many mentees and godchildren, but also to her direct descendants. Joseph La Framboise, despite some of his misgivings with his mother’s religious devotion, nevertheless took lessons she taught him to heart, especially about the cultivation of linguistic skills. This allowed him to persistently remain prosperous even as American influence grew in Greater Mackinac in the mid-nineteenth century. Joseph’s daughter Juliette, meanwhile, secured an intellectual legacy that would last well into the twentieth century by becoming the first woman of Dakota descent to translate and preserve Dakota legends. Cultural preservation was surely a priority of Agatha Biddle as well. Although she married a Protestant American partner, she continued to practice Catholicism throughout her life and maintain her own homestead as one of the most crucial centers of Anishinaabe charity between Waganawkezee and Mackinac Island. Along with looking out for the material conditions of her Anishinaabe and mixed-ancestry kin, she also promoted Indigenous lifeways, leaving a deep impression on Mackinac Island residents that persists to the present. The leadership she showcased also left an impression on the United States government, as it recognized Agatha as the chief of her own band in 1870, entrusting her over any other male counterparts with the distribution of annuity funds.949 949 Weller, The Founding Mothers of Mackinac Island, xiv; Karlis-Shananaquet, “Agatha Biddle,” 34. 250 The legacies of Indigenous and mixed-ancestry members of the Schoolcraft family are somewhat more challenging to assess because of how the family’s white patriarch, Henry R. Schoolcraft, vigorously appropriated Anishinaabe knowledge for his own scholarly advancement while recasting it as “primitive” ruminations of a bygone people. In modern times, however, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft has received much-deserved credit as a poet who captured the history and landscape of Baawitigong with her words and transmitted it with the intent of preserving the integrity of the Ojibwe language. Even after her untimely passing, remnants of her independent spirit remained perceptible in her children who did not allow their father and deeply racist stepmother to rupture connections to their Aboriginal heritage. Janee Schoolcraft Howard followed in the footsteps of Madame La Framboise as an educator while John Johnston Schoolcraft rebuked his stepmother’s allegiance to Southern slave power by enlisting as a Union soldier in the Civil War like many other Michigan Anishinaabe.950 Ironically, the Davenport family, who came from a lower socioeconomic stratum than the La Framboises, the Biddles, or the Schoolcrafts, would leave the longest lasting physical legacy in Greater Mackinac. Mixed-ancestry Davenport children born in the nineteenth century would grow to secure subsistence in the twentieth century in professions such as lighthouse keeping. Meanwhile, Henry Blatchford, younger brother of Susan Davenport, rose from humble origins at the Mackinaw Mission School to eventually lead his own parish near Mooningwanekaaning. For all these people, persistence took roundabout forms through complex processes of racialization, but many most assuredly found autonomy and authority along with legacies that have lasted to the present. 950 Michelle Cassidy, Michigan’s Company K: Anishinaabe Soldiers, Citizenship, and the Civil War (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2023), 65-95. 251 Archival Materials BIBLIOGRAPHY American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA. American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Native American Languages Collection Anthony F.C. Wallace Papers Broadside Collection, 1638-1980 Ely Samuel Parker Papers Samuel George Morton Papers Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. 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