Research Paper on the Métis

Status:

MINNESOTA STATE UNIVERSITY, MANKATO

RACIAL TENSION AND EXPLOITATION AMONG THE ANISHINAABEG IN

NORTHERN MINNESOTA

A RESEARCH PAPER

SUBMITTED TO

DR. LAHLUM

BY

JASON MORRISON

MANKATO, MN

16 APRIL 2007

 In many ways the history of the United States contradicts the ideals behind its founding.  This contradiction is particularly stark when looking at that history and its treatment of Native Americans.  Part of the problem is the lack of Native American inclusion in mainstream U.S. history, and the other is the treatment of Native peoples by Euro Americans when their history has been included.  Often that history shows a Euro American bias, not taking into account Native American history outside of the sphere of Euro American history.  When this is done it is possible to see the many distinct cultures that comprise Native Americans.  As the two merged, each culture lost some of its own and took on parts of the other.  After a period of time this merger became heavy sided to the point that Native Americans were forced to assimilate into Euro American ways of life.  This period is one of many in which the contradiction between American history and American ideals are most tragic. 

            To gain a perspective on this tragedy, this paper will focus on the reservation movement in northern Minnesota up to 1870 and its impact on the Anishinaabeg and people of mixed descent, or the métis.[1]  The perspective gained from looking at this area will show that reservations forced the demise of the Native American way of life, and strengthened the pervasiveness of racial identification, which served to increase tensions among all of the people living in this area. 

            Indicative of a history before their interaction with Euro Americans, Anishinaabe oral tradition places the people who would become the Anishinaabeg on the Atlantic coast before European contact with the New World.  By the time of contact, the Algonquian speakers (of which the Anishinaabeg emerged from) were living in the northern part of the Great Lakes Region near Sault Ste. Marie.  From here these people would develop trading relationships with the French and the Iroquois with the British.  Over time, Native American use of European trade goods lead to dependence on those goods, and there was an increasing demand on the furs being supplied by Native peoples.  Increasing demand stoked preexisting tension between the Algonquian’s and the Iroquois, leading to open conflict as the Iroquois invaded in the middle of the seventeenth century. This conflict was fought with a level of violence unparalleled in previous Native American experience due to the presence of European arms.[2]

Demand for furs and game coupled with the violence pushed the Algonquian speakers west.  As they pushed west, they divided at Lake Superior.  The future Anishinaabeg divided into a Northern and Southern faction.  The Southern faction becoming the Anishinaabeg of northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin moved along the south shore of Lake Superior, while the other group migrated north of Lake Superior up into Canada.  It is after this move into northern Wisconsin that some of the Algonquian speakers would become the Anishinaabeg in the 1730’s.  At a large village sight called Chequamegan is where Melissa L. Meyer says “the Anishinaabeg were born.”[3]

It is from Chequamegan in northern Wisconsin near the Keweenaw Peninsula that the Anishinaabeg would hunt in bands south and west of the village and coming into contact with the Dakota.  The French would try and act as intermediaries, but by 1736, as hunting pressure mounted, open conflict between the two tribes broke out.  From this time on, Chequamegan would serve as a launching point for the Anishinaabeg as they dispersed further west across Wisconsin and Minnesota.  By 1825, the Prairie du Chien treaty created a buffer zone between the Anishinaabeg and the Dakota.  By the mid nineteenth century the Anishinaabeg had spread across northern Minnesota.  The Prairie du Chien would be the first of many treaties between the Anishinaabeg and the federal government.[4]

Following the Prairie du Chien in 1837 was another treaty in which the Anishinaabeg were to cede land specified vaguely using a number of rivers, lakes, the forty-sixth parallel, and the line created in 1825 with the Dakota.  In return the Anishinaabeg were to be given money, goods, farm implements, tobacco, and among other things the “privilege of hunting fishing, and gathering the wild rice, upon the lands, rivers and the lakes included in the territory ceded.”  This was all at the “pleasure of the President of the United States.”[5]  In the treaty, the Anishinaabeg are referred to as the “Chippewa nation.”  This language carries the connotation of the Anishinaabeg being one people with a single set of appointed leaders.  In reality, this wording evidenced either a gross misunderstanding of Anishinaabe culture or a shortcut taken by the United States government to expedite its process of acquiring land.  The Anishinaabeg hadn’t been together as a single “nation” since their time at Chequamegan over a century earlier.  By the time of the treaty in 1837, the Anishinaabeg lived in separate bands located across the state and into Wisconsin, all connected by a shared culture.[6]

Article three in the 1837 treaty is particularly interesting.  This article stipulated that “the half-breeds of the Chippewa nation,” receive 100,000 dollars.  These “half-breeds” mentioned in the treaty are the métis.  The word métis is “an old French adjective meaning ‘mixed,’ began by the late 1700s.”[7]  The word was used to categorize the people that came about as French fur traders began to marry and bear children with Native American women.  Among many advantages, marriage to Native American women was seen as beneficial to traders because it cemented ties between a trader and the tribe that the woman was from.  For the Anishinaabeg and other tribes, intertribal marriage had been a preexisting method of establishing peaceful relations.[8]  Over time the population of métis in the Great Lakes Region would expand, with their acquiring a unique position in the fur trade and a culture all of their own.  A métis of Anishinaabe descent, William W. Warren, even went so far as to boast of their being more métis of Anishinaabe heritage than any other.  “It reflects honor on this tribe,” Warren said.[9]  Though they were still regarded as relatives by the Anishinaabeg, the métis were acknowledged as being unique.  This uniqueness did not transmit itself to racial tension initially.  Many métis coexisted between Euro American and Native American cultures.  [10] 

As the nineteenth century wore on, the treaties and legislation affecting the Anishinaabe became more pervasive, limiting their ability to live in a manner more traditional than that of what was expected by the U.S. government through forced assimilation.  Each successive treaty took more land and by the treaty of 1854, land began to be allotted to individual heads of family.  The language difference between the treaties signed in 1842 with that of 1854 is stark.  In article three of the1842 treaty it was agreed that “unceded lands belonging to the Indians… shall be the common property and home of all the Indians, party to this treaty.”  In contrast, the 1854 treaty stipulates in the seventh clause of article two that the “head of a family, or single person over twenty-one years of age at the present time of the mixed bloods, belonging to the Chippewas of Lake Superior, shall be entitled to eighty acres of land…”  What makes this significant is that in a treaty from 1847, “half or mixed bloods” were “allowed to participate in all annuities which shall hereafter be paid to the Chippewas.”  Article five of this same treaty also lists a series of conditions in which allotted lands may be claimed by the government with due compensation to the previous landholder.[11]  The land reserved for the Anishinaabeg under these stipulations was in know way guaranteed, and it also appears that the U.S. government is also beginning to use the métis to weaken the links between the Anishinaabeg and the land.[12]

Melissa L. Meyer points out that the treaties in the mid 1850’s (1854 & 1855) opened the door for white settlers into northern Minnesota.  Along with these settlers came the plagues and vices that they had previously transmitted elsewhere in Native America.[13]  This is evidenced in news paper articles from this same time.  In a New York Times article from May 16, 1854 it is pointed out that a doctor was ordered by the governor of Minnesota to vaccinate the Anishinaabeg from small-pox, which were “raging with great violence.”  The article notes that fifty-seven died and that “the Indians were almost frantic with fear and dread…”  The Times also mentions the presence of alcohol among the Anishinaabeg despite of its being banned among them in article seven of the 1854 treaty.  The party with greatest concern in the Times article are the Christian missionaries and clergymen, which reflects the confluence of the antebellum religious mindset and views towards Native Americans.[14] 

In, History of the Ojibway People, William W. Warren gives an account of Anishinaabe history based on the oral accounts of his family and other Anishinaabeg around him.  In his book, Warren shows himself as further evidence of the melding of Christian faith into the world of Native Americans.  While Warren doesn’t see himself as Native American, he is indeed a link between the Euro American spheres of the time with those of the Native Americans around him.  In his account, Warren says the religion of the Anishinaabe is inferior to that of Christianity regarding stories of origin, and although Warren see’s himself as an objective observer, through a comparison of oral history and the Bible he comes to see Native Americans as descended from the lost tribes of Israel.[15] 

Warren, in many ways, is evidence of what the government was hoping for through the reservation movement, even though he was unaware of it.  In article three of the 1847 treaty there is mention of any “Chippewas of full or mixed blood” educated enough as employable.  This same treaty mentions any “mixed bloods” as being Native American if they choose to live among the Native population.  The education received by Warren in Euro American society gave him the perception of the superiority of Anglo thought, and this same education made him a “competent” and employable person as stated in the treaty.  Warren’s example is also reflective of a longer held notion of eliminating Native Americans through miscegenation.[16]  Though this extermination never happened, there can be little doubt that the métis were used to take advantage of the Anishinaabeg. 

After the signing of a treaty in 1867, many Anishinaabeg began moving to the newly created White Earth Reservation.  White Earth was seen by many American officials to be an ideal place for assimilation among the Anishinaabeg to take place.  At White Earth it was believed that Native Americans could become “civilized” farmers.[17]  So strong was this belief that in the final article of the treaty power was given to the county sheriff to make arrests in light of a crime “against life or property.”  Perhaps the most interesting article in the treaty is the fourth.  In article four it states that no provisions from the treaty of 1867 or earlier would be paid to a person of “mixed blood,” unless they “actually live with their people upon one of the reservations…”  Meyer highlights this aspect of treaty as she is discussing the role of chief Hole-in-the-Day, a wealthy Anishinaabeg that was party to the treaty negotiations.  Meyer mentions that Hole-in-the-Day had a somewhat infamous relationship with some métis, and at one point the two parties have a falling out. As a result Meyer quotes Hole-in-the-Day as saying: “See what my relations, the mixed bloods, were doing to me.  I can hardly see…”  He goes on to mention his gaining retribution by halting annuity payments to the métis.[18]  These events occurred sometime between 1862 and 1867, which would have prompted Hole-in-the-Day to inquire about article four in the negotiations. 

From the time that the Algonquian speakers of the northern Great Lakes Region first developed extensive trade networks with the French fur traders and into the nineteenth century, the Anishinaabeg treated the métis created from this interaction with the respect due a blood relative.  However, as the U.S. government began forcing the Anishinaabeg on to reservations in northern Minnesota, the métis were used to exploit the Anishinaabeg as a means of gain monetarily and in property for Euro Americans.  Some métis themselves used their unique position to further themselves materially.  This exploitation served to estrange some métis and created a consciousness of race among the Anishinaabeg that had not existed before this time.  While this paper focuses on a specific geographical location, the type of interaction outlined in this paper is not entirely unique to this area.  This type of interaction is one of many ways leading up to the poor conditions faced by many Native Americans today, and through a study of the history of Native peoples we may hope to improve their present condition. 

Work Cited

Abbott, Kathryn A. “Alcohol and the Anishinaabeg of Minnesota in the Early Twentieth Century.” Western Historical Quarterly 30 (Spring 1999): 25-43.

Belmessous, Saliha. “Assimilation and Racialism in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century

            French Colonial Society.” American Historical Review 110, no. 2 (2005): 322-349.

Brown, Jennifer S. H. “Métis, Halfbreeds, and Other Real People: Challenging Cultures and Categories.” The History Teacher 27 (November 1993): 19-26.

________. Strangers In Blood: Fur Trade Company Families In Indian Country. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980.

Cymon. “Another Swindle Exposed.” New York Times, 7 October 1871, pg. 3. Proquest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2003) [database online]. Available from http://proquest.umi.com/; accessed 06 April 2007. Internet

Graves, Kathy Davis and Elizabeth Ebbott. Indians in Minnesota, 5^th ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

Jung, Patrick. “The Creation of Metis Society: French-Indian Intermarriage in the Upper Great Lakes.” Voyageur: Northeast Wisconsin’s Historical Review 19 (2003): 38-48.

Kappler, Charles J., ed. “Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties.” Vol. 2. Available from http://digital.library.okstate.edu/kappler/Vol2/Toc.htm; Internet; accessed 5 April 2007.

Meyer, Melissa L. The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889-1920. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.

Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. “1837 Treaty.” Available from http://dnr.state.mn.us/; Internet; accessed 5 April 2007.

________. “Text of 1854 Treaty with the Chippewa.” Available from http://dnr.state.mn.us/; Internet; accessed 5 April 2007.

Morrison, Eliza. A Little History of My Forest Life. Victoria Brehm, ed. Tustin, Mich.: Ladyslipper Press, 2002.

New York Times. 16 May 1854, pg. 1. Proquest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2003) [database online]. Available from http://proquest.umi.com/; accessed 06 April 2007. Internet

________. 18 June 1858, pg. 1. Proquest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2003) [database online]. Available from http://proquest.umi.com/; accessed 06 April 2007. Internet

Van Kirk, Sylvia. Many Tender Ties. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980.

Warren, William W. History of the Ojibway People. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1984

White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.