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FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY
Potawatomi Location
In 1600, the Potawatomi lived in the northern third of lower Michigan. Threatened by the Ontario tribes trading with the French (Neutrals, Tionontati, Ottawa, and Huron) during the late 1630s, the Potawatomi began leaving their homeland in 1641, moving to the west side of Lake Michigan in northern Wisconsin.
This was completed during the 1650s after the Iroquois defeated the French allies and swept into lower Michigan. By 1665, the Potawatomi lived on Wisconsin's Door Peninsula just east of Green Bay. They remained there until 1687, when the French and Great Lakes Algonquin began driving the Iroquois back to New York. As the Iroquois retreated, the Potawatomi moved south along the west shore of Lake Michigan, reaching the south end by 1695. One band settled near the Jesuit mission on the St. Joseph River in southwest Michigan at about the same time. Shortly after the French built Fort Ponchartrain at Detroit in 1701, groups of Potawatomi settled nearby. By 1716, most Potawatomi villages were located between Milwaukee and Detroit. During the 1760s, they expanded into northern Indiana and central Illinois.
Land cessions to the Americans began in 1807 and drastically reduced their territory for 25 years. Removal west of the Mississippi occurred between 1834 and 1842. The Potawatomi were removed in two groups: the Prairie and Forest Bands from northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin went to Council Bluffs in southwest Iowa. The Potawatomi of the Woods (Michigan and Indian bands) were relocated to eastern Kansas near Osawatomie. In 1846, the two groups merged and were placed on a single reservation north of Topeka. Arguments over-allotment and citizenship led to their separation in 1867. The Potawatomi left for Oklahoma and settled near present-day Shawnee. Most of their lands were lost to the allotment in 1889. The Prairie Potawatomi stayed in Kansas and still have a reservation. Several Potawatomi groups avoided removal and remained in the Great Lakes.
Three are in Michigan: the Huron Potawatomi in the south-central, the Pokagon Potawatomi in the southwest and northern Indiana, and the Hannaville Potawatomi of the upper peninsula.
The Forest County Potawatomi lived in northeast Wisconsin. The Canadian Potawatomi in southern Ontario has become part of the Walpole Island and the Stoney Point and Kettle Point First Nations.
Population
Estimates of the original Potawatomi population range as high as 15,000, but 8,000 is probably closer to the truth. Although they had undergone 30 years of war, relocation, and epidemic, the French estimated about 4,000 in 1667. This was probably accurate since all Potawatomi bands had gathered into four villages near Green Bay at that time. Later estimates varied between 1,200 and 3,400, but the Potawatomi had separated into many bands, and these estimates failed to list all of them. Accurate counts were only possible once the Potawatomi had been moved to Kansas. In 1854, the Indian Bureau listed 3,440 on the reservation, but some had left with the Kickapoo for northern Mexico. The report also mentioned 600 "strolling Potawatomi," who had avoided removal and were somewhere in Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. It also failed to include the 4-600 Potawatomi in Canada. The 1910 census listed 2,440 Potawatomi in the United States, with another 180 in Canada, totaling 2,620. The current population of all Potawatomi in Canada and the United States is almost 28,000.
Tribe Names
The Potawatomi name is a translation of the Ojibwe "Pottawattomienk," meaning "people of the place of fire." Similar renderings of this are Fire Nation, Keepers of the Sacred Fire, and People of the Fireplace - all of which refer to the role of the Potawatomi as the keeper of the council fire in an earlier alliance with the Ojibwe and Ottawa. In their own language, the Potawatomi refer to themselves as the Nishnabek or "people" (similar to the Ojibwe name for themselves, Anishinabe (Anishinaubag, Neshnabek). A lengthy term like Potawatomi has had a variety of spellings: Potawatomi, Pattawatima, Putawatimes, Pouteouatims, and Poutouatami. Also called Adawadeny or Atowateany (Iroquois), Assistaeronon (Huron), Kunuhayanu (Caddo), Ouapou, Mesquakie (Fox), Pous, Poux, or Pu (French), Tcashtalalgi (Creek), Undatomatendi (Huron), Wahhonahah (Miami), Wahiucaxa (Omaha), Wahiuyaha (Kansa), and Woraxa (Iowa, Missouri, Otoe, and Winnebago).
Language
Central Algonquin is very close to Ojibwe and Ottawa.
Sub-Nations
During the 1700s, there were three groups of Potawatomi based on location:
Detroit Potawatomi - southeast Michigan
Prairie Potawatomi - northern Illinois
St. Joseph Potawatomi - southwest Michigan
By 1800, the names and locations of these three divisions had changed to:
Potawatomi of the Woods - southern Michigan and northern Indiana
Forest Potawatomi - Northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan
Potawatomi of the Prairie - north Illinois and southern Wisconsin
Villages
Illinois Villages:
Assiminehkon (Paw-Paw Grove), Calumet, Chicago, Little Rock, Mesheketeno, Minemaung, Mosheketeno, Nayonsay, Rock Village, Sandy Creek, Sawmehnaug, Secawgo, Shaytee (Grand Bois), Shobonier (Shabbona), Soldier's Village, and Waisuskuck.
Indiana Villages:
Abercronk, Ashkum, Aubbeenaubbee, Checkawkose, Chekase, Chichipe Outipe, Chippoy (Chipaille), Comoza, Elkhart (Miami), Kethtippecagnunk (Wea), Kinkash, Macon, Massac, Mamotway, Maukekose, Menominee, Menoquet, Mesquawbuck, Metea, Moran, Mota, Muskwawasepeotan, Pierrish, Rum, Tassinong, Tippecanoe, Toisa, Wanatah, Wimego, Winamac, and Wonongoseak.
Michigan Villages:
Bawbee's Village, Big Wolf, Cheenauge, James Burnett, Koassun, Le Clerc, Macousin, Mangachqua, Mary Ann, Matchebenashshewish, Matchkee, Menoquet, Mickkesawbee, Moccasin, New Village, Nottawaseppi (Natowapsepe), Pokagon, Prairie Ronde, Saint Joseph, Seginsavin, Tondagaie, Tonguish, Topenebee, and Wolf Rapids.
Wisconsin Villages:
Big Foot (Gros Pied, Maumksuck), Manitowoc, Maquanago, Mechingan, Milwaukee (Ojibwe, Ottawa), Mitchigami, Mukwonago, Oconomowoc, Rock County, St. Michael, Skunk Grove, Waubekeetschuk, and Waukesha.
There are seven separate groups of Potawatomi - six in the United States and one in Canada.
Canada:
When removal to Kansas and Iowa began in the 1830s, some Potawatomi escaped by moving to Canada. Those from Indiana and lower Michigan slipped into southern Ontario, where they settled among the Ojibwe and Ottawa at Walpole Island, Stoney Point, Kettle Point, Caradoc, and Riviere aux Sables. At the same time, other groups of Potawatomi west of Lake Michigan crossed near Sault Ste. Marie to the Ojibwe and Ottawa communities on Cockburn and Manitoulin Islands. After the "heat was off," some northern groups returned to the United States and became the Hannaville Potawatomi. Although Canada listed 290 Potawatomi in Ontario in 1890, the Canadian Potawatomi intermarried with the Ojibwe and Ottawa, blurring tribal identity. More than 2,000 Indians Nativ in Canada can claim Potawatomi descent.
Citizen Potawatomi:
Federally recognized, the Citizen Potawatomi is the largest Potawatomi group. Most are descended from the Potawatomi of the Woods (southern Michigan and northern Indiana), including the Mission Band from St. Joseph in southwest Michigan. Acculturated and primarily Christian, they found it easier to accept allotment and citizenship in 1861 than the more traditional Prairie Potawatomi. This led to a separation (not on the best terms) in 1870 when the Citizens moved to Oklahoma. Allotment took most of their land in 1889, and they have kept only 4,371 acres, less than two acres of which is tribally owned! Most Citizen Potawatomi had remained in Oklahoma - the Indian Bureau listed 1,768 of them in 1908 - but many left for California during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Headquartered in Shawnee, they are organized under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act with an enrollment of more than 18,000.
Forest County Potawatomi:
The most traditional group, the Forest County Potawatomi of northern Wisconsin, has retained much of its original language, religion, and culture. They are descended from three Potawatomi bands from Lake Geneva in southern Wisconsin who avoided removal by moving north to the Black River and Wisconsin Rapids. In 1867, they were joined by Potawatomi, who had left Kansas. In 1913, the government accepted their residence in Wisconsin and purchased 12,000 acres. Since the original intention was to distribute this in individual allotments, the parcels were scattered. Still, resistance to personal ownership delayed this until they had reorganized under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. All land, except for 200 acres, is tribally owned. Federally recognized with an enrollment close to 800, they live in three separate communities with the tribal headquarters in Crandon, Wisconsin.
Hannaville Potawatomi:
The Hannaville Potawatomi at Wilson in upper Michigan shares a similar history with their Forest County counterparts. Initially from Illinois and Wisconsin, they refused to leave after 1834 and moved to northern Wisconsin. Some lived with the Menominee, while others stayed with the Ojibwe and Ottawa in Canada. Some returned to the United States in 1853 but were landless. Peter Marksnian, an Ojibwe missionary, found some land for them in 1883, and Hannaville was named after his wife. In 1913, Congress acknowledged the Hannaville Potawatomi and purchased 3,400 acres of scattered parcels, of which 39 acres were added in 1942. Federally recognized since 1936, membership is almost 900.
Huron Potawatomi (Nottawaseppi):
Originally a part of the Detroit Tribes in southeastern Michigan, the Huron Potawatomi did not entirely escape the removal process. Gathered by soldiers and sent to Kansas in 1840, the bands of Mogwago and Pamptopee escaped, returning to Michigan. The government relented in 1845 when President Polk signed a bill giving 40 acres of public lands in southeast Michigan to the Huron Potawatomi. Another 80 acres were added to this in 1848, with a Methodist mission established the following year. Most Huron Potawatomi became citizens and took their lands in Separateness in 1888, and federal tribal status was officially terminated in 1902. However, the Nottawaseppi continued their tribal organization and traditions, and with an enrollment of approximately 600, they successfully regained their federal recognition late in 1995.
Pokagon Potawatomi:
Roman Catholic and acculturated because of the St. Joseph Mission, the Pokagon were protected from removal by treaty and were allowed to stay in southwest Michigan. Their name derives from Chief Simon Pokagon, a famous Indian lecturer during the 1850s.
Refused tribal status under the Indian Reorganization Act (1934), their long struggle to gain federal recognition finally succeeded in 1994. With tribal offices located in Dowagiac, Michigan, the Pokagon is in the process of reacquiring a land base. Most of their 2,600 members are scattered among the general populations of southern Michigan and northern Indiana.
Prairie Potawatomi:
Formed from the Forest and Prairie Potawatomi bands west of Lake Michigan, they were removed to southwest Iowa in 1834. They were accompanied by Ottawa and Ojibwe from the same area, which merged with the Potawatomi. Placed on a Kansas reservation in 1846 with the Potawatomi of the Woods and Mission Band, the Prairie Potawatomi preferred to hold their land in common and remained in Kansas when the Citizens left for Oklahoma in 1870. They were eventually forced to accept allotment, which reduced their land from 77,400 acres to 20,325 - 560 tribally owned. The population in 1908 was only 676, but since then, it has grown to almost 4,000, with the tribal headquarters in Mayetta, Kansas. The Prairie Potawatomi are usually traditional, and many practiced either the Drum Religion or belong to the Indian Church.
Culture
The Potawatomi initially provided for themselves as hunter/gatherers because they were too far north for reliable agriculture. Like the closely related Ojibwe and Ottawa, their diet came from wild game, fish, wild rice, red oak acorns, and maple syrup, but the Potawatomi were adaptive. After being forced by the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700) to relocate to Wisconsin, they learned farming from the Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Winnebago. When the French arrived at Green Bay, Potawatomi women tended large corn, beans, and squash fields. They even took their agriculture further and were known for their medicinal herb gardens. Agriculture was an extension of the women's role as gathers, but the men remained hunters and warriors other than clearing the fields.
By 1660, the Potawatomi were agricultural, and their movement south after 1680 was most likely motivated by a desire for better soil and a longer growing season. Other things changed as European contact continued. Besides the switch to metal tools and firearms, the Potawatomi, by the 1760s, were abandoning birchbark canoes for horses "borrowed" from white settlers. This served well for buffalo hunts, first on northern Indiana and Illinois prairies and later on the Great Plains. Another skill they adopted was standard infantry tactics from their wars with the Americans. During their fights in Kansas in the 1850s, the Pawnee experienced the devastating effect of continuous fire. Potawatomi warriors maintained a steady advance in two alternating ranks, the first kneeling and firing while the other stood to the other rear and reloaded.
Early French accounts describe the Potawatomi as shorter but more robust and darker-skinned than other Algonquins. Otherwise, the Potawatomi were a typical Great Lakes tribe. Summer villages were fairly large, with rectangular, bark-covered (or woven brush) houses. After their buffalo hunt in the fall, they separated into small hunting camps of extended families. Winter homes were oval, dome-shaped wigwams resembling those of the Ojibwe. Most Potawatomi preferred log cabins in later periods, much like their white neighbors. While some polygamy occurred with men marrying two or more sisters, the Potawatomi were generally more strict about chastity than other tribes. Kinship was determined by patrilineal descent, although the marriage was matrilocal (the husband moved in with his wife's family). Warriors wore their hair long except in times of war when they shaved their heads except for a scalp-lock to which they added an upright roach of porcupine hair with an eagle feather. The war paint was red and black. Women's hair was parted in the middle with a single long braid behind.
The Potawatomi followed the Ojibwe pattern of tribal identity with little central political organization. The independent bands were bound by a common language and a shared clan system that cut across band lines. This was later reinforced by the Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society), a secret religious organization of men and women whose members performed elaborate healing ceremonies to deal with epidemics. Although their political structure was not what Europeans expected, it functioned well, and Potawatomi bands rarely fought each other and could cooperate when the situation required. However, it created problems for the Americans in negotiations. Separate treaties were needed with each band, and before they were finished, the Potawatomi had signed forty-two separate documents with the United States.
History
In a tradition shared by all three tribes, the Potawatomi came from the northeast with the Ottawa and Ojibwe to the eastern shore of Lake Huron. This is believed to have happened sometime around 1400 after the North American climate became colder. The Ottawa remained near the French River and Manitoulin and the other islands in Lake Huron. The Potawatomi and Ojibwe continued north along the shoreline until they reached Sault St. Marie. About 1500, the Potawatomi crossed over and settled in the northern third of lower Michigan. Although separated, the three related tribes remembered their earlier alliance and referred to each other as the "three brothers." As the keepers of the council fire of this old alliance, the Potawatomi were called "Potawatomienk" or "people of the place of fire."
Although they did not meet until later, the French first learned of the Potawatomi on the far side of the "Great Freshwater Sea" when the Huron mentioned them to Champlain in 1615 during his first visit to their villages. Jean Nicollet, who became the first Euro-American to see Lake Michigan, may have met the Potawatomi in 1634 while en route to Green Bay to arrange a truce between the Winnebago and the Ottawa and Huron. However, Nicollet followed the north shore of Lake Michigan, so he probably missed them. In any case, his list of the tribes living on Lake Michigan (many of whom he never met) became the basis for the first mention of the Potawatomi in the Jesuit Relations of 1640. French contact occurred the following year during Jesuits Charles Raymbault and Issac Jogues's visit to the Ojibwe at Sault Ste. Marie. By this time, some of the Potawatomi had already moved to the west side of Lake Michigan. During the 1630s, the Huron, Ottawa, Neutral, and Tionontati had exhausted the beaver in their homelands and were seizing new hunting territory from the tribes in lower Michigan.
Because the French at this time rarely ventured beyond the Huron villages, they only knew of this from the Huron who, borrowing the Ottawa name for the Potawatomi, referred to all Algonquin in lower Michigan (Potawatomi, Mascouten, Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo) as Assistaeronon (Fire Nation). Since there was no threat to the fur trade, the French did not intervene. The warfare in lower Michigan was a part of the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700), which had started in the east between the French-allied Algonkin and Montagnais fighting the Dutch-allied Iroquois for the upper St. Lawrence River. This set off a chain reaction as tribes competed for territory and fur. As the Iroquois gained the advantage, they threatened to cut the trade route through the Ottawa Valley to the Great Lakes, and the French began selling firearms to the Huron, Ottawa, and Algonkin. The Dutch countered with their own sales to the Iroquois, and after the British and Swedish entered the picture, it was an arms race. The French weapons found their way through trade to the Tionontati and Neutrals, who turned them against the Michigan tribes. The Potawatomi and others resisted bravely but at a tremendous disadvantage with only traditional weapons.
The Potawatomi, which the Jesuits met at Sault Ste. Marie, in 1641, was among the first to leave. After crossing the lake, they had first attempted to settle near Green Bay, but the hostile reception received from the Winnebago forced them north to a refuge with the Ojibwe. Other refugee tribes arrived in Wisconsin from lower Michigan during the next few years. The Winnebago, Menominee, and Illinois (pronounced: Illinois' - plural) were a group of tribes (aka Illiniwek or Illini) that soon had more invaders than they could handle. Sometime between 1642 and 1652, Winnebago became involved in a war with the Fox, who had settled uninvited on the west side of Lake Winnebago. En route to attack a Fox village, 500 Winnebago warriors were caught on the lake in their canoes by a storm and drowned. The Winnebago drew themselves into a single large village perfect for the epidemic that struck next. Shortly afterward, they were nearly exterminated in a war with The Illinois. Aside from occasional skirmishes with the Dakota (Sioux) or Ojibwe (Chippewa), there was little resistance after the fall of the Winnebago to resettle other refugees in Wisconsin.
The French allies and trading partners started the depopulation of lower Michigan but never finished it. Iroquois victories in the east drove the Algonkin and Montagnais from the upper St. Lawrence and lower Ottawa Valleys and cut the trade route from the Great Lakes. To shorten the travel distance for the Huron and Ottawa, the French built a new post at Montreal in 1642, but with Iroquois war parties roaming the lower Ottawa River, only large canoe convoys could get through. As the fur flow slowed to a trickle in 1645, the French were forced to agree to a peace treaty with the Mohawk and promised to remain neutral in future wars between the Iroquois and Huron. During the next two years, the Iroquois, who were running out of beaver in their homeland, used every diplomatic means to gain Huron permission to hunt in their territory or to be allowed to pass through to hunt in the lands beyond. When their requests were denied, the Iroquois resorted to war. After two years of attacks on villages in the Huron homeland, 2,000 Iroquois warriors in March of 1649 launched a coordinated attack that overran and destroyed the Huron Confederacy.
Huron, who survived the onslaught, fled to neighboring tribes, only to have the Iroquois pursue them and destroy their allies. The Tionontati fell later that year, followed by the Algonkin and Nipissing in 1650. The neutral suffered a similar fate in 1651. The Erie was defeated after a three-year war with the Iroquois ending in 1656. At the same time, Iroquois war parties swept into lower Michigan and completed the expulsion of its original inhabitants. Lower Michigan was a "no man's land" between the Iroquois and their defeated enemies in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan during the next forty years. Thousands of Iroquoian-speaking captives were adopted into the tribes of the Iroquois League, swelling their ranks to over 25,000 and creating a severe problem. So long as one group of their former enemies remained free, the Iroquois were in danger of an insurrection from within, and 1,000 Tionontati and Huron had escaped and fled north to the Ottawa villages at Mackinac. Iroquois warriors followed and tried to capture them in 1650. This failed, but after certain other attacks, the Tionontati and Huron (who would merge to become the Wyandot) evacuated Mackinac and moved west to an island in Green Bay. But the Iroquois were relentless, and a Mohawk and Seneca war party attacked their new village in 1652.
Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.
Research Contributor: Lee Sultzman
[1] Between 1630 and 1700, the Beaver Wars battled for economic welfare throughout the St. Lawrence River valley and the lower Great Lakes region. The wars were between the Iroquois [aka Haudenosaunee; People of the Longhouse] trying to take control of the fur trade from the Hurons, the northern Algonquians, and their French allies. The Iroquois were known during the colonial years to the French as the "Iroquois League," and later as the "Iroquois Confederacy," and to the English as the "Five Nations," comprising of the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes.
When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:
- The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.
Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:
- "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
- "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
- "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.
— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —
THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.
In 1600, the Potawatomi lived in the northern third of lower Michigan. Threatened by the Ontario tribes trading with the French (Neutrals, Tionontati, Ottawa, and Huron) during the late 1630s, the Potawatomi began leaving their homeland in 1641, moving to the west side of Lake Michigan in northern Wisconsin.
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| The Potawatomi Tribe illustration. |
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| A Potawatomi Village. |
Three are in Michigan: the Huron Potawatomi in the south-central, the Pokagon Potawatomi in the southwest and northern Indiana, and the Hannaville Potawatomi of the upper peninsula.
The Forest County Potawatomi lived in northeast Wisconsin. The Canadian Potawatomi in southern Ontario has become part of the Walpole Island and the Stoney Point and Kettle Point First Nations.
Population
Estimates of the original Potawatomi population range as high as 15,000, but 8,000 is probably closer to the truth. Although they had undergone 30 years of war, relocation, and epidemic, the French estimated about 4,000 in 1667. This was probably accurate since all Potawatomi bands had gathered into four villages near Green Bay at that time. Later estimates varied between 1,200 and 3,400, but the Potawatomi had separated into many bands, and these estimates failed to list all of them. Accurate counts were only possible once the Potawatomi had been moved to Kansas. In 1854, the Indian Bureau listed 3,440 on the reservation, but some had left with the Kickapoo for northern Mexico. The report also mentioned 600 "strolling Potawatomi," who had avoided removal and were somewhere in Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin. It also failed to include the 4-600 Potawatomi in Canada. The 1910 census listed 2,440 Potawatomi in the United States, with another 180 in Canada, totaling 2,620. The current population of all Potawatomi in Canada and the United States is almost 28,000.
Tribe Names
The Potawatomi name is a translation of the Ojibwe "Pottawattomienk," meaning "people of the place of fire." Similar renderings of this are Fire Nation, Keepers of the Sacred Fire, and People of the Fireplace - all of which refer to the role of the Potawatomi as the keeper of the council fire in an earlier alliance with the Ojibwe and Ottawa. In their own language, the Potawatomi refer to themselves as the Nishnabek or "people" (similar to the Ojibwe name for themselves, Anishinabe (Anishinaubag, Neshnabek). A lengthy term like Potawatomi has had a variety of spellings: Potawatomi, Pattawatima, Putawatimes, Pouteouatims, and Poutouatami. Also called Adawadeny or Atowateany (Iroquois), Assistaeronon (Huron), Kunuhayanu (Caddo), Ouapou, Mesquakie (Fox), Pous, Poux, or Pu (French), Tcashtalalgi (Creek), Undatomatendi (Huron), Wahhonahah (Miami), Wahiucaxa (Omaha), Wahiuyaha (Kansa), and Woraxa (Iowa, Missouri, Otoe, and Winnebago).
Language
Central Algonquin is very close to Ojibwe and Ottawa.
Sub-Nations
During the 1700s, there were three groups of Potawatomi based on location:
Detroit Potawatomi - southeast Michigan
Prairie Potawatomi - northern Illinois
St. Joseph Potawatomi - southwest Michigan
By 1800, the names and locations of these three divisions had changed to:
Potawatomi of the Woods - southern Michigan and northern Indiana
Forest Potawatomi - Northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan
Potawatomi of the Prairie - north Illinois and southern Wisconsin
Villages
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| A Potawatomi Camp. |
Assiminehkon (Paw-Paw Grove), Calumet, Chicago, Little Rock, Mesheketeno, Minemaung, Mosheketeno, Nayonsay, Rock Village, Sandy Creek, Sawmehnaug, Secawgo, Shaytee (Grand Bois), Shobonier (Shabbona), Soldier's Village, and Waisuskuck.
Indiana Villages:
Abercronk, Ashkum, Aubbeenaubbee, Checkawkose, Chekase, Chichipe Outipe, Chippoy (Chipaille), Comoza, Elkhart (Miami), Kethtippecagnunk (Wea), Kinkash, Macon, Massac, Mamotway, Maukekose, Menominee, Menoquet, Mesquawbuck, Metea, Moran, Mota, Muskwawasepeotan, Pierrish, Rum, Tassinong, Tippecanoe, Toisa, Wanatah, Wimego, Winamac, and Wonongoseak.
Michigan Villages:
Bawbee's Village, Big Wolf, Cheenauge, James Burnett, Koassun, Le Clerc, Macousin, Mangachqua, Mary Ann, Matchebenashshewish, Matchkee, Menoquet, Mickkesawbee, Moccasin, New Village, Nottawaseppi (Natowapsepe), Pokagon, Prairie Ronde, Saint Joseph, Seginsavin, Tondagaie, Tonguish, Topenebee, and Wolf Rapids.
Wisconsin Villages:
Big Foot (Gros Pied, Maumksuck), Manitowoc, Maquanago, Mechingan, Milwaukee (Ojibwe, Ottawa), Mitchigami, Mukwonago, Oconomowoc, Rock County, St. Michael, Skunk Grove, Waubekeetschuk, and Waukesha.
There are seven separate groups of Potawatomi - six in the United States and one in Canada.
Canada:
When removal to Kansas and Iowa began in the 1830s, some Potawatomi escaped by moving to Canada. Those from Indiana and lower Michigan slipped into southern Ontario, where they settled among the Ojibwe and Ottawa at Walpole Island, Stoney Point, Kettle Point, Caradoc, and Riviere aux Sables. At the same time, other groups of Potawatomi west of Lake Michigan crossed near Sault Ste. Marie to the Ojibwe and Ottawa communities on Cockburn and Manitoulin Islands. After the "heat was off," some northern groups returned to the United States and became the Hannaville Potawatomi. Although Canada listed 290 Potawatomi in Ontario in 1890, the Canadian Potawatomi intermarried with the Ojibwe and Ottawa, blurring tribal identity. More than 2,000 Indians Nativ in Canada can claim Potawatomi descent.
Citizen Potawatomi:
Federally recognized, the Citizen Potawatomi is the largest Potawatomi group. Most are descended from the Potawatomi of the Woods (southern Michigan and northern Indiana), including the Mission Band from St. Joseph in southwest Michigan. Acculturated and primarily Christian, they found it easier to accept allotment and citizenship in 1861 than the more traditional Prairie Potawatomi. This led to a separation (not on the best terms) in 1870 when the Citizens moved to Oklahoma. Allotment took most of their land in 1889, and they have kept only 4,371 acres, less than two acres of which is tribally owned! Most Citizen Potawatomi had remained in Oklahoma - the Indian Bureau listed 1,768 of them in 1908 - but many left for California during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Headquartered in Shawnee, they are organized under the Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act with an enrollment of more than 18,000.
Forest County Potawatomi:
The most traditional group, the Forest County Potawatomi of northern Wisconsin, has retained much of its original language, religion, and culture. They are descended from three Potawatomi bands from Lake Geneva in southern Wisconsin who avoided removal by moving north to the Black River and Wisconsin Rapids. In 1867, they were joined by Potawatomi, who had left Kansas. In 1913, the government accepted their residence in Wisconsin and purchased 12,000 acres. Since the original intention was to distribute this in individual allotments, the parcels were scattered. Still, resistance to personal ownership delayed this until they had reorganized under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. All land, except for 200 acres, is tribally owned. Federally recognized with an enrollment close to 800, they live in three separate communities with the tribal headquarters in Crandon, Wisconsin.
Hannaville Potawatomi:
The Hannaville Potawatomi at Wilson in upper Michigan shares a similar history with their Forest County counterparts. Initially from Illinois and Wisconsin, they refused to leave after 1834 and moved to northern Wisconsin. Some lived with the Menominee, while others stayed with the Ojibwe and Ottawa in Canada. Some returned to the United States in 1853 but were landless. Peter Marksnian, an Ojibwe missionary, found some land for them in 1883, and Hannaville was named after his wife. In 1913, Congress acknowledged the Hannaville Potawatomi and purchased 3,400 acres of scattered parcels, of which 39 acres were added in 1942. Federally recognized since 1936, membership is almost 900.
Huron Potawatomi (Nottawaseppi):
Originally a part of the Detroit Tribes in southeastern Michigan, the Huron Potawatomi did not entirely escape the removal process. Gathered by soldiers and sent to Kansas in 1840, the bands of Mogwago and Pamptopee escaped, returning to Michigan. The government relented in 1845 when President Polk signed a bill giving 40 acres of public lands in southeast Michigan to the Huron Potawatomi. Another 80 acres were added to this in 1848, with a Methodist mission established the following year. Most Huron Potawatomi became citizens and took their lands in Separateness in 1888, and federal tribal status was officially terminated in 1902. However, the Nottawaseppi continued their tribal organization and traditions, and with an enrollment of approximately 600, they successfully regained their federal recognition late in 1995.
Pokagon Potawatomi:
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| Potawatomi Chief Simon Pokagon, son of Chief Leopold Pokagon, owned land on which Chicago now stands. |
Prairie Potawatomi:
Formed from the Forest and Prairie Potawatomi bands west of Lake Michigan, they were removed to southwest Iowa in 1834. They were accompanied by Ottawa and Ojibwe from the same area, which merged with the Potawatomi. Placed on a Kansas reservation in 1846 with the Potawatomi of the Woods and Mission Band, the Prairie Potawatomi preferred to hold their land in common and remained in Kansas when the Citizens left for Oklahoma in 1870. They were eventually forced to accept allotment, which reduced their land from 77,400 acres to 20,325 - 560 tribally owned. The population in 1908 was only 676, but since then, it has grown to almost 4,000, with the tribal headquarters in Mayetta, Kansas. The Prairie Potawatomi are usually traditional, and many practiced either the Drum Religion or belong to the Indian Church.
Culture
The Potawatomi initially provided for themselves as hunter/gatherers because they were too far north for reliable agriculture. Like the closely related Ojibwe and Ottawa, their diet came from wild game, fish, wild rice, red oak acorns, and maple syrup, but the Potawatomi were adaptive. After being forced by the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700) to relocate to Wisconsin, they learned farming from the Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Winnebago. When the French arrived at Green Bay, Potawatomi women tended large corn, beans, and squash fields. They even took their agriculture further and were known for their medicinal herb gardens. Agriculture was an extension of the women's role as gathers, but the men remained hunters and warriors other than clearing the fields.
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| Buffalo Dance of the Prairie Potawatomi. |
Early French accounts describe the Potawatomi as shorter but more robust and darker-skinned than other Algonquins. Otherwise, the Potawatomi were a typical Great Lakes tribe. Summer villages were fairly large, with rectangular, bark-covered (or woven brush) houses. After their buffalo hunt in the fall, they separated into small hunting camps of extended families. Winter homes were oval, dome-shaped wigwams resembling those of the Ojibwe. Most Potawatomi preferred log cabins in later periods, much like their white neighbors. While some polygamy occurred with men marrying two or more sisters, the Potawatomi were generally more strict about chastity than other tribes. Kinship was determined by patrilineal descent, although the marriage was matrilocal (the husband moved in with his wife's family). Warriors wore their hair long except in times of war when they shaved their heads except for a scalp-lock to which they added an upright roach of porcupine hair with an eagle feather. The war paint was red and black. Women's hair was parted in the middle with a single long braid behind.
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| Prairie Potawatomi Fully Equipped for Travel. |
History
In a tradition shared by all three tribes, the Potawatomi came from the northeast with the Ottawa and Ojibwe to the eastern shore of Lake Huron. This is believed to have happened sometime around 1400 after the North American climate became colder. The Ottawa remained near the French River and Manitoulin and the other islands in Lake Huron. The Potawatomi and Ojibwe continued north along the shoreline until they reached Sault St. Marie. About 1500, the Potawatomi crossed over and settled in the northern third of lower Michigan. Although separated, the three related tribes remembered their earlier alliance and referred to each other as the "three brothers." As the keepers of the council fire of this old alliance, the Potawatomi were called "Potawatomienk" or "people of the place of fire."
Although they did not meet until later, the French first learned of the Potawatomi on the far side of the "Great Freshwater Sea" when the Huron mentioned them to Champlain in 1615 during his first visit to their villages. Jean Nicollet, who became the first Euro-American to see Lake Michigan, may have met the Potawatomi in 1634 while en route to Green Bay to arrange a truce between the Winnebago and the Ottawa and Huron. However, Nicollet followed the north shore of Lake Michigan, so he probably missed them. In any case, his list of the tribes living on Lake Michigan (many of whom he never met) became the basis for the first mention of the Potawatomi in the Jesuit Relations of 1640. French contact occurred the following year during Jesuits Charles Raymbault and Issac Jogues's visit to the Ojibwe at Sault Ste. Marie. By this time, some of the Potawatomi had already moved to the west side of Lake Michigan. During the 1630s, the Huron, Ottawa, Neutral, and Tionontati had exhausted the beaver in their homelands and were seizing new hunting territory from the tribes in lower Michigan.
Because the French at this time rarely ventured beyond the Huron villages, they only knew of this from the Huron who, borrowing the Ottawa name for the Potawatomi, referred to all Algonquin in lower Michigan (Potawatomi, Mascouten, Fox, Sauk, and Kickapoo) as Assistaeronon (Fire Nation). Since there was no threat to the fur trade, the French did not intervene. The warfare in lower Michigan was a part of the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700), which had started in the east between the French-allied Algonkin and Montagnais fighting the Dutch-allied Iroquois for the upper St. Lawrence River. This set off a chain reaction as tribes competed for territory and fur. As the Iroquois gained the advantage, they threatened to cut the trade route through the Ottawa Valley to the Great Lakes, and the French began selling firearms to the Huron, Ottawa, and Algonkin. The Dutch countered with their own sales to the Iroquois, and after the British and Swedish entered the picture, it was an arms race. The French weapons found their way through trade to the Tionontati and Neutrals, who turned them against the Michigan tribes. The Potawatomi and others resisted bravely but at a tremendous disadvantage with only traditional weapons.
The Potawatomi, which the Jesuits met at Sault Ste. Marie, in 1641, was among the first to leave. After crossing the lake, they had first attempted to settle near Green Bay, but the hostile reception received from the Winnebago forced them north to a refuge with the Ojibwe. Other refugee tribes arrived in Wisconsin from lower Michigan during the next few years. The Winnebago, Menominee, and Illinois (pronounced: Illinois' - plural) were a group of tribes (aka Illiniwek or Illini) that soon had more invaders than they could handle. Sometime between 1642 and 1652, Winnebago became involved in a war with the Fox, who had settled uninvited on the west side of Lake Winnebago. En route to attack a Fox village, 500 Winnebago warriors were caught on the lake in their canoes by a storm and drowned. The Winnebago drew themselves into a single large village perfect for the epidemic that struck next. Shortly afterward, they were nearly exterminated in a war with The Illinois. Aside from occasional skirmishes with the Dakota (Sioux) or Ojibwe (Chippewa), there was little resistance after the fall of the Winnebago to resettle other refugees in Wisconsin.
The French allies and trading partners started the depopulation of lower Michigan but never finished it. Iroquois victories in the east drove the Algonkin and Montagnais from the upper St. Lawrence and lower Ottawa Valleys and cut the trade route from the Great Lakes. To shorten the travel distance for the Huron and Ottawa, the French built a new post at Montreal in 1642, but with Iroquois war parties roaming the lower Ottawa River, only large canoe convoys could get through. As the fur flow slowed to a trickle in 1645, the French were forced to agree to a peace treaty with the Mohawk and promised to remain neutral in future wars between the Iroquois and Huron. During the next two years, the Iroquois, who were running out of beaver in their homeland, used every diplomatic means to gain Huron permission to hunt in their territory or to be allowed to pass through to hunt in the lands beyond. When their requests were denied, the Iroquois resorted to war. After two years of attacks on villages in the Huron homeland, 2,000 Iroquois warriors in March of 1649 launched a coordinated attack that overran and destroyed the Huron Confederacy.
Huron, who survived the onslaught, fled to neighboring tribes, only to have the Iroquois pursue them and destroy their allies. The Tionontati fell later that year, followed by the Algonkin and Nipissing in 1650. The neutral suffered a similar fate in 1651. The Erie was defeated after a three-year war with the Iroquois ending in 1656. At the same time, Iroquois war parties swept into lower Michigan and completed the expulsion of its original inhabitants. Lower Michigan was a "no man's land" between the Iroquois and their defeated enemies in Wisconsin and Upper Michigan during the next forty years. Thousands of Iroquoian-speaking captives were adopted into the tribes of the Iroquois League, swelling their ranks to over 25,000 and creating a severe problem. So long as one group of their former enemies remained free, the Iroquois were in danger of an insurrection from within, and 1,000 Tionontati and Huron had escaped and fled north to the Ottawa villages at Mackinac. Iroquois warriors followed and tried to capture them in 1650. This failed, but after certain other attacks, the Tionontati and Huron (who would merge to become the Wyandot) evacuated Mackinac and moved west to an island in Green Bay. But the Iroquois were relentless, and a Mohawk and Seneca war party attacked their new village in 1652.
Chief Shabbona volunteered his people as scouts for the Americans while pursuing the Sauk in Wisconsin. Afterward, he was hailed as the "white man's friend," but this did not prevent the cession of five million acres at the Treaty of Chicago in 1832 or the removal of his people to Iowa. Chief Shabbona got to keep a small reserve in Illinois for his loyalty and service. The Sauk never forgave him for what they considered a betrayal, and Neopope made an unsuccessful attempt in Kansas to assassinate him during the fall of 1837. This forced Chief Shabbona to return to Illinois until Neopope died in 1849. He lived with his people in Kansas for the next two years, but when he returned to Illinois in 1851, he discovered whites had taken his land. Almost 80 at the time, Chief Shabbona cried. He died in 1859 and is buried in the Evergreen Cemetery in Morris, Illinois. In 1903, white citizens erected a monument in his honor but never returned his land.
The Prairie Potawatomi were removed in 1834, and Ojibwe and Ottawa of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin were assigned land between Missouri and Little Platte Rivers, known as the Platte Purchase. Some bands refused to leave and moved north to lands belonging to the Menominee and Ojibwe. A few went to Canada to escape. In 1836, the southern part of the Platte Purchase was added to the state of Missouri. After the Potawatomi killed two white men, a brief war ensued (Heatherly War). Army dragoons and Missouri militia attacked the Missouri Band of the Sauk and Fox in retaliation (a not-too-subtle suggestion to move). In 1837, the Potawatomi were relocated north of the Missouri line to a reservation near Council Bluffs. It was not a peaceful place. In 1841, a hunting party of 16 Delaware and a Potawatomi were attacked by the Dakota near the Sioux Fork of Mink Creek in Iowa. Only the Potawatomi escaped, reaching the Sauk and Fox villages. A Sauk and Fox war party caught the Dakota raiders and killed them.
The removal of the Potawatomi of the Woods from Michigan and Indiana did not proceed as smoothly. Rather than agree to immediate removal, they signed two treaties in October 1832 (Tippecanoe or Wabash Treaties), ceding most of their remaining land in exchange for reserves and annual annuities. This temporary solution continued while American agent A.C. Pepper negotiated treaties with the individual bands (four in 1834 and eight in 1836) to cede their reserves and agree to removal. Once this was done, a collective agreement with five bands was signed in February 1837 in Washington, DC. The chiefs signed, but there was widespread resistance to this agreement. Some bands slipped across the border into Ontario, where they have remained ever since. Others were not so passive, and the chief at Nottawaseepe was poisoned by his people while trying to convince them to accept removal. Menominee and his band at Twin Lakes, Indiana, refused to sign any treaties. Confronted in July 1838, he still refused to sign or leave Indiana.
Indiana governor David Wallace sent General John Tipton to force removal. He arrived at Menominee's village on August 30 and arrested every Potawatomi there. Menominee was thrown into a caged wagon. The soldiers burned down the village, and on September 4, 1859, the Potawatomi departed on what they would call the "Trail of Death." Not as nearly as famous as the Cherokee Trail of Tears, it was every bit as deadly. The first child died on the second day out, and 51 Potawatomi became too sick to continue. By the time they reached Logansport, four more children were dead. The 300 who were sick required a halt so a hospital could be erected. The march continued across northern Illinois until it reached the ferry crossing the Mississippi at Quincy, Illinois. The Potawatomi camped outside the town for a few days while the ferry carried their baggage across. When Sunday came, more than 300 of these "savages" attended mass at the local Catholic church. The church was less than a half-mile from the site of the Potawatomi village destroyed by Roger's Rangers in 1813.
Less than 700 Potawatomi arrived at Osawatomie in November. Half of the graves marking their route were filled with their children. Among the casualties was Father B. Petit, who had volunteered to accompany his congregation to Kansas. He became ill when they reached the Illinois River and died at St. Louis in February 1839. Some Potawatomi remained behind and hid for many years. Laws were passed as late as 1870 to force their removal but were never enforced. They remain today as part of the Huron and Pokagon Potawatomi in southern Michigan. The Potawatomi of the Woods remained on their reservation in eastern Kansas for almost eight years. In 1846, the government decided to consolidate the two groups of Potawatomi into a single tribe on one reservation. By this time, the Ojibwe and Ottawa, who had accompanied the Prairie Potawatomi West, had merged with them. However, it was still necessary to have both groups of Potawatomi sign the agreement. This was accomplished in June in exchange for $850,000 (
Needing allies to survive, the Wyandot and Ottawa joined the Potawatomi to build a large fortified village (Mitchigami). The Iroquois returned in 1653, but their first attack was repulsed, and during the long siege that followed, the Iroquois ran out of food and were forced to retreat. Unfortunately, they had also attacked the Nikikouek Ojibwe on the northern shore of Lake Huron, and the Mississauga Ojibwe killed almost half of them on their return to New York. Although they were making enemies, the Iroquois returned to Wisconsin after the Wyandot. There was another attack in 1655, and by 1658, the Wyandot had left Green Bay and moved inland to Lake Pepin on the Mississippi. The Ottawa also went for the south shore of Lake Superior at Chequamegon and Keweenaw Bay. However, their departures brought little relief for the Potawatomi and other refugees at Green Bay.
After the Iroquois had overrun the Huron in 1649, the French fur trade was in shambles. In danger of being overrun and destroyed (only 400 Frenchmen in North America at this time), the French welcomed an offer of peace from the western Iroquois (Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga) in 1653, and to protect this truce, the French stopped their travel to the Great Lakes. However, they kept inviting former trading partners to bring furs to Montreal. With the Iroquois controlling the Ottawa River, this was a hazardous undertaking requiring large canoe fleets and hundreds of heavily armed warriors to force their way past the Iroquois blockade. However, having become dependent on European trade goods, the Wyandot and Ottawa were willing to try. After collecting furs from the Cree far to the north and the Wisconsin tribes, they used Ojibwe warriors to supplement their ranks and fought to and from Montreal. Unable to stop the convoys, the Iroquois went after their source, and their war parties moved into Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, attacking any tribe supplying fur to the Wyandot and Ottawa.
The renewed trade and raiding added to the misery in the region. More than 20,000 refugees had crowded into an area that was, for the most part, too far north for maize agriculture. This forced the farming tribes to rely on hunting to feed themselves, quickly using the limited resources available. Hunting for fur only aggravated the problem. Harassed by Iroquois warriors, ravaged by epidemics, and stalked by starvation, the refugees fought among themselves or with the neighboring Dakota and Ojibwe over hunting territory. The Potawatomi were more fortunate because their villages were located on the Door Peninsula, jutting into Lake Michigan to form the south side of Green Bay. With some of the best soil in the area, this was where the Winnebago had grown their corn for centuries. Blessed with an ample food supply, the Potawatomi found it easier to maintain their tribal unity while larger tribes separated into mixed villages.
Potawatomi villages were mixed but not as much, and this allowed them to become the dominant tribe in an area that also contained Wyandot, Ottawa, Illinois, Miami, Nipissing, Noquet, Menominee, Winnebago, Mascouten, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, several varieties of Ojibwe, and even some Cheyenne, with occasional unfriendly visits from the Dakota, Iowa, and Iroquois. In this tense atmosphere, warfare was constant between shifting alliances based more on locality than tribal affiliation. One example was the Sturgeon War, which erupted sometime around 1658 between the Ojibwe and Menominee over fish weirs at the mouth of a river. After the Menominee refused to remove their weirs, preventing the sturgeon from moving upstream, the Ojibwe destroyed their village. The survivors fled to their relatives at Green Bay, who asked the nearby villages (Green Bay tribes) to help them retaliate against the Ojibwe. Before it was over, the Potawatomi, Fox, Sauk, and Noquet had joined the fighting.
While chaos ruled in Wisconsin, the French peace with the Iroquois ended in 1658 after the murder of a Jesuit ambassador. War resumed along the St. Lawrence, but since there was no longer peace to protect, Pierre-Espirit Radisson and Médart Chouart des Groseilliers saw an opportunity to ignore the travel ban and renew the fur trade in the Great Lakes. Joining a party of Wyandot on their return journey, they reached the west end of Lake Superior and traded with the Dakota. They were arrested, and their furs were confiscated when they returned to Quebec in 1660. But by 1664, the French had tired of living in fear of the Iroquois. Canada was placed under the king, and a regiment of regular French soldiers was sent to Quebec to deal with the Iroquois. The ban on travel west was also lifted. In 1665, the fur trader Nicolas Perrot, Jesuit Father Claude-Jean Allouez, and six other Frenchmen accompanied 400 Ottawa and Huron on their return to the Great Lakes. They reached Green Bay in September and spent the winter.
Allouez was interested in re-establishing contact with the Wyandot and Ottawa converts that the Jesuits had made before 1649. He visited many other villages in the area and observed the Potawatomi were growing corn. Perrot, of course, was interested in more practical matters like fur. In 1665, the French soldiers in Quebec began attacks on the Iroquois homeland, and by 1667, the League had agreed to a peace that included French allies and trading partners. This brought a much-needed period of stability to Wisconsin and allowed the French to travel unmolested to Green Bay and beyond. However, as the dominant tribe in the area, the Potawatomi were unhappy with the increased French presence. During the 1660s, some of them had accompanied the Ottawa to Montreal, and they had come home angered by the lack of respect and abuse they had received.
The Potawatomi were also accustomed to being middlemen in collecting furs for the Ottawa and Wyandot to take to Montreal. They viewed the French traders at Green Bay as competitors in this enterprise. In 1668, the Potawatomi attempted to bypass the French and trade directly at Montreal, but Perrot thwarted them by building a permanent trading post at La Baye (Green Bay). A Jesuit mission, St. Francis Xavier, was added the following year. As the number of French grew, the Potawatomi lost some of their former influence. To help their fur trade, the French began mediating intertribal disputes to end the warfare endemic to the region. This also annoyed the Potawatomi, who attempted to usurp (take a position of power or importance illegally or by force) the French by mediating a dispute between The Illinois and Miami. Despite these problems, the Potawatomi learned to tolerate the French, who provided the firearms they were using against the Dakota. In 1671, the Potawatomi provided the guides that took Perrot south to the Miami villages near Chicagou.
To keep the French supplied with fur, the Green Bay tribes were forced to hunt farther west, bringing confrontations with the Dakota. To fight them, the Potawatomi in 1675 were with the Meskwaki (Fox), Sauk, and Ottawa, but the Dakota were not easily intimidated and attacked a Potawatomi village near Green Bay in 1677. The Jesuits had made their first converts among the Potawatomi by this time. One of these was a young warrior from an influential family who, shortly afterward, was killed by a bear while hunting. In itself, this was not unusual, but the bear had been particularly enraged and ripped his corpse to pieces. The warrior's family felt that the mutilation and dismemberment had to be avenged, so the Potawatomi declared war on bears and captured and tortured-to-death more than 500 bears during the next few years.
In 1680, Daniel Greysolon Dulhut (Duluth) negotiated a truce between the Saulteur Ojibwe and the Dakota, allowing French traders to visit the Dakota villages. Unfortunately, the agreement did not include the Keweenaw Ojibwa or the Green Bay tribes, and they were still at war with the Dakota and did not want the French to arm their enemies. In 1682, Menominee and Ojibwe warriors of Chief Achiganaga murdered two French traders in upper Michigan. DeLhut's attempt to punish Achiganaga and his warriors was frustrated when the Potawatomi and Ottawa let it be known there would be trouble if Achiganaga's punishment was too severe. DeLhut relented and executed only one Menominee, but the unrest grew as the French continued to trade with the Dakota. Rumors spread among the Potawatomi that the Jesuits used witchcraft to cause epidemics, and in 1683, the Sauk murdered two Jesuit donné. The Potawatomi chief Onanghisse began to organize a conspiracy to force the French to leave Green Bay.
This might have gotten serious if other events had not intervened. The peace with the Iroquois ended in 1680 with devastating attacks against The Illinois. This marked the beginning of the second phase of the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700). It is a common mistake to view the French effort in the Great Lakes as unified when competition between French traders was often as treacherous as any intertribal rivalry. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (Sieur du La Salle is a title translating to "Lord of the Manor") tried to open trade with the Illiniwek Confederacy in 1679, Perrot and the other Green Bay traders took advantage of the traditional animosity between the Miami and Illiniwek to secretly encourage the Miami and Mascouten to settle at the south end of Lake Michigan and block La Salle's access. La Salle slipped past in 1680 and built Fort de Crévecoeur on the upper Illinois River, but this new post caused The Illinois to increase their beaver hunting, the main reason for the Iroquois attacks that year.
With an extraordinary sense of timing, La Salle left Henri de Tonti in charge of Fort de Crévecoeur and returned to Quebec when the Iroquois attacked. Tonti and the other French abandoned the post and fled north to Green Bay, where they would have starved for all the help they got from the French at La Baye, but Onanghisse's Pottawattamie defied Perrot and fed them. Tonti returned to the devastation the Iroquois had left behind in Illinois. The Iroquois returned the following year, but Tonti afterward built Fort Saint Louis du Rocher at Starved Rock (Utica, Illinois - article: "The Starved Rock Massacre of 1769 - Fact or Fiction.") and convinced the Illinois and Miami to settle nearby and defend it. The Iroquois failure to take Fort St. Louis in 1684 is generally regarded as the turning point of the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700). Encouraged by this victory, the French tried to organize an alliance against the Iroquois. The French's first offensive action was such a fiasco. Joseph La Barre, the governor of Canada, signed a treaty with the Iroquois, conceding most of the Ohio Valley east of the Illinois River.
Until this point, the French at Green Bay had ignored the trouble their rivals had gotten into in the Illinois country and had no desire to join the fight against the Iroquois. Although concerned by a Seneca attack at Mackinac in 1683, the Potawatomi and other Wisconsin tribes were angry about French trade with the Dakota. They had no wish to defend French interests in the South. This changed when Jacques-Renede Denonville replaced La Barre. Orders were issued for the French to end their differences and cooperate. Denonville repudiated LaBarre's treaty, built new forts, and strengthened old ones. More importantly, he began to arm and organize an alliance of the Great Lakes Algonquin against the Iroquois. The Potawatomi became an essential member of this alliance after taking the offensive in 1687, roughly coinciding with King William's War (1688-97) between Britain and France.
By the 1690s, the Iroquois were on the defense and retreating across the Great Lakes to their homeland in New York. This allowed the Potawatomi and other refugee tribes to leave the overcrowded conditions near Green Bay for places with better soil and longer growing seasons. The Potawatomi began expanding south along the west side of Lake Michigan - apparently adding to their population by taking in Abenaki and New England Algonquin refugees from King Phillip's War (1675-76) who had immigrated to the Great Lakes. By 1685, there was a Potawatomi village in Milwaukee; another was in Chicago in 1695. At about the same time, almost 1,000 Potawatomi settled on the opposite corner of Lake Michigan near the St. Joseph mission, which Father Allouez had established for the Miami in southwest Michigan.
By 1696, the Iroquois had been beaten and asked for peace, but French influence had declined so much that they had difficulty persuading their allies to agree. The reason was a glut of fur on the European market had caused a drastic fall in the price of beaver furs. Finally willing to listen to Jesuit complaints about the corruption the fur trade was causing among Indians, Louis XIV issued a decree in 1696 suspending the fur trade in the Great Lakes. Without the trade goods needed by their allies, the French authority collapsed. Sensing this weakness, the Iroquois offered peace and access to British traders to the Ottawa and Ojibwe if they would break with the alliance. This was refused, but suspicion grew within the alliance that the French would abandon them to make their own peace with the Iroquois. Using every possible argument, the French finally convinced the Algonquin to sign a treaty with the Iroquois in 1701, just as another war started with Great Britain - Queen Anne's War (1701-13).
Most of the fighting during this war was in New England and the Canadian Maritimes, while the exhausted Iroquois (except for the Mohawk) honored their agreement with the French and remained neutral. This was fortunate because the French alliance was unraveling without the fur trade. A fresh round of fighting broke out along the upper Mississippi in western Wisconsin during the 1690s between the Dakota, Ojibwe, Fox, Mascouten, Kickapoo, Illinois, and Miami. The Potawatomi had moved south by this time and were not a significant participant. Further east, the British and Iroquois started trading with French allies, subverting their loyalty. After several desperate pleas from Canada explaining the situation, permission was finally given for a new post at Detroit to retain the commitment of the Great Lakes tribes. In 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac arrived, built Fort Ponchartrain, and invited the Ottawa and Wyandot to settle nearby. Many of them left Mackinac at this time and moved south.
Groups of Ojibwe followed and settled just to the north, keeping French allies from trading with the British, Cadillac kept inviting other tribes to Detroit, including some groups of the Potawatomi who came during 1704. Rather than strengthening the alliance, the French, within a few years, reproduced the same miserable conditions in Wisconsin during the 1660s... too many people and too few resources. Meanwhile, the Ottawa still at Mackinac 1706 defied the French and prepared a war party to send against the Dakota. This upset the Wyandot and Miami in the vicinity so much that they planned to punish them by attacking the Ottawa village as soon as its warriors left. However, a Potawatomi warned the Ottawa, who ambushed five Miami chiefs and then attacked the Miami village, driving them into the French fort. Before the fighting was over, 50 Miami, 30 Ottawa, and two French were dead, and the conflict spread to Detroit. A confusing situation but indicative of the problems afflicting the French alliance at the time.
In response to the fighting at Mackinac, the Ottawa and Miami fought with each other near Detroit that year, and even the Wyandot, Ottawa, and Ojibwe (generally on the best of terms) were having occasional skirmishes over hunting territory in the vicinity. Aware of the tension at Detroit, the St. Joseph Potawatomi decided not to join their relatives and asked for their own trading post and garrison. Unfortunately, the French could not grant this until after the death of Louis XIV in 1715, which allowed the trade suspension to be rescinded. Meanwhile, Cadillac had ignored all the warning signs and, in 1710, invited the Fox to move to Detroit. Hostile to the French from their first meeting and angry about the recent Ojibwe attack that the French had encouraged to force them from the St. Croix Valley and Fox Portage in Wisconsin, 1,000 Fox arrived at Detroit accompanied by many of their Kickapoo and Mascouten allies.
The Fox was returning to what had been their homeland before the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700), and they were not reluctant to inform the other tribes they found living there of this. Within a short time, the Potawatomi, Ottawa, Wyandot, and Ojibwe demanded that the French order the Fox to return to Wisconsin. When the French ignored them, they took matters into their own hands. In the spring of 1712, Ottawa and Potawatomi warriors attacked a Mascouten hunting party near the headwaters of the St. Joseph River. The Mascouten fled east to their Fox allies, and as the Fox prepared to retaliate, the French attempted to stop them. At this point, the Fox, Mascouten, and Kickapoo decided to attack Fort Ponchartrain. The first assault failed and was followed by a siege, but the Potawatomi, Ottawa, Wyandot, and Ojibwe relief force arrived and fell upon the Fox from the rear. Only 100 Foxes escaped during the following slaughter. Most fled to the Iroquois, but some returned to Wisconsin with the Mascouten and Kickapoo. Once there, they joined the Fox, who had remained behind and began taking their revenge on the French and their allies for the massacre at Detroit.
The Potawatomi were one of the most important French allies during the First Fox War (1712-16), but the French alliance was in such disarray that it took almost three years to gather a compelling force to go after the Fox. In 1715, a French-Potawatomi expedition defeated the Kickapoo and Mascouten, forcing them to make a separate peace. The Fox refused to quit and gathered in a fort in southern Wisconsin. Louis de Louvigny arrived with a large party of Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Ottawa warriors the following year and laid siege. The French were finally forced to withdraw and afterward offered peace. The Fox accepted, but both sides remained bitter and distrustful of the other. The Fox fought with the Illinois and Osage in the following years and continued antagonizing the French. Under pressure from the Potawatomi and other allies to do something about the Fox, the French decided on drastic measures.
Although no official policy was approved by the king until 1732, the drastic measures turned out to be genocide - after a war of extermination, any Fox who survived would be sold as slaves to the West Indies. By this time, the Fox had aggravated enough tribes that there was little opposition within the alliance. After isolating the Fox from their Dakota and Winnebago allies, the French attacked in 1728. The initial French offensive of the Second Fox War (1728-37) accomplished little. Afterward, the Fox managed to "shoot themselves in the foot" by alienating their only allies, the Mascouten and Kickapoo. When these tribes went to the French, the Fox were isolated and battered from all sides. In 1730, about 1,000 Fox decided to accept an Iroquois offer of sanctuary and leave Wisconsin, but crossing northern Illinois, they fought with The Illinois. Forced to build a temporary fort to protect their women and children, the Illinois surrounded them and called in the French.
The French and their allies (including Detroit and St. Joseph Potawatomi) came from every direction. After a 23-day siege, the Fox were starving and attempted to escape one night during a thunderstorm, but the French and their allies caught up and killed all of them. After this, all that remained were the 500 Fox who had stayed in Wisconsin. They fled to the Sauk west of Green Bay, and the French went after them in 1734. When the Sauk refused to surrender the Fox, they were attacked, but the French commander was killed during the assault. In the confusion that followed, the Fox and Sauk abandoned their village and fled west across the Mississippi into Iowa. The French sent another expedition against them in 1736, but their allies were having doubts about genocide by this time. At a meeting in Montreal in the spring of 1837, the Potawatomi and Ottawa asked the French to forgive the Sauk, while the Menominee and Winnebago made a similar request on behalf of the Fox. Faced with a revolt of their allies, a war with the pro-British Chickasaw, which had closed the lower Mississippi, and fighting between the Ojibwe and Dakota in Minnesota, the French reluctantly agreed.
By 1718, the Potawatomi had replaced the Miami at St. Joseph. Their warriors served as loyal French allies and raided the pro-British Chickasaw and Cherokee during 1740-41. The French had a serious problem with the increasing competition from British traders. To meet this, the French reoccupied or opened new posts at Michilimackinac, La Baye, Ouiatenon, Chequamegon, St. Joseph, Pimitoui, Miamis, Niagara, De Chartes, and Vincennes, but the damage was done. British goods were generally cheaper and better than what the French could offer, and by 1728, 80% of the beaver at Albany was coming from French allies. This became critical during the King George's War (1744-48) after a British blockade of the St. Lawrence cut the supply of French trade goods. During the Queen Anne's War, there was little fighting in the Great Lakes, but the Potawatomi joined other Great Lakes warriors to travel to Montreal and defend Quebec from a British invasion that never came.
However, economic warfare in the Ohio Valley between the British and French continued throughout the war and in the years that followed. Ohio was claimed by the Iroquois by right of conquest, the French by right of discovery, and the British since the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) had placed the Iroquois under their protection. In truth, none of these claims were valid, and Ohio belonged to the Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo (Ohio Iroquois) who lived there. Nominally members of the Iroquois Covenant Chain, the Ohio tribes were independent of the League and had no wish to be dominated by the Iroquois, British, or French. But they did want to trade, and because of this, British traders could visit Ohio and trade directly. This proved irresistible to French allies, and in 1748, Orontony's Wyandot at Sandusky burned their French trading post and attempted to organize a revolt against the French at Detroit. This collapsed after Orontony died in 1750 but was followed by a more dangerous conspiracy of the Miami chief Memeskia (known as La Demoiselle to the French and Old Britain to the British).
Memeskia sacked a French trading post on the Wabash and moved his people east to a new village at Pickawillany (Piqua, Ohio), where he allowed the British to build a trading post. He then invited other Miami and Kickapoo, Illinois, and Potawatomi to come to his village to trade. The French noted the defections from their alliance when the Potawatomi and other tribes ceased their attacks on the Chickasaw and Cherokee South of the Ohio River. The French tried to organize an attack on Memeskia to force the Ohio tribes to expel the British. Still, the Detroit tribes (including the Potawatomi) were thinking of dumping the French for the British and, using the excuse of the recent smallpox epidemic, refused to act. In desperation, Charles Langlade, a Métis (mixed blood), gathered a war party of 250 Ojibwe and Ottawa at Mackinac and, in June 1752, attacked and destroyed Pickawillany. "Old Britain" and 30 Miami were killed, and the British trading post was looted and burned. The attack sent a chilling message to French allies to break with the alliance to trade with the British.
By fall, the Potawatomi, Miami, and Wyandot had apologized to the French and renewed their attacks on the Chickasaw. This encouraged the French to construct a line of forts in western Pennsylvania to block British access to Ohio. Virginia, in 1754, sent a young militia major named George Washington to demand the French abandon their new forts, but he got into a fight with French soldiers, which started the French and Indian War (1755-63). The Potawatomi supported the French throughout this war, first sending warriors to defeat Braddock's army at Fort Duquesne in 1755 and then east to Montreal to participate in the French campaigns in northern New York in 1756-57. During the siege of Fort William Henry in 1757, their warriors contracted smallpox and brought it back to their villages. The epidemic that swept through the Great Lakes during the winter of 1757-58 took most French allies out of the war. Quebec fell to the British in September 1759, and Montreal surrendered the following summer.
The French were finished in North America. British soldiers occupied most of their forts in the Great Lakes later that year, and only Fort de Chartres in the Illinois county remained under French control. In 1761, the Potawatomi and other members of the French alliance met with Sir William Johnson at Detroit to learn what to expect from their new British "fathers." Johnson hoped to continue the old French system, but he was overruled by Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander in North America. Amherst despised American colonials, so his feelings about Indians are not difficult to imagine. As an economic measure, he ordered an end to the annual presents given to chiefs, increased trade goods prices, and restricted supply, especially of gunpowder and whiskey. He then left it to Johnson to deal with the dissatisfaction, which was short in coming. Johnson discovered that the Seneca circulated a war belt at the Detroit meeting, calling for a general uprising.
Johnson squashed this, but calls for revolt continued. A drought in the Ohio Valley during the summer of 1762 brought winter famine. At the same time, Neolin, the Delaware prophet, began preaching a return to traditional Indian values and a rejection of the white man's trade goods. The St. Joseph Potawatomi, who were heavily Catholic due to the Jesuit mission, accepted many of his ideas but gave them Christian interpretations. However, Neolin's most crucial convert was Pontiac, the Ottawa chief at Detroit, who decided a return to traditional values meant getting rid of the British and bringing back the French. In meetings during the spring of 1763, he secretly organized a revolt that captured nine of the twelve British forts west of the Appalachians when it struck in May. The Detroit Potawatomi joined Pontiac's attack on Fort Detroit, while the St. Joseph Potawatomi overwhelmed their British garrison. However, the uprising collapsed after failing to take Forts Pitt, Niagara, and Detroit.
Pontiac was forced to abandon the siege and flee west to northern Indiana. As the British rushed troops to the area, the intractable Amherst was replaced by Thomas Gage, and the Proclamation of 1763 was issued, halting further settlement west of the Appalachians. The Potawatomi and other tribes attended a conference with Johnson at Fort Niagara in July 1764 and made peace. Gage ended the trade restrictions, and Pontiac signed his own accord in 1766, promising never to fight the British again. Unpopular among his people because of this and his failure to capture Detroit, he settled in northern Illinois, where he still enjoyed a considerable following. There were rumors Pontiac was secretly trying to organize another uprising in the West. In 1769, he was murdered by a Peoria at the establishment of a British trader in Cahokia. The British were suspected of arranging his assassination, but the wrath of his supporters fell on The Illinois. The Potawatomi allied with the Ojibwe, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, Winnebago, and Ottawa and avenged Pontiac by destroying the Illinois Confederation (article: "The Starved Rock Massacre of 1769 - Fact or Fiction.").
Fewer than 400 Illinois survived this war to reach the protection of the French settlement at Kaskaskia. The victors divided their abandoned lands among themselves, with the Prairie Potawatomi expanding down the Illinois River as far as present-day Peoria. With the Prairie Potawatomi controlling most of northeast Illinois and southeast Wisconsin, the St. Joseph Potawatomi began to push south into northern Indiana. This was particularly annoying to the Miami, who had given ground to the Potawatomi for many years, and relations between these two tribes were strained. Their dispute was poorly timed since the American colonists had forced the British to rescind the Proclamation of 1763 and negotiate with the Iroquois to open the Ohio Valley for settlement. Illegal squatters had started coming after the Pontiac Rebellion, but the trickle became a flood after the Iroquois cession of Ohio at Fort Stanwix in 1768.
Shawnee protests against the Iroquois brought threats of extermination if they resisted. In 1769, the Shawnee made overtures of an alliance to the Potawatomi, Illinois, Kickapoo, Wea, Piankashaw, Miami, Wyandot, Ottawa, Delaware, Mascouten, Ojibwe, Cherokee, and Chickasaw. Meetings were held on the Scioto River in 1770 and 1771, but William Johnson's threats of war with the Iroquois kept other tribes from helping the Shawnee and Mingo during Lord Dunmore's War (1774). Afterward, the British washed their hands of the whole affair, withdrew most of their garrisons, and sat back to watch. Their detachment ended with the outbreak of the Revolutionary War (1775-83) when they armed the Ohio tribes and urged them to attack American settlements. Because the disputed lands were in Kentucky and Ohio, only the Shawnee and Chickamauga Cherokee were initially involved. By 1779, the British had brought the Detroit and St. Joseph Potawatomi, Saginaw and Mackinac Ojibwe, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, and Kickapoo into the fight with the "Long Knives" (American frontiersmen) along the Ohio River.
France had given Louisiana to Spain in 1763 rather than see it fall into British hands. The Prairie Bands of the Potawatomi and Kickapoo in central Illinois had become closer to the French traders from St. Louis than the British. Because of this and their remoteness to Ohio, they had remained neutral during the Revolution's first years and did not participate in the attacks on the Kentucky settlements. This changed when George Rogers Clark and his army of 200 Kentucky frontiersmen arrived in the Illinois country in 1778 and surprised the small British garrison at Kaskaskia. Clark also took Cahokia and won the support of the French in the area, but he hated the Indians and spurned their offers to help capture Detroit. The opportunity slipped through his fingers, and that fall, Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit (known in Kentucky as the "hair buyer" because he paid for American scalps), recaptured Fort Sackville at Vincennes with a force of Detroit warriors and French. Clark made a daring mid-winter trek across southern Illinois to Vincennes, and after a brief siege, Hamilton surrendered in February 1779.
The British and French were spared, but Clark and his men executed the warriors with tomahawks. Among the victims were Detroit Potawatomi, Ottawa, Wyandot, and Saginaw Ojibwe, and although Clark had once received overtures of cooperation from almost every tribe in Illinois who traded with the French and Spanish (Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Illinois, Winnebago, Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Miami), this brutality turned most of them against the Americans. Only the Milwaukee Potawatomi of Letourneau (Blackbird or Siggenauk) and some of The Illinois remained friendly for the remainder of the war. During the winter of 1779-80, the British planned an offensive to reclaim the Illinois country and seize the entire Mississippi basin. Spain had entered the war against the British by this time, so part of the offensive was directed against them. While British naval forces attacked Spanish ports on the Gulf of Mexico, a column under Captain Henry Bird left Detroit with 600 warriors (150 Potawatomi) in April 1780 and, adding another 600 as it moved south, struck the settlements south of the Ohio River. Before turning back, Bird's army left a trail of death and destruction throughout Kentucky.
Meanwhile, another expedition under Captain Emanuel Hesse moved down the Illinois River to attack St. Louis. However, the Spanish and French were warned of its approach and had ample time to prepare. When the assault by 950 British and their allies (Ojibwe, Fox, Sauk, Winnebago, Dakota, and Potawatomi) finally occurred on May 26, it was repulsed after heavy losses to both sides. An attack against Cahokia across the Mississippi also failed, and the British retreated without results. Potawatomi participation in the remaining years of the war varied considerably. The Detroit bands remained active in the British cause and, in 1782, helped defeat Colonel William Crawford's army (June) and Kentucky militia at Blue Licks (August), during which Daniel Boone's son Israel was killed. The Milwaukee Potawatomi sided with the Spanish and Americans. At their suggestion, the Spanish 1780 launched a retaliatory raid against the British post at St. Joseph, but the British caught the raiders in northern Illinois and killed or captured most of them.
After the Spanish and French entered the war, the loyalty of the heavily Catholic St. Joseph Potawatomi to the British was wavering, so before launching a second attack on St. Joseph, the Spanish promised them a share of the plunder. In January 1781, Spanish troops of Capt. Eugene Pourre destroyed the British fort and trading post without resistance from the Potawatomi. At best, the St. Joseph Potawatomi were reluctant British allies, and their encroachment into northern Indiana created problems. In 1780 The Miami attacked a Potawatomi war party heading south to attack the Kentucky settlements. To keep both tribes fighting Americans instead of each other, Simon de Peyster, the British agent at Detroit, was required to use all of his skills as a mediator.
The Revolutionary War "officially" ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris. Because George Rogers Clark's conquest of the Illinois country placed the western boundary of the United States at the Mississippi River. "Unofficially," the war continued to 1794 because the British, using the pretext of debts owed to British loyalists (Tories), refused to withdraw from its forts on American territory until these were paid. This was impossible unless the Americans could sell the lands in Ohio, and the British knew this. Although they urged their Indian allies to stop attacking American settlements in 1783, they encouraged an alliance to keep the Americans out of Ohio. In the fall of 1783, the coalition was formed at a meeting at Sandusky. The British did not attend, but they sent the Mohawk Joseph Brant to speak on their behalf and let it be known they would support the alliance in war with the Americans.
The membership ultimately included Potawatomi, Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, Iroquois (Canadian), Miami, Wea, Piankashaw, Fox, Sauk, Ottawa, Ojibwe, Kickapoo, and Chickamauga (Cherokee). With more than 2,000 warriors, the alliance was a formidable barrier to American expansion in the Ohio Valley. After forcing the Iroquois to acknowledge their previous cession of Ohio at Fort Stanwix in 1768, the United States tried to establish a boundary with the Ohio tribes through treaties. However, the Americans refused to deal with the alliance because they considered it a British plot (which it was). Instead, they signed treaties with individual tribes at Fort McIntosh (1785) and Fort Finney (1786). Since the chiefs signing these agreements did not represent the alliance (and often their own tribe), the treaties were worthless. To make matters worse, the American commissioners did not represent their frontier citizens, who had rid themselves of one government trying to keep them out of Ohio. They were ready to take on the one in Philadelphia if it stood in their way.
Frontiersmen simply ignored the treaty and moved onto Indian lands. The tiny American army could not stop this, and when Indian warriors tried to remove the squatters, there was war. The first council fire of the alliance was at the Shawnee village of Waketomica, but it was burned by the Americans in 1786, and the capital was moved to Brownstown, a Wyandot village near Detroit. As alliance warriors and frontiersmen exchanged raids and atrocities, the government finally attempted to resolve the dispute by treaty. In December 1787, the governor of the Northwest Territory, Arthur St. Clair II (for whom St. Clair County, Illinois is named), requested a meeting to be held at the falls of Muskingum River. The alliance met to determine its position and agreed to accept the Muskingum as the boundary. However, there was opposition, and Joseph Brant left the meeting in disgust and returned to Ontario.
The Miami, Kickapoo, and Shawnee also pulled out, but the Delaware, Wyandot, and Detroit tribes (including the Potawatomi) decided to attend. The Fort Harmar Treaty (January 1789) was the first treaty between the United States and Potawatomi. Unfortunately, it meant very little. There were no Potawatomi villages in Ohio, so they had little stake in the outcome. The signatures of the other tribes were more critical. After fighting resumed that summer, the militant Shawnee and Miami dominated the alliance, and the Americans decided to use force. The initial battles of Little Turtle's War (1790-94) ended in disaster for the Americans. Led by the Miami war chief Little Turtle, alliance warriors inflicted the worst defeats an American army ever received from Indians: Harmar (1790) and St. Clair (1791).
But the Americans could not afford to quit, and President Washington sent "Mad Anthony" Wayne to Ohio. Wayne was anything but "mad." During the next two years, he trained his "Legion," a large force of regulars to back the frontier militia. He began careful preparations for an offensive to destroy the alliance villages in northwest Ohio. Meanwhile, continuous warfare took its toll on the alliance, which could not feed its warriors for extended periods. Complaining about the lack of food, the Fox and Sauk left in 1792. At the same time, General Charles Scott attacked the villages on the lower Wabash. He captured a large number of women and children, which forced the Wabash tribes (Wea, Piankashaw, and Kickapoo) to make a separate peace. By the time it was defeated by the Americans at Fallen Timbers in 1794, the alliance had less than 800 warriors. During their retreat after the battle, the warriors watched the British close the gates of Fort Miami to them rather than risk a confrontation with Wayne's army.
In November, the British signed the Jay Treaty, resolving their differences with the United States and agreeing to leave their forts on American territory. Abandoned by the British, the alliance chiefs assembled at Fort Greenville in August 1795 and signed a treaty ceding Ohio except for the northwest. Negotiations involved a considerable number from the alliance (the Americans counted 1,130 attended). Of these, 240 were Potawatomi, and the 24 signatures of their chiefs represent the largest delegation to sign the treaty. Although the Potawatomi did not surrender any of their lands at Greenville, they received $1,000 for signing. More than 60 of the Potawatomi who attended mysteriously got sick and died afterward, and the British claimed they had been poisoned by the Americans. There was no evidence to support this, but the suspicion remained and prepared the way for Tecumseh and his brother, the Shawnee Prophet.
An unhappy peace settled across the Ohio Valley afterward, but in the wake of military defeat, it was a terrible period of social disintegration and breakdown of tribal authority. The Shawnee chief Blue Jacket tried to resurrect the council at Brownstown in 1801, but his efforts were thwarted by Little Turtle and the other "peace chiefs" trying to reach an accommodation with the Americans. They had an impossible task. The Americans finally got Ohio in 1795 but would not be satisfied until they had the entire Ohio Valley. William Henry Harrison arrived as the new governor of the Northwest Territory in 1800 with specific instructions to end Indian title to their lands through a treaty, and he set about his work. The Potawatomi and others signed treaties at Fort Wayne (1803), Fort Industry (1805), and Grouseland (1805), ceding portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. At the Detroit treaty signed in November 1807 ceded the southeast quarter of lower Michigan, where the Potawatomi were required to surrender some of their own lands for the first time. The Americans took a little more at Brownstown in 1808.
It was a good time for a prophet, and one arose among the Shawnee. His name originally was Lalawethika, and he was known among the Shawnee as a drunkard and loudmouth. In 1805, Lalawethika received a spiritual vision and changed his name to Tenskwatawa, "the open door." Unwilling to struggle with his Shawnee name, Americans simply called him "The Prophet." His message was similar to the Delaware Prophet Neolin's in 1763 - return to traditional values and reject trade goods and whiskey. His brother Tecumseh, a respected war chief, added a political element - no more land cessions to the Americans. To make this point, the brothers established their village at the treaty line on the abandoned grounds of Fort Greenville. Interest in Tenskwatawa grew quickly, but many turned away after his followers killed some of the Delaware and Wyandot for witchcraft. Tenskwatawa recovered by predicting an eclipse in 1806 (some would say with the help of a British almanac). Still, he could never win widespread support among the important tribes of the old alliance, including the Shawnee.
This was partly due to the opposition of the "peace chiefs," who saw the new movement as a threat to their authority. Instead, most support for Tecumseh and the Prophet came from the tribes farther west, the Pottawattamie, Kickapoo, Sauk, Fox, and Winnebago. They were allies in a bitter war with the Osage west of the Mississippi. They had not yet lost land to the Americans but realized it was only a matter of time. Upset by the American purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, the Dakota sent a wampum belt to the Fox, Sauk, and Pottawattamie in 1805, asking them to end their war with the Osage and join an alliance against the Americans. Unsure of what to do, a Potawatomi and Sauk delegation visited the British at Fort Malden (Amherstburg, Ontario) to ask for their support. The British refused to commit themselves, but rumors of war circulated across the frontier during 1806. By the time Tecumseh visited Fort Malden in 1808, the British had changed their minds and given him every encouragement.
The Prophet's message found fertile ground among the Prairie Potawatomi, especially the band of Main Poche (French for Withered Hand), a war chief and shaman who had spent his life fighting the Osage in Missouri. Main Poche and his people visited the Prophet at Greenville in 1807 and extended an invitation to relocate his village to Tippecanoe in western Indiana. Tenskwatawa accepted and left Greenville in the spring of 1808. There was nothing accidental about the location of Prophetstown to Tippecanoe. It was disputed ground between the Potawatomi and Miami and intended to insult the most essential peace chief, Little Turtle of the Miami. In September 1809, the Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Delaware, and Miami peace chiefs met with Governor Harrison at Fort Wayne and ceded over three million acres of southern Illinois and Indiana. When Tecumseh learned of this, he denounced the treaty, threatened the chiefs who signed it with death and promised the provisions would never be carried out.
He made good on his threat when his Wyandot followers executed the old chief Leatherlips in 1810 and sent the alliance wampum belts to Tippecanoe. The reaction of the peace chiefs meeting in Brownstown was to condemn the Prophet as a witch. Tecumseh met Harrison twice at Vincennes, but their talks almost ended in armed confrontations. In the fall of 1811, Tecumseh left Prophetstown to recruit the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee against the Americans. Before leaving, he warned his brother to avoid a fight with Americans while he was gone. He would have done better to tell Main Poche the same thing. Launching his own protest against the Fort Wayne Treaty, his Potawatomi attacked settlements in southern Illinois, throwing the frontier into alarm and bringing out the militia. Harrison seized upon this to gather an army and march on Tippecanoe. When it arrived in November, Tenskwatawa ignored his brother's instructions and ordered an attack on Harrison's camp. During the battle that followed, the Indians were forced to withdraw, and the Americans captured and burned Prophetstown.
The military defeat at the Battle of Tippecanoe was less consequential than the damage done to Tenskwatawa's reputation as a prophet. When Tecumseh returned in January, he had to rebuild his alliance. He had little time for this since the War of 1812 (1812-14) began in June. The Potawatomi did not automatically join Tecumseh and the British other than Main Poche. Thanks to Thomas Forsyth, the American Indian agent at Peoria, Black Partridge and Gomo (Nasima) bands on the Illinois River remained neutral. At the same time, the Milwaukee Potawatomi stood by the Americans as they had done during the Revolution. The St. Joseph and Huron bands were divided following the Brownstown council's decision to remain neutral and others joining Tecumseh. However, Main Poche convinced the Prairie Potawatomi to attack Fort Dearborn (Chicago). In August, besieged and surrounded, the fort's garrison received orders from General William Hull to abandon the fort and join him at Detroit.
Negotiations were held for a safe withdrawal, but the night before they were to leave, the fort's commander ordered the fort's powder supply thrown down a well rather than leave it for the Potawatomi as promised. The Indian agent at the fort was William Wells. Captured as a child, he had been adopted by The Miami and was married to Little Turtle's daughter. When Wells saw what was done with the powder, he blackened his face in the traditional Miami manner and prepared for death. On August 16, the 42-man garrison marched east of the fort. They had not gone far when the ruined powder was discovered and attacked. Everyone was killed, including Wells. The Potawatomi mutilated his body and ate his heart. Black Partridge, or Black Pheasant (1795–1816), a Peoria Lake Potawatomi chieftain, and his brother Waubonsie attempted to protect settlers during the Battle of Fort Dearborn but arrived too late to save the garrison. They buried the dead and rescued the few civilian survivors from the massacre until they could be sent safely to the British at Detroit.
Detroit was British because, on that same day, General Hull had surrendered his command to a smaller force without a fight. This act earned him the distinction of being the only American general court marshaled for cowardice and sentenced to death by firing squad (later pardoned by President Madison). Because of the British victory at Detroit and the efforts of the British Indian agent, Robert Dickson, the Potawatomi and warriors from many tribes joined Tecumseh at Detroit. However, Black Partridge, if anything, still leaned toward the Americans. Unfortunately, Illinois territorial governor Ninian Edwards needed to respond to the Fort Dearborn massacre and attacks on Fort Madison (Iowa). In November 1812, an expedition from Fort Russell (Edwardsville) under Colonel William Russell to attack the hostile Kickapoo and Potawatomi villages on the Illinois River. As always, the innocent were easier to find than the guilty, and the militia attacked Black Partridge's village on Peoria Lake. At the same time, he was absent, helping to rescue one of Forsyth's relatives. In the middle of the night, the attack killed 25-30 Potawatomi, including Black Partridge's favorite daughter and her child. After this, all of the Potawatomi were fighting the Americans.
Potawatomi Warriors went to Ohio and became a significant part of Tecumseh's army. They defeated the Americans at the Raisin River, but the tide turned after William Henry Harrison assumed command of the American forces. The British and their allies failed to take Fort Meigs in northwest Ohio and afterward began a retreat toward Detroit. Discouraged by the heavy losses and boredom of siege warfare, Main Poche left to pursue his own war against the Americans in Illinois. However, Chief Benjamin Shabbona and the other Potawatomi remained with Tecumseh. After Perry's victory over the British fleet on Lake Erie, Detroit abandoned Harrison's army approached. Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813 while covering the British retreat across southern Ontario, and the last chance for Indians to stop the Americans from taking their land died with him.
Although Indian resistance generally ended after the death of Tecumseh, Potawatomi and Kickapoo attacks in Illinois resulted in an almost separate conflict known as the Peoria War (1813). In August, 150 soldiers from St. Louis came to Peoria by keelboat and built Fort Clark. An attack by Black Partridge's Potawatomi was repulsed, and soon afterward, reinforcements arrived in the form of 800 mounted rangers commanded by former Missouri governor Benjamin Howard. The troops destroyed two nearby villages (including Gomo's). Meanwhile, Roger's Rangers from St. Louis attacked and destroyed the Kickapoo-Potawatomi village at "The Bluffs" on the Mississippi (Quincy, Illinois). Faced with overwhelming military force, the Potawatomi ended their last war with the Americans. Sanatuwa and Latapucky made peace that fall, and Black Partridge met with William Clark (Lewis and Clark fame and younger brother of George Rogers) at St. Louis in January 1814. Gomo began supplying Fort Clark's garrison with meat and kept the peace even after whites murdered some of his hunters.
The War of 1812 is generally thought to have ended in a stalemate between Great Britain and the United States, but for the Indians, it was a total defeat. With Tecumseh dead and British support gone, there was nothing to stop the Americans. New agencies and forts were added at Green Bay, Chicago, Rock Island, Peoria, Prairie du Chien, St. Paul, and Peoria. The first treaties signed by the Potawatomi after the war made peace and forgave injuries: Greenville (1814) - tribes allied with the Americans (Delaware, Seneca, Shawnee, and Wyandot) made peace with the Miami, Kickapoo, Ottawa, and Potawatomi; Portage des Sioux (1815) - Prairie Potawatomi made peace with the Americans; and Spring Wells (1815) - Detroit Potawatomi and other Tecumseh allies agreed to a truce and were allowed to return from Canada. However, the Prophet remained in Canada until he was lured back to the United States in 1824 by Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan to convince the Shawnee to leave Ohio and remove to Kansas.
After this, the Americans got down to the business of taking Indian lands east of the Mississippi. The usual method was to force tribes into smaller areas where their only real income was annuities. Government traders (the only persons allowed to trade with Indians) extended credit, and as debts increased, the tribes were forced to sell land to pay. Because the Potawatomi were north of the early settlements, they did not lose much land until 1821. They were called upon earlier to surrender claims to land occupied by other tribes: St. Louis (1816) - Potawatomi surrender claim to western Illinois lands ceded by the Sauk and Fox in 1804; Fort Meigs (1817) - Wyandot ceded three million acres of Ohio, but the Detroit Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwe lost only 500,000 acres; and St. Marys (1818) - Potawatomi abandon claims to lands in Indiana South of the Wabash and ceded a narrow strip north of the river.
The treaty signed at Chicago in 1821 was the first significant land cession by the Potawatomi since 1807 and set the pattern for things to come. The St. Joseph bands surrendered a large tract in southwest Michigan (and a small strip of northern Indiana in exchange for reservations for the individual bands. Four years later, the Forest Potawatomi in Wisconsin participated in the Grand Council at Prairie du Chein (1825), which attempted to prevent intertribal warfare along the upper Mississippi by creating boundaries between tribal territories. The Americans continued to whittle away at Potawatomi holdings with the Wabash Treaty (1826), taking another narrow strip of Indiana north of the Wabash. The 1827 treaty with the Huron Potawatomi completed the establishment of reservations in Michigan by consolidating several bands and moving them away from the Chicago-Detroit highway.
The treaty at Prairie du Chein in 1825 had little effect on the warfare in the upper Mississippi. It was enough for American miners to rush into the lead mining area of northwest Illinois and southwest Wisconsin, which resulted in a brief war with the Winnebago (Winnebago War) in 1827. In 1828, the Winnebago, the Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwe surrendered their claims to the area in a treaty signed at Green Bay. That same year, the St. Joseph Potawatomi ceded another small area along Lake Michigan, including parts of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. In response to growing white settlement, the Prairie Potawatomi in 1829 gave up part of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin and agreed to a series of reservations. Within a brief period of eight years, the Potawatomi lost 70% of their land and allowed themselves to be confined on small reservations where it was almost impossible to support themselves. With the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the stage was set for their removal to the West of the Mississippi.
This was delayed while the government focused on getting Black Hawk's Sauk at Rock Island to accept the 1804 treaty and leave western Illinois. The opportunity came in 1831 during a war between the Fox and Dakota when Black Hawk moved his people across the river into Iowa to defend the Fox. After the danger passed, the army refused to allow him to return to his village in Illinois. The matter would have been settled here if Black Hawk had not spent the winter in Iowa fuming and listening to the arguments of his friend Neopope and the Winnebago Prophet (White Cloud). Wampum belts arrived from the Winnebago and Potawatomi, convincing Black Hawk they would support him if he defied the Americans and crossed back into Illinois. In June, he led 2,000 Sauk across the Mississippi and started the Black Hawk War (1832).
Black Hawk avoided Fort Armstrong at Rock Island and moved northeast up the Rock River to contact the Potawatomi and Winnebago. Although the alarm was out and the militia was assembling all over Illinois, there had been no hostilities up to this point. Black Hawk went into camp upstream from Dixon's Ferry and left for a council with the Potawatomi. At this meeting, it became clear that Chief Shabbona and the other Potawatomi chiefs would not join him, and Black Hawk decided to return to Iowa. A messenger was dispatched to request safe passage from the army, but he had no sooner left than mounted militia arrived and prepared to attack his camp. Black Hawk tried to arrange a truce, but his messengers were taken prisoner, and the next group was fired upon. The militia then killed their prisoners and charged after the UK, only to panic when they ran into what they thought was an ambush. At the Battle of Sycamore Creek (Stillman's Defeat), 250 mounted militia were routed by less than 40 Sauk warriors.
Although he stayed with Tecumseh until he died in 1813, Chief Shabbona accepted the outcome and tried to get along with the Americans afterward. His influence was the main reason the Potawatomi refused to support Black Hawk, but several Potawatomi bands considered fighting the Americans after the Sauk victory at Sycamore Creek. Chief Shabbona rode to the scattered villages to stop this, but at Big Foot's village, his arguments fell on deaf ears, and he was taken prisoner. Some Potawatomi felt this was an affront to a chief who had come for a council, and he was released but had to flee for his life. Aware that some Potawatomi warriors were planning to join Black Hawk and avenge old injuries from settlers in the area, Chief Shabbona rode all night and warned the whites to leave.
Some did not listen, and Potawatomi warriors killed 16 whites at Indian Creek (near Ottawa). The Indian Creek Massacre occurred on May 21, 1832, with the attack by a party of Native Americans on a group of United States settlers in LaSalle County, Illinois, following a dispute about a settler-constructed dam that prevented fish from reaching a nearby Potawatomi village. The incident coincided with the Black Hawk War but was not a direct action of the Sauk leader Black Hawk and conflict with the United States.
The Prairie Potawatomi were removed in 1834, and Ojibwe and Ottawa of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin were assigned land between Missouri and Little Platte Rivers, known as the Platte Purchase. Some bands refused to leave and moved north to lands belonging to the Menominee and Ojibwe. A few went to Canada to escape. In 1836, the southern part of the Platte Purchase was added to the state of Missouri. After the Potawatomi killed two white men, a brief war ensued (Heatherly War). Army dragoons and Missouri militia attacked the Missouri Band of the Sauk and Fox in retaliation (a not-too-subtle suggestion to move). In 1837, the Potawatomi were relocated north of the Missouri line to a reservation near Council Bluffs. It was not a peaceful place. In 1841, a hunting party of 16 Delaware and a Potawatomi were attacked by the Dakota near the Sioux Fork of Mink Creek in Iowa. Only the Potawatomi escaped, reaching the Sauk and Fox villages. A Sauk and Fox war party caught the Dakota raiders and killed them.
The removal of the Potawatomi of the Woods from Michigan and Indiana did not proceed as smoothly. Rather than agree to immediate removal, they signed two treaties in October 1832 (Tippecanoe or Wabash Treaties), ceding most of their remaining land in exchange for reserves and annual annuities. This temporary solution continued while American agent A.C. Pepper negotiated treaties with the individual bands (four in 1834 and eight in 1836) to cede their reserves and agree to removal. Once this was done, a collective agreement with five bands was signed in February 1837 in Washington, DC. The chiefs signed, but there was widespread resistance to this agreement. Some bands slipped across the border into Ontario, where they have remained ever since. Others were not so passive, and the chief at Nottawaseepe was poisoned by his people while trying to convince them to accept removal. Menominee and his band at Twin Lakes, Indiana, refused to sign any treaties. Confronted in July 1838, he still refused to sign or leave Indiana.
Indiana governor David Wallace sent General John Tipton to force removal. He arrived at Menominee's village on August 30 and arrested every Potawatomi there. Menominee was thrown into a caged wagon. The soldiers burned down the village, and on September 4, 1859, the Potawatomi departed on what they would call the "Trail of Death." Not as nearly as famous as the Cherokee Trail of Tears, it was every bit as deadly. The first child died on the second day out, and 51 Potawatomi became too sick to continue. By the time they reached Logansport, four more children were dead. The 300 who were sick required a halt so a hospital could be erected. The march continued across northern Illinois until it reached the ferry crossing the Mississippi at Quincy, Illinois. The Potawatomi camped outside the town for a few days while the ferry carried their baggage across. When Sunday came, more than 300 of these "savages" attended mass at the local Catholic church. The church was less than a half-mile from the site of the Potawatomi village destroyed by Roger's Rangers in 1813.
Less than 700 Potawatomi arrived at Osawatomie in November. Half of the graves marking their route were filled with their children. Among the casualties was Father B. Petit, who had volunteered to accompany his congregation to Kansas. He became ill when they reached the Illinois River and died at St. Louis in February 1839. Some Potawatomi remained behind and hid for many years. Laws were passed as late as 1870 to force their removal but were never enforced. They remain today as part of the Huron and Pokagon Potawatomi in southern Michigan. The Potawatomi of the Woods remained on their reservation in eastern Kansas for almost eight years. In 1846, the government decided to consolidate the two groups of Potawatomi into a single tribe on one reservation. By this time, the Ojibwe and Ottawa, who had accompanied the Prairie Potawatomi West, had merged with them. However, it was still necessary to have both groups of Potawatomi sign the agreement. This was accomplished in June in exchange for $850,000 (
Needing allies to survive, the Wyandot and Ottawa joined the Potawatomi to build a large fortified village (Mitchigami). The Iroquois returned in 1653, but their first attack was repulsed, and during the long siege that followed, the Iroquois ran out of food and were forced to retreat. Unfortunately, they had also attacked the Nikikouek Ojibwe on the northern shore of Lake Huron, and the Mississauga Ojibwe killed almost half of them on their return to New York. Although they were making enemies, the Iroquois returned to Wisconsin after the Wyandot. There was another attack in 1655, and by 1658, the Wyandot had left Green Bay and moved inland to Lake Pepin on the Mississippi. The Ottawa also went for the south shore of Lake Superior at Chequamegon and Keweenaw Bay. However, their departures brought little relief for the Potawatomi and other refugees at Green Bay.
After the Iroquois had overrun the Huron in 1649, the French fur trade was in shambles. In danger of being overrun and destroyed (only 400 Frenchmen in North America at this time), the French welcomed an offer of peace from the western Iroquois (Seneca, Cayuga, and Onondaga) in 1653, and to protect this truce, the French stopped their travel to the Great Lakes. However, they kept inviting former trading partners to bring furs to Montreal. With the Iroquois controlling the Ottawa River, this was a hazardous undertaking requiring large canoe fleets and hundreds of heavily armed warriors to force their way past the Iroquois blockade. However, having become dependent on European trade goods, the Wyandot and Ottawa were willing to try. After collecting furs from the Cree far to the north and the Wisconsin tribes, they used Ojibwe warriors to supplement their ranks and fought to and from Montreal. Unable to stop the convoys, the Iroquois went after their source, and their war parties moved into Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, attacking any tribe supplying fur to the Wyandot and Ottawa.
The renewed trade and raiding added to the misery in the region. More than 20,000 refugees had crowded into an area that was, for the most part, too far north for maize agriculture. This forced the farming tribes to rely on hunting to feed themselves, quickly using the limited resources available. Hunting for fur only aggravated the problem. Harassed by Iroquois warriors, ravaged by epidemics, and stalked by starvation, the refugees fought among themselves or with the neighboring Dakota and Ojibwe over hunting territory. The Potawatomi were more fortunate because their villages were located on the Door Peninsula, jutting into Lake Michigan to form the south side of Green Bay. With some of the best soil in the area, this was where the Winnebago had grown their corn for centuries. Blessed with an ample food supply, the Potawatomi found it easier to maintain their tribal unity while larger tribes separated into mixed villages.
Potawatomi villages were mixed but not as much, and this allowed them to become the dominant tribe in an area that also contained Wyandot, Ottawa, Illinois, Miami, Nipissing, Noquet, Menominee, Winnebago, Mascouten, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, several varieties of Ojibwe, and even some Cheyenne, with occasional unfriendly visits from the Dakota, Iowa, and Iroquois. In this tense atmosphere, warfare was constant between shifting alliances based more on locality than tribal affiliation. One example was the Sturgeon War, which erupted sometime around 1658 between the Ojibwe and Menominee over fish weirs at the mouth of a river. After the Menominee refused to remove their weirs, preventing the sturgeon from moving upstream, the Ojibwe destroyed their village. The survivors fled to their relatives at Green Bay, who asked the nearby villages (Green Bay tribes) to help them retaliate against the Ojibwe. Before it was over, the Potawatomi, Fox, Sauk, and Noquet had joined the fighting.
While chaos ruled in Wisconsin, the French peace with the Iroquois ended in 1658 after the murder of a Jesuit ambassador. War resumed along the St. Lawrence, but since there was no longer peace to protect, Pierre-Espirit Radisson and Médart Chouart des Groseilliers saw an opportunity to ignore the travel ban and renew the fur trade in the Great Lakes. Joining a party of Wyandot on their return journey, they reached the west end of Lake Superior and traded with the Dakota. They were arrested, and their furs were confiscated when they returned to Quebec in 1660. But by 1664, the French had tired of living in fear of the Iroquois. Canada was placed under the king, and a regiment of regular French soldiers was sent to Quebec to deal with the Iroquois. The ban on travel west was also lifted. In 1665, the fur trader Nicolas Perrot, Jesuit Father Claude-Jean Allouez, and six other Frenchmen accompanied 400 Ottawa and Huron on their return to the Great Lakes. They reached Green Bay in September and spent the winter.
Allouez was interested in re-establishing contact with the Wyandot and Ottawa converts that the Jesuits had made before 1649. He visited many other villages in the area and observed the Potawatomi were growing corn. Perrot, of course, was interested in more practical matters like fur. In 1665, the French soldiers in Quebec began attacks on the Iroquois homeland, and by 1667, the League had agreed to a peace that included French allies and trading partners. This brought a much-needed period of stability to Wisconsin and allowed the French to travel unmolested to Green Bay and beyond. However, as the dominant tribe in the area, the Potawatomi were unhappy with the increased French presence. During the 1660s, some of them had accompanied the Ottawa to Montreal, and they had come home angered by the lack of respect and abuse they had received.
The Potawatomi were also accustomed to being middlemen in collecting furs for the Ottawa and Wyandot to take to Montreal. They viewed the French traders at Green Bay as competitors in this enterprise. In 1668, the Potawatomi attempted to bypass the French and trade directly at Montreal, but Perrot thwarted them by building a permanent trading post at La Baye (Green Bay). A Jesuit mission, St. Francis Xavier, was added the following year. As the number of French grew, the Potawatomi lost some of their former influence. To help their fur trade, the French began mediating intertribal disputes to end the warfare endemic to the region. This also annoyed the Potawatomi, who attempted to usurp (take a position of power or importance illegally or by force) the French by mediating a dispute between The Illinois and Miami. Despite these problems, the Potawatomi learned to tolerate the French, who provided the firearms they were using against the Dakota. In 1671, the Potawatomi provided the guides that took Perrot south to the Miami villages near Chicagou.
To keep the French supplied with fur, the Green Bay tribes were forced to hunt farther west, bringing confrontations with the Dakota. To fight them, the Potawatomi in 1675 were with the Meskwaki (Fox), Sauk, and Ottawa, but the Dakota were not easily intimidated and attacked a Potawatomi village near Green Bay in 1677. The Jesuits had made their first converts among the Potawatomi by this time. One of these was a young warrior from an influential family who, shortly afterward, was killed by a bear while hunting. In itself, this was not unusual, but the bear had been particularly enraged and ripped his corpse to pieces. The warrior's family felt that the mutilation and dismemberment had to be avenged, so the Potawatomi declared war on bears and captured and tortured-to-death more than 500 bears during the next few years.
In 1680, Daniel Greysolon Dulhut (Duluth) negotiated a truce between the Saulteur Ojibwe and the Dakota, allowing French traders to visit the Dakota villages. Unfortunately, the agreement did not include the Keweenaw Ojibwa or the Green Bay tribes, and they were still at war with the Dakota and did not want the French to arm their enemies. In 1682, Menominee and Ojibwe warriors of Chief Achiganaga murdered two French traders in upper Michigan. DeLhut's attempt to punish Achiganaga and his warriors was frustrated when the Potawatomi and Ottawa let it be known there would be trouble if Achiganaga's punishment was too severe. DeLhut relented and executed only one Menominee, but the unrest grew as the French continued to trade with the Dakota. Rumors spread among the Potawatomi that the Jesuits used witchcraft to cause epidemics, and in 1683, the Sauk murdered two Jesuit donné. The Potawatomi chief Onanghisse began to organize a conspiracy to force the French to leave Green Bay.
This might have gotten serious if other events had not intervened. The peace with the Iroquois ended in 1680 with devastating attacks against The Illinois. This marked the beginning of the second phase of the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700). It is a common mistake to view the French effort in the Great Lakes as unified when competition between French traders was often as treacherous as any intertribal rivalry. When René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (Sieur du La Salle is a title translating to "Lord of the Manor") tried to open trade with the Illiniwek Confederacy in 1679, Perrot and the other Green Bay traders took advantage of the traditional animosity between the Miami and Illiniwek to secretly encourage the Miami and Mascouten to settle at the south end of Lake Michigan and block La Salle's access. La Salle slipped past in 1680 and built Fort de Crévecoeur on the upper Illinois River, but this new post caused The Illinois to increase their beaver hunting, the main reason for the Iroquois attacks that year.
With an extraordinary sense of timing, La Salle left Henri de Tonti in charge of Fort de Crévecoeur and returned to Quebec when the Iroquois attacked. Tonti and the other French abandoned the post and fled north to Green Bay, where they would have starved for all the help they got from the French at La Baye, but Onanghisse's Pottawattamie defied Perrot and fed them. Tonti returned to the devastation the Iroquois had left behind in Illinois. The Iroquois returned the following year, but Tonti afterward built Fort Saint Louis du Rocher at Starved Rock (Utica, Illinois - article: "The Starved Rock Massacre of 1769 - Fact or Fiction.") and convinced the Illinois and Miami to settle nearby and defend it. The Iroquois failure to take Fort St. Louis in 1684 is generally regarded as the turning point of the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700). Encouraged by this victory, the French tried to organize an alliance against the Iroquois. The French's first offensive action was such a fiasco. Joseph La Barre, the governor of Canada, signed a treaty with the Iroquois, conceding most of the Ohio Valley east of the Illinois River.
Until this point, the French at Green Bay had ignored the trouble their rivals had gotten into in the Illinois country and had no desire to join the fight against the Iroquois. Although concerned by a Seneca attack at Mackinac in 1683, the Potawatomi and other Wisconsin tribes were angry about French trade with the Dakota. They had no wish to defend French interests in the South. This changed when Jacques-Renede Denonville replaced La Barre. Orders were issued for the French to end their differences and cooperate. Denonville repudiated LaBarre's treaty, built new forts, and strengthened old ones. More importantly, he began to arm and organize an alliance of the Great Lakes Algonquin against the Iroquois. The Potawatomi became an essential member of this alliance after taking the offensive in 1687, roughly coinciding with King William's War (1688-97) between Britain and France.
By the 1690s, the Iroquois were on the defense and retreating across the Great Lakes to their homeland in New York. This allowed the Potawatomi and other refugee tribes to leave the overcrowded conditions near Green Bay for places with better soil and longer growing seasons. The Potawatomi began expanding south along the west side of Lake Michigan - apparently adding to their population by taking in Abenaki and New England Algonquin refugees from King Phillip's War (1675-76) who had immigrated to the Great Lakes. By 1685, there was a Potawatomi village in Milwaukee; another was in Chicago in 1695. At about the same time, almost 1,000 Potawatomi settled on the opposite corner of Lake Michigan near the St. Joseph mission, which Father Allouez had established for the Miami in southwest Michigan.
By 1696, the Iroquois had been beaten and asked for peace, but French influence had declined so much that they had difficulty persuading their allies to agree. The reason was a glut of fur on the European market had caused a drastic fall in the price of beaver furs. Finally willing to listen to Jesuit complaints about the corruption the fur trade was causing among Indians, Louis XIV issued a decree in 1696 suspending the fur trade in the Great Lakes. Without the trade goods needed by their allies, the French authority collapsed. Sensing this weakness, the Iroquois offered peace and access to British traders to the Ottawa and Ojibwe if they would break with the alliance. This was refused, but suspicion grew within the alliance that the French would abandon them to make their own peace with the Iroquois. Using every possible argument, the French finally convinced the Algonquin to sign a treaty with the Iroquois in 1701, just as another war started with Great Britain - Queen Anne's War (1701-13).
Most of the fighting during this war was in New England and the Canadian Maritimes, while the exhausted Iroquois (except for the Mohawk) honored their agreement with the French and remained neutral. This was fortunate because the French alliance was unraveling without the fur trade. A fresh round of fighting broke out along the upper Mississippi in western Wisconsin during the 1690s between the Dakota, Ojibwe, Fox, Mascouten, Kickapoo, Illinois, and Miami. The Potawatomi had moved south by this time and were not a significant participant. Further east, the British and Iroquois started trading with French allies, subverting their loyalty. After several desperate pleas from Canada explaining the situation, permission was finally given for a new post at Detroit to retain the commitment of the Great Lakes tribes. In 1701, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac arrived, built Fort Ponchartrain, and invited the Ottawa and Wyandot to settle nearby. Many of them left Mackinac at this time and moved south.
Groups of Ojibwe followed and settled just to the north, keeping French allies from trading with the British, Cadillac kept inviting other tribes to Detroit, including some groups of the Potawatomi who came during 1704. Rather than strengthening the alliance, the French, within a few years, reproduced the same miserable conditions in Wisconsin during the 1660s... too many people and too few resources. Meanwhile, the Ottawa still at Mackinac 1706 defied the French and prepared a war party to send against the Dakota. This upset the Wyandot and Miami in the vicinity so much that they planned to punish them by attacking the Ottawa village as soon as its warriors left. However, a Potawatomi warned the Ottawa, who ambushed five Miami chiefs and then attacked the Miami village, driving them into the French fort. Before the fighting was over, 50 Miami, 30 Ottawa, and two French were dead, and the conflict spread to Detroit. A confusing situation but indicative of the problems afflicting the French alliance at the time.
In response to the fighting at Mackinac, the Ottawa and Miami fought with each other near Detroit that year, and even the Wyandot, Ottawa, and Ojibwe (generally on the best of terms) were having occasional skirmishes over hunting territory in the vicinity. Aware of the tension at Detroit, the St. Joseph Potawatomi decided not to join their relatives and asked for their own trading post and garrison. Unfortunately, the French could not grant this until after the death of Louis XIV in 1715, which allowed the trade suspension to be rescinded. Meanwhile, Cadillac had ignored all the warning signs and, in 1710, invited the Fox to move to Detroit. Hostile to the French from their first meeting and angry about the recent Ojibwe attack that the French had encouraged to force them from the St. Croix Valley and Fox Portage in Wisconsin, 1,000 Fox arrived at Detroit accompanied by many of their Kickapoo and Mascouten allies.
The Fox was returning to what had been their homeland before the Beaver Wars[1] (1630-1700), and they were not reluctant to inform the other tribes they found living there of this. Within a short time, the Potawatomi, Ottawa, Wyandot, and Ojibwe demanded that the French order the Fox to return to Wisconsin. When the French ignored them, they took matters into their own hands. In the spring of 1712, Ottawa and Potawatomi warriors attacked a Mascouten hunting party near the headwaters of the St. Joseph River. The Mascouten fled east to their Fox allies, and as the Fox prepared to retaliate, the French attempted to stop them. At this point, the Fox, Mascouten, and Kickapoo decided to attack Fort Ponchartrain. The first assault failed and was followed by a siege, but the Potawatomi, Ottawa, Wyandot, and Ojibwe relief force arrived and fell upon the Fox from the rear. Only 100 Foxes escaped during the following slaughter. Most fled to the Iroquois, but some returned to Wisconsin with the Mascouten and Kickapoo. Once there, they joined the Fox, who had remained behind and began taking their revenge on the French and their allies for the massacre at Detroit.
The Potawatomi were one of the most important French allies during the First Fox War (1712-16), but the French alliance was in such disarray that it took almost three years to gather a compelling force to go after the Fox. In 1715, a French-Potawatomi expedition defeated the Kickapoo and Mascouten, forcing them to make a separate peace. The Fox refused to quit and gathered in a fort in southern Wisconsin. Louis de Louvigny arrived with a large party of Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Ottawa warriors the following year and laid siege. The French were finally forced to withdraw and afterward offered peace. The Fox accepted, but both sides remained bitter and distrustful of the other. The Fox fought with the Illinois and Osage in the following years and continued antagonizing the French. Under pressure from the Potawatomi and other allies to do something about the Fox, the French decided on drastic measures.
Although no official policy was approved by the king until 1732, the drastic measures turned out to be genocide - after a war of extermination, any Fox who survived would be sold as slaves to the West Indies. By this time, the Fox had aggravated enough tribes that there was little opposition within the alliance. After isolating the Fox from their Dakota and Winnebago allies, the French attacked in 1728. The initial French offensive of the Second Fox War (1728-37) accomplished little. Afterward, the Fox managed to "shoot themselves in the foot" by alienating their only allies, the Mascouten and Kickapoo. When these tribes went to the French, the Fox were isolated and battered from all sides. In 1730, about 1,000 Fox decided to accept an Iroquois offer of sanctuary and leave Wisconsin, but crossing northern Illinois, they fought with The Illinois. Forced to build a temporary fort to protect their women and children, the Illinois surrounded them and called in the French.
The French and their allies (including Detroit and St. Joseph Potawatomi) came from every direction. After a 23-day siege, the Fox were starving and attempted to escape one night during a thunderstorm, but the French and their allies caught up and killed all of them. After this, all that remained were the 500 Fox who had stayed in Wisconsin. They fled to the Sauk west of Green Bay, and the French went after them in 1734. When the Sauk refused to surrender the Fox, they were attacked, but the French commander was killed during the assault. In the confusion that followed, the Fox and Sauk abandoned their village and fled west across the Mississippi into Iowa. The French sent another expedition against them in 1736, but their allies were having doubts about genocide by this time. At a meeting in Montreal in the spring of 1837, the Potawatomi and Ottawa asked the French to forgive the Sauk, while the Menominee and Winnebago made a similar request on behalf of the Fox. Faced with a revolt of their allies, a war with the pro-British Chickasaw, which had closed the lower Mississippi, and fighting between the Ojibwe and Dakota in Minnesota, the French reluctantly agreed.
By 1718, the Potawatomi had replaced the Miami at St. Joseph. Their warriors served as loyal French allies and raided the pro-British Chickasaw and Cherokee during 1740-41. The French had a serious problem with the increasing competition from British traders. To meet this, the French reoccupied or opened new posts at Michilimackinac, La Baye, Ouiatenon, Chequamegon, St. Joseph, Pimitoui, Miamis, Niagara, De Chartes, and Vincennes, but the damage was done. British goods were generally cheaper and better than what the French could offer, and by 1728, 80% of the beaver at Albany was coming from French allies. This became critical during the King George's War (1744-48) after a British blockade of the St. Lawrence cut the supply of French trade goods. During the Queen Anne's War, there was little fighting in the Great Lakes, but the Potawatomi joined other Great Lakes warriors to travel to Montreal and defend Quebec from a British invasion that never came.
However, economic warfare in the Ohio Valley between the British and French continued throughout the war and in the years that followed. Ohio was claimed by the Iroquois by right of conquest, the French by right of discovery, and the British since the Treaty of Ryswick (1697) had placed the Iroquois under their protection. In truth, none of these claims were valid, and Ohio belonged to the Shawnee, Delaware, and Mingo (Ohio Iroquois) who lived there. Nominally members of the Iroquois Covenant Chain, the Ohio tribes were independent of the League and had no wish to be dominated by the Iroquois, British, or French. But they did want to trade, and because of this, British traders could visit Ohio and trade directly. This proved irresistible to French allies, and in 1748, Orontony's Wyandot at Sandusky burned their French trading post and attempted to organize a revolt against the French at Detroit. This collapsed after Orontony died in 1750 but was followed by a more dangerous conspiracy of the Miami chief Memeskia (known as La Demoiselle to the French and Old Britain to the British).
Memeskia sacked a French trading post on the Wabash and moved his people east to a new village at Pickawillany (Piqua, Ohio), where he allowed the British to build a trading post. He then invited other Miami and Kickapoo, Illinois, and Potawatomi to come to his village to trade. The French noted the defections from their alliance when the Potawatomi and other tribes ceased their attacks on the Chickasaw and Cherokee South of the Ohio River. The French tried to organize an attack on Memeskia to force the Ohio tribes to expel the British. Still, the Detroit tribes (including the Potawatomi) were thinking of dumping the French for the British and, using the excuse of the recent smallpox epidemic, refused to act. In desperation, Charles Langlade, a Métis (mixed blood), gathered a war party of 250 Ojibwe and Ottawa at Mackinac and, in June 1752, attacked and destroyed Pickawillany. "Old Britain" and 30 Miami were killed, and the British trading post was looted and burned. The attack sent a chilling message to French allies to break with the alliance to trade with the British.
By fall, the Potawatomi, Miami, and Wyandot had apologized to the French and renewed their attacks on the Chickasaw. This encouraged the French to construct a line of forts in western Pennsylvania to block British access to Ohio. Virginia, in 1754, sent a young militia major named George Washington to demand the French abandon their new forts, but he got into a fight with French soldiers, which started the French and Indian War (1755-63). The Potawatomi supported the French throughout this war, first sending warriors to defeat Braddock's army at Fort Duquesne in 1755 and then east to Montreal to participate in the French campaigns in northern New York in 1756-57. During the siege of Fort William Henry in 1757, their warriors contracted smallpox and brought it back to their villages. The epidemic that swept through the Great Lakes during the winter of 1757-58 took most French allies out of the war. Quebec fell to the British in September 1759, and Montreal surrendered the following summer.
The French were finished in North America. British soldiers occupied most of their forts in the Great Lakes later that year, and only Fort de Chartres in the Illinois county remained under French control. In 1761, the Potawatomi and other members of the French alliance met with Sir William Johnson at Detroit to learn what to expect from their new British "fathers." Johnson hoped to continue the old French system, but he was overruled by Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander in North America. Amherst despised American colonials, so his feelings about Indians are not difficult to imagine. As an economic measure, he ordered an end to the annual presents given to chiefs, increased trade goods prices, and restricted supply, especially of gunpowder and whiskey. He then left it to Johnson to deal with the dissatisfaction, which was short in coming. Johnson discovered that the Seneca circulated a war belt at the Detroit meeting, calling for a general uprising.
Johnson squashed this, but calls for revolt continued. A drought in the Ohio Valley during the summer of 1762 brought winter famine. At the same time, Neolin, the Delaware prophet, began preaching a return to traditional Indian values and a rejection of the white man's trade goods. The St. Joseph Potawatomi, who were heavily Catholic due to the Jesuit mission, accepted many of his ideas but gave them Christian interpretations. However, Neolin's most crucial convert was Pontiac, the Ottawa chief at Detroit, who decided a return to traditional values meant getting rid of the British and bringing back the French. In meetings during the spring of 1763, he secretly organized a revolt that captured nine of the twelve British forts west of the Appalachians when it struck in May. The Detroit Potawatomi joined Pontiac's attack on Fort Detroit, while the St. Joseph Potawatomi overwhelmed their British garrison. However, the uprising collapsed after failing to take Forts Pitt, Niagara, and Detroit.
Pontiac was forced to abandon the siege and flee west to northern Indiana. As the British rushed troops to the area, the intractable Amherst was replaced by Thomas Gage, and the Proclamation of 1763 was issued, halting further settlement west of the Appalachians. The Potawatomi and other tribes attended a conference with Johnson at Fort Niagara in July 1764 and made peace. Gage ended the trade restrictions, and Pontiac signed his own accord in 1766, promising never to fight the British again. Unpopular among his people because of this and his failure to capture Detroit, he settled in northern Illinois, where he still enjoyed a considerable following. There were rumors Pontiac was secretly trying to organize another uprising in the West. In 1769, he was murdered by a Peoria at the establishment of a British trader in Cahokia. The British were suspected of arranging his assassination, but the wrath of his supporters fell on The Illinois. The Potawatomi allied with the Ojibwe, Fox, Sauk, Kickapoo, Winnebago, and Ottawa and avenged Pontiac by destroying the Illinois Confederation (article: "The Starved Rock Massacre of 1769 - Fact or Fiction.").
Fewer than 400 Illinois survived this war to reach the protection of the French settlement at Kaskaskia. The victors divided their abandoned lands among themselves, with the Prairie Potawatomi expanding down the Illinois River as far as present-day Peoria. With the Prairie Potawatomi controlling most of northeast Illinois and southeast Wisconsin, the St. Joseph Potawatomi began to push south into northern Indiana. This was particularly annoying to the Miami, who had given ground to the Potawatomi for many years, and relations between these two tribes were strained. Their dispute was poorly timed since the American colonists had forced the British to rescind the Proclamation of 1763 and negotiate with the Iroquois to open the Ohio Valley for settlement. Illegal squatters had started coming after the Pontiac Rebellion, but the trickle became a flood after the Iroquois cession of Ohio at Fort Stanwix in 1768.
Shawnee protests against the Iroquois brought threats of extermination if they resisted. In 1769, the Shawnee made overtures of an alliance to the Potawatomi, Illinois, Kickapoo, Wea, Piankashaw, Miami, Wyandot, Ottawa, Delaware, Mascouten, Ojibwe, Cherokee, and Chickasaw. Meetings were held on the Scioto River in 1770 and 1771, but William Johnson's threats of war with the Iroquois kept other tribes from helping the Shawnee and Mingo during Lord Dunmore's War (1774). Afterward, the British washed their hands of the whole affair, withdrew most of their garrisons, and sat back to watch. Their detachment ended with the outbreak of the Revolutionary War (1775-83) when they armed the Ohio tribes and urged them to attack American settlements. Because the disputed lands were in Kentucky and Ohio, only the Shawnee and Chickamauga Cherokee were initially involved. By 1779, the British had brought the Detroit and St. Joseph Potawatomi, Saginaw and Mackinac Ojibwe, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, and Kickapoo into the fight with the "Long Knives" (American frontiersmen) along the Ohio River.
France had given Louisiana to Spain in 1763 rather than see it fall into British hands. The Prairie Bands of the Potawatomi and Kickapoo in central Illinois had become closer to the French traders from St. Louis than the British. Because of this and their remoteness to Ohio, they had remained neutral during the Revolution's first years and did not participate in the attacks on the Kentucky settlements. This changed when George Rogers Clark and his army of 200 Kentucky frontiersmen arrived in the Illinois country in 1778 and surprised the small British garrison at Kaskaskia. Clark also took Cahokia and won the support of the French in the area, but he hated the Indians and spurned their offers to help capture Detroit. The opportunity slipped through his fingers, and that fall, Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit (known in Kentucky as the "hair buyer" because he paid for American scalps), recaptured Fort Sackville at Vincennes with a force of Detroit warriors and French. Clark made a daring mid-winter trek across southern Illinois to Vincennes, and after a brief siege, Hamilton surrendered in February 1779.
The British and French were spared, but Clark and his men executed the warriors with tomahawks. Among the victims were Detroit Potawatomi, Ottawa, Wyandot, and Saginaw Ojibwe, and although Clark had once received overtures of cooperation from almost every tribe in Illinois who traded with the French and Spanish (Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Illinois, Winnebago, Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Miami), this brutality turned most of them against the Americans. Only the Milwaukee Potawatomi of Letourneau (Blackbird or Siggenauk) and some of The Illinois remained friendly for the remainder of the war. During the winter of 1779-80, the British planned an offensive to reclaim the Illinois country and seize the entire Mississippi basin. Spain had entered the war against the British by this time, so part of the offensive was directed against them. While British naval forces attacked Spanish ports on the Gulf of Mexico, a column under Captain Henry Bird left Detroit with 600 warriors (150 Potawatomi) in April 1780 and, adding another 600 as it moved south, struck the settlements south of the Ohio River. Before turning back, Bird's army left a trail of death and destruction throughout Kentucky.
Meanwhile, another expedition under Captain Emanuel Hesse moved down the Illinois River to attack St. Louis. However, the Spanish and French were warned of its approach and had ample time to prepare. When the assault by 950 British and their allies (Ojibwe, Fox, Sauk, Winnebago, Dakota, and Potawatomi) finally occurred on May 26, it was repulsed after heavy losses to both sides. An attack against Cahokia across the Mississippi also failed, and the British retreated without results. Potawatomi participation in the remaining years of the war varied considerably. The Detroit bands remained active in the British cause and, in 1782, helped defeat Colonel William Crawford's army (June) and Kentucky militia at Blue Licks (August), during which Daniel Boone's son Israel was killed. The Milwaukee Potawatomi sided with the Spanish and Americans. At their suggestion, the Spanish 1780 launched a retaliatory raid against the British post at St. Joseph, but the British caught the raiders in northern Illinois and killed or captured most of them.
After the Spanish and French entered the war, the loyalty of the heavily Catholic St. Joseph Potawatomi to the British was wavering, so before launching a second attack on St. Joseph, the Spanish promised them a share of the plunder. In January 1781, Spanish troops of Capt. Eugene Pourre destroyed the British fort and trading post without resistance from the Potawatomi. At best, the St. Joseph Potawatomi were reluctant British allies, and their encroachment into northern Indiana created problems. In 1780 The Miami attacked a Potawatomi war party heading south to attack the Kentucky settlements. To keep both tribes fighting Americans instead of each other, Simon de Peyster, the British agent at Detroit, was required to use all of his skills as a mediator.
The Revolutionary War "officially" ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris. Because George Rogers Clark's conquest of the Illinois country placed the western boundary of the United States at the Mississippi River. "Unofficially," the war continued to 1794 because the British, using the pretext of debts owed to British loyalists (Tories), refused to withdraw from its forts on American territory until these were paid. This was impossible unless the Americans could sell the lands in Ohio, and the British knew this. Although they urged their Indian allies to stop attacking American settlements in 1783, they encouraged an alliance to keep the Americans out of Ohio. In the fall of 1783, the coalition was formed at a meeting at Sandusky. The British did not attend, but they sent the Mohawk Joseph Brant to speak on their behalf and let it be known they would support the alliance in war with the Americans.
The membership ultimately included Potawatomi, Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, Iroquois (Canadian), Miami, Wea, Piankashaw, Fox, Sauk, Ottawa, Ojibwe, Kickapoo, and Chickamauga (Cherokee). With more than 2,000 warriors, the alliance was a formidable barrier to American expansion in the Ohio Valley. After forcing the Iroquois to acknowledge their previous cession of Ohio at Fort Stanwix in 1768, the United States tried to establish a boundary with the Ohio tribes through treaties. However, the Americans refused to deal with the alliance because they considered it a British plot (which it was). Instead, they signed treaties with individual tribes at Fort McIntosh (1785) and Fort Finney (1786). Since the chiefs signing these agreements did not represent the alliance (and often their own tribe), the treaties were worthless. To make matters worse, the American commissioners did not represent their frontier citizens, who had rid themselves of one government trying to keep them out of Ohio. They were ready to take on the one in Philadelphia if it stood in their way.
Frontiersmen simply ignored the treaty and moved onto Indian lands. The tiny American army could not stop this, and when Indian warriors tried to remove the squatters, there was war. The first council fire of the alliance was at the Shawnee village of Waketomica, but it was burned by the Americans in 1786, and the capital was moved to Brownstown, a Wyandot village near Detroit. As alliance warriors and frontiersmen exchanged raids and atrocities, the government finally attempted to resolve the dispute by treaty. In December 1787, the governor of the Northwest Territory, Arthur St. Clair II (for whom St. Clair County, Illinois is named), requested a meeting to be held at the falls of Muskingum River. The alliance met to determine its position and agreed to accept the Muskingum as the boundary. However, there was opposition, and Joseph Brant left the meeting in disgust and returned to Ontario.
The Miami, Kickapoo, and Shawnee also pulled out, but the Delaware, Wyandot, and Detroit tribes (including the Potawatomi) decided to attend. The Fort Harmar Treaty (January 1789) was the first treaty between the United States and Potawatomi. Unfortunately, it meant very little. There were no Potawatomi villages in Ohio, so they had little stake in the outcome. The signatures of the other tribes were more critical. After fighting resumed that summer, the militant Shawnee and Miami dominated the alliance, and the Americans decided to use force. The initial battles of Little Turtle's War (1790-94) ended in disaster for the Americans. Led by the Miami war chief Little Turtle, alliance warriors inflicted the worst defeats an American army ever received from Indians: Harmar (1790) and St. Clair (1791).
But the Americans could not afford to quit, and President Washington sent "Mad Anthony" Wayne to Ohio. Wayne was anything but "mad." During the next two years, he trained his "Legion," a large force of regulars to back the frontier militia. He began careful preparations for an offensive to destroy the alliance villages in northwest Ohio. Meanwhile, continuous warfare took its toll on the alliance, which could not feed its warriors for extended periods. Complaining about the lack of food, the Fox and Sauk left in 1792. At the same time, General Charles Scott attacked the villages on the lower Wabash. He captured a large number of women and children, which forced the Wabash tribes (Wea, Piankashaw, and Kickapoo) to make a separate peace. By the time it was defeated by the Americans at Fallen Timbers in 1794, the alliance had less than 800 warriors. During their retreat after the battle, the warriors watched the British close the gates of Fort Miami to them rather than risk a confrontation with Wayne's army.
In November, the British signed the Jay Treaty, resolving their differences with the United States and agreeing to leave their forts on American territory. Abandoned by the British, the alliance chiefs assembled at Fort Greenville in August 1795 and signed a treaty ceding Ohio except for the northwest. Negotiations involved a considerable number from the alliance (the Americans counted 1,130 attended). Of these, 240 were Potawatomi, and the 24 signatures of their chiefs represent the largest delegation to sign the treaty. Although the Potawatomi did not surrender any of their lands at Greenville, they received $1,000 for signing. More than 60 of the Potawatomi who attended mysteriously got sick and died afterward, and the British claimed they had been poisoned by the Americans. There was no evidence to support this, but the suspicion remained and prepared the way for Tecumseh and his brother, the Shawnee Prophet.
An unhappy peace settled across the Ohio Valley afterward, but in the wake of military defeat, it was a terrible period of social disintegration and breakdown of tribal authority. The Shawnee chief Blue Jacket tried to resurrect the council at Brownstown in 1801, but his efforts were thwarted by Little Turtle and the other "peace chiefs" trying to reach an accommodation with the Americans. They had an impossible task. The Americans finally got Ohio in 1795 but would not be satisfied until they had the entire Ohio Valley. William Henry Harrison arrived as the new governor of the Northwest Territory in 1800 with specific instructions to end Indian title to their lands through a treaty, and he set about his work. The Potawatomi and others signed treaties at Fort Wayne (1803), Fort Industry (1805), and Grouseland (1805), ceding portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. At the Detroit treaty signed in November 1807 ceded the southeast quarter of lower Michigan, where the Potawatomi were required to surrender some of their own lands for the first time. The Americans took a little more at Brownstown in 1808.
It was a good time for a prophet, and one arose among the Shawnee. His name originally was Lalawethika, and he was known among the Shawnee as a drunkard and loudmouth. In 1805, Lalawethika received a spiritual vision and changed his name to Tenskwatawa, "the open door." Unwilling to struggle with his Shawnee name, Americans simply called him "The Prophet." His message was similar to the Delaware Prophet Neolin's in 1763 - return to traditional values and reject trade goods and whiskey. His brother Tecumseh, a respected war chief, added a political element - no more land cessions to the Americans. To make this point, the brothers established their village at the treaty line on the abandoned grounds of Fort Greenville. Interest in Tenskwatawa grew quickly, but many turned away after his followers killed some of the Delaware and Wyandot for witchcraft. Tenskwatawa recovered by predicting an eclipse in 1806 (some would say with the help of a British almanac). Still, he could never win widespread support among the important tribes of the old alliance, including the Shawnee.
This was partly due to the opposition of the "peace chiefs," who saw the new movement as a threat to their authority. Instead, most support for Tecumseh and the Prophet came from the tribes farther west, the Pottawattamie, Kickapoo, Sauk, Fox, and Winnebago. They were allies in a bitter war with the Osage west of the Mississippi. They had not yet lost land to the Americans but realized it was only a matter of time. Upset by the American purchase of the Louisiana Territory in 1803, the Dakota sent a wampum belt to the Fox, Sauk, and Pottawattamie in 1805, asking them to end their war with the Osage and join an alliance against the Americans. Unsure of what to do, a Potawatomi and Sauk delegation visited the British at Fort Malden (Amherstburg, Ontario) to ask for their support. The British refused to commit themselves, but rumors of war circulated across the frontier during 1806. By the time Tecumseh visited Fort Malden in 1808, the British had changed their minds and given him every encouragement.
The Prophet's message found fertile ground among the Prairie Potawatomi, especially the band of Main Poche (French for Withered Hand), a war chief and shaman who had spent his life fighting the Osage in Missouri. Main Poche and his people visited the Prophet at Greenville in 1807 and extended an invitation to relocate his village to Tippecanoe in western Indiana. Tenskwatawa accepted and left Greenville in the spring of 1808. There was nothing accidental about the location of Prophetstown to Tippecanoe. It was disputed ground between the Potawatomi and Miami and intended to insult the most essential peace chief, Little Turtle of the Miami. In September 1809, the Potawatomi, Kickapoo, Delaware, and Miami peace chiefs met with Governor Harrison at Fort Wayne and ceded over three million acres of southern Illinois and Indiana. When Tecumseh learned of this, he denounced the treaty, threatened the chiefs who signed it with death and promised the provisions would never be carried out.
He made good on his threat when his Wyandot followers executed the old chief Leatherlips in 1810 and sent the alliance wampum belts to Tippecanoe. The reaction of the peace chiefs meeting in Brownstown was to condemn the Prophet as a witch. Tecumseh met Harrison twice at Vincennes, but their talks almost ended in armed confrontations. In the fall of 1811, Tecumseh left Prophetstown to recruit the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Cherokee against the Americans. Before leaving, he warned his brother to avoid a fight with Americans while he was gone. He would have done better to tell Main Poche the same thing. Launching his own protest against the Fort Wayne Treaty, his Potawatomi attacked settlements in southern Illinois, throwing the frontier into alarm and bringing out the militia. Harrison seized upon this to gather an army and march on Tippecanoe. When it arrived in November, Tenskwatawa ignored his brother's instructions and ordered an attack on Harrison's camp. During the battle that followed, the Indians were forced to withdraw, and the Americans captured and burned Prophetstown.
The military defeat at the Battle of Tippecanoe was less consequential than the damage done to Tenskwatawa's reputation as a prophet. When Tecumseh returned in January, he had to rebuild his alliance. He had little time for this since the War of 1812 (1812-14) began in June. The Potawatomi did not automatically join Tecumseh and the British other than Main Poche. Thanks to Thomas Forsyth, the American Indian agent at Peoria, Black Partridge and Gomo (Nasima) bands on the Illinois River remained neutral. At the same time, the Milwaukee Potawatomi stood by the Americans as they had done during the Revolution. The St. Joseph and Huron bands were divided following the Brownstown council's decision to remain neutral and others joining Tecumseh. However, Main Poche convinced the Prairie Potawatomi to attack Fort Dearborn (Chicago). In August, besieged and surrounded, the fort's garrison received orders from General William Hull to abandon the fort and join him at Detroit.
Negotiations were held for a safe withdrawal, but the night before they were to leave, the fort's commander ordered the fort's powder supply thrown down a well rather than leave it for the Potawatomi as promised. The Indian agent at the fort was William Wells. Captured as a child, he had been adopted by The Miami and was married to Little Turtle's daughter. When Wells saw what was done with the powder, he blackened his face in the traditional Miami manner and prepared for death. On August 16, the 42-man garrison marched east of the fort. They had not gone far when the ruined powder was discovered and attacked. Everyone was killed, including Wells. The Potawatomi mutilated his body and ate his heart. Black Partridge, or Black Pheasant (1795–1816), a Peoria Lake Potawatomi chieftain, and his brother Waubonsie attempted to protect settlers during the Battle of Fort Dearborn but arrived too late to save the garrison. They buried the dead and rescued the few civilian survivors from the massacre until they could be sent safely to the British at Detroit.
Detroit was British because, on that same day, General Hull had surrendered his command to a smaller force without a fight. This act earned him the distinction of being the only American general court marshaled for cowardice and sentenced to death by firing squad (later pardoned by President Madison). Because of the British victory at Detroit and the efforts of the British Indian agent, Robert Dickson, the Potawatomi and warriors from many tribes joined Tecumseh at Detroit. However, Black Partridge, if anything, still leaned toward the Americans. Unfortunately, Illinois territorial governor Ninian Edwards needed to respond to the Fort Dearborn massacre and attacks on Fort Madison (Iowa). In November 1812, an expedition from Fort Russell (Edwardsville) under Colonel William Russell to attack the hostile Kickapoo and Potawatomi villages on the Illinois River. As always, the innocent were easier to find than the guilty, and the militia attacked Black Partridge's village on Peoria Lake. At the same time, he was absent, helping to rescue one of Forsyth's relatives. In the middle of the night, the attack killed 25-30 Potawatomi, including Black Partridge's favorite daughter and her child. After this, all of the Potawatomi were fighting the Americans.
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| Chief Benjamin Shabbona |
Although Indian resistance generally ended after the death of Tecumseh, Potawatomi and Kickapoo attacks in Illinois resulted in an almost separate conflict known as the Peoria War (1813). In August, 150 soldiers from St. Louis came to Peoria by keelboat and built Fort Clark. An attack by Black Partridge's Potawatomi was repulsed, and soon afterward, reinforcements arrived in the form of 800 mounted rangers commanded by former Missouri governor Benjamin Howard. The troops destroyed two nearby villages (including Gomo's). Meanwhile, Roger's Rangers from St. Louis attacked and destroyed the Kickapoo-Potawatomi village at "The Bluffs" on the Mississippi (Quincy, Illinois). Faced with overwhelming military force, the Potawatomi ended their last war with the Americans. Sanatuwa and Latapucky made peace that fall, and Black Partridge met with William Clark (Lewis and Clark fame and younger brother of George Rogers) at St. Louis in January 1814. Gomo began supplying Fort Clark's garrison with meat and kept the peace even after whites murdered some of his hunters.
The War of 1812 is generally thought to have ended in a stalemate between Great Britain and the United States, but for the Indians, it was a total defeat. With Tecumseh dead and British support gone, there was nothing to stop the Americans. New agencies and forts were added at Green Bay, Chicago, Rock Island, Peoria, Prairie du Chien, St. Paul, and Peoria. The first treaties signed by the Potawatomi after the war made peace and forgave injuries: Greenville (1814) - tribes allied with the Americans (Delaware, Seneca, Shawnee, and Wyandot) made peace with the Miami, Kickapoo, Ottawa, and Potawatomi; Portage des Sioux (1815) - Prairie Potawatomi made peace with the Americans; and Spring Wells (1815) - Detroit Potawatomi and other Tecumseh allies agreed to a truce and were allowed to return from Canada. However, the Prophet remained in Canada until he was lured back to the United States in 1824 by Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan to convince the Shawnee to leave Ohio and remove to Kansas.
After this, the Americans got down to the business of taking Indian lands east of the Mississippi. The usual method was to force tribes into smaller areas where their only real income was annuities. Government traders (the only persons allowed to trade with Indians) extended credit, and as debts increased, the tribes were forced to sell land to pay. Because the Potawatomi were north of the early settlements, they did not lose much land until 1821. They were called upon earlier to surrender claims to land occupied by other tribes: St. Louis (1816) - Potawatomi surrender claim to western Illinois lands ceded by the Sauk and Fox in 1804; Fort Meigs (1817) - Wyandot ceded three million acres of Ohio, but the Detroit Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwe lost only 500,000 acres; and St. Marys (1818) - Potawatomi abandon claims to lands in Indiana South of the Wabash and ceded a narrow strip north of the river.
The treaty signed at Chicago in 1821 was the first significant land cession by the Potawatomi since 1807 and set the pattern for things to come. The St. Joseph bands surrendered a large tract in southwest Michigan (and a small strip of northern Indiana in exchange for reservations for the individual bands. Four years later, the Forest Potawatomi in Wisconsin participated in the Grand Council at Prairie du Chein (1825), which attempted to prevent intertribal warfare along the upper Mississippi by creating boundaries between tribal territories. The Americans continued to whittle away at Potawatomi holdings with the Wabash Treaty (1826), taking another narrow strip of Indiana north of the Wabash. The 1827 treaty with the Huron Potawatomi completed the establishment of reservations in Michigan by consolidating several bands and moving them away from the Chicago-Detroit highway.
The treaty at Prairie du Chein in 1825 had little effect on the warfare in the upper Mississippi. It was enough for American miners to rush into the lead mining area of northwest Illinois and southwest Wisconsin, which resulted in a brief war with the Winnebago (Winnebago War) in 1827. In 1828, the Winnebago, the Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwe surrendered their claims to the area in a treaty signed at Green Bay. That same year, the St. Joseph Potawatomi ceded another small area along Lake Michigan, including parts of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. In response to growing white settlement, the Prairie Potawatomi in 1829 gave up part of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin and agreed to a series of reservations. Within a brief period of eight years, the Potawatomi lost 70% of their land and allowed themselves to be confined on small reservations where it was almost impossible to support themselves. With the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the stage was set for their removal to the West of the Mississippi.
This was delayed while the government focused on getting Black Hawk's Sauk at Rock Island to accept the 1804 treaty and leave western Illinois. The opportunity came in 1831 during a war between the Fox and Dakota when Black Hawk moved his people across the river into Iowa to defend the Fox. After the danger passed, the army refused to allow him to return to his village in Illinois. The matter would have been settled here if Black Hawk had not spent the winter in Iowa fuming and listening to the arguments of his friend Neopope and the Winnebago Prophet (White Cloud). Wampum belts arrived from the Winnebago and Potawatomi, convincing Black Hawk they would support him if he defied the Americans and crossed back into Illinois. In June, he led 2,000 Sauk across the Mississippi and started the Black Hawk War (1832).
Black Hawk avoided Fort Armstrong at Rock Island and moved northeast up the Rock River to contact the Potawatomi and Winnebago. Although the alarm was out and the militia was assembling all over Illinois, there had been no hostilities up to this point. Black Hawk went into camp upstream from Dixon's Ferry and left for a council with the Potawatomi. At this meeting, it became clear that Chief Shabbona and the other Potawatomi chiefs would not join him, and Black Hawk decided to return to Iowa. A messenger was dispatched to request safe passage from the army, but he had no sooner left than mounted militia arrived and prepared to attack his camp. Black Hawk tried to arrange a truce, but his messengers were taken prisoner, and the next group was fired upon. The militia then killed their prisoners and charged after the UK, only to panic when they ran into what they thought was an ambush. At the Battle of Sycamore Creek (Stillman's Defeat), 250 mounted militia were routed by less than 40 Sauk warriors.
Although he stayed with Tecumseh until he died in 1813, Chief Shabbona accepted the outcome and tried to get along with the Americans afterward. His influence was the main reason the Potawatomi refused to support Black Hawk, but several Potawatomi bands considered fighting the Americans after the Sauk victory at Sycamore Creek. Chief Shabbona rode to the scattered villages to stop this, but at Big Foot's village, his arguments fell on deaf ears, and he was taken prisoner. Some Potawatomi felt this was an affront to a chief who had come for a council, and he was released but had to flee for his life. Aware that some Potawatomi warriors were planning to join Black Hawk and avenge old injuries from settlers in the area, Chief Shabbona rode all night and warned the whites to leave.
Some did not listen, and Potawatomi warriors killed 16 whites at Indian Creek (near Ottawa). The Indian Creek Massacre occurred on May 21, 1832, with the attack by a party of Native Americans on a group of United States settlers in LaSalle County, Illinois, following a dispute about a settler-constructed dam that prevented fish from reaching a nearby Potawatomi village. The incident coincided with the Black Hawk War but was not a direct action of the Sauk leader Black Hawk and conflict with the United States.
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| An artist depicted the 1832 Indian Creek Massacre during the Black Hawk War. |
Both groups moved to a new reservation north of Topeka in 1847. The merger into a single tribe did not go well. The Prairie Potawatomi bands were more traditional and clashed with the more acculturated Potawatomi of the Woods. The balance between the two factions was disturbed in 1850 by the arrival of 650 members of the Mission Band from Michigan. They settled near St. Mary's Mission. Some of the more traditional Potawatomi could not adjust to these circumstances and left with the Kickapoo for northern Mexico in 1852. Besides their internal divisions, there were serious problems with the Pawnee and other plains tribes. Many of the immigrant tribes in Kansas removed from east of the Mississippi supported themselves by becoming professional hunters, a source of considerable annoyance to the plains tribes who depended on the buffalo for food. This was aggravated by traffic through the Platte Valley to Oregon during the 1840s and the California gold rush in 1849. The increased traffic decimated the Platte River buffalo herd, forcing the Pawnee and Cheyenne to hunt south in central Kansas. Hungry, they were not inclined to share this hunting territory with many "defeated Indians" from the east.
After several Pawnee attacks designed to keep them confined to their reservation villages, the Potawatomi declared war in 1850. Supported by other immigrant tribes, a battle was fought along the Blue River in June. The Pawnee lost 40 warriors in this engagement and afterward were inclined to leave the Potawatomi alone. In 1861, Kansas became a state. Unlike Delaware, Wyandot, and Shawnee farther east, the western location of the Potawatomi protected them from the fighting in eastern Kansas between pro and anti-slavery forces after Kansas was opened for white settlement by the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. This was especially apparent in the case of the Potawatomi of the Woods. Their old reservation was the site of some of the worst incidents: the Potawatomi Massacre (1856) and the Marais des Cygnes Massacre two years later. Their location also kept the Potawatomi from the American Civil War.
However, it could not protect them from Kansas statehood and has been this way before. The Potawatomi of the Woods and the Mission Band foresaw problems. They pushed for citizenship and allotment - something unacceptable to the traditional Prairie Band. Unable to resolve their differences, the two groups divided their reservation in a treaty signed in 1861. The Prairie Potawatomi continued to hold their half in common. The Citizen Potawatomi agreed to 160-acre allotments and citizenship - the excess land to be sold to the Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western Railroad. In 1864, the Kansas legislature called for removing all Indians from Kansas. Disturbed by this, Potawatomi attended the peace on the Plains council with the Confederates on Oklahoma's Washita River in May 1865. The meeting was well-attended (Osage, Pawnee, Iowa, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Wichita, Navaho, Mescalero, Yankton, Lakota, and Cheyenne), but Lee had already surrendered in Virginia, and the war was over.
The Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western Railroad never purchased the Citizen Potawatomi lands, so a treaty was signed in 1867 allowing their sale to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Most immigrant tribes left Kansas in 1867 and moved to the Indian Territory. Two years later, the Potawatomi citizens asked permission to do likewise. After selling their remaining lands in Kansas, they moved in 1870-71 to the vicinity of Shawnee. Most of their lands were lost in 1889 to allotment and "grafting" (a polite way of describing massive fraud and corruption in Oklahoma), but most chose to remain in Oklahoma. The Prairie Potawatomi stayed in Kansas. Chief Wabwabashkot resisted allotment until 1895, and tribal organization disintegrated afterward. The tribal council ceased after 1900, the agency closed in 1903, and annuities stopped six years later. By 1925, only 22% of their land remained scattered in a checkerboard pattern through the original eleven square miles of the reservation. However, the Prairie Potawatomi survived. Federal recognition has been maintained despite efforts to terminate them in 1953.
The Leavenworth, Pawnee & Western Railroad never purchased the Citizen Potawatomi lands, so a treaty was signed in 1867 allowing their sale to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Most immigrant tribes left Kansas in 1867 and moved to the Indian Territory. Two years later, the Potawatomi citizens asked permission to do likewise. After selling their remaining lands in Kansas, they moved in 1870-71 to the vicinity of Shawnee. Most of their lands were lost in 1889 to allotment and "grafting" (a polite way of describing massive fraud and corruption in Oklahoma), but most chose to remain in Oklahoma. The Prairie Potawatomi stayed in Kansas. Chief Wabwabashkot resisted allotment until 1895, and tribal organization disintegrated afterward. The tribal council ceased after 1900, the agency closed in 1903, and annuities stopped six years later. By 1925, only 22% of their land remained scattered in a checkerboard pattern through the original eleven square miles of the reservation. However, the Prairie Potawatomi survived. Federal recognition has been maintained despite efforts to terminate them in 1953.
Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.
Research Contributor: Lee Sultzman
[1] Between 1630 and 1700, the Beaver Wars battled for economic welfare throughout the St. Lawrence River valley and the lower Great Lakes region. The wars were between the Iroquois [aka Haudenosaunee; People of the Longhouse] trying to take control of the fur trade from the Hurons, the northern Algonquians, and their French allies. The Iroquois were known during the colonial years to the French as the "Iroquois League," and later as the "Iroquois Confederacy," and to the English as the "Five Nations," comprising of the Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and Seneca tribes.
Very interesting about all of the Indian tribes locations.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting historical account.
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