THE POTTAWATOMIES

This tribe, unlike the Winnebagoes, belong to the Algonquin, or eastern family of Indians. Though warlike, they are said to have had, at the advent of the whites, a less stable form of government and a ruder dialect, than the rest of their race. At the beginning of the seventeenth century they occupied the lower peninsula of Michigan, in scattered and roving bands, apparently independent of each other—there being at no period of their history any trace of a general authority or government. They lived, like the other tribes, mainly by hunting and fishing, and the occasional cultivation of maize. Notwithstanding their scattered condition and nomadic habits, whenever a common danger threatened them the more influential leaders of the independent bands seemed to find little difficulty in uniting them for the common defence [defense]. They thus maintained their position for a long time, often coming out victorious in their war-like collisions with neighboring tribes. At last, however, they were driven west by the united tribes of the Iroquois family, and settled on the islands and shores of Green Bay. Here they were favored by the Jesuit Fathers, who established a mission among them. Perrot acquired great influence over them, by which they were induced to take part with the French against the Iroquois. Onanguice, their most prominent chief, was one of the parties to the treaty made at Montreal, in 1701; and the bands united under him, actively aiding the French in their subsequent wars. Their connection with the French greatly increased their power, and they gradually spread over what is now southern Michigan and northern Illinois and Indiana—a mission on the St. Joseph river being a sort of a central point.

The Pottawatomies joined Pontiac, the Ottawa chief, in his great conspiracy against the English, in 1763. They were prominent in the surprise of Fort St. Joseph, on the twenty-fifth of May in that year, when the garrison was routed and the commandant, Schlosser, was captured. During the Revolution, and the Indian wars that followed, they were hostile to the Americans; but, after Wayne's victory, they joined in the treaty of Greenville, December 22, 1795. The tribe was at this time composed of three bands, each under its own chief, but all united in a strong confederacy. These were called the St. Joseph, the Wabash, and the Huron river bands. There was, besides, a large scattering population, generally called the Pottawatomies of the prairie, who were a mixture of many Algonquin tribes. From 1803 to 1809, the various bands sold to the Government a portion of the lands claimed by them, receiving an equivalent in cash and the promise of annuities. Yet, in the War of 1812 they again joined the English, influenced by the Shawnee warrior, Tecumseh. A new treaty of peace was made in 1815, followed by others in rapid succession, by which nearly all the their lands were at length ceded to the Government. A large reservation was assigned to them on the Missouri; and, in 1838, the St. Joseph's band was removed by a military force, on the way losing a hundred and fifty persons out of eight hundred, by death and desertion. The whole tribe numbered about four thousand. The St. Joseph, Wabash, and Huron bands had made considerable progress in civilization, and adhered to the Catholic church, having been converted by the Jesuit missionaries; but the Pottawatomies of the prairie were, for the most part, pagan and roving. A part of the tribe was removed with some Chippewas and Ottawas, but they subsequently joined the rest of their tribe, or disappeared.

In Kansas the civilized band, with the Jesuit mission founded by DeSmet and Hoecken, made rapid improvement, good schools having been established for both sexes. The Baptists more than once undertook to establish a mission, and a school among the less tractable Prairie band; but meeting with little success, it was finally abandoned. The political disturbances in Kansas brought trouble to the Indians, as well as to the whites, and made the Prairie band more restless and the civilized portion of the tribe more anxious for a quiet and settled abode. A treaty, proclaimed April 19, 1862, gave to individual Indians a title to their several tracts of land, under certain conditions; and, although the execution of this treaty was delayed by the progress of the civil war, yet the policy was subsequently carried out in the treaty of February 27, 1867. Of a population then numbering twenty-one hundred and eighty, nearly two-thirds elected to become citizens and take lands in severalty. Some of the Prairie band were absent, and were not included in this arrangement. The experiment met with varied success. Some did well and improved; others squandered their lands and their portion of the funds, and became paupers. Many of these scattered in small bands, one company even going to Mexico. In 1874, the largest company of the Prairie band, numbering four hundred and sixty-seven, occupied a reservation

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of seventeen thousand three hundred and fifty-seven acres, in Jackson county, Kansas, held in common. They, like the other tribes above-mentioned, were under the control of the Quakers, who had established schools among them, and reported considerable advancement. There were, at that timid, [time?] sixty Pottawatomies of the Huron in Michigan on a small tract of a hundred and sixty acres, with a school and log houses; a hundred and eighty-one of the same tribe in Wisconsin, and eighty in Mexico and the Indian Territory.

The history of this tribe affords much encouragement to those who are looking and hoping for the civilization of the remnants of the Indians in this country. So long as any do well, there is ground for hope. That some should turn out badly is no more than might reasonably be expected. Let the Government persist in this plan of conferring lands in severalty upon those who are willing to become citizens; but it might be well for the Government to make these lands inalienable, except to Indians, and to retain a reversionary right to them in case they should be abandoned or sold to whites. This would thwart the cupidity of white settlers, and tend to the permanence of Indian occupation.

Although there is no mention in any of the accounts we have seen, of the occupation of Iowa soil by any of the Pottawatomie bands, yet the fact that the writer of this once knew of a company of this tribe who made occasional visits to the Iowa river, near Marshalltown—and the further fact, stated above, in regard to their extensive wanderings and their know occupation of lands in Wisconsin on the north and Kansas on the south—these facts, we say, fully justify us in reckoning the Pottawatomies among the tribes that doubtless, in historic or prehistoric times, made occasional hunting grounds of the woods and prairies now embraced in Buchanan county.

The Sioux

Mardos Memorial Library

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