The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin

Chapter 2. Nena’aangabi and the Language of Treaties, 1837– 1855

31 CHAPTER 2 Nena’aangabi and the Language of Treaties, 1837–1855 At the 1855 annuity payment, Nena’aangabi told American officials about his understanding of the treaty that had transpired the year before where Lake Superior Ojibwe bands ceded iron-ore-rich lands in northeast Minnesota and retained reservations. In his colorful oratory, Nena’aangabi told government officials, “I swallowed the words of the treaty down my throat, and they have not yet had time to blister my breast.”1 The implication was that the longtime leader was dissatisfied with prior treaties and the relationship with the United States that had developed in the prior few decades. By 1855, Nena’aangabi was the most influential Ojibwe leader in Wisconsin. In 1837, the Ojibwe ceded lands in northern Wisconsin , including Manoominikaan. However, Nena’aangabi refused to sign the treaty. After the treaty, Nena’aangabi continued to assert his influence in defense of Ojibwe sovereignty. In 1847, he joined other Ojibwe leaders in protesting a treaty made that year that ceded Ojibwe lands in central Minnesota because it gave a greater share of annuity payments to Ojibwe bands in Minnesota (while the Minnesota Ojibwe still collected equal share of the annuities from sale of Wisconsin Ojibwe lands) and the treaty authorized persons of mixed descent who were not Ojibwe leaders to sell land. Tragedy struck Nena’aangabi’s community and the rest of the Wisconsin Ojibwe in 1850 when Minnesota Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey attempted to remove the Wisconsin Ojibwe to Sandy Lake, Minnesota. The events at Sandy Lake resulted in the deaths of four hundred Wisconsin Ojibwe, when the Wisconsin Ojibwe showed up at Sandy Lake with no provisions or annuities. As a result, Nena’aangabi and other Lake Superior Ojibwe leaders 32| Chapter Two signed the 1854 treaty that secured reservations, including one for the Lac Courte Oreilles Band. However, in 1855, just weeks after Nena’aangabi told American officials the 1854 treaty had “not yet had time to blister my breast,” the Dakota cut down the influential leader on the battlefield. Accounts of how the Ojibwe understood treaties are found in a variety of surviving texts. In 1864, a delegation of Wisconsin Ojibwe presented Abraham Lincoln with a petition detailing unfulfilled treaty provisions. The delegation included Fond du Lac ogimaa Naagaanab, Lac du Flambeau ogimaa Aamoons, three ogimaag from the La Pointe Band, and Lac Courte Oreilles ogimaa Akiwenzii, the son and successor of Moozojiid. The petition was in both English and Ojibwe.2 While other scholars have analyzed the English version of the text, scholars have not pondered the precise meaning of the Ojibwe text. The English text was not an exact translation of the Ojibwe and sometimes differs substantially. Analysis of the Ojibwe text reveals Ojibwe understanding of the treaties and that American officials explicitly told Ojibwe leaders that they were only purchasing rights to harvest certain resources and not purchasing title to the land itself, something borne out in other archival materials. Obtaining territory through outright deception is contrary to a just democracy and reveals how nineteenth-century American expansion was colonialism. Had Nena’aangabi lived even a few more years, the treaty of 1854 would no doubt have had time to blister his breast. GAAWIIN WIIN OWIDI OJIIBIKAAWID GIBAGIDINAMOOSINOON: THE TREATY OF 1837 In the winter of 1836, Wisconsin Territorial Governor Henry Dodge and St. Peter’s Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro lobbied the Jackson administration for a land cession treaty of Ojibwe pinelands in northern Wisconsin. Their efforts paid off, and Congress authorized a land cession treaty of Ojibwe lands in far east-central Minnesota and northern Wisconsin, including Manoominikaan. The treaty was held at Lawrence Taliaferro’s agency at the confluence of the Minnesota (which was then called the St. Peters River) and Mississippi Rivers. Henry Dodge acted as treaty commissioner. The location made it easy for Ojibwe living on the Mississippi whose lands were not included in the land cession to attend, while geographical barriers made for a more arduous journey for the leaders of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band. This was by design, as Taliaferro knew that it would be easier to convince Ojibwe leaders along the Mississippi to agree to the cession, since he had a Nena’aangabi and Treaties| 33 relationship with those leaders and they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by agreeing to the sale of territory they did not reside on.3...