The Fur Trade Revisited: Selected Papers of the Sixth North American Fur Trade Conference, Mackinac Island, Michigan, 1991

“Half-Breed” Rolls and Fur Trade Families in the Great Lakes Region—An Introduction and Bibliography

"Half-Breed" Rolls and Fur Trade Families in the Great Lakes Region-An Introduction and Bibliography James L. Hansen Most of the individuals who worked in the fur trade, as in many occupational fields, are very poorly documented. Because much fur trade activity took place in areas with little or no governmental control, comparatively few records were created, outside the trade itself, that even named the workers. Typically, identifying or quantifying these individuals can be accomplished only by extremely careful comparison of such arid sources as contracts, licenses, accounts, and engagements. Therefore, any source providing significant detail on these workers, their families, and connections, should be welcome to researchers. In the course of research on the early settlement of Prairie du Chien, it has been possible to identify a significant body of material that has apparently not come to the attention of historians of the Upper Midwest fur trade-the records relating to payments from the U.s. government to the mixed bloods of the various Midwestern tribes. The records relating to these payments, though widely scattered and often difficult to find, can be an important and useful source of information on many of the individuals involved in the fur trade with those tribes. They are described in detail in the bibliography below. When the U.s. government entered into treaties with the various Indian tribes, it was concerned mainly with obtaining land and making whatever arrangements were necessary to obtain that land. During the period of major cessions in the Great Lakes-Upper Mississippi region, the tribes also came to expect some sort of settlement for their mixed-blood relations. Because those relations, not being members of the tribe, did not normally benefit from the annuities and other settlements, special provision was made for them. Between 1817 and 1833 that provision was normally for reserves, grants of federal land to specified individuals. l Because the reserves system was discovered to be so cumbersome, a system of cash payments was decided upon and was first brought into effect at the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. From 1833 to 1849 the government, when negotiating and drawing up a treaty, normally set aside a sum of money to be divided among the mixed bloods.2 Although the exact procedure varied from treaty to treaty, it was customary in the early (reserves) period for the individuals to be identified by name in the 161 JAMES L. HANSEN Figure 1. Prairie du Chien painted by Seth Eastman. Watercolor, 1846-1848. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society, No. 56236. treaty itself or in a separate council; the list was then forwarded to the federal authorities for action. That action was often very slow in coming. The "halfbreed tract" granted to the eastern Sioux in 1830 was not divided and made available for more than twenty-five years, despite continued importunities from the individuals involved. By the time it was available the pressure for white settlement was so strong that, in exchange for relinquishing their claims to the tract, the mixed bloods were granted certificates to obtain federal land elsewhere . Because they took so long to be settled, the reserves created a sizeable mass of paperwork, correspondence, petitions, claims, depositions, and complaints. Some of this material is found in the general correspondence of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but much of it appears either in the "reserves" supplement to individual agencies' correspondence, or in the reserves files in the records of the BIA (RG 75) at the National Archives. This material frequently contains considerable biographical and genealogical information on the individuals involved, information that is otherwise not easily come by. Also, because the reserves system involved the granting of land, additional records will often be found in the records of the General Land Office (RG 49) at the National Archives. The records relating to cash payments are usually not as voluminous as the reserves records nor do they cover as broad a span of time, but they typically relate to larger numbers of individuals and provide a "snapshot" of a mixedblood community at a particular time. Although details varied from treaty to 162 "HALF-BREED" ROLLS AND FUR TRADE FAMILIES IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION Figure 2. Rachel (Lawe) Grignon (1808-1876), daughter of John Lawe of Green Bay and his wife Therese Rankin, daughter of David Rankin and Therese "Neckickoqua," a Chippewa of Lac du Flambeau. Courtesy of State Historical Society of Wisconsin, WHi...