Great Leader: Menominee of the Potawatomi

Native leaders tried a number of tactics to hold on to whatever land remained for their people.  Menominee of the Potawatomi, c 1791-1841, resisted removal from Twin Lakes, in what is now Marshall County, Indiana, first stalling for time by signing a series of treaties, then refusing to move until he was forced off his land in the 1838 Trail of Death.

Menominee was born somewhere in what is now Wisconsin or Illinois.  How he achieved leadership status among the Potawatomi is not clear now.  However, beginning 1818 and through the 1830's, he was signatory to several treaties ceding most of what is now Illinois and Indiana to the American government.  These treaties included the Treaty of St. Mary's, 1818, the Treaty of Mississinwas, 1828, and the Treaty of Tippecanoe, 1832, as well as another treaty in 1834.  These treaties confined the Potawatomi to a reservation at Twin Lakes, near present-day Plymouth, Indiana.  There, Menominee and other Native leaders hoped to be allowed to stay.  He developed a reputation as a spiritual leader, fusing Native religious beliefs with Roman Catholicism.  Faced with pressure to remove his people to Kansas, he and other leaders put off the inevitable time and again, often by claiming that the elderly and children were unable to travel, or that the requests came too late in the year, putting the march during winter and leaving the Natives without ability to hunt or harvest crops. 

For awhile, these stalling tactics worked.  Menominee refused to sign the Treaty of Yellow River in 1836, plainly telling American representatives that he knew he and his people were being deceived about the amount of land they were being forced to sign over.  However, in 1838, the government ordered Menominee and his people to prepare for removal.  Menominee and other leaders were arrested and kept in custody pending the trek to Kansas.  859 Potawatomi men, women and children marched over 660 miles from Indiana to Kansas.  The journey was in late fall, from September-November, 1838.  42 people, 28 of them young children, died along the way.  At first, Menominee and the other leaders were forced to ride in a wagon behind the rest of the column, being treated as hostages or captives.  As conditions worsened, a Catholic priest riding with the group begged the soldiers to allow the men to hunt and for the leaders to take their place on horseback at the head of the column.  Food supplies and moral improved among the people, and the death rate slowed down. 

Menominee survived the march to Kansas, but died of illness in 1841.  He was buried at St. Mary's Mission, Kansas,  The state of Indiana erected a statue to his memory on the site of his village at Twin Lakes.  The Chief Menominee Memorial Site was listed on the National Register of Historical Places in 2010.