THIS LAND WAS MADE FOR YOU AND ME – PART II
or
The Kroc’s Crock: Claiming Historical Homelands Long Gone
This land is your land, and this land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me….
–Woody Guthrie, ca. 1940
The Wasteland Turned Productive
The Potawatomi did not always inhabit this land. They arrived after other Indian tribes inhabited the area. When Rene Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, arrived in what is Indiana in 1679, he found the area inhabited with Miami, Wea and Mascouten with Shawnees in the South. Before these distinct peoples came into northern and central Indiana, there were a variety of different peoples who held a culture known as Mississippian. In addition, the other Algonquins (the Potawatomi are considered Algonquin) inhabited the area having been driven from their lands in the East and Mid-Atlantic by the Iroquois[1]. By the early 1700s, the Potawatomi “followed the Miami into the St Joseph river valley of northern Indiana.” As the French presence grew in the region, they established posts to trade with the Indians. The tribes split from each over the issue of alliances with the French or with the British. And there were political divisions within the tribes over the same question. The treaty resulting from Pontiac’s War (July, 1766)[2] effectively halted British expansion west, and at the same time the British nominally came to control the whole area after having defeated the French in the latest French and Indian War.[3]
With the end of the American Revolution, the Americans pushed west as they were unrestrained by the British. This created conflict with the Indian tribes and a war began in 1790 with Little Turtle leading the Miami against the Americans. Finally defeated at Fallen Timbers in August, 1794, the Indians signed the Treaty of Greenville the following year that allowed American settlement into what is known as the Northwest Territory and at the same time secured certain rights for the Indians.[4]
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), Governor of the Indiana Territory and later President, negotiated a number of treaties over the course of six years between 1803 and 1809 to give land in southern Indiana to the Americans. Tecumseh, a Shawnee Chief, organized a confederation against the Americans beginning in 1808 and by 1811 he was at war. He took the view that the land of the Indians could not be alienated, even if they did not properly use the land. He said:
“Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth?…Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children? How can we have confidence in the white people…especially when such great acts of injustice have been committed by them upon our race?”[5]
The War of 1812 was the last gasp of the Indians as they could count on some help from a foreign power – Britain – in their efforts to stop the Americans. With that war lost, the tribes and the Americans signed a treaty on September 8, 1815 which preserved the “land and immunities [the Potawatomi] …had at the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.”[6] From that point on, Indian lands were regularly purchased in what is now Indiana.
Settling Indiana and Converting Indians
One of the most relevant treaties was the Treaty of Chicago signed on August 29, 1821 after two weeks of talks between Indians and Americans. There were over 3,000 attendees, many speeches were given, and much discussed. The treaty was finally signed by representatives of the US Government on the one side and the chiefs of the Pottawatomi, Chippewa and Ottawa of Illinois and Michigan on the other. Under the terms of the treaty, the Indians sold 5,000,000 acres while keeping 484 square miles (about 309,000 acres) in return for a permanent annuity of one thousand dollars in coin and another annuity of $ 1,500 per year for the promotion of agriculture and “the advancement of the useful arts.”[7]
Metea (d. 1827) was a Potawatomi chief, and he addressed the assemblage. His speech was notable:
“My father…you know that we first came to this country, a long time ago, and when we sat ourselves down upon it, we met with a great many hardships and difficulties. Our country was then very large, but now it is dwindled to a small spot, and you wish to purchase that. This has caused us much reflection, and we bring all our chiefs and warriors, and families, to hear you.
“Since you first came among us, we have listened with an attentive ear to your words; we have listened to your counsels. Whenever you have had a favor to ask of us, our answer has been, invariably, Yes!
“A long time has passed since we came upon these lands. Our old people have all sunk into their graves; they had sense. We are all young and foolish, and would not do anything they could not approve, if living. We are fearful to offend their spirits, if we sell our lands. We are fearful to offend you, if we do not. We do not know how we can part with the land.
“Our country was given to us by the Great Spirit, to hunt upon, to make corn fields to live on, and, when life is over, to spread down our beds upon, and lie down. That Spirit would never forgive us if we sold it. When you first spoke to us at St Mary’s, we said we had a little land, and sold you a piece. But we told you we could spare no more; now, you ask us again. You are never satisfied….
“Take notice, it is a small piece of land where we now live. It has been wasting away ever since the white people became our neighbors. We have now hardly enough to cover the bones of our tribe.”[8]
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), an ethnologist and author of the definitive study of Indians as commissioned by the Congress in 1850, debunked Metea’s claims. Schoolcraft, whose first wife taught him the Ojibwe language as she was the granddaughter of an Ojibwe war chief[9], recorded the American response:
“If we wished to get your lands without paying a just equivalent for them, we have nothing to do but to get you all intoxicated, and we could purchase as much land as we pleased. You perfectly know, that when in liquor you have not your proper senses, and are wholly unfit to transact any business, especially business of so weighty a nature. When intoxicated, you may be induced to sign any paper, you then fall asleep, and, when you awake, find you have lost all your lands. But, instead of pursuing this course, we keep the whisky from you, that you may make the best bargain for yourselves, your women and children. I am surprised, particularly, that your old men should come forward, continually crying whiskey! whiskey! whiskey!”
Schoolcraft then presented the evidence of how the Potawatomi, and other Indian tribes, were letting the land go to waste when it could be used for greater purposes:
“….Detention of millions of acres, for no higher purpose than to hunt the wild animals existing thereon.
“A critical examination has proved that, not a single acre of the land ceded by the Indians of this latitude was under cultivation, nor fifty acres of that lying between the banks of the Wabash and Chicago; and not one solitary cornfield could be found on the tract explored between Peoria and the same place. The aboriginal population occupied the banks, not only of the Illinois, but also of its tributaries, with a few meager villages…….It was pertinently remarked by one of the commissioners, after taking an elaborate survey of the vast tracts which they possessed, that the portion actually under cultivation bore no greater proportion to the whole, than two or three flies did to the surface of the long table before them.”[10]
The Indians had other problems. According to a number of scholars, nearly every single Indian tribe practiced some form of cannibalism[11]. They were dwelling in “the bonds of ignorance and savagery,” and as the Code of International Ethics put it, this made them a backwards people.
When the Catholic priests arrived again to the area after the signing of the Treaty of Chicago, and after a hiatus of almost 60 years, the Indians were glad to see them. The first “blackrobe” was Fr. Fredric Rese (1791-1871) who stayed only a short time, but more came baptizing and teaching things like farming while building churches and schools, things tied to the land.[12] The priests confirmed the backward nature of the Indians, with the most prominent pronouncement coming from Fr. Stephen Badin (1768-1853), the French priest who eventually bought 524 acres of land from the US Government and 2 private individuals which land became the University of Notre Dame. He wrote in a letter dated September 30, 1830: “I am consecrating the little strength left to me to spread the seeds of the Faith among the good Potawatomi savages.”[13]
Badin saw a structural defect with the Potawatomi society: the women did all the work while the men hunted and warred. Fr. Thomas Blantz, a Notre Dame historian, explains that Fr. Badin “encouraged the Potawatomi in the cultivation of wheat and corn and, since in the Potawatomi culture chiefly women tilled the soil while the men did the hunting, Badin cultivated his own garden to give an example that farming was for men also.”[14]
There was an economy of sorts among the Indian tribes that consisted of crafts and limited cultivation of land along with some trade with other tribes thereby resulting in a “cultural self-sufficiency”. The Indian economy suffered dramatically upon contact with the Europeans who had improved goods and a voracious demand for furs as part of an economy centered and controlled from far away. Trade with the Indians resulted in the creation of an intermediary and trading class of the Potawatomi and other tribes, and this class came to lead to Indian migration to the west. European traders would often marry Indian women thereby helping to gain access to sources of raw materials and markets for European goods. Their children, half-breeds or mixed-bloods were known as Metis and this population grew while further specializing in trade. The Metis would become leaders of the bands, which are and were subsets of the tribes, and were often the ones negotiating the sale of Indian land in the years ahead thereby facilitating the movement of the tribes west of the Mississippi.[15]
Schoolcraft explained that the Indian population could not increase due to the Indian view on existence and industry. In other words, the Indians had a defective political economy that was not operating for their own benefit. They were unable or unwilling to cultivate large areas of land, and they suffered from malnutrition and disease while spending inordinate time hunting instead of raising livestock. Their families were small with the average family having two children.[16] Schoolcraft, in describing the Indians, was unwittingly giving a blue print to the current day global leadership for how the nations of the world could be controlled, if not destroyed, and the land rendered sterile.
The Americans were a different, more advanced civilization in many ways. American experience was that the Indians needed a refuge. Schoolcraft explained that the Union expanded with “business, commercial enterprise, a science” moving
“forward hand in hand; new and distant regions were sought out for agricultural and commercial purposes; scientific explorations of new territories were made; and geographical data were rendered valuable by minute observations on the natural history, mineralogy, geology, botany and fauna of the new countries…..The Indians were regarded as a people who could not attain to a state of prosperity within the area of the old States, surrounded, as they were, on all sides, by temptations which they had not the strength of purpose to resist. They were, consequently, directed to the regions beyond the Mississippi, as to a refuge of safety and rest.”[17]
The American population in Indiana, which became a state in 1816, rapidly grew in 30 years while the Indian population stagnated. By 1830 which is when President Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act, which provided for the movement and resettlement of Indians west of the Mississippi, there were about 2500 Potawatomi in the entire northern half of the state of Indiana while the American population had grown from 6,550 to 344,000.[18]
The amount of acreage held exclusively for such a small population as the Indians had, was not justified given that this land could be put to better, or more productive, use for all mankind. This was an American concern as was the concern that the Indians were threatened with extinction given the history of American-Indian relations since the early 1600s.
President James Monroe expressed this fear for the continued existence of the Indian people in January, 1825 as did President Andrew Jackson in late 1829. They recognized practical problems in dealing with the Indians under current political situations in the existing states, and so they believed the best path forward for the Americans and the Indians was to get the Indians away from the Americans and to conduct a program of training or education of the Indians so that they could be more productive with the crafts and agriculture. This involved relocations, and the infusion of large amounts of capital both human and financial to retrain these people.[19]
Congress passed and Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act of May 28, 1830. Under that law, tribes willing to move west would be given land, annuities and other financial and material aid, while being transported to a suitable area of adequate size where they would be protected from the encroachments of Americans.[20]
A series of treaties then ensued in Indiana between the Americans, or US Government, and the Potawatomi. These included the Treaty of Mississinewa in 1826 by which the Indians sold the land upon which sits the University of Notre Dame,[21] the Treaty of Carey Mission (named after a mission started by Baptist minister Isaac McCoy) in 1828, and the Treaty of Tippecanoe in October, 1832. This all coincided with the renewed presence of the Catholic Church in this area in the form of the ministrations of Fr. Rese, Fr. Badin, and Fr. Badin’s famous replacement, the Flemish priest, Fr. Louis DeSeille (1795-1837).
Fr. Rese came to the Potawatomi village about six miles from the Carey Mission near Niles, Michigan in 1830 which was about the time McCoy abandoned the Baptist mission to go west with Indian bands to find new land.[22] Fr. Rese converted and baptized many Indians to include the Potawatomi leader or chief known as Pokagon (1775-1841). Pokagon replaced in 1826 the famous Chief Topinbee or Topinabee, a great Potawatomi leader present at the Treaty of Chicago. Pokagon took the name of Leopold Pokagon and his band converted with him thereby taking the name of the Pokagon Band which exists to this day. In 1836, after ceding his land to the Americans[23], Leopold was able to repair to a plot of land near Dowagiac, Michigan, and take up agriculture. After Fr. Rese left (he later became the Bishop of Detroit), Leopold traveled to Detroit to petition the bishop there for another priest. That priest would be Fr. Badin.[24]
Badin has been called the “proto priest of the United States” who was invested with “the spirit of unrest that seemed to govern all of his movements.”[25] He gained the confidence and the trust of the Americans by assuring them that the Treaty of Tippecanoe was in the best interests of the Americans and the Indians.[26] With that treaty, concluded in late October, 1832, some Pottawatomi sold their land while others kept their land with a guarantee from the US Government that they could keep those lands.[27] In November, 1832, the Americans asked him to assist with negotiations in Fort Wayne for the purchase of more Indian lands to allow for the construction of the Wabash Canal[28]. In the meanwhile, and perhaps as a quid pro quo for helping former Indiana Governor Jonathan Jennings and US Senator John Tipton at the Fort Wayne negotiations, he obtained a charter for an orphanage and a school at property he recently purchased.[29] That property was about 525 acres of land near St Mary’s Lake, and he obtained it by buying it from the State of Indiana and from two private individuals – a Mr. Austin W. Morris and a Mr. Samuel Merrill (1792-1855) who was a lawyer, prominent Indiana politician and government official, and publisher (the Bobbs-Merrill Company owes its genesis partly to him).[30] Badin built a log cabin on the land with the hopes of it becoming an orphanage and school, but those plans were cancelled as he eventually decided to give the property to the Bishop of Vincennes for the purpose of a school.[31] That school became, of course, the University of Notre Dame founded by Fr. Edward Sorin (1814-1893) in late November, 1842.
Ten years earlier, in late November, 1832, Flemish priest Fr. Louis DeSeille arrived in Detroit to assist Badin, who was indeed successful in converting many Indians. DeSeille continued that work moving the effort further south to the Tippecanoe River which is about forty miles south of Notre Dame, near the current day town of Rochester, Indiana. DeSeille was energetic, and perhaps even aggressive. He sought to “train them [the Potawatomi] for pastoral life.”[32] On August 24, 1834, on the banks of the Yellow River near modern day Plymouth, Indiana, DeSeille baptized Potawatomi Chief Menominee (1791-1841) who had also been an Indian religious leader, and named him Alexis. There the Potawatomi gave him 320 acres for a church, after he erected a chapel, and another 320 acres for a school.[33]
Badin remarked in a letter from September 30, 1834:
“As to the Indians, the greatest number of them being Christians are on the borders of Michigan, under the direction of the excellent priest, Monsr. de Seille. He made this summer two excursions among the Poutomatamies of Tippecanoe river and baptized 76 of them, the first Sunday of May, and 60 more the 1st Sunday of this month. (Sept.) The Poutom. Of Mich. Have sold all their lands, & must emigrate within two years; the Inds. Are our best congreg. But those of Tippecanoe have retained their reserves of land, and may form a Catholic miss. In the Dioc. Of Vinc.”[34]
Simon Brute (1779-1839), the Bishop of Vincennes, traveled with DeSeille to the Tippecanoe River and Chechakkose’s Village in the Spring of 1835. Again, the Indians offered 320 acres of land for a church on the banks of the Tippecanoe, but the priests were concerned that the Government would not approve of such as the Americans were busy buying up land from the Indians, band by band. Bishop Brute wrote that the Government wanted to push the Indians west of the Mississippi, and away from “all civilized life.”[35]
William Marshall, Indian Agent for Indiana, commenced buying Potawatomi land, band by band, so as to avoid involving the tribes which would involve chiefs who might oppose such a move.[36] After Marshall resigned in February, 1835, the effort to buy Indian land fell largely on Colonel Abel C. Pepper (1793-1860) appointed to oversee the removal of the Indians from Indiana. He began his work with the removal of a group that started with about 250 from Logansport, Indiana, but dwindled to less than one hundred. Pepper got word that DeSeille could be hindering the efforts to remove the Indians, calling on them to remain on their property. George Gibson (1775-1861), the Commissary General ultimately responsible for Indian removal, met with DeSeille and expressed surprise that a Catholic priest would be interfering with the activities of the US Government to help the Indians. Pepper engaged in an exchange of letters with DeSeille attempting to gain assurances that such was not the case while offering to provide an interpreter so as to spy on DeSeille and the Indians. DeSeille said he did not want to interfere with the Government’s efforts and that his counsels, or meetings, with the Indians were purely religious. DeSeille confirmed “I have not the least objection to this – my business with the Indians being only about their spiritual concerns.”[37]
In a letter dated October 10, 1835 to Pepper, DeSeille wrote concerning the land the Indians wanted to give for a Catholic Church, and what he believed to be the larger designs of the US Government:
“I cannot but approve it [the gifting of the land for the construction of a Catholic Church] but I deemed it useless being concerned that it was not possible for them to stay much longer in that country without being protected by the laws against encroachment of the Whites, and for this reason I would not take one step to begin and after several repeated solicitations I told them that I did not see any possibility for them to remain in this country unless they should get from their great father the President the favor of being subject to the laws as white people and this I did not tell them before I had ascertained myself that the intention of the Government was not to remove all the Indians to the West, but rather to extinguish their nationality – so I was told by persons in office when I supposed to be well acquainted with the proceedings of the Government.”[38]
Gibson was satisfied with this response and other responses from DeSeille. According to Gibson, a Potawatomi visit to Washington DC in November, 1835 resulted in assurances to the Indians they could remain on their lands as set out in the Treaty of Tippecanoe. The Potawatomi promptly set about asking for funding for religious education, ostensibly by Deseille.[39]
Pepper was off-put by all of this believing that he still had an obligation to acquire the Indian lands. In March and April 1836 and again in August and September of that same year he pursued an aggressive policy of buying the Indians’ land by negotiating with the various bands. At the Treaty of Yellow River on August 5, 1836, Pepper claimed that Menominee sold his land, something which Menominee vehemently denied, and with some credibility, as neither his name nor his mark was on the document[40]. Pepper watched DeSeille closely, fearing he would incite the Indians to resist removal which was mandated in two years by the Treaty of Yellow River. If the Indians did not leave, American squatters would be let on the Potawatomi land under protection of US forces. Menominee sent numerous appeals to Presidents Jackson and Martin Van Buren from November, 1836 to June, 1837, and all were either denied or ignored. It is believed that DeSeille was instrumental in sending these appeals to the Presidents.[41]
Louis Sands, an undersecretary for the emigration of the Indians, visited the tribes in the Spring of 1837 and he concluded that it was DeSeille who convinced them that they did not sell their land and that they did not have to leave. Pepper got wind of the report and immediately ordered that DeSeille either prove he was a US citizen so he would then face prosecution under the Act of June 30, 1834 for interfering with the Government’s actions towards the Indians, or face deportation from the US. DeSeille did not resist, though he remained in the neighborhood and moved north to Pokagon’s Village in Michigan. From there he went to the log cabin built by Badin at St Mary’s lake in northern Indiana, the site of Notre Dame. He died there alone and in dramatic fashion, having crawled to the chapel, administering to himself the Viaticum, and expiring at the foot of the steps leading to the altar. The date of his death was September 26, 1837, and it is commemorated in Notre Dame history and art.[42]
All that remained was for the Americans to remove the Potawatomi, and that occurred beginning in early September, 1838 after a number of skirmishes between the two peoples. Fr. Benjamin Petit accompanied the Indians on the trek to what is now Council Bluffs, Iowa, but recounting that experience is left for another time.
Conclusion
The Kroc’s statement is unjustified by either Natural Law, historical fact, or Catholic teaching. The land – including that upon which sits the Kroc Institute and the University of Notre Dame — rightly belongs to the Americans as historical claims of ownership are null and void. Any claims that the various treaties and agreements to sell the land by the Potawatomi bands because of drunkenness or impropriety, with the sole possible exception being the claims of Menominee or Alexis, are not supported by the evidence. And even if there exists evidence that the Indians were coerced or tricked or intoxicated into selling their lands, or otherwise cheated, the injustice is long past under either American law or the Law of Nations and so repeating claims to the land or claimed injustice is itself unjust and even immoral. The Kroc’s statements on its website evidence a dynamic that has been present with the Catholic leadership, especially in the United States, for a long while. That is serving the plutocratic socio-economic elites who evince a design to destroy the nations of the world to make a new one while rendering the earth sterile.
The above account demonstrates a defect in social organization, namely, the separation of church and state such that the elites gain power in society. Without the help of Catholicism, the US Government – or any government for that matter — is not able to properly develop, or civilize, all peoples by providing for their spiritual and material development.
[1] Blantz, The University of Notre Dame, 26.
[2] Pontiac (c. 1714-1769), of the Ottawa tribe, lead a confederation of Indian tribes against the British starting in May, 1763 that lasted well into 1764 with considerable success.
[3] Elizabeth Glenn and Stewart Rafert, “Native Americans,” Peopling Indiana: The Ethnic Experience (Indiana Historical Society, 1996), 392-398.
[4] Ibid, 398-400; Vincent Schilling, “Why the War of 1812 Was a Turning Point for Native Americans,” July 12, 2023, History, https://www.history.com/news/war-of-1812-native-americans-tecumseh, accessed August 18, 2023.
[5] Schilling, “Why the War of 1812 Was a Turning Point for Native Americans.”
[6] Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, History of the Indian Tribes of the United States: Their Present Conditions and Prospects (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, J.P. Lippincott and Company, 1857), Section XVI, pp. 387-388.
[7] Ibid., 395.
[8] Ibid., 394.
[9] Robert Dale Parker, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, accessed Dec 11, 2008
[10] Schoolcraft, History of the Indian Tribes of the United States, 394-395.
[11] Alan Axelrod, Chronicles of the Indian Wars: From Colonial Times to Wounded Knee (Prentice Hall, New York, 1993), 75.
[12] John Gilmary Shea, Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes of the United States, (Arno Press and the new York Times, New York, 1969), 387-388.
[13] Thomas E. Blantz, CSC, The University of Notre Dame: A History, (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 2020), 26.
[14] Blantz, The University of Notre Dame, 26.
[15] Glenn and Rafert, “Native Americans,” Peopling Indiana, 395, 402-404.
[16] Schoolcraft, History of the Indiana Tribes of the United States, 561-563. Schoolcraft explains that the Indian was averse to cultivation and lays out the reasons for the failure of the Indian population to grow: “conditions of life which oppose the increase of the aboriginal population:
“The Indian withers at the touch of civilization. Contact with it exercises a blighting influence both upon his physical and mental faculties. Naturally indolent in his habits, he is opposed to labor, improvident in his manner of living, and has extremely small foresight in providing of the future. He evinces but little care for the present and makes only slight use of the experience of the past….Addicted to the use of ardent spirits….It is a well-known fact that the Indian tribes do not increase in the ratio of other nations; the cause of which we learn from the first principles of political economy. The want of sufficient nutriment is not the only cause that limits their increase. The entire mental constitution and habitudes of the man, his irregular life, manners, customs and idiosyncrasies, all contribute to this end. In like circumstances, he neither acts nor thinks like other persons of the human family. Devoted in his attachment to the solitude of the forest, there would seem to be some secret principle at work akin to monasticism, repelling him from a participation in the active labors of life. Even in the Sandwich islands, where the gospel has been most successfully disseminated the Indian population very visibly and inscrutably declines…..
“The evil seems to originate in an ill balanced mind, which grasps at present effects, without regard to the future results. This mental incapacity to realize and provide for his future necessities is the reason why he is at one time, destitute of food, and suffering the keenest pangs of hunger, while, at another, he feasts from a board filled to replete with an abundance of forest game….The time devoted to the hunting of wild animals is vastly disproportionate to that expended in the raising of cattle…A single acre of corn yields more nutriment for a family than all the wild roots, truffles, tepia and wattapineeg, which can be gathered in a season.
“The opineeg, or common potato, found in Virginia which when it was first discovered, has never been cultivated by the Indians….Corn was planted to a limited extent by the Atlantic and Mississippi valley tribes….The average number of children in each hunter family, does not exceed two….but exposure and its results super-induce many trifling diseases, from the effects of which numbers of children die, who, in civilized life, would have been saved by the ordinary practice of medicine….Want of proper nourishment and exposure thus considerably affect the scale of population, but, in a far less degree than pestilence and Indian warfare….It is accordingly noticed that those tribes who have relinquished war, or are but selfdom engaged in it, and especially , those whose families are permanently resident in comparatively well-built and well sheltered houses, and warmly clothed, are precisely the cases in which fecundity is the most apparent. There is a manifest increase in the ratio of births in the tribes who have removed to the West, where they reside in good houses, surrounded by well-tilled fields and all the comforts of agricultural life.”
[17] Schoolcraft, History of the Indian Tribes of the United States, 396
[18] Benjamin Petit, The Trail of Death: Letters of Benjamin Marie Petit, Irving McKee, ed., (Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, IN 1941), 11, 17.
[19] Schoolcraft, History of the Indian Tribes in the United States, 407-415, 428-430.
[20] Axelrod, Chronicles of the Indian Wars, 138.
[21] Arthur J. Hope, CSC, “Chapter IV,” Notre Dame—One Hundred Years, found at archives.nd.edu/hope/hope04.htm as accessed August 12, 2023.
[22] McCoy later became an agent for the US Government and received compensation for his work in resettling the Indians. This is an example of what St Damien De Veuster, the Leper Priest, observed nearly 50 years later in Hawaii – the Protestant ministers came, established their missions, and all the while were preparing for commercial or money-making enterprises. St Damien wrote that the Protestant missionaries let “even the women” preach, charged money for the services, and “once they became very rich, most of them resign and go into business.” Jan De Volder, The Spirit of Fr. Damien: The Leper Priest A Saint for Our Times. (San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press, 2010), 23.
[23] This was pursuant to the treaty of September 26, 1833 in which the Indians ceded property on the western shore of Lake Michigan in return for 5 million acres in the west with the payment of $ 150,000 for goods and provisions; $ 100,000 to satisfy claims of individuals against the Indians; $ 150,000 to pay debts against the tribes; $ 14,000 a year for 20 years as an annuity; $ 150,000 for mills, farm-houses, shops, and supply of agricultural implements and stock and to support artisans, smiths and other mechanics; and $ 70,000 for education. The treaty was ratified February 21, 1835. See,
Schoolcraft, History of the Indian Tribes in the United States, 458.
[24] Matthew L.M. Fletcher, “Pokagon Band and Notre Dame,” November 20, 2007, Turtle Talk, https://turtletalk.blog/2007/11/20/pokagon-band-and-notre-dame/ accessed August 20, 2023; Katie Peralta, “Pokagon Band Part of ND History, Land,” November 20, 2007, The Observer; Benjamin Petit, The Trail of Death: Letters of Benjamin Marie Petit, ed. Thomas McKee (Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1941), 12-14; Schauinger, Stephen T. Badin: Priest In the Wilderness (Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1956), 244; John Gilmary Shea, Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes of the United States, (Arno Press, and the New York Times, New York, 1969), 393-395.
[25] Schauinger, Stephen T. Badin, 264-265.
[26] Ibid., 239-241.
[27] While Article I of the treaty ceded land to the United States, Article II set forth reservations for thirteen bands, one of which was Menominee’s band who received with two other bands a total of 22 sections with each section consisting of 640 acres. Article V states: “the United States agree to provide for the Pottawatimies, if they shall at any time hereafter wish to change their residence, an amount, either in goods, farming utensils, and such other articles as shall be required and necessary, in good faith, and to an extent equal to what has been furnished any other Indian tribe or tribes emigrating, and in just proportion to their numbers.” Article VI states the “The United States agree to erect a saw mill on their lands, under the direction of the President of the United States….” It was clear from the treaties the bands could remain where they were, and that they could sell and move if they chose to do so. Additionally, under Article III, the Indians were paid an annuity for 20 years for a total of $ 20,000, goods worth $ 30,000 delivered in 1833, and goods worth $ 100,000 after signing of the treaty. (A quick search indicates that $ 1 in 1832 would be worth at least $ 35 today.) All references are to the treaty located at the Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library, The Avalon Project.
[28] Schauinger, Stephen T. Badin, 241-242
[29] Ibid., 241-242
[30] Hope, “Chapter IV,” Notre Dame – One Hundred Years.
[31] Petit, The Trail of Death, 13-15.
[32] Petit, The Trail of Death, 14-15.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Schauinger, Stephen T. Badin, 243
[35] Petit, The Trail of Death, 14-17.
[36] Ibid.. 18-19.
[37] Petit, Trail of Death, 19-21.
[38] Petit, Trail of Death, 21; University of Notre Dame Archives, Diocese of Vincennes Collection, CAV 2(1) and 2(2).
[39] Petit, Trail of Death, 21-22.
[40] “Treaty with Pottawatomi at Yellow River, 8/5/1836,” Docs Teach, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/treaty-potawatomi-yellow-river?tmpl=component&print=1 accessed August 23, 2023.
[41] Petit, Trail of Death, 22-24.
[42] Petit, Trail of Death, 23-25.