Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 50, number 2, winter, 1967

              A MISSION TO THE MENOMINEE:
Alfred Cope's Green Bay Diary {Part III)
Synopsis
r\'N October 18, 1848, at a council held at ^-^ their Lake Poygan headquarters, the Menominee Indians, reduced in numbers, im¬ poverished, and helpless in the face of increas¬ ing white encroachment, were intimidated in¬ to ceding to the federal government the last tribal lands owned by them or any other In¬ dians in the newly formed state of Wisconsin. In return they were allotted a tract of 600,000 less desirable acres in Minnesota—to which they reluctantly agreed to deport themselves— and $350,000. Of this sum, and at their own request, $40,000 was to be distributed among persons of mixed Menominee blood as a token of the tribe's gratitude for past favors.
President Zachary Taylor, himself a veteran of the Black Hawk War and well aware of the trickeries practiced on the Indians, appoint¬ ed Thomas Wistar, a wealthy, philanthropic Quaker to oversee the payment. Fortunately for history, Wistar chose Alfred Cope, like¬ wise wealthy, humanitarian, and a devout Quaker of considerable literary ability, to accompany him as his assistant. It is from Cope's diary, kept while the two men were at Fort Howard in the late spring and early sum¬ mer of 1849 supervising the payment, that this and the two previous installments are drawn.
In the last issue of the Magazine (Autumn, 1966), Cope described his and Wistar's in¬ tense relief at discovering, in their dealings with the twenty-six chiefs summoned to Fort Howard to compile a list of those who were to share in the $40,000, that the white stereo¬ types of the Indian character, with which they had been bombarded since their arrival in Green Bay, did not hold true. Instead of find¬ ing the Indians childlike, indolent, unreliable, and subject to chronic drunkenness, the two Quakers were struck by the chiefs' dignity and intelligence, and above all, by their sobriety. Even Chief Oshkosh, whose alcoholic exploits were legendary, behaved in an exemplary man¬ ner throughout the negotiations.
This portion of Cope's diary opens as Thomas Wistar is preparing to leave via stage¬ coach and steamer for New York, there to pick up the $40,000 in gold and to bring it back to Fort Howard. Left alone, unencum¬ bered by his official duties. Cope was free to record at leisure his perceptive, and frequent¬ ly witty, observations concerning the Wiscon¬ sin countryside, Green Bay's raucous bull¬ frogs and formidable mosquitoes, the dress and daily habits of the Menominee, and his vivid, firsthand impressions of an Oneida Fourth of July celebration culminating in a spirited game of lacrosse.
W.C.H.
120