Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 49, number 4, summer, 1966

              COPE:   MENOMINEE DIARY
practised upon individuals among them, how¬ ever influential, could ever have driven the body into so short-sighted and mischievous a measure. But from this they shrank. Few and feeble as they are—the mere shadow of an expiring people—they are reluctant to part with a name endeared to them by many as¬ sociations. The death of their nationality seems to them like the extermination of them¬ selves. Notwithstanding all that has befallen them, and the end which threatens them speedily to arrive, they still revert to the dis¬ tant past and hope vainly for the future. This feeling is not peculiar to the Indian. It apper¬ tains alike to men of high and low degree. . . . The infatuated attachment of the Indians to their national organization in spite of the evil it entails upon them is the more striking in the case of the Stockbridges, as they have daily before their eyes practical proof of the benefit arising from its abandonment. Their neighbours on the south—the Brothertons— have shown themselves to be a wiser people.''^ They have given up their little republic and consented to become part and parcel of the great community of white men. They have dropped their native language and speak Eng¬ lish only, doffed the Indian dress, abandoned the chase, taken to the plough, divided their lands, become citizens, and they participate in public affairs. They vote at elections and are voted for. A thing without precedent has been done in the State of Wisconsin. Alonzo Dick, said to be a full-blooded Brotherton Indian, has been elected a member of [the] assembly, taken his seat among the grave legis¬ lators of the commonwealth, and sustained himself with reputation.'"
^ The Brothertowns, formed from remnants ot vari¬ ous Algonquin tribes, came to Wisconsin from New York State with the Oneida, Munsee, and Stock- bridge Indians in 1824, settling on the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago in Calumet County. They soon relinquished their tribal identity and became citizens. Today, unlike the Stockbridge-Munsee and the Onei¬ da, Brothertowns are no longer identifiable among the Indians of Wisconsin. See Hodge (ed.), Hand¬ book of American Indians, part 1:166; State His¬ torical Society of Wisconsin Collections, XV:423-430. Cope employs an alternative spelling of the tribe's name.
^^ Alonzo 0. Dick, a prominent Brothertown farmer, served one term in 1849 as assemblyman from Calu¬ met County. He also served as census taker for the censuses of 1850 and 1870, and was a tribal headman.
It is a pleasant thing to visit such a people —a fragment of the great wreck after the buffetings of many storms, beyond the reach of the devouring waves. They are the gathered remnants of the Pequods and Narragansetts of New England, with a few Delawares from Pennsylvania. How many dark deeds of blood and devastation do those names recall! Through all the slaughter and ravages com¬ mitted against these people, a few have still survived and struggled on. "As the shepherd taketh out of the mouth of the lion, two legs or a piece of an ear," so hath the great Shep¬ herd of the flock preserved these lacerated fragments. They are monuments of past in¬ iquity and undeniable evidence of the capa¬ city of those "brutish savages"—as they were scornfully termed—to receive the light of civilization and religion. If under all the grevious wrongs inflicted upon them by men called Christians they have been able to rec¬ ognise and adopt, in a good degree, the great truths of Christianity, what would have been the effect upon the thousands who have per¬ ished, had they been treated with justice and humanity?
The Brothertons live exceedingly well. There is not the want of tidiness about their premises observed in some cases elsewhere. They build neatly, have many snug accommodations around them, and begin to pay some attention to the planting of shade trees and shrubbery near their houses.
The Friends lodged with Alonzo Dick; one of them twice. They found him a modest and kind man, disposed to exert himself to make them comfortable. On one of these occasions, he was away from home when they arrived, being engaged in attendance at the only In¬ dian celebration still kept up by the Brother- tons—the national game of ball [lacrosse]. This amusement is common to many, perhaps to all of the North American Indians, and they are particularly partial to it. Great ac¬ tivity is necessary to play it well, every muscle being brought into requisition. It was, no doubt, encouraged formerly by their leading men as an appropriate exercise for lads, by which they were trained to that swiftness of foot and play of limb needful for the hunter and warrior. Those uses having happily be¬ come obsolete, the practice is now maintained
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