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Perhaps nothing illustrates the sentiments in Will E. Hampton's Poem, The Indian more effectively than the long history of how Native Americans lost their land. Before the arrival of Columbus to the American continent, Native Americans roamed freely across not only all of Michigan, but the rest of the United States as well. But from the moment Americans first ventured into Michigan the U. S. government endeavored to obtain native land. As early as 1807, when the first treaty was signed, the government began forcing native chiefs to sign treaties that ceded parts of their land for white settlement.
This process lasted well into the twentieth century, and Native American land claims across the country, including some in Michigan, have still not been settled. One of the most significant events in the early history of land relations was the War of 1812. When the War of 1812 ended in 1815, tribal chiefs were forced to sign treaties with the U. S. government giving up significant amounts of land. These treaties promised to return those parts of Native American land that had been seized during the war. However, America broke this treaty, and no land was ever returned.
Many conflicts over land stemmed from very different ideas about how land should be used. Native Americans generally adapted to the natural environment. They believed as Chief Black Hawk said in his autobiography:
"My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to cultivate it they have the right to the soil. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away."
White settlers more often adapted the natural environment to suit their needs. The earliest examples of differences between native and white land use came from their use of trails. Native American trails were often only 12 to 18 inches wide, permitting travel only by single file. When white settlers arrived, they broadened these trails to accommodate their horses and wagons. They built farms and cleared land of its natural growth to create space for crops and pastures. Settlers fenced in these spaces, claiming individual ownership over particular areas of land.
These different ideas about land use led to difficulties when Native Americans and whites made agreements with each other. As historian W. B. Hinsdale wrote in 1927 in Indians of Washtenaw County,
"The most of them [Native Americans], if not all, supposed when they acceded to treaty bargains that they were simply granting the other party the same and only the same opportunities as they gave one another-that is, a place for a temporary home, rights to hunt in the woods, to navigate the streams and lakes, to breathe the air and to "enjoy" whatever other benefit might occur from the situation without molestation on their part." (22).
The U. S. government had two purposes in mind when making land agreements with Native Americans. First, they wanted to open it up more land for white settlement. Second, they wanted to ease tensions between whites and Native Americans by forcing Natives to use the land like whites did. The government had a variety of strategies to accomplish these aims. Many treaties required Native Americans to become farmers in order to keep their land. Government officials often did not translate the documents Native Americans were forced to sign, and native chiefs often had little or no idea what they were signing. This letter describes one instance where white officials made one man named Caw-bu-be-quay sign a document that probably gave away portions of his land. The problem was that at the time Caw-bu-be-quay signed, the document was not translated for him, nor was he allowed to bring a translator. In this document, Louis Baroux, a French missionary wrote to his colleagues describing these unfair practices.
One of the most important treaties in Michigan history was the treaty of 1855 with the Ottawa, Chippewa, and Pottawatomie nations. With this treaty the government confiscated Native American land in exchange some payment to members of the tribe, and 40 or 80 acre plots returned to each adult. This document shows a certificate returning a plot of land to Joseph Waw-be-gay-kake. While this treaty did not require farming, it did encourage Native Americans to farm instead of hunting because it confiscated large amounts of their hunting grounds and Native Americans were given small plots of land instead. The amount of land returned to Native Americans always came to less than the original tribal land.
In addition, to receive either land or payment for land, in this example and in many others, Native Americans had to demonstrate their tribal membership to the satisfaction of white officials. In this document from 1898 one native woman tried to prove her membership in the Pottawatomie tribe so that she could receive payment for land confiscated in the 1855 treaty. However, some documents suggest that the government was often unfair in making these distinctions and used land as a kind of reward system and some Native Americans claimed that a person received land because of her or his willingness to farm, speak English, and dissolve any relationship with the tribe, not because of any documentation they might have of their ethnicity.
Native Americans trying to reclaim land they had already lost had two options. First, they could take up arms against the American government and try to forcefully reclaim lost land. One group of Native Americans took this route, which resulted in the Black Hawk War of 1832. A Sauk warrior called Black Hawk (right) led a coalition of about one thousand men, women and children from Sauk, Kickapoo and Fox tribes who wanted to reclaim lands they had lost. The conflict began in Illinois but quickly expanded to include Detroit and other parts of Michigan. Later in 1832, Black Hawk and his followers were stopped in Wisconsin and Black Hawk was put in prison and forced to renounce any claims to leadership of his tribe. He died in 1838, and Native American land remained in white control.
Second, Native Americans could work within the American legal system and hope to force American officials to respond. This strategy, however was only of limited success (at least until the second half of this century) because the government found ways in which Native Americans had violated treaties they had made. In 1862, one white official, Charles E. Mix, helped Native American tribes make legal claims against the federal government. In one letter, Mix wrote to the federal office of Indian Affairs and asked why money owed to the Pottawatomie tribe from treaties made in 1829 and 1833 still had not been paid. Federal officials were unsympathetic, and the reply from the federal government said that the Pottawatomies would never be paid because they had not properly vacated the land seized by the treaty. Around 1910, the Chippewa nation also petitioned the government for payment according to the 1855 treaty mentioned above.
In another instance, in 1971 a lawsuit was filed against the University of Michigan. Petitioners argued that the University was constructed on Native American land. Under a nineteenth-century contract, a portion of the proceeds of that land had been pledged to support the education of children from the Chippewa, Ottawa or Pottawatomie tribes. Those initiating the court claim argue that these payments were never made and want to recover damages from the University. As these cases show that Native American history is not a remnant of the distant past, but continues to shape life in Michigan today.
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