In 1961, the tribe suffered the effects of the federal Indian policy of Termination, introduced in the 1950s.
The idea was to terminate the special relationship between the federal government and Indian tribes so that Native Americans could fit better into mainstream
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Menominee arrow with knobbed tip
Menominee warclub
American culture. The Menominee were told by federal officials that they would be denied certain federal funds unless they agreed to Termination. The reservation became a county, and the tribe became a corporation.
But the Menominee suffered a series of setbacks.
They lacked enough money to get their lumber corpo-ration going. Many individuals could not afford the new property taxes, from which they had previously been exempt. They were no longer protected from lumber companies seeking the rich stands of timber.
And without federally sponsored programs in housing, education, and health, the tribe sank deeper and deeper into poverty.
Finally in 1972, after Termination as a policy was rec-ognized as counterproductive to economic development, the federal government passed the Menominee Restora-tion Act to restore special trust status and to protect tribal lands and interests. The Menominee Ada Deer, who helped found DRUMS (Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Shareholders) in 1970 to
lobby for restoration, became the assistant secretary for Indian affairs in the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1993, the first woman to hold the position.
The Menominee have continued to develop their timber resources. Gaming operations, including the successful Menominee Nation Casino, also have con-tributed to tribal revenues.
The Menominee Nation Powwow on the first week-end of August and the Veterans Powwow on Memorial Day weekend further tribal unity, as does the celebration of Menominee Restoration Day every December 22.
Tribal members are working to preserve the Menominee language and traditional customs. Many practice the Big Drum religion, which began in the late 1880s among tribes of the western Great Lakes region as a revitaliza-tion movement and which involves the playing of sacred drums. The tribe has a newspaper, the Menominee Nation News, in circulation since 1976, dedicated to informing tribal members of political issues and com-munity events.
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A Menominee boy, mounted on his horse, at the turn of the century
MESKWAKI (Fox)
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The Meskwaki (Fox) occupied ancestral territory in the western Great Lakes region. Like most other ALGON
-QUIANS, they are classified as a Woodland people of the Northeast Culture Area (see NORTHEAST INDIANS).
They typically located their villages along river valleys where the soil was rich enough for crops. Their Native name, Meskwaki (also spelled Mesquaki or Mesquakie), pronounced mes-KWAK-ee, means “red earth people,”
after the reddish soil in their homeland. (The name of their neighbors and allies, the SAC, is derived from an Algonquian word for “yellow earth people.”) Their alter-nate, more widely known, name—after the animal and pronounced as spelled—possibly was the symbol of a particular clan and mistakenly applied to the entire tribe by Europeans.
The Meskwaki are also sometimes classified as
PRAIRIE INDIANS, because they lived near the prairies of the Mississippi valley, with its tall, coarse grasses and few trees and its herds of buffalo.
Being seminomadic, the Meskwaki could take advan-tage of both forests and prairies. During the summer, they lived in villages of bark-covered houses and raised corn, beans, squash, pumpkins, and tobacco; during the winter, they tracked herds of game and lived in portable wigwams.
The Meskwaki and other tribes of the western Great Lakes region sometimes are referred to as the “people of the calumet” because they used calumets, or sacred pipes, in their ceremonies. The Indians placed tobacco, or kin-nikinnik, a mixture of tobacco and willow bark, in the pipe bowls carved from pipestone (catlinite); then they inhaled the burning matter through long wooden or reed stems.
The Meskwaki had three kinds of leader: the peace chief, the war chief, and the ceremonial leader. The first position was the only one that was hereditary, passed on from father to son. The peace chief kept peace within the tribe and was in charge at councils when village matters were discussed. On these occasions, the calumets were
decorated with white feathers and were truly “peace pipes,” the popular name for the long Indian pipes.
A war chief was chosen for each military campaign by his peers on the basis of fighting skills and visions. He would be in charge at councils when matters of war were discussed. On these occasions, the calumets would be decorated with red feathers.
The ceremonial leader, or shaman, instructed others in religious rituals. These ceremonies had many pur-poses, such as making game plentiful, or helping crops grow, or curing the sick. On these occasions, participants would smoke sacred pipes.
Historically, the Meskwaki are most closely associated with Wisconsin. The territory where they first had con-tact with non-Indians in the 1600s, along the Fox River named after them, is now part of that state. But the Meskwaki might have earlier lived east of Lake Michigan in what is now the state of Michigan.
The Meskwaki were the only sizable Algonquian tribe to make war on the French during the early part of the French and Indian wars, especially in the 1720s and 1730s.
Most of the other Algonquians sided with the French against the British. The Meskwaki followed a different path, however, because they were traditional enemies of the
CHIPPEWA(OJIBWAY), who maintained close ties with the French. The Meskwaki demanded tolls in the form of trade goods from any outsiders who passed along the Fox River, which angered the French. The French and Chippewa launched a campaign against them and drove them down the Wisconsin River to new homelands.
It was during this period, in 1734, that the Meskwaki joined in an alliance with the Sac, one that has lasted to present times. Starting in 1769, the two tribes plus oth-ers drove the ILLINOIS from their lands, and some Meskwaki moved farther south into what has become the state of Illinois. In 1780, Meskwaki also formed a temporary alliance with the SIOUX (DAKOTA, LAKOTA,
NAKOTA) to attack the Chippewa at St. Croix Falls, but in this conflict they were defeated.
After the American Revolution and the birth of the United States, Meskwaki history closely follows that of their permanent allies, the Sac. The Meskwaki were active in Little Turtle’s War of 1790–94 (see MIAMI) and Tecumseh’s Rebellion of 1809–11 (see SHAWNEE).
Meskwaki warriors also fought alongside the Sac under the Sac chief Black Hawk in the famous Black Hawk War of 1832, the final Indian war for the Old North-west. Today, the two tribes share reservations and trust Meskwaki courting flute
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lands in Iowa, Kansas, and Oklahoma under the official name of the Sac and Fox. The Sac and Fox of the Mis-sissippi in Iowa also use the name Meskwaki Nation since most of their people are Meskwaki.
When the Meskwaki were moved from their ances-tral lands, many of their traditions and teachings were lost. The government implemented the Sac and Fox
Agency that encouraged modern farming and created Christian missionary schools where they were not allowed to practie their Native religion or speak their Native language. A constitutional government replaced the traditional clan leadership. Yet family gatherings, sporting events, arts, and crafts are still a part of everyday life and help preserve tribal identity.
MÉTIS
Métis means “mixed-blood” in French. When it is used with a lowercase m, the word refers to all peoples with mixed racial ancestry. When the word is capitalized, it refers to a particular group of economically and politi-cally unified people with a special place in Canadian his-tory. It is pronounced may-TEE and usually appears with an accent.
Most of the Métis were of French and CREEdescent.
Some had a parent or grandparent from another Indian tribe, especially the CHIPPEWA (OJIBWAY), and from among Scottish and Irish settlers. The sizable population of mixed-bloods in Canada resulted primarily from the fur trade. In Europe during the 1700s and part of the 1800s, beaver hats, as well as other fur fashions, were very popular, and fortunes were made by shipping furs back to Europe. Traders depended on Native Americans as suppliers of the valuable pelts.
Lifeways
Many traders, especially among the French, adopted Native customs. Some lived among the Indians, intermar-ried, and had children with them. The men who paddled the trading canoes through the western wilderness for the big fur companies came to be called voyageurs, the French word for “travelers.” Those who were independent and unlicensed traders were the coureurs de bois, or “runners of the woods.” The mixed-blood children of both voyageurs and coureurs de bois were the Métis, many of whom even-tually took the same occupations as their parents did.
By the 1800s, the Métis had developed a unique lifestyle, with elements from both European and Indian cultures. They spoke both French and Indian languages, the latter mostly Algonquian, the language of the Cree and Chippewa (see ALGONQUIANS and SUBARCTIC INDIANS). Sometimes they practiced Catholic rites; at other times, Indian rituals. They farmed and lived in frame houses part of the year; they hunted and lived in
hide tents the rest. Because of their uniqueness, the Métis came to consider themselves a separate group with their own special interests and destiny. Out of their com-mon hopes came the Métis wars, usually called the Riel Rebellions. The Second Riel Rebellion came to involve their Cree kinsfolk as well.