Menominee
The Menominee are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans officially known as the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. Their land base is the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin. Their historic territory originally included an estimated in present-day Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The tribe currently has about 8,700 members.
Federal recognition of the tribe was terminated in the 1960s under policy of the time which stressed assimilation. During that period, they brought what has become a landmark case in Indian law to the United States Supreme Court, in Menominee Tribe v. United States, to protect their treaty hunting and fishing rights. The Wisconsin Supreme Court and the United States Court of Claims had drawn opposing conclusions about the effect of the termination on Menominee hunting and fishing rights on their former reservation land. The U.S. Supreme Court determined that the tribe had not lost traditional hunting and fishing rights as a result of termination, as Congress had not clearly ended these in its legislation.
The tribe regained federal recognition in 1973 by an act of Congress, re-establishing its reservation in 1975. It operates under a written constitution establishing an elected government. The tribe took over tribal government and administration from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1979.
Overview
The Menominee are part of the Algonquian language family of North America, made up of several tribes now located around the Great Lakes and many other tribes based along the Atlantic coast. They are one of the historical tribes of present-day upper Michigan and Wisconsin; they occupied a territory of about in the period of European colonization. They are believed to have been well-settled in that territory for more than 1,000 years. By some accounts, they are descended from the Old Copper Culture people and other indigenous peoples who had been in this area for 10,000 years.Menominee oral history states that they have always been here and believe they are Kiash Matchitiwuk which is "Ancient Ones". Their reservation is located 60 miles west of the site of their Creation, according to their tradition. They arose where the Menominee River enters Green Bay of Lake Michigan, where the city of Marinette, Wisconsin, has since developed.
Their name for themselves is Mamaceqtaw, meaning "the people". The name "Menominee" is not their autonym. It was adopted by Europeans from the Ojibwe people, another Algonquian tribe whom they encountered first as they moved west and who told them of the Menominee. The Ojibwe name for the tribe was manoominii, meaning "wild rice people", as they cultivated wild rice as one of their most important food staples.
Historically, the Menominee were known to be a peaceful, friendly and welcoming nation, who had a reputation for getting along with other tribes. When the Oneota culture arose in southern Wisconsin between AD 800 and 900, the Menominee shared the forests and waters with them.
The Menominee are a Northeastern Woodlands tribe. They were initially encountered by European explorers in Wisconsin in the mid-17th century during the colonial era, and had extended interaction with them during later periods in North America. During this period they lived in numerous villages which the French visited for fur trading. The anthropologist James Mooney in 1928 estimated that the tribe's number in 1650 was 3,000 persons.
The early French explorers and traders referred to the people as "folles avoines", referring to the wild rice which they cultivated and gathered as one of their staple foods. The Menominee have traditionally subsisted on a wide variety of plants and animals, with wild rice and sturgeon being two of the most important. Wild rice has a special importance to the tribe as their staple grain, while the sturgeon has a mythological importance and is often referred to as the "father" of the Menominee. Feasts are still held annually at which each of these is served.
Menominee customs are quite similar to those of the Chippewa, another Algonquian people. Their language has a closer affinity to those of the Meskwaki and Kickapoo tribes. All four spoke Anishinaabe languages, part of the Algonquian family.
The five principal Menominee clans are the Bear, the Eagle, the Wolf, the Crane, and the Moose. Each has traditional responsibilities within the tribe. With a patrilineal kinship system, traditional Menominee believe that children derive their social status from their fathers, and are born "into" their father's clan. Members of the same clan are considered relatives, so must choose marriage partners from outside their clan. Ethnologist James Mooney wrote an article on the Menominee which appeared in Catholic Encyclopedia, incorrectly reporting that their descent and inheritance proceeds through the female line. Such a matrilineal kinship system is common among many other Native American peoples, including other Algonquian tribes.
Culture
Traditional Menominee spiritual culture includes rites of passage for youth at puberty. Ceremonies involve fasting for multiple days and living in a small isolated wigwam. As part of this transition, youth meet individually with Elders for interpretation of their dreams, and to receive information about what adult responsibilities they will begin to take on following their rites of passage.Ethnobotany
Traditional Menominee diets include local foods such as Allium tricoccum. Boiled, sliced potatoes of Sagittaria cuneata are traditionally strung together and dried for winter use. Uvularia grandiflora has historically been used to treat pain and swellings. Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium, ssp obtusifolium is also used medicinally. Taenidia integerrima is taken as a root infusion for pulmonary troubles, and as chew, the steeped root, for 'bronchial affections'; it is also used as a companion herb in other remedies because of its pleasant smell. The inner bark of Abies balsamea is used as a seasoner for medicines, taking an infusion of the inner bark for chest pain and using the liquid balsam pressed from the trunk for colds and pulmonary troubles. The inner bark is used as a poultice for unspecified illnesses. Gum from plant blisters is also applied to sores.History
The tribe originally occupied a large territory of extending from Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Historic references include one by Father Frederic Baraga, a missionary priest in Michigan, who in his 1878 dictionary wrote:Mishinimakinago; pl.-g.—This name is given to some strange Indians, who are rowing through the woods, and who are sometimes heard shooting, but never seen. And from this word, the name of the village of Mackinac, or Michillimackinac, is derived.
Maehkaenah is the Menominee word for turtle. In his The Indian Tribes of North America, John Reed Swanton recorded under the "Wisconsin" section: "Menominee," a band named "Misi'nimäk Kimiko Wini'niwuk, 'Michilimackinac People,' near the old fort at Mackinac, Mich." Michillimackinac is also spelled as Mishinimakinago, Mǐshǐma‛kǐnung, Mi-shi-ne-macki naw-go, Missilimakinak, Teiodondoraghie.
The Menominee are descendants of the Late Woodland Indians who inhabited the lands once occupied by Hopewell Indians, the earliest human inhabitants of the Lake Michigan region. As the Hopewell culture declined, circa A.D. 800, the Lake Michigan region eventually became home to Late Woodland Indians.
Early fur traders, coureur-de-bois, and explorers from France encountered their descendants: the Menominee, Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, Meskwaki, Ho-Chunk and Miami. It is believed that the French explorer Jean Nicolet was the first non-Native American to reach Lake Michigan in 1634 or 1638.
First European encounter
In 1634, the Menominee and Ho-Chunk people witnessed the French explorer Jean Nicolet's approach and landing. Red Banks, near the present-day city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, later developed in this area. Nicolet, looking for a Northwest Passage to China, hoped to find and impress the Chinese. As the canoe approached the shore, Nicolet put on a silk Chinese ceremonial robe, stood up in the middle of the canoe and shot off two pistols.Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, a French Catholic clergyman, professor, historian, author and explorer, kept a detailed journal of his travels through Wisconsin and Louisiana. In 1721 he came upon the Menominee, whom he referred to as Malhomines, which the French had adapted from an Ojibwe term:
After we had advanced five or six leagues, we found ourselves abreast of a little island, which lies near the western side of the bay, and which concealed from our view, the mouth of a river, on which stands the village of the Malhomines Indians, called by our French "peuples d'avoines" or Wild Oat Indians, probably from their living chiefly on this sort of grain. The whole nation consists only of this village, and that too not very numerous. 'Tis really great pity, they being the finest and handsomest men in all Canada. They are even of a larger stature than the Potawatomi. I have been assured that they had the same original and nearly the same languages with the Noquets, and the Indians at the Falls.
19th century
Initially neutral during the War of 1812, the Menominee later became allied with the British and Canadians, whom they helped defeat American forces trying to recapture Fort Mackinac in the Battle of Mackinac Island. During the ensuing decades, the Menominee were pressured by encroachment of new European-American settlers in the area. Settlers first arrived in Michigan, where lumbering on the Upper Peninsula and resource extraction attracted workers. By mid-century, encroachment by new settlers was increasing. In the 1820s, the Menominee were approached by representatives of the Christianized Stockbridge-Munsee Indians from New York to share or cede some of their land for their use.The Menominee gradually sold much of their lands in Michigan and Wisconsin to the U.S. government through seven treaties from 1821 to 1848, first ceding their lands in Michigan. The US government wanted to move them to the far west in the period when Wisconsin was organizing for statehood, to extinguish all Native American land claims. Chief Oshkosh went to look at the proposed site on the Crow River and rejected the offered land, saying their current land was better for hunting and game. The Menominee retained lands near the Wolf River in what became their current reservation. The tribe originated in the Wisconsin and are living in their traditional homelands.