Chief Menominee

Menominee
Born	c. 1791 Twin Lakes, Indiana, U.S.
Died	1841 St. Mary's Mission, Kansas, U.S.
Nationality	Pottawatomie
Occupation	Pottawatomie chieftain
Known for	Pottawatomie chieftain during the Trail of Death
Home town	Twin Lakes, Indiana

Menominee (circa 1791 – 1841) was chief of the largest Potawatomi community in Indiana at the Twin Lakes of Marshall County.^[1]

In 1820 at a Fort Wayne council, Menominee met with Isaac McCoy and asked him to visit his village on the Yellow River. Menominee had become a religious chief among the Potawatomi as he combined the teaching of Tecumseh and the Prophet with Roman Catholicism.^[2] He hoped to create a way for his people to cope with the changes caused by the growing number of settlers and increased pressure by the government. In the 1830s the Carey Mission declined and was slowly replaced by a Catholic Mission. Father Frederick Reze(e) baptized 13 Potawatomi, including Pokagon and his son^[3] in 1830, beginning a long history of church influence over the Pokagon community. In 1833, the fathers expanded their mission to the Yellow River Potawatomi of Menominee. These two communities would be the heart of the resistance to removal.^[2]

Chief Menominee refused to sign any treaty, which gave away Indian lands.^[2] Still, the Treaty of Tippecanoe (1832) sold his lands. When the Potawatomi of Indiana were being rounded up for transportation to the west, Menominee’s village on the Yellow River became the gathering place of those who did not agree to go. Father Deseille of the mission on the Yellow River was replaced at the government's request, when it felt that he was interfering with the plans for the removal of the Potawatomi. A camp near Menominee’s Yellow River village at the Twin Lakes was established as a place to gather the Michigan and Indiana Potawatomi.^[2] But Pokagon Band in Michigan was not cooperating either. When Menominee again refused to allow his village to be removed by August 6, 1838, the reservation was opened to squatters. When the Potawatomi destroyed the huts of squatters, the whites retaliated by burning the Indians' cabins. In an attempt to prevent bloodshed, Governor David Wallace of Indiana authorized the enlistment of volunteers. Menominee was lured to a meeting to allow for the militia to surround his village and take the Potawatomi into custody.^[2]

On September 4, 1838, the Potawatomi of Indiana began their march to Kansas. Menominee and his band of 859 Christian Potawatomi were forcibly removed in 1838 to Kansas. On the march to Kansas, the food was so poor that the volunteers refused to eat it and demanded funds to buy their own. The Potawatomi were given no option. The route of their march was through the typhoid epidemic region. There were daily deaths. He died at St. Mary’s Mission, Kansas in 1841.^[2]

In 1909, a statue of Chief Menominee was erected near the headwaters of the Yellow River in northwest Indiana, three miles southwest of the town of Plymouth, Indiana.^[4] It is the first monument that any state has ever erected to a Native American.

See also

• Potawatomi
• Potawatomi Trail of Death
• Treaty with the Potawatomi

References

1. ^ Chief Menominee Statue, State of Indiana
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Edmunds, R. David. The Potawatomis, Keepers of the Fire. 1978.
3. ^ Hulst, Cornelia Steketee. Indian Sketches: Père Marquette and the Last of the Pottawatomie Chiefs. Longmans, Green, and Co. (1912), p. 43.
4. ^ Hellman, Paul T. Historical Gazetteer of the United States. New York: Routledge (2005), p. 326.

Additional reading

• Indian Names in Indiana, by Alan McPherson, 1993
• The Potawatomis, Keepers of the Fire, by R. David Edmunds, 1978

Persondata
Name	Menominee, Chief
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth	Twin Lakes, Indiana, U.S.
Date of death	1841
Place of death	St. Mary's Mission, Kansas, U.S.