By the end of this exercise, I can… 

• describe the experience of participating in treaty negotiations, including naming specific negotiation tactics
• analyze how distinct perspectives on land impacted treaty talks
• evaluate the extent to which treaty talks worked toward justice, equality, and liberty
• compare different ways of interpreting primary sources

This exercise directly relates to:

• Land Purchases from American Indian Nations (1795-1830s)

Inquiry

• SS.9-12.IS.3.Develop new supporting and essential questions by primary and secondary investigation, collaboration, and use of sources that reflect diverse perspectives (e.g., political, cultural, socioeconomic, race, religious, gender).
• SS.9-12.IS.5. Gather and evaluate information from multiple primary and secondary sources that reflect the perspectives and experiences of multiple groups, including marginalized groups.

Civics

• SS.9-12.CV.3. Analyze constitutions, laws, and agreements to determine the degree to which they achieve justice, equality, and liberty. 

History

• SS.9-12.H.3. Evaluate the methods used to promote change and the effects and outcomes of these methods on diverse groups of people.
• SS.9-12.H.9  Analyze the relationship between historical sources and the secondary interpretations made from them.
• SS.9-12.H.10. Identify and analyze ways in which marginalized communities are represented in historical sources and seek out sources created by historically oppressed peoples. 
• SS.9-12.H.11. Analyze primary and secondary historical sources from multiple vantage points and perspectives to identify and explain dominant narratives and counternarratives of historical events. 

Land and Relationality

Indigenous creation or origin stories link Native peoples to their lands and waters. The stories provide deep context for each nation’s origins. They teach about each nation’s relationships with and responsibilities to their lands and waters. They are an important source that tells us about a people’s history since time immemorial. Many Indigenous creation or origin stories recognize humans as dependent on lands, waters, plants, and animals for their survival. Rather than seeing humans as better than plants and animals, they see all living beings as interdependent. This is why so many creation or origin stories show humans making mistakes and needing to learn from other living beings. The stories teach humans values around listening to, observing, and otherwise learning from the world around us.

Indigenous values for land include reciprocal relationships. Indigenous peoples’ languages, religions or spiritual teachings, technologies, medicines, and foods come from their relationships with certain lands. This means that for Indigenous people, lands can’t be exchanged. Indigenous peoples maintain deep relationships with their homelands, whether they live there now or not.

Traditional Indigenous laws prioritize the health and well-being of humans, lands, waters, animals, and plants. Indigenous people have been caring for the land since time immemorial. They see the value of the land as inherent: all life has value just for being alive. They also recognize that lands, waters, plants, and animals have their own rights, perspectives, and desires. In contrast, settler laws value land based on the presence of resources that can meet human wants. Settler systems see the land as inanimate, which means it cannot have its own perspectives or desires.

For Indigenous people, caring for the land does not mean leaving the land unchanged or untouched (this is a myth). Instead, Indigenous people have managed their lands through Indigenous sciences. Indigenous sciences are based on knowledge developed over generations about one area. Indigenous people have worked with the land to create new technologies for housing, education, food production, defense, healthcare, and the arts. One example of this is using controlled burns to manage ecosystems and increase species diversity.

Within Indigenous economies, changes to the land needed to promote collective long term health. This applied to the land and all the living beings that rely on it. Plants, animals, waters, and lands will continue to be healthy and take care of humans if humans take care of them. In contrast, for settler capitalism, changes to the land needed to create a financial benefit. This could mean increasing the production or consumption of goods for humans. This has unfortunately negatively impacted the health of the land. It has also interrupted Native peoples’ ability to maintain their relationships with their lands and waters. We see this in the rerouting of the Chicago river and the draining of regional marshes to build the city.

It is a myth that Indigenous people lacked boundaries before colonialism. Indigenous people had long-standing ways of recognizing territorial boundaries between Native nations for governing, hunting, farming, and other needs. The treaties that outlined how Native nations shared or divided space were not one-time papers. Instead, these treaties were rules for relationships that needed to be renewed on a regular basis. This helped to make sure that the agreements still met everyone’s needs and that everyone knew what they were agreeing to. For Indigenous people before colonization, treaty-making was a way of ensuring sustainable, healthy, peaceful coexistence through relationships and respect.

Settlers handled legal agreements and diplomacy differently. Americans inherited ideas from European legal traditions that prioritized individually held property. This property could be owned, transferred, and modified. These could be one-time agreements, purchases, or transfers and did not require relationships beyond the single transaction. Even though settlers were newcomers on Indigenous lands, they chose to import their existing ideas about land. They chose not to recognize Indigenous laws as valid.

Settlers saw lands as able to be exchanged based on financial value, but Indigenous people did not see lands as interchangeable. The difference in these two approaches meant that Indigenous people and Europeans/Americans did not have the same expectations going into treaty talks. For example, Native nations had long made agreements about land use between themselves. These agreements did not mean a permanent loss of land, but rather clear expectations about who would use the land, when, and in what ways. On the contrary, settlers saw the treaties as permanent land transfers that would keep Native people out of the ceded lands. This difference in expectations led to more conflicts. 

American leaders who wanted Indigenous land in the Midwest believed that it was “destined” for the United States to expand West. They thought that Native people did not deserve the land they had because they were not Christian. American leaders believed that these lands had been given to the United States by God. This would later be called “manifest destiny.” These beliefs influenced the tactics that US officials used to secure land upon entering into treaty talks. 

In treaty negotiations, U.S. negotiators worked aggressively to get the signatures they needed. They often used lies, threats, fraud, and alcohol to get Indigenous people to sign agreements. Sometimes, they presented the agreement as more beneficial to Native people than it actually was. This meant that Native nations did not always have good information about what they were signing. 

Other times, if U.S. officials could not get the signatures they wanted, the U.S. picked who would sign. They found Native people who would sign and claimed they were the correct person to do so. This could be a person from the same community or even from another nation! For example, few (if any) Neshnabék representatives from around Chicago attended the 1795 Treaty of Greenville negotiations. Instead, the land was ceded by Neshnabék from other regions, and by other tribes who ceded their claims to the land. Since Chicago had multiple overlapping land claims, these other communities recognized that they did not hold the sole right to cede this land. Even so, the treaty ceded six-square miles of their land around the mouth of the Chicago River. After the treaty was signed, Neshnabé leaders from Chicago protested it. They argued that since none of them were present for the negotiations, they didn’t give permission to cede the land.

In other cases, U.S officials called negotiations when Native communities would be more likely to agree. They specifically chose times when Native people were vulnerable or in need of support, such as after the end of a military conflict. For example, Native communities in the Chicago area needed supplies after the War of 1812. The fur trade had begun to drive away animals, and people were hungry. U.S. officials knew this and started planning for the Treaty of St. Louis. By the time they gathered communities together in 1816, the Neshnabék from the Chicago area were hungry and low on supplies. Illinois governor Ninian Edwards wanted a canal built between Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers He told Indigenous leaders that the canal would help them. To encourage them to sign, the treaty promised the Neshnabék $1,000 worth of goods annually (about $22,000 annually in 2024 dollars). Even though Neshnabé leaders had doubts about the canal, they desperately needed funds to buy supplies for their communities. They signed the treaty.

U.S officials also carefully chose where they brought tribal leaders together. For example, the 1816 treaty took place in St. Louis and the 1829 treaty took place in Prairie du Chien. Even though the treaties were about lands in Chicago, both of these negotiation locations are hundreds of miles away. Similarly, U.S. negotiators chose Chicago for the 1821 treaty about lands in present-day Michigan because it was far away. Since treaty talks typically occurred over several weeks, entire communities traveled to attend them. Holding negotiations away from the lands to be ceded exhausted the resources of Native communities that traveled for these talks. It is estimated that at least 8,000 Neshnabé attended the 1833 Treaty of Chicago – you can imagine the resources needed for that many people to travel and stay for several weeks!

U.S. officials also used threats to make Native leaders attend treaty talks and cede land. The 1832 Black Hawk War (discussed further in Module 4) was about Sauk leader Black Hawk defending his community and their access to their homelands. The war ended with American militia massacring Sauk and Meskwaki people. American officials argued that the war proved that all Native people were violent and had to be removed from their homelands. Not all Native people fought against the Americans during the war: some Neshnabé people helped the Americans as scouts and go-betweens, while others were detained in Chicago to keep them from getting involved. Even so, U.S. Treaty Commissioners later threatened that if the Neshnabék did not give up their homelands, they might experience violence like Black Hawk’s community did.

Treaty-making was supposed to set firm borders for where Euro-Americans would settle, but settlers regularly ignored treaty boundaries. More settlers meant more conflict and fewer available resources, which pressured Native nations to cede more land. Many Native leaders signed treaties because they believed that peace might be found in the lands that the treaties promised. In the treaty talks, Americans promised to permanently set aside lands for Native people where they would have enough food and be free from arriving settlers. Native leaders who accepted this trade believed it offered the best possible futures for future generations of their people. This demonstrates how Native leaders had to make difficult decisions during treaty talks. They had to take care of their communities at the time, and they also had to think about the needs of future generations. In spite of being forced to leave, Indigenous people who were removed have never given up their relationships with their homelands.

Sources: 

Arvin, Maile, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill, “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy,” Feminist Formations 25, no. 1 (2013): 8–34.

Benton, Lauren and Benjamin Straumann, “Acquiring Empire by Law: From Roman Doctrine to Early Modern European Practice.” Law and History Review. 28 (1). (February 2010): 1–38.

Bowes, John P. Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016). 

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2015). 

Low, John. Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago. (Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2016). 

Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. “Looking after Gdoo-Naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg Diplomatic and Treaty Relationships.” Wicaso Sa Review 23, no. 2 (2008): 29–42.

Wilkins, David E. and Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark. American Indian Politics and the American Political System. 4th ed. (Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2017). 

Note to teachers: We invite you to use the components of the Indigenous Chicago curriculum that best align with the needs of your classroom. The following suggested steps can be modified as needed, and we invite you to use the teacher’s history brief to inspire new exercises that best meet the needs of your students. Please note that we suggest shortening, rather than modifying, the language of historical sources to best reflect the original source’s context, intention, and voice.  

1. Review the information in the Background section above. What were the different cultural and political perspectives on land that Indigenous people and settlers held? Anticipate how these different perspectives might impact any agreements between Indigenous people and settlers about land. 

2. This exercise will investigate the negotiation tactics, treaty talk experiences, and outcomes of treaty talks in the Chicago area from 1795 to 1833. To prepare for the primary sources you’re about to look at, create a chart like the one below (adapted from Nokes, 2022, p. 130):

3. Let’s read Source 1, an excerpt from Charles Joseph LaTrobe’s travel journal (printed at the end of this document). This section talks about getting ready for the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. 

• • In LaTrobe’s description, what did US negotiators tell Indigenous people they had heard about Indigenous people and the land?
  • How did Indigenous leaders respond to the US claim?
  • When the US forced negotiations anyway, how did Indigenous leaders slow down the proceedings?
  • How does this exchange reflect the different perspectives Indigenous people and settlers have/had about land? (Think back to SQ1 and the Background section above.)

4. Create a two-column notes page to start documenting what treaty talks were like. Remember that for the early treaties, Native people still had the stronger hand for negotiating. By the later treaties, power dynamics in the region had changed. 

You might set it up your notes like this:  

Feel free to look back at the Background Section above to help fill this in!

5. Now, let’s look at Source 2, four versions of Myaamia negotiator Little Turtle’s speech in the Aacimotaatiiyankwi blog post (pronounced aw·chi·moh·taw·tea·yan·gwi), also printed at the end of this document. The post tells us important information about treaties, it also reveals how historians read and debate primary source material. 

We’ll start with how historians do what they do. After reading the source, 

• What do you notice about the information the scholars use? 
• Where do scholars’ knowledge about language and translation shape their interpretation of the sources? Their knowledge of cultural context? Their knowledge of family relationships? 
• How are these approaches helpful in understanding the motivations and outcomes of historical events?

6. Now, let’s zoom in on the content of Little Turtle’s speech. Read the speech again. This time, notice:

• How does Little Turtle protest the treatment of Myaamia people by the United States negotiators? 
• Where does Little Turtle insist on Myaamia rights to their lands? How does this reflect Indigenous relationships with land?
• Where in his speech do you notice the United States pitting Native nations against one another? 

Add these insights to your growing list of answers in your chart above!

7. So far, you’ve looked at two primary sources, and you’ve also thought about how historians analyze primary sources. Now, let’s look at a secondary source. Source 3 (printed at the end of this document) is two excerpts from the book Muddy Ground by historian John William Nelson. Nelson’s interpretation of the history helps us understand settler and Indigenous tactics for treaty talks. As you read, add to your chart above!

• What tactics did each negotiating party use? 
• How did Anishinaabeg leaders protest the results of prior talks? 
• How did Indigenous leaders advocate for their communities during treaty negotiations? 
• According to Nelson, in what ways were Native nations successful in maintaining access to the land homelands? 
• Did the United States’ tactics lead Indigenous people to collaborate with one another? To fight against one another? In what ways

8. Summing it up! How would you now describe treaty negotiations for Chicago between 1795 and 1833? Would you say these talks led to justice, equality, and liberty for all involved? Describe your findings in a format of your choosing – a paragraph, poem, art piece with an explanatory statement, etc. 

9. Looking forward, what additional questions would you want to answer to more fully understand treaty talk experiences?

Charles LaTrobe was a British politician who served as the first lieutenant governor of the British colony Victoria in Australia. Before getting involved in politics, LaTrobe traveled across North America with American author Washington Irving. He wrote The Rambler in North America about his travels. In this excerpt, LaTrobe describes the opening of the treaty talks for the 1833 Treaty of Chicago.

THE INDIAN TREATY. A preliminary council had been held with the chiefs some days before our arrival. The principal Commissioner had opened it, as we learnt, by stating that, ‘as their Great Father in Washington had heard that they wished to sell the land, he had sent Commissioners to treat with them.’ The Indians promptly answered by their organ, ‘that their Great Father in Washington must have seen a bad bird which had told him a lie, for that. far from wishing to sell their land, they wished to keep it.’ The Commissioner, nothing daunted, replied : ‘that nevertheless, as they had come together for a Council, they must take the matter into consideration.’ He then explained to them promptly the wishes and intentions of their Great Father, and asked their opinion thereon. Thus pressed, they looked at the sky, saw a few wandering clouds, and straightway adjourned sine die, as the weather is not clear enough for so solemn a council. (p. 203-204)

Source citation: Charles LaTrobe, The Rambler in North America: MDCCCXXXII-MDCCCXXXIII. (London: R.B. Seeley and W. Burnside, 1835), Newberry Library: 203-204.

The blog post is accessible in full here.

Mihšihkinaahkwa (pronounced mish·eh·kin·aw·kwa, or Little Turtle in English) was a Myaamia leader born around 1747. He rose to leadership through his Myaamia military service and fought in several battles against the United States. Over time, Mihšihkinaahkwa became concerned about the growing violence. He was concerned for his people, including his son-in-law, Eepiihkaanita (ay·pea·con·it·a, also known as William Wells), who served as a scout for the U.S. Army. Mihšihkinaahkwa came to believe that peace with the United States was the best option for his community. He and Eepiihkaanita worked together toward peace on several occasions, including at the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. Mihšihkinaahkwa died in 1812. 

Source citation: George Ironstrack, Hunter Lockwood, David Costa, Daryl Baldwin, and Cameron Shriver. “Four Versions of a Little Turtle Speech at Greenville, 1795.” Aacimotaatiiyankwi, aacimotaatiiyankwi.org. 

Four Versions of a Little Turtle Speech at Greenville, 1795

*and a conversation about them

Posted by CAMSHRIVER on APRIL 13, 2021

The following four primary sources all reveal aspects of a critical message delivered by the Myaamia leader Mihšihkinaahkwa ‘Little Turtle’ during the summer of 1795 at negotiations in Greenville in the Ohio territory. For the context, see our previous two blog posts about the Treaty of Greenville (Part One and Part Two). In March 2021, some staff at the Myaamia Center got together virtually for a brown bag chat about these sources, resulting in a wide-ranging conversation reproduced below. 

The four sources are introduced here in no particular order, including their citation and a short explanation. The first three are extracted from longer, eyewitness reports of the 1795 negotiations, each detailing many more days of speeches and events. The last is a modern re-translation of Little Turtle’s speech by the Miami speaker Gabriel Godfroy with interlinear translations by David Costa. All transcriptions are reproduced verbatim.

Following the sources is a lightly edited transcription of the brown bag conversation itself, which delved into the value of translations, the contexts of the speech, and historical concepts of boundaries and territorial dominion so critical to Miami and U.S. history. Join the conversation below, or via Facebook or Twitter.

The Four Sources

1. “Diary of surgeon John F. Carmichael, June-Dec. 1795.” HM 827. The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

This version of the negotiations is my transcription of a manuscript that I saw at the Huntington Library in California some years ago. It was written by a medical surgeon present with the American army in Greenville. 

In council

Tarhee, or Crane, a Wyandot Chf was preparing to speak, but was interrupted by

Chi-quee-naugh-qua—

Little turtle a Miami

Elder Brother-

I thought yesterday there was a mistake, in the interpretation, or in the Chief who spoke—for we ware surprised at his words;–You shall now hear what I have to say on that subject-

I have already told you, that neither I nor any of the Chiefs of my nation nation ware at Muskingum—and we known nothing of the transfer of the lands—

I do not understand our Elder Brothers the three fires—when they say the country is theirs—Open your ears and hear and I will tell, you whare you live, and, your boundries—

The Maumee Villiges, and the River is mine—the marks of my fore father’s houses, are yet plain to be seen—The Pattawatomies live on the St. Joseph, and on the Wabash—with the other Wabash indians tribes—The Tau-was live —

The Chip-pa-was-live on

Listen and I will tell you who has the right of soil—

The Great Spirit first settled my forefathers, at Detroit—and gave them all this country and told them never to part with there land,–And their boundary was, From thence to the head branches of the Sciota along the Sciota to the mouth from thence along the Ohio, to the mouth of the Wabash—and from thence up the Wabash to its source—from thence along a branch of    to     the southwest corner of lake       where we first saw our brothers the Shau-wa-noes these are our bounderies, and this is our land,–My fore fathers told me, not to sel our land, and we have never sold, it—

The Great Spirit, has not taken care of our elder brothers—for they have always sold their land to any white man who wore a hat—

2. American State Papers, Indian Affairs, vol. 1: 570-571.

This official report is the only source used in the secondary literature. It is the most complete and accessible of the sources. Interested readers can find it here, on page 570.

I wish to inform you where your younger brothers, the Miamies, live, and, also, the Pattawatamies of St. Joseph’s, together with the Wabash Indians. You have pointed out to us the boundary line between the Indians and the united States, but I now take the liberty to inform you, that that line cuts off from the Indians a large portion of country, which has been enjoyed by my forefathers since time immemorial, without molestation or dispute. The print of my ancestors’ houses are every where to be seen in this portion. I was a little astonished at hearing you, and my brothers who are now present, telling each other what business you had transacted together heretofore at Muskingum, concerning this country. It is well known by all my brothers present, that my forefather kindled the first fire at Detroit; from thence, he extended his lines to the head waters of Scioto; from thence, to its mouth; form thence, down the Ohio, to the mouth of the Wabash, and from thence to Chicago, on lake Michigan; at this place I first saw my elder brothers, the Shawanese. I have now informed you of the boundaries of the Miami nation, where the Great Spirit placed my forefather a long time ago, and charged him not to sell or part with his lands, but to preserve them for his posterity. This charge has been handed down to me. I was much surprised to find that my other brothers differed so much from me on this subject: for their conduct would lead one to suppose, that the Great Spirit, and their forefathers, had not given them the same charge that was give to me, but, on the contrary, had directed them to sell their lands to any white man who wore a hat, as soon as he should ask it of them. Now, elder brother, your younger brothers, the Miamies, have pointed out to you their country, and also to our brothers present. When I hear your remarks and proposals on this subject, I will be ready to give you an answer; I came with an expectation of hearing you say good things, but I have not yet heard what I have expected.

3. “Report to Colonel England on Mission to Greenville,” Burton Historical Records, John Askin Papers (1928) 1: 564.

This version, the briefest, comes from the British subject (born to an Ottawa mother) John Askin, Junior, in his intelligence reporting to Col. England. Askin, like many, was deeply interested in the negotiations because his trading prospects hinged on access to Indigenous markets and producers in the region.

The Miamis spoke and said their Grand Father had given them these Lands and they were told not to sell them nor give them away and of Course the Tribes who had given them at Muskingum had no right to them, and several other words to the same purpose.

4. Little Turtle’s Speech, trans. by Gabriel Godfroy and David Costa. Jacob Piatt Dunn Collection, L047, Manuscripts Division, Indiana State Library.

Mihšihkinaahkwa Kiiloohkweeta

The English line (3) is taken verbatim from the published American State Papers official record of the speech. The Miami translation line (1) is from a retranslation from English back into Miami by Gabriel Godfroy, elicited by Jacob Dunn. The Miami has been fit to modern orthography by David Costa. The interlinear translation line (2) is provided by David Costa.

Iihseensa oolawi pisentawilo noonki iilwiaani.

older brother (voc.) | ‘I desire (pray)’ | listen to me | now | I say 

I hope you will pay attention to what I now say to you.

Kiwiintamoole kati ahšiimaki Myaamiaki eehi wiiyaahkiwaaci,

I tell you | will | younger siblings | Miamis | where | they stay

I wish to inform you where your younger brothers, the Miamis live,

aapooši Wahoonaahaki (of the St. Joseph’s), aapooši Waapaahšikenki mihtohseeniaki.

also | Potawatomis | also | Wabash (loc.) | Indians 

and also the Potawatomis of St. Joseph’s, together with the Wabash Indians.

Kiila šaaya meehci peemaahkonamani mihtohseeniaki meetaathsoopia. 

you | already | you draw it as a boundary | Indians | government

You have pointed out to us the boundary line between the Indians and the United States,

Kiwiintamoole kati peemaahkonamani ašiihkiwi wiihsa mihtohseeniaki keehkaawaaci,

I tell you | will | you draw it as a boundary | land | many | Indians | it cuts them off (?)

but now I take the liberty to inform you that that line cuts off from the Indians a large portion of country

noohsinaanaki eehi-pimiseniowaaci eehkwi ceeki aweeya kihkeelintamaani 

our fathers | where | they live | while | everybody | he knows it

which has been enjoyed by my forefathers, time immemorial, 

moohci ansihke aweeyaki nimiikaalikona nintepeelintantekohsiiwa*.

not | never | someone (pl.) | he fights us (?) | he does not make claims against me (?)

without molestation or dispute.

Miisaahaki eehkwa peemhkawaaciki neeminki awiikawaanki oowaaha ašiihkiwi

everywhere | still | traces | it is seen | their houses (loc.) | here | land

The print of my ancestor’s houses are everywhere to be seen in this portion. 

Niila kikawe waaciinkwiiteehiaani eehpiši kiila weechsaamakiki oowaaha weeyaahkiciki noontamaani,

I | ‘somewhat’ | I worry | ‘when’ | you | my brothers (1 > 33) | here | they dwell | I hear it

I was a little astonished at hearing you, and my brothers who are now present,

aatotankwaatiiciki iišišiniyani milohta mihtami Muskingum ooniini ašiihkiwi aatotameekwi.

they talk about it to each other | what you do | before | first | Muskingum | this | land | you (pl.) talk about it

telling each other what business you had transacted together heretofore at Muskingum concerning this country.

Ceeki kiihkeelintaminki weechsaamakiki weeyaahkiiciki kiintoohki pootaweeta noohsa Ee(h)kakamionki,

all | it is known | my brothers (1 > 33) | they stay | ‘first’ | he builds a fire | my father | Detroit (loc.)

It is well known by all my brothers present, that my forefather kindled the first fire at Detroit,

niiyaanci kiikaapiikahank Scioto eehonci maaciihtanki,

from there | he draws a line on it | Scioto | from where | it flows out

from thence he extended his lines to the headwaters of Scioto from thence to its mouth

niiyaanci eehi saakiiweeki Kaanseeseepiiwi niiyaanci Waapaahšiiki eehi saakiiweeki Kaanseeseepionki

from there | where | it joins, confluence | Ohio river | from there | Wabash river | where | it joins, confluence | Ohio river (loc.)

from thence, down the Ohio, to the mouth of the Wabash;

niiyaanci šikaakonki kihcikamionki.

from there | Chicago (loc.) | sea (loc.)

from thence to Chicago, on lake Michigan.

Niiyaaha kiintoohki nihseensaki šaawanooki neewakiki.

there | first | my older brothers | Shawnees | I see them 

at this place, I first saw my elder brothers the Shawnees. 

Noonki šaaye meehci weentamoolaani eehi Myaamiaki teepeelintankiki eehi noohsina pooniaminci miišimaaha

now | already | after | I tell you | where | Miamis | they own it | where | our (excl.) father | he has us (excl.) | long ago 

I have now informed you of the boundaries of the Miami nation, where the Great Spirit placed my forefather a long time ago,

“Wiihkata ansihke ataaweehsoolo ooniini kitašiihkiomi”, iišita noohsina, “kiniicaanhsawa kati eelooweelintankiki”.

don’t | never | do not sell it | this | your land | he says to me | our (excl.) father | your (pl.) children | will | ‘they have the benefit of it’

and charged him not to sell or part with his lands, but to preserve them for his posterity.

Niila ooniini poonamawinki

I | this | (it) is handed to me

This charge has been handed down to me.

Taaniši toki iišiteehiaani moohci nimaamaanteešiteehiminaan ooniini iilaatotaminki

how | I wonder | I think | not | we (excl.) think alike | this | it is spoken of thus

I was much surprised to find that my other brothers differed so much from me on this subject:

Malami iišileniwaata aalaamhtoonci kati noohsina noohsinaanaki moohci naahpi wiintamawaaciki iišimenki.

too | they do so | he is believed | will | our (excl.) father | our (excl.) fathers | not | also | they tell him | I am said 

so to 

for their conduct would lead one to suppose, that the Great Spirit, and their forefathers, had not given them the same charge that was given to me, 

Kwitakinkiši iišileniciki ataaweeko atašiihkiomawe mihtami Mihšimaalhsa kwicimolekoci

otherwise | he does thus | sell (imp.) | their land | first | white person | he (obv.) asks him

but on the contrary, had directed them to sell their lands to any white man who wore a hat, as soon as he should ask it of them. 

Iihseensa noonki wiintamoohkiki teepeelintamoowa* ahšiimaki Myaamiaki 

elder brother | now | they tell you | they govern it (?) | younger siblings | Miamis

Now, elder brothers, your younger brothers, the Miamis, have pointed out to you their country, 

aapooši ceeki weechsaamankwiki oowaaha weeyaahkiciki

also | all | our brothers (12 > 33) | here | they stay

and also to our brothers present. 

Meehci kati noontoolaani kiwiintamoole

after | fut. | I hear you | I tell you 

When I hear your remarks and proposals on this subject, I will be ready to give you an answer.

Oowaaha pyaayaani peehki ninoontawaa kati iileelimelaani moohci naahpa kinoontoohsoole.

here | I come | good | I hear him | will | I think of you thus | not | but | I do not hear you

I came with an expectation of hearing you say good things, but I have not yet heard what I expected.

A Conversation

Brown bag conversation, March 4, 2021.

George Ironstrack: Gabriel Godfroy’s version strikes me as a straight up translation from the English he was provided. We know there is a major language shift between Little Turtle’s time (ca. 1795) and Gabriel Godfroy (ca. 1890). Not that Godfroy wouldn’t have understood Little Turtle’s speech, but I don’t think it tells us a lot about the actual words Mihšihkinaahkwa spoke on that day or the oratorical style he might have used for that circumstance. For the American State Papers version, we know that William Wells was the interpreter and so I tend to trust the interpretation at a pretty high degree on account of his level of fluency and relationship with Little Turtle, and we also see them working hand in glove politically, which helps me to trust the initial translation, at least. I’m struck, when I go back and read it, by Little Turtle’s definition of space, because nobody else from the tribes at that treaty attempts to define their space at all, much less defined it in a way that puts a roadblock in Anthony Wayne’s plan for what’s going to happen at the negotiation, and I don’t think we have a lot of good examples from that period of Indigenous descriptions of homelands. He’s very much just describing it by outside borders, which strikes me as very culturally important in that moment, if you’re trying to defend your territory by defining it. It’s not very culturally resonant in the way territory… we can see in old [documents], the territory was defined by central cities, not by peripheries. I’d be curious if folks have read others, especially in the language or in heavy [Algonquian] language context with good translations, where tribal leaders in the Great Lakes are defining the boundaries of their territories?

Hunter Lockwood: On the question of “are translators trustworthy?” Sometimes absolutely, but sometimes never. And then this piece [Little Turtle’s speech], one of the things I noticed about that boundary definition is that it’s basically all using the rivers and watersheds. So one of the things I’ve been thinking about also is:  what sorts of things are hard to translate, and what sorts of things are relatively easier to translate in general? In Algonquian languages, defining rivers and boundaries is not the most unnatural thing in the world and I could imagine reasons including contentious discussions over space in this shared territory [in the Great Lakes]. But when you get a really specific delineation of space according to colonial units, that’s when things get murky. So, some of the later treaties have “such and such many miles” and “such and such many subdivisions,” and even today, with modern speakers of Ojibwe, for instance, speakers will not always talk about those things the same way.

David Costa: One thing Rich Rhodes talked about long ago, when I was a grad student, he said that one of the big salient differences between how territory was conceived of back then versus how white people conceived of it is white people came with a conception that rivers were boundaries. Whereas in North America, at least in the Great Lakes and Midwest, rivers were, that was the heart of territory, so conceiving of those as boundaries as Europeans were wont to do was a drastic change. Because, as you know, that was how people got around. People would take huge detours to get from A to B by following rivers when, if you look at it, as the crow flies a direct line will be much shorter but also next to impossible to do.

Daryl Baldwin: Right, and I think that’s a good point because, when we look at Little Turtle’s words, we have to understand the context in which he’s speaking and he’s trying to speak in another language. I’m saying that conceptually. He’s speaking to someone who is trying to take his land, so you’re right, I think that the notion of homeland is “where I live,” and that’s probably the way it was thought of in the context of the language. We use ‘Myaamionki’ all the time, it’s ‘where the Miamis are at.’ The boundaries are probably heavily influenced because treaty negotiations are not about tribal epistemologies, but about American ideas of land ownership and boundaries. Little Turtle and the other leaders are having to figure out how to talk in those terms, and this might have been a good example of an early attempt for Little Turtle to speak in those terms.

David Costa: Yeah, even though I think he did not speak English, it is actually an interesting big adaptation to European ways of thinking. It’s already evident.

Cameron Shriver: In the John Carmichael version, I’m struck by how similar it is to the American State Papers version. They almost fully agree, but there are some interesting details in the Carmichael version. “Open your ears and I will tell you where they live,” he says. “The marks of my forefather’s houses are yet plain to be seen. … The Potawatomis live on the St. Joseph and the Wabash, the Ottawas live at ‘blank,’ the Ojibwes live on ‘blank,’ and there are other place names that Carmichael apparently could not write down. Little Turtle is saying explicitly where the Ottawas and Ojibwes and Potawatomis live, and Carmichael just doesn’t know what those words mean or Wells is not translating them from the Miami names. So he’s kind of mixing a centered version–maybe they live on this river or that river–and then switching to describe the boundaries of the Miami Nation. That’s interesting.

George Ironstrack: And the historical context here: there are three fraudulent treaties [Fort Harmar, Fort McIntosh, Fort Stanwix] that Little Turtle is essentially trying to knock out from underneath this negotiation. At those treaties [Wyandot leader Tarhe] is one of the people and some Ojibwe or other people who ceded our lands although we didn’t attend those treaties, because we didn’t see them as legitimate. So, when you enter that part of the negotiations, that context is really important.

Cameron Shriver: Yeah, there’s a real tension because Mihšihkinaahkwa is kind of on an island in this treaty council, and increasingly so, as the only one who is willing to challenge Anthony Wayne. He is clearly trying to refute and say that those earlier treaties with the Ottawas and Ojibwes were void because key groups, Miamis and Shawnees, weren’t there. Groups from Michigan are selling Southern Ohio and he’s like “nope, you live there, we live here” and “I’m surprised you would sell that land to any white man who wears a hat,” a phrase that appears in both versions. There must be something there. 

Hunter Lockwood: Certain modern varieties connect that [hats] to Frenchmen. The hat is a trade good brought in for trade; that’s how I learned it anyway. That’s actually white people in general, “one who wears a hat” in some versions of Miami-Illinois.

George Ironstrack: Yeah, the wearing of hats shows up all the way through the early nineteenth century, like the [Shawnee] Prophet talks about the wearing of hats is like a sign of white people but also selling out, and there’s a hat in his vision and there’s all these references to hats that go back in time. But it’s really interesting, and again, to me it is a huge violation of treaty protocol, [Little Turtle] is essentially name calling, is what’s going on there. It just shows the tension; imagine the backroom tension. It very much feels like Andrew Cayton writes, that this is political theater. Imagine being there on the day as well as the following night when people around the campfire are talking about this after the fact, and planning what they’re going to say the next day.

Cameron Shriver: There’s another context here, to what Wayne is saying. Wayne is arguing, “hey you Miamis, you sold your land to the French, the British conquered the French, and we conquered it from the British, and therefore we get that land fair and square.” Wayne’s saying “you have already sold your land, get off your high horse Little Turtle and admit that you are already colonized,” and so I wonder if Turtle is using that “white man who wears a hat” to mean all settlers or colonists, French, British and Americans, versus the clear distinction between an American and a British and a French person.

David Costa: I just looked into my etymological dictionary under ‘hat’ and Gatschet learned “eetehtolenia” as ‘someone who wears a hat.’ Sarah Wadsworth evidently told Gatschet, “this was the first name given by Wea Indians to the white people.” It’s pretty impressive that Wadsworth was born in the 1850s would remember that. 

Cameron Shriver: Godfroy does not use a hat term, it looks like he just says “mihsi-maalhsa.” (Long Knife). But he was reading the American State Papers version, or Dunn was reading it to him for translation.

Daryl Baldwin: This was stated earlier in our conversation, but I just want to reiterate that Godfroy’s translation of the treaty speech is nothing more than his language interpretation, and so I’ve never attempted to look at that as a representation, especially for cultural concepts that Little Turtle might have been trying to express.

David Costa: Yeah, I agree. Though I do wonder whether Godfroy put something into his translation that’s not immediately evident, that might not have been characteristic of his normal speech. You know, there was an oratorical style. There might have been some subtle things about how Godfroy translated this that might have been harking back to “well I kind of remember when I was a kid when people would make speeches.” Maybe he tried to throw in a few old-fashioned turns of phrase into it, like [Thomas Wildcat] Alford did when he translated the Shawnee Bible.

Hunter Lockwood: I think that’s true to a large extent. It’s a linguistic exercise, but I think there’s a value to it in that there is a broader perspective also. When we’re looking at these old interpretations, which parts are really tricky to translate and which parts aren’t? The strawman argument, maybe, says that this stuff is impossible to translate into languages that are so hopelessly different that there is no way to communicate between them. And so it’s useful to say no, these are things that are translatable; that if Miami speakers speak English, they could say: “here’s how you would configure these descriptions of space.” And also, “there are the concepts that are tricky.” I think that is useful. Godfroy showed years later that these boundaries were relatively straightforward to translate.

George Ironstrack: And there are little things in there that, if we didn’t know from outside sources, would help us like kinship terminology. Brother is actually ‘elder brother,’ and you know younger brother is actually ‘younger siblings.’ It opens up a little bit of a cultural door, so it’s not useless in terms of understanding the speech in that way, but it gives us more questions to ask about the intercultural communication that was occurring at Greenville in 1795.

David Costa: In the version I [translated] I had to give both [the American State Papers] version and another translated version of what Godfroy is actually saying, because there are some places where [Godfroy’s Miami] really departs from the English. There’s actually a bad match between Dunn’s translation and the Myaamia language itself, so Godfroy is applying some of his own intuitions to this. Whether or not there is some echo of the oratorical style that he might remember is tougher to say. It’s definitely not just a … [word for word] translation.

Cameron Shriver: I think we all know that you can translate any idea across languages, but there’s an outdated idea in the literature that Native people don’t know what a boundary is or don’t understand or have a notion of land ownership, and so there are a few ways that Godfroy relatively easily translates what could be an abstract idea, but it’s not problematic for him. Like for boundary, he says, ‘draw a line’ and that’s a boundary. OK, that’s no problem. But then, when he describes the “boundaries of the Miami nation, where the Great Spirit placed my forefather a long time ago,”–he just says ‘Myaamiaki,’ by the way, not ‘Miami nation,’ there’s no “nation” term–but rather he translates: “I tell you where the Miamis, they own it, where our (exclusive) father, he has us (exclusive) long ago.” So, those exclusive ideas are, well, that’s kind of what property is, that is what dominion is, it’s something exclusive not inclusive. So the words he chooses to use for boundaries of the Miami nation are interesting to me as well.

George Ironstrack: Who was it, was it Bundy that answered the question: how do you say nation? He just said “ceeki” [‘all/everything.’]

Daryl Baldwin: I’ve also long wondered about people, about where they’re from as in their village, and that the extent of their domain largely hinged on how friendly they were. If they were friendly, they could get close, and if they weren’t friendly you stayed farther away from them. I always felt like that ability to interact hinged on one’s perception of another. Different tribes would have different degrees of association with different groups, so there was this middle gray space between villages that was constantly in ebb and flow and maybe even seasonally as summer villages broke into winter camps and so on and so forth. And then you work in the whole notion of travel and my guess is that on a portage, people could get through fine, but you didn’t venture off that portage into certain areas. I think it was a very complex social landscape that would have been guided by a lot of different human forces that didn’t have clear distinct boundaries, and just like it is hard to describe what animate or inanimate [nouns] means, it’s pretty hard to describe who belongs to a bounded geography.

If your school has access, you can read the whole book on Project Muse here.

John William Nelson is an Assistant Professor of History at Texas Tech University. He received his PhD from Notre Dame University. Nelson is an expert on early America, especially on how ecology and geography shaped interactions between Native people and European settlers. 

Please note, in this source, the author uses “Anishinaabe(g)” to refer to the confederacy of Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa people, which we refer to as Neshnabé(k) throughout the curriculum. Both terms refer to the same confederacy – they are just used more or less frequently depending on the region. 

On the 1795 Treaty: 

As [General Anthony] Wayne advanced his plan for fortifying Chicago’s portage and controlling waterborne movement through the area, the Anishinaabe leadership of the Chicago towns protested. Traveling to Wayne’s headquarters on July 16, 1796, a delegation of Potawatomi headmen representing at least four separate Anishinaabe towns around the [Chicago] portage demanded ‘to known what chiefs gave you our land at Checago.’ According to Wayne, the Chicago delegation ‘pestered & interrupted’ him at his headquarters, demanding “further and particular compensation” for the six-mile tract at Chicago. Wabenaneto, speaking on behalf of the Potawatomi town near the southern portage, pointed out that neither he nor the headmen from north of the Chicago River had attended the Treaty of Greenville. According to the Chicago Indians, their ‘great chief’ was too elderly to have come forward either during the treaty or afterward to represent them properly. In the end, Wayne agreed to pay them directly for the land cession and doled out presents in exchange for some captives the Chicago chiefs had brought along. After six days of haranguing the U.S. commander, the western Anishinaabe leaders expressed their satisfaction at the new peace between the United States and the Northwest Indians, but also reiterated their own distance from the conflict [between more eastern tribes and the U.S. government] and their lack of consent with the cession of Chicago specifically. (p. 131)

On the 1816 Treaty: 

In August 1816, Ninian Edwards, governor of Illinois, William Clark, territorial governor of Missouri, and Auguste Chouteau, a prominent St. Louis fur trader, acted as hosts to ‘the chiefs and warriors of the united tribes of Ottawas, Chippewas, and Potawatomies, residing on the Illinois and Melwakee Rivers, and their waters, and on the southwestern parts of lake Michigan.’ Journeying from towns southwest of Lake Michigan, the Anishinaabeg gathered to meet the U.S. treaty commissioners at the designated site. But these southwestern Anishinaabeg, suffering from low quantities of food, munitions, and other supplies since the war [of 1812] found themselves in a difficult position to bargain with the Americans. The government treaty commissioners used this to their advantage. Ninian Edwards, recognizing their current poverty and knowing the history of prosperity among the Chicago Anishinaabeg, used the proposed canal to appeal to their sense of commerce. He argued that a modest land cession of only twenty miles wide along the proposed canal route between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, would increase the flows of trade through their lands. The Chicago-area Anishinaabeg would be enriched once again, this time by a canal route rather than a portage running through their territory. When this line of argument along failed to yield results, a promised of a $1000 annuity payment for the next twelve years delivered directly to the Anishinaabeg  at Chicago and the Illinois River, convinced the poorly supplied Anishinaabeg to accept the U.S. proposal…In all, the treaty did not signify an exceptionally large land transfer compared to other treaties of the day. The Chicago-area Anishinaabeg had managed to retain hunting and fishing rights in the relinquished lands, and the U.S Commissioners guaranteed Indigenous rights to continue living in and moving through the space so long as it remained the property of the government.

Source citation: John William Nelson, Muddy Ground: Native peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023), 131.