Wisconsin Magazine of History

Wisconsin Magazine of History Rtminisunccs of Life Among the Chi^^cwa: Part One BENJAMIN G. ARMSTRONG Gentlemen Farmers in the Gilded Age GERALD PRESCOTT The Wisconsin Life Insurance Reform of 1907 ALBERT ERLEBACHER The South Old and Hew: A Review Essay MORTON SOSNA Published by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin / Vol. 55, No. 3 / Spring, 1972 THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF WISCONSIN JAMES MORTON SMITH, Director Officers E. DAVID CRONON, President GEORGE BANTA, JR., Honorary Vice-President JOHN C. GEILFUSS, First Vice-President E. E. HOMSTAD, Treasurer HOWARD W. MEAD, Second Vice-President JAMES MORTON SMITH, Secretary Board of Curators Ex Officio PATRICK J. LUCEY, Governor of the State CHARLES P. SMITH, State Treasurer ROBERT C. ZIMMERMAN, Secretary of State JOHN C. WEAVER, President of the University MRS. GORDON R. WALKER, President of the Women's Auxiliary Term Expires, 1972 E. DAVID CRONON ROBERT A. GEHRKE BEN GUTHRIE FRANCIS PAUL PRUCHA, S.J. Madison Ripon Lac du Flambeau Milwaukee SCOTT M. CUTLIP JOHN C. GEILFUSS MRS. R. L. HARTZELL J. WARD RECTOR Madison Milwaukee Grantsburg Milwaukee MRS. ROBERT E. FRIEND MRS. HOWARD T. GREENE ROBERT H. IRRMANN CLIFFORD D. SWANSON Hartland Milwaukee Beloit Stevens Point Term Expires, 1973 THOMAS H. B.\RLAND MRS. RAYMOND J. KOLTES FREDERICK I. OLSON DONALD C. SLIGHTER Eau Claire Madison Wauwatosa Milwaukee E. E. HOMSTAD CHARLES R. MCCALLUM F. HARWOOD ORBISON DR. LOUIS C. SMITH Black River Falls Hubertus Appleton Lancaster MRS. EDWARD C. JONES HOWARD W. MEAD NATHAN S. HEFFERNAN ROBERT S. ZIGMAN Fort Atkinson Madison Madison Milwaukee Term Expires, 1974 ROGER E. AXTELL REED COLEMAN ROBERT B. L. MURPHY MILO K. SWANTON Janesville Madison Madison Madison HORACE M. BENSTEAD PAUL E. HASSETT MRS. WM. H. L. SMYTHE CEDRIC A. Vic Racine Madison Milwaukee Rhinelander THOMAS M. CHEEKS WILLIAM HUFFMAN WILLIAM F. STARK CLARK WILKINSON Milwaukee Wisconsin Rapids Nashotah Baraboo Honorary Honorary Life Members EDWARD D. CARPENTER, Cassville MRS. ESTHER NELSON, Madison RUTH H. DAVIS, Madison DOROTHY L. PARK, Madison MRS. MARGARET HAFSTAD, Rockdale MONICA STAEDTLER, Madison PRESTON E. MCNALL, Clearwater, Florida BENTON H. WILCOX, Madison WILLIAM ASHBY MCCLOY, New London, Connecticut PAUL VANDERBILT, Madison Fellows VERNON CARSTENSEN MERLE CURTI ALICE E. SMITH The Women's Auxiliary Officers MRS. GORDON R. WALKER, Racine, President MRS. DAVID S. FRANK, Madison, Vice-President MRS. JAMES S. VAUGHN, Milwaukee, Secretary MRS. HUGH HIGHSMITH, Fort Atkinson, Treasurer MRS. GEORGE SWART, Fort Atkinson, Ex Officio VOLUME 55, NUMBER 3 / SPRING, 1972 Wisconsin Magazine of History WILLIAM CONVERSE HAYGOOD, Editor WILLIAM C. MARTEN, Associate Editor Reminiscences of Life Among the Chippewa (Part I) 175 BENJAMIN G. ARMSTRONG Gentlemen Farmers in the Gilded Age 197 GERALD PRESCOTT The Wisconsin Life Insurance Reform of 1907 213 ALBERT ERLEBACHER The South Old and New: A Review Essay 231 MORTON SOSNA Communications 236 Book Reviews 237 Book Review Index 257 Accessions 258 Contributors 260 Published Quarterly by The State Historical Society of Wisconsin THE WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY is published Microfilms, 313 North First Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan; quarterly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, reprinted volumes available from Kraus Reprint Company, 816 State Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53706. Distributed 16 East 46th Street, New York, New York. Communica to members as part of their dues (Annual membership, tions should be addressed to the editor. The Society does $7.50, or $5 for those 65 or over or members of affiliated not assume responsibility for statements made by contribu societies; Family membership, $10.00, or $7 for those 65 tors. Second-class postage paid at Madison and Stevens or over or members of affiliated societies; Contributing, $25; Point, Wis. Copyright © 1972 by the State Historical Business and Professional, $50; Sustaining, $100 or more Society^ of Wisconsin. Paid for in part by the Maria L. annually; Patron, $500 or more annually). Single numbers, and Simeon Mills Editorial Fund and by the George B. $1,75. Microfilmed copies available through University Burrows Fund. EIRLOOMS, a selection of glass, ceramics, and textiles from the H Society's permanent collection, opened April 27 in the Elvehjem Art Center's Mayer Gallery and continued until June 5. Organized by students enrolled in the Center's Museum Training and Connois seurship class, under the guidance of the Center's Director, Millard F. Rogers, Jr., and its Curator, Arthur R. Blumenthal, the exhibition included more than seventy objects, most of which had never been displayed before owing to the Society's lack of exhibition space. Artifacts on display included eighteenth-century Spanish barber bowls, nineteenth-century English lustreware, and shawls of the 1920's. This exhibit is representative of the many joint Society-Univer sity projects of a cultural and educational nature made possible by the Society's location on the Madison campus. (Photos courtesy Lance M. Neckar and the Elvehjem Art Center.) 174 REMINISCENCES OF LIFE AMONG THE CHIPPEWA (PART I) By BENJAMIN G. ARMSTRONG Introduction regained his health, learned the Chippewa N HIS SEVENTY-FIRST YEAR, Benjamin language, married the niece of Buffalo, head I Green Armstrong of Ashland dictated his chief of the Lake Superior Chippewa, and memoirs to Thomas Wentworth. The follow was adopted by Buffalo as his son. There ing year, 1892, Arthur W. Bowron, later edi after, Armstrong served the tribe as interpret tor of the Ashland Weekly Leader, issued the er, confidant, sturdy defender, trusted ad memoirs under the title. Early Life Among visor, and finally as historian. His deep in the Indians: Reminiscences of Benj. G. Arm terest in the aboriginal culture, even then strong: Treaties of 1835, 1837, 1842, and doomed by the shadow of the encroaching 1854: Habits and Customs of the Red Men of whites, is abundantly reflected in his sym the Forest: Incidents, Biographical Sketches, pathetic observations concerning the Indians' Battles, &. Not only, in conformity with psychology, social and religious philosophy, contemporary taste, was the title sesquipeda helplessness in the face of the whites' ofttimes lian, it was also slightly inaccurate, inasmuch casual ruthlessness, and the vulnerability of as Armstrong's Indian experiences had been the Indians' ancient oneness with their en limited almost solely to one tribe—^the Chippe vironment when faced with a superior tech wa (Ojibway) of northern Wisconsin. nology. To be sure, his was a privileged posi How Ben Armstrong, a native of Alabama, tion enjoyed by few white men; but he made came to spend most of his adult life in com the most of it, and admiration for the In panionship with Indians makes for a rousing dians' way of life, as well compassion for tale. After only three weeks of formal school their inevitable fate, permeates his story. ing he became a precocious and apparently Armstrong's narrative is replete with inci successful racing jockey in the South. Injured dents illustrative of the historic enmity exist in his early teens by a fall from his horse, ing between the Chippewa and the Sioux, dat he developed a fever which may or may not ing back to the sixteenth century when the have been tuberculosis. In any event, a Mis Chippewa were driven west by the more pow souri doctor advised him to seek a different erful Iroquois of the New York state area. climate, which accounts for his arrival in Possessed of white men's knives and muskets, Wisconsin in territorial days. Here he led an the Chippewa easily occupied the territory in active outdoor life among his Indian friends. habited by the more primitive Sioux, thus 175 WISCONSIN MAGAZINE OF HISTORY SPRING, 1972 precipitating continual wars, forays, and am bushes which ended only with the forcible re moval of the Sioux (by then concentrated largely in Minnesota) following the Indian scare of 1862. Armstrong himself witnessed and vividly describes a singularly bloody en counter between the Chippewa and Sioux on the Brule River. This battle, like many of the events in the memoirs, can only be dated approximately. Indeed, even the title of Armstrong's book contains an error, since no treaty between the Chippewa and the United States occurred in 1835. He appears to have been well aware of the normal inability of an aged man to re call names and dates with precision. In his preface he disarms the reader with his candor in this respect, at that same time maintaining that the events he describes are correct in their essential details. Careful consultation of the appropriate sources proves the validity of his contention, although for the sake of the record Society's Iconographic Collections such slips of memory as could be corrob orated have been amended in the footnotes. Benjamin G. Armstrong Printed on cheap newsprint, Armstrong's book was not designed to withstand the rav ages of time. In fact, the Society's copy, kept in the relative immunity of its library's rare T WAS BORN in the State of Alabama in book room, crumbled while being xeroxed for -•• the year 1820, and at the age of ten years, editing. Its fragility, together with the prob having had less than three weeks' schooling, able scarcity and utility of such copies as may I was decoyed away from home by a man remain in home or other libraries, played a named Thomas, who was engaged in horse- major role in the decision to republish at racing, traveling all over the Southern states. least a portion of the memoirs before they In the summer of 1833 we went to New become irretrievably lost. Orleans, La., where I was injured by a fall What follows represents a selection of epi from a horse, and just after this and before sodes dealing with Armstrong's relations with I had recovered from that injury, I was taken the Chippewa.

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