Fond du Lac Treaty Portraits: 1826
RICHARD E. NELSON Duluth, Minnesota
The story of the Fond du Lac Treaty portraits began on the St. Louis River at a site near the present city of Duluth with these words:
Whereas a treaty between the United States of America and the Chippeway tribe of Indians, was made and concluded on thefifth day of August, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-six, at the Fond du Lac of Lake Superior, in the territory of Michigan, by Commissioners on the part of the United States, and certain Chiefs and Warriors of the said tribe . . . (McKenney 1959:479)
The location was memorialized by a monument erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Duluth, Minnesota, on November 21, 1922, which reads:
Fond du Lac, Minnesota. Site of an Ojibway village from the earliest known pe riod. Daniel Greysolon Sieur de Lhut was here in 1679. Astor's American Fur Company established a trading post on this spot about 1817. First Ojibway treaty in Minnesota made here in 1826.
The report of the treaty is recorded in Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, of the Character and Customs of the Chippeway Indians, and of Incidents Connected with the Treaty of Fond du Lac written by Thomas K. McKenney in the form of letters to Secretary of War James Barbour in Washington and firstpublishe d in 1827. McKenney was the head of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. In May of 1826 he and Lewis Cass, the governor of the Michigan Territory, were appointed by President John Quincy Adams to conclude a major treaty at Fond du Lac. The treaty was to gain approval of the agreements made at Prairie du Chien the previous year to gain access to the mineral deposits of the area, and to arrange for another treaty at Green Bay in 1827 to fix the boundary lines between the Ojibwas and the Winnebagos and the Menominees.
239 240 RICHARD E. NELSON
McKenney traveled from Washington to New York, up the Hudson River to the Erie Canal, and from Buffalo through Lake Erie to Detroit. His letters are full of observations about the country through which he traveled. In Detroit he met Governor Lewis Cass, and arrangements were completed for the party from Detroit that would be going to Fond du Lac. Some of the company would be traveling by boat but others by canoe, including McKinney himself: "Having never seen a birch canoe, I am anxious to know in what kind of a conveyance I am destined to go up the lakes" (McKenney 1959:116). Joining the party at Detroit was James Otto Lewis. He was a young Detroit artist, engraver and printer. As a friend of Governor Cass, he travelled as an artist officially assigned to paint Indian portraits in the west. In 1825 he had been with Cass at the Treaty of Prarie du Chien on the Mississippi. In October 1826 he was present when treaties were signed with the Pottawatomi and Miami in Indiana, and in 1827 at the treaty of Green Bay at Buttes des Mortes on the Fox River. It is the work of Lewis done at Fond du Lac that serves as the basis of the collection of treaty portraits. When Cass and McKenney reached Sault Ste. Marie, Henry R. School craft joined the group that would be in the treaty party. Schoolcraft was the Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie. He and Governor Cass had been on previous expeditions together. In 1820 he was the geologist with the group that sought the headwaters of the Mississippi. As the group left this city on the 11th of July, they were joined by soldiers who increased their number to 112 persons. It took them 17 days to reach the mouth of the St. Louis River at the western end of Lake Superior, a journey estimated by McKenney to be 529 miles. At the head of Lake Superior they were met by a party of Indians from the Fond du Lac band. As the group approached their destination, McKenney reflected on his journey in a rather flamboyant 19th-century rhetorical style:
Much as I admire these wild and vast displays of creative and sustaining power, and often as I have felt my heart swell under the eloquence of nature, when she has spoken in storms, or whispered in zephyrs, when the mountains have been made to shake, and the lake to lift its billows high in the air, and when all has been still again; and no sound was heard but the murmer on the shore, and nothing seen but the still leaf, the glassy lake, and the spangled and silentfirmament; yet there was a charm which bound my heart, and that charm was home. (McKenney 1959:274)
Pen and oil sketches by James Otto Lewis were used as the basis of the lithographs which illustrated Sketches of a Tour of the Lakes. Lewis was one of the first of the painters of Indian portraits and scenes. He TREATY PORTRAITS 241
did two portraits of an Ojibwa named Shin-Gaa-Ba-W'osin, the first in his Aboriginal Port-Folio (Lewis 1835), the second in the Sketches of a Tour of the Lakes. A third portrait of him, entitled "Shin-Ga-Be-W'ossin, A Chippeway Chief is from McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America published between 1836 and 1844 in Philadelphia. There is much biographical information about many of the personages pictured in this collection. Shin-Ga-Be-W'ossin was a famed war captain, powerful orator, and statesman. His granddaugher, Jane Johnson, married Henry Schoolcraft. It was McKenney who developed the custom of having portraits painted of the Indians who came to Washington in delegations to visit and sign treaties. This collection of portraits, known collectively as the "Indian Gallery", hung in a cramped office in the War Department. Charles Bird King painted many of them from life. King was born in Rhode Island and studied in London under Benjamin West of the Royal Academy. Returning from London, he became a popular artist in Washington. In addition to the Indian portraits painted from life, he copied for the Indian Gallery some of the portraits sent to Washington by James Lewis that had been done at treaty meetings in various far reaches of the country. In order to have a set of portraits available for him to be used as the ba sis of the lithographs for the History of the Indian Tribes of North America, McKenney had copies of the King paintings made by Henry Inman. These portraits have survived, and until recently were at Harvard's Peabody Mu seum. Recognizing the role of Lewis in the development of the portrait gallery, James Horan (1972:64) states, "He appears to be the unsung hero of McKenney's famous Indian Gallery." By the 1860s the King portrait collection had been moved to the Smithsonian. They were there only until 1865 when they were destroyed in a disasterous fire. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate portraits of women and children. Of the first, McKenney (1933:199) writes, "The life of the Indian woman, under the most favourable circumstances, is one of continual labour and unmitigated hardship." The second has no comment, but is considered to be one of the most charming pictures in the Lewis portfolio. A series of three portraits of an Ojibwa chief named Wa-Em-Boesh- Kaa illustrate how the images change as we see them in the Port-Folio, the Sketches, and McKenney and Hall's History. In the Port-Folio the figure faces one direction. The drawing in the Sketches shows what seems to be the same figure seated on the ground under two tree smoking a pipe with a stem of immense length. In the McKenny and Hall lithograph, here reproduced as Figure 3, the figure is reversed, the pipe wrappings are altered, and colour of the bowl is changed. McKenney has the following comment about the subject of the portraits: 242 RICHARD E. NELSON
Among the most remarkable Chiefs we met with at the treaty of La Fond du Lac Superior, in 1826, was Waemboeshkaa. ... Our attention was attracted more by his style of dress than by any particular part that he bore in the ceremonies of that occasion. He was the only Indian present who seemed to have a right conception of a kingly crown, and to have succeeded in constructing a very successful imitation of that appendage of royalty. (1933:258)
Unfortunately for those who are interested in Fond du Lac there is no view of the site in the Lewis Port-Folio. There are views there of the Prarie du Chien treaty site, and of the Butte des Morts showing the arrival of Cass and McKenney in 1827. However, a full length portrait of an Ojibwa chief named Nabu-Naa-Kee-Shick, here shown as Figure 4, probably includes a view of the St. Louis River. This chief was from Fond du Lac, and I would like to think that the portrait shows him at his own village. There are a number of small islands in this area of the river near where the fur post and Indian village were located, and it is possible that this print could include a view of this scene. Although James Otto Lewis was not widely respected as an artist, his contribution to these priceless collections of treaty portraits has been recognized. As Horan (1972:64) states in his book on the McKenney-Hall portrait gallery, "Lewis did not possess the artistic background of King . . . but he had accomplished three major objectives which were beyond the desire or ability of King: he had witnessed history in the making and had not only recorded but participated in it — he was a witness to the great Fond du Lac Treaty of 1826."
APPENDIX
Fond du Lac Treaty Portraits: 1826 From the Collection of Richard E. Nelson and Dorothy R. Nelson, Duluth, Minnesota.1
1. Okee-Maakee-Quid, A Chippeway Chief, HIT 2. Nabu-Naa-Kee-Shick, or the One Side of the Sky, A Chippeway Chief, APF 3. Pee-Che-Kir, A Chippeway Chief, HIT 4. Kee-Wa-Din, or the North Wind, A Chippeway Chief, APF 5. Meta-Koosega, or Pure Tobacco, A Chippeway Warrior, HIT 6. Mich-She-Quat, or the Clear Sky, A Chippeway Chief, APF 7. Wa-Bish-Kee-Pe-Nas, the White Pigeon, A Chippewa, HIT
JHIT = History of the Indian Tribes of North America; APF = Aboriginal Port- Folio. TREATY PORTRAITS 243
8. At-Te-Conse, or the Young Rein Deer, A Chippeway Chief, APF 9. A-Na-Cam-E-Gish-Ca, A Chippeway Chief, HIT 10. Kee-Me-One, or Rain, A Chippeway Chief, APF 11. Pa-She-Nine, A Chippeway Chief, HIT 12. Chippeway Squaws, APF 13. Chippeway Squaw and Child, HIT 14. Wa-Em-Boesh-Kaa, A Chippeway Chief, APF 15. Wa-Em-Boesh-Kaa, A Chippeway Chief, HIT 16. Shing-Gaa-Ba-W'osin, or Figure'd Stone, A Chippeway Chief, APF 17. Shin-Ga-Ba-W'ossin, A Chippeway Chief, HIT 18. A Chippeway Squaw and Child, APF 19. Chippeway Squaw and Child, HIT 20. Jack-O-Pa, or the Six, A Chippeway Chief, APF 21. Jack-O-Pa, A Chippewa Chief, HIT 22. O-Hya-Wa-Nim-Ce-Kee, or the Yellow Thunder, A Chippeway Chief, APF 23. O-Hya-Wa-Mince-Kee, A Chippewa Chief, HIT 24. Ta-Ma-Kake-Toke, or the Woman That Spoke First, A Chippewa Squaw (mourn ing), APF 25. A Chippeway Widow, HIT
REFERENCES Horan, James D. 1972 The McKenney-Hall Portrait Gallery of American Indians. New York: Crown.
Lewis, James Otto 1835 Aboriginal Port-Folio. Philadelphia.
McKenney, Thomas L. 1959 Sketches of a Tour to the Lakes, of the Character and Customs of the Chippeway Indians, and of Incidents Connected with the Treaty of Fond du Lac. Minneapolis: Ross and Haines. [Facsimile offirst editio n pub lished in Baltimore in 1827.]
McKenney, Thomas L., and James Hall 1933 History of the Indian Tribes of North America, with Biographical Sketches and Anecdotes of the Principal Chiefs. Embellished with One Hundred and Twenty Portraits, from the Indian Gallery in the Department of War, at Washington. 3 volumes. Edited by Frederic Hodge. Edinburgh: John Grant. [Originally published 1827 at Philadelphia.] 244 RICHARD E. NELSON
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