Rights, Treaties, and Contested Spaces
Although the Indian treaties affecting the Great Lakes region were negotiated more than a century ago, the terms agreed to continue to affect the lives of contemporary Indians and Euro-Americans. Tribal communities under American law have the status of nations within a nation. This status was reached within several treaties between the United States government and each individual community. In late 18th-and-19th-century Michigan, the Peoples of the Three Fires, collectively known as the Anishinaabe, negotiated a series of treaties with represetatives of the U.S. government. In return for concessions from the Tribal Governments, usually land, the United States government was obligated to provide the signers’ nation with compensation. Compensation might include money, services, reserves of land, or rights. Today, reserved treaty rights are similar to property rights. Tribal communities retain certain rights, including fishing and hunting rights. The collective experience of the Peoples of the Three Fires intimately involves borders and boundaries both national and international. This regional area can be described as a borderland where people have contested each other for control, economics, and trade.
Water—especially that of the Great Lakes—plays a very important role in these treaties for a variety of different reasons including political borders, fishing rights, commerce, and evironmental concerns. Prior to 1808 and colonial settlement, Tribal communities inhabited most of the 57,000 square miles of Michigan territory. Conditions of peace in the Northwest Territory were rudely interrupted by the arrival of the French, English, and then the Americans. The first lands ceded in treaty negotiations in the Michigan territory was the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. The treaty itself sought to end "a destructive war" between the U.S. and the Tribal nations. However, looking at the language of the boundaries in the treaty, it can be gleaned that water played an important role. Situating territorial boundaries and portages created natural barriers between nations. Article 3 of the treaty stated: "The general boundary line between the lands of the United States, and the lands of the said Indian tribes, shall begin at the mouth of the Cayahoga river, and run thence up the same to the portage between that and the Tuscarawas branch of the Muskingum; thence down that branch to the crossing place above Fort Lawrence; thence westerly to a fork of that branch of the great Miami river running into the Ohio, at or near which fork stood Loromie's store, and where commences the portage between the Miami of the Ohio, and the St. Mary's River, which is a branch of the Miami, which runs into Lake Erie...." Article 5 upheld Tribal rights to hunting, planting, and dwelling "so long as they please." Article 7 reinforced their rights to hunting on their ancestral lands.
The importance of boundaries, particularly water boundaries, became even more evident in the 1807 Treaty at Detroit. The treaty stipulated that: "the lands comprehended within the following described lines and boundaries: Beginning at the mouth of the Miami river of the lakes, and running thence up the middle thereof, to the mouth of the great Au Glaize river, thence running due north, until it intersects a parallel of latitude, to be drawn from the outlet of lake Huron, which forms the river Sinclair; thence running north east the course, that may be found, will lead in a direct line, to White Rock, in lake Huron, thence due east, until it intersects the boundary line between the United States and Upper Canada, in said lake, thence southwardly, following the said boundary line, down said lake, through river Sinclair, lake St. Clair, and the river Detroit, into lake Erie, to a point due east of the aforesaid Miami river, thence west to the place of beginning." Again, fundamental Tribal fishing and hunting rights were also upheld. Prior to 1815, the basic objective was to maintain the peace. Following the War of 1812, Americans sought to reinforce their sovereign boundaries, especially those which were waterborne. This Royce map of the Treaty of Washington, 1836, describing land cession 205, demonstrates the water boundaries:
“Beginning at the mouth of Grand river of Lake Michigan...thence, in a direct line, to the head of Thunder-bay river...thence northeast to the boundary line in Lake Huron between the United States and the British province of Upper Canada, thence northwestwardly...through the straits, and river St. Mary’s, to a point in Lake Superior north of the mouth of Gitchy Seebing...thence south to the mouth of said river and up its channel...in a direct line to the head of the Skonawba river of Green bay in direct line, through the ship channel into Green bay, to the outer part thereof, thence south to a point in Lake Michigan west of the north cape, or entrance of Grand river...”
The Great Lakes ceased to form a hub of culture and instead became increasingly defined as boundaries between peoples and nations. The close of the War of 1812 pushed the U.S. to secure their water boundaries in Michigan. For the Anishinaabe, like the water in which a canoe floated, the land belonged to no one—it was simply there to be used. Unlike the French before them, the Americans sought to exploit the natural resources irrespective of the presence of Tribal communities, rather than integrate and trade. Treaties constructed by the US and with Indigenous peoples stipulated hard boundaries and restrictions on usage of waterways. For the United States, treaties within the Great Lakes region had two goals, the most fundamental being peace, at a minimum to ensure Anishinaabe neutrality between the Americans and the British in Canada. During the War of 1812, Indigenous peoples were able to use imperial interests to play the British and Americans off one another. After the war, however, this ability to manipulate the situation had vanished. Treaties themselves transformed over time, allowing the U.S. government to use them for not only peace but also land appropriation. Henry R. Schoolcraft and Lewis Cass pushed forward the treaty negotiations and removal policies throughout the U.S.
Two consecutive treaties in 1819 and 1820 secured the Saginaw Bay and the boundary at Sault Ste. Marie. Lewis Cass spearheaded the negotiations, where the U.S. laid claim to over four million acres of land, approximately a third of Michigan’s lower peninsula. The political situation at the close of the War of 1812 favored the expansionist ambitions of the United States and accelerated the drive to occupy land that both extended and secured the boundaries of America. As a result, the Thunder Bay region formed the northern boundary. The Sault Ste. Marie Treaty of 1820 had a similar result. Negotiations focused on Lake Huron as a boundary between Canada and the United States. From the boundary line at St. Mary’s river, the Chippewas ceded sixteen square miles of land adjacent to Little Rapid and the St. Mary River. Article 3 ensured that the tribe retained their fishing rights at the St. Mary’s falls and a place of “encampment upon the tract hereby ceded, convenient to the fishing ground,” as long as it did not interfere with military defense of the boundary line.
Henry R. Schoolcraft served as Indian Agent in Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan from 1822 until 1839 when he was promoted to Superintendent of Indian Affairs. He played an instrumental role for the U.S. government in securing the Treaty of Washington (1836). He brought about the ceding of an estimated 15 million acres of Michigan territory. In 1846, Schoolcraft spearheaded an investigation into the private lands at Sault Ste. Marie. His report detailed that the original occupants were French or of French descent, that land claims had all been proved by 1822, the cession of the lands from the Chippewa in 1820 had brought into existence "private lands," the "dissenting" commissioner had never visited the region, and that he was sure everything was in legal order.
Treaties established with the Chippewa nation in 1838 and 1855 respectively show the importance of water in Michigan legal terms. Under President Martin Van Buren, Henry Schoolcraft negotiated a treaty with the Saginaw Tribe for several tracts of land based around important rivers including the Flint River, Saginaw River, Cass River, Au Sable River, Shiawassee River, Tittabawassee River, Point Au Gres River, and an island in Saginaw Bay. President Franklin Pierce pursued a more complete ownership of the lands at Sault Ste. Marie. The first article of the treaty sought to reclaim the fishing rights at the falls. Article two detailed that a commissioner would personally visit and examine the fishery and determine its value, and a sum would be paid to the tribe for vacating the area. The treaty also awarded Chief O-Shaw-Waw-No use of a small island within the St. Mary's River for his own use.
From the Native American perspective, the U.S. government's seemingly endless quest for land left no room for Tribal society. While attending treaty negotiations at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Shing-Gaa-Ba-W'OSin (Figured Stone) illustrated this point quite eloquently. Spotting a U.S. negotiator sat on a stump, he joined the stump very close to the negotiator, practically pushing him off. The perplexed negotiator moved to another stump, and Shing-Gaa-Ba-W'OSin followed him and did the same thing. Eventually, he pushed the man onto the ground and said:
"There, my Father, that is the way in which you serve your poor red children...I came and asked you for a seat...you gave it to me. Not contented with this, I urged you for more until you gave and I again demanded more until you had none left. Many moons ago, our Father crossed the Big Water [Atlantic Ocean] and begged of his red children a small piece of land...it was given him; but...he again asked his red children for more. This was given, and still more, until his red children abandoned the homes and hunting grounds of their fathers to make way for the white man. Now...our Father is for sending us further west to where the sun sets and sinks into the Big Lake [Pacific Ocean]."
Shing-Gaa-Ba-W'OSin’s speech was, in many ways, a counterpoint to the career of Lewis Cass. Cass negotiated twenty treaties while he served as the governor of Michigan Territory, from 1815 to 1830. He oversaw the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw, which brought about the surrender of nearly a third of the lower peninsula of Michigan to control of the United States, and he represented the U.S., as commissioner, at the treaties of Prairie du Chien 1825, Fond du Lac 1826, and Butte des Mort 1827 (the three “Augustic Treaties," so named because they occurred in three successive years in August). In several articles that appeared in the North American Review in the 1820s, Cass advocated moving all tribes to lands lying west of the Mississippi River. Cass built his case around a sentimental racism, shared by many, that assumed the sad but inevitable disappearance of Native populations as white settlements advanced westward. This widely-held “extinction discourse,” writes Patrick Brantlinger, “served as the ideological basis for the passage of the Indian Removal Act.”
Towards the end of the 1830s, expulsion of the Native peoples from the northern border region had taken on new importance. Hugh Brady (1768-1851), veteran of the Black Hawk War and the War of 1812, supervised the removal of the tribes from Michigan. Henry R. Schoolcraft’s dealings with land accession moved the boundaries between Indians and Americans specifically on the west part of the state from Marquette to what is now Alpena and Kalamazoo. It was also widely assumed, in accordance with the 1830 Indian Removal Act, that the Anishinaabe would be relocated west of the Mississippi River once they had ceded their lands in Michigan. The articles of the Treaty with the Ottawa (1836), concluded in Washington, had much more stringent obligations and no longer granted land usage for more than five years without specific permissions from the U.S. government. Only certain places had long standing obligations to be kept, including many of the northern islands and riverways that provided the Ottawa and Chippewa nations with food and transport. By 1855, the U.S. sought the surrender of fishing rights at the falls of St. Mary’s and consolidated its hold on its water boundaries, forcing the Anishinaabe inland and away from the lakes. Indigenous treaties—which remain in full force today—are part of the ongoing struggles between Americans and Anishinaabe centering on Tribal sovereignty. Use of the waterways and the lands adjacent to them is at the heart of treaty rights.
