during good behavior, but must be regarded as tenants at will and having no interest in the land.

About this time Col. SAMUEL C. STAMBAUGH was appointed Indian agent at Green Bay by General JACKSON. On the 8th of November, 1830, he left Green Bay with a delegation of fourteen Menomonee chiefs to visit Washington with a view to making a treaty there for the sale of a part of their lands to the United States. On their arrival there on the 11th of December, the President appointed Gen. EATON, Secretary of War, and Col. STAMBAUGH, commissioners to make a treaty.

After several delays and much informal negotiation the Commissioners and the Menomonees met and on the 8th of February 1831, agreed upon a treaty, in which it was provided that a tract of land should be set apart as a home for the New York Indians bounded as follows: Beginning on the west side of Fox River, near the little Kau-kau-lin at the 'Old Mill Dam'; then northwest forty miles; then northeast to the Oconto river; then down the Oconto, and up and along Green Bay and Fox River to the place of beginning containing about 500,000 acres, excluding private claims and the military reservation. The treaty in the first article limited the time of the removal and settlement of the New York Indians upon the lands to three years. It further provided in the sixth article, that if the New York Indians then in Wisconsin, should not remove to and settle on the ceded land within three years, the President should direct their immediate removal from the Menomonee country. On the 17th day of February, 1831, a supplementary article was added to the treaty, which provided, that instead of the limitation of three years contained in the first article, the President should prescribe the time for the removal and settlement, and that the removal of the Indians, mentioned in the sixth article, should be left discretionary with the President.

This treaty not having been acted upon at the session which terminated March 4th, 1831, a further stipulation was made on the 15th of March, that it should be laid before the Senate at its next session, with the same effect as at the late session.

The amendments made on the 17th February did not reconcile the New York Indians to the treaty, and they renewed their opposition to it at the next session. The result

was that the treaty was ratified by the Senate on the 25th June, 1832, with an amendment in the interest of the New York Indians, which provided that two townships of land on the east side of Winnebago Lake, equal to forty-six thousand and eighty acres, should be laid off for the use of the Stockbridge and Munsee tribes, and one township adjoining, equal to twenty-three thousand and forty a cres, should be laid off and granted for the use of the Brothertown Indians; and that the Stockbridge, Munsee and Brothertown Indians should relinquish to the United States all their claims to any other lands, on the east side of Fox River, and that the United States should pay the Indians for their improvements thereon.

The amendment of the Senate also provided that the southwestern boundary of the 500,000 acre tract on the western side of the Fox River, should be extended southwesterly far enough to add to it 200,000 acres, and that the same number of acres should be taken from the northeast side.

On the 27th October, 1832, a council was held at Green Bay, by GEORGE B. PORTER, Governor of Michigan Territory, commissioned for that purpose by the President, with the representatives of the Menomonees, Stockbridges, Munsees, Brothertowns, St. Regis and Six Nations. The Menomonees assented without objection to so much of the Senate amendment as related to the three townships of land on the east side of Lake Winnebago, but proposed a modification of the southwestern boundary line of the 200,000 acres added on the southwest side, not however affecting the quantity of land added. All the New York Indians, including the St. Regis and Six Nations (generally known as Oneidas), accepted and agreed to the Senate amendments, with the modification proposed by the Menomonees, and requested that they might be ratified and approved by the President and Senate of the United States.

The conflict with the Wisconsin Indians, which had its origin in the three separate schemes of the Ogden Land Company to make its pre-emption rights available, of the Stockbridge, Munsee and Brothertown Indians, to obtain a more desirable home, and of ELEAZER WILLIAMS to build up a grand Indian nation, fostered and encouraged as these schemes were by JOHN C. CALHOUN, to render it impossible that more free states should be organized out of the North

west Territory, by setting it apart for the sole dominion of Indian tribes, was now terminated. This conflict had continued for more than twelve years, and the result had fallen so far short of the grand hopes and castles in the air, built by WILLIAMS, that he abandoned forever his Utopian scheme and devoted his time to the establishment of his more visionary fiction, that he was the Dauphin-the "Lost Prince" of the house of the Bourbons.

The schemes of the Ogden Land Company, of relegating to the wilds of Wisconsin the Indians who occupied the lands in New York, which the company coveted so much, was attended with the same disaster, and the project of obtaining a home for them near Green Bay was abandoned, to be succeeded by a provision for their transfer a few years later to a reservation made west of Missouri, in the southeastern part of what has since become the State of Kansas, where a reservation of nearly two million acres was, by treaty, entered into January 15, 1838, made for

"A permanent home for all the New York Indians now residing in the State of New York or in Wisconsin, or elsewhere in the United States."

The hopes of the Secretary of War, and of all others who shared them, of abridging the area of freedom, were also disappointed.

The New York Indians, who had removed or desired to remove to Green Bay, were the only parties to the original plan of emigration that were satisfied with the result. The whole of the Stockbridges, Brothertowns, and part of the Munsees, with about eleven hundred Oneidas, moved soon after to their respective locations, and the community of the Oneidas has been continually augmented by the annual accession of small parties from New York.

By a treaty made with the United States, February 3, 1838, the Oneida Indians, in consideration of $33,500, ceded to the United States all their title and interest in the land set apart to them by the treaties of 1831 and 1832, reserving a tract of one hundred acres to each individual of the Oneidas, to be surveyed by the government as soon as practicable, so as to include all their settlements and improvements.

By this treaty the possessions of the Six Nations were reduced to a tract of about eight miles by twelve, containing about sixty-one thousand acres. About two thousand of these people now live on this tract, who are slowly pro

gressing in civilization. There is a missionary church and school in the settlement, under the fostering care of the Protestant Episcopal church. About one hundred and fifty families, comprising about seven hundred and fifty persons, compose the church congregation, of whom about two hundred and fifty are communicants.

The Brothertown Indians had entirely laid aside their aboriginal character, to the extent even of having lost their vernacular, and adopted the English language, and were in a fit situation to abandon their tribal relations and become citizens of the United States. Congress, therefore, by an act approved March 3, 1839, provided that the township of land granted for their use by the Menomonees, should be partitioned and divided among the different individuals composing the Brothertown tribe, and be held by them separately and severally in fee simple. And that thereafter each of them should be citizens of the United States, and their rights as a tribe or a nation should cease and determine. Since then they have been recognized as citizens; have been elected members of the Legislature, and to other offices under the Territorial and State governments, and have become homogeneous with the other inhabitants of the State.

CHAPTER XI.

THE LEAD MINES AND WINNEBAGO WAR.

The history of General SMITH is as complete in relation to the Indian disturbances in Wisconsin, as to the early explorations of the valley of the Mississippi, and this chapter is largely made up of extracts from that rare and valuable work.

Indian wars with their attendant horrors and savage atrocities have ever been concomitants of the primitive permanent settlement of every part of the American continent from those which followed the settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth to the latest conflicts with the savages of the Territories.

Indian traders in the Northwest were suffered to pursue their vocation for nearly two hundred years without mo

lestation, for the reason, doubtless, that the articles of traffic which they exchanged for furs and peltries contributed to the gratification of the tastes of the aborigines and to their success in hunting, fishing and trapping.

Besides the few missionaries who gave no offense to the Indians, and who were the apostles of the gospel of peace, there were no inhabitants who were not directly or remotely connected with the Indian trade, who for reasons already stated were suffered to pursue their vocation during this long period without interruption. Moreover, a large proportion of these traders were Frenchmen, many of whom had intermarried with the Indians of the various tribes, and their hybrid progeny exerted a powerful influence in creating a kindly feeling towards all French people.

But very different feelings pervaded the savage breast towards those who came to occupy the country for agricultural purposes; and, consequently, as they rightly believed, to impair its value for their nomadic use. And most especially were the Winnebago Indians jealous of, and determinedly opposed to, any intrusion upon or occupation of the country, which should threaten to interfere with their exclusive occupancy of the Lead Mine Region, the sole right to which east of the Mississippi, was claimed by that tribe.

Mr. JOHN SHAW has been already mentioned as having been engaged between 1815 and 1820, in running a trading boat between St. Louis and Prairie du Chien. In one of those trips he was anxious to visit the Lead Mines at Galena, with one of his trading boats, but was told by the Indians that the "white man must not see their Lead Mines;" but as he spoke French fluently, he was supposed to be a Frenchman, and was permitted to go up the Fever river with his boat, where he found at least twenty smelting places of which he has given the following description:

"A hole or cavity was dug in the face of a piece of sloping ground, about two feet in depth and as much in width at the top; this hole was made in the shape of a mill-hopper, and lined or faced with flat stones. At the bottom or point of the hopper, which was about 8 or 9 inches square other narrow stones were laid across grate-wise; a channel or eye was dug from the sloping side of the ground inwards to the bottom of the hopper. This channel was about a foot in width and in height, and was filled with dry wood and brush. The hopper being filled with the mineral and the wood ignited, the molten lead fell through the stones at the bottom of the hopper; and this was discharged through the eye, over the earth, in bowl-shaped masses called 'plats,' each of which weighed about seventy pounds.