16 Facts About Chief Oshkosh

Chief Oshkosh was involved in treaty negotiations as the United States sought to acquire more of the Menominee tribe's land in Wisconsin and Michigan for both white settlers and relocated Oneida, Stockbridge, Munsee, and Brothertown Indians.

However, Chief Oshkosh resisted US government pressure for the tribe to relocate to northern Minnesota and played a key role in securing the 235,524-acre Menominee Indian Reservation as a permanent home for his people on their ancestral land.

Chief Oshkosh's family belonged to the Bear Clan, and his grandfather Chawanon was head chief of the Menominee.

Chief Oshkosh was present at the sieges of Fort Mackinac, Fort Meigs, and Fort Stephenson, as well as the 1814 Battle of Mackinac Island.

Head Chief Oshkosh Chawanon died in 1821 without leaving a clear successor.

In 1827, Chief Oshkosh was involved in negotiations with the United States Federal Government at Butte des Morts, Wisconsin, to resettle Christianized Oneida, Stockbridge, and Munsee people from New York and western Massachusetts on Menominee land in Wisconsin.

Chief Oshkosh reported the incident to Oshkosh, who was in Green Bay at the time.

Some historians have interpreted Chief Oshkosh's actions as having fallen in line with the Menominee tradition of justice practiced at that time; an enslaved person could be killed for taking a Menominee person's life under any circumstances, even if it was an accident.

Chief Oshkosh ruled that United States laws did not apply to Native Americans under the circumstances, because, at the time, Native Americans were not granted the privileges of citizenship under the law, so US law did not apply to their internal disputes and affairs on their own lands.

Chief Oshkosh was present at the initial negotiations in Green Bay, but he did not travel to Washington, DC, to sign the treaties.

In 1848, the United States and the Menominee negotiated the Treaty of Lake Poygan, in which Chief Oshkosh ceded the Menominee's remaining lands in Wisconsin in exchange for 600,000 acres along the Crow Wing River in Minnesota and $20,000.

Chief Oshkosh led a delegation to visit the Crow Wing River area in 1850, but was disappointed with what he found.

Chief Oshkosh traveled to Washington, DC, in August 1850 to request that President Millard Fillmore allow the tribe to remain in Wisconsin.

Chief Oshkosh had no surviving children with his second wife, Shakanouiu.

Chief Oshkosh had at least one adopted son, who was killed on January 1,1850 in a bar fight with a white man in Grand Rapids, Wisconsin.

In 1926, the Menominee allowed Chief Oshkosh's remains to be moved to Menominee Park in Chief Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where they were interred at the foot of a monument dedicated to him, covered with an inscribed granite slab.