Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 63, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1912 — Famous Stockbridge Indians Are to Go West [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Famous Stockbridge Indians Are to Go West

DECIDING to abandon their tribal form of government and adopt the w’hite man’s way of doing things, the remnant of the Stockbridge tribe of Indians, numbering GOO men, women and children, will shortly become citizens of Wisconsin and cease to be under the supervision and guardianship of the federal government. The Stockbridge Indians will halve a whole township to themselves, east of Lake Winnebago, and other land that the government intends giving them. Already they are planning the organization of a town government, and they have written to various federal and state officials about the state for information respecting civil government, parliamentary practice and whatever else may be useful to them in solving the problems before them. Originally the Stockbridge Indians were a part of the Mohican confederacy and were known under the name of Housatonic. When the pilgrim fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, the Stockbridges occupied part of the Housatonic valley at Berkshire Hills, Mass. Soon after the famous missionary, Sergeant, went to work among them they were collected on a tract reserved by the English government. The French and Indian war, which

broke out in 1754, marked the beginning of the decline of the Stockbridges. They sided with the French and thus aroused the ire of many other Indian tribes. At the close of the war they were forced to move, partly because the war had reduced their numbers and partly because the New Englanders desired they should leave that community. Their number reduced to a beggarly band of 200 and their villages pillaged and burned by their enemies, it was with joy that they accepted- the invitation in 1785 to join the Oneidas in Oneida and Madison counties, New York.

The Interior Department has given its approval of the plan, and the Stockbridges are planning to lay aside soon the blanket, tepee and other marks of “the only real American* and take up the white man’s duties.