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A most important treaty with the Menomonies has been recently negotiated by the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in person, by which all their land in the State of Wisconsin being about 4,000,000 acres has been ceded to the United States. This treaty will be submitted to the Senate for ratification at an early period of your present session.
These were all nominal Christians, and counted eight hundred warriors. With them were the western Indians: Ojibwas, Mississagas, Pottawattamies, Menomonies, Sacs, Foxes, Winnebagoes, Miamis, and Iowas. These were still unconverted. The French held these savage allies in abhorrence.
There were Chippewas, Sioux, Sacs and Foxes, Menomonies, Iowas, Winnebagoes, and a portion of the Ottawa, Chippewa, and Pottawattomie tribes living on the Illinois River gathered to consult with Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan and General William Clark, the government's commissioners.
"In the mean time numerous bands of the Indians living on the lakes and the Mississippi the Ojibeways, Menomonies, Winnebagoes, Sioux, Sacs, &c. together with a large number of Canadians, amounting in all to upwards of fourteen hundred, had assembled on the eastern shore of the Mississippi, a little above St. Louis, awaiting the sixth of May, the day fixed for the attack.
Here were the Hurons, fugitives twenty years before from the slaughter of their countrymen; and the Ottawas, who, like them, had sought an asylum from the rage of the Iroquois. Many other tribes, Illinois, Pottawattamies, Foxes, Menomonies, Sioux, Assinneboins, Knisteneaux, and a multitude besides, came hither yearly to trade with the French.
A band of Menomonies from beyond Lake Michigan, naked, painted, plumed, greased, stamping, uttering sharp yelps, shaking feathered lances, brandishing tomahawks, danced the war-dance before the Governor, to the thumping of the Indian drum. Bougainville looked on astonished, and thought of the Pyrrhic dance of the Greeks.
They were then spread out on lattice work and smoked to dry the chaff, which could be trodden loose when the whole bulk, tied in a skin bag, was put into a hollow in the ground made for that purpose. The Indians pounded their grain to meal and cooked it with fat. The Menomonies tried to prevent Marquette and Jolliet from going farther.
When, after days of steady progress, the expedition entered the Bay of Puans, now called Green Bay, and found the nation of Menomonies or Wild Oats Indians, Marquette was as much interested as Jolliet in the grain which gave these people their bread. It grew like rice, in marshy places, on knotted stalks which appeared above the water in June and rose several feet higher.
With these came the heathen of the west, Ottawas of seven distinct bands; Ojibwas from Lake Superior, and Mississagas from the region of Lakes Erie and Huron; Pottawattamies and Menomonies from Lake Michigan; Sacs, Foxes, and Winnebagoes from Wisconsin; Miamis from the prairies of Illinois, and Iowas from the banks of the Des Moines: nine hundred and seventy-nine chiefs and warriors, men of the forests and men of the plains, hunters of the moose and hunters of the buffalo, bearers of steel hatchets and stone war-clubs, of French guns and of flint-headed arrows.
"Then why do the Winnebago tribe on this bay allow themselves to be called Puans?" "That has never been explained by the missionaries sent to that post, though the name seems to carry no reproach. They are well made and tall of stature. I find Wild Oats a stranger name the Menomonies are Wild Oats Indians.
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