Abstract
Speculator interest in Nebraska was not as intense as in Minnesota in the 1850s, but the pressure to dispossess treaty rights holders on the Nebraska Half Breed Tract (as well as the Native peoples of the Great Plains west of the Tract) again led Congress and the Office of Indian Affairs to the idea of scrip. Tested in Minnesota, confirmed in Nebraska, scrip would become the means by which other inconvenient peoples—the Pawnee and Ponca of the Platte, Republican and Niobara river valleys, the Choctaw stay-behinds in Mississippi, the Ojibwe of the white pine and mineral belt districts around Lake Superior would be dispossessed.
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Notes
- 1.
St. Joseph Gazette, February 25 1852; Jefferson Jenkins, The Northern Tier: Or Life Among the Homestead Settlers, (Topeka, George W. Martin, 1880), pp. 14–15; Manypenny, “Annual Report,” p. 269.
- 2.
Henry C. Carey, Principles of Social Science, Philadelphia, 1858, p. 168.Willard Phillips, A Manual of Political Economy with Particular Reference to the Institutions, Resources and Condition of the United States (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little & Wilkins, 1828), 28, 119, 256.
- 3.
Caleb Cushing to James Orr, April 29 1854, Attorney General Opinions, vol. 1, pp. 438–44.
- 4.
George Manypenny, “Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” November 26 1853, Senate Executive Document No. 1, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, p. 247; Daniel Vanderslice to Albert Cumming, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, St. Louis, “Report showing the condition of the several tribes under the Great Nemahaw Agency,” September 29 1853, Ibid., pp. 327, 329, 300; Sara Rae to Rev. S.M. Irvin, “Ioway and Sac Mission School,” Ibid., p. 331.
- 5.
Manypenny to Sharp, 14 May 1856, National Archives Office of Indian Affairs, Letter Book vol. 54, pp. 224–27. Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, 1st session (April 25 1854), p. 1004. Sharp to Commissioner J.W. Denver (Manypenny’s successor), April 24 1857, National Archives, Office of Indian Affairs, Great Nemaha Agency, S323–1857. Caleb B. Smith (Secretary of the Interior) to Alfred B. Greenwood (commissioner of Indian Affairs) June 15 1861 confirming plan to sell and disburse proceeds of unallotted land; National Archives, Interior Department, Indian Division, Received Letters, Vol 3, pp. 433–434. Bureau of Land Management, Nebraska Patents, vol. 288, lists patent grantees and is summarized in Chapman, The Otoes and Missourias, pp. 381–384.
- 6.
Charles Rulo and Joseph Tesson to J.W. Denver, April 2 1857, National Archives, Office of Indian Affairs, Great Nemaha Agency, R 216–1857; Stark to Denver, August 1857, National Archives, Office of Indian Affairs, Letter Book, vol. 57, pp. 234–38. Indian Affairs Commissioner A.B. Greenwood to the General Land Office, 24 March 1860, National Archives, Office of Indian Affairs, Letter Book, vol. 63, p. 172.
- 7.
Stark to Denver, 10 December 1857, National Archives, Office of Indian Affairs, Great Nemaha Agency S470 1857; Archer town site meeting and resolution of September 281,857, cited in Chapman, Otoes and Missourias, p. 69. Kirk to Denver, October 26 1857, National Archives, Office of Indian Affairs, Great Nemaha Agency, K79 1857. Denver to Kirk, November 9 1857, National Archives, Office of Indian Affairs Letter Book, vol. 58, pp. 29–30; Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st Session (May 31 1858) p. 2543.
- 8.
Louis Neales et al. to President Franklin Pierce, January 1 1857. National Archives, Office of Indian Affairs, Great Nemaha Agency, W261–1857.
- 9.
Hegler v. Faulkner et al. 15 US 109, 111, 120. Bureau of Land Management, Nebraska Patents, vol. 288, p. 1. Neales’ name is spelled Lewis Neals on the patent. Nebraska Advertiser, 3 September 1857 reports Neales’ sale. See also C.O. Snow, ‘History of the Half Breed Tract’, Nebraska History Magazine, vol. 16, no. 1, Jan.-Mar., 1935, pp. 36–48. Neals was convicted of manslaughter in 1859, Nebraska Advertiser, 26 May 1859, and after his release from prison, enlisted in the Union Army in 1864 and drew a Civil War pension from 1890. Chapman, Otoes and Missourias, p, 78, n. 64. The Census of 1860 reported allotment-holders Antoine Barada and four of his children; Mary Benoist; William Barnaby (fourteen years old), Felicity Beddow, Margaret Longdeau and her son Morris (four years old); Julia Livermore; Louis and William Menard (eighteen years old); Anna Henderson; Louisa, Eliza and Julia Paul (ten, fourteen and seventeen years old), Antoine Goulet (eleven years old), George Ebbs (eight years old), Elizabeth Story and Robert Whitecloud, from my cross-tabulation of the Nebraska Territorial Census, Richardson County enumeration and the list of Nemaha Half Breed Tract Allotments 1856–7, National Archives, Office of Indian Affairs, Survey and Allotments, no. 403-A. Barada’s father was Michel Barada, one of the interpreters in the negotiations over the Treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1830. The 1870 Census showed only the Baradas, Pauls and Longdeaus (Londo, as enumerated) remained on the Tract.
- 10.
Treaty with the Pawnee (September 24 1857) 11 Stat.728, Article 9; Treaty with the Ponca (March 12 1858) 12 Stat. 997, Article 3.
- 11.
Peter Pitchlynn’s memorial, Report of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, February 15 1859, Senate Report No. 374, pp. 9, 15–16; Annual Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, November 28 1849, p. 39; Choctaw Nation v. United States, 119 U.S. 1 at 7 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1886).
- 12.
Antoine Barada, “Pioneer Exploits,” in Lewis C. Edwards (editor), History of Richardson County, Nebraska, (Indianapolis: B.F. Bowen & Co., 1917), pp. 733–734.
- 13.
Barada, “Pioneer Exploits,” p. 734; Elisha Dorian, “Earlier Indian History,” Ibid., p. 731.
- 14.
The tale crediting Barada with the discovery of artesian wells says he threw a timber derrick across the mile-wide Missouri River into Iowa and that when he hit the partly buried derrick with his fist, so hard it disappeared deep into the ground, drilling a well that spouted water fifty feet into the air that would have drowned the region had not Barada sat on the hole to stop the flood, Roger L. Welsch, A Treasury of Nebraska Pioneer Folklore, Lincoln, 1984, p. 173. Another variation of the story has him flinging a pile driver so hard and so far that he created the Breaks of the Missouri, the rocky, broken badlands of central Montana through which the Missouri River flow. Louise Pound, ‘Nebraska Strong Men’, Southern Folklore Journal, vol. 7, 1943, pp. 133–43.
References
Annual Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, November 28 1849.
Choctaw Nation v. United States, 119 U.S. 1 at 7 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1886).
Congressional Globe, 35th Congress, 1st Session.
Hegler v. Faulkner et al. 15 US 109 (U.S. Supreme Court, 1894).
“Peter Pitchlynn’s memorial,” in “Report of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, February 15 1859,” Senate Report No. 374, pp. 9–16.
“Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs,” November 26 1853, Senate Executive Document No. 1, 33rd Congress, 1st Session.
Treaty with the Pawnee (September 24 1857) 11 Stat. 728.
Treaty with the Ponca (March 12 1858) 12 Stat. 997.
Barada, Antoine, “Pioneer Exploits,” in Lewis C. Edwards (editor), History of Richardson County, Nebraska, (Indianapolis: B.F. Bowen & Co., 1917), pp. 733–73.
Carey, Henry C., Principles of Social Science (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott & Co., 1858.
Chapman, Berlin B., The Otoes and the Missourias, A Study of Indian Removal and the Legal Aftermath, (Oklahoma City: Times-Journal Publishing, 1965).
Jenkins, Jefferson, The Northern Tier: Or Life Among the Homestead Settlers, (Topeka, George W. Martin, 1880).
Phillips, Willard, A Manual of Political Economy with Particular Reference to the Institutions, Resources and Condition of the United States (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little & Wilkins, 1828).
Pound, Louise, “Nebraska Strong Men,” Southern Folklore Journal, vol. 7, (1943) pp. 133–43.
Snow, C.O., “History of the Half Breed Tract,” Nebraska History Magazine, vol. 16, no. 1, (January–March, 1935) pp. 36–48.
Welsch Robert L., A Treasury of Nebraska Pioneer Folklore (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984).
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Ress, D. (2019). Taking the Nebraska Half Breed Tract. In: The Half Breed Tracts in Early National America. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31467-5_7
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