In May and June of 1854 an officially appointed delegation from the Miami Nation gathered in Meetaathsoopionki “Washington City” to meet with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in order to negotiate a new treaty.^[1] This was the first treaty the Miami Nation negotiated since the 1846 removal. The negotiations presented an important opportunity to address numerous issues facing the Miami Nation, as well as Myaamiaki who were allowed to live in Indiana following the removal (If you want to learn more about the families who were legally allowed to live in Indiana, check out this post by Diane Hunter). The U.S. government sought to reduce the size of the Miami Nation’s communal land base and then divide much of what remained into family reserves. The Miami Nation’s representatives attended the treaty with the goal of protecting their collective resources from the U.S. government and non-Myaamia individuals. The U.S. government objectives were to acquire as much of the nation’s land as possible and to amend the terms of previous treaties, which they now found inconvenient. The nation also sought to protect their resources from individuals who sought to take their land or receive treaty payments that they did not have a legal right to receive.  

Following the 1846 removal, the Miami Nation, with all of the rights and responsibilities inherent to that political status, was located on its national reserve in Waapankiaakamionki ‘Marais des Cygnes River Valley’ (present day Kansas). Following the 1846 removal, all Myaamiaki, no matter where they lived, had rights to treaty resources and treaty protections that were derived from treaties signed over the previous fifty years. At the same time, Myaaamia families residing in Indiana had no collective political status separate from the Miami Nation in the west; these aforementioned rights were based on descent and often centered on their family. In the Treaty of 1854, these Myaamia family groups were not referred to as a collective government, but instead by their location: “Miami Indians, residents of the State of Indiana.”^[2]

This is the first of a multipart series of blog posts focused on closely examining the transcript of the 1854 Treaty of Washington. This first post provides some brief background to the treaty and takes a close look at a meeting that occurred in the fall of 1853, which set the stage for the treaty negotiation in May and June of the following year. 

Background to the Treaty of 1854

As a result of the 1846 removal, the government of the Miami Nation was located within the nation’s new reservation in the Waapankiaakamionki ‘Marais des Cygnes River Valley.’ The first years were extremely difficult and the population of the nation on the reservation declined as a result of deaths due to illness and the emigration of some Myaamiaki back to Indiana. By 1854, there were around 250 Myaamiaki living on the national reservation and just over 300 Myaamiaki living in the state of Indiana.^[3] Those Myaamiaki residing in Indiana were, for the most part, living on individual or family reserves created by treaties that preceded removal. The family reserves were mostly concentrated in Waapaahšiki Siipionki ‘Wabash River Valley’ between Peru, Indiana and Fort Wayne, Indiana and in the Nimacihsinwi Siipionki ‘the Mississinewa River Valley’ between Peru and Marion, Indiana. These Myaamiaki were family groups that had been given permission via treaty or legislation to receive their annuity payments within the state, thereby avoiding removal, and remaining in their homes in the Myaamia historic homeland.^[4]

In the early 1850s the Miami Nation had a series of concerns that they hoped to address through treaty negotiations. Neewilenkwanka, also known as Big Legs, was the elected chief of the Miami Nation and led the treaty delegation to Meetaathsoopionki ‘Washington D.C.’ in 1854. Akima Neewilenkwanka was the second akima elected to represent the nation following the 1846 forced removal. He succeeded Akima Oonseentia who served only a year before passing away.^[5] One of the primary concerns of the Miami Nation was to clarify their annuity rolls and restrict treaty payments to only those closely associated with the tribe. In 1851 the U.S. government officials added sixty-eight individuals to the nation’s annuity rolls.^[6] Tribal leaders maintained that some of these new additions were not Myaamia at all. Other families had Myaamia genealogical ties, but had not associated themselves with the Myaamia community in many decades and therefore, the nation maintained, they should not receive annuity payments. In the 1850s, tribal leaders also wanted to protect the nation’s lands and political status as the U.S. government organized a new state around their reservation and sought to consolidate tribal holdings. 

To address the nation’s concerns, tribal leadership dealt directly with George W. Manypenny, Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1853-1857). During his tenure, he met with the leadership of the Miami Nation at least twice.^[7] According to the historian Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, Indian Affairs under the leadership of Commissioner Manypenny developed a driven and efficient practice that extended U.S. colonial control west of the Mississippi and sought to unify the country’s control over native nations’ homelands, which U.S. representatives saw as the future home of new states. Manypenny summarized his Indian policy in the 1850s as “first, treaties of peace and friendship; second, treaties of acquisition, with a view of colonizing the Indians on reservations; and third, treaties of acquisition, and providing for the permanent settlement of the individuals of the tribes, at once or in the future, on separate tracts of land or homesteads, and for the gradual abolition of the tribal character.” In this same period, the Office of Indian Affairs sought to reduce the number of negotiations by replacing formal negotiations with bureaucratic decision making.^[8] This policy shift placed more power in the hands of Indian Agents and Office of Indian Affairs bureaucrats and unsurprisingly produced many conflicts with tribal leaders.

On October 4, 1853, Commissioner Manypenny visited the Miami Nation in their homelands in Waapankiaakamionki ‘Marais des Cygnes River Valley.’ The record of the meeting indicates that Manypenny was touring tribal reserves and working to convince nations to sign new land treaties relinquishing as much tribal land as possible in advance of the Kansas-Nebraska act. This 1854 act created Kansas and Nebraska Territories, paved the way for statehood for both territories, and led to an outbreak of violence among U.S. settlers in Kansas over whether that new state would enter the Union as a free state or a state that participated in the enslavement of people of African descent.^[9] 

On behalf of the Miami Nation, Akima Neewilenkwanka responded to Manypenny’s request by stating that the Miami Nation would only discuss land sessions after the U.S. government addressed a handful of outstanding concerns. Neewilenkwanka had clearly been tasked by his people with addressing a series of grievances that had accumulated since their last treaty in 1840. First, they wanted reimbursement for losses they incurred during the 1846 removal, as promised in the treaty. Second, they wanted to address issues with their annuity payments. Since 1846, the population of Myaamiaki residing in the state of Indiana had surpassed the population of those living within the Miami Nation’s reserve in Waapankiaakamionki. Neewilenkwanka argued that this meant more of the nation’s annuities were being paid in Indiana than in the nation’s own reserve. One of the nation’s unstated concerns was annuity payments being made in Indiana to families or individuals who had no treaty rights to receive those payments. Lastly, the Miami Nation leader stated that funds had been previously set aside for the poor of his nation and yet they had heard no more about these funds. Neewilenkwanka was careful, however, to add the caveat that even after these terms were met, they could not say how much land they would sell.^[10]

Following the completion of the October 1853 meeting, the leaders of the Miami Nation expected a followup negotiation with Commissioner Manypenny on their lands in the coming spring. Yet Manypenny had other plans. The next spring, the U.S. government arranged to have representatives of the Miami Nation travel to Meetaathsoopionki ‘Washington D.C.’ to attend a treaty negotiation in May of 1854.

Arrival in Meetaathsoopionki and Meeting Commissioner Manypenny

The official delegation of the Miami Nation arrived in Meetaathsoopionki ‘Washington, D.C.’ a few days before the formal negotiations began on May 23. In addition to Akima Neewilenkwanka “Big Legs,” the tribe’s delegation included: Mahkateeciinkwia “Little Doctor,” Lenipinšia “Jack Hackley,” Soowilencihsia “John Bourie,” and Awansaapia. The entire delegation stayed at Union Hotel located close to the White House at the corner of 13 ½ Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. The proprietors were Jemmy Maher and his wife Mrs. Maher, and they were well-known for the care they showed to visiting tribal dignitaries.^[11] The Maher’s hotel was usually used by the Office of Indian Affairs to house visiting tribal delegations. The Mahers would have been busy in 1854 as there were at least eight treaties negotiated in Washington that year.  

Also attending and participating in nearly every day of the discussion were Mihšiinkweemiša, Pakankia, Pimweeyotamwa, Waapapita “Peter Bondy,” and Keahcotwoh* who represented their families who were exempted from removal and still living in Indiana. This group of Myaamiaki stayed at the Empire Hotel in the city.^[12]

The Miami Nation delegates met informally with Commissioner Manypenny the evening before the treaty negotiation began. They presented Manypenny with a letter that formalized their appointment by the council of the Miami Nation to negotiate a treaty on the nation’s behalf.^[13] This letter is indicative of at least two critical points. First, that the government of the Miami Nation was actively asserting their sovereignty. This assertion came in the face of difficult challenges: increasing numbers of U.S. citizens moving onto and through their lands and the rising power of Kansas Territory in its bid for statehood. Second, that the Miami National government was concerned that individuals or small groups may attempt to misrepresent their interests. The formal letter was one strategy to clarify who had a right to speak and negotiate on behalf of the nation.

This initial meeting was completed without controversy and the Miami Nation delegates likely returned to the Maher’s hotel to enjoy one of Mrs. Maher’s famous meals. However, the calm of this first meeting was not an indicator of what was to come over the ten days of meetings that would follow. In our next post we will take a close look at the first four days of negotiations and the rising tensions as the U.S. government pitted Myaamia people against each other in an attempt to reduce tribal land holdings and shrink future annuity payments.

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Notes

[1] Meetaathsoopionki literally means ‘place of the ten sitters.’ You can learn more about the origin of this word and Myaamia visits to this politically charged location by reading this blog post: nakaani-kaloosioni: meetaathsoopionki ‘Old Word: Washington D.C.’

[2] United States. 1904. Kappler’s Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of the Interior), 641. Full text of the treaty is available through Oklahoma State University at https://cdm17279.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/kapplers/id/29625/rec/1 and through the University of Wisconsin at https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AAKQKRUJZNAQM39A.

[3]  Bert Anson, The Miami Indians, 1st ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 239-40.

[4] For more on the families exempted from the 1846 Forced Removal see Diane Hunter’s post on this blog: https://aacimotaatiiyankwi.org/2021/07/02/exemptions-from-removal/

[5] Anson, Miami Indians, 231.

[6] Stewart Rafert, The Miami Indians of Indiana: A Persistent People, 1654-1994 (Indianapolis, Ind.: Indiana Historical Society, 1996), 129.

[7] The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in 1824 and was originally located within the Department of War. In 1849, the Indian Office, as it was known in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was moved to the Department of the Interior. Paul Stewart, The Indian Office : growth and development of American institution, 1865-1900 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1979), 5. For a listing of Commissioners of Indian Affairs by year see: https://www.bia.gov/sites/default/files/dup/assets/public/pdf/idc-001881.pdf.

[8]  Manypenny quoted in Joseph C. Genetin-Pilawa, Crooked Paths to Allotment: The Fight Over Federal Indian Policy after the Civil War (Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 19-20.

[9] John Bowes, Exiles and Pioneers: Eastern Indians in the Trans-Mississippi West (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 150, 185.

[10] “Miami Nation Osage River Agency October 4th, 1853.” Ratified treaty no. 274. Documents relating to the negotiation of the treaty of June 5, 1854, with the Miami Indians (available digitally at https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AAKQKRUJZNAQM39A).

[11]  “Local and Personal – Arrival of Indians.” Washington Sentinel (Washington (DC), District of Columbia) 2, no. 50, May 23, 1854: [3]. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers (link). Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, “The Indians Capital City: Diplomatic Visits, Place, and Two Worlds Discourse in Nineteenth-Century Washington, DC.” in Beyond Two Worlds: Critical Conversations on Language and Power in Native North America (State University of New York Press, 2014), 131.

[12]  The Eventing Star article reported “A delegation from the remnant of an Indian tribe in Indiana, is now in this city, stopping at the Empire Hotel.  They propose selling their lands, which are partly cultivated, to government.” May 22, 1854:  Evening Star (Washington, District of Columbia) 3, no. 436, May 22, 1854: [2]. Newspapers.com (link).

[13] “Osage River M 1088 Miamie Delegates Washn May 2d ‘54.” Ratified Treaty No. 274, Documents Relating to the Negotiation of the Treaty of June 5, 1854, with the Miami Indans, Miami Delegates Appointment Letter, May 2, 1854 (available digitally at https://search.library.wisc.edu/digital/AAKQKRUJZNAQM39A).