Menominee

• CATEGORY: Tribe
• CULTURE AREA: Northeast
• LANGUAGE GROUP: Algonquian
• PRIMARY LOCATION: Great Lakes region
• POPULATION SIZE: 3,537 (Menominee Reservation and Off-Reservation Trust Land, WI; 2022 American Community Survey)

The Menominee belong to the large family of Indigenous people called the Algonquians. They occupied the Great Lakes region since before recorded history. They were travelers and traders, visiting distant clans in their birchbark canoes. In the twenty-first century, there is a Menominee reservation on the Wolf River in northeastern Wisconsin.

Culture

Menominee culture resulted from environmental experience, clan and tribal oral histories, and information gathered via the Tribe’s network of water and land trails. Intertribal marriage gained acceptance to maintain extended family units, while diminishing the chances for inbreeding among the original clans. The earliest French explorers and trappers reported the Menominee to be “gentle of spirit,” although they boasted of their warlike exploits and supernatural adventures. A rigidly defined social system required strict adherence to gender roles and various customs. There were some positions, such as war chief, that could be achieved only by men, but most were open to women. Menominee have traditionally been a matriarchy. The Menominee prized individual rights for all people, including children. This belief precluded punishment for disobeying social rules.

The numeral 4 was considered sacred by the Nation; its sacredness may be surmised as having come from the four directions—crucial for navigation on water. Prayers are repeated four times, sometimes to each of the four directions. The Signing of the Cross taught by the French Catholic missionaries, with four points on the body, may have coincidentally created a powerful inducement for religious conversion. Early priests had no initial trouble converting Menominee to Catholicism. The Menominee did not believe in one omnipotent being, but in several levels of gods, encompassing humor and even violence. Menominee who sought to improve their spiritual luck prayed to many different deities and performed many rituals. Tribal members belonged to many societies in a poly-religious blend of science, superstition, and stoicism.

There were once witches and sorcerers among the people, but they were not thought to be evil. Magic, as well as medicine, was thought to be neutral, but there were inevitably some who wished harm to others. These people would “witch” the target with incantations and a bundle made of herbs and minerals that was referred to as a “witch bag.” These animal-hide pouches were reputed to be fed the released human energy occurring upon death and other misery. The Serpent Cult, a secret society that celebrated the commission of evil, was once a potent force within some clans.

Geography

The Menominee trace their beginnings to a village near the mouth of the Menominee River. During the early colonial era, the French documented the tribal range, which was bordered by the Milwaukee River to the south, the Mississippi River to the west, and Lakes Superior, Huron, and Michigan to the north and east. This territory encompassed ten million acres. The predominant geography is small lakes, interconnected with rivers, and large stands of timber. There was surface copper that was considered a source of tribal wealth.

The Menominee made four types of snowshoes, each named after a clan, to deal with the heavy snowfalls of the region, but the Menominee were primarily a water people. A significant part of their diet was derived from shallow waters. Living near waterways eased transportation problems and allowed a sense of community. It was proximity to navigable waterways that brought the Nation to European attention as early as 1634.

Tribal History

The birthplace of the Menominee can be traced through its oral history. The present city of Menominee, Michigan, was once known as Mini’ Kani, the source of the Menominee. According to their legends, the Great Mystery permitted a Giant White Bear with a copper-colored tail to emerge from an underground den as the first man and establish the village. This village, established by the White Bear, became home to the Bear Clan. Each clan and village had its own chief, but all were subordinate to the Bear Clan. There were several original clans, including the Beaver, the Wolf, and the Eagle. The Menominee spread to other rivers that drain into Lake Michigan. There were more than thirty major Menominee villages on the shores of Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Superior, with another center of population near Detroit.

Rivers provided an abundance of sturgeon and wild rice to eat. The dependence on wild rice, in fact, provided the name for the Menominee. The Algonquian word for wild rice was manomin; hence, an eater of wild rice became Manominee, now generally spelled Menominee. Rivers provided freshwater mussels, fowl, and other game besides the staple of wild rice. Only war could bring famine.

A trail network maintained by Potawatomis and protected by Menominee existed from present-day Detroit to St. Louis, and from the north around Lake Superior south to Chicago. Both White and Indigenous groups used the same trade routes and sites for their cities.

European Contact

Menominee involvement in world politics began in 1608. Their list of allies began with the French, the first White people they had seen; then the English, who bought their allegiance with gifts of firearms and alcohol; and finally, the Americans, who were glad to get their military help. Since the first treaty with the Americans, there have been Menominee who served in all US wars.

Menominee inadvertently became enemies of the Iroquois, hence the English, after French interference. In 1608 near the north shore of Lake Superior, the governor general of New France, Samuel de Champlain, and two other White companions, accompanied by an exploratory force of Algonquian people, encountered an Iroquois party. The battle was decided by the French use of matchlock rifles. This united the Iroquois Nations in a war that spread to involve the entire Great Lakes region. The constant fear of attack on the waterways, which were primary trade routes, spread to involve the entire St. Lawrence drainage system. This interrupted the fledgling fur trading industry. By 1611, the Iroquois, who were well armed, spread war to all waterways except Lakes Superior and Michigan. Menominee provided refuge to fellow Tribes in the Algonquian language family, a fact which created a population explosion that had dire consequences through the eighteenth century.

The first official meeting between France, represented by Jean Nicolet, and Menominee took place at Mini’ Kani in 1634, with a signed pledge of peace. With the hope of profits from the fur trade, the French planned for the exploitation of their New France territory. The Menominee formed an instant market for costly goods. The price for a matchlock rifle from the French was a stack of furs piled alongside the weapon. The low price paid for pelts placed the Great Lakes ecosystem in distress while keeping the growing number of inhabitants virtually unarmed. Thus, France interceded and protected the Nation from the better-armed Iroquois.

There was no further Menominee involvement with the French until 1661, when Me’dort des Grosilliers and Pierre Esprit Radisson entered the main village of Mini’ Kani and were amazed at the amount of fish and game in the region. Another Frenchman, Father Jerome Lalemont, explored Lake Superior and found nearly pure lead mines, fist-sized copper nodules, and veins of turquoise and amethyst.

Sometime after this contact of 1661, there occurred a great war, noted by Claude Allouez in 1670. He stated that he found the Tribe almost exterminated. When Jacques Marquette visited in 1673 and recorded the use of wild rice by the Nation, however, he made no mention of recent war. It is probable that the Sturgeon War occurred in the spring of 1669 or 1670. This large battle took place in a village on the Menominee River after the erection of a dam prevented the sturgeon from moving upriver. The combatants may possibly have been Chippewa, yet they could have been another band of Menominee. Whoever was involved, the reason as remembered by tribal elders was stress on the environment from the swelling population. It was 1682 before a coalition of Algonquians, including many Menominee, decisively thwarted the English and Iroquois in two separate actions at Chicago and near the Illinois River near Utica, Illinois.

From the Nineteenth Century to the Twenty-First Century

The English sought the friendship of the Menominee after the French departure. With gifts, the English were able to maintain an alliance against the Americans. Although not friends with the English, Menominee kept their agreements. In the War of 1812, the Menominee victoriously fought the Americans at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and on the island of Mackinac, Michigan.

During the Civil War, the Nation responded with many volunteers. At the Battle of Petersburg, Company K, consisting of Wisconsin infantry volunteers, suffered eleven Menominee wounded, nine killed in action, seven dead in prison camp, and two released from prison camp because of illness (they later died). The company was on duty at Washington, DC, during the trial and execution of the conspirators in the Abraham Lincoln assassination.

After a treaty with the Americans in 1856, the Menominee lived on 235,000 acres. The fur trade had finally collapsed, and they were forced to log their beloved forest. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) built a sawmill in 1908 and managed the resources. The Menominee sued the bureau for mismanagement in 1934 and finally won its suit in 1951.

A 1952 report from BIA Commissioner Dillon Myer issued instructions to Tribes for a step-by-step withdrawal of the BIA from their affairs. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Menominee Termination Act, effective on May 1, 1961. A 1965 survey reported that there were 2,526 Menominee County residents, 57 percent of whom were under nineteen years of age. Social problems and economic instability were epidemic. The Menominee Restoration Act of December 1973 returned the Tribe to federally recognized status.

Beginning in the late 1980s, the Nation created a new school district, including a community college. Indian gaming in the 1990s provided enough revenue for social programs and investment. In 1992, the reservation comprised 222,552 acres and had a population of 3,182 American Indians. The median age was 21.4 years old; 48.7 percent were high school graduates, and 74 percent of persons sixteen to nineteen years old were enrolled in school. In 2015, amidst the trend in which several states began legalizing the use of marijuana, the Menominee voted to support the sale of marijuana on the reservation to boost the reservation's economy.

In 2024, after two years of extremely high incidence rates of hospitalizations or deaths due to overdoses, rates dropped by nearly 70 percent. The Menominee Tribe’s Drug Addiction Intervention Team's efforts were credited with the improvement. The team provides education and resources to individuals struggling with addiction, including providing Narcan and fentanyl test strips to the community.

Bibliography

Kaquatosh, Raymond C. Little Hawk and the Lone Wolf: A Memoir. Wisconsin Historical Society, 2014.

"Menominee Culture." Milwaukee Public Museum, www.mpm.edu/content/wirp/ICW-54. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

"Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin." www.menominee-nsn.gov. Accessed 25 Nov. 2024.

Ourada, Patricia K. The Menominee Indians: A History. U of Oklahoma P, 1979.

Peroff, Nicholas C. Menominee Drums: Tribal Termination and Restoration, 1954–1974. U of Oklahoma P, 1982.

Schulz, Joe. "Menominee Tribe Sees Sharp Decrease in Overdose Deaths, Hospitalizations." Wisconsin Public Radio, 27 Nov. 2024, www.wpr.org/news/menominee-tribe-decrease-overdose-deaths-hospitalizations. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.

Skinner, Alanson. Social Life and Ceremonial Bundles of the Menomini Indians, vol. 13, American Museum of Natural History, 1913.

Smith, Huron H. Ethnobotany of the Menomini Indians. Greenwood, 1970.

Spindler, George, and Louise Spindler. Dreamers with Power: The Menominee. Waveland, 1971.