The Wisconsin Oneidas And The Episcopal Church

This unique collaboration by academic historians, Oneida elders, and Episcopal clergy tells the fascinating story of how the oldest Protestant mission and house of worship in the upper Midwest took root in the Oneida community. Personal bonds that developed between the Episcopal clergy and the Wisconsin Oneidas proved more important than theology in allowing the community to accept the Christian message brought by outsiders. Episcopal bishops and missionaries in Wisconsin were at times defenders of the Oneidas against outside whites attempting to get at their lands and resources. At other times, these clergy initiated projects that the Oneidas saw as beneficial—a school, a hospital, or a lace-making program for Oneida women that provided a source of income and national recognition for their artistry. The clergy incorporated the Episcopal faith into an Iroquoian cultural and religious framework—the Condolence Council ritual—that had a longstanding history among the Six Nations. In turn, the Oneidas modified the very form of the Episcopal faith by using their own language in the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum as well as by employing Oneida in their singing of Christian hymns. Christianity continues to have real meaning for many American Indians. The Wisconsin Oneidas and the Episcopal Church testifies to the power and legacy of that relationship.

This unique collaboration by academic historians, Oneida elders, and Episcopal clergy tells the fascinating story of how the oldest Protestant mission and house of worship in the upper Midwest took root in the Oneida community. Personal bonds that developed between the Episcopal clergy and the Wisconsin Oneidas proved more important than theology in allowing the community to accept the Christian message brought by outsiders. Episcopal bishops and missionaries in Wisconsin were at times defenders of the Oneidas against outside whites attempting to get at their lands and resources. At other times, these clergy initiated projects that the Oneidas saw as beneficial—a school, a hospital, or a lace-making program for Oneida women that provided a source of income and national recognition for their artistry. The clergy incorporated the Episcopal faith into an Iroquoian cultural and religious framework—the Condolence Council ritual—that had a longstanding history among the Six Nations. In turn, the Oneidas modified the very form of the Episcopal faith by using their own language in the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum as well as by employing Oneida in their singing of Christian hymns. Christianity continues to have real meaning for many American Indians. The Wisconsin Oneidas and the Episcopal Church testifies to the power and legacy of that relationship.

Contemporary scholarship and Indian oral tradition come together in this unique account of the history and culture of the Oneida Iroquois—particularly the Wisconsin Oneidas—who have not been the subject of the intense scholarly attention accorded other Iroquois groups. Contributors include Oneida educators, community leaders, historians, anthropologists, and linguists; essays vary from accounts of personal experience and oral history to presentations of academic research. The common denominator is the Oneida experience of cultural change and survival. Part I focuses on the history and adaptations of the Oneidas in their New York homeland. Part II describes the motives and methods used by New York State officials in divesting the Oneidas of their New York home and explores the aftereffects of the Indians' removal to Wisconsin and the legal implications of allotment legislation on American Indians' tribal jurisdiction today. Nineteenth-century attempts by whites to take the Oneidas' Wisconsin land base forced the Indians to develop strategies for survival, described in Part III. Capable leadership, the maintenance of tribal tradition, cultural revitalization, new educational initiatives, and continuing connections among the Oneida communities have fostered a tribal reemergence and have allowed the Oneidas to maintain themselves as a unique and thriving people.

Chief Daniel Bread (1800-1873) played a key role in establishing the Oneida Indians’ presence in Wisconsin after their removal from New York, yet no monument commemorates his deeds as the community’s founder. Laurence M. Hauptman and L. Gordon McLester, III, redress that historical oversight, connecting Bread’s life story with the nineteenth-century history of the Oneida Nation. Bread was often criticized for his support of acculturation and missionary schools as well as for his working relationship with Indian agents; however, when the Federal-Menominee treaties slashed Oneida lands, he fought back, taking his people’s cause to Washington and confronting President Andrew Jackson. The authors challenge the long-held views about Eleazer Williams’s leadership of the Oneidas and persuasively show that Bread’s was the voice vigorously defending tribal interests.

In this intimate volume the long-lost voices of Wisconsin Oneida men and women speak of all aspects of life: growing up, work and economic struggles, family relations, belief and religious practice, boarding-school life, love, sex, sports, and politics. These voices are drawn from a collection of handwritten accounts recently rediscovered after more than fifty years, the result of aøWPA Federal Writers? Project undertaking called the Oneida Ethnological Study (1940?42) in which a dozen Oneida men and women were hired to interview their families and friends and record their own experiences and observations. ø Selected from more than five hundred biographical narratives, these sixty-five chronicles, told by fifty-eight women and men, present a picture of Oneida Indian life from the 1880s, before the Dawes Allotment Act, through World War I and the Great Depression, to the beginning of World War II. Despite the narrators' struggles against harsh economic conditions, the theft of their land, and neglect, their firsthand histories are rendered with frankness and wit and present a remarkable picture of an era and a people.