As for the people of Racine, they made life rather uncomfortable for the
men who had assisted the Milwaukee deputy marshals in arresting Glover.
The city became a fiercer hotbed of abolition than ever before, and
several times thereafter aided slaves to escape from bondage.
Fortunately for their own good, as well as for the cause of law and
order, they found no further occasion to take the law into their own
hands, in the defense of human liberty.
THE STORY OF A FAMOUS CHIEF
One of the best-known Indians with whom Wisconsin Territorial pioneers
were thrown into personal contact was Oshkosh, the last of the Menominee
sachems, or peace chiefs. It is worth while briefly to relate the story
of his career, because it was the life of a typical Indian leader, at
the critical time when the whites were coming into the country in such
numbers as to crowd the reds to the wall.
Oshkosh was born in 1795, at Point Bas, on the Wisconsin River.
Cha-kau-cho-ka-ma (meaning Old King), the peace chief of the Menominees
at that time, was his maternal grandfather. The war chief was Glode, the
orator of the tribe, and a mighty hunter. The Old King lived until 1826,
but Glode died in 1804, his successor being Tomah (the French
pronunciation of Thomas, his English name).
In the War of 1812-15, a large band of Wisconsin Indians joined the
ranks of Tecumseh, in raiding upon the American borderers. The principal
Menominee chiefs were Tomah, Souligny, Grizzly Bear, and Iometah, and
among the young men was Oshkosh.
Their first expedition was against Fort Mackinac, in 1812, that
stronghold being captured from the Americans without bloodshed. Among
white men, such an enterprise would not seem to offer much opportunity
for the display of personal bravery; but savage and civilized standards
of courage differ, and young Oshkosh appears to have satisfied the old
men upon this occasion, so that he then received the name by which we
know him, meaning in the Menominee tongue, "brave."
By the following May, Oshkosh, now in his nineteenth year, and prominent
among the young warriors, went out with Souligny and Tomah, and joined
Tecumseh in the siege of Fort Meigs at the rapids of the Maumee River.
Later, during the same summer, he was engaged in the memorable
British-Indian siege of Sandusky. The succeeding year he was one of a
large party of Menominees assisting the British to repel a fierce but
futile American attempt to recapture Fort Mackinac. This was his last
campaign, for peace between Great Britain and the United States soon
followed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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