Note 203 — Chapter XXXIII · RETURN ON THE ERIE CANAL AND THE RIVER HUDSON TO NEW YORK—VOYAGE TO EUROPE

The Oneida Indians, one of the "five nations" of the Iroquois confederacy, lived east of the Onondaga, in the present Madison and Oneida counties. In 1788 they ceded their land to New York state, retaining a large reservation, which has been gradually disposed of for successive annuities. About 1820 the project of their removal to Wisconsin was broached, and two delegations representing diverse interests among the Oneida, headed respectively by Dr. Jedidiah Morse, and Reverend Eleazer Williams, visited the West, and entered into arrangements with the Menominee and Winnebago tribes for territory contiguous to Green Bay. These treaties were the subjects of much negotiation, but the controversy was finally settled (1831) by the United States government in favor of the New York Indians. With the Oneida were three tribes of New England Indians—the Stockbridge, Munsee, and Brothertown—who had previously been (in the latter part of the eighteenth century) received among the Oneida in New York. The migration of these various tribes began about 1823, and continued at varying intervals until about 1846, a small remnant only remaining in New York. In Wisconsin they located permanently; the Munsee and Brothertown having assumed citizenship, are for the most part absorbed in the white population of Brown, Outagamie, and Calumet counties, chiefly the last named, although a few are mingled with the Oneida on their reservation near Green Bay. The latter number about two thousand, and are in a fairly prosperous condition, chiefly farmers. On the Stockbridge reservation in Shawano County there are about five hundred engaged in farming and lumbering. Consult Wisconsin Historical Collections, ii, pp. 415-449; xv, pp. 25-209; and J. N. Davidson, Unnamed Wisconsin (Milwaukee, 1895).—Ed.