Racine Dominicans
Detail of “Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata” by Gerardus Mercator (1569)
Land-history research for Siena, 5635 Erie Street, Racine WI 53402
“The Northwest and Michigan Territories,” by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Great Britain) (1833)
“Jean Nicolet, landing at the Bay of Green Bay in 1634” by Franz Edward Rohrbeck, on the rotunda of the Brown County Courthouse in Green Bay, Wisconsin (1910)
European Contact
The Doctrine of Discovery at Siena
“The Last Council of the Pottawatomies, 1833” by unknown artist in Chicago Historical Pictorial by Lawrence C. Earle (1902)
“Leaders of the Continental Congress. John Adams, Morris, Hamilton, Jefferson,” by Augustus Tholey (c. 1894)
Settler Colonialism
The Treaty Period
Good Faith.
“The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall never be taken from them without their consent; and in their property, rights and liberty, they never shall be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorised by Congress; but laws found in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.”
“An ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States, North-west of the river Ohio,” passed by the Continental Congress (July 13, 1787)
Sepia ink drawing of Lewis Cass by James Barton Longacre (c. 1833)
Desirable.
“This treaty is “[a]n event equally desirable for us as for them; as it is not possible that they can retain their present position much longer, pressed as they will be by our settlements, and exposed to all the evils which these produce.”
Instruction of Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, to treaty commissioners George B. Porter, Thomas V. Owen, and William Weatherford (April 8, 1833)
Engraving of Territorial Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs George Bryan Porter by unknown artist in General History of the State of Michigan by Charles Richard Tuttle (1874)
Relieved.
“[T]hus this whole country may probably be altogether relieved from any serious impediment to its entire settlement, by the removal of a population which will always embarrass and retard it."
Letter from George B. Porter to Lewis Cass (Sept. 28, 1833)
“Chicago in 1833” postcard by V.O. Hammon Publishing Co. Chicago (date unknown)
Villainy.
“The goods were deposited in two buildings and torn up into small pieces to be distributed and the avaricious French traders were permitted to watch them and stole to the amount of 20 thousand dollars worth in two nights. . . . They [the Indians] will give anything they have for whiskey and as soon as they are drunk they are stripped to the skin by the whites. Such infernal villainy would make the Devil blush.”
Letter from Henry van der Bogart to David Demarest (Oct. 7, 1833) in A History of Chicago (New York, 1937) by Bessie L. Pierce
Signature of Territorial Governor George Porter on journal of 1833 Treaty of Chicago
Plunder.
"This amount of public money is put into the pockets of one family in the short space of six weeks. Is it not reasonable to suppose, that Governor Porter finds a strong reason for confining the patronage of the Government to one family, in the fact that he comes in for a share of the ‘plunder?’.... It is a fact notorious among all who attended the Chicago Treaty, that the goods furnished at that treaty, were afterwards taken from the Indians in large amounts, and furnished at other places.”
Charges preferred against George B. Porter to President Andrew Jackson (Dec. 12, 1833)
“Map of Treaty Cessions by Charles C. Royce, Bureau of American Ethnology (1899)
Primary Sources
& Markups
Current Law
Land Becomes Property
Primary Sources
& Markups
“Map of the State of Wisconsin,” by Snyder, Van Vechten & Co. (1878)
“Elevated view of east side of Main Street, with Langlois & Robilliard visible at 137 Main Street” by W.M. Lockwood (c. 1860)
Curated Resource List for the Racine Dominicans
There’s more
To learn about tribes in Wisconsin from an Anishinaabekwe author:
Read Patty Loew, Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2013)
To learn the history of the United States’ removal of the Bodwéwadmi (Potawatomi) to land west of the Mississippi River:
Read John P. Bowes, Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016)
Photograph of Potawatomi leader and treaty signer Shab-eh-nay (Shabbona) by W.E. Bowman (c. 1858)
For a modern Bodwéwadmi voice:
Read Levi Rickert, Visions for a Better Indian Country: One Potawatomi Elder's Opinions (Indian Country Media, 2022)
For indigenous perspectives on U.S. history:
Read Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2015)
Read Anton Treuer, Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask: Revised and Expanded (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2023)