The Treaty of Ghent.
A letter from Grandpa Gary
To Grandson,
Vogun Wylder Boyd.
Introducing …
The messenger man fifth great grandfather,
Indian Agent George Boyd’s,
Peerings into Menominee &
World Events,
By
Gary R Boyd, Pemapomay.
(Parental discretion is advised.)
The Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve of December 24th of 1814 at number 8 of the Fratersplein in the Empire room within the Flemish City of Ghent in what was then the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. In the year of 1830, sixteen years later after the Belgian Revolution, Ghent became a town in what is now the country of Belgium west of Germany and northeast of France. Since 1830, Belgium became a completely separate country from The Netherlands.
The Treaty of Ghent was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 and it restored Peaceful and Friendly relations between the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This Ghent treaty is what led the way to what are now the present day landholdings and boundaries between the United States of America and the nation of Canada.
The Anglo-French painter, Amédée Forestier, accurately depicted historical scenes and he was careful to include all of the members of the American entourage in the Flemish style of painting. George Boyd is third from the right and is farthest to the background in the line of sight “drawing a straight dotted line” so to speak over the upper back of the only peace commissioner with snowy white hair on the right side of the painting, James Bayard.
A painting by Amédée Forestier.
The two central figures shaking hands in the foreground of the above portrait are: on the right in the middle is the United States Ambassador to Russia, John Quincy Adams and on the left is the British Admiral of the Fleet, James Gambier. Starting from the right side of the painting the Americans from right to left are: Jonathan Russell, age 43 in 1814, Henry Clay, seated, age 37, George Boyd, age 35 at the signing, (Boyd was not one of the treaty signers. He was entrusted with private dispatches to the five American peace commissioners at Ghent.) James Bayard with white hair, age 47, Christopher Hughes, the Secretary for the Delegates carrying the red attaché, age 28, Albert Gallatin, age 53, and John Quincy Adams, age 47 in 1814, at the treaty signing.
Your fifth great grandfather, George Boyd, participated in the entourage that attended the signing of the treaty. See if you can pick out, which one George is, in the Flemish painting. Personally, I, one of your 2 grandfathers, Gary Richard Boyd, born April 2nd of 1950, believe that I have the answer to the question: Which man in this portrait of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent is the man named George Boyd? And I also believe that you, Vogun Boyd, will one day be able to definitively tell which one is an actual likeness of him, but I do believe that undoubtedly it is the man in the background whom I have described above.
In the Flemish painting, George Boyd, is the man who is portrayed third from the right and farthest to the background directly in the line of sight over the back of James Bayard, the man on the right with white hair. George is described as being “handsome” by one writer and to me seems to resemble the Canadian actor, William Shatner. Albert Gallatin is behind John Quincy Adams, the man in the center. The Flemish people are known for having had great and realistic painters so you can be quite sure that the image in the painting of George Boyd, one of the men in the portrait, your fifth great grandfather, is an actual likeness of him. Although the painter, Amedee Forestier was born in the mid-eighteen hundreds in 1854 and died in 1930, he was known to accurately depict historical scenes.
George Boyd was entrusted with private dispatches to the peace commissioners at Ghent, which is just a fancy way of saying that he was a “gopher” or a messenger man, for some of the most dynamically influential politicians in America, during the history of this time period of the first quarter of the 1800s (the 19th century). Today Ghent is a town in the northwestern part of the country of Belgium which is adjacent to northeastern France. In the very early part of the 1800s, Britain was giving up its control over a very large area of land which it had seized from American control when Britain was occupying land here in North America that two years after the War of 1812, on Christmas Eve in the year of 1814, it became the present day United States of America. Canada had not become a nation yet until the year of 1867 when it formed a Constitution and the leaders of the new Canadian government signed it that year.
In order to understand family relationships, let me spell it out. You have 4 grandparents, your mom and dad’s parents: two grandfathers and two grandmothers. You have 4 great grandfathers as well as 4 great grandmothers, 8 great great grandfathers, 16 great great great grandfathers, 32 fourth great grandfathers and George Boyd was one of the 64 of your fifth great grandfathers who, of course, were married to 64 of your fifth great grandmothers. Your mom and dad’s brothers are called uncles and their sisters are called aunts. Their marriage partners are called uncles and aunts “through marriage”. Your grandma and grandpa’s brothers are called grand uncles and their sisters are called grand aunts. Your great grandma and great grandpa’s brothers are called great grand uncles and their sisters are called great grand aunts and so on. So your fifth great grandmother’s sister is called a fifth great grand aunt and her husband is called a: “fifth great grand uncle through marriage”.
So now please allow me to introduce to you about the individual personages that we are about to encounter and some background historical information about them. So let's start with, John Quincy Adams, who was born in 1775, married Louisa Catherine Johnson in 1797 and eleven years after 1814 became the US President in 1825 to 1829 and lived until 1848. Louisa was the sister of Harriet Johnson. Harriet, our ancestor, who was my third great grandmother and was your fifth great grandmother, lived from 1784 until 1850.
In 1805, Harriet married George Boyd, your fifth great grandfather, who is in the entourage of the Flemish painting. Harriet's sister, Louisa C Adams (born Johnson) was your “fifth great grand aunt” and her husband, George's brother-in-law, US President John Quincy Adams, was therefore your: “fifth great grand uncle through marriage”, your aunt Cherissa and your Dad’s “fourth great grand uncle through marriage” and my “third great grand uncle through marriage”. George was born in 1779 in the State of Maryland, and was a native to next-door Virginia. His father was named Archibald George Boyd who was an immigrant from Scotland to America. George Boyd lived until 1846.
Introducing some historical background on the Menominee Indians of Wisconsin.
About one hundred and twenty years after Jean Nicolet de Belbourne (1598-1642) first arrived in 1634 at the shores of the Red Banks at “le Baie des Puants” (bay of the stinking cabbage) six miles east of what is now Green Bay toward Sturgeon Bay in Wisconsin, a first cousin of Thomas Carron, whose name was Chawanon (Shawano, the south + n ending = southerner) became referred to as the TsheKatchekemau, (also spelled Chakachokama, and Shekatshowemau) the head chief, in the Menominee language. A newspaper article by research by William R. Hunt: “Le Roy, De Carrie and Carron Families” in the Appleton Post Crescent on May 26, 1998; "Family History Project" Page 6 sheds some light upon the fact that Shawano, who was known as Chawanon, was referred to in Hunt’s research project as the son of Vieux Claude Caron and Waupesesiu, however, further research seems to indicate that he was actually Waupesesiu’s brother and was the son of Pierre Leduc dit Souligny.
In his involvement with the Mamaceqtawuk, the peerings of what George Boyd personally was witnessing among the Menominee and other Algonquin of the Mamaceqtawuk is surrounded by the Treaty of Ghent itself which was surrounded by world events of that day and age in the late 1700s and in the early to mid-1800s.
Now let me introduce to you some background historical information about Colonel George Boyd’s professional life that he had experienced personally and witnessed as a private merchant and a public employee. In June of 1819, he came to Fort Mackinac which is located about ten miles off the northernmost tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan Territory to replace William Henry Puthuff as the Indian agent at the fort on Mackinac Island. Puthuff was born in Virginia and had a spotless record as a rifleman in the 2nd Regiment, however, sometime during the time that he was an Indian agent on Mackinac Island from 1815-1824, he became unbalanced, heavy-handed and paranoid. He was likely one of the main proponent of immigrants who had engaged in spreading malicious slander about Menominee ancestors by dehumanizing natives by a vicious rumor to the territorial governor Lewis Cass who had actually reported to Washington in June of 1816, to quote Cass’s exact words, that during the American war with Great Britain, that these starving natives:
“In 1814, Michigan Territory (which included Wisconsin) had an adult male population of about 800, facing 2000 Indian braves impoverished by the war for a very large portion of the year, subsisted on roots and at one period of the war they killed their children and ate them” unquote. ~ Governor Lewis Cass report to Congress in 1816 from the book A Shovel of Stars, The Making of the American West by Ted Morgan, Copyright 1995.
Natives had to endure this absurd form of stereotyping and these sorts of malicious deceptions were historically told in the name of Manifest Destiny, which was better known as the Monroe Doctrine and was originated by one of the American founding fathers, James Monroe (1758-1831). This was the concept that it was the white race of Europe that was to take over complete control of North American land and resources; and that Native Americans were not considered as “human beings”; and that it was evident that it was Europeans that were destined to move in and to dominate the native inhabitants and, since the Indian was considered merely just a little above an animal, to take over their land no matter to what extent of the immense amount of human suffering that it inflicted upon them.
Hence, this debased type of stereotyping of natives in the form of such “little white lies” were told in the name of Manifest Destiny and in the name of American progress no matter to what extent of exploitation, oppression and oftentimes outright extermination that it inflicted upon its native inhabitants. This was commonplace in the United States in the 1800s as exemplified by all of the innumerable massacres that were perpetrated against Native Americans by the US Cavalry and is one major reason why immigrant Europeans historically had referred to natives as mere savages even before the founding of the United States in 1776.
Mackinac Island sits right in between two gigantic lakes, Lake Huron to the east and Lake Michigan to the west. The Indian male was fully capable of fishing for the super-abundant food supply of fish of all sorts and varieties that were contained therein these immense lakes as they had been for innumerable thousands of years. Great Lakes Sturgeon were known to have grown as large as seven feet long and weighed as much as a thousand lbs.
Judging by the amount of wooded area that it entails, this very area today is still filled with wildlife as you can visually see on the map . In the early 1800s there was super immense forestland on Mackinac Island and right nearby across the channel at St. Ignace and near Mackinaw City in Lower Michigan and on Bois Blanc Island. The logging industry, which would result in the eventual depletion of the wildlife in the region, had not yet gone into full swing until the late 1800s and the early 1900s almost a century later. In the early 1800s, these gigantic forests were much more immense than they are today and they were teaming with wildlife.
As long as Puthuff was the Superintendent Indian agent at Fort Mackinac, European immigrant fur traders did not fare very well either by his policies, by his referring to them as “foreigners” and by his refusal to grant them licenses. These immigrant fur traders were completely unaware of a new law that was passed by Congress in 1816 that only allowed American citizens to obtain licenses to trade for furs within the United States.
Puthuff saw this as a splendid opportunity for himself, so he took advantage of every chance to seize furs from immigrants and then place a $50 ransom ($50 in 1816 equivalent to $808 in 2013) for their return. Being the days of the old frontier, this meant holding these immigrants at gunpoint, confiscating the furs they collected from native trappers who worked for the American Fur Company, and then by Puthuff demanding the ransom from these traders to release the furs back to them.
Boyd initially worked at the Indian agency at Fort Mackinac for five years learning agency business during which time, it was Puthuff’s policy to refuse to grant licenses to incoming immigrants. Traders Robert Stuart and Ramsey Crooks, who themselves were immigrants from Scotland, continually lobbied for Puthuff’s removal. By 1824, and very likely to the relief of many an immigrant and native alike, George Boyd became the Superintendent of the Indian agency at Fort Mackinac (also referred to as Michilimackinac) and he finally replaced Puthuff and thereafter Boyd had more openly granted immigrant traders licenses.
The Indian agency at Fort Mackinac, founded in 1780, was set up to serve American needs for the native fur trade and the Indian agency at the fort was a way for the United States to implement treaty agreements that were made with natives in the region. During the early 1800s, the United States Office of Indian Trade (Click #75.3) had established a fur trading company and tanning factory for furs largely acquired from natives in the region who were evidently supplied with metal traps from the company store.
Because of an overwhelming demand for furs in Europe to make fur coats, top hats, wallets, purses, and boots and so on, back in those days in the 1700s and early 1800s, furs were veritably worth their weight in gold and were highly valued items to be traded or bargained with. Robert Stuart (born 1785 died 1848), an immigrant from Scotland, worked as the head representative of the American Fur Company, which was founded in 1808 by John Jacob Astor who was a German immigrant.
Stuart strove to have government Indian agents in the region, enforce regulations that primarily benefitted only the company and by not responding so much to the needs of natives who had signed solemn treaties and agreements with the United States while working for the company, collecting furs by trapping various animals, in regional forests within Michigan Territory.
George Boyd objected to Stuart’s endeavor to benefit only the American Fur Company which was neglecting these treaty agreements. Boyd was a Colonel in the US Army in a regiment of the US Cavalry and it was his duty as a member of the army to enforce the treaty in accordance with the letter of the law. Boyd became an Indian agent at Fort Mackinac in 1819 and he later became the Superintendent of the Indian agency in 1824.
Vieux and Waupesesiu were the father and mother of Thomas Carron (Chief Tomau), who was the father of Josette Caron, (Chief Little Wolf, Mahwahsay) the father of Sasos, who was the mother of Margaret Kitson (born Robinson 1821 to 1904). Margaret was the daughter of a mixed blood chief named Chichipinquay, Alexander Robinson, who was appointed by the US government as a Mamaceqtawuk chief of the Ottawa, Potawatomi, Menominee and Ojibway (at that time this included ancestors of whom Menominee ancestors were considered part of) in the 1825 Treaty of Prairie du Chein with numerous tribes.
As a response to the spreading of such malicious misinformation before Congress that was being given about their fathers and mothers who were born on Mackinac Island and about their generation that had sided with the British, after coming back from the 1812 war in 1814, the members of the Menominee Warrior Society simultaneously took over three forts in the year of 1817. It was a year after the 1816 report that Cass had given the inflammatory report to Congress that the 65 year old, Tomah, his brother, the 40 year old, Iometah, and other chiefs such as a 22 year old, Oshkosh, (the grandson of Chawanon), Souligny, (the grandson of Pierre le duc dit Souligny), and Kaush-Kau-No-Naïve, Grizzly Bear, (the son of Colonel Samuel C Stambaugh), spearheaded their support to the British, inland from the southwestern shore of Lake Erie in the northwestern portion of the former Ohio country (statehood 1803) by enacting a three simultaneous occupations of Forts Mackinac, Stephenson and Meigs which were becoming vacant in their usefulness to the US government at that time.
Although there was a great amount of an armed interchange, these takeovers were somewhat easier for the Menominee Warrior Society to appropriate and were a re-enactment of a previous eleven-day siege of Fort Meigs in late April of 1813 and of nearby Fort Stephenson (previously Fort Sandusky) against the Americans in August during 1813 that ended in the siege being dispersed. However, Fort Mackinac had previously been successfully occupied by Iometah and several of these chiefs in the year of 1812. The capture of the forts by these chiefs in 1817 was equivalent to, as if the Menominee Warrior Society as having had performed three successful Novitiate takeovers in 1975 all at the same time, instead of just the one takeover of the Novitiate that was not successful. This interchange led to the United States agreeing to the 1817 treaty, however, the US government by not recognizing them as Menominee Chiefs in the 1817 treaty, spurned Tomah, Iometah, Oshkosh, Souligny and the rest of the chiefs, by assisting the British army, and were instrumentally involved in the capture of the three forts.
President John Quincy Adams chose to recognize the principal clan chiefs and eight years later in 1827, and at that time, there were fourteen of them who were chosen internally among the Menominee clan chiefs themselves. However, the territorial commissioner, Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan Territory had taken it upon himself to decide who was to be the chief of the Menominees from a delegation of these fourteen chiefs.
Most of the Mamaceqtawuk braves who lived upon and surrounding Mackinac Island went to war for the British until the year of 1817, when the Menominee Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed with the US. The members of the Caron family of chiefs and their relatives were recognized by the British in 1778 and were not being recognized by this 1817 treaty thereafter. During the administration of President John Quincy Adams, the United States recognized many of the Menominee ancestral clan chiefs who signed their X marks next to their names such as: “Warbano” (Waubeno, Wolf and Waupoose families and relatives are descended from the wolf clan chief) and “Innimikee” (Anamikee, thunder clan chief, the Komaniken and the Thunder family ancestor) in the treaty of 1817.
However, the Caron family descendants and the rest of the chiefs who were recognized by the British in 1778 went on the war path in 1819 and insisted that the chiefs as recognized by the British be included in the recognition of Menominee clan chiefs who signed treaties with the United States. The British had awarded these Caron family chiefs with huge solid silver peace medals and the Americans would award peace medals that were made of hollow silver, much like many of the hollow promises that were being made to Menominees in many of the treaties that were signed with the United States government, while fulfilling such promises grossly only in part.
The determination of who was to be the chief of the Menominee was to be decided on a sovereign level, however, when Cass placed the hollow silver peace medal around the neck of Oshkosh, it was decided then and there that Oshkosh would be the recognized chief of the Menominee by the US government. On a certain level, Menominees had lost a level of sovereignty on an international level and this was what initially led the way for Menominees to becoming US citizens in a couple of years over a century on June 2nd of 1824, yet while still retaining a certain level of this sovereignty, that is, the status as being recognized as a nation.
Speaking about Native American sovereignty, during the end of the Cold War, while President Ronald Reagan was in office in 1981 through 1989, Russian diplomats to the United States such as Andre Suvorov had likely prompted students and the faculty at Moscow State University on May 31st of 1988 to ask him why the United States had signed treaties with Native Americans, if they are not sovereign, and Reagan’s reply was: “Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe we should not have humored them. Maybe we should have said, no, come join us; be citizens along with the rest of us.”
This comment was unanimously considered an insult to the five hundred Native American tribal governments within the US because it left the question in mind that maybe these solemn treaties that were made with native tribes were simply part of an ongoing effort by the US government to humor them while also fulfilling them in part by providing the many services to Native American tribes by the US government like medical services and education.
Allow me now to give you some background information on Menominee natives near Green Bay and in the Michigan territorial region that Boyd had represented at the Indian agency at Fort Howard.
In 1832, he replaced Colonel Samuel C Stambaugh (1765-1860), who incidentally, was nicknamed “The Great Packer,” at the Indian agency at Fort Howard in Green Bay (of course not because of the football team, that came about in Green Bay eighty seven years later in 1919). Colonel Stambaugh was replaced at the Indian agency in Green Bay because he was so enamored by Menominees that he had fathered a son named Kaush-Kau-No-Naïve (1782-1834) by a Menominee woman and had orchestrated the 1832 treaty which was set up in 1831, and in its stipulations, instead of Menominee landholdings, had ceded Potawatomi land to the US.
In about ~1739, the son of Claude Caron (lived from 1672 to 1708) and Elizabeth Perthuis Sieur de la Janvry (purported by Menominees to have been a mixed-blood Abenaki woman from du territoire de la Nouvelle-France.), Vieux Claude Caron married Waupesesiu (meaning “Little Wild Potato”) Souligny (born around ~1715) who was the sister of Waupesepin (“Wild Potato”) Souligny, an influential Menominee ancestor during Pontiac’s Uprising in 1763. Abenaki land is located in what is now New England and in Canada east of Montreal in the province of Quebec. Waupesesiu and Waupesepin were both the daughters of Pierre Leduc dit Souligny, who lived from 1699 to 1764 and of Agathe Villeneuve, who lived from 1724 to 1801.
Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, Abenaki and Penobscot.
The presumably mixed-blood Abenaki Frenchman, Vieux Claude Caron, and his wife Waupesesiu had three sons who had all become chiefs of the Menominee: Chief Augustin Iometah Carron, (born about 1772 died in 1865), was chief of the bear clan, Chawanon Carron, (born about 1732 died in 1821) was the buffalo progenitor and Thomas Carron (lived from about 1752 to 1817), who oddly but true, as many elders, such as the late Bruce Wilber Sr. had repeatedly stated, and the anthropologist Walter James Hoffman had documented in the book, “The Menomini Indians,” on page 56, that Thomas had become the progenitor of the prairie chicken clan. He was otherwise known to Menominees as “Chief Tomau”. Thomas Carron was the father of Josette Carron, who was the father of Wabenowabon in the family tree of Chief Keshena.
Wabenowabon was also known as Wabenomitamo Oshkosh, (born Carron), and married Chief Neopit Oshkosh. Wabenowabon’s sister Okemawabon, whose baptismal name was Cynthia Josephine Carron, was referred to as "Sas Sus Soshey Saeh". This was a Menominee way of saying her Christian name as "Little Josephine," which was shortened to “Sasos”. In the book “The Menomini Indians,” on page 53 of the genealogy chart, Walter James Hoffman erroneously refers to Vieux Claude Caron as “Tomau,” however, it was Vieux’s son, Thomas, who was the one that was known as Tomau or Tomah, (search Tomah then Go to Page 42). Long after his death in 1782, Vieux became referred to by Menominees as “Chief Tomau,” and his grandson Josette was also known by the name “Chief Tomau,” as well as by his given name at birth as Mahwahsay, Chief Little Wolf.
Iometah Carron was a brother of Thomas, Konot (Glode, Claude) and of Chawanon Carron who became regarded by the French in around the late 1850s as the Menominee TsheKatchekemau (head chief).
Click on red and blue flags above each individual entry box on Boyd website: Menominee family tree.
A second cousin of Sasos was named Susan Carron, who was the granddaughter of the bear clan chief Iometah Carron, who was also known as the Menominee war chief. She married Kaush-Kau-No-Naïve (Grizzly Bear), Colonel Stambaugh’s son, and they were the mother and father of Ma-ko-me-ta, Bear’s Oil, sometimes written as, Mah-kée-mee-teuv, who was nicknamed "Grizzly Bear" after his father. His brothers, Ahkinipowa, (Earth Stander), and Wapemen, (Corn), had also become recognized as chiefs among the Menominee. Ahkinipowa, being the grandson of Iometah, Susan Carron's eldest son, in 1827, was recognized as the chief of the bear clan, the largest and most powerful Menominee clan.
About one hundred and twenty years after Jean Nicolet de Belbourne (1598-1642) first arrived at the shores of the Red Banks at “le Baie des Puants” near Green Bay in 1634, the older brother of Thomas Carron, whose name was Chawanon (Shawano, the south + n ending = southerner) became referred to as the TsheKatchekemau, (also spelled Chakachokama, and Shekatshowemau) the head chief, in the Menominee language. A newspaper article by research by William R. Hunt: “Le Roy, De Carrie and Carron Families” in the Appleton Post Crescent on May 26, 1998; "Family History Project" Page 6 sheds light upon the fact that Shawano, who was known as Chawanon, was the son of Vieux Claude Carron and Waupesesiu.
Previous to this era, native Menominee ancestors were not yet referred to by the modern American term "Menominee" which came into vogue around 1800 and in 1817 after the Menominee Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed with the United States. Algonquin natives that harvested wild rice referred to themselves as "Omaeqnominiwuk", as “Wild Rice People”. These are Algonquin ancestors from whom very large portions of Cree, Ojibway, Menominee, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Sauk, Meskwaki and the Fox people have descended. In the 1850s, Chawanon, was recognized by the French as the Grand Chief of the "Le Folles Avoines," (Foolish Oats), people, what the French pioneers had called the regional Algonquin people in the 1600s, and the British had called Menominee ancestors since 1778. The wild rice plant that grew on the rivers and in lakes in the early 1600s was described to these early French explorers and voyageurs by one of their scouts, as being like “oats”, however, it took some time for them to get used to it, so they described it as “foolish oats”.
Pemabeme was the father of John Waubeno (lived 1840 to about 1925) who was the father of Kenyahkiew, Mary Waubeno, “Kinuhkiw” (born about 1880 lived to about 1976). Mary was the mother of Nepenanakwat, Chief Summer Cloud, Johnson Awonohopay (born 1913 until about 1986). Pemabeme was described by the late John “Manny” Boyd, (born in 1910 lived until 1988) Napoose, as having lived around 100 years. He was the wolf clan chief who signed the 1827 treaty and was Chief Summer Cloud’s great grandfather. The wolf clan totem was known as the “low man on the totem pole” and this symbolized that the wolf clan was the oldest ancestral clan and was the position of what anthropologists call the culture hero on the totem pole.
Pemabeme was the wolf clan chief who signed the 1827 treaty and was Chief Summer Cloud’s great grandfather. The generation of Pemabeme (born about 1740 died in 1840), is the 2nd great grandfather of my generation as compared with the generation of Archibald George Boyd, who was born about five years after Pemabeme was born and is my 4th great grandfather who was born in 1745. Pemabeme was the chief of the wolf clan in 1827.
The generation of Pemabeme (born about 1740 died in 1840), is the 2nd great grandfather of my generation as compared with the generation of Archibald George Boyd, who was born about five years after Pemabeme was born and is my 4th great grandfather who was born in Scotland in 1745. The Boyd family in Europe was part of the same family of relatives from Ireland and northern France which had originated from the Scandinavian Peninsula over 1300 years ago. The term “Boyd” has a root meaning from an old Nordic term “Bui” which meant “countryman”.
At Little Lake Butte des Morts just before the 1827 Menominee treaty was signed, the matter of who would be head chief was not resolved among the fourteen Menominee chiefs who were about to sign the 1827 treaty with the United States. On Aug 11th at Little Lake Butte des Morts the commissioner, Governor Lewis Cass of Michigan Territory arbitrarily chose to place the silver chieftain peace medal around the neck of Oshkosh who then had become recognized as the head chief of the Menominee in the Treaty of 1827. Oshkosh was recognized as the chief of the buffalo clan, however, shortly thereafter, contrary to what was considered traditional by the rest of the prestigious Carron family descendants and the rest of the clan chiefs who signed the treaty, Oshkosh then proclaimed himself as the chief of the bear clan and then replaced Ahkinipowa as the bear clan chief.
Having been a pioneer out on the old frontier amongst the natives of the region and having learned the southern Mamaceqtawuk Ojibway Algonquin language and customs, George Boyd objected to Gov. Lewis Cass’s appointment of Oshkosh and he referred to the chief as being, to use his exact word, a “scoundrel” for declaring himself as the bear clan chief. A year and a half later, President John Quincy Adams signed the 1827 treaty into US law on February 23rd of 1829.
James Louis Boyd lived from 1874 to 1942 and his wife Mabel Rose Boyd, (born Wilber), lived from 1876 to 1976. James was the grandson of William Boyd and the great grandson of George Boyd. Mabel was the great granddaughter of Sasos, who was the daughter of Josette Carron, who was the son of Thomas Carron, (Tomah), who was the son of Waupesesiu, (born Souligny), and Vieux Claude Caron.
To view these facts in the Menominee family tree check out the Boyd website by just Left-Clicking on this link and then Left Click on the blue and red flags above the boxes of each individual family entry. Enter the name of the person of interest to you in the Search area in the: Menominee family tree.
Vera and Margaret were by rights one-half Menominee. Their grandmother, Theresa Grignon was the daughter of Augustin Grignon, Jr. who, according to Napoose and numerous other elders was a chief among the Menominee and Vera's siblings were the great grandchildren of Chief Augustin’s wife, Nomakuhkiew, who was a full blood Menominee. Nomakuhkiew’s Christian name was “Matilda,” and was referred to as Pamosowak and was the daughter of Mahwahsay. Since both Chief Augustin and Nomakuhkiew were full blood, their daughter Theresa Grignon was, therefore a full blood, and since her husband, Alfred Boyd, was one half Menominee; Theresa and Alfred’s son, James was therefore 3/4th Menominee by inherent tribal rights. James Boyd married Mabel Wilber who was 1/4th Menominee, therefore, their children were one half Menominee.
Margaret, Vera, Sarah, Esther, Marjorie and Edna were the daughters of James and Mabel. They were the full sisters of Ted Boyd Sr. (1915-1984), Leslie “Beck” Boyd and of Alfred Boyd, the sons of James and Mabel.
From the late 1700s and the early to the mid-1800s George Boyd had personally witnessed the undercurrents that were going on amongst the Mamaceqtaw who lived around Mackinac Island in what is now Upper Michigan within an extensive Upper Michigan and Wisconsin radius of Minikani, the Bear Village, which is now the present day Marinette-Menominee. The newly developing identity of the regional Mamaceqtawuk, (-wuk ending = people), who referred to themselves as “Omaeqnominiwuk” of Michigan Territory was slowly becoming the term “Menominee” from 1800 to 1817, and it represented the people who lived within and surrounding the areas of Matc Suamico what is now Green Bay in Wisconsin, and in Minikani, what is now Marinette-Menominee on the border of the upper right hand corner of northeastern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan.