A History of Stewardship

By Scott Landis

(Originally published in Harrowsmith Country Life, November, 1992)

        UNTIL THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, THE MENOMINEE OCCUPIED more than half of what is now Wisconsin, as well as part of northern Michigan. But in 1854, besieged by smallpox and alcohol and overwhelmed by waves of dispossessed Eastern Indians and white settlers, they were finally sequestered on the banks of the Wolf River. A series of treaties left them with roughly 3 percent of their ancestral territory.

        Like the other Algonquian Indians who populated the Great Lakes region, the Menominee hunted, fished and harvested wild rice on their reservation. But unlike their Indian neighbors - the Sioux, Winnebago and Chippewa - whose lands were rapidly lost and denuded, the Menominee successfully resisted the private allotment of their property and retained their island of timber and their community by dint of their own tenacity, federal protection and fortuitous circumstance.

        In the years immediately following the formation of the reservation, the Menominee cut timber for fence posts, homes, firewood and incidental agricultural clearing. The first tribal lumber camp was organized in 1872, when they began cutting pine and driving it down the Wolf River to sawmills off the reservation. Logging continued sporadically for the next two decades, interrupted every few years by government decree. (Congress was under pressure by the timber barons to prevent the Indians from processing and selling their own lumber.) Even the cutting of dead-and-down timber was ruled illegal in 1888, when the government determined that "the right of Indians on an Indian reservation is one of occupancy only."

        While the Menominee struggled to establish their right to cut timber, unrestrained logging looted the forests in the rest of the Great Lakes states. By the turn of the century, almost all of Wisconsin had been logged over, while the Menominee were left sitting on what one forester called a virtual "supermarket" of timber, possibly the richest to be found east of the Mississippi River.

        In 1890, the Menominee were granted permission to cut 20 million board feet of green timber, and the Menominee Log Fund was established to handle the proceeds. It quickly swelled to more than $2 million, making the tribe among the richest in the country. But the Menominee would not enjoy economic security until they were able to process their own timber. Opportunity came by chance in 1905, when a cyclone laid waste nearly 30 million board feet of timber on the reservation. Congress passed the LaFollette Act, authorizing the Menominee to conduct their own salvage and build sawmills. The bill's sponsor, Wisconsin Senator Robert LaFollette, argued that "what the white man has in other places destroyed, [Indians] should be taught to preserve."

        For a time, the management of the forests was largely dictated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which sanctioned clear-cutting of white pine in the 1920s and '30s. Eventually, the tribe acquired greater control over its forestry operations and launched a lawsuit against the federal government over the bureau's mismanagement of timber resources. The claim was settled in 1951, adding another $8.5 million to the already tidy Menominee Log Fund. Interest from this account paid for schools, hospitals, law enforcement and other government functions.

        Ironically, the relative affluence of the tribe nearly brought about the demise of the reservation. Many Menominee wanted to have the tribal trust fund distributed among its members. Congress linked dispersal of the fund to termination of the tribe's protected legal status. In a referendum, the Menominee voted overwhelmingly for termination and Congress made that official in 1960. The log fund was dispersed and house lots were carved out of part of the reservation and deeded over to individual Menominee. The mill and production forest were placed in the hands of a private corporation. The reservation was replaced by a new Menominee County, which ranked first in the state in unemployment and last in income. Almost overnight, a $10 million nest egg disappeared, and the timber operation began racking up debts.

        Pressure to meet their new county tax burden and to pay for a much-needed mill renovation sparked what is known locally as the "cowboy era" as the Menominee began liquidating their forest assets. A small creek was dammed in the southeast corner of the reservation to create 5,000-acre Legend Lake. Soon the shoreline was lined with high- priced cottage lots, most of which were sold to nonnatives. As Marshall Pecore put it, "This was burning your house down to stay warm." In the 1960s, the sale of lakeside lots led to demonstrations and cottage burnings.

        A campaign to restore tribal status, which began almost immediately after the referendum that terminated it, succeeded in 1973. The reservation was restored, but the legacy of termination will be felt for a long time. Menominee Tribal Enterprises, the corporation that now oversees forest management and production, had to buy back part of the tribe's own land, and it is still paying off debts incurred during the mill renovation. And Legend Lake remains a thorn in the side of many Menominee. It is a monument to their brush with termination and a constant reminder of the primacy of land ownership in any sustainable-forest-management regime.