The murder of Joe White: Ojibwe leadership and colonialism in Wisconsin

Abstract

The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin is centered around the 1894 murder of Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe ogimaa (chief) Giishkitawag, also known as Joe White. White was the ogimaa of a community at Rice Lake, Wisconsin, 50 miles southwest of the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation. In 1894, Wisconsin game wardens Horace Martin and Josiah Hicks were dispatched to arrest White for hunting deer out of season and off reservation land. Martin and Hicks found White working in an off-reservation logging camp and made an effort to arrest him. When White took a single step back, the game officers proceeded to beat him with handcuffs and a shotgun. Then White attempted to flee, and the wardens shot him in the back, fatally wounding the leader. Both Martin and Hicks were charged with manslaughter, but later acquitted by an all-white jury. This dissertation contextualizes this event within decades of struggle of the community at Rice Lake to resist removal to the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation, created in 1854 at the Treaty of La Pointe. The community at Rice Lake was first led by White's father, Nenaa'angabi, who after being killed in battle with the Dakota in 1855 was succeeded by Joe White's brother Waabizheshi. Joe White became ogimaa when Waabizheshi was murdered in 1877 for unknown reasons by another Ojibwe. While many studies portray American colonialism as defined by federal policy, this dissertation seeks a much broader understanding of colonialism, including the complex role of state and local governments as well as corporations. All of these facets of American colonialism shaped the events that led to the death of Joe White and the struggle of the Ojibwe to resist removal to the reservation.