Cornelius Hill (November 13, 1834 – January 25, 1907) or Onangwatgo (“Big Medicine”) was the last hereditary chief of the Oneida Nation, and fought to preserve his people's lands and rights under various treaties with the United States government.

White settlers were also moving into Wisconsin, and coveted tribal lands, which were held in common under an 1838 treaty negotiated by Chief Daniel Bread, who by his death in 1873 thought such private allocation inevitable.

[3] At least one Indian Agent supposedly assigned to help the tribe also forbade them to sell shingles and other lumber products to support themselves during a crop failure, which Hill and missionary and teacher the Rev.

Edward A. Goodnough (who worked among the Oneidas from 1863 to 1890) thought was designed to get the tribe to sell lands to whites (if not his cronies), and eventually managed to secure that agent's dismissal.

Nonetheless, pursuant to the Dawes Act of 1887, the federal government allocated the tribe's Wisconsin land to individuals beginning in 1892, who were to be allowed to transfer that property after a 25-year waiting period.

Solomon S. Burleson (also a lawyer and doctor), secured a hospital and boarding school for the reservation, and the following year the Sisters of the Holy Nativity sent nuns to work as nurses and teachers there.

Goodnough and his successors, as well as his tribe's sachem and delegate to church councils, Hill thought ordination would bring additional authority among whites as well as help him become a bridge between the cultures.

The Oneida continued to revere Hill's wisdom and sanctity, relating tales of their leader to Works Progress Administration historians during the Great Depression, even though by 1920 only a few hundred acres of the reservation were owned by tribal members (the remaining approximately 65,000 acres being owned by whites before the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 caused the Bureau of Indian Affairs to begin reversing the policy).