[6] Her maternal grandfather was Chief Daniel Bread,[6] who helped find land for his people after the Oneidas were forcibly removed from New York State to Wisconsin in the early nineteenth century.

[7] Unlike many of her contemporaries on the reservation, Cornelius managed to avoid the usual educational route to distant Indian Eastern boarding schools at Carlisle and Hampton.

Of Europeans, she writes kindly and with hope "Ye spring from noble warrior blood, as brave as Saxon, Roman, Greek, a race of kingly men, May your careers be as complete as the arches of your mater halls.

[17] In 1909, called "Princess Neoskalita" by the Los Angeles Times, Kellogg said she "did not consider her education complete until she had some knowledge of the social life, the art and literature of the French and English."

"[19] While touring Europe, Kellogg developed a particular interest in the Garden city movement of urban planning in England, Germany and France, and visioned the model adapted to reservations to generate Oneida economic self-sufficiency and tribal self-governance.

After the Society's Columbus meeting in 1911, the New York Tribune hailed Cornelius as a scholar, a social worker, "one of the moving spirits in the new American Indian Association, " and "a woman of rare intellectual gifts.

In a local newspaper called the Tulsa Daily World, an anonymous member of the Oneida tribe described Laura Cornelius Kellogg as a "ready borrower" with the "habit of making little touches wherever she finds any of her people".

[39] She also condemned materialism: "Where wealth is the ruling power and intellectual attainments secondary, we must watch out … that we do not act altogether upon the dictates of a people who have not given sufficient time and thought to our own peculiar problems, and we must cease to be dependent on their estimates of our position".

Kellogg believed that the Bureau of Indian Affairs could play a different role, that of guarantor of sovereignty and protector of Native peoples from grafters and petty state politics.

[7] Kellogg saw the need for the Haudenosaunee people of the Six Nations of the Iroquois to reunite, institute tribal self-government, reclaim communal lands and promote economic development.

Kellogg's "Lolomi Plan" was a vision for the future of Indian reservations which drew upon the Garden city movement, the success of Mormon communities and the enthusiasm and efficiency of Progressive Era organizations.

[41] On April 3–4, 1911, at the invitation of Professor Fayette Avery McKenzie, six American Indian intellectuals attended a planning meeting at Ohio State University.

[43] On June 21 and 22, 1911, Kellogg hosted a meeting of the Temporary Executive Committee at her home in Seymour, Wisconsin, to draft a letter announcing the association's formation and purpose.

On October 11, 1913, after several weeks investigating oil leases at Pawhuska, Oklahoma, the agency of the Osage tribe, the Kelloggs were arrested on orders of a U.S. District Court in Pueblo, Colorado, on charges of obtaining money under false pretenses and impersonating federal officials.

Kellogg asserted that this was a frame-up instigated by the Indian Bureau, "Another move in the game now being played in Osage County between the Department of the Interior, various big factors in the oil world, and the advance guard of the Robinson investigating committee."

While touring Europe from 1908 to 1910, Kellogg developed a particular interest in garden cities in England, Germany and France, and visioned the model adapted to reservations to generate "Oneida economic self-sufficiency and tribal self-governance".

Indians could thus adopt beneficial elements of mainstream society while avoiding such evils as the factory system, urban congestion, and class conflict between labor and capital.

Lolomi villages would be outside the Bureau's control, managed as private foundation, maintaining lifestyles agreeable to the American Indian through their concentration on outdoor pursuits.

[58] Her book was "lovingly dedicated" to the memory of Chief Redbird Smith, spiritual leader of the Nighthawk Keetoowah (Cherokee), "who preserved his people from demoralization, and was the first to accept the Lolomi."

Her ally attorney Edward A. Everett appealed for extension, but the property was finally sold in the spring of 1924 and immediately given to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay.

The Keetoowah Nighthawk Society secretly practiced the traditional ceremonies and gatherings of the pre-removal Cherokee culture, and resisted assimilation, allotment and dissolution of tribal government.

He was an Indian, an educated man and came from the sacred direction, east[62] During this time, Cornelius helped the Keetoowah reestablish in some way the old tribal organization of the Cherokee Nation.

[66] In 1920, Minnie Kellogg's book Our Democracy in the American Indian was "lovingly dedicated" to the memory of Chief Redbird Smith, spiritual leader of the Nighthawk Keetoowah, "who preserved his people from demoralization, and was the first to accept the Lolomi."

After a four-year study from 1919 to 1922, the Everett Report concluded the Six Nations Iroquois were entitled to 6,000,000 acres (2,400,000 ha) in New York, due to illegal dispossession after the 1784 Treaty of Fort Stanwix.

[72] The Boylan decision and the Everett Report buoyed Kellogg and her supporters with the hope of successfully reclaiming Oneida and Six Nations lands in New York State and Pennsylvania.

In October 1922, after an extensive investigation and report by Kellogg, the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin announced that they would pursue a claim for 6 million New York acres of land valued at $2 billion.

She added that the real question was not the workings of the Everett Commission, but the legal status of the Six Nations according to Treaty of Fort Stanwix of 1784 granting the Iroquois Confederacy independence.

Less than a week later, Kellogg sent Everett a letter endorsing his report, condemning the Indian Welfare League, and making an offer to retain his legal services for in future litigation.

Once again she spoke in proud terms of the Six Nations, of her plans for their economic, political and spiritual revival, of her hatred for the Bureau, whom she now accused of spreading pernicious and criminal propaganda against her and the Iroquois.

[89] While Kellogg never fulfilled the expectations of her followers, her Lolomi Plan was a Progressive Era alternative to Bureau of Indian Affairs control, and presaged subsequent 20th-century movements to reclaim communal lands, institute tribal self-government and promote economic development.