Treaty of the Cedars

In this area grew the cities of Oshkosh, Neenah, Menasha, Appleton, Marinette, Oconto, Escanaba, Michigan, Wausau, Wisconsin Rapids, and Stevens Point.

From the arrival of French explorers in the 1600s, the Menominee generally lived in peace with the European newcomers, though some fought on the side of the British against the Americans in the War of 1812.

A few Menominee representatives were present and signed, but they didn't have enough authority within the tribe, so the lines were adjusted again in the 1827 Treaty of Butte des Morts.[2]: ?

[4] In the negotiation, the Menominee chiefs claimed a much larger area than the 1825 treaty, reaching from Milwaukee to Door County far into the UP and west to what would become Eau Claire.

[2]: 128–129 In 1835 Chief Oshkosh told the Indian agent that the Menominee wanted to discuss selling some land from the northwest part of their territory.

The agent relayed this up the chain through Lewis Cass, former Governor of Michigan Territory and then Secretary of War, to President Jackson.

[2]: 129–130 Dodge arranged the treaty talk at a place called The Cedars, on the Fox River below Grand Chute, in late August of 1836.

This may be the place described in 1831 as, "Some distance below the Chute there is a bold prominance [sic] at an angle to the river, which overlooks seventy miles of the rapids, which present an interesting and beautiful spectacle."

[2]: 132 Governor Dodge had fought a band of Sauk people and Fox in the Black Hawk War,[2]: 129  but he respected the Menomonie and recognized the immense value of their land.

Dodge would like to have given the Menominee more for the huge area, but $700,000 was a large amount to pay for a land cession at the time, and he felt the Senate would have refused to ratify a larger payment.

[8] By 1847, twenty-four mills on the Wisconsin - many in the strip opened by the Treaty of the Cedars - produced almost twenty million board feet per year.

[9] Huge tracts were opened to logging east of the Wolf River too, reaching from Oshkosh to Iron Mountain, Michigan to Escanaba.

In exchange, they agreed to move by 1850 from Wisconsin to a similar-sized area near the Crow Wing River in central Minnesota and receive ten years of payments.