native.BrokenClaw.net

Caleb Ancestry
The Caleb family are all descendants of a Christian Munsee Indian from the Ohio Territory named Caleb,1 who was baptized on 10 November 1790 by Rev. David Zeisberger at the Moravian mission of Petquotting in the valley of the Muskingum (now Tuscarawas) River. The Fliegel Index contains several references to Caleb, mostly reporting his […]

Allotment, or allotment in severalty, was the process of assigning specific plots of land on the reservation to specific individuals. Allotment, authorized by US Congress in the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, was another means to assimilate Indians into white culture, but its main result was to provide a means to sell reservation land to […]

The following table shows my transcription of the Census of the Chippewa and Christian Indians, dated 30 June 1900, by the Indian agent, W. R. Honnell, of the Pottawatomie and Great Nemaha Agency in Kansas. The first column shows the Name exactly as it was written on the original document. The Description shows the gender, […]

Members of the combined Chippewa and Munsee tribes posed for this photograph in front of the Moravian Mission (white clapboard barely visible in the background) in Ottawa, Kansas, on 8 November 1900. It is the last record of their people as a group, coinciding with the final disbursement of federal funds.
The original version of this […]

After years of public pressure and internal conflict, the Chippewa and Munsee Indians finally voted in favor of the federal Indian Appropriation Act of 1897 that provided for the appraisal, distribution, and disposal of their tribal lands and funds in Franklin County, Kansas. The vote was taken on 26 July 1897 at the Moravian mission […]

In the summer of 1868, Ignatius Caleb and Moses Kilbuck traveled to Cherokee Nation territory to try to move their dwindling tribe into a confederation with the Cherokee. The following document shows that they were successful in getting the Cherokee leadership to agree in principal.
The provisions of the agreement were for the Munsee to pay […]

This list was adapted for the web from a photocopy of a two-page typed document provided by the family of Clio Caleb Church. Since it has no official heading or signature, the document seems to be someone’s transcription of an original report to the Office of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior. It appears to […]

Much of what we know about the early history of the Munsee comes from the records of the Moravian missionaries. Unlike other Christian sects and denominations who came to America for religious freedom, one of the main reasons that the Moravians came to America was to minister to the native population. Their first efforts started […]