The Pottawatomi Bands still maintain close connections and relationships to the lands and waterways throughout Neshnabé-ki. It remains imperative to the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi to protect the mounds and burials, archeological sites, and other important cultural resources that permeate the lands and waterways of Neshnabé-ki.
The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians (Gun Lake Tribe) is part of the historic Three Fires Confederacy, an alliance of the Pottawatomi (Bodewadmi), Ottawa (Odawa) and Chippewa (Ojibwe). Tribal Nations in the Great Lakes region are also known as the Neshnibek, or original people.
The Three Fires Confederacy, under the command of Chief Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish, signed the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 with the United States government. At the turn of the 19th century the Chief’s Band inhabited the Kalamazoo River Valley. The Band’s primary village was located at the head of the Kalamazoo River.
In the late 1700s, Neshnabé-ki totaled more than 89 million acres. Treaties, more specifically the land cession treaties of the early nineteenth century, led to a significant reduction in land base. Neshnabé-ki includes present-day Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. The Treaty of Greenville (1795) was the first treaty in which the Pottawatomi ceded land to the United States. Most of the territory now known as present-day Ohio was ceded to the U.S. under this treaty, but only impacted a portion of Neshnabé-ki. In the State of Wisconsin, Neshnabé-ki includes present-day Door Peninsula and lands south of the peninsula along the shores of mshigmé (Lake Michigan) and the banks of the kche-sippi (Mississippi River). Throughout the 1820s and 1830s, most of the Pottawatomi lands in Indiana and Illinois were ceded to the Federal Government, which led to some of the first Pottawatomi relocations west of the Mississippi River to Indian Territory.
Chief Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish signed the Treaty of Chicago in 1821, which was the first land cession to the U.S. government that directly affected his Band. Under the terms of the 1821 Treaty, the Tribe retained a three-square-mile reservation located at present day downtown Kalamazoo.
The U.S. and the Pottawatomi Tribes signed the Treaty of St. Joseph in 1827. Under its terms the Chief ceded rights to the Kalamazoo reserve granted under the 1821 treaty. Neither payment nor land was ever provided to the Chief’s Band and instead this began a period of constant movement north in an effort to avoid forced removal out west. The Band briefly settled in Cooper, Plainwell and Martin before finding a permanent settlement in Bradley, circa 1838, near Gun Lake.
The last land cession treaty that ceded Pottawatomi lands in the Great Lakes to the United States was the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. After the Treaty, some Pottawatomi relocated to Iowa and Kansas, while some escaped northward to Canada to avoid removal west of the Mississippi River. From 1838 to 1842, U.S. government and military leaders and state and territory militia pursued several forced removals of the Pottawatomi living in present-day northern Indiana and southern Michigan, including the 1838 Trail of Death, which forced various Pottawatomi villages and bands to leave their homelands for lands west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory. Several Pottawatomi Bands were able to avoid or escape the forced removals and remain near their historic village sites in their traditional territory in the Great Lakes region, including the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians. However, the Pottawatomi Bands who remained in southern Michigan were not federally recognized until the 1990s.The Bradley Settlement was first known as the Griswold Mission. This was an effort of the Episcopal Church under the direction of Reverend James Selkirk to Christianize the Indians. Later known as the Bradley Indian Mission, Chief Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish’s Band remained an Indian community and persevered as a Tribal Government into present times.
The political leadership of the Band since European contact is well documented. First, Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish followed by his son Penassee, followed by his first son Shu-be-quo-ung (a.k.a. Moses Foster) and then Moses’s brother, known by his Anglicized name - David K. (D.K.) Foster. Charles Foster, D.K.’s son, was later elected Chief in 1911.
Under the leadership of Selkirk Sprague, the “Bradley Indians” attempted to organize under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Before doing so, however, the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided to withhold recognition of Lower Peninsula Michigan Indian Tribes.
During the 1980s the Band prepared for federal recognition under the new federal acknowledgement procedures of 1978. In the early 1990s, the Tribe filed for federal acknowledgement by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Branch of Acknowledgement and Research. Federal recognition of Chief Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish’s Band of Pottawatomi Indians became effective on August 23, 1999.
