Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:02:44.604Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - “Damned Yankee Court and Jury”

More New Institutions, Keeping Order and Peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

Lucy Eldersveld Murphy
Lucy Eldersveld Murphy
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
Get access

Summary

On May 11, 1824, a grand jury in Prairie du Chien indicted Governor Lewis Cass’s brother for assault. Captain Charles L. Cass of the Fifth Regiment, U.S. Infantry, stationed at Fort Crawford had apparently attacked Joseph Glass, who was in jail at the time. The Glass family, of course, had been the objects of community assistance (mentioned in the previous chapter) after the father’s incarceration had caused them economic distress and officials had threatened to take the children from their mother. Public pressure had caused the county commission to find a way for Glass to get out of jail and the children to stay with their parents.

The mercy shown to Joseph Glass was one method of resolving the whole affair, but there was also the second issue, the matter of the beating he had received from Charles Cass on January 12. So Prairie du Chien community members used another new institution, the grand jury, to address the violent behavior of Captain Cass. As they had with the new electoral system, the habitants found ways to make the unfamiliar court system both familiar and useful. They could have let the matter go out of deference to the governor. After all, Charles Cass wasn’t in Prairie du Chien anymore by the time the grand jury met. Five months after the attack when the circuit court finally convened, he seems to have left town after resigning from the army. But the predominantly Creole grand jury was not going to let the matter go: they were still angry.

Type
Chapter
Information
Great Lakes Creoles
A French-Indian Community on the Northern Borderlands, Prairie du Chien, 1750–1860
 , pp. 108 - 147
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cass, Charles L. as Lewis Cass’s brother, Klunder, Willard Carl, Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1996), 48, n. 55 (p. 326)
Heitman, Francis B., Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903), Vol. I, 289
Chaput, Donald, “Bailly, Joseph,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2000), Vol. VI, accessed July 14, 2009
Elizabeth, T. Baird, “Reminiscences of Early Days on Mackinac Island,” Wisconsin Historical Collections 14 (1898), 43
Brown, Elizabeth Gaspar, ed., “Judge James Doty’s Notes of Trials and Opinions: 1823–1832,” American Journal of Legal History 9, no. 1 (January 1965): 31Google Scholar
Eastman, Charles A., The Soul of the Indian: An Interpretation [1911] (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 108–110
Radin, Paul, The Winnebago Tribe [1923], (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 161;
Perrot, Nicholas, “Memoir on the Manners, Customs, and Religion of the Savages of North America,” in The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes [1911–1912], edited by Blair, Emma Helen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), Vol. I, 141
Forsyth, Thomas, “Account of the Manners and Customs of the Sauk and Fox Nations of Indians Tradition,” in The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes [1911–1912], edited by Blair, Emma Helen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), Vol. II, 186–187
Deloria, Vine Jr. and Lytle, Clifford M., American Indians, American Justice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), 85
Harring, Sidney L., “Indian Law, Sovereignty, and State Law: Native People and the Law,” in A Companion to American Indian History, edited by Deloria, Philip J. and Salisbury, Neal (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 445
James, Rudy Al, “Traditional Native Justice: Restoration and Balance, not ‘Punishment,’” in Unlearning the Language of Conquest: Scholars Expose Anti-Indianism in America, edited by Topa, Wahinke (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), 113
Whitney, Ellen M., comp. and ed., The Black Hawk War, 1831–1832, 2 vols. (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1973)
Bailey, Kenneth P., ed. and trans., Journal of Joseph Marin, French Colonial Explorer and Military Commander in the Wisconsin Country, Aug. 7, 1753–June 30, 1754 (n.p.: Published by the editor, 1975)
Moogk, Peter N., La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada – A Cultural History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000), 62
Kellogg, Louise Phelps, The French Régime in Wisconsin and the Northwest (New York: Cooper Square, 1968)
Podruchny, Carolyn, Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 136
Smith, Alice E., The History of Wisconsin (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1985)
Smith, Alice Elizabeth, James Duane Doty, Frontier Promoter (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1954)
Ellis, Albert G., “Life and Public Services of J. D. Doty,”WHC, Vol. 5 (1868), 372Google Scholar
Murphy, Lucy Eldersveld, “Public Mothers: Native American and Métis Women as Creole Mediators in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest,” Journal of Women’s History, special issue on “Revising the Experiences of Colonized Women,” 14, no. 4 (Winter 2003): 142–166;Google Scholar
Jung, Patrick J., in “Judge James Duane Doty and Wisconsin’s First Court: The Additional Court of Michigan Territory, 1823–1836,”Wisconsin Magazine of History (Winter 2002–2003): 32–41Google Scholar
Nelson, William E., Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760–1830 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 110
Hall, Kermit L., The Magic Mirror: Law in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 154
Murphy, Lucy Eldersveld, “Women, Networks, and Colonization in Nineteenth-Century Wisconsin,” in Contours of a People: Metis Family, Mobility, and History, edited by St-Onge, Nicole, Podruchny, Carolyn, and Macdougall, Brenda (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012)
Carter, Clarence E., ed., Territorial Papers of the United States, 28 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1934–68)
Woollen, William Wesley et al., ed., “Executive Journal of Indiana Territory, 1800–1816,” Indiana Historical Society Publications 3, no. 3 [Indianapolis] (1900): 110–112, 122Google Scholar
Sleeper-Smith, Susan, “Women, Kin, and Catholicism,” in Native Women’s History in Eastern North American before 1900: A Guide to Research and Writing, edited by Kugel, Rebecca and Murphy, Lucy Eldersveld (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 234–255
Baird, Elizabeth, “Reminiscences of Life in Territorial Wisconsin,”WHC, Vol. 15 (1900)Google Scholar
, Les and Rentmeester, Jeanne, Wisconsin Creoles (Melbourne, FL: Privately published, 1987)
Kinzie, Juliette, Wau-Bun: The “Early Day” in the North-West [1856] (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 143–154
Hansen, James L., “Two Early Lists of Mixed-Blood Sioux,” Minnesota Genealogical Journal 6 (Nov. 1986): 5Google Scholar
Cole, Harry Ellsworth, Stagecoach and Tavern Tales of the Old Northwest (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1930), 17, 237–298
The Saloon on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979)
Carter, , TPUS, Vol. 11, 383. Thanks to Jim Hansen for bringing this source about Reed’s appointment as coroner to my attention. History of Crawford and Richland Counties (Springfield, IL: Union Publishers, 1884), Vol. I, 364
Hansen, James L., “Crawford County, Wisconsin Marriages, 1816–1848,” Minnesota Genealogical Journal 1 (May 1984): 54Google Scholar
Hansen, , “Prairie du Chien and Galena Church Records, 1827–29,” Minnesota Genealogical Journal 5 (May 1986): 18.Google Scholar
Pierce, Eben D., “James Allen Reed: First Permanent Settler in Trempealeau County and Founder of Trempealeau [Wisconsin],” Wisconsin Historical Society, Proceedings (1914), 108Google Scholar
Scanlan, Peter Lawrence, Prairie du Chien: French, British, American (Menasha, WI: Collegiate Press, 1937), 190–191
Lockwood, James H., “Early Times and Events in Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Historical Collections, Vol. 2 (Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society,[1856]; reprint 1903), 175
Mancall, Peter C., Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 79–82
Lockwood, , “Early Times and Events in Wisconsin,” 169–170
Keyes, Willard, “A Journal of Life in Wisconsin One Hundred Years Ago,”Wisconsin Magazine of History 3, no. 3 (March 1920): 356Google Scholar
Blume, William Wirt, ed., Transactions of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Michigan, 1814–1824 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1938), Vol. I, 21
Jackson, Donald, ed., Black Hawk, An Autobiography (Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 1955);
Nichols, Roger L., Black Hawk and the Warrior’s Path (Arlington Heights, IL: Harland Davidson, 1992)
Murphy, Lucy Eldersveld, A Gathering of Rivers: Indians, Métis, and Mining in the Western Great Lakes, 1737–1832 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000)
Fifth Census or, Enumeration of the Inhabitants of the United States, 1830 (Washington: Duff Green, 1832), 152–153
Harlan, Elizabeth Taft, Millbrook, Minnie Dubbs, and Erwin, Elizabeth Case, transcribers and eds., 1830 Federal Census: Territory of Michigan (Detroit: Detroit Society for Genealogical Research, 1961), 98–99
Hansen, James L., “Crawford County, Wisconsin, Marriages, 1816–1848,” Minnesota Genealogical Journal (May 1984): 40, 41, 42, 45, 47; Les and Jeanne Rentmeester, Wisconsin Creoles, 190, 240–241; 281–282, 288, 320, 333–334Google Scholar
Hansen, , “A Roll of Sioux Mixed Bloods, 1855–56,” Minnesota Genealogical Journal 7 (Nov. 1987): 11Google Scholar
Hansen, James L., “Prairie du Chien’s Earliest Church Records, 1817,” Minnesota Genealogical Journal 4 (November 1985): 3, 5Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×