Veterans and Bureaucrats “Out in the Brush”: Anishinaabe Pension Claims in Postbellum Michigan

From 1863 to 1865, 136 Anishinaabe men served in Company K of the First Michigan Sharpshooters. This paper argues that these Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi men employed their status as Civil War veterans, state citizens, and Anishinaabeg to acquire resources from the government; build networks of support; and enhance their reputations and status in their communities. Anishinaabe veterans were frequently able to take advantage of commonly held Euro-American beliefs about indigenous peoples to acquire resources even when they did not meet the paperwork requirements of the United States Pension Office. This paper applies an Anishinaabe framework—one that takes into account changing customs and beliefs—to Civil War pension files. The 102 pension files of Company K Anishinaabeg are a rich yet underutilized resource; they are as problematic as they are informative. Through careful reading strategies, this paper uses these files to demonstrate the ways Company K men in the lower peninsula of Michigan were engaged in both American and indigenous social and political networks after the Civil War. In addition, Civil War pension files illuminate community dynamics, marriage practices, and gender roles on reservations and in Michigan counties with large Anishinaabe populations. As Anishinaabe men and their communities struggled to maintain autonomy and claims to land, they claimed the rights of citizenship in the Great Lakes borderlands, affecting both Anishinaabe and state politics.