Pemoussa and Pechicamengoa: Negotiating Native Identity and Loyalty in Early America

This paper examines the actions of Meskwaki chief Pemoussa and Kickapoo chief Pechicamengoa to better understand how eighteenth-century Native people negotiated disputes over identity and loyalty in the Upper Mississippi. During the winter of 1728–1729, the French and their extensive network of Native allies had just launched a second war against the Meskwaki after twelve years of uneasy peace. In response, the Kickapoo and Mascouten of Pechicamengoa’s village had taken twelve Frenchmen captive, but now needed to decide what to do with them. Some Kickapoo including Pechicamengoa, whose wife was Meskwaki, sought to use this as an opportunity to reaffirm his people’s longstanding alliance with the Meskwaki—built on marriages like his and residence in the same villages—by turning over the captives and joining the Meskwaki in the war. However, other Kickapoo, with less intimate ties to the Meskwaki, sought to abandon the alliance and side with New France in attacking the Meskwaki. This disagreement within Pechicamengoa’s village set off a series of disputes among the Kickapoo, Mascouten, and Meskwaki that would end with Pemoussa dead at the hands of Kickapoo warriors and the Kickapoo and Mascouten siding with New France, with Pechicamengoa ultimately joining his relatives among the Kickapoo, rather than his Meskwaki family-by-marriage. But this outcome was far from certain, and only came about after intense, sometimes violent negotiations over which relationships and identities were most important, relevant, and advantageous given the coming war. Through the negotiations of Pemoussa, Pechicamengoa, and those around them we can see that Native identities and ideas of belonging were shaped by negotiations within Native communities based on specific circumstances. Ultimately, Native identities—and therefore loyalties—were structured by a constellation of social relationships between individuals like Pechicamengoa and Pemoussa that had to be constantly negotiated and maintained.