Lost Partridge Boy
The Indian boy claimed as the
lost child of the Partridges was a Menomonee. The speech made by Oshkosh,
head chief in 1855, to the editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel and
interpreted by Mr. Robert Gringos and Mr. William Johnson, was as follows:
"It was at the payment at Lake Pouwaygan, made by Colonel Jones, that this
boy was born. I then lived on the Wisconsin river and was notified to come
to the payment with my tribe. The roll had all been made up, and the
payment was to be made the next day. During the night this boy was born. I
was told of it in the morning, and asked Colonel Jones to put his name on
the roll. The colonel said it could not be, but if the chiefs were all
willing the child should have his share. They were all willing. The boy's
share was given to me, and I gave it to his mother. It is the truth I am
telling."
The Partridges lived in Vinland. They lost the boy.
Having discovered this boy among the Menomonee they claimed it, and a
trial was had before Commissioner Buttrick in Oshkosh who decided in favor
of the Indian mother Sabah Kom, but the child was taken from the sheriff
by Partridge friends and after two years was recovered by the Indian agent
down in Indiana and brought to Milwaukee, where before proper legal steps
could be had, the Partridges smuggled the child out of jail and he grew up
among the whites.
The boy might resemble his white neighbors, as the Menomonee
are a fine appearing people. Cadillac says. of them many years ago, that
"the men are very white, and the women also rather pretty and more gentle
than those of other tribes."
"There is no nation in which the men are so well built,
or have so good figures as this one." It was Charlevoix, who said of them,
they are "fine looking men, among the most shapely in Canada and taller
than the Pottawattamie."
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