Kewaskum, Wisconsin

History

In the early 19th century, the Kewaskum area was home to the Potawatomi, who surrendered the land to the United States Federal Government in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which required them to leave Wisconsin by 1838. While many Potawatomis moved west of the Mississippi River to Kansas, some chose to remain, and were referred to as "strolling Potawatomi" in contemporary documents because many of them were migrants who subsisted by squatting on their ancestral lands, which were now owned by white settlers. A band of strolling Potawatomi traveled through Dodge, Jefferson, and Washington counties, and was led by Chief Kewaskum, who had a camp on Pike Lake. The chief was friendly with the white settlers who began arriving in the 1840s. He died sometime between 1847 and 1850, but itinerant Potawatomis lived in Washington County into the late 19th century, when many of them gathered in northern Wisconsin to form the Forest County Potawatomi Community.

The first settlers in the area were the Barnes family, who arrived in 1844 and began farming near the future village. In 1847, the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature created the town of North Bend from land that had previously been part of the town of West Bend, and the community's first post office was established. In 1849, the residents changed their community's name to the "town of Kewaskum" to distinguish it from neighboring West Bend.

From the History section of Kewaskum, Wisconsin on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.