b. 1838
d. Long Lake, Wisconsin, December, 1894

Joe White was an Ojibwe Chief who signed treaties in 1837, 1842 and 1854 to guarantee the Ojibwe the right to hunt and fish without restriction on their ceded lands in northern Wisconsin. During the 1880s and 1890s, the State of Wisconsin enacted wildlife conservation laws that limited hunting and fishing, and applied them to the Ojibwe as well as to white settlers regardless of federal treaty stipulations.

Death

On December 13, 1894, a local game warden and law officer arrested chief Joe White at Long Lake, in Washburn County for hunting deer out of season. Although White agreed to go with them peaceably, they attempted to handcuff him and a scuffle broke out. The only eyewitness accounts, forensic analysis and ballistics evidence show that the game warden clubbed White in the head with his rifle and that the deputy shot him at a distance of nearly 30 yards as White ran away. Chief White died two hours later.

Trial

An inquest was held and the Washburn County district attorney filed murder charges against the deputy and the game warden. In a highly publicized trial, an all-white jury found that the officers had acted in self-defense and declared them innocent. The Lake Superior Ojibwe remembered the incident for generations as a flagrant example of treaty violation and racial injustice.

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Shell Lake Watchman Dec. 20, 1894; March 21 & 26, 1895; Wisconsin. Circuit Court (Washburn County), Case File ST113. Satz, Ronald N. Chippewa Treaty Rights (Madison, 1991)