Description
A collection of four store ledger books
from the Keshena, Wisconsin, general store of Joseph Gauthier.
Background
Joseph Gauthier (Joe Gokie in its Menominee rendering) was born on August 18, 1818, at Rock
Island, Illinois. He was nearly full-blood Menominee; his father was Shaw-nah-quah-hah and
his mother Sho-Sha-Quaer, who was a daughter of sub-chief Kanote and niece of the head-chief
Tomah. Gauthier's Menominee father died when he was eight years old, and sometime after his
mother married an employee of the American Fur Company named Antoine Gauthier, from whom he
took his surname. The frontier schools at Rock Island provided Joseph with a rudimentary
education, which he supplemented through his work among U. S. Army officers at Fort
Armstrong during the Black Hawk War. In 1850, he left Illinois and rejoined the Menominee,
who at the time, were situated at Poygan Lake just west of present-day Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Gauthier found work in a government-operated blacksmith shop and eventually was promoted to
shop boss; the Menominee moved to Keshena, Wisconsin in 1852, and the shop was
re-established in the new location. In 1857, Gauthier received his first appointment as an
official interpreter for the tribe and tribal court, a position he kept for most of the rest
of his life. In 1860 or 1861, he went into partnership with Charles Upham and opened a
general store and trading post, though Gauthier soon took over the everyday operations of
running the store until 1866 when he gained reappointment as tribal interpreter. In 1852,
Gauthier married Mary Ann Mo-sha-quah-toe-kiew. They had one child, Frank, who died in
infancy; the couple then adopted a small boy, Joseph F. Gauthier, and brought him up as
their son. Mary Ann Gauthier died on July 12, 1892, and Joseph Gauthier died in
approximately 1899.
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