SEPTEMBER 10, 1880

ONEIDA LAURA CORNELIUS KELLOGG BORN—SOCIETY OF AMERICAN INDIANS FOUNDER

Born on the Oneida reserve in Wisconsin (WI), Kellogg graduated from Grafton Hall Episcopal with honors in 1898 studying Greek & Latin while compiling a grammar of the Oneida language. She also studied at Stanford, Barnard College, Cornell & WI University. On European tour, she studied “Green City” urban planning—self-sustained cities encircled by greenbelts. A Society of American Indians (SAI) founder, she proposed the concept for reservations, renamed the “Lalomi Plan,” at SAI’s convention in 1911. She often attacked the Bureau of Indian Affairs before Congress as corrupt & inefficient & in 1919 demanded justice for American Indians at the League of Nations. In 1920, she published Our Democracy and the American Indian: A Comprehensive Presentation of the Indian Situation as It Is Today. In the 1920s & 30s, with Dennis Wheelock & brother Chester P. Cornelius, she tried to apply the Lalomi Plan to the Oneida in WI & Keetoowah Nighthawk Society in Oklahoma. Kellogg died in New York City in 1947.

Sources:
  Catherine Faurot, “Laura Cornelius Kellogg: Reclaiming an Indigenous Visionary,” Rematriation.  Retrieved 3/10/2022, Laura Cornelius Kellogg: Reclaiming an Indigenous Visionary (rematriation.com)
Wikipedia
Portrait:  Author unknown, 1913. Public Domain.