The following information is from the government website gunlaketribe-nsn.gov.

The Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians (Gun Lake Tribe) is part of the historic Three Fires Confederacy, an alliance of the Pottawatomi (Bodewadmi), Ottawa (Odawa) and Chippewa (Ojibwe). Tribal Nations in the Great Lakes region are also known as the Neshnibek, or original people.

The Three Fires Confederacy, under the command of Chief Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish, signed the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 with the United States government. At the turn of the 19th century the Chief's Band inhabited the Kalamazoo River Valley. The Band's primary village was located at the head of the Kalamazoo River.

Chief Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish signed the Treaty of Chicago in 1821, which was the first land cession to the U.S. government that directly affected his Band. Under the terms of the 1821 Treaty, the Tribe retained a three-square-mile reservation located at present day downtown Kalamazoo.

The U.S. and the Pottawatomi Tribes signed the Treaty of St. Joseph in 1827. Under its terms the Chief ceded rights to the Kalamazoo reserve granted under the 1821 treaty. Neither payment nor land was ever provided to the Chief's Band and instead this began a period of constant movement north in an effort to avoid forced removal out west. The Band briefly settled in Cooper, Plainwell and Martin before finding a permanent settlement in Bradley, circa 1838, near Gun Lake.

The Bradley Settlement was first known as the Griswold Mission. This was an effort of the Episcopal Church under the direction of Reverend James Selkirk to Christianize the Indians. Later known as the Bradley Indian Mission, Chief Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish's Band remained an Indian community and persevered as a Tribal Government into present times.

The political leadership of the Band since European contact is well documented. First, Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish followed by his son Penassee, followed by his first son Shu-be-quo-ung (a.k.a. Moses Foster) and then Moses's brother, known by his Anglicized name - David K. (D.K.) Foster. Charles Foster, D.K.'s son, was later elected Chief in 1911.

Under the leadership of Selkirk Sprague, the "Bradley Indians" attempted to organize under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Before doing so, however, the Bureau of Indian Affairs decided to withhold recognition of Lower Peninsula Michigan Indian Tribes.

During the 1980s the Band prepared for federal recognition under the new federal acknowledgement procedures of 1978. In the early 1990s, the Tribe filed for federal acknowledgement by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Branch of Acknowledgement and Research. Federal recognition of Chief Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish's Band of Pottawatomi Indians became effective on August 23, 1999.


The following is courtesy of The Allegan News, May 10, 2014

Bradley Church Celebrates 100 Years

The ministry's roots extend back to 1836 with the signing of the Ottawa/Chippewa Treaty. At that time, U.S. President Martin Van Buren decided to involve five Christian denominations in the effort to "educate and civilize" Indians. "They thought the only way to save the Indians was to Christianize them," said current tribal member Becky Baker, whose great-grandfather Selkirk Sprague and grandfather Fred Sprague both served as pastors at the mission. At that time, Samuel Alan McCoskrey, newly consecrated Episcopal Bishop of Michigan, was provided with funds for Indian missions and schools. He appointed the Rev. James Selkirk to establish an Episcopalian mission at Bradley in 1838. By the 1840s the mission had 38 permanent resident families and about 220 individuals. In the 1840s they opened a school and acquired a bell, which was rung for services, community events, and emergencies.

Attendance dropped after the Treaty of 1855 set aside lands for the Indians of Bradley in Oceana and Mason counties in Northern Michigan. Most went north, but returned by the 1870s and rejoined the congregation. By this time, it had transferred religious allegiance from the Episcopalian Church to the Methodist Church. The Bradley Indian Cemetery, west of the current church building, was established in 1885. It has continued to be the burial place of both resident and nonresident descendants of Bradley-area Indian families until the present day.

Beginning in the early 1900s, the church had a series of Indian ministers. They included Joseph Shagonaby, John Pigeon, Selkirk Sprague, Fred Sprague, Sampson Pigeon, Joe Sprague, and Louis White-Eagle Church.

The current building was erected in 1914. In the late 1920s the Methodist Church moved to exercise stronger central supervision over the activities of local churches. Beginning in 1929, non-Indian pastors were assigned to serve the church at Bradley and at the Salem Indian Mission Church, now located at 3644 28th St. near Hopkins.

In the 1940s, the Methodist Conference attempted to merge the missions of Bradley and Salem, but the move was resisted by the members of the two churches, as members of each congregation wished to maintain their own identity and traditions. After a severe storm damaged the building in 1979, the congregation and community members pitched in to repair it. They also added a meeting room annex.

Until 1992, the Bradley Indian Mission served as not only a religious center, but as the focus of tribal government. In that year, a provisional government called the "Bradley Settlement Elders Council" was empowered to organize Allegan County Indians. When the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi Indians petitioned for federal acknowledgment in 1994, it relied on church records to prove it had a sustained government-to-government relationship with the United States going back to first contact with European descendants.