Menominee Indian chief, b. probably in a tribal hunting camp at Point Bas (Nekoosa) on the Wisconsin River. During the War of 1812 he served with Menominee warriors on the British side at Mackinac and at Fort Meigs and Fort Sandusky, but in the Black Hawk War, he sided with the Americans. At the treaty of Butte des Morts (1827), Governor Lewis Cass recognized Oshkosh as chief of the Menominee. Three years later judge James D. Doty (q.v.), in a dramatic trial, saved the chief from the penalty of murder of another Indian on the grounds that, under the circumstances, American laws did not apply to Indians. Oshkosh signed treaties surrendering large portions of Menominee lands at Cedar Point in 1836 and at Lake Poygan in 1848, but worked to get adjustments in the provisions of the latter. He died on the Menominee reservation at Keshena. In 1926 his remains were reinterred at Oshkosh, the city that bears his name. Colls. State Hist. Soc. Wis., 3 (1857); Proc. State Hist. Soc. Wis.,1911 (1912),1912 (1913); Wis. Mag. Hist., 10.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]