Laura Cornelius Kellogg

Laura Minnie Cornelius Kellogg, the granddaughter of the famous Oneida leader Daniel Bread, was born in 1880 on the Oneida reservation in Wisconsin. One of the few Native American women of her time to attend college, she studied law and other subjects at Barnard College, Cornell University, the New York School of Philanthropy, Stanford University, and the University of Wisconsin, though she never attained a degree from the universities.

Fluent in Oneida, Mohawk, and English, Kellogg became a founding member of the Society of American Indians in 1911 and taught at the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California.

An orator, organizer, and an activist for Native American rights, Kellogg was also a short story writer, playwright, poet, and political essayist, though most of her books and pamphlets have not survived. “A Tribute to the Future of My Race” is her only known surviving poem.

Though Kellogg is believed to have died in 1949, the exact date and location of her death is unknown.