William S. Hamilton was one of Alexander Hamilton’s sons. I don’t think he was a barefooter, but he didn’t have qualms about going barefoot when it made sense.
He’s mentioned in an article in an 1866 Harpers New Monthly Magazine related to the time he spent working at lead mining in southwest Wisconsin.
Here’s what it says:
[A repost.]
The mines at Hamilton Settlement were first worked by William S. Hamilton, a son of the distinguished statesman Alexander Hamilton. Colonel Hamilton removed early to Illinois, and was a member of the Illinois Legislature in 1825-6. He emigrated to the lead mines, the then Michigan Territory, in 1828, and was an officer in the Black Hawk war in 1832. He resided in Iowa County, Wisconsin, from that time until 1849, when he went to California, and died there in 1851. He was a gentleman of much natural ability, but of eccentric habits. He never married, and, though naturally of a social and genial disposition, shunned all society. He adopted great plainness of garb, and while working his mines lived and dressed more coarsely than any of his workmen. With his coarse clothes, slouched hat, bare feet, and his pantaloons rolled up to his knees and covered with mud and dirt, he would hardly have been recognized as the son of the greatest American statesman, and on of the most polished gentlemen of any period or country.
His time as an officer in the Black Hawk war also gives us some insight into bare feet at that time. He was a captain in the militia, and one of the things he did was work with the Native American Sioux and Menominee who were allies with the militia against Black Hawk’s Sauk Tribe.
We can pick up the story from “The Magazine of Western History” (November, 1884):
One of the causes of the Black Hawk war, in 1832, was the murder of a party of Menominees near Fort Crawford, by the Sacs and Foxes. There was an ancient feud between those tribes, which implies a series of scalping parties from generation to generation.
As the Menominees were at peace with the United States, and their camps were near the garrison, they were considered to have been under Federal protection, and their murder as an insult to its authority. The return of Keokuk’s band to the Rock river country brought on a crisis in the month of May. The Menominees were anxious to avenge themselves, but were quieted by the promise of the government that the Sacs and Foxes should be punished. They offered to accompany our troops as scouts or spies, which was not accepted until the month of July, when Black Hawk had returned to the Four Lakes, where is now the city of Madison.
We often think of Native Americans as always wearing moccasins, but that was not always the case. Continuing . . .
On a bright afternoon, about the middle of the month, a company of Menominee warriors emerged in single file from the woods in rear of Fort Howard, at the head of Green bay. They numbered about seventy-five, each one with a gun in his right hand, a blanket over his right shoulder, held across the breast by the naked left arm, and a tomahawk. Around the waist was a belt, on which was a pouch and a sheath, with a scalping knife. Their step was high and elastic, according to the custom of the men of the woods. On their faces was an excess of black paint, made more hideous by streaks of red. Their coarse black hair was decorated with all the ribbons and feathers at their command. Some wore moccasins and leggings of deer skin, but a majority were barefooted and barelegged. They passed across the common to the ferry, where they were crossed to Navarino, and marched to the Indian agency at Shantytown. Here they made booths of the branches of trees. Captain or Colonel Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton, was their commander. As they had an abundance to eat and were filled with martial prowess, they were exceedingly jubilant.
(My emphasis.)
I suppose it could be possible that the Menominee were too poor to have had moccasins. However, I suspect rather that they saw them as tools to be used only when needed. Why wear them out when their bare feet worked just fine?
