City Spirits: Stella’s

DE PERE – In March 1906, Paul Van De Walle sold his bakery shop and buildings at Fourth Street and Main Avenue in De Pere for $4,000.

The buildings were purchased by John Hermes to introduce a wholesale produce business.

Hermes later added a restaurant, and in 1907, Hermes was granted a “saloon license” for the purpose of adding a bar.

But, two years later, the saloon was in trouble, as one of 11 Brown County taverns charged with selling liquor to a Native American customer.

An 1897 statute imposed fines and prison time for furnishing alcohol to “any Indian to whom allotment of land has been made while the title to the same shall be held in trust by the government, or to any Indian ward of the government under charge of any Indian superintendent or agent, or any Indian, including mixed bloods over whom the government . . . exercises guardianship.”

Henry Johnson of the Hermes Saloon was caught in a sting, of sorts, and brought up on federal charges in Milwaukee and was tried in Oshkosh.

“The arrests were made, it is understood, on the grounds that the saloon keepers sold liquor to a member of the Menominee Indian reservation, who is not a citizen of the United States,” a May 1909 Press-Gazette article stated.

The bar was later taken over by John Janssen.

Janssen then turned the business over to John Hermes’ son, Henry, during the summer of 1914.

After two years in business, Henry was among 11 other saloon keepers being eyed by the federal government, as J.C. LeMarr, a government inspector, was investigating Brown County.

Court complaints stated that the saloon operators had sold beer to members of the Oneida Nation.

Federal investigators had once again used members of local Nations to organize a sting, as saloon keepers continued to ignore the “Indian Appropriations Act” provisions.

The law was not repealed until 1953, with the passing of “House Concurrent Resolution 108.”

The federal resolution was intended to “make Indians within the territorial limits of the United States subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States, to end their status as wards of the United States, and to grant them all of the rights and prerogatives pertaining to American citizenship.”

Hermes continued to run the saloon, but that would just be the beginning of his challenges.

To be continued