In the Menominee language, this place is known as "Māēnomehsāyak", "wild rice along the banks". The name refers to the wild rice which is a traditional staple of the diets of many Native Americans living in the area, particularly the Menominee, whose name in English is ultimately from an Ojibwe word meaning "people of the wild rice". The Menominee ceded this territory to the United States in the 1836 Treaty of the Cedars, after years of negotiations about how to accommodate the Oneida, Stockbridge-Munsee, and Brothertown peoples who were being removed from New York to Wisconsin.