History of the Ojibway Nation/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII.
COMMENCEMENT OF BRITISH SUPREMACY.
That portion of the Ojibways, forming by far the main body of the tribe, who occupied the area of Lake Superior, and those bands who had already formed distinct villages on the headwaters of the Mississippi and its principal northeastern tributaries, were not engaged in the bloody transaction of the taking of Fort Michilimackinac, or at most, but a few of their old warriors who have all now fallen into their graves, were noted as having been accidentally present on the occasion of this most important event in the history of their tribe.
It is true that the war-club, tobacco, and wampum belt of war had been carried by the messengers of Pontiac and his lieutenant, the Mackinaw chieftain, to La Pointe, and the principal villages of the tribe on Lake Superior, but the Ojibways listened only to the advice and the words of peace of a French trader who resided at Sault Ste. Marie, and from this point (with an influence not even surpassed by that which his contemporary, Sir Wm. Johnson, wielded over the more eastern tribes), he held sway, and guided the councils of the Lake Superior Ojibways, even to their remotest village.
This man did not stand tamely by, as many of his fellow French traders did, to witness the butchery of British soldiers and subjects, and see the blood of his fellow whites ruthlessly and freely flowing at the hands of the misguided savages. On the contrary, he feared not to take a firm stand against the war, and made noble and effective efforts to prevent the deplorable consequences which their opposition to the British arms, would be sure to entail on the Ojibways. He knew full well that the French nation had withdrawn forever from their possessions in this country, and that their national fire, which was promised would blaze forever with the fire of the Ojibways, was now totally extinguished, and knowing this, he did not foolishly stimulate, as others did, the sanguinary opposition which the Indians continued to make against the predominant Saxon race, by telling them that "the great king of the French had only fallen into a drowse, but would soon awaken, and drive the English back into the great salt water."
On the contrary, he pointed out to the Ojibways, the utter uselessness and impotence of their efforts; and he told them that the war would only tend to thin the ranks of their warriors, causing their women to cover their faces with the black paint of mourning, and keep them miserably poor, for the want of traders to supply their wants.
It is through the humane advice of this French trader, and the unbounded influence which he held over the Lake Superior Ojibways, which prevented them from joining the alliance of Pontiac, in his war against the English, and which has thereby saved them from the almost utter annihilation which has befallen every other tribe who have been induced to fight for one type of the white race against another, and which enables them at this day to assume the position of the most numerous and important branch of the Algic race, and the largest tribe residing east of the Mississippi.
The name of this man was John Baptiste Cadotte, and he was a son of the Mons. Cadeau who first appeared in the Ojibway country, as early as in 1671, in the train of the French envoy, Sieur du Lusson, when he treated with the delegates of the northwestern Indian tribes at Sault Ste. Marie.
John Baptist Cadotte[1] (as his name was spelt by the British, and has been retained to this day) had, early in life, followed the example of the hardy western adventurers who had already found their way to the sources of the Great Lakes and the Great River, Mississippi. He went as a "Marchand voyageur," and visited the remotest villages of the Ojibways on Lake Superior, to supply their wants in exchange for their valuable beaver skins. He became attached to one of their women, belonging to the great clan of A-waus-e, and married her according to the forms of the Catholic religion, of which he was a firm believer.
At the breaking out of the war between France and Great Britain, which resulted in the ending of the French domination in America, Mons. Cadotte made it his permanent residence at Sault Ste. Marie, from which point he eventually wielded the salutary influence which we have mentioned. He is the only French trader of any importance whom the Ojibways tell of having remained with them, when the French people were forced to leave the Lake Superior country. And it is said that though he made several attempts to leave the Ojibway people in company with his departing countrymen, such was the affection which they bore to himself and his half-breed children, that their chiefs threatened to use force to prevent his departure.
His Ojibway wife appears to have been a woman of great energy and force of character, as she is noted to this day for the influence she held over her relations—the principal chiefs of the tribe; and the hardy, fearless manner, in which, accompanied only by Canadian "Coureurs du bois" to propel her canoes, she made long journeys to distant villages of her people to further the interests of her husband.
She bore him two sons, John Baptiste, and Michel, who afterwards succeeded their father in the trade, and became, with their succeeding children of the same name, so linked with the Ojibways, that I shall be forced often to mention their names in the future course of my narrative, although at the evident risk of laying myself open to the charge of egotism, or making them prominent because they happen to be my direct progenitors.
Alex. Henry, in his straight-forward and truthful narrative, gives full testimony to all which I have said respecting the position and influence of Mons. Cadotte among the Ojibways during the middle of the past century, and not only for the purpose of making known the noble and philanthropic conduct of this man during this trying season in Ojibway history, but also to more fully illustrate to the reader the position and affairs of the tribe during this era, I will take the liberty to introduce a few more paragraphs from his pen. In the spring of the following year after his capture, having passed the winter as an Indian in the hunting camp of his adopted brother Wa-wa-tam, in whose family he was ever kindly treated, he returned to the fort at Michilimackinac, which now contained but two French traders. He says:—
"Eight days had passed in tranquillity, when there arrived a band of Indians from the bay of Sag-u-en-auw (Saginaw.) They had assisted at the siege of Detroit, and came to muster as many recruits for that service as they could. For my own part, I was soon informed that, as I was the only Englishman in the place, they proposed to kill me, in order to give their friends a mess of English broth to raise their courage. This intelligence was not of the most agreeable kind, and in consequence of receiving it, I requested my friend to carry me to the Sault de Saint Marie, at which place I knew the Indians to be peaceably inclined, and that M. Cadotte enjoyed a powerful influence over their conduct. They considered M. Cadotte as their chief, and he was not only my friend, but a friend to the English. It was by him that the Chippeways of Lake Superior were prevented from joining Pontiac."
His friend and brother Wa-wa-tam was not slow in exerting himself for his preservation, and leaving Mackinaw during the night, he proceeded with him to Isle aux Outardes, on the route to Sault Sainte Marie. Here Nonen, the wife of Wa-wa-tam, falling sick, they were obliged to remain for some days, in the greatest fear of hostile Indians, who were now daily expected to pass on the route to Missisaukie, or Straits of Niagara, for the purpose of carrying on the war against the British. A return to Mackinaw was to incur certain destruction, and it was with the greatest pleasure that the distressed traveller at last saw a canoe approaching the island, which he knew must be manned by Canadians, by the manner in which the paddles were managed, and the whiteness of the sail. On entering the lodge of his adopted brother, elated with the news of the approach of white men, he says:—
"The family congratulated me on the approach of so fair an opportunity of escape, and my father and brother (for he was alternately each of these) lit his pipe, and presented it to me, saying, 'my son, this may be the last time that ever you and I shall smoke out of the same pipe. I am sorry to part with you. You know the affection which I have always borne you, and the dangers to which I have exposed myself and family, to preserve you from your enemies; and I am happy to find that my efforts promise not to have been in vain.' At this time a boy came into the lodge, informing us that the canoe had come from Michilimackinac, and was bound to the Sault de Sainte Marie. It was manned by three Canadians, and was carrying home Madame Cadotte, the wife of M. Cadotte, already mentioned. My hopes of going to Montreal being now dissipated, I resolved on accompanying Madame Cadotte, with her permission, to the Sault. On communicating my wishes to Madame Cadotte, she cheerfully acceded to them. Madame Cadotte, as I have already mentioned, was an Indian woman of the Chippeway nation, and she was very generally respected. . . . Being now no longer in the society of Indians, I put aside their dress, putting on that of a Canadian: a moleton or blanket coat over my shirt, and a handkerchief about my head, hats being very little worn in this country. At daylight on the second morning of our voyage, we embarked, and presently perceived several canoes behind us. As they approached, we ascertained them to be the fleet bound for the Missisaki, of which I had been so long in dread. It amounted to twenty sail.
"On coming up with us, and surrounding our canoe, and amid general inquiries concerning the news, an Indian challenged me for an Englishman, and his companions supported him, saying that I looked very like one, but I affected not to understand any of the questions which they asked me; and Madame Cadotte assured them that I was a Canadian, whom she had brought on his first voyage from Montreal. The following day saw us safely landed at the Sault, where I experienced a generous welcome from M. Cadotte. There were thirty warriors at this place, restrained from joining the war only by M. Cadotte's influence. Here, for five days, I was once more in possession of tranquillity; but on the sixth, a young Indian came into M. Cadotte's, saying that a canoe full of warriors had just arrived from Michilimackinac; that they had inquired for me; and that he believed their intentions to be bad. Nearly at the same time, a message came from the good chief of the village, desiring me to conceal myself, until he should discover the views and temper of the strangers. A garret was the second time my place of refuge; and it was not long before the Indians came to M. Cadotte's. My friend immediately informed Match-i-ki-wish, their chief, who was related to his wife, of the design imputed to them, of mischief against myself. Match-i-ki-wish frankly acknowledged that they had had such a design; but added, that if displeasing to M. Cadotte, it should be abandoned. He then further stated, that their errand was to raise a party of warriors to return with them to Detroit; and that it had been their intention to take me with them.
"In regard to the principal of the two objects thus disclosed, M. Cadotte proceeded to assemble all the chiefs and warriors of the village, and then, after deliberating for some time among themselves, sent for the strangers, to whom both M. Cadotte and the chief of the village addressed a speech. In these speeches, after recurring to the designs confessed to have been entertained against myself, who was now declared to be under the protection of all the chiefs, by whom any insult I might sustain would be avenged, the ambassadors were peremptorily told that they might go back as they came, none of the young men of this village being foolish enough to join them.
"A moment after, a report was brought that a canoe had just arrived from Niagara. As this was a place from which every one was anxious to hear news, a message was sent to these fresh strangers, requesting them to come to the council. The strangers came accordingly, and being seated, a long silence ensued. At length, one of them, taking up a belt of wampum, addressed himself thus to the assembly:—
'"My friends and brothers, I am come with this belt from our great father, Sir William Johnson. He desired me to come to you as his embassador, and tell you that he is making a great feast at Fort Niagara: that his kettles are all ready and his fires lit. He invites you to partake of this feast, in common with your friends, the Six Nations, who have all made peace with the English. He advises you to seize this opportunity of doing the same, as you cannot otherwise fail of being destroyed; for the English are on their march with a great army, which will be joined by different nations of Indians. In a word, before the fall of the leaf, they will be at Michilimackinac, and the Six Nations with them.'"
The tenor of this speech greatly alarmed the Indians throughout the Northwest, and those who fortunately had not embrued their hands too deeply in British blood, were glad to send delegates to the Great Council at Niagara. Among the rest, the Sault Ste. Marie Ojibways sent twenty deputies, with whom Mr. Henry, after one year of captivity and trouble, returned once more to his friends. These deputies, though they went in fear and trembling, were well received at the hands of Sir William Johnson, and they now experienced the good consequences of having listened to the advice of their trader.
During the summer of the same year, 1764, in which the council was held at Niagara, where it is said that twenty-two different tribes were represented, a British force of three thousand men under Gen. Bradstreet proceeded up the lakes as far as Detroit. Under the command of this officer, Alexander Henry had a battalion of Indian allies, among whom were "ninety-six Ojibways of Sault Ste. Mary," who, however, nearly all deserted before the army reached Fort Erie.
On arrival of this large body of troops at Detroit, a permanent peace was effected with all the northern tribes, including the Ojibways. Pontiac, the head and heart of the bloody Indian war which had now come to an end, was not present at this treaty. His best allies, the tribes of the northern lakes, had deserted him, and he thereafter confined his exertions to the tribes of the Miamis, Shawanoes, and Illinois, towards the south and west. He never overcame his animosity to the Saxon race, and had he not suffered a premature death at the hands of an Indian of the Kaskaskia tribe, he would again have fanned the flames of another sanguinary war. His name and influence extended over all the Algic tribes, and their regret for his loss is fully proved by the manner in which the Ojibways, Pottawaudumies, Ottawas, and Osaugees revenged his death by total extermination of the tribe to which belonged his assassin, and of the Illinois, Cahokias, and Peorias, who rallied to their defence, but a few families were saved from total annihilation.
For two years after the ending of Pontiac's war, the fear of Indian hostility was still so great that the British traders dared not extend their operations to the more remote villages of the Ojibways, and La Pointe, during this time, was destitute of a resident trader. To remedy this great evil, which the Indians, having become accustomed to the commodities of the whites, felt acutely, Ma-mong-e-se-da, the war chief of this village, with a party of his fellows, was deputed to go to Sir Wm. Johnson, to ask that a trader might be sent to reside among them. He is said to have been well received by their British father, who presented him with a broad wampum belt of peace, and gorget. The belt was composed of white and blue beads, denoting purity and the clear blue sky, and this act settled the foundation of a lasting good-will, and was the commencement of an active communication between the British and Ojibways of Lake Superior.
A brief notice may not be considered amiss in this place, of the chief Ma-mong-e-se-da, who acted in this important affair as the representative of hie tribe. His father was a member of the Reindeer Clan, and belonged to the northern division of the tribe. He moved from Grand Portage on the north shore of Lake Superior when a young man, to the main village of his tribe at Shaugha-waum-ik-ong. Becoming noted as an active and successful hunter, and having distinguished himself at the battle of Point Prescott, where the Ojibways destroyed so many of their enemies, he married a woman of the La Pointe village, who had been the wife of a Dakota chief of distinction during the late term of peace which the French traders had brought about. The renewal of the war had obliged her to separate from her Dakota husband, and two sons whom she had borne him, one of whom afterwards became a celebrated chief, whose name, Wabasha, has descended down in Dakota and Ojibway traditions to the present times.
Ma-mong-e-se-da (Big Feet), was the offspring of his mother's second marriage with the young hunter of the Reindeer Clan. He became noted as he grew up to be a man, for the fearless manner in which he hunted on the best hunting grounds of the Dakotas, on the lower waters of the Chippeway River, and an incident worthy of note is related as having happened to him during the course of one of his usual fall hunts. His camp on this occasion consisted of several lodges of his own immediate relatives. They had approached near the borders of the Dakota country, in the midland district lying between the Mississippi and Lake Superior, when, one morning, his camp was fired on by a party of Dakota warriors. At the second volley, one of his men being wounded, Ma-mong-e-se-da grasping his gun sallied out, and pronouncing his name loudly in the Dakota tongue, he asked if Wabasha, his brother, was among the assailants. The firing ceased immediately, and after a short pause of silence, a tall figure ornamented with a war dress, his head covered with eagle plumes, stepped forward from the ranks of the Dakotas and presented his hand. It proved to be his half brother Wabasha, and inviting him and his warriors into his lodge, Ma-mong-e-so-da entertained them in the style of a chief.
This chieftain was noted also for the frequency of his visits to Montreal and Quebec, and the great love he bore to the French people, whose cause he warmly espoused against the British. He was at last recognized as a chief, and received a medal and flag at the hands of the French. He actively aided them in their wars with Great Britain, and on one occasion he took a message from Gen. Montcalm to the Lake Superior Ojibways, asking them to come to his aid in Canada. But a small party followed the chieftain on his return to join the French general, in whose ranks he fought at the taking of Quebec in 1759.
After the failure of the Indian opposition to the British arms in 1764, Ma-mong-e-se-da, through the attentions he received at the hands of Sir William Johnson, became a fast friend to the English. After his death he was succeeded by his son Waub-o-jeeg, in his war chieftainship, who became much more noted in Ojibway history than even his father.
The British trader Alexander Ilenry, notwithstanding the losses and misfortunes which had befallen him at the hands of the Ojibways, again returned into their country immediately after the peace, and joining his more ample means with the greater influence of Mons. Cadotte in partnership, they carried on the fur trade with the Ojibways of Lake Sui»erior, which had for a time been discontinued. They made it their depot at Sault Ste. Marie and from this point they sent outfits to Shaug-a-waum-ik-ong and other points of the great lake. It is even said that Mons. Cadotte, through his influence with the Indians, and knowledge of the former mining localities of the French, being acquainted with rich deposits of copper ore and masses of the virgin metal, he in conjunction with Mr. Henry, carried on mining operations in connection with their trade on the Ontonagon River.
I have learned from some of the old chiefs of the tribe, among whom I may mention Ke-che-wash-keenh, or Great Buffalo, of La Pointe, that soon after the first arrival of the British into their country, the chiefs of the Ojibways at Sault Ste. Marie made a formal grant of a large tract of land, comprising the present site of the town of Ste. Marie, to Mons. Cadotte and his half-breed children. The written grant it appears, through some means fell into the hands of Alexander Henry, after whose death some person brought it back into the Ojibway country, and made inquiries of some of the principal chiefs as to its authenticity. It was shown to Great Buffalo at Sault Ste. Marie, and he described it as being a very old-looking paper, being much torn and patched up, and the writing upon it hardly discernible. Many questions were asked him by the gentleman who had it in possession, respecting the number and whereabouts of Cadotte's descendants. The paper was taken back to Montreal, and has never been heard of since.
- ↑ For a notice of Cadot or Cadotte gleaned from parish and other records, see another article in this volume.—E.D.N.