History of the Ojibway Nation/Neill/Chapter 3
III.
OJIBWAYS UNDER UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
Lt. Z.M. Pike of the United States Army landed on the island, at the junction of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, on the 21st of September, 1805, and found that all the young warriors of the two Sioux villages in the vicinity had marched against the Ojibways to take revenge for an attack that had been made upon them in that vicinity, by which ten of their tribe had been killed. On Monday the 23d, he held a council with the Sioux, who agreed to make peace with their old foes.
LT. Z.M. PIKE AT LEECH LAKE.
On the 16th of February, 1806, as the first representative of the United States who had visited them, he held a council with the Ojibways at Leech Lake, and in his opening speech said: "I was chosen to ascend the Mississippi to bear to his red children the words of their father, and the Great Spirit has opened the eyes and ears of all the nations to listen to my words. The Sauks and Reynards are planting corn and raising cattle. The Winnebagoes continue peaceable as usual, and even the Sioux have laid by the hatchet at my request. Yes, my brothers, the Sioux who have so long and obstinately warred against the Chippeways, have agreed to lay by the hatchet, smoke the calumet, and again become your brothers. Brothers! you behold the pipe of Wabasha as a proof of what I say. The Little Corbeau, Fils de Pinchon, and L'Aile Rouge, had marched two hundred and fifty warriors to revenge the blood of their women and children, slain last year at the St. Peters. I sent a runner after them, stopped their march, and met them in council at the mouth of the St. Peters, where they promised to remain peaceable until my return; and if the Ouchipawah chiefs accompanied me, to receive them as brothers, and accompany us to St. Louis, there to bury the hatchet, and smoke the pipe in the presence of our great war-chief; and to request him to punish those who first broke the peace. . . . . Brothers! I understand that one of your young men killed an American at Red Lake last year, but that the murderer is far off; let him keep so; send him where we may never hear of him more, for were he here I would be obliged to demand him of you, and make my young men shoot him," etc. etc.
Wiscoup, Le Sucre, or Old Sweet of Red Lake, who told Lieutenant Pike that he was a young man when the Sioux were driven from Leech Lake, was the first to reply. He spoke as follows: "My father! I have heard and understood the words of our great father. It overjoys me to see you make peace among us. I should have accompanied you had my family been present, and would have gone to see their father, the great war-chief.
"The medal I hold in my hand I received from the English chiefs. I willingly deliver it up to you. Wabasha's calumet with which I am presented, I receive with all my heart. Be assured that I will use my best endeavors to keep my young men quiet. There is my calumet, I send it to my father the great war-chief. What does it signify that I should go to see him?
"My father! you will meet the Sioux on your return. You may make them smoke in my pipe, and tell them that I have let fall my hatchet.
"My father! tell the Sioux on the upper part of the St. Peters River, that they mark trees with the figure of a calumet, that we of Red Lake who go that way, should we see them, may make peace with them, being assured of their pacific disposition, when we shall see the calumet marked on the trees."
Obigouitte and Aish-ke-bug-e-koshe,[1] Guelle Plat (as called by the French), Flat Mouth (by the English), spoke to the same effect, and it was arranged that Beau, a brother of Flat Mouth, and a chief called the Buck, should go with Lieutenant Pike as deputies to Saint Louis.
In 1806, the country east of the Mississippi between Red River and the Crow Wing was in dispute between the Sioux and Ojibways, and the Ojibways claimed west of the Mississippi, north of the Crow Wing River.
Pike, in his published work,[2] in an appendix, gives the following census of the Ojibways of the Saint Croix and Mississippi.
OJIBWAY POPULATION A.D. 1806.
| Place. | Men. | Women. | Children. | Total. |
| Sandy Lake | 45 | 79 | 224 | 348 |
| Chief, Catawabata (De Breche or Broken Tooth). | ||||
| Leech Lake | 150 | 280 | 690 | 1120 |
Chiefs, Eskibugekoge (Guelle Plat or Flat Mouth), Obigouitte (Ch de la Terre, or of the Land), Oole (La Brulé or the Burnt).
| ||||
| Red Lake | 150 | 260 | 610 | 1020 |
| Chief, Wiscoup (Le Sucre or the Sweet). | ||||
| St Croix and Miss. | 104 | 165 | 420 | 689 |
OJIBWAYS AT THE CAPTURE OF MACKINAW ISLAND A.D. 1812.
The President of the United States by the order of Congress on June 19, 1812, declared war against Great Britain. The United States military post on Mackinaw Island was then in command of Porter Hanks, a lieutenant of artillery. About dawn of the morning of the 17th of July, a flotilla from St. Joseph's Island at the mouth of the Ste. Marie River, consisting of a brig of the Northwest Company, ten batteau, and seventy canoes, arrived at Mackinaw Island with British forces. At ten in the morning, a piece of artillery was in a position on a height commanding the American garrison.[3] Lieutenant Hanks was greatly surprised, as he had not received official notice of the declaration of war. His entire force was only 61 persons, and he was obliged to surrender.[4] The British troops were composed of 40 regulars, 260 Canadians, and 482 Indians. Capt. Charles Roberts was in command of the whole, and Robert Dickson was at the head of the Sioux, Folle Avoine, and Winnebago Indians, and John Askin was the leader of the Ojibways and Ottawas. Askin, in his report,[5] expressed his indebtedness to his subordinates, Michel Cadotte, Jr., Charles Longlade, and Augustin Nolin. He wrote to his superior officer: "I firmly believe not a soul of them would have been saved," if the Americans had fired a gun, and also, "I never saw so determined a set of people as the Chippeways and Attawas." Among the British traders, in this expedition, were Crawford, John Johnson, Pothier, Armatinger, La Croix, Franks, and Rolette.
AMERICAN TROOPS BURN HOUSES AT SAULT STE. MARIE.
The Scorpion, under command of Lieut. D. Turner of the United States Navy, during the last week of July, 1814, landed at Sault Ste. Marie a detachment of infantry under the command of Major Holmes of the army. The agent of the Northwest Company who had borne arms against the United States escaped, and the troops burned the trading post of the company, and the huts of those traders who were disloyal. An attempt was also made to bring out of Lake Superior a schooner, called the Perseverance, of one hundred tons, and used to carry goods to Fort William, but in dragging it through the rapids it bilged, and Lieut. Turner ordered it to be burned. On the 4th of August, Holmes was killed while leading an attack upon the British troops at Mackinaw. The Tigress, an American gunboat, in command of sailing-master Champlin,[6] near the mouth of St. Mary's River, was soon after captured by some British sailors under Lieut. Bulger, boarding in the night, assisted by Indians under Dickson.
FIGHT IN A.D. 1818 BETWEEN SIOUX AND OJIBWAYS.
Toward the close of the year 1818, a fight took place between the Sioux and Ojibways in the country between the headwaters of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. A Yankton chief, called by the French Le Grand, held a council with some Ojibways and smoked the pipe of peace. When the latter were returning home, some of the Sioux sneaked after them, scalped a few, and took a woman prisoner. When the intelligence reached Leech Lake, thirteen young warriors started for the Sioux country to avenge the insult. For four weeks they travelled without meeting any of their enemies, but at length on the Pomme de Terre River, on a very foggy morning they thought a buffalo herd was in sight, but on nearer approach it proved to be a Sioux camp, and some of the latter on horseback gave the alarm. The Ojibways finding that they were discovered, and that their foes were numerous, sent one of their number to their home east of the Mississippi to announce their probable death.[7] The twelve who remained now began to dig holes in the ground, and prepare for the conflict from which they could not hope to escape. Soon they were surrounded by the Sioux, and their leader, exasperated by their continued loss, gave orders for a general onset, when all the Ojibways were tomahawked. The thirteenth returned home, and related the circumstances, and while friends mourned, they delighted in the story of their bravery.
GOVERNOR LEWIS CASS IN 1820 VISITS OJIBWAYS.
In June, 1820, Governor Lewis Cass, of Michigan, visited the Lake Superior region. At Sault Ste. Marie he found forty or fifty lodges of Ojibways, and Shaugabawossin was the head chief. There was another chief Shingwauk, or Little Pine, who had been with the British in 1814,[8] and also Sassaba, a chief of the Crane Totem, whose brother had been killed at the battle of the Thames. He wore a scarlet uniform with epaulets, and was hostile to the United States. After some sharp words with the latter, on the 16th of June a treaty was concluded, by which the "Chippeway tribe of Indians ceded sixteen square miles of land,[9] Sassaba[10] refused to sign,[11] and Little Pine signed under another name, Lavoine Bart.
Governor Cass learned that Leech Lake, Sandy Lake, and Fond du Lac were the chief places of residence of the Ojibways. At Leech Lake, Flat Mouth was chief, and it was estimated there were two hundred men, three hundred and fifty women, and about eleven hundred children; at Sandy Lake, the chief was Bookoosaingegum, by the French called Bras Casse, by the English, Broken Arm. At this point were eighty-five men, two hundred and forty-three women and children, and thirty-five half-breeds; at Fond du Lac, Ghingwauby, the Deaf Man, was chief, and the band numbered about forty-five men, sixty women, and two hundred and forty children.[12]
LA POINTE ISLAND.
La Pointe Island, called by the voyageurs Middle Island, because half way between Sault Ste. Marie and Fort William, and also Montreal Island, was only a transient trading post until after the United States military post was established at Sault Ste. Marie, and the American Fur Company organized. John Johnston, in 1791, stopped on the island with some goods, and traded with the Indian village, then about four miles westerly on the mainland.
Governor Cass visited it in 1820, and Schoolcraft, who was his companion, in the Narrative of the Expedition, wrote: "Passing this [Bad] river, we continued along the sandy formation to its extreme termination, which separates the Bay of St Charles [Chagouamigon] by a strait from that remarkable group of islands called the Twelve Apostles by Carver. It is this sandy point which is called La Pointe, Chagoimegon by the old French authors, a term now shortened to La Pointe. . . . . Touching at the inner, or largest of the group, we found it occupied by a Chippeway village, under a chief called Bezhike.[13] There was a tenement, occupied by a Mr. M. Cadotte[14] who has allied himself to the Chippewas."
SCHOOLCRAFT CALLS THE ISLAND, MICHAEL'S.
In 1822, when John C. Calhoun was Secretary of War, the first military post and Indian agency of the United States was established at Sault Ste. Marie.
In 1824, George Johnston, an Indian sub-agent, went to the island, and the Warrens, two young men from Vermont, who had married daughters of Cadotte, represented the interests of the American Fur Company. McKenney, in 1826, visited what he calls Michael's Island, and alludes to two comfortable log houses lathed and plastered, and twenty acres under cultivation, and mentions that the trader Cadotte had lived there for twenty-five years. Under Cadotte and his son-in-law Lyman Warren, La Pointe Island grew in importance as a trading post. Through Warren's influence, as has been mentioned,[15] the first missionaries, since the days when Allouez and Marquette dwelt on the shores of Chagouamigon Bay, entered the country and settled at La Pointe Island.[16]
OJIBWAYS IN 1820 AT FORT ST. ANTHONY, NOW SNELLING.
Major Taliaferro, who had been appointed in 1819, the first Indian agent above Prairie du Chien, in his journal under date of July 10, 1820, mentions one of the first visits of Ojibways to the agency at the mouth of the Minnesota River. He writes: "The Chippeways have visited me, twenty-eight in number, under Abesheke their chief. They smoke the pipe of peace with the three bands of Sioux near this place. . . . . Col. Dickson[17] informs me that if I succeed in completing the peace between the Sioux and Chippeways, that the latter to the number of two hundred and fifty to three hundred will visit my agency."
In 1823, a large party of Ojibways visited the agency and held a council with the Sioux in the presence of the Indian agent Taliaferro.
After criminations and recriminations, the Sioux presented the calumet, as they had been the first to violate the agreement which had been made three years before. Wamenitonka (Black Dog), presented it to Pasheskonoepe, the oldest Ojibway chief, who after handing it to the Indian agent, smoked it, and passed it to the rest. The ceremony concluded with a little whiskey presented by the agent, but in two days they were again about to fight each other.
The council was held on the 4th of June, but it was not until the next day that Flat Mouth (Aish-ke-bug-e-koshe), the head chief of the Ojibways arrived, and the Sioux chief of the old village, Panisciowa, was the first person he sent, who held out his hand, but the Ojibway would not take it. The Sioux chief, indignant, raised a war party, and the next day surrounded the Ojibways, who had placed their women and children behind the log huts of the old cantonments, and were ready to fight. Before any blood was shed, the agent, and colonel of the fort, effected a reconciliation.
THE CHIEF AISH-KE-BUG-E-KOSHE.
Beltrami, the Italian traveller, was on the 9th of September, of this year, at Leech Lake, and found the Ojibways there in two factions, one under Cloudy Weather, and the other under Aish-ke-bug-e-koshe or Flat Mouth. Cloudy Weather's son-in-law had been killed by the Sioux, a few days before, and they were meditating a war party, but at length agreed to go and consult with agent Taliaferro. Soon after,[18] Flat Mouth was in his tent, at full length, "like old Silenus in a state of intoxication."
LONG'S VISIT TO THE OJIBWAY COUNTRY A.D. 1823.
Keating, the historigrapher of Major Long's expedition, in 1823, to the sources of the Minnesota, and from thence to Lake Winnipeg, and the north shore of Lake Superior to Sault Ste. Marie, doubted whether the population of the Ojibway tribe had ever been large, and after mentioning that they were divided into many local bands, uses this language: "We can form no idea of the population of each of these bands or of the whole nation, but although we travelled over about fourteen hundred miles of country claimed by the Chippeways from the main fork of Red River to the Sault de Ste. Marie, the whole amount of Indians we fell in with did not exceed one hundred. We heard of no traditions respecting their origin upon which any confidence might be placed. The tales we heard were so much intermixed with childish details, and contained so many coincidences with the Mosaic doctrines, evidently derived from white men, that they do not deserve to be noted."[19]
OJIBWAYS KILL A TRADER IN 1824, AT LAKE PEPIN.
During the month of July, 1824, a Mr. Findlay with a Canadian named Barrette, and two others, were met at Lake Pepin by an Ojibway war party and killed.
In the spring, Kewaynokwut, a chief of Lac Vieux Desert, while very sick, made a vow, that if he recovered, he would lead a war party against the Sioux. After he gained strength, early in July with twenty-nine warriors he descended the Chippeway River to its mouth, where he arrived, early on a foggy morning, and found Findlay and his party still asleep. When it was discovered they were not Sioux, the Ojibways began to pillage, and first killed all but Findlay, who was near his canoe. He was at length pursued by an Indian named Little Thunder who shot him, and then waded in the water, cut off his head, and took the scalp.
The affair created great excitement, and on the 31st of August, John Holiday,[20] a trader, came to Sault Ste. Marie bearing a small coffin painted black containing the scalp of the American killed at Lake Pepin, which had been sent down by the Ojibway chief at Keweenaw. Schoolcraft, then Indian agent, forwarded it to the Governor of Michigan, who was Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northwest, and on the 22d of June, 1825, the murderers were delivered up.
OJIBWAYS IN 1825 SIGN TREATY AT PRAIRIE DU CHIEN.
In view of the dissensions among the Indians of the Northwest, the United States government authorized Governor Clark of Missouri, and Governor Cass of Michigan, to make an effort to settle the boundaries of the tribes, and establish peaceful relations.
At Prairie du Chien, on the 19th of August, 1825, a grand conference was held with the Sioux, Ojibways, Sauks, and Foxes, Menomonees, Ioways, Pottawattomies, Ottawas and Winnebagoes. After some discussion,[21] the following article was adopted by the Sioux and Ojibways: "It is agreed that the line dividing their respective countries, shall commence at the Chippewa River, a half day's march below the falls; and from thence it shall run to Red Cedar River immediately below the falls; from thence to the St. Croix River which it strikes at a place called the Standing Cedar, about a day's paddle in a canoe, above the lake at the mouth of that river; thence passing between two lakes called by the Chippewas 'Green Lakes,' and by the Sioux the 'Lakes they bury the eagles in,' and from thence to the Standing Cedar the Sioux split, thence to Rum River crossing it at the mouth of a small creek called Choking Creek, a long day's march from the Mississippi; thence to a point of woods that projects into the prairie half a day's march from the Mississippi; thence in a straight line to the mouth of the first river which enters the Mississippi on its west side, above the mouth of Sac River; thence ascending the said river above the mouth of Sac River to a small lake at its source; thence in a direct line to a lake at the head of Prairie River, which is supposed to enter the Crow Wing River on its south side; thence to Otter Tail Lake Portage; thence to said Otter Tail Lake, and down through the middle thereof to its outlet; thence in a direct line so as to strike Buffalo River, half way from its source to its mouth, and down the said river to Red River; thence descending Red River to the mouth of Outard or Goose Creek.
"The eastern boundary of the Sioux commences opposite Ioway River on the Mississippi, runs back two or three miles to the bluffs, follows the bluffs crossing Bad Axe River, to the mouth of Black River, and from Black River to a half day's march below the falls of the Chippeway River."
A noted Sandy Lake chief, Curly Head or Ba-ba-see-keen-dase as his Indian name appears in the treaty, on his way home from Prairie du Chien was taken sick and died; the wife of the old Hole-in-the-Day also died at Sauk River. During Curly Head's sickness he called two brothers who as young men had been his pipe bearers, and committed to them the care of the Mississippi Ojibways. One of these was Song-uk-um-eg, Strong Ground; the other Pug-on-a-ke-shig,[22] Hole-in-the-Day.
TREATY IN 1826 AT FOND DU LAC OF LAKE SUPERIOR.
As full deputations of the Ojibways were not at Prairie du Chien, it was agreed that the tribe should assemble again at the Fond du Lac of Lake Superior. The commissioners on the part of the United States were Gov. Lewis Cass and T.L. McKenney. On the second of August, 1826, the council met, and after the usual feast, speeches, and exhausting of patience, on the fifth, a treaty was concluded, which was ratified on the second of February of the next year by the United States Senate. By the third article, the United States was given "the right to search for and carry away any metals or minerals from any part of their country."
CHIEF SHINGABA WOSSIN.
Shingaba Wossin, of Sault Ste. Marie, then the head chief, was the principal speaker. In council he said: "My relatives! our fathers have spoken to us about the line made at the Prairie [du Chien]. With this I and my band are satisfied. You who live on the line are most interested. . . . . My friends! our fathers have come here to embrace their children. Listen to what they say. It will be good for you. If you have any copper on your lands, I advise you to sell it. It is of no use to us. They can make articles out of it for our use. If any one has any knowledge on this subject, I ask him to bring it to light."
The father of this chief was Maid-o-Saligee, who had four wives, three of whom were sisters, and by them he had twenty children. Shingaba Wossin, during the war with Great Britain, in 1813, went to Canada, and one of his brothers was killed at the battle of the Thames.
A DESPONDENT OJIBWAY.
A PARTIALLY SCALPED OJIBWAY WOMAN.
Commissioner McKenney, on the 31st of July, went to an island in the St. Louis River opposite the American Fur Company's post, to visit an old woman named Oshegwun, whose career had been quite remarkable. When about fourteen years of age she went with a band of sixty men, women, and children, to the vicinity of the Falls of Chippewa River, which were surprised by the Sioux who rushed down the hillsides and fired into their lodges. Oshegwun ran toward the woods, and was pursued by a Sioux who caught and bound her. Another Sioux then approached and struck her with a war-club, partially scalped her and was about to cut her throat when he was shot. In the contest for the girl each warrior had taken a portion of her scalp, and, while they were disputing, her father came up and killed both. When night came the parent went to the spot where he had seen his daughter, found the pieces of scalp, and by the blood on the snow reached the place to which she had crawled. The daughter survived and lived to have three husbands, all of whom were unkind, and to be the mother of ten children. Her son Okeenakeequid appeared at the council in a Sioux dress, which he obtained at the treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1825, where the Sioux and Ojibways smoked together. At that time a Sioux warrior proposed to exchange clothing with him, and after they had made the change the Sioux looking him in the face, and pointing to the headdress, archly said: "Brother, when you put that dress on, feel up there, there are five feathers, I have put one in for each scalp I took from your people, remember that."
CONSTRUCTION OF A BIRCH BARK CANOE.
Okeenakeequid was employed to make a birch canoe, and McKenney graphically describes the process of construction. "The ground being laid off in length and breadth answering to the size of the canoe (thirty-six feet long and five wide), stakes are driven at the two extremes, and thence, on either side, answering in their position, to the form of a canoe. Pieces of bark are then sown together with wattap (the root of the red cedar or fir), and placed between those stakes, from one end to the other, and made fast to them. The bark thus arranged hangs loose, and in folds, resembling in general appearance, though without their regularity, the covers of a book, with its back downwards, the edges being up, and the leaves out. Cross pieces are then put in. These press out the rim, and give the upper edges the form of the canoe. Upon these ribs, and along their whole extent, large stones are placed. The ribs having been previously well soaked, they bear the pressure of these stones, till they became dry. Passing around the bottom, and up the sides of the canoe to the rim, they resemble hoops cut in two, or half circles. The upper parts furnish mortising places for the rim; around and over which, and through the bark, the wattap is wrapped. The stakes are then removed, the seams gummed, and the fabric is lifted into the water, where it floats like a feather."
OJIBWAYS IN 1826 VISIT FORT SNELLING.
During the summer of 1826, the Ojibways came to visit the Indian agent at Fort Snelling, and encamped on the eastern shore of the Mississippi nearly opposite to the fort. Soon they were attacked by the Sioux. Henry H. Snelling, in a letter published in April, 1856, in the Saint Paul Pioneer and Democrat, wrote: "From the tower of the fort I witnessed the battle that ensued, and it is needless to say that the Chippewas though favored by numbers, were entirely routed, and men, women, and children indiscriminately butchered. The Sioux returned triumphantly. A large portion landed under the walls of the fort, and proceeded to the prairie, about a quarter mile northwest of it, where they performed the war-dance around the scalps of their victims.
On the 28th of May, 1827, the Ojibways again visited the fort, and as a precautionary measure encamped near its walls. Flat Mouth, with seven warriors and about sixteen women and children, composed the party.
OJIBWAYS IN 1827 ATTACKED AT FORT SNELLING.
They were told by Colonel Snelling and agent Taliaferro that as long as they encamped under the flag, and near the walls of the fort, they would be secure. During the afternoon some Sioux visited the camp, and were feasted and smoked the pipe of peace.
That night, as some officers were on the porch of Capt. Nathan Clark's quarters, which was one of the stone houses that used to stand outside of the gates, a bullet whizzed by, and rapid firing began. The Sioux, after their profession of friendship, had returned and attacked the unsuspecting Ojibways, killing two and wounding six. A little daughter of Flat Mouth was pierced through both thighs by a bullet, and though she received attention from Surgeon McMahon, soon died.
Captain Clark the next morning went in pursuit of the assassins, and thirty-two prisoners were soon brought back from Land's End. Colonel Snelling ordered them to be brought into the presence of the Ojibways who were on the parade ground, and two being recognized as participants in the attack were delivered to the aggrieved party, who led them out to the plain in front of the fort gate, and when placed at a certain distance, were told to run for their lives. With the rapidity of frightened deer they bounded over the ground, but the Ojibway bullets flew faster, and they soon fell lifeless to the ground.[25] After the execution, the Ojibways entered the fort, and the same day a deputation of Sioux warriors arrived to express sorrow for the act of their young men, and to deliver two more of the assassins.
The Ojibways under a son of Flat Mouth met the Sioux on the prairie, near where the Indian agent resided, and with much solemnity two more of the guilty were delivered. One was fearless, and with firmness stripped himself of his clothing and ornaments, and distributed them. The other could not face death with composure.[26] He was disfigured by a hare-lip and begged for life. H.H. Snelling mentions that "their inanimate bodies no sooner touched the ground than both Sioux and Chippewas rushed to the spot, and thrusting their knives into the still warm flesh of the brave men, drew them reeking with blood, through their lips, saying, that the blood of so brave men would inspire courage in the weakest heart. The body of the coward, however, was trampled on indiscriminately by Sioux and Chippewas, and subjected to every species of indignity."
The dead bodies were then dragged to the high bluff above the fort, and thrown into the Mississippi.
W. Joseph Snelling in one of his stories writes: "The Flat Mouth's band lingered in the fort till their wounded comrade died. He was sensible of his condition, and bore his pains with great fortitude. When he felt his end approach, he desired that his horse might be caparisoned and brought to the hospital window, so that he might touch the animal. He then took from his medicine bag a large cake of maple sugar, and held it forth. It may seem strange, but it is true, that the beast ate it from his hand. His features were radiant with delight, as he fell back on the pillow exhausted. His horse had eaten the sugar he said, and he was sure of a favorable reception and comfortable quarters in the other world. We tried to discover the details of this superstition, but could not succeed."
PEACE DANCE IN 1829 AT FORT SNELLING.
On the 20th of May, 1829, there was a peace dance at Fort Snelling, by about one hundred relatives of the four Sioux who had been delivered in 1827 to be executed by the Ojibways. An uncooked dog was hung upon a stake, and each dancer came up and took a bite. Seven days afterwards twenty-two bark canoes filled with Ojibways from Sandy Lake, Gull Lake, and Rum River arrived, and on Sunday, the last day of May, the Sioux and Ojibways danced together before Agent Taliaferro's house. Then the Sioux crossed the river and danced before the Ojibway lodges, and to return the compliment, the next day the Ojibways went to Black Dog's, a Sioux village four miles above the fort, on the Minnesota River, and danced. An agreement was then made that they would hunt in peace on the prairies above the Sauk River.
FLAT MOUTH'S VISIT TO SAULT STE. MARIE A.D. 1828
The civil chief of Leech Lake, Aish-ke-bug-e-koshe, or Flat Mouth, in July, 1828, made his first visit to Sault Ste. Marie. His youth had been passed as a hunter, in the British possessions, west of the Red River of the North, and his first medal was received from William McGillivray of the Northwest Company, after whom Fort William[27] at the mouth of the Kamanistiguia was named. This medal in 1806, he delivered up at Leech Lake, to Lt Z.M. Pike.
CATAWATABETA.
The same month, arrived the Sandy Lake chief, Catawatabeta, by the French, known as the Breche, and by the English, Broken Tooth. He was the oldest of the Ojibway chiefs on the Upper Mississippi, and had in 1822 visited Sault Ste. Marie. He was a small boy, when the Ojibways in 1768 captured Fort Mackinaw. He mentioned to Agent Schoolcraft, that he had until lately in his possession a French flag which had been presented to his ancestors, but he had given it to a British trader, Ermatinger, whose wife was his daughter, and that he had taken it to Montreal.[28]
CHIANOKWUT.
Among others from Leech Lake was the principal war-chief Chianokwut, called by the French, Convert du Temps (Cloudy Weather).
OJIBWAY AND SIOUX SKIRMISHES IN 1832.
Flat Mouth in the spring of 1832 led a war party beyond Crow Wing River, and met a band of Sioux, killed three and wounded about the same number, and lost one of their own men, who belonged to Cass Lake.
In 1832, Henry R. Schoolcraft, the Indian agent, visited the Upper Mississippi with an escort of soldiers under Lt. James Allen, U.S.A. The Rev. W.T. Boutwell, one of the associates of the Rev. Mr. Ferry, the Presbyterian missionary at Mackinaw, was invited to accompany the expedition.
On the night of the 7th of July a man came from Leech Lake and informed Schoolcraft of the recent skirmish of the Pillagers with the Sioux. The Ojibways lost one man and took three scalps. He also mentioned that a party of Sioux had been to Pembina, scalped a child, and fled. The Ojibways pursued and killed four Sioux, in revenge. Leech Lake was reached at 10 P.M. of the 16th of July. Mr. Boutwell in his Narrative[29] writes that early on the next morning "the principal chief [Flat Mouth] sent his mishinne, waiting-man, requesting Mr. Schoolcraft to come and breakfast with him.
FLAT MOUTH IN 1832.
"Decorum required him to comply with the request, though he was at liberty to furnish the table mostly himself. A mat spread in the middle of the floor served as a table, upon which the dishes were placed. Around this were spread others upon which the guests sat while the wife of the chief waited upon the table, and poured the tea. She afterward took breakfast by herself." After breakfast they proceeded to the chief's headquarters which is thus described: "It is a building perhaps twenty feet by twenty-five, made of logs, which I am informed was presented to him by one of the traders. As we entered, the old chief, bare-legged and bare-foot, sat with much dignity upon a cassette. A blanket, and cloth about the loins, covered his otherwise naked body, which was painted black. His chief men occupied a bench by his side, while forty or more of his warriors sat on the floor around the walls of his room smoking. The old man arose and gave us his hand as we were introduced, bidding us to take a seat at his right, on his bed. As I cast my eye around upon this savage group, for once, I wished I possessed the painter's skill. The old chief had again returned to his seat upon the large wooden trunk, and as if to sit a little more like a white man than an Indian, had thrown one leg across the other knee. His warriors were all feathered, painted, and equipped for service. Many of them wore the insignia of courage, a strip of polecat skin around the head or heels, the bushy tail of the latter so attached as to drag on the ground; the crown of the head was ornamented with feathers, indicating the number of enemies the individual had killed, on one of which I counted no less than twelve.
"One side of his room was hung with an English and American flag, medals, war-clubs, lances, tomahawks, arrows, and other implements of death. The subject of vaccination was now presented to the chief, with which he was pleased, and ordered his people to assemble for that purpose. I stood by the doctor, and kept the minutes while he performed the business.
"Preparations were now making for taking our leave when the chief arose, and, giving his hand to each, spoke as follows, in reply to Mr. Schoolcraft, who had addressed them as 'My children.'
FLAT MOUTH'S SPEECH.
"'You call us children. We are not children, but men. When I think of the condition of my people I can hardly refrain from tears. It is so melancholy that even the trees weep over it. When I heard that you were coming to visit us, I felt inclined to go and meet you. I hoped that you would bring us relief. But if you did not furnish some relief, I thought I should go farther, to the people who wear big hats, in hopes of obtaining that relief from them, which the Long Knives [Americans] have so often promised.
"'Our great father promised us, when we smoked the pipe with the Sioux at Prairie du Chien in 1825, and at Fond du Lac in 1826, that the first party who crossed the line, and broke the treaty, should be punished. This promise has not been fulfilled. Not a year has passed but some of our young men, our wives, and our children have fallen, and the blood that has begun to flow will not soon stop. I do not expect this year will close before more of my young men will fall. When my son was killed, about a year since, I determined not to lay down any arms as long as I can see the light of the sun. I do not think the Great Spirit ever made us to sit still and see our young men, our wives, and our children murdered.
"'Since we have listened to the Long Knives, we have not prospered. They are not willing we should go ourselves, and flog our enemies, nor do they fulfil their promise and do it for us.'
"The medals of each chief and a string of wampum were now brought forth stained with vermilion.
"'See our medals,' and holding them up by the strings, he continued: 'These and all your letters are stained with blood. I return them all to you to make them bright. None of us wish to receive them back,' laying them at Mr. Schoolcraft's feet, 'until you have wiped off the blood.'
"Here a shout of approbation was raised by all his warriors present, and the old man, growing more eloquent, forgot that he was holding his blanket around his naked body with one hand, and it dropped from about him, and he proceeded:—
"'The words of the Long Knives have passed through our forests as a rushing wind, but they have been words merely. They have only shaken the trees, but have not stopped to break them down, nor even to make the rough places smooth.
"'It is not that we wish to be at war with the Sioux, but when they enter our country and kill our people, we are obliged to revenge their death. Nor will I conceal from you the fact that I have already sent tobacco and pipestems to different bands to invite them to come to our relief. We have been successful in the late war, but we do not feel that we have taken sufficient revenge.'
"Here a bundle of sticks two inches long was presented, indicating the number of Ojibways killed by the Sioux since the treaty of 1825, amounting to forty-three. Just as we were ready to embark, the old man came out in his regimentals, a military coat faced with red, ruffled shirt, hat, pantaloons, gloves, and shoes. So entirely changed was his appearance that I did not recognize him until he spoke.
"This band is the largest and perhaps the most warlike in the whole Ojibway nation. It numbers 706, exclusive of a small band, probably 100 on Bear Island, one of the numerous islands in the lake."
Schoolcraft in his Narrative mentions that Ma-je-ga-bo-wi, who tomahawked Governor Semple, of Selkirk settlement, after he fell from his horse, was present at the council with Flat Mouth.
CONFLICTS OF SIOUX AND OJIBWAYS A.D. 1838.
The Sandy Lake band of Ojibways in February, 1833, sent out sixty warriors, under Songegomik, a young chief, who found nineteen teepees of the Sioux, and in the night surrounded them. Before sunrise the next day, the Ojibways opened fire, and without any injury to themselves, killed nineteen, and wounded forty of the Sioux. In retaliation a war party of about one hundred Sioux was formed, which attacked a fortified camp of Mille Lacs and Snake River Ojibways, and killed nine men and one woman.
THE ASTRONOMER NICOLLET IN 1836 VISITS THE LEECH LAKE OJIBWAYS.
On the 2d of July, 1836, a distinguished French astronomer, J.N. Nicoley or Nicollet (Nicolay), arrived in the steamboat Saint Peter at Fort Snelling, to explore the Upper Mississippi under the direction of the United States government, and left the fort on the 27th, for the sources of the Mississippi. He reached Leech Lake in August, and when the Pillager Ojibways found that he was only a poor scholar, with neither flour, nor beef, nor tobacco to give away, and constantly peeping through the tube of a telescope, they became very rude. The Rev. W.T. Boutwell, whose mission house was on the opposite side of the lake, hearing the shouts and drumming of the Indians, came over to the relief of Nicollet, who writes: "On the fourth day he arrived, and although totally unknown to each other previously, a sympathy of feeling arose growing out of the precarious circumstances under which we were both placed, and to which he had been much longer exposed than myself. This feeling from the kind attentions he paid me, soon ripened into affection and gratitude."[30]
He reached the Falls of Saint Anthony on the 27th of September, 1886, upon his return from Lake Itasca, and wrote the following letter to Major Taliaferro at Fort Snelling, which showed he had not mastered the English language, "Dear friend; I arrived last evening about dark; all well, nothing lost, nothing broken, happy, and a very successful journey. But I done exhausted, and nothing can relieve me, but the pleasure of meeting you again under your hospitable roof, and to see all the friends of the garrison who have been so kind to me.
"This letter is more particularly to give you a very extraordinary tide. Flat Mouth, the chief of Leech Lake, and suite, ten in number, are with me. The day before yesterday, I met them again at Swan River, where they detained me one day. I had to bear a new harangue and gave answer. All terminated, by their own resolution, that they ought to give you the hand, as well as to the Guinas of the fort (Colonel Davenport). I thought it my duty to acquaint you with it beforehand. Peace or war are at stake of the visit they pay you. Please give them a good welcome until I have reported to you and Colonel Davenport all that has taken place during my stay among the Pillagers. But be assured I have not trespassed, and that I have behaved as a good citizen of the United States. As to Schoolcraft's statement alluding to you, you will have full and complete satisfaction from Flat Mouth himself. In haste, your friend, J.N. Nicoley."[31]
ALFRED AITKIN KILLED BY AN OJIBWAY.
Not many weeks after the visit of Nicollet to Leech Lake, on the sixth of December, Alfred, a mixed blood, the eldest son of William Aitkin[32] of Sandy Lake, who, for years, had been in charge of the posts of the American Fur Company west of Lake Superior, and east of the Mississippi, in what is now Minnesota, was killed at Red Cedar, now Cass Lake. He was twenty-two years of age, and had come down the night before from Red Lake. One of his voyageurs who had gone to draw some water, came back and said that an Ojibway had broken open and entered the store. Aitkin went and pushed him out, and took from him an axe, but while he was locking the store-door, the Indian fired his gun and killed him. The father, as soon as he received the intelligence, went to Leech Lake for assistance, and in a little time twenty half-breeds, with Francis Brunette, at the head, oftered their assistance. With the father they went to the camp where the murderer was, beyond Cass Lake, determined to cut off the whole band, should they attempt to rescue him.
William Aitkin, in a letter to H.R. Schoolcraft, Indian agent at Sault Ste. Marie, wrote: "Our friend Mr. Boutwell joined the party with his musket on his shoulders, as a man and a Christian, for he knew it was a righteous cause."
Upon reaching the band, the murderer was seized and the excited parent would have killed the assassin on the spot, but the missionary Boutwell advised to take him where he could be tried under the laws of the land. Two days after his arrest, he managed to escape, but after a six days' pursuit by the half-breeds he was recaptured.
On the 20th of February, 1837, he was brought down to Fort Snelling by the trader Morrison, and on the 11th of May, the accused, and the father of the murdered, left Fort Snelling, to attend the court to be held at Prairie du Chien.
The trial of the Ojibway is said to have been the first murder case under the territorial code of Wisconsin. One of the jurors in the trial of the case writes: "The case was conducted with very few formalities; and whenever the court took a recess, the jury were locked up in a grocery, where, for the sum of seventy-five cents each, we could have all the liquor we wanted, provided we did not waste or carry any away. Imbibing was quite prevalent among all classes in that day, and if each of the jurymen drank his seventy-five cents worth, the judge and counsel could not have been far behind, and some individual was heard to say that the prisoner was the only sober man in the court-room.[33] After the jury was charged, we were locked up two or three nights, and on the third morning we brought in a verdict of not guilty and he was discharged."
TREATY WITH OJIBWAYS AT FORT SNELLING.
During the summer of 1837, Charles Vineyard, a sub-agent, was sent to invite the Ojibways to a council at Fort Snelling, with the United States commissioner Gov. Henry Dodge. Twelve hundred assembled in July, and a treaty was concluded on the 29th of the month, under some excitement, caused by the custom which had grown up within a few years, of holding a whole tribe responsible to the traders for the bad debts of individuals.[34]
The treaty was approved on the 15th of June, 1888, by the President and Senate of the United States. Under it the Ojibways ceded all the country within the following limits: "Beginning at the junction of the Crow Wing and Mississippi Rivers, between twenty and thirty miles above where the Mississippi is crossed by the forty-sixth parallel of north latitude, and running thence to the north point of Lake St. Croix, one of the sources of the St. Croix River; thence to and along the dividing ridge between the waters of Lake Superior and those of the Mississippi to the sources of the Ocha-sau-sepe, a tributary of the Chippewa River; thence to a point on the Chippewa River twenty miles below the outlet of Lake de Flambeau; thence to the junction of the Wisconsin and Pelican Rivers; thence on an east course twenty-five miles; thence southerly on a course parallel with that of the Wisconsin River, to the line dividing the territories of the Chippewas and Menomonies; thence to Plover Portage; thence along the northern boundary of the Chippewa country to the commencement of the boundary line dividing it from that of the Sioux, half a day's march below the Falls, on the Chippewa River; thence with said boundary line to the north of Wattap River, at its junction with the Mississippi; and thence up the Mississippi to the place of beginning."
HOLE-IN-THE-DAY ATTACKS SIOUX.
In the spring of 1838 a party of Sioux, with their families, accompanied by Rev. G.H. Pond, one of the Presbyterian missionaries, left Lac-qui-Parle, to hunt in the upper part of the valley of Chippewa River, near the site of the town of Benton, in Swift County, Minnesota. The number of lodges was six, but on one Thursday in April, Mr. Pond and three lodges of Sioux were separated from the others. That evening there arrived at the other lodges Hole-in-the-Day, with his young son and nine Ojibways. The Sioux in these lodges were three men, and ten or eleven women or children. Hole-in-the-Day said he had come to smoke the pipe of peace, and was cordially received. Two dogs were killed, and he was treated to the luxury of dog-meat.
At length all lay down, but all did not sleep. At midnight Hole-in-the-Day and party arose, and massacred the sleeping Sioux, with the exception of a woman, and a wounded boy, who escaped, and a girl whom they took prisoner. The woman found the lodges, where the Rev. Mr. Pond was, and he accompanied by one Sioux went and buried the mutilated and scalped bodies.
CONFERENCE WITH HOLE-IN-THE-DAY.
The sub-agent Vineyard was sent from Fort Snelling the next June to visit Hole-in-the-Day, and with Peter Quinn as interpreter held a council on an island in the Mississippi River a short distance above Little Falls. After some discussion the Sioux woman who was captured in April was given up.
HOLE-IN-THE-DAY IN 1838 AT FORT SNELLING.
On the 2d of August, to the regret of Major Plympton, the officer in command, Hole-in-the-Day and other Ojibways visited Fort Snelling. The next evening a Presbyterian missionary, the Rev. Samuel W. Pond, met Taliaferro, the Indian agent at Lake Harriet, and told him that a number of armed Sioux from Mud Lake had gone to B.F. Baker's stone trading house[35] between the fort and Minne Haha Falls, for the purpose of attacking the Ojibways. The agent hastened to the spot and reached the point just as the first gun was fired. An Ottawa half-breed of Hole-in-the-Day's party was killed, and another was wounded. Of the Sioux, Tokali's son was shot by Obequette of Red Lake, just as he was scalping the dead man.
Major Plympton had Hole-in-the-Day and comrades placed under the protection of the fort, and at nine o'clock at night a Sioux was confined in the guard house as a hostage. The next day the major and Indian agent held a council with the Sioux, and Plympton said: “It is unnecessary to talk much. I have demanded the guilty; they must be brought."
The Sioux assented, and at half past five in the afternoon, two sons of Tokali were delivered with much ceremony. Their old mother said: "Of seven sons, only three are left; one of them was wounded and soon would die, and if the two now given up were shot, her all was gone. I called on the head men to follow me to the fort. I started with the prisoners, singing their death song, and have delivered them at the gates of the fort. Have mercy upon them, for their folly and for their youth."
But this night, notwithstanding the murdered man of Hole-in-the-Day's party had been buried in the military graveyard for safety, an attempt was made by the Sioux, to dig up his remains. On the evening of the sixth of August, Major Plympton sent Hole-in-the-Day and party home, giving them provisions, and sending them across the Mississippi.
HOLE-IN-THE-DAY IN 1839 AT FORT SNELLING.
In June, 1839, Hole-in-the-Day again determined to come down to Fort Snelling, and on the 18th the Indian agent sent a letter to him by Stephen Bonga[36] or Bungo, but on the 20th, Hole-in-the-Day arrived with five hundred Ojibways and asked permission to remain three days. The next day, under a canopy near the walls of the fort, the Ojibways held a council with the Sioux, Bonga acting as their interpreter. On Sunday the 23d, the whole number of Ojibways at the fort was eight hundred and forty-six, and twelve hundred Sioux. The day was passed in dancing together, and in foot races. The next day a man by the name of Libbey came up in the steamboat Ariel, and sold thirty-six gallons of whisky to Scott Campbell the Sioux interpreter, and the next night the Sioux and Ojibways presented the scene of a pandemonium.[37]
Upon Sunday the 30th of June Hole-in-the-Day announced his intention to return to his own country, and on the 1st day of July the Sioux and Ojibways even smoked the pipe of peace, and Hole-in-the-Day began his ascent of the Mississippi. Two Pillager Ojibways[38] however remained near the fort, and passing over to Lake Harriet, about sunrise on the morning of the 2d, killed Badger, a Sioux, on his way to hunt.
BATTLES OF SIOUX AND OJIBWAYS JULY 4, 1839.
The excitement now became great among the Sioux, and in a little while war parties were in pursuit of their old foes. The Lake Calhoun Sioux with those from the villages on the Minnesota River assembled at the Falls of St. Anthony, and started in pursuit of the Mille Lacs band of Ojibways, and on the morning of the 4th of July before sunrise, found them in the valley of Rum River, and attacking them killed and wounded about ninety. The Kaposia band of Sioux pursued the Saint Croix Ojibways, and on the third of July found them encamped with their trader Aitkin, in the ravine at Stillwater, where the Minnesota Penitentiary is now situated, quite intoxicated. The sight of the Sioux tended to make them sober, but in the fight twenty-one of their number were killed, and twenty-nine were wounded.
OJIBWAYS RECEIVED BY QUEEN VICTORIA.
The United States government has always frowned upon the attempts of speculators to exhibit Indians for the purpose of gain. Joel R. Poinsett, Secretary of War under President Van Buren, in a letter to George Catlin, the painter of Indian portraits, expressed the sentiments of every high-minded citizen when he wrote: "I consider such proceedings as calculated to degrade the red man, and certainly not to exalt the whites engaged with them."
An adventurer under the name of Rankin succeeded, in 1839, in taking some Ojibways to England, and arrangements were made to exhibit them in connection with Catlin's portraits. The principal Indian was Ah-quee-we-zanits, about seventy-five years of age. The half-breed interpreter was Louis Cadotte. It had been arranged as a precautionary measure that the Ojibways should abstain from intoxicating liquors. In an interview with the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray, Master of the Household to Queen Victoria, they were offered champagne, which they at first, remembering their agreement, refused, but, he assuring them that the drink would not intoxicate, they drank, and from that hour they talked about the Chee-ee Pop-po[39] by day, and dreamed of it by night. After this, they were formally presented to the Queen, who presented them with several hundred dollars. The interpreter, Louis Cadotte, was of fine appearance, and a pretty and respectable English girl fell in love with him, and with the consent of her parents they were married in St. Martin's Church, London. She came with him to Sault Ste. Marie, and after her death he was said to have been much depressed.
CONFLICTS OF SIOUX AND OJIBWAYS CONTINUED.
During the summer of 1840, a Sioux and his wife were killed by Ojibways on the right bank of the Mississippi, near the mouth of the brook between Mendota and Saint Paul.
On the eighth of April, 1841, three Ojibways came down the Mississippi in a canoe, which they left between St. Anthony and Minnehaha Falls, and hid themselves during the night near a footpath on the bank of the Mississippi about a mile above Fort Snelling. As a Sioux chief was passing in the morning with his son, they fired, killing the boy and mortally wounding the father.
BATTLE OF POKEGUMA.
Pokeguma[40] is a beautiful lake four or five miles long, and about a mile wide, connected with Snake River, about twenty miles above its junction with the river St. Croix. In the year 1836, missionaries supported by the Presbyterian and Congregational churches established a mission here, and built a residence on the east side of the lake, while the Ojibway village was on an island.
The mission was for a time prosperous, and in a letter written in 1837, one of the missionaries writes: "The young women and girls now make, mend, wash, and iron after our manner. The men have learned to build log houses, drive team, plough, hoe, and handle an American axe."
In May 1841, Jeremiah Russel now living at Sauk Rapids, then Indian farmer at this point, sent two Ojibways accompanied by Elam Greeley of Stillwater to the Falls of St. Croix for supplies. They arrived there on Saturday the fifteenth of the month, and the next day a steamboat arrived with goods. The captain said that a war party of Sioux headed by Big Thunder, called Little Crow by the whites, was advancing, and the Ojibways prepared to go back and warn their friends. They had not proceeded far when they discovered the foe, and quickly discharged their guns and killed two of Big Thunder's sons. The Sioux returned the fire, and mortally wounded one of the Ojibways. According to custom, the bodies of the chief's sons were ornamented, and set up with their faces towards the enemy's country, and the Ojibway was horribly mangled by the Sioux, and his scalped head placed in a kettle was suspended in front of their dead companions.
Big Thunder, disheartened by the loss of his sons, returned with his party to Kaposia, a village a few miles below Saint Paul, and on the opposite side of the Mississippi, but there were other parties on the war-path.
It was not until Friday, the 21st of May, that the death of the Ojibway was known at Lake Pokeguma. Mr. Russell, on the next Sunday, accompanied by a half-breed, and Capt. William Holcomb, subsequently the first Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota, went to the mission house to attend a religious service, and in returning the half-breed said there was a rumor that Sioux were approaching. On Monday, three young men left in a canoe, to go to the west shore of the lake, and from thence to Mille Lacs, to give intelligence to the Ojibways there resident. They took in the canoe two girls about twelve years of age, pupils of the mission school, for the purpose of bringing the canoe back to the island. Just as the three were landing, twenty or thirty Sioux with a war-whoop emerged from their hiding place and fired into the canoe. The young men instantly jumped into the water, which was shallow, returned the fire, and ran into the woods. The little girls waded into the lake and were pursued. Their parents upon the island heard the death cries of their children. Their fathers, burning for revenge, left the island in a canoe, and drawing it upon the shore of the lake, hid behind it, opened fire upon and killed one of the Sioux. The Sioux approaching, they again launched the canoe, one lay on his back at the bottom, the other plunged into the water, and holding the canoe with one hand, and swimming with the other, he pushed the canoe beyond the reach of the foe. As the Sioux would aim at him he dodged their shot, by putting his head under water, and waiting until he heard the discharge of their guns. After a skirmish of two hours, the Sioux, numbering over one hundred retreated, having lost two men.
At the request of the parent Mr. E.F. Ely, the catechist of the mission, went across the lake with two of his friends to collect the mutilated remains of his pupils. He found their heads cut off and scalped, with a tomahawk buried in the brains of each. Their bodies were pierced in the breast, and the right arm of one was broken away. Removing the tomahawks, he brought the bodies to the island, and in the afternoon they were buried with the simple and solemn rites of Christianity.
OJIBWAYS IN 1842 ATTACK KAPOSIA SIOUX.
In June, 1842, an Ojibway war party of about forty was formed at Fond du Lac in the valley of the St. Louis River, and appeared at the marsh below what is now the city of Saint Paul, and opposite to the Kaposia village of Sioux, of which Big Thunder was chief, and killed a Sioux, the wife of Gamelle a Canadian, and another woman and child. The Sioux warriors came over from the other side, and they lost ten men, and one known as the Dancer was horribly mutilated, while the Ojibways had only four killed.
TREATY OF 1842 AT LA POINTE ISLAND.
On the 4th of October, 1842, a treaty was concluded at La Pointe between Robert Stuart, U.S. commissioner, and the Ojibways of Lake Superior and the Mississippi by which they ceded to the United States the country "beginning at the mouth of Chocolate River of Lake Superior, thence northwardly across the lake to intersect the boundary line between the United States and the Province of Canada; thence up said Lake Superior to the mouth of the St. Louis or Fond du Lac River (including all the islands in said lake); thence up said river to the American Fur Company's post, at the southwardly bend thereof, about twenty-two miles from its mouth; thence south to intersect the line of the treaty of July 29, 1837, with the Chippewas of the Mississippi; thence along said line to its southeastwardly extremity near the Plover Portage on the Wisconsin River; thence northeastwardly along the boundary line between the Chippewas and Menonomees, to its eastern termination on the Skonawby River of Green Bay; thence northwardly to the source of Chocolate River; thence down said river to its mouth, the place of beginning."
DEATH OF THE ELDER HOLE-IN-THE-DAY.
In the spring of 1847, the distinguished chief Hole-in-the-Day, while intoxicated, fell from a Red River cart near Platte River, Benton County, Minnesota, and soon died. He was buried upon a high bluff not far distant. For a quarter of a century he had exerted a great influence among his tribe.
In 1820, the principal chiefs of the Sandy Lake Ojibways were Kadewabedas, an old man called by the French, Breche or Brechedent; by the English, Broken Tooth; and Babikesundeba or Curly Head.
Broken Tooth in 1785 is mentioned in connection with traders at Sandy Lake, and Lieutenant Pike met him in 1806, and in 1828 he died at a great age. Curly Head, mentioned by Pike in 1806, and visited by Cass in 1820, after attending the treaty at Prairie du Chien in 1825, became sick while returning to his village, and died. Hole-in-the-Day was with him at this time, and soon after became a prominent chief. Two prominent traders, Ashmun and Ermatinger, lived with sisters of his wife, who was a daughter of Biaswah. Already in this article allusions have been made to his bold career. In the fifth volume of the Wisconsin Historical Collections, the Rev. Alfred Brunson, who had been the superintendent of a Methodist mission among the Sioux below Saint Paul, and afterwards U.S. agent for the Ojibways, gives the following reminiscences of this chief:—
BRUNSON'S DESCRIPTION OF HOLE-IN-THE-DAY.
"Some time in June of this year [1838], Miles Vineyard, sub-agent to the Chippewas on the Upper Mississippi, ascended the river to a point a short distance above Little Falls and summoned Hole-in-the-Day and his band to a council, and demanded the prisoner.
"In July, 1838, not knowing of this movement, I ascended the river, to the same point, with a view to establish a mission and school among those Indians. I found them in council, on an island. As is their custom, when a stranger arrives, all business was suspended till the newcomers were introduced. . . . . I had heard so much of Hole-in-the-Day that I was anxious to see him. The council was in a thicket on an island. The underbrush had been cut out and piled in the centre, and perhaps fifty braves seated on the ground in the circle. The agent and his attaches were seated in like manner under a tree on one side of the circle, by the side of whom I and my attendants were assigned the place of honor, and looking in vain for one of distinguished appearance, I inquired of my interpreter which was the great chief, and he pointed to the dirtiest, most scowling, and savage-looking man in the crowd, who was lying on a pile of brush in the centre, as if, as I found to be the fact, he was alone on his side of the question to be settled. All others had agreed, before my arrival, to release the prisoner. As they resumed business, a dead silence occurred of some minutes, all waiting for his final answer. At length he rose up with impetuosity, as if shot with a gun. His blanket, innocent of water since he owned it, was drawn over his left shoulder and around his body, his right arm swinging in the air, his eyes flashing like lightning, his brow scowled as if a thundergust had settled on it, and his long hair literally snapping in the air, from the quick motion of his head. I thought of Hercules with every hair a serpent, and every serpent hissing.
"He came forward, as is their custom, and shook hands with the agent, and all the whites present, and then stepping back a short distance, orator-like, to give himself room for motion, and swinging his right arm, said, addressing the agent:—
"'My father! I don't keep this prisoner out of any ill-will to you, nor out of any ill-will to my Great Father at Washington; nor out of ill-will to these men [gracefully waving his hand back and around the circle], but I hate the Sioux. They have killed my relatives, and I'll have revenge. You call me chief, and so I am, by nature, as well as by office, and I challenge any of these men to dispute my title to it. If I am chief, then my word is law, otherwise you might as well put this medal [showing the one received from Governor Cass] upon an old woman.' He then threw himself upon a pile of brush. Finally, he arose again, but a little milder in manner, said:—
"'My father! for your sake, and for the sake of those men [waving his hand around the circle], I'll give up the prisoner, and go myself and deliver her at the fort.' As this would have been injudicious, he at length consented to deliver the prisoner to the agent. In a little while, however, he determined to go uninvited to the fort, and the result has already been narrated."[41] Schoolcraft[42] described Hole-in-the-Day as "one of the most hardened and bloodthirsty wretches," and mentions that Mr. Aitkin, the elder, told him "that having once surprised and killed a Sioux family, the fellow picked up a little girl, who had fled from the lodge, and pitched her into the Mississippi. The current bore her against a point of land, and seeing it, the hardened wretch ran down and again pushed her in."
TREATY OF FOND DU LAC, MINNESOTA, A.D. 1847.
In 1847, Hon. Henry M. Rice, now of St. Paul, late U.S. Senator from Minnesota, and Isaac A. Verplanck, of Buffalo, New York, were appointed commissioners to treat with the Ojibways for the country between the Wattap and Crow Wing Rivers. Hole-in-the-Day, the son of the recently deceased chief of that name, made his appearance in council for the first time as chief and addressed the commissioners as follows:—
SPEECH OF CHIEF HOLE-IN-THE-DAY, THE YOUNGER.
"Our Great Father instructed you to come here, for the purpose of asking us to sell a large piece of land, lying on and west of the Mississippi River. To accomplish this you have called together all the chiefs and head men of the nation who to the number of many hundreds are within the hearing of my voice: that was useless, for they do not own the land; it belongs to me. My father, by his bravery, took it from the Sioux. He died a few moons ago, and what belonged to him became mine. He, by his courage and perseverance, became head chief of all the Chippewas, and when he died I took his place, and am consequently chief over all the nation. To this position I am doubly entitled, for I am as brave as my father was, and through my mother I am by descent the legal heir to the position.
"Now, if I say sell, our Great Father will obtain the land; if I say no, you will tell him he cannot have it. The Indians assembled here have nothing to say, they can but do my bidding."
After this speech, the commissioners negotiated with him, and when he was satisfied with the propositions made, he was told that they must be explained to all the Indians, and their consent obtained. He did not like this, but the commissioners had the treaty explained by the interpreters, and they agreed to it without a dissenting voice. They were then called to sign the treaty, and waited for Hole-in-the-Day first to attach his mark. This he refused to do, but told them to walk up in order of rank, and sign the paper, which they did.
After this, he said to commissioner Rice, that on the next day he would sign, but did not wish his name to appear with the common Indians. After some conversation, it was arranged that below, after the sentence "I approve of this treaty and consent to the same," he should sign his name, and so it appears in the printed treaty.
OJIBWAYS AFTER THE ORGANIZATION, IN 1849, OF MINNESOTA TERRITORY.
After the treaty of 1837, the Mississippi Ojibways received their first annuities at Lake St. Croix, but owing to their conflict with the Sioux, in 1839, La Pointe became the place where they received their payments. By the treaty of 1847 at Fond du Lac of St. Louis River, it was stipulated that they should receive their payments on the Mississippi. In 1849, a farm for their benefit was made at Gull Lake, and some of the Ojibways moved there with five chiefs.
Alexander Ramsey, as Governor of Minnesota Territory, was ex-officio Superintendent of Indian Affairs. In June, 1850, he visited the Ojibway country of the Upper Mississippi, with William Warren as interpreter, to select a suitable place for an agency, and the sub-agent at La Pointe removed to Sandy Lake.
OJIBWAYS KILLED AT APPLE RIVER.
During the month of April, 1850, there was a renewal of hostilities between the Sioux and Ojibways on lands that had been ceded to the United States. A Sioux war-prophet at Red Wing village dreamed that he ought to raise a war party. Announcing the fact, a number volunteered to go, and several from the Kaposia village joined them. The leader of the party was a worthless fellow who the year before had been confined in the guard-house at Fort Snelling for scalping his wife.
Passing up the valley of the Saint Croix, a few miles above Stillwater, they discovered on the snow the marks of a keg and foot-prints. From these, they knew that Ojibways were returning from a whiskey shop. Following their trail, they found on the Apple River, a tributary of the Saint Croix, a party of Ojibways in one large wigwam. Waiting till daybreak, on the 2d of April the Sioux fired on the unsuspecting inmates, fifteen in all, and none were left alive, except a boy, who was taken prisoner. The next day the Sioux came to Stillwater, and danced the scalp-dance around the captive, striking him in the face at times with the scarcely cold scalps of his relatives. The child was then taken to Kaposia, the Sioux village below Saint Paul, and adopted by the chief.
Governor Ramsey immediately took measures to send the boy to his friends. At a conference held at the Governor's house, the boy was delivered up, and on being taken to the kitchen by a little son of the Governor, since deceased, he cried, seeming more afraid of his white friends than his dusky captors.
HOLE-IN-THE-DAY AT SAINT PAUL.
On the afternoon of the 15th of May, naked and painted Sioux warriors were seen in Saint Paul much excited. A few hours before the Ojibway chief, young Hole-in-the-Day, had secreted his canoe in a gorge near the western suburbs, and with two or three associates crossed the river, attacked a small party of Sioux, and killed one man. To adjust the difficulties Gov. Ramsey held a council on the 12th of June, and the contending parties, as they had often done before, promised to live in peace.
FAMINE AND CANNIBALISM.
During the winter of 1850–51, the Ojibways of Red, Cass, Leech, and Sandy Lakes, suffered much from want of food. About the first of October, 1850, the Indians collected at the new agency at Sandy Lake to receive their annuities, and here, to their disappointment, they were kept seven or eight weeks awaiting the arrival of provisions. During this period the measles and dysentery prevailed, and many died. With only a partial payment, they began to go to their homes. A family consisting of a man, wife, and two children, and wife's brother, left Sandy Lake in health, but when about half way to Leech Lake, the wife's brother was taken sick and died. They buried him and continued their journey. Then the two children became sick. The father carried his son, and the mother the daughter. The night before they reached Leech Lake the boy died and the father continued to carry him. The next day the daughter died, and the parents appeared at Leech Lake with their dead children on their backs.
Missionary J.P. Bardwell, of Cass Lake, in his report to the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, refers to the most shocking case of cannibalism that he ever heard of.
An Indian west of Cass Lake, with his wife, and two daughters, and son-in-law, had killed and eaten fifteen persons, most of whom were their own children and grandchildren. A writer in the Minnesota Democrat, under date of July 29, 1851, gives a more particular account. He writes: "They were reduced to a starving condition, and the mothers commenced killing and eating their children. They fed voraciously upon the flesh, and became passionately fond of it." After all of the children had been despatched but a boy of eighteen years, "in the latter part of winter, his mother called him to her, and requested him to put his head in her lap, under pretence of desiring to look for vermin. The boy complied. The mother had some molten lead which she poured into his ear, and killed him. His cries of agony alarmed the old people. The old man told his wife to go and see what was the matter. She went and looked into the door of the lodge, and there saw the woman with the body of the boy on the fire, singeing his hair off. She said to her 'come in and get some; it is good.'"
OJIBWAYS, IN 1853, ATTACK SIOUX IN ST. PAUL.
On the 9th of April, 1853, a party of Ojibways killed a Sioux, at Shakopee, and then Sioux from Kaposia killed an Ojibway in the valley of the Saint Croix River.
On the morning of the 27th, some Ojibways could have been seen lurking on the elevation, behind the marsh in Saint Paul, now filled with railways and warehouses. Perceiving a canoe of Sioux coming up the river from Kaposia, they hurried to the neighborhood of Third and Jackson Streets, and saw the Sioux land from their canoe, walk up Jackson Street, and go into a trading house, which stood at the southeast corner of those streets. As they entered, the Ojibways fired and mortally wounded a Sioux woman. A Sioux, who had lost a leg in a fight several years before, seizing a gun in the store, pursued the foe a short distance.
Messengers were despatched to Fort Snelling, and a party of dragoons under Lt. W.B. Magruder were soon in pursuit of the Ojibways, who were overtaken the next day at the Falls of Saint Croix. The dragoons fired upon them, and an Ojibway was killed. His scalp was brought to Saint Paul and photographed. An engraving from the photograph soon after appeared in Graham's Magazine, published in Philadelphia.
TREATY OF 1854, WITH OJIBWAYS.
A treaty was made in 1854, by which the Ojibways of Lake Superior ceded the region "beginning at a point where the east branch of Snake River crosses the southern boundary line of the Chippewa country, running thence up the said branch to its source; thence nearly north, in a straight line, to the mouth of the East Savannah River; thence up the Saint Louis River to the mouth of East Swan River; thence up the East Swan River to its source; thence in a straight line to the most westerly bend of Vermilion River; and thence down the Vermilion River to its mouth."
TREATY OF 1855.
In 1855, an important treaty was made at Washington between the Pillager and Lake Winnibigoshish Ojibways. By one of its provisions a patent for a section of land was to be given to Pug-o-na-ke-shick or Hole-in-the-Day.
LAST CONFLICT OF OJIBWAYS WITH THE SIOUX.
Early on Thursday morning, May 27, 1858, a party of Mille Lacs Ojibways, numbering about one hundred and fifty, appeared opposite the Sioux village, not far from the town of Shakopee, on the Minnesota River. A Sioux, who was fishing on the banks of the stream, was shot and scalped, and then the infuriated Sioux began to cross the river at Major Murphy's ferry, and in the open meadows came in contact with their old foes. Three Ojibways were killed in the fight and one died, near Lake Minnetonka. About ten o'clock in the morning the rest withdrew. Seven of the wounded arrived at the Falls of Saint Anthony that night. Doctors Murphy and Rankin visited them. One had been shot by an ounce ball, in the lower jaw, which also carried away a portion of the tongue. A chief of Mille Lacs, known as Wah-de-nah, was shot above the knee and the bone splintered. The others had wounds that were not serious. On Friday afternoon, they were placed on board the steamboat Enterprise, which ran above the Falls toward their homes.
HOLE-IN-THE-DAY, THE YOUNGER, UNRULY.
On the eighteenth of August, 1862, the uprising of the Sioux against the whites began at Red Wood agency, on the Minnesota River, and led to the massacre of more than five hundred of the defenceless men, women, and children of the frontier. It is worthy of note, that on that very day, the Ojibways at Gull Lake arrested several white persons, and talked about attacking the agency, then in charge of Major L.C. Walker. The next morning, agent Walker left for Crow Wing, and met troops coming from Fort Ripley. Returning with them, the Gull Lake chief was arrested. Walker again left for Saint Cloud, to consult with the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, on his way to Grand Forks, on the Red River of the North, to make a treaty with the Ojibways of that region. Meanwhile, the Ojibways of Leech Lake had risen, held all the whites but two, seven in number, prisoners, and brought them down to Gull Lake, where they were released. Agent Walker, on his way to Saint Cloud, under excitement, committed suicide. U.S. Commissioner Dole abandoning his journey to Grand Forks, came to Fort Ripley, with a military escort. He proposed to Hole-in-the-Day that there should be a council at Fort Ripley, but the chief declined to come. It was then arranged that there should be a conference at Crow Wing. On the 12th of September, the house of Hole-in-the-Day was burned by two white men, who were indignant at his course. The same night, about ten o'clock, three Ojibway chiefs, and three warriors, from Leech Lake, left the hostile camp, crossed the river, and conferred with the acting Indian agent. The night of the 18th, they went back to Hole-in-the-Day's camp, and the morning of the 14th returned with their families.
In council with the authorities of the United States, Wasec, a Pillager brave, said: "My father, I am not afraid to tell you the name of the one who led us to do wrong to the whites. It was Hole-in-the-Day who caused us to go astray by his bad advice. He sent messengers through to the lake, saying that our Great Father intended to send men, and take all Indians and dress them like soldiers, and send them away to fight in the south; and if we wish to save ourselves we must rise and fight the whites, and take them and their goods from the lake. The next day, after we had robbed our traders, another messenger arrived from Hole-in-the-Day, saying the white soldiers had shot at him, and in revenge wished us to kill all the whites at the lake, but our chiefs said, No; if Hole-in-the-Day wishes to kill the whites, let him commence first."
After this defection, upon the part of the Pillagers, Hole-in-the-Day became quiet and reasonable.[43]
TREATY OF MARCH, 1863.
On the 11th of March, 1863, a treaty was concluded by which the Mississippi, and the Pillager, and Lake Winnibigoshish bands of Ojibways relinquished Gull Lake and other reservations, and accepted the region, "beginning at a point, one mile south of the most southerly point of Leech Lake; thence easterly to a point, one mile south of the most southerly point of Goose Lake; thence due east to a point due south from the intersection of the Pokagomin reservation and the Mississippi River; thence on the dividing line between Deer River Lakes and Mashkordens River and Lakes, until a point is reached north of Deer River Lakes; thence in a direct line northwesterly to the outlet of the Two Routes Lake; thence in a southwesterly direction to Karbekaun River; thence down said river to the lake of the same name; thence due south to a point due west from the beginning; thence to the place of beginning."
TREATY OF OCTOBER, 1863.
The Red Lake and Pembina Ojibways on the 2d of October, 1863, by treaty, ceded the lands, "beginning at the point where the international boundary between the United States and the British Possessions intersects the shores of the Lake of the Woods; thence in a direct line southwestwardly to the head of Thief River; thence down the main channel of said Thief River to its mouth on the Red Lake River; thence in a southeasterly direction, in a direct line towards the head of Wild Rice River, to the point where such line would intersect the northwestern boundary of the tract ceded by the treaty of February, 1855; thence along the boundary line of said cession to the mouth of Wild Rice River; thence up the main channel of the Red River to the mouth of the Shayenne River; thence up its main channel to Poplar Grove; thence in a direct line to the "Place of Stumps," otherwise called Lake Chicot; thence in a direct line to the head of the main branch of Salt River; thence in a direct line due north to the point where such line would intersect the international boundary; thence eastwardly to the place of beginning."
TREATY OF 1864.
A treaty was made with the Ojibways of the Mississippi on May 7, 1864, by which reservations were to be selected for the different bands, on the Upper Mississippi, and therein; $5000 was allowed Hole-in-the-Day for the burning of his house during the troubles of 1862.
TREATY OF 1866.
The Bois Forte Ojibways on April 7, 1866, concluded a treaty by which they ceded all their lands around Lake Vermilion.
DEATH OF THE YOUNGER HOLE-IN-THE-DAY.
In 1864 the younger Hole-in-the-Day succeeded in captivating a young white woman employed at the National Hotel, Washington, and she accompanied him to his log house, near Crow Wing, and became the companion of his Indian wives. During the morning of the 27th of June, 1868, he went in a buggy to the Indian agency two miles distant, and from thence to Crow Wing. While returning, and passing a thicket near the agency, some of his tribe who disliked him, appeared, and one shot him. The wound was fatal, and he fell from the buggy and died. After taking his blanket and the valuables on his person, they rode in the buggy to his house, and announced to his wives that the chief had been killed. One or two went up stairs to the loft where the babe of the white wife was sleeping, but the child was not molested. They ransacked the house and took what they wanted, and left with a horse for Leech Lake.
The chief was buried in the Roman Catholic churchyard at Crow Wing. His son by his white wife was adopted by a family in Minneapolis, and educated in the public schools, and is now an intelligent youth. His mother afterwards married a white man by the name of Sullivan who was not as kind to her as Hole-in-the-Day.
OJIBWAYS OF MINNESOTA IN 1883.
The Ojibways of Minnesota are on three reservations at Red Lake, Leech Lake, and White Earth. The Pembina band live eighteen miles north of the White Earth agency, and the Otter Tail Pillagers dwell about eight miles east of the agency. There are also some Ojibways in the northeastern portion of the State. According to the report of U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1883, their numbers were as follows:—
WHITE EARTH AGENCY.
| Mississippi Ojibways | 896 |
| Otter Tail Pillagers | 570 |
| Pembina band | 235 |
| Pillagers of Lakes Cass and Winnebagoshish | 351 |
| Leech Lake | 1137 |
| Mississippi | 95 |
| Mille Lacs | 894 |
| LA POINTE AGENCY. | |
| Red Cliff | 188 |
| Bois Forte | 700 |
| Grand Portage, Lake Superior | 236 |
| Fond du Lac | 431 |
OJIBWAYS OF WISCONSIN.
Soon after, the refugee Hurons and Ottawas retired from Northern Wisconsin, the Ojibways by way of Montreal and Bois Brule Rivers, entered the country about the sources of the Black, Chippewa, and Saint Croix Rivers, and occupied the old plantations (vieux deserts) of the Ottawa Lakes, Lac Court Oreilles, and Lac du Flambeau.
| Court Oreilles band number | 841 |
| Lac du Flambeau number" | 480 |
| Bad River band number" | 460 |
OJIBWAYS OF MICHIGAN.
The establishment of a central trading post in 1701, at Detroit, led some of the Ojibways to hunt and fish on the shores of Lake Huron, especially about Saginaw Bay. Jonathan Carver who visited the country in 1766, mentions[44] that the promontory between Lakes Huron and Michigan was divided "between the Ottowaw and Chipéway Indians," and on another page writes: "A great number of the Chipéway Indians live scattered around this lake [Huron], particularly near Saginaw Bay."
The Indian agency at Mackinaw in 1883 reported:—
| Ojibways of Saginaw and vicinity | 2500 |
| Lake Superior bands | 1000 |
| Mixed with Ottawas | 6000 |
OJIBWAYS OF CANADA.
By the treaty of Utrecht, concluded in 1713, it was agreed that England should retain possession of all the posts of Hudson's Bay, and to keep the Indians of Lake Superior from trading with the English, at the north, it became necessary for the French to revive their posts at Nepigon, and Michipicoton. As traders appeared along the north shore, some of the Ojibways who had lived at Sault Ste. Marie settled near them, and gradually spread over what is now the Dominion of Canada.
The Canadian Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the year ending June 30, 1883, estimates the Ojibway population as follows:—
PROVINCE OF ONTARIO.
Ojibways and Ottawas of Manitoulin and Cockburn Islands |
1673 | ||
| Ojibways | of | Lake Huron | 2934 |
| Ojibways " | of" | Georgian Bay | 685 |
| Ojibways " | of" | Lake Superior | 1883 |
| Ojibways " | of" | Garden River near Sault Ste. Marie and Batchewana Bay |
725 |
| Ojibways " | of" | Beau Soleil | 813 |
| Ojibways " | of" | Nawash | 897 |
| Ojibways " | of" | Saugeen, County Bruce | 868 |
| Ojibways " | of" | Rama, County Ontario | 247 |
| Ojibways " | of" | Snake Island, Lake Simcoe | 135 |
| Ojibways " | of" | Sarnia, etc. | 485 |
| Ojibways " | with Ottawas and Pottawattamies of Walpole Island, River St. Clair |
789 | |
| Ojibways " | with Munsees of the Thames | 582 | |
PROVINCE OF MANITOBA.
The Ojibways did not dare to hunt in the valley of the Red River of the North, until the Northwest Company established posts at Pembina, Park River, and Red Lake River. They were then introduced as hunters, but the Crees and Assineboines, to whom the country belonged, looked upon them as intruders. In what is now Minnesota, at the junction of the Red Lake River, and the Red River of the North known as the Grand Fork, Thomas, Earl Selkirk on July 3, 1817, made a treaty with the Crees or Knistineaux, and the "Chippewa or Saulteaux."
The Ojibways being a party in this treaty, Ross[45] writes, "gave great umbrage to the Crees, who in consequence have repeatedly threatened to drive them back to their old haunts about Lake Superior."
In the census of 1883, they are computed with the Crees, and enumeration is therefore omitted.
- ↑ In this article the spelling of the treaty of 1855 is used.
- ↑ Expedition to the Source of the Mississippi, by Major Z.M. Pike, Philadelphia, 1810.
- ↑ Report of Hanks, Niles's Register, vol. ii.
- ↑ Report of Captain Roberts in the appendix to James's Naval Occurrences of the Late War mentions that the Mackinaw garrison consisted of 2 first lieutenants, 1 surgeon's mate, 3 sergeants, 4 corporals, 5 musicians, 6 artificers, 39 privates, total 61.
- ↑ Report of Askin in Niles's Register, vol. ii.
- ↑ His son was the late Raymond Champlin, of St. Paul.
- ↑ The story as given in the text was narrated by Aitkin, trader of Sandy Lake, and appears In Minnesota Year Book for 1851. James D. Doty, secretary of Gov. Cass in 1820, gives a different version in his journal.
The Fond du Lac Ojibways, he wrote, having been reprimanded by the more distant Ojibways for their unwarlike spirit, thirteen went on a war party to the Sioux country. At night they came upon a party of Sioux and begin to dig holes to which they might retreat, and fight to the last extremity. They appointed the youngest of their number to stand at a distance and watch the struggle and told him when they were all killed to go back, and tell their friends. Early in the morning they attacked the Sioux, who numbered nearly one hundred. They were forced back to their holes after four had been killed on the field, and here the other eight died. This story Doty received from the survivor. See letter of Gov. Lewis Cass to Secretary of War. Schoolcraft mentions that he saw the survivor at Grand Island In Lake Superior in 1890, and describes him as a young and graceful warrior. - ↑ Anna Jameson mentions him in her Winter Studies and Summer Rambles.
- ↑ See Indian Treaties of United States.
- ↑ Sassaba used to walk about Sault Ste. Marie naked, except a large gray wolf's skin with the tail dangling on the ground. On Sept. 16, 1822, he was drowned in the rapids while under the influence of liquor.
- ↑ Schoolcraft's Narrative.
- ↑ Doty's Report, Sept. 1820, to Governor Cass. Vol. vii. Wis. Hist. Soc. Collections.
- ↑ A marble tombstone on the island, records that he died Sept. 7, 1855, aged 96 years. If this is correct, he was 17 years old when the English colonies declared their independence of Great Britain.
- ↑ Upon Michael Cadotte's tombstone it is mentioned that he died July 8, 1837, aged 72 years, which would make his birth A.D. 1765.
- ↑ See page 406.
- ↑ The child of the wife of Rev. Sherman Hall, was the first of pure white parentage born on the shores of Lake Superior, and west of Sault Ste. Marie.
- ↑ Robert Dickson, known to Indians as "Red Head," with Archibald Campbell, Duncan Graham, and F.M. Dease, were traders on the Minnesota and the Upper Mississippi before the year 1802. Dickson during the war of 1812 was British Superintendent of Indians. Capt. Anderson in a speech to the Indians at Prairie du Chien in 1814 said, "My brethren! you must not call me father. You have only one father in this country, that is the Red Head, Robert Dickson, the others are all your brethren." In 1815, Dickson was for a period at Prairie du Chien. Wisconsin Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. ix. p. 236.
A notice of Dickson may be found in Neill's History of Minnesota, pp. 279–283, 289–291. - ↑ Beltrami, vol. ii. p. 441.
- ↑ Expedition to Sources of St. Peter's River, etc., vol. ii. pp. 148, 150. London, 1825.
- ↑ Holiday had been a trader since 1802.
- ↑ The Ojibways who signed this treaty were:—
Shingauba W'Ossin, first chief, Sault Ste. Marie. Gitspee Jiauba, second chief, Sault Ste. Marie."" Gitspee Waiskee, or Le Bœuf, La Pointe. Nain-a-boozho, La Pointe."" Mongazid, Loon's Foot, Fond du Lac. Wescoup, or Sucre, Fond du Lac."" Mush-koss, or The Elk, Fond du Lac."" Naubun Aqueezhiok, Fond du Lac."" Kautawaubeta, Broken Tooth, Sandy Lake. Pugisaingegen, Broken Arm, Sandy Lake."" Kweeweezaishish or Grosseguelle, Sandy Lake."" Babaseekeendase, Curling Hair, Sandy Lake."" Paashineep, Sandy Lake."" Peechananim, Striped Feather, Sandy Lake."" Puinanegi, Hole-In-the-Day, Sandy Lake."" Pugaagik, Little Beef, Leech Lake. Shaata, The Pelican, Leech Lake."" Cheonoquet, Great Cloud, Leech Lake."" Kiawatas, The Tarrier, Leech Lake."" Maugegabo, The Leader, Leech Lake."" Nangotuck, The Flame, Leech Lake."" White Devil, Leech Lake."" Neesopena, Two Birds, Upper Red Cedar. Iaubensee, Little Buck, Red Lake. Neesidayshish, The Sky, Red Lake."" Nauquanabee, Mille Lac. Piagick, Single Man, St. Croix Band. Peeseeker, Buffalo, St. Croix Band."" Naudin, or The Wind, St. Croix Band."" Cabamabee, St. Croix Band."" Tukaubishoo, Crouching Lynx, Lac Courte Oreille. Red Devil, Lac Courte Oreille."" The Track, Lac Courte Oreille."" Nebonabee, The Mermaid, Lac Courte Oreille."" Kahaka, White Sparrow, Lac Courte Oreille."" Nauquanosh, Lac du Flambeau. - ↑ The name attached to the treaty of 1826, is spelled Pu-in-a-ne-gi.
- ↑ In 1857, he carried letters from La Pointe, to Sault Ste. Marie, and still was unpopular with his tribe.
- ↑ The superstition of the Indians relative to copper was noticed by early travellers. Allouez, the Jesuit missionary, writes of the Lake Superior Indians: "They often find at the bottom of the water pieces of pure copper weighing from ten to twenty pounds. I have often seen them In the hands of the savages, and as they are superstitious they look upon them as so many divinities, or as presents made to them by the gods who are at the bottom of the lake, to be the cause of their good fortune."
Governor Denonville, of Canada, in 1687 wrote: "I have seen one of our voyageurs, who assures me that some fifteen months ago he saw a lump of two hundred weight as yellow as gold, in a river which falls into Lake Superior. When heated it could be cut with an axe, but the superstitious Indians, regarding this boulder as a good spirit, would not permit him to take any of it away."
La Ronde, the officer in charge at Chagouamigon Bay in 1730, reported that he had received "a fragment of copper weighing eighteen pounds, which in smell, color, and weight resembled the ordinary red copper. This ingot had been brought in by an Indian, but the savages were superstitious as to those discoveries, and would not reveal the locality." - ↑ Accounts vary. H.H. Snelling writes that they refused to run, and, facing their foes, told them to fire.
- ↑ Major Garland told Schoolcraft that the two walked to execution hand in hand, when one perceiving that his comrade trembled, drew away his hand, and said be would be ashamed to die by the side of a coward. Schoolcraft's Reminiscences, p. 618.
- ↑ Neill's History of Minnesota, 5th edition, 1883, p. 886.
- ↑ Schoolcraft's Personal Memoirs, pp. 293, 295, 305.
- ↑ Missionary Herald, Boston, 1834.
- ↑ Nicollet's Report. Senate Document No. 237, 26th U.S. Congress, 2d Session.
- ↑ Nicollet appears to have written his name in English at times Nicoley or Nicolay.
- ↑ He came to the Indian country about A.D. 1802.
- ↑ It was alleged at the trial that young Aitkin had persuaded the squaw of the Indian to desert her husband. Wis. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. v. p. 271.
- ↑ See Neill's History of Minnesota, 5th edition, 1883, pp. 922, 923.
- ↑ Afterwards used as a hotel, and then destroyed by fire.
- ↑ His grandparents were negro slaves of Capt. Daniel Robertson, British commandant at Mackinaw from 1782 to 1787. After his death they remained, and Kelton gives the following marriage from the Parish Register: "1794, June 25th, Jean Bonga and Jeanne." The married couple, Kelton mentions, kept the first inn on the island. In 1800 a negro named Pierre Bonga was with Alexander Henry of the Northwest Company in the valley of the Red River of the North. George Bonga, supposed to be the father of Stephen, was an interpreter of Gov. Cass in 1820 at Fond du Lac. Stephen died in 1884.
- ↑ Taliaferro's MS. Journal.
- ↑ Relations of the man shot the summer before.
- ↑ Catlin mentions they gave champagne the name chick-a-bob-boo, became when the corkscrew was introduced there was a fizz, which sounded like chee-ee, and then the popping out of the cork. See Catlin's Ogibbeway Indians.
- ↑ In the treaty of 1842 spelled Po-ke-gom-maw.
- ↑ See page 488.
- ↑ Personal Memoirs, p. 611.
- ↑ Report of U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1862.
- ↑ Carver's Travels, London, 1778, page 147.
- ↑ The Red River Settlement, by Alexander Ross. London, 1856, p. 12.