Ancient Garden Beds of Michigan
May 4, 2017
By Amorin Mello
This is a reproduction of “Ancient Garden Beds of Michigan“ from Memorials of a Half Century, by Bela Hubbard, 1887, pages 243-261.
ANCIENT GARDEN BEDS OF MICHIGAN.*
* Read before the State Pioneer Society, February 7, 1877, and published in the American Antiquarian.
Bela Hubbard explored Lake Superior in 1840 as the Assistant State Geologist of Michigan with Douglass Houghton.
A CLASS of works of the Mound-builders exists in Michigan, of unknown age and origin, which have received the name of “Garden-Beds.”
An unusual importance attaches to these remains of a lost race, from the fact that they have been almost entirely overlooked by archæologists, and that of those which were so numerous and prominent forty, or even thirty years ago, nearly every trace has disappeared. For any knowledge beyond the scanty details hitherto recorded we are forced to rely upon the recollections of the “oldest inhabitants.” We know how uncertain this reliance often is, and were it otherwise, we cannot but recognize the rapidity with which we are losing our hold of this kind of testimony, and the very brief period of which it must cease altogether.
The earliest mention of these relics which I find is by Haven, in his “Archæology of the United States.” It is the report of Verandrie, who, with several French associates, explored this region before 1748. He found in the western wilderness
“large tracts free from wood, many of which are everywhere covered with furrows, as if they had formerly been ploughed and sown.”
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft wrote about ancient gardens in Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge: Volumes I-VI.
Schoolcraft was the first to give to the world any accurate and systematic account of these “furrows.” Indeed, he is the only author of note who honors this interesting class of the works of the Mound-Builders with more than the most meagre mention. Observations were made by him as early as 1827. He gives figures of two kinds of beds, and he records the fact, that
“the garden-beds, and not the mounds, form the most prominent, and, by far, the most striking and characteristic antiquarian monuments of this district of country.”
Another writer of early date, still resident of our State, John T. Blois, published, in 1839, in his “Gazetteer of Michigan,” a detailed description, with a diagram, of one kind of the beds.
No mention is made of these remains by Priest or by Baldwin. Foster devotes to them less than a single page of his voluminus work, and only says, in effect, that “they certainly indicate a methodical cultivation which was not practised by the red man.”
Increase Allen Lapham wrote about ancient gardens in Antiquities of Wisconsin, and was involved with the Penokee Survey Incidents.
Dr. Lapham describes a few of this kind of remains which were found upon the western shore of Lake Michigan, as
“consisting of low parallel ridges, as if corn had been planted in drills. They average four feet in width, and twenty-five of them have been counted in the space of one hundred feet.”
Yet these relics constitute a unique feature in the antiquities of our country. They are of especial interest to us, from the fact that they were not only the most prominent of our antiquities, but, with the exception referred to in Wisconsin, they are confined to our State.
Some investigations, by no means thorough, enable me to define more accurately and fully than has been heretofore done the different kinds of these beds, which I shall attempt to classify, according to the most reliable information obtained. But I must first define their situation, extent and character.
The so-called “Garden-Beds” were found in the valleys of the St. Joseph and Grand rivers, where they occupied the most fertile of the prairie land and burr-oak plains, principally in the counties of St. Joseph, Cass and Kalamazoo.
They consist of raised patches of ground, separated by sunken paths, and were generally arrange in plats or blocks of parallel beds. These varied in dimensions, being from five to sixteen feet in width, in length from twelve to more than one hundred feet, and in height six to eighteen inches.
The tough sod of the prairie had preserved very sharply all the outlines. According to the universal testimony, these beds were laid out and fashioned with a skill, order and symmetry which distinguished them from the ordinary operations of agriculture, and were combined with some peculiar features that belong to no recognized system of horticultural art.
In the midst of diversity, sufficient uniformity is discoverable to enable me to group the beds and gardens, as in the following
CLASSIFICATION:
1. Wide convex beds, in parallel rows, without paths, composing independent plats. (Width of beds, 12 feet; paths, none; length, 74 to 115 feet.) Fig. 1.
2. Wide convex beds, in parallel rows, separated by paths of same width, in independent plats (Width of bed, 12 to 16 feet; paths same; length, 74 to 132 feet.) Fig. 2.
3. Wide and parallel beds, separated by narrow paths, arranged in a series of plats longitudinal to each other (Width of beds, 14 feet; paths, 2 feet; length, 100 feet.) Fig. 3.
4. Long and narrow beds, separated by narrower paths and arranged in a series of longitudinal plats, each plat divided from the next by semi-circular heads. (Width of beds, 5 feet; paths, 1½ feet; length, 100 feet; height 18 inches.) Fig. 4.
5. Parallel beds, arranged in plats similar to class 4, but divided by circular heads. (Width of beds, 6 feet; paths, 4 feet; length, 12 to 40 feet; height, 18 inches.) Fig. 5.
6. Parallel beds, of varying widths and lengths, separated by narrow paths, and arranged in plats of two or more at right angles N. and S., E. and W., to the plats adjacent. (Width of beds, 5 to 14 feet; paths, 1 to 2 feet; length, 12 to 30 feet; height, 8 inches.) Figures a, b, and c are varieties. Fig. 6.
7. Parallel beds, of uniform width and length, with narrow paths, arranged in plats or blocks, and single beds, at varying angles. Width of beds, 6 feet; paths, 2 feet; length, about 30 feet; height, 10 to 12 inches.) Fig. 7.
8. Wheel-shaped plats, consisting of a circular bed, with beds of uniform shape and size radiating therefrom, all separated by narrow paths. (Width of beds, 6 to 20 feet; paths, 1 foot; length, 14 to 20 feet.) Fig. 8.
I present diagrams of each of these classes or kinds of beds. Of these only those numbered 1, 2 and 4 have ever before been delineated, to my knowledge. (See figures 1 to 8, pages 257-261.) Nos. 3 and 5 are described by Schoolcraft and Blois, while the others are figured as well – 1 and 2 by Schoolcraft and 4 by Blois. No. 3, according to the latter, consists of five plats, each 100 feet long, 20 beds in each plat. Schoolcraft does not give the exact localities, and I am unable to state whether beds of the same class have been noticed by other observers. As to their extent, his language is, “The beds are of various sizes, covering generally from 20 to 100 acres.” Some are reported to embrace even 300 acres. Plats of beds are undoubtedly here referred to.
Of the plat figured by Blois (No. 4), the writer says:
“They are found a short distance from Three Rivers, on one side of an oval prairie, surrounded by burr-oak plains. The prairie contains three hundred acres. The garden is judged to be half a mile in length by one-third in breadth, containing about one hundred acres, regularly laid out in beds running north and south, in the form of parallelograms, give feet in width and one hundred in length, and eighteen inches deep.”
The distinctive peculiarity of these beds is what Blois calls the “semi-lunar” head, at the extremity of each bed, separated from them by a path as represented.
Class 6, so far as my own inquiries warrant, represents the form and arrangement which is most common, viz.:
that of a series of parallel beds formed into blocks of two or more, alternating with other similar blocks placed at right angles to them. (See figures a, b, and c.) The prevailing width of the bed is five or six feet, and that of the paths one and a half to two feet. The length of the plats or blocks varies, the average being about twenty feet. Gardens of this kind were found by the early settlers of Schoolcraft, the burr-oak plains at Kalamazoo, Toland’s prairie, Prairie-Ronde, and elsewhere.
Mr. Henry Little says, that in 1831 they were very numerous on the plains where now stands the village of Kalamazoo; and south of the mound, eight or ten acres were entirely covered by them.
Mr. E. Laken Brown confirms this account, and says they reminded him of old New England gardens, being very regular and even, and the beds five feet by twelve or fourteen feet. In 1832 the outlines were very distinct, and the burr-oak trees on them as large as any in the vicinity. Mr. A. T. Prouty concurs as to the extent covered, but thinks the beds were six feet wide by twenty-five to forty long. On the farm of J. T. Cobb, section 7, town of Schoolcraft, the beds were quite numerous as late as 1860. There must have been 15 acres of them on his land. The “sets” would average five or six beds each. Neighbors put the number of acres covered with them in 1830, within the space of a mile, at one hundred.
Fig. 6-b, of class 6, is from a drawing by James R. Cumings, of Galesburg, of a garden in which the beds are of more than usual diversity in width and length. H. M. Shafter and Roswell Ransom, old settlers, say that three or four acres on the edge of the prairie, at this place, were covered with the beds. On the farm of the latter in the town of Comstock, of one hundred acres, there were not less than ten acres of beds, six feet by twenty-five to forty, arranged in alternate blocks, having a north-and-south and east-and-west direction.
Fig. 6-c is from a drawing by Mr. Shafter.
The series represented by Class 7 (fig. 7) were found at Prairie-Ronde. They are platted and described to me by Messrs. Cobb and Prouty. They differ from the more ordinary form of No. 6, in the arrangement of the blocks or sets of beds, which is here not at right angles, but at various and irregular angles, also in the single beds outlying. The number of beds in each block is also greater than usual.
Class 8 is established on the authority of Henry Little and A. T. Prouty, of Kalamazoo. The figure delineated is from the descriptions and dimensions given by the former. The diameter of the circular bed and the length of the radiating ones are each twenty-five to thirty feet. The latter describes two of similar design, but of smaller dimensions, the centre bed being only six feet in diameter, and the radiating ones twenty feet. All occurred at Kalamazoo, and in immediate association with the other forms of beds at that place, represented generally by Class 6.
There is reason for supposing that there may have existed another class of beds, differing altogether from any that I have represented, from expressions used by both Schoolcraft and Blois. The former speaks of “enigmatical plats of variously shaped beds;” and further, “nearly all the lines of each area or sub-area of beds are rectangular and parallel. Others admit of half circles and variously curved beds, with avenues, and are differently grouped and disposed.”
The latter says, the beds “appear in various fanciful shapes.” Some are laid off in rectilineal and curvilineal figures, either distinct or combined in a fantastic manner, in parterres and scolloped work, with alleys between, and apparently ample walks leading in different directions.”
This language is too vague to enable me to construct a diagram, nor have I any confirmation to offer from other sources. The reputation of the writers will not allow us to consider the descriptions fanciful, but it is possible to suppose they were misled by the representations of others.
Lac Vieux Desert (‘lake of the old garden’) and Catakitekon [Gete-gitigaan (‘old gardens’)] from Thomas Jefferson Cram’s 1840 fieldbook. This is the headwaters of the Wisconsin River, and near those of the Wolf River and Ontonagon River.
~ School District of Marshfield: Digital Time Travelers
The principal crop of the Indians is maize, and this was never cultivated by them in rows, but in hills often large but always disposed in a very irregular manner. As little do these beds resemble the deserted fields of modern agriculture. On the other hand, the resemblance of many of the plats to the well-laid out garden beds of our own day is very striking; while the curvilinear forms suggest analogies quite as strong to the modern “pleasure garden.”
The nearest approach to anything resembling horticultural operations among Indian tribes, with the historic period, is noticed by Jones, who refers to a practice, among some of the southern Indians, of setting apart separate pieces of ground for each family. This author quotes from Captain Ribault’s “Discovery of Terra Florida,” published in London, 1563. “They labor and till the ground, sowing the fields with a grain called Mahis, whereof they make their meal, and in their gardens they plant beans, gourds, cucumbers, citrons, peas, and many other fruits and roots unknown to us. Their spades and mattocks are made of wood, so well and fitly as is possible.”
In the St. Joseph Valley I learned of numerous places, widely apart, where the labor and ksill of our ancient horticulturists were apparent in small gardens, laid out in different styles, and with an eye to the picturesque; as if each family had not only its separate garden patch, but had used it for the display of its own peculiar taste.
~ Bad River WPA Papers, Envelope 3, Folder 9.
~ Railroad History, Issues 54-58, pg. 26
Historians tell us of the Aztecs, that they had gardens in which were cultivated various plants, for medicinal uses, as well as for ornament. Was there something analogous to this in the Michigan Nation? Did the latter also have botanical gardens? May we accord to this unknown people a considerable advance in science, in addition to a cultivated taste, and an eye for symmetry and beauty, which is without precedent among the pre-historic people of this continent, north of Mexico?
These extensive indications of ancient culture necessarily imply a settled and populous community. We are led, therefore, to look for other evidences of the numbers and character of the people who made them. But here an extraordinary fact presents itself; such evidences are almost wanting! The testimony of nearly every one whom I have consulted – men who were among the first of the white race to break up the sod, that for ages had consecrated these old garden lands – agrees in the fact, that almost none of usual aboriginal relics were found; no pottery; no spear- and arrow-heads; no implements of stone; not even the omnipresent pipe. Tumuli, or burial mounds of the red man, are not uncommon, though not numerous, in Western Michigan, but have no recognized association with the garden race.
Upon the St. Joseph and Colorado rivers, and in the town of Prairie-Ronde, exist several small circular and rectangular embankments, resembling the lesser works of the Mound-Builders so numerous in Ohio. But no connection can be traced between these detached earthworks and the garden-beds. None of them seem to have been the bases of buildings, nor do they give indication of any religious origin or rites. There are no traces of dwellings, and the soil which has so sacredly preserved the labor of its occupants, discloses not even their bones!
At Three Rivers, and in Gilead, Branch County, are some ancient embankments, which are probably referable to this people and may pass for works of defence. That at the first named place was notably extensive. It consisted only of an earth embankment, about six feet in height, extending between two forks of a river, a mile apart. It thus enclosed a large area, and with a sufficient garrison might have withstood the siege of a large army of barbarous warriors.
It seems strange, indeed, that these garden beds, suggestive as they are, should be the only memorials of a race which has left such an evidence of civilized advancement, and was worthy of more enduring monuments! We may reasonably conclude, that they were a people of peaceable disposition, of laborious habits, and of æsthetic if not scientific tastes; that they lived in simple and patriarchal style, subsisting on the fruits of the earth, rather than of the chase. Their dwellings and their tools were of wood, and have perished. This simple record of their character and labors is all, it may be, we can ever know.
But is this all? May we not form some reasonable conjecture as to the period in which these gardeners lived?
Detail of “Chippewa Gardens” at Odanah from Narrative journal of travels from Detroit northwest through the great chain of American lakes to the sources of the Mississippi River in the year 1820, in 1820, by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, page 105. This place is known as Gete Gititaaning (‘at the old gardens’) in Ojibwemowin.
“My children, I want you to listen to me. The proposition I am about to present will benefit all of you, and I need your cooperation. I would like to have you donate your labor to clear land for a large community garden, where every family, or any one who wishes can plant. The place I would suggest is that swampy flat, near the cemetery. It will take time to drain it and dry out but I know it will make good garden plats.“
~ Early Settlement of the Bad River Indian Reservation
A fact mentioned by Dr. Lapham furnishes a species of evidence, as to the relative antiquity of the garden beds of Wisconsin, as compared with the animal mounds. They were found overlying the latter; from which he infers, of course, a more recent origin. We may also suppose a considerable more recent age, since it is not likely that the race could have thus encroached upon the works of another, until long after these had been abandoned, and their religious or other significance forgotten.
The date of the abandonment of the beds may be approximately fixed, by the age of the trees found growing upon them. One of these mentioned by Schoolcraft, cut down in 1837, had 335 cortical layers. This carries the period back as far as 1502, or some years prior to the discovery of this country by the French. How long these labors were abandoned before this tree commenced its growth may not be susceptible of proof. Early French explorers do not appear to have been interested in the question, and it does not seem to me necessary to go further back than the three centuries during which that tree flourished, for a period quite long enough to have crumbled into indistinguishable dust every trace of wooden dwellings and implements, as well as of the bodies of their fabricators, if the latter received only simple earth burial.
(Anishinaabe Migration Story):
“In the Third Fire the Anishinabe will find the path to their chosen ground, a land in the west to which they must move their families. This will be the land where food grows upon the waters.”
~ The Mishomis Book – The Voice of the Ojibway by Edward Benton-Banai, Chapter 13 – The Seven Fires.
At the time of the arrival of the French the country was in possession of Algonquin tribes, who emigrated from the St. Lawrence about the middle of the 16th century. They were ignorant of the authors of these works, and were not more advanced in the arts of culture than the other known tribes.
It is probable that the few defensive works I have mentioned were erected by this settled and peaceful race of gardeners, as places of temporary refuge for the women and children, against the raids of the warlike tribes living eastward of them. The larger one may have served for the general defence in a time of sudden and great emergency. It is probable that on some such occasion they were surprised by their savage and relentless foes, and were overwhelmed, scattered or exterminated.
Most of the facts I have been able to present are gathered, in large part, from the memories – of course not always exact or reliable – of early settlers, and after modern culture had for many years obliterated the old.
It is perhaps useless to regret that these most interesting and unique relics of a lost people have so completely perished, through the greed of the dominant race; or that they could not have received, while they yet remained, the more exact and scientific scrutiny which is now being applied to the antiquities of our land. Much that might then have been cleared up, must now remain forever involved in mystery, or be left to conjecture.
– – – – – – – – – –
In September, 1885, the writer visited the region of the ancient garden beds, in hopes of being so fortunate as to find some remaining. He did discover, near Schoolcraft, on a plat of land which had been recently cleared of its timber, a few traces of beds belonging to a set, most of which had been broken up by the plough.
Four or five beds could be distinctly traced, for the distance of some ten to fifteen feet. The remainder of their lengths, said to be some twenty to thirty feet, had been obliterated by cultivation. Each bed had a width of about ten feet from centre to centre of the intervening paths. The latter had apparently a width of two or three feet, but it was impossible to define the exact outlines.
After much inquiry I could learn of no other place in or near Prairie-Ronde, or the plains of St. Joseph and Kalamazoo Counties, where any traces of the old garden beds remained.
Mr. Cobb informed me that about 1859 he endeavored to preserve portions of a set of these beds, which were well covered by touch, protective prairie sod. But when the white grub took possession of the turf thereabouts his ancient garden reserve did not escape. In a year or two the hogs, in their search for the grub, had so rooted and marred the outlines that he ploughed the beds up.
I found many old residents who well remembered the garden plats as they appeared a half century ago, and all concurred in the admiration excited by their peculiar character and the perfection of their preservation. Mr. Cobb says, he often took his friend to see his “ancient garden,” counted the beds, and speculated upon their object. The set of beds, which is shown only partially in his sketch (Fig. 7), contained thirteen beds, and was the largest of the sets. The others averaged five or six beds each.
All concurred, too, as to the great extent of land, amounting to several hundred acres, covered, wholly or partially, by the beds, chiefly upon the northern edge of the prairie. That all visible evidence of their existence should have so completely disappeared is not surprising to any one who notes their situation, upon the richest portions of the mixed prairies and plains. The lands most esteemed by their garden race were those which first attracted the modern farmer. These lands still constitute fields as beautiful as the eye can anywhere rest upon, and in a region second in loveliness to no other part of our country. The wants of the early settler almost preclude any care for the preservation of what was regarded as mere curiosities. Even when spared from the plough, and left to the care of nature, the absence of the annual fires, which had prevented the growth of timber; the roots of trees upheaving the beds; the decay of fallen timber; the hummocks caused by upturned roots; the destruction of the turf by the forest growth, and by cattle and hogs, all tend to deface the beds, and leave them to be reduced to the general level by the elements. Under these circumstances, a few years even would suffice to obliterate outlines which had remained almost unaltered for centuries.
Early Trails and Water Routes
August 3, 2016
By Amorin Mello
United States. Works Progress Administration:
Chippewa Indian Historical Project Records 1936-1942
(Northland Micro 5; Micro 532)
Abstract
“Records of a WPA project to collect Chippewa Indian folklore sponsored by the Great Lakes Indian Agency and directed by Sister M. Macaria Murphy of St. Mary’s Indian School, Odanah, Wisconsin. Included are narrative and statistical reports, interview outlines, and operational records; and essays concerning Chippewa religious beliefs and rituals, food, liquor, transportation, trade, clothing, games and dances, and history. Also includes copies of materials from the John A. Bardon collection concerning the Superior, Wisconsin region, La Pointe baptismal records, the family tree of Qui-ka-ba-no-kwe, and artwork of Peter Whitebird.”
Reel 1, Envelope 2, Item 1
Editor’s Note: This article is the result of the information given by the staff, also gleanings from the “Bardon Collection.”
EARLY TRAILS AND WATER ROUTES
~ Fifty Years in the Northwest, by W. H. C. Folsom, 1888, page 258.
Bardon in his Collections says, “From the earliest times, the waterways were the Red Man’s highways: naturally the fur-trader, explorer, and missionary followed the same routes.”
For hundreds of years before the white man came to live in this country, the Indians rarely traveled on land except to portage their canoes in taking short cuts from one body of water to another, thus cutting off considerable distance for extensive traveling. Then, too, game was plentiful on the banks of rivers and lakes. For these reasons the Indian preferred traveling by water to that of land.
For the white man in the early 50’s as well as for the Indian, transportation could be carried on only by water in the lowlands and by trails in the uplands, therefore, canoes were extensively used in the former and quite commonly employed in the latter, for the highlands, too, and their lakes and streams.
Water Routes
An important route connecting the Great Lakes and the Mississippi was by way of the Brule and the St. Croix Rivers. This water route began at Lake Superior, ascended the Brule River to Lake St. Croix then descended the St. Croix River to the Mississippi. The first eastern settler, missionaries, explorers, traders and Indians used this route very extensively.
Another route connecting Lake Superior and the Mississippi River was made by the historian, Schoolcraft, over a hundred years ago. This historic water route began at Chequamegon Bay, ascended the Bad River, and descended the Namekagon and the St. Croix Rivers to the Mississippi.
A route by way of Fish Creek from Chequamegon Bay was also important. Indian travelers portaged their canoes from Fish Creek to White River and down this river for several miles and again portaged to Lake Namakagon, from thence to Namakagon River, thence to the St. Croix and down to the Mississippi. This same route could be taken to the Flambeau and the Wisconsin Rivers by going upstream on the St. Croix.
Several trails converged at the mouth of Fish Creek on Chequamegon Bay. ~ Wisconsin Public Land Survey Records
Trails
In traveling by trail most Indians traveled on foot, but many used dog-teams and toboggans, and in some cases, ponies. The Lake Superior region was a permanent camping ground for the Chippewa. This country for many miles around, and numerous trails branching off in all directions, far too many for us to mention each individually. Here we shall point out only the more important ones.
Talking Trail
“Talking Trail”, was so named on account of its beginning at a popular meeting or camping site situated where the city of Washburn now stands. “Talking Trail” began at this camping ground, thence it extended south, to Fish Creek, then south-west for a few miles, finally west to Superior, thus connecting Chequamegon Bay and Superior.
The “Talking Trail” began at the mouth of Vanderventer Creek near Washburn, and was also known as the “Council Trail.”
~ Wisconsin Public Land Survey Records
Bad River Trail
Whether or not this old trail was specifically known as designated above, the title is quite appropriate, since it began at the Leihy Mill on Bad River, Odanah, ran south to Tyler’s Forks, thence to Lake Namakagon and on to Lac Court Oreilles Reservation.
Indian War Trail
The reason for this name is evident: This trail was much used by the Chippewa in time of strife with the Sioux. The War Trail ran east to Montreal River and on to Porcupine Mountains, then to Ontonagon, thence to the copper country, including L’Anse and Marquette, Michigan. Mrs. Frank La Fernier of the Bad River Reservation, (1937) whose father, Mr. James lived to the age of one hundred-three years, corroborated this statement. Mr. James carried United States mail over this trail from our section of the country.
Moccasin Mike Trail
Chief Joseph Ozaagii was a cosigner of the 1854 Treaty at La Pointe on behalf of the Fond Du Lac Band.
~ Geni.com
“Moccasin Mike Trail”, was only another name for the “Osaugee1 Trail”. It was one of the most historic trails, and was evidently named after the local chief, Osaugee, who was the father-in-law of Charles Lord, a latter resident of Solon Springs, but originally a pioneer Quebec trader and voyageur.
This famous trail extended from the south of the St. Louis River, down Wisconsin Pointe, thence along the southern shore of Lake Superior to La Pointe, Bayfield, Ashland, Ontonagon, and the “Copper Country” of Michigan.
A branch of this trail led south, along the Montreal River to central Wisconsin, and was the route of the fur trader from Lake Superior to Green Bay. In the late 50’s and early 60’s, this trail was the land route East and South, and was much used by the early missionaries, traders and pioneer settlers. It became the regular mail route between all “south shore” points. Owen Sheridan and R.S. Mclean were two of the early mail carriers on this trail, packing on foot during the summer and fall, and travelling by dog team in winter.
“Osawgee Beach” postcard, circa 1920.
~ Zenith City Online
When Superior was started in 1853, a new branch of this trail began at the Nemadji River crossing and followed the mainland east, practically along the present high-ways 10 and 2, through what is now Alloues and Itasca, then east over the route of the present drive to an intersection with the main trail near Dutchman’s Creek. The early settlers remember it well. The density of the woods through which it passed kept the trail free from drifting snows and cutting winter winds. Snow shoes, toboggans, and dog teams were a powerful aid to travelers over this early trail.
Detail of Michael S. Bright Sr.‘s trading post on Saint Louis Bay near Oneota (West Duluth).
~ General Land Office Records
With the march of civilization, the settler, and the coming of regularly laid out roads, this intensely historic trail became practically eliminated. In the early 90’s, the Board of Douglas County in conjunction with the city of Superior saw the need of an all-year-round road to Lake Superior and Wisconsin Point. The project was sponsored by Michael S. Bright, now of Duluth, then a member of the County Board from the second ward of Superior. As the Supervisor of the Ward was always dubbed some Indian name, Mr. Bright fell heir to the sobriquet of “Moccasin Mike”. Because the rejuvenated road followed the old Osaugee Trail, and Mr. Bright had been very active in its building, the County Board officially designated the new road: “The Moccasin Mike Trail”.
1 Chief Osaugee was one of the signers of the important Treaty with the Chippewa in 1854. In Vol 2 “Treaties”, compiled by Chas. J. Kappler, the chief’s name is spelled: O sau’gee. The Chippewa spelling is: Osagi, the a being pronounced like a in ah, and the i like e in he.
TRAILS BECOME HIGHWAYS
“… the navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, shall be common highways and forever free …”
Many of the old Indian trails, especially those bordering on the southern shores of Lake Superior, have become permanent highways, and a number of these took their rise in our own village of Odanah. One of these led to Lac du Flambeau, and is now our present U.S. No. 2.
Over-Ridge Trail
This one-time Indian trail ran through Hurley, Wisconsin, Ironwood, Bessemer, Wakefield, and beyond Marinesco, Michigan, where it turned south to Lac du Flambeau. The Indians called the trail: “Ka-ke-way-wa-jwie-no-con”, meaning – “Over Ridge Trail”. At the turning point, it was necessary to cross a small river called “Ka-ba-no-ti-go-ge-wung” or “Presque Isle River”.
White River Trail
Another old Indian trail, leading West out of Odanah followed the [????] of our present U.S. No. 2; after crossing the Chicago and North Western railroad just a few feet west of the steel Railroad Bridge at the west entrance of the village, this trail entered the outskirts of Ashland where it turned directly towards Lake Superior. From thence it followed what is now Front Street in Ashland, turning south at the present site of the Knight Hotel. Following Ellis Avenue, it later crossed “Wa-bi-si-bi,” or White River. Mr. Scott, one of our historical staff says, “At that time there was a solid jam of flood wood at that point. Elm trees blew down on top of the jam, making it sufficiently solid for all kinds of Indian traffic.”
Detail of trails in Ashland east to Odanah and south to the White River. ~ Wisconsin Public Land Survey Records
This Indian Trail ran through Fifield, Wisconsin then straight east to Lac du Flambeau, from thence to Wausau, which was one of the trading posts of the early days. It is now our present U.S. Highway, No. 13.
N.B. An old wagon road known as the St. Paul Road was once a trail when the United States mail was carried on foot. In later years a wagon road was constructed by the War Department for military purposes.
See article following on “Military or St. Paul Road,” By W.P. Bigboy.
Reel 1, Envelope 2, Item 2
MILITARY, OR ST. PAUL, ROAD
By W.P. Bigboy
The road referred to in the “Recollections of Joseph Bell,” was the old military, or St. Paul, road, built by the government during the Civil War.
It followed the trail blazed out in earlier years by “Old Michel Buskey,” later identified as a keeper of a stopping place along this route. These hostelries could be found along the entire route and were for the accommodation and convenience of the early mail packers and travelers, who in the pursuit of their regular missions found the water ways or routes an impediment in the early and proper discharge of their assigned duties. Their locations were spaced by about twenty miles, and in most cases homesteads located near lakes were designated as such. Here mail carriers and other weary travelers, becoming too fatigued to continue farther, could pause and rest, and then continue on their way.
Leaving Bayfield, the first stopping place was at Moose Lake and the second at Loon Lake. These two places were located between Iron River and Bayfield, somewhere in the “Barrens.” The third stop was at Spider Lake. Here lived “Old Michel Buskey,” original trail blazer. His sunny disposition led to the designation of his cheery home as one of the stopping places; and for many years, not only the mail carriers, but many other weary travelers enjoyed the hospitality rendered by this family.
Leaving this place the next stopping place was at Island Lake, near Barnes of today. The next or fifth stop was at Gordon considered the crossroad of the country. Here the traveler usually made an over-night-stop, and enjoyed the hospitality of the village founder, Antoine Gordon.
From Gordon the road continued in a southwesterly direction until it reach near where the Namakagon empties into the St. Croix River. Here John Morrison, the grandfather of the Odanah Morrison, maintained a small hostelry for the accommodation of the traveling public for years. From there the road continued on to Yellow Lake, where another stopping place was located, then the road continued on to St. Croix Falls, where the traffic was ferried across the St. Croix, thence continuing on to St. Paul.
The road was not turnpiked as are the roads of today, but deep gullies and ravines were bridged with stout timbers and lumber, strong enough to bear the heavier armament of the United States Army in the event it became necessary to use the road for the transportation of army equipment.
Reel 1, Envelope 12, Item 3.
EARLY EXPERIENCE
Statement of Joseph Bell, [90?] yrs.
Interviewed by Dan Morrison.
I am in no position to give you much of a story that anyone would care to read, as I am not educated. During my childhood days we did not have the opportunity of going to school that the children now have, and all that I know is what I picked up myself. I have a few things in mind, however, that may be of interest to the present and succeeding generations, pertaining to some old people who were brought up at La Pointe on Madeline Island.
Portrait of Antoine Gordon from Noble Lives of a Noble Race by St. Mary’s Industrial School (Odanah), page 207.
I will tell you about William Gordon’s father raised on Madeline Island, who belongs ot the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa Indians. In the very early days when the United States Government caused roads to be built for the purpose of opening up the country, one of the first roads to be constructed ran from Bayfield to Eau Claire Lakes. This road opened up a vast section of the country, and when new roads were built in those times, people, as a rule, followed in quest for new locations and homes. William Gordon’s [illegible] father did just this. He followed the road from the starting point at Bayfield, running south for some distance, thence west to what they call Moose Lake. This was known as the first station and stopping place. The second station or stopping place was Moon Lake. The third station was at Spider Lake, known now as Silver Lake. The fourth place was Gordon’s, where William Gordon’s father settled. The present town of Gordon represents the first settlement of William Gordon’s father. The fifth stopping place was Yellow River; the sixth, Grantsburg and the seventh, was St. Croix Falls. This was the last stopping place as far as I remember.
The 1820 Cass-Schoolcraft expedition mapped the “Great Trail to the Folle Avoines Country” beginning at the mouth of the Sioux River.
~ Narrative journal of travels from Detroit northwest through the great chain of American lakes to the sources of the Mississippi River in the year 1820, by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, page 105.
As I said before, these roads opened up a beautiful section of the country, full of wild game, plenty of fur-bearing animals, with many lakes and rivers where fishing was at its best. one could easily make a good living by hunting and trapping, and there was always plenty to eat. Many of the Indians who lived at La Pointe on Madeline Island left the island, following the direction of the newly constructed road. Though they were members of the La Pointe Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa, many remained in the new settlements, and the Indians remaining along the St. Croix River and other adjacent places finally lost their identity on the La Pointe Band and were later known as the “Lost Tribe.”
My great grandfather told me that the Chippewa lived on the south side of Lake St. Croix and the Sioux Indians lived on the north side, both claiming ownership of the St. Croix River. The question of full right of the St. Croix River kindled a feeling of animosity between the two tribes, and failing to arrive at any suitable agreement, war was declared between them, the aim of which was to settle the ownership of the river once and for all. In these encounters the Chippewa conquered the Sioux, driving them out of the country entirely. In their retreat, the Sioux followed a westerly direction, finally stopping where the city of St. Paul stands today.
Among The Otchipwees: II
June 4, 2016
By Amorin Mello
… continued from Among The Otchipwees: I
Magazine of Western History Illustrated
No. 3 January 1885
as republished in
Magazine of Western History: Volume I, pages 177-192.
AMONG THE OTCHIPWEES.
II.
In the fall of 1849, the Bad Water band were in excellent condition, and therefore very happy. Deer were then very abundant on the Menominee. They are nimble animals, able to leap gracefully over obstructions as high as a man’s head standing. But they do not like such efforts, unless there is a necessity for it. The Indians discovered this long ago, and built long brush fences across their trails to the water. When the unsuspecting animal has finished browsing, he goes for a drink with the regularity of an habitué of a saloon. Seeing the obstruction, he walks leisurely along it, expecting to find a low place, or the end of it. The dark eye of the Chippewa is fixed upon him from the top of a tree. This is much the best position, because the deer is not likely to look up, and the wind is less likely to bear his odor to the delicate nostrils of the game. At such close quarters every shot is fatal. Its throat is cut, its legs tied together, and thrown over the head and shoulders of the hunter, its body resting on his back, and he starts for the village. Here the squaws strip off the hide and prepare the carcass for the kettle. With a tin cup full of flour or a pound of pork, we often purchased a saddle of venison, and both parties were satisfied with the trade.
Naagaanab
~ Minnesota Historical Society
~ Executive Documents of the State of Minnesota for the Year 1886, Volume V.: Minnesota Geographical Names Derived from the Chippewa Language, by Reverend Joseph Alexander Gilfillan, 1887, page 457.
“Akwaakwaa” refers to “go a certain distance in the woods.”
~ General Geology: Miscellaneous Papers, Volume 1: A Report of Explorations in the Mineral Regions of Minnesota During the Years 1848, 1859 and 1864 by Colonel Charles Whittlesey, 1866, page 44.
Of course the man of the woods has a preference as to what he shall eat; but when he is suffering from hunger, as he is a large part of his days, he is not very particular. Fresh venison, bear meat, buffalo, moose, caribou, porcupine, wild geese, ducks, rabbits, pigeons, or fish, relish better than gulls, foxes, or skunks. The latter do very well while he is on the verge of starvation, and even owls, crows, dead horses and oxen. The lakes of the interior of Minnesota and Wisconsin produce wild rice spontaneously. When parched it is more palatable than southern rice, and more nutritious. Potatoes grow well everywhere in the north country; varieties of corn ripen as far north as Red Lake. Nothing but a disinclination to labor hinders the Chippewa from always having enough to eat. With the wild rice, sugar, and the fat of animals, well mixed, they make excellent rations, which will sustain life longer than any preparation known to white men. A packer will carry on his back enough to last him forty days. He needs only a tin cup in which to warm water, with which it makes a rich soup. Pemmican is less palatable, and sooner becomes rancid. This is made of smoke or jerked meat pulverized, saturated with fat and pressed into cakes or blocks. Sturgeon are numerous and large, and when well smoked and well pulverized they furnish palatable food even without salt, and keep indefinitely. Voyagers mix it with sugar and water in their cups. In the large lakes, white fish, siskowit, and lake trout are abundant. In the smaller lakes and rivers there are many varieties of fish. With so many resources supplied by nature, if the natives suffer from hunger it is solely caused by indolence. His implicit reliance upon the Great Spirit, which is his good Providence, no doubt encourages improvidence. Nanganob was apparently very desirous to have a garden at Ashkebwaka, for which I sent him a barrel of seed potatoes, corn, pumpkins, and a general assortment of seeds. Precisely what was done with the parcel I do not know, but none of it went into the ground. In most cases everything eatable went into their stomachs as soon as they were hungry. Even after potatoes had been planted, they have been dug out and eaten, and squashes when they were merely out of bloom. If the master of a lodge should be inclined to preserve the seed and a hungry brother came that way, their hospitality required that the garden should be sacrificed. Their motto is that the morrow will take care of itself. After being well fed, they are especially worthless. When corn has been issued to them to carry to their home, they have been known to throw it away and go off as happy as children.
Detail of the Saint Louis River with the Artichoke River (unlabeled) between the Knife Portage and East Savannah River from Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River from Astronomical and Barometrical Observations Surveys and Information by Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, 1843.
~ David Rumsey Map Collection
No footgear is more comfortable, especially in winter, than the moccasin. The Indian knows nothing of cold feet, though he has no shoes or even socks. His light loose moccasin is large enough to allow a wrap of one or more thickness of pieces of blankets, called “nepes.” In times of extreme cold, wisps of hay are put in around the “nepes.” In winter the snow is dry, and the rivers and swamps everywhere covered with ice, which is a thorough protection against wet feet. As they are never pinched by the devices of shoemakers, the blood circulates freely. The well tanned deer skin is soft and a good nonconductor, which cannot be said of the footgear of civilization. In summer the moccasin is light and easy to the foot, but is no protection against water. At night it is not dried at the camp-fire only wrung out to be put on wet in the morning. Like the bow and the arrow, these have nearly disappeared since Europeans have furnished bullets, powder and guns. Before that time the war club was a very important weapon. It was of wood, having a strong handle, with a ball or knot at the end. If the Chippewas used battleaxes of stone, they could not have been common. I have rarely seen a light war club with an iron spike well fastened in the knot or ball at the end. In ancient days, when their arrows and daggers were tipped with flint, their battles were like those of all rude people – personal encounters of the most desperate character. The sick are possessed of evil spirits which are driven out by incantations loud and prolonged enough to kill a well person. Their acquaintance with medical herbs is very complete.
One of the customs of the country is that of concubinage as well as polygamy, resembling in this respect the ancient Hebrews and other Eastern nations. The parents of a girl – on proper application and the payment of a blanket, some tobacco and other et ceteras, amounting to “ten pieces” – bestowing their daughter for such a period as her new master may choose. A further consideration is understood that she is to be clothed and fed, and when the parents visit the traders’ post they expect some pork and flour. To a maiden – who, as an Indian wife or in her father’s house is not only a drudge but a slave, compelled to row the canoe, to cut and bring wood, put up the lodge and take it down, and always to carry some burden – this situation is a very agreeable one. If she wishes to marry afterwards, her reputation does not suffer. While Mr. B. was conversing with the Hudson’s Bay man on the bank, some of the girls came coquettishly down to them frisking about in their rabbit skin blankets well saturated with grease. One of them managed to keep in view what she considered a special attraction – a fine pewter ring on her finger. These Chippewas damsels had in some way acquired the art of insinuation belonging to the sex without the aid of a boarding school.
The Indian agent at La Pointe killed a deer of about medium size, which he left in the woods. He engaged an Indian to bring it in. Night came and the next day before the man returned without the deer. “Where is my deer?” “Eat him, don’t suppose me to eat nothing.” Probably that meal lasted him a week. There is among them no regular time for meals or other occupations. If there are provisions in the lodge, each one helps himself; and if a visitor comes, he is offered what he can eat as long as it lasts. This is their view of hospitality. The lazy and worthless are never refused. To do this to the meanest professional dead beat would be the ruin of the character of the host.
Detail of portage between Lake Vermillion and the Saint Louis River headwaters from Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River from Astronomical and Barometrical Observations Surveys and Information by Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, 1843.
~ David Rumsey Map Collection
“Vincent Roy Sr. was born at Leech Lake Minn. in the year 1779 1797, and died at Superior, Wis. Feb. 18th 1872. He was a son of a Canadian Frenchman by the same name as his son bears. When V. Roy, Sr was about 17 or 18 years old, they emigrated to Fort Frances, Dominion of Canada, where he was engaged by the North-West Fur Co. as a trader until the two Companies (the North-West and the Hudson Bay Co joined together) he still worked for the consolidated Company for 12 or 15 years. When the American Traders came out at the Vermillion Lake country in Minnesota Three or four years afterwards he joined the American Traders. For several years he went to Mackinaw, buying goods and supplies for the Bois Fortes bands of Chippeways on Rainy and Vermillion Lake Country. About the year 1839 he came out to the Lake Superior Country and located his family at La Pointe. In winters he went out to Leech Lake Minn., trading for the American Fur Co. For several years until in the year of 1847 when the Hon. H. M. Rice, now of St. Paul, came to this country representing the Pierre Choteau Co. as a fur trading company. V. Roy, Sr. engaged to Pierre Choteau & Co. to trade with his former Indians at Vermillion Lake Country for two years, and then went for the American Fur Company again for one year. After a few years he engaged as a trader again for Peter E. Bradshaw & Co. and went to Red Lake, Minn. for several years. In 1861 he went to Nipigon (on Canadian side) trading for the same company. In a few years, he again went back to his old post at Vermillion Lake, Minn., where he contracted a very severe sickness, in two years afterwards he died at Superior among his Children as stated before &c.”
~ Minnesota Historical Society: Henry M. Rice and Family Papers, 1824-1966; Box 4; Sketches folder; Item “Roy, Vincent, 1797-1872”
Among the Chippewas we hear of man eaters, from the earliest travelers down to this day. Mr. Bushnell, formerly Indian agent at La Pointe, described one whom he saw who belonged on the St. Louis River and Vermillion Lake. The Indians have a superstitious dread of them, and will flee when one enters the lodge. They are hated, but it is supposed they cannot be killed, and no one ventures to make the experiment. it is only by a bullet such as the man eater himself shall designate that his body can be pierced. He is frequently a lunatic, spending days and nights alone in the woods in mid winter without food, traveling long spaces to present himself unexpectedly among distant bands. Whatever he chooses to eat is left for him, and right glad are the inmates of a lodge to get rid of him on such easy terms. The practice is not acquired from choice, but from the terrible necessities of hunger which happen every winter among the northern Indians. Like shipwrecked parties at sea, the weaker first falls a prey to the stronger, and their flesh goes to sustain life a little longer among the remainder. The Chippewas think that after one has tasted human food he has an uncontrollable longing for it, and that it is not safe to leave children alone with them. They say a man eater has red eyes and he looks upon the fat papoose with a demonical glance, and says: “How tender he would be.” One miserable object on the St. Louis River eat off his own lips, and finally became such a source of consternation that one Indian more courageous than the rest buried a tomahawk in his head. Another one who had the reputation of having killed all of his own family, came to the winter fishing ground on Rainy Lake, where Mr. Roy was trading with the Indians. He stayed on the ice trying to take some fish, but without success. Not one of the band dared go out to fish, although they were suffering from hunger. Mr. Roy and all the Indians requested him to go away, but he would not unless he had something to eat. no one but the trader could give him anything, and he was not inclined to do so. Things remained thus during three days, no squaw daring to go on the ice to fish for fear of the man eater. Mr. Roy urged them to kill him, but they said it would be of no use to shoot at him. The man eater dared them to fire. The trader at length lost patience with the cannibal and the terrified Bois Forts. He took his gun and warned the fellow that he would be shot if he remained on the ice. The faith of the savage appears to have been strong in the charm that surrounded his person, for he only replied by a laugh of derision. On the other side Mr. Roy had great faith in his rifle, and discharging it at the body of the man, he fell dead, as might have been expected. The Indians were at once relieved of a dreadful load, and sallied out to fish. No one, however, dared to touch the corpse.
No one of either party can go into the country of the other, and not be discovered. Their moccasins differ and their mode of walking. Their canoes and paddles are not alike, and their camp-fires as well as their lodges differ. The Chippewa lodge or wigwam is made by a circular or oblong row of small poles set in the ground, bending the tops over and fastening them with bark. They carry everywhere rolls of birch bark, which unroll like a carpet. These are wound on the poles next the ground course, and overlapping this a second and third, so as to shed rain. On one side is a low opening covered by a blanket, and at the top a circular place for the smoke to escape. The fire is on the ground at the centre. The work of putting up the lodge is done by the squaws, who gather wood for the fire, spread the mats, and proceed to cook their meals, provided there is anything to cook.
Stereograph of “Chippewa Indians and Wigwams” by Martin’s Art Gallery, circa 1862-1875, shows that they used more than one type of wigwam.
~ Commons.Wikimedia.org
A Sioux lodge is the model of the Sibley tent, with a pole at the centre and others set around in a circle, leaning against the central one at the top, forming a cone. This they cover with skins of the buffalo, deer, elk or moose, wound around like the Chippewa rolls of bark, leaving a space at the top for the smoke to escape, and an entrance at the side. This is stronger and more compact than the Chippewa wigwam, and withstands the fiercest storms of the prairies. In winter, earth is occasionally piled around the base, which makes it firmer and warmer.
We were coming down the Rum River, late in the fall of 1848, when one of our voyageurs discovered the track of a Sioux in the sand. It was at least three weeks old, but nothing could induce him to stay with us, not even an hour. He was not sure but a mortal enemy was then tracking us for the purpose of killing him.
Detail of Red Lake from Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River from Astronomical and Barometrical Observations Surveys and Information by Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, 1843.
~ David Rumsey Map Collection
Earlier in the season we were at Red Lake. A cloud of smoke came up from the west, which caused a commotion in the village and mission at the south end of the lake. A war party was then out on a Sioux raid. The chief had lost a son, killed by them. He had managed to get the hand of a Sioux, which he had planted at the head of his son’s grave. But this did not satisfy his revenge nor appease the spirit of his son. He organized a war party to get more scalps, which was then out. A warrior chief or medicine man gains his principal control of the warriors by means of a prophecy, which he must make in detail. If the first of his predictions should fail, the party may desert him entirely. In this case, on a certain day they would meet a bear. When they met the enemy, if they were to be victorious, a cloud of smoke would obscure the sun. It was this darkening of the sky that excited the hopes of the Red Lake band. They were sure there had been a battle and that the Sioux were defeated.
Judge Samuel Ashmun
~ Chippewa County Historical Society
The late Judge Ashmun, of Sault Ste. Marie, while he was a minor, wandered off from his nativity in Vermont to Lake Superior, through it to Fond du Lac, and thence by way of the St. Louis River to Sandy Lake on the Mississippi. Somewhere in that region he was put in charge of one of Astor’s trading posts. In the early winter of 1818 he went on a hunt with a party of seventeen indiscreet young braves, against the advice of the sachems, apparently in a southwesterly direction on the Sioux border, or neutral land. Far from being neutral, it was very bloody ground. At the end of the third day they were about fifty miles from the post. On the morning of each day a rendezvous was fixed upon for the next camp. Each one then commenced the hunt for the day, taking what route pleased himself. The ice on the lakes and marshes was strong and the snow not uncomfortably deep. The principal game was deer, with some pheasants, prairie hens, rabbits and porcupines. What a hunter could not carry he hung upon trees to be carried home upon their return. Their last camp was on the border of a lake in thick woods, with tall dry grass on the margin of the lake. Having killed all the deer they could carry, it was determined to begin the return march the next day. It was not a war party, but they were prepared for their Sioux enemies, of whom no signs had been discerned. There was no whiskey in the camp, but when the stomach of an Indian is filled to its enormous capacity with fresh venison he is always jolly. It was too numerous a party to shelter themselves by a roof of boughs over the fire, but they had made a screen against the wind of branches of pine, hemlock or balsam. Around the fire was a circle of boughs on which they sat, ate and slept. Some were mending their moccasins, other smoking tobacco and kinnikinic, playing practical jokes, telling stories, singing songs and gambling. Mr. Ashmun could get so little sleep that he took Wa-ne-jo, who had a boy of thirteen years, and they made a separate camp. This man going to the lake to drink, was certain that he heard the tramp and felt the vibrations of a party going over the ice, who could be no other than the Sioux. He returned, and after some hesitation Mr. Ashmun reported the news to the main camp. “Oh, Wa-ne-jo is a liar, nobody believes him,” was the universal response. Mr. Ashmun, however, gave credit to the repot. They immediately put out the fire at his bivouac. Even war parties do not place sentinels, because attacks are never made until break of day. In the isolated camp they waited impatiently for the first glimpse of morning. Most of the other party fell asleep with a feeling of security, for which they took no steps to verify. One of them lay down without his moccasins. Mr. Ashmun and his man were just ready to jump for the tall grass when a volley was poured into the other camp, accompanied by the usual savage yell. The darkness and stillness of a faint morning twilight made this burst of war still more terrific. Taking the boy between them, they commenced the race for life under the guidance of Wa-ne-jo, in a direction directly opposite to their home. He well knew the Sioux all night long had been creeping stealthily over the snow and through the thicket, and had formed a line behind the main camp. The Chippewas made a brave defence, giving back their howls of defiance and fighting as they dispersed through the woods. Eight were killed near the camp and a wounded one at some distance, where he had secreted himself. Two fo the wounded were helped away according to custom, and also the barefooted man, whose feet were soon frozen. All clung to their guns, and the frightened boy to his hatchet. They estimated the Sioux party to have been one hundred and thirty, of whom they killed four and wounded seven, but brought in no scalps.
Indians Canoeing in the Rapids painting by Cornelius Krieghoff, 1856.
~ Commons.Wikimedia.org
In his way, the Chippewa is quite religious. He believes in a future world where there is a happy place for good Indians. If he is paddling his canoe against a head wind and can afford it, he throws overboard a piece of tobacco, the most precious thing he has. With this offering there is a short invocation to the good manitou for a fair breeze, when he can raise a blanket for a sail, stop rowing and take a smoke. At the head of many a rapid which it is dangerous to run, are seen pieces of tobacco on the rocks, which were laid there with a brief prayer that they may go safely through. Some of them, which are frightful to white men, they pass habitually. These offerings are never disturbed, for they are sacred. He endeavors also to appease the evil spirit Nonibojan. Fire, rocks, waterfalls, mountains and animals are alive with spirits good and bad. The medicine man, who is prophet, physician, priest and warrior, is an object of reverence and admiration. His prayers are for success in the hunt, accompanied by incantations.
George Bonga
~ Wikipedia.org
Among the stories of a thousand camp-fires, was one by Charlie, a stalwart, half-breed Indian and negro, whose father was an escaped slave. On the shores of Sandy Lake, a party of Chippewas had crossed on the ice in midwinter, and encamped in the woods not far from the north shore. One of them went to the Lake with a kettle of water, and a hatchet to cut the ice. After he filled his kettle, he lay down to drink. The water was not entirely quiet, which attracted his attention at once. His suspicions were aroused, and placing his ear to the ice, he discerned regular pulsations, which his wits, sharpened by close attention to every sight and every sound, interpreted to be the tramp of men. They could be no other than Sioux, and there must be a party larger than their own. Their fire was instantly put out, and they separated to meet at daylight at a place several miles distant. All their conclusions were right. One band of savages outwitted another, having instincts of danger that civilized men would have allowed to pass unnoticed. The Sioux found only the embers of a deserted camp, and saw the tracks of their enemies diverge in so many directions that it was useless to pursue.
In 1839 the Chippewas on the upper Mississippi were required to come to Fort Snelling to receive their payments. That post was in Sioux territory, and the order gave offense to both nations. It required the presence of the United States troops to prevent murders even on the reservation. On the way home at Sunrise River, the Chippewas were surprised by a large force of Sioux, and one hundred and thirty-six were killed.
At the mouth of Crow Wing River, on the east bank of the Mississippi, is a ridge of gravel, on which there were shallow pits. The Indians said that, about fifteen years before, a war party of Sioux was above there on the river to attack the Sandy Lake band. A party of Chippewas concealed themselves in these pits, awaiting the descent of their enemies. The affair was so well managed that the surprise was complete. When the uncautious Sioux floated along within close range of their guns, the Chippewa warriors rose and delivered their fire into the canoes. Some got ashore and escaped through the woods to the westward, but a large portion were killed.
Detail of Crow Wing River from Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River from Astronomical and Barometrical Observations Surveys and Information by Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, 1843.
~ David Rumsey Map Collection
While crossing the Elk River, between the falls of St. Anthony and those of St. Cloud, a squaw ran into the water, screaming furiously, followed by a man with a club. This was her lord and master, bent on giving her a taste of discipline very common in Indian life. She succeeded in escaping this time by going into deep water. Her nose had been disfigured by cutting away most of the fleshy portions, as a punishment for unfaithfulness to a husband, who was probably worse than herself.
At the mouth of Crow Wing River was an Indian skipping about with the skin of a skunk tied to one of his ankles. There was also in a camp near the post another Chippewa, who had murdered a brother of the lively man. There is no criminal law among them but that of retaliation. Any member of the family may execute this law at such time and manner as he shall decide. This badge of skunk’s skin was a notice to the murderer that the avenger was about, and that his mission was not fulfilled. Once the guilty man had been shot through the thigh, as a foretaste of what was to follow. The avenger seemed to enjoy badgering his enemy, whom he informed that although he might be occasionally wounded, it was not the intention at present to kill him outright. If the victim should kill his persecutor, he well knew that some other relative would have executed full retaliation.
~ The Assassination of Hole In The Day [the Younger] by Anton Treuer, 2010.
Hole In The Day the Younger
aka Kue-wee-sas (Gwiiwizens [Boy or Lad])
(1825-1868)
Bagone-giizhig the Younger
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
This Chippewa brave, Bug-on-a-ke-dit, lived on a knoll overlooking the Mississippi River, four miles above Little Rock, where he had a garden. He appeared at the payment at La Pointe, in 1848, with a breech cloth and scanty leggings. This was partially for showing off a very perfect figure, tall, round and lithe, the Apollo of the woods. His scanty dress enabled him to exhibit his trophies in war. The dried ears of his foes, a part of whom were women, were suspended at his neck. Around his tawny arms were bright brass bands, but there was nothing of which he was more proud than a bullet hole just below the right breast. The place of the wound was painted black, and around it circles of red, yellow and purple; other marks on the chest, arms and face told of the numbers he had slain and scalped, in characters well understood by all Chippewas. The numbers of eagle feathers in his hair informed the savage crowd how many battles he had fought. He was not, like Grizzly Bear, a great orator, but resembled him in getting drunk at every opportunity. He managed to procure a barrel of whiskey, which he carried to his lodge. While it was being unloaded it fell upon and crushed him to death. Looking up a grass clad hill, a dingy flag was seen (1848) fluttering on a pole where he was buried. He often repeated with great zest the mode by which the owners of two of the desecrated ears were killed. His party of four braves discovered some Sioux lodges on the St. Peters, from which all the men were absent. The squaws lodged their hereditary enemies over night with their accustomed hospitality. Bug-on-a-ke-dit and his party concealed themselves during the day, and at dark each one attacked a lodge. Seven women and children were slaughtered. His son Kue-wee-sas, or Po-go-noy-ke-schik, was a much more respectable and influential chief.
An hundred years since, the Sioux had an extensive burial ground, on the outlet of Sandy Lake, a few miles east of the Mississippi River. Their dead were encased in bark coffins and placed on scaffolds supported by four cedar posts, five or six feet high. This was done to prevent wolves from destroying the bodies. Thirty years since some of these coffins were standing in a perfect condition, but most of them were broken or wholly fallen, only the posts standing well whitened by age. The Chippewas wrap the corpse in a blanket and a roll of birch bark, and dig a shallow grave in which the dead are laid. A warrior is entitled to have his bow and arrow, sometimes a gun and and a kettle, laid beside him with his trinkets. Over the mound a roof of cedar bark is firmly set up, and the whole fenced with logs or protected in some way against wolves and other wild animals. There is a hole at one or both ends of the bark shelter, in which is friends place various kinds of food. Their belief in a spirit world hereafter is universal. If it is a hunter or warrior, he will need his arms to kill game or to slay his enemies. Their theory is that the dog may go to the spiritual country, as a spirit, also his weapons, and the food which is provided for the journey. To him every thing has its spiritual as well as its material existence. Over all is the great spirit or kitchi-manitou, looking after the happiness of his children here and hereafter.
Stephen Bonga
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Winter travelling in those northern regions is by no means so uncomfortable as white men imagine. By means of snow shoes the Indian can move in a straight course towards his village, without regard to the trail. In the short days of winter he starts at day break and travels util dark. Stephen said he made fifty miles a day in that way, which is more than he could have done in summer.
At night they endeavor to find a thicket where there is a screen against the wind and plenty of wood. They scoop away the snow with their shoes and start a fire at the bottom of the pit. Around this they spread branches of pine, balsam or cedar, and over head make a shelter of brush to keep off the falling snow. Probably they have a team or more of dogs harnessed to sledges, who take their places around the fire. Here they cook and eat an enormous meal, when they wrap themselves in blankets for a profound sleep. Long before day another heavy meal is eaten. Everything is put in its proper package ready to start as soon as there is light enough to keep their course.
– Freelang Ojibwe-English by Weshki-ayaad, Charles Lippert and Guy T. Gambill
– Ojibwe People’s Dictionary by the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota
Many Indian words have originated since the white people came among them. A large proportion of their proper names are very apt expressions of something connected with the person, lake, river, or mountain to which they are applied. This people, in their primitive state, knew nothing of alcohol, coffee, tea, fire-arms, money, iron, and hundreds of other things to which they gave names, generally very appropriate ones. A negro is black meat; coffee is black medicine drink; tea, red medicine drink; iron, black metal; gold, yellow metal. I was taking the altitude of the sun at noon near Red Lake Mission with a crowd of Chippewas standing around greatly interested. They had not seen the liquid metal mercury, used for an artificial horizon in such observations, which excited their especial astonishment, and they had no name for it. One of them said something which caused a general expression of delight, for which I enquired the reason. He had coined a word for mercury on the spot, which means silver water.
Detail of Minnesota Point during George Stuntz’s survey contract during August-October of 1852.
~ Barber Papers (prologue): Stuntz Surveys Superior City 1852-1854
This family’s sugar bush was located at or near Silver Creek (T53N-R10W).
~ General Land Office Records
Indian trail to Rockland townsite overlooking English/Mineral Lake and Gogebic Iron Range.
~ Penokee Survey Incidents: Number V
Coasting along the beach northward from the mouth of the St. Louis River, on Minnesota Point, I saw a remarkable mark in the sand and went ashore to examine it. The heel and after part was clearly human. At the toes there was a cleft like the letter V and on each side some had one, others two human toes. Not far distant were Indians picking berries under the pine trees, which then covered the point in its entire length. We asked the berrypickers what made those tracks. They smiled and offered to sell us berries, of which they had several bushels, some in mokoks of birch bark, others in their greasy blankets. An old man had taken off his shirt, tied the neck and arms, and filled it half full of huckleberries. By purchasing some, (not from the shirt or blanket) we obtained an explanation of the nondescript tracks. There was a large family, all girls, whose feet were deformed in that manner. It was as though their feet had been split open when young halfway to the instep, and some of the toes lost. They had that spring met with a great loss by the remorseless bear. On the north shore, thirty miles east of Duluth, they had a fine sugar orchard, and had made an unusual quantity of sugar. A part was brought away, and a part was stored high up in trees in mokoks. There is nothing more tempting than sugar and whiskey to a bear. When this hard working family returned for their sugar and dried apples, moistened with whiskey, to lure bruin on to his ruin. A trap fixed with a heavy log is set up across a pen of logs, in the back end of which this bait is left, very firmly tied between two pieces of wood. This is fastened to a wooden deadfall, supporting one end of a long piece of round timber that has another piece under it. The bear smells the bait from afar, goes recklessly into the pen, and commences to gnaw the pieces of wood; before he gets much of the bait the upper log falls across his back, crushing him upon the lower one, where, if he is not killed, his hind legs are paralyzed. These deadly pens are found everywhere in the western forests. Two bears ranging along the south shore of English Lake, in Ashland County, Wisconsin, discovered some kegs of whiskey which contraband dealers had concealed there. With blows from their heavy paws they broke in the heads of the kegs and licked up the contents. They were soon in a very maudlin state, rolling about on the ground, embracing each other in an affectionate manner and vainly trying to go up the trees. Before the debauch was ended they were easily captured by a party of half-breeds. There are Indians who acknowledge the bear to be a relation, and profess a dislike to kill them. When they do they apologize, and say they do it because they are “buckoda,” or because it is necessary.
Detail of the Porcupine Mountains between the Montreal River and Ontonagon River from Map of the Mineral Lands Upon Lake Superior Ceded to the United States by the Treaty of 1842 With the Chippeway Indians.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
At Ontonagon, a very sorry looking young Indian came out of a lodge on the west side of the river and expressed a desire to take passage in our boat. There had been a great drunk in that lodge the day before. The squaws were making soup of the heads of white fish thrown away by the white fishermen. Some of the men were up, others oblivious to everything. Our passenger did not become thoroughly sober until towards evening. We passed the Lone Rock and encamped abreast of the Porcupine Mountains. Here he recovered his appetite. The next day, near the Montreal River, a squaw was seen launching her canoe and steering for us. She accosted the young fellow, demanding a keg of whiskey. He said nothing. She had given him furs enough to purchase a couple of gallons and he had made the purchase, but between himself and his friends it had completely disappeared. The old hag was also fond of whiskey. The fraud and disappointment put her into a rage that was absolutely fiendish. Her haggard face, long, coarse, greasy, black hair, voluble tongue and shrill voice perfected that character.
Turning into the mouth of the river we found a party from Lake Flambeau fishing in the pool at the foot of the Great Fall. Their success had not been good, and of course they were hungry. One of our men spilled some flour on the sand, of which he could save but little. The Flambeaus were delighted, and, gathering up sand and flour together, put the mixture in their kettle. The sand settled at the bottom, and the flour formed an excellent porridge for hungry aboriginees.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Mushinnewa and Waubannika, Chippewas, lived at Bad River, near Odana. Mushinnewa had a very bad reputation among his tribe. He was not only quarrelsome when drunk, but was not peaceable when sober. He broke Waubannika’s canoe into fragments, which was resented by the wife of the latter on the spot. She made use of the awl with which she was sewing the bark on another canoe, as a weapon, and stabbed old Mushinnewa in several places so severely that it was thought he would die. He threatened to kill her, and she fled with her husband to Lake Flambeau. But Mushinnewa did not die. He had a son as little liked by the Odana band as himself. In a drunken affray at Ontonagon another Indian killed him. The murderer then took the body in his canoe, brought it to Bad River and delivered it to old Mushinnewa. According to custom the Indian handed the enraged father the knife with which his son was killed, and baring his breast told him to strike. The villagers were happy to be rid of the young villain, and took the knife from the hand of his legal avenger. A barrel of flour covered the body, and before night Mushinnewa adopted the Indian as his son.
Two varieties of willow, the red and the yellow, grow on the low land, at the margin of swamps and streams, which have the name of kinnekinic. During the day’s journey, a few sticks are cut and carried to the camp. The outer bark is scraped away from the inner bark, which curls in a fringe around the stick, which is forced in the ground before a hot fire, and occasionally turned. In the morning it is easily crumpled in the hands, and put into the tobacco pouch. If they are rich enough to mix a little tobacco with the kinnekinic, it is a much greater luxury. As they spend a large part of their leisure time in smoking, they are compelled to be content with common willow bark, which is a very weak narcotic. Tobacco is not grown as far north as the country of the Chippewas, but it is probable they had it through traffic with the tribes of Virginia, North Carolina and the Gulf States, in times very remote. Pipes are found in the works of the mounds builders that are very ancient, showing that they had something to smoke, which must have been a vegetable.
Detail of where the “Lake Long” [Lake Owen] and St. Croix foot paths start along Fish Creek.
~ Barber Papers: “Barbers Camp” Fall of 1855
~ History of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, by Western Historical Co., 1883, page 276
Staggering around in a drunken crowd at La Pointe was a handsome Chippewa buck, as happy as whiskey can make any one. The tomahawk pipe is not an instrument of war, though it has that form. Its external aspect is that of a real tomahawk, intended to let out the brains of the foe. It is made of cast iron, with a round hollow poll, about the size of a pipe. The helm or handle is the stem, frequently decorated in the height of savage art, with ribbons, porcupine quills, paint and feathers. One thoroughly adorned in this manner has aperatures through the handle cross wise, so large and numerous that it is a mechanical wonder how the smoke can be drawn through it to the mouthpiece. No Indian is without a pipe of some kind, very likely one that is an heirloom from his ancestors. It is only in a passion that his knife or tomahawk pipe becomes dangerous. This genial buck had been struck with the poll of such a pipe when all hands were fighting drunk. It had cut a clear round hole in his head, hear the top, sinking a piece of skull with the skin and hair well into his brains. A surgeon with his instrument could not have made a more perfect incision. Inflammation had not set in and he was too busy with his boon companions to think of the wound. It was about twenty-four hours after it occurred when he stepped into his canoe and departed. When Mr. Beasley went up the Fish River, a few days afterwards a funeral was going on at the intersection of the Lake Long and the St. Croix trails, and the corpse had a cut in the head made by the pole of a tomahawk. From this event, no doubt, a family quarrel commenced that may continue till the race is extinct. The injured spirit of the fallen Indian demands revenge. In the exercise of retaliation it may be carried by his relations a little beyond retaliating justice, which will call on the other side for a victim, and so on to other generations.
In a lodge between the agency and the mission there was a young girl very sick. Probably it is my duty to say that she was not only young but beautiful, but at this time she was only wretched. Whether in her best health and estate the term beauty could be applied I very much doubt, as such cases are extremely rare among Indians, compared by our standard. A “grand medicine” had been got up expressly for the purpose of curing her. The medicine lodge was about thirty feet in length, made of green boughs. The feast, without which no evil spirit would budge one inch, had been swallowed, and the dance was at its height, in which some women were mingled with the men. Their shrieks, yelling and gesticulations should have frightened away all the matchi-manitous at La Pointe. The mother of the girl seemed to be full of joy, the bad spirit which afflicted her child was so near being expelled. As they made the circuit of the dance they thrust a large knife into the air towards the northwest, by which they gave the departing demon a stab as he made his escape from the lodge. This powow raged around the poor girl all the afternoon and till midnight, when the medicine man pronounced her safe. Before sundown the next day we saw them law her in a shallow grave, covered with cedar bark.
Father Nicolas Perrot
~ Wikipedia.org
Father Perret, who was among the Natches as far back as 1730, gives a portrait of a medicine man of that tribe at that time. It answers so well for those I have seen among the Chippewas that I give his description at length. For the Chippewa juggler I must except, however, the practice of abstinence and also the danger of losing his head. A feast is the first thing and the most essential.
“This nation, like all others, has its medicine man. They are generally old men, who, without study or science, undertake to cure all complaints. All their art consists in different jugglings, that is to say, they sing and dance night and day about the sick man, and smoke without ceasing, swallowing the smoke of the tobacco. These jugglers eat scarcely anything while engaged with the sick, but their chants and dances are accompanied by contortions so violent that, although they are entirely naked and should suffer from cold, they are always foaming at the mouth. They have a little basket in which they keep what they call their spirits, that is to say, roots of different kinds, heads of owls, parcels of the hair of deer, teeth of animals, pebbles and other trifles. To restore health to the sick they invoke without ceasing something they have in their basket. Sometimes they cut with a flint the part afflicted, suck out the blood, and in returning it immediately to the disk they spit out a piece of wood, straw or leather, which they have concealed under their tongue. Drawing the attention of the sick man, ‘there,’ they say, ‘is the cause of his sickness.’ These medicine men are always paid in advance. If the sick man recovers their gain is considerable, but if he dies they are sure to have their heads cut off by his relations.”
“Osawgee Beach. Superior, Wis.” postcard, circa 1920:
“Ojibwe chief Joseph Osawgee was born in Michigan in 1802 and came to Wisconsin Point as a young boy. There he established Superior’s first shipyard—a canoe-making outfit along the Nemadji River near Wisconsin Point. His birch bark canoes supplied transportation for both Ojibwe trappers and French Voyageurs. Chief Osawgee signed the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe on behalf of the Fond du Lac Ojibwe—and subsequently lost his land. He died in Solon Springs, Wisconsin, in 1876.”
~ Zenith City Online
Joseph Ozaagii
~ Geni.com
~ Indian Country Today Media Network
“Chief O-sau-gie Built First ‘Ships’ in City of Superior (He Was Head of Small Chippewa Band when Superior was Tiny Spot)”
As a rare example of the industry and probity among northern Indians, I take pleasure in recording the name of Osagi. His hunting ground and sugar camp lay to the west of La Pointe, on Cranberry River, where he had a cabin. In traversing that region I had as a guide a rude map and sketch of the streams made by him on a sheet of post office paper with a red pencil. Osagi was never idle and never drunk. Dr. Livermore was at this time the agent for the tribes at the west end of Lake Superior, and related the following instance of attention and generosity which is worthy of being reported. Osagi frequently made the agency presents, and Dr. Livermore, of course, did the same to his Otchipwee friends. Late in the fall, as the fishing season was about to close, he sent a barrel of delicious trout and white fish to the agency, which, by being hung up separately, would in this cool climate remain good all winter. The interpreter left a message from the donor with the fish, that he did not want any present in return, because in such a case there would be on his part no gifts, and he wished to make a gift. Dr. Livermore assented, but replied that if Osagi should ever be in need the agent expected to be informed of it. During the next winter a message came to Dr. Livermore stating that his friend wanted nothing, but that a young man, his cousin, was just in from Vermillion Lake, where he lived. The young man’s father and family could no longer take fish at Vermillion, and had started for Fonddulac. The old man was soon attacked by rheumatism, and for many days the whole party had been without provisions. Would the agent make his uncle a present of some flour? Of course this was done, and the young messenger started with a horse load of eatables for the solitary lodge of his father, on the St. Louis River, two hundred miles distant. This exemplary Indian, by saving his annuities, and by his economy, had accumulated money enough to buy a piece of land, and placed it in the hands of the agent. when the surveyors had subdivided the township opposite La Pointe, on the mainland, he bought a fraction and removed his family to it as a permanent home. In a few months the small pox swept off every member of that family but the mother.
[CHARLES WHITTLESEY.]
To be continued in Among The Otchipwees: III…
Among The Otchipwees: I
May 28, 2016
By Amorin Mello
Magazine of Western History Illustrated
No. 2 December 1884
as republished in
Magazine of Western History: Volume I, pages 86-91.
AMONG THE OTCHIPWEES.
Like all the northern tribes, the Chippewas are known by a variety of names. The early French called them Sauteus, meaning people of the Sault. Later missionaries and historians speak of them as Ojibways, or Odjibwes. By a corruption of this comes the Chippewa of the English.
“No-tin” copied from 1824 Charles Bird King original by Henry Inman in 1832-33. Noodin (Wind) was a prominent Chippewa chief from the St. Croix country.
~ Commons.Wikimedia.org
On the south of the Chippewas, in 1832, across the Straits of Mackinaw, were the Ottawas. Some of this nation were found by Champlain on the Ottawa River of Canada, whom he called Ottawawas. In later years there were some of them on Lake Superior, of whom it is probable the Lake Court Oreille band, in northwestern Wisconsin, is a remainder. The French call them “Court Oreillés,”, or short ears. All combined, it is not a powerful nation. Many of them pluck the hair from a large part of the scalp, leaving only a scalp lock. This custom they explain as a concession to their enemies, in order to make a more neat and rapid job of the scalping process. A thick head of coarse hair, they say, is a great impediment. Probably the true reason is a notion of theirs that a scalp lock is ornamental. The practice is not universal among Ottawas, and is not common with the neighboring tribes. These were the people who committed the massacre of the English garrison at Old Mackinaw, in 1763.
![Mah-kée-mee-teuv, Grizzly Bear, Chief of the [Menominee] Tribe by George Catlin, 1831. ~ Smithsonian Institute](https://chequamegonhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/1831-mah-kee-mee-teuv-grizzly-bear-by-george-catlin.jpg)
“Mah-kée-mee-teuv, Grizzly Bear, Chief of the [Menominee] Tribe” by George Catlin, 1831.
~ Smithsonian Institute
The Oneidas, a small remnant of that nation, from New York, were located on Duck River, near Fort Howard, and the Tuscaroras on the south shore of Lake Winnebago.
Detail from “Among The Winnebago [Ho-Chunk] Indians. Wah-con-ja-z-gah (Yellow Thunder) Warrior chief 120 y’s old” stereograph by Henry Hamilton Bennett, circa 1870s.
~ J. Paul Getty Museum
Plaster life cast of Sac leader Black Hawk (Makatai Meshe Kiakiak) reproduced by Bill Whittaker (original was made circa 1830) on display at Black Hawk State Historic Site.
~ Wikipedia.org
Next to the Menominees on the west were the Winnebagoes, a barbarous, warlike and treacherous people, even for Indians. Their northern border joined the Chippewas. Yellow Thunder’s village, in 1832, was on the trail from Lake Winnebago to Fort Winnebago, south of the Fox River about half way. He was more of a prophet, medicine man or priest, than warrior. In the Black Hawk war man of the Winnebago bucks joined the Sacs and the Foxes. Only four years before the United States was obliged to send an expedition against them, and to build a stockade at the portage. Their chiefs, old men, and medicine men, professed to be very friendly to us, but kept up constant communications with Black Hawk. When he was beaten at the Bad Ax River, and his warriors dispersed, they followed the old chief into the northern forest, captured him, and delivered him to the United States forces.
One of the causes of the Black Hawk War in 1832 was the murder of a party of Menominees near Fort Crawford, by the Sacs and Foxes. There was an ancient feud between those tribes which implies a series of scalping parties from generation to generation.
Sac leader “Ke-o-kuk or the Watchful Fox” by Thomas M. Easterly, 1847.
~ Missouri History Museum
As the Menominees were at peace with the United States, and their camps were near the garrison, they were considered to have been under Federal protection, and their murder as an insult to its authority. The return of Keokuk’s band to the Rock River country brought on a crisis in the month of May. The Menominees were anxious to avenge themselves, but were quieted by the promise of the government that the Sacs and Foxes should be punished. They offered to accompany our troops as scouts or spies, which was not accepted until the month of July, when Black Hawk had returned to the Four Lakes, where is now the city of Madison.
On a bright afternoon, about the middle of the month, a company of Menominee warriors emerged in single file from the woods in rear of Fort Howard at the head of Green Bay. They numbered about seventy-five, each one with a gun in his right hand, a blanket over his right shoulder, held across the breast by the naked left arm, and a tomahawk. Around the waist was a belt, on which was a pouch and a sheath, with a scalping knife. Their step was high and elastic, according to the custom of the men of the woods. On their faces was an excess of black paint, made more hideous by streaks of red. Their coarse black hair was decorated with all the ribbons and feathers at their command. Some wore moccasins and leggings of deer skin, but a majority were barefooted and barelegged. They passed across the common to the ferry, where they were crossed to Navarino, and marched to the Indian Agency at Shantytown. Here they made booths of the branches of trees. Captain or Colonel Hamilton, a son of Alexander Hamilton, was their commander. As they had an abundance to eat and were filled with martial prowess, they were exceedingly jubilant.
“A view of the Butte des Morts treaty ground with the arrival of the commissioners Gov. Lewis Cass and Col. McKenney in 1827” by James Otto Lewis, 1835.
~ Library of Congress
Their march was up the valley of the river, recrossing above Des Peres, passing the great Kakolin, and the Big Butte des Morts to the present site of Oshkosh. Thence crossing again they followed the trail to the Winnebago villages, past the Apukwa or Rice lakes to Fort Winnebago, making about twenty miles a day. On the route they were inclined to straggle, presenting nothing of military aspect except a uniform of dirty blankets. Colonel Hamilton was not able to make them stand guard, or to send out regular pickets. They were expert scouts in the day time, but at night lay down to sleep in security, trusting to their dogs, their keen sense of hearing and the great spirit. On the approach of day they were on the alert. It is a rule in Indian tactics to operate by surprises, and to attack at the first show of light in the morning.
From Fort Winnebago they moved to the Four Lakes, where Madison now is. Black Hawk had retired across the Wisconsin River, where there was a skirmish on the 21st of July, and the battle of the Bad Ax was being fought.
Photograph of Pierre Jean Édouard Desor (Swiss geologist and professor at Neuchâtel academy) from Wisconsin Historical Society. Desor and others were employed to survey for Report on the geology and topography of a portion of the Lake Superior Land District in the state of Michigan: Part I, Copper Lands; Part II, The Iron Region.
A few miles southwesterly of Waukedah, on the branch railroad to the iron mines of the upper Menominee, is a lake called by the Indians “Shope,” or Shoulder Lake, which I visited in the fall of 1850, in company with the late Edward Desor, a scientist of reputation in Switzerland. It discharges into the Sturgeon River, one of the eastern branches of the Menominee. There was a collection of half a dozen lodges, or wigwams, covered with bark, with a small field of corn, and the usual filth of an Indian village. The patriarch, or “chief” of that clan, came out to meet us, attended by about thirty men, women and children. By the traders he was called “Governor.” His nose was prominently Roman. He stood evenly on both feet, with his limbs bare below the knees. The right arm was also bare, and over the left shoulder was thrown a dirty blanket, covering the chest and the hips. A mass of coarse black hair covered the head, but was pushed away from the face. The usual dark, steady, snakelike, black eye of the race examined us with a piercing gaze. His face, with its large, well proportioned features, was almost grand. his pose was easy, unstudied and dignified, like one’s ideal of the Roman patrician of the time of Cicero, such as sculptors would select as a model.
This band were the Chippewas, but the coast of Green Bay was occupied by Menominees or Menomins, known to the French as “Folle Avoines,” or “Wild Rice” Indians, for which Menomin is the native name. Above the Twin Falls of the Menominee was an ancient village of Chippewas, called the “Bad Water” band, which is their name for a series of charming lakes not far distant, on the west of the river. They said their squaws, a long time since, were on the lakes in a bark canoe. Those on the land saw the canoe stand up on end, and disappear beneath the surface with all who were in it. “Very bad water.” From that time they were called the “Bad Water” lakes.
The Bad Water Band of Lake Superior Chippewa was first documented by Captain Thomas Jefferson Cram in his 1840 report to Congress.
~ Dickinson County Library
Cavalier was a half-breed French and Menominee. He was a handsome young man, and was well aware of it. Though he was married, the squaws received his attentions without much reserve. Half-breeds dress like the whites of the trading post, and not as Indians. Their hair is cut, and instead of a blanket they have coarse overcoats, and wear hats. Many of them are traders, a class mid-way between the whites and Indians.
No Princess Zone: Hanging Cloud, the Ogichidaakwe is a popular feature here on Chequamegon History.
Polygamy is the most fixed of savage institutions, and one that the half-breed and trader does not despise. Chippewa maidens, and even wives, have many reasons for looking kindly upon men who wear citizens’ clothes and trade in finery. Moccasins they can make very beautifully, but shawls and strouds of broadcloth, silk ribbons, pewter broaches, brass rings, and glass beads they cannot. These are the work of the white man. But none of that race, man or maid, has a more powerful passion for the ornamental than the children of the forest, male or female. Let us not judge the latter too harshly – poor, ignorant, suffering slave, with none of the protection which the African slave could sometimes invoke against barbarian cruelty. Their children are as happy and playful as those of the white race. Before they become men and women they are frequently beautiful, the deep brunette of their complexion having, on the cheek, a faint tinge of a lighter color, especially among those from the far north, like the “Bois Forts” of Rainy Lake. Young lads and girls have well formed limbs and straight figures, with agile and graceful movements. At this age the burdens and hardships of the squaws have not deformed them. The smoke of the lodge has not tanned their skin to Arab-like blackness nor inflamed their eyes. In about ten years of drudgery, rowing the canoe, putting up lodges, bearing children, and not infrequent beatings by her lord, the squaw is an old woman. Her features become rough and angular, the melodious voice of childhood is changed to one that is sharp, shrill, piercing and disagreeable. At forty she is a decrepit old woman, and before that time, if her master has not put her away, he may have installed number two as an additional tyrant.
A Menominee village in “Village of Folle-Avoines” by Francis de Laporte de Castelnau, 1842.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Well up the Peshtigo, on a rainy, foggy afternoon, we made an early camp near a dismal swamp on the low ground. On the other side of the river, at a considerable distance, was heard the moans of a person evidently in great distress. Cavalier was sent over to investigate. He found a wigwam with a Menominee and two women, both wives. The youngest was on a bridal tour. The old wife had broken her thigh about a month before, which had not been set. She was suffering intensely, the limb very much swollen, and the bridal party wholly neglecting her. It was evident that death was her only relief. A strong dose of morphine gradually moderated her groans, which were more pathetic than anything that ever reached my ears. Before morning she was quiet.
As the water was very low I went through the gorge of the Menominee above the Great Bekuennesec, or Smoky Falls. Near the lower end, and in hearing of the cataract, I saw through the rocky chasm a mountain in the distance to the northeast. My half-breed said the Indians called it Thunder Mountain. They say that thunder is caused by an immense bird which goes there, when it is enveloped by clouds and flaps its wings furiously.
Turning away from the mists of the cataract and its never ceasing roar, we went southwesterly among the pines, over rocks and through swamps, to a time worm trail leading from the Bad Water village to the Pemenee Falls. This had been for many years the land route from Kewenaw Bay to the waters of Green Bay at the mouth of the Menominee River. When the copper mines on Point Kewenaw were opened, in 1844 and 1845, the winter mail was carried over this route on dog trains, or on the backs of men. Deer were very plenty in the Menominee valley. Bands of Pottawatomies scoured the woods, killing them by hundreds for their skins. We did not kill them until near the close of the day, when about to encamp. Cavalier went forward along the trail to make camp and shoot a deer. I heard the report of his gun, and expected the usual feast of fresh venison. “Where is your deer?” “Don’t know; some one has put a spell on my gun, and I believe I know who did it.”
Map of Lac Vieux Desert with “Catakitekon” [Gete-gitigaan (old gardens)] from Thomas Jefferson Cram’s 1840 fieldbook.
~ School District of Marshfield: Digital Time Travelers
The Chippewas are spread over the shores and the rivers of Lake Superior, Lake Nipigon, the heads of the Mississippi, the waters of Red Lake, Rainy Lake and the tributaries of the Lake of the Woods. When Du Lhut and Hennepin first became acquainted with the tribes in that region, the Sioux, Dacotas, or Nadowessioux, and the Chippewas were at war, as they have been ever since. The Sioux of the woods were located on the Rum, or Spirit River, and their warriors had defeated the Chippewas at the west end of Lake Superior. Hennepin was a prisoner with a band of Sioux on Mille Lac, in 1680, at the head of Rum River, called Isatis. When Johnathan Carver was on the upper Mississippi, in 1769, the Chippewas had nearly cleared the country between there and Lake Superior of their enemies. In 1848 their war parties were still making raids on the Sioux and the Sioux upon them.
CHARLES WHITTLESEY.
To be continued in Among The Otchipwees: II…
Colonel Charles Whittlesey
May 27, 2016
By Amorin Mello
C.C. Baldwin was a friend, colleague, and biographer of Charles Whittlesey.
~ Memorial of Charles Candee Baldwin, LL. D.: Late President of the Western Reserve Historical Society, 1896, page iii.
This is a reproduction of Colonel Charles Whittlesey’s biography from the Magazine of Western History, Volume V, pages 534-548, as published by his successor Charles Candee Baldwin from the Western Reserve Historical Society. This biography provides extensive and intimate details about the life and profession of Whittlesey not available in other accounts about this legendary man.
Whittlesey came to Lake Superior in 1845 while working for the Algonquin Mining Company along the Keweenaw Peninsula’s copper region. His first trip to Chequamegon Bay appears to have been in 1849 while doing do a geological survey of the Penokee Mountains for David Dale Owen. Whittlesey played a dramatic role in American settlement of the Chequamegon Bay region. Whittlesey convinced his brother, Asaph Whittlesey Jr., to move from the Western Reserve in 1854 establish what became the City of Ashland at the head of Chequamegon Bay as a future port town for extracting and shipping minerals from the Penokee Mountains. Whittlesey’s influence can still be witnessed to this day through local landmarks named in his honor:
Whittlesey published more than two hundred books, pamphlets, and articles. For additional research resources, the extensive Charles Whittlesey Papers are available through the Western Reserve Historical Society in two series:
Magazine of Western History, Volume V, pages 534-548.
COLONEL CHARLES WHITTLESEY.
Map of the Connecticut Western Reserve in Ohio by William Sumner, September 1826.
~ Cleveland Public Library
![Asaph Whittlesey [Sr], Late of Tallmadge, Summit Co., Ohio by Vesta Hart Whittlesey and Susan Everett Whittlesey, né Fitch, 1872.](https://chequamegonhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/asaph-whittlesey-vesta-hart.jpg)
[Father] Asaph Whittlesey [Sr], Late of Tallmadge, Summit Co., Ohio by [mother] Vesta Hart Whittlesey [posthumously] and [stepmother] Susan Everett Whittlesey, né Fitch, 1872.
~ Archive.org
War was then in the west, and his neighbors feared they might be the victims of the scalping knife. But the danger was different. In passing the Narrows, between Pittsburgh and Beaver, the wagon ran off a bank and turned completely over on the wife and children. They were rescued and revived, but the accident permanently impaired the health of Mr. Whittlesey.
Mr. Whittlesey was in Tallmadge, justice of the peace from soon after his arrival till near the close of his life, and postmaster from 1814, when the office was first established, to his death. He was again severely injured, but a strong constitution and unflinching will enabled him to accomplish much. He had a store, buying goods in Pittsburgh and bringing them in wagons to Tallmadge; and an ashery; and in 1818 he commenced the manufacture of iron on the Little Cuyahoga, below Middlebury.
The times were hard, tariff reduced, and in 1828 he returned to his farm prematurely old. He died in 1842. Says General Bierce,
“His intellect was naturally of a high order, his religious convictions were strong and never yielded to policy or expediency. He was plain in speech, sometimes abrupt. Those who respected him were more numerous than those who loved him. But for his friends, no one had a stronger attachment. His dislikes were not very well concealed or easily removed. In short, he was a man of strong mind, strong feelings, strong prejudices, strong affections and strong attachments, yet the whole was tempered with a strong sense of justice and strong religious feelings.”
[Uncle] Elisha Whittlesey
~ Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives
Portrait of Reverend David Bacon from ConnecticutHistory.org:
“David Bacon (1771 – August 27, 1817) was an American missionary in Michigan Territory. He was born in Woodstock, Connecticut. He worked primarily with the Ottawa and Chippewa tribes, although they were not particularly receptive to his Christian teachings. He founded the town of Tallmadge, Ohio, which later became the center of the Congregationalist faith in Ohio.”
~ Wikipedia.org
Tallmadge was settled in 1808 as a religious colony of New England Congregationalists, by a colony led by Rev. David Bacon, a missionary to the Indians. This affected the society in which the boy lived, and exercised much influence on the morality of the town and the future of its children, one of whom was the Rev. Leonard Bacon. Rev. Timlow’s History of Southington says, “Mr. Whittlesey moved to Tallmadge, having become interested in settling a portion of Portage county with Christian families.” And that he was a man “of surpassing excellence of character.”
If it should seem that I have dwelt upon the parents of Colonel Whittlesey, it is because his own character and career were strongly affected by their characters and history. Charles, the son, combined the traits of the two. He commenced school at four years old in Southington; the next year he attended the log school house at Tallmadge until 1819, when the frame academy was finished and he attended it in winter, working on the farm in summer until he was nineteen.
The boy, too, saw early life on foot, horseback and with ox-teams. He found the Indians still on the Reserve, and in person witnessed the change from savage life and new settlements, to a state of three millions of people, and a large city around him. One of Colonel Whittlesey’s happiest speeches is a sketch of log cabin times in Tallmadge, delivered at the semi-centennial there in 1857.
~ Annual Report on the Geological Survey of the State of Ohio: 1837 by Ohio Geologist William Williams Mather, 1838, page 22.
In 1827 the youngster became a cadet at West Point. Here he displayed industry, and in some unusual incidents there, coolness and courage. He graduated in 1831, and became brevet second lieutenant in the Fifth United States infantry, and in November started to join his regiment at Mackinaw. He did duty through the winter with the garrison at Fort Gratiot. In the spring he was assigned at Green Bay to the company of Captain Martin Scott, so famous as a shot. At the close of the Black Hawk War he resigned from the army. Though recognizing the claim of the country to the services of the graduates of West Point, he tendered his services to the government during the Seminole Mexican war. By a varied experience his life thereafter was given to wide and general uses. He at first opened a law office in Cleveland, Ohio, and was fully occupied in his profession, and as part owner and co-editor of the Whig and Herald until the year 1837. He was that year appointed assistant geologist of the state of Ohio. Through very uneconomical economy, the survey was discontinued at the end of two years, when the work was partly done and no final reports had been made. Of course most of the work and its results were lost. Great and permanent good indeed resulted to the material wealth of the state, in disclosing the rich coal and iron deposit of southeastern Ohio, thus laying the foundation for the vast manufacturing industries which have made that portion of the state populous and prosperous. The other gentlemen associated with him were Professor William Mather as principal; Dr. Kirtland was entrusted with natural history. Others were Dr. S. P. Hildreth, Dr. Caleb Briggs, Jr., Professor John Locke and Dr. J. W. Foster. It was an able corps, and the final results would have been very valuable and accurate. In 1884, Colonel Whittlesey was sole survivor and said in this Magazine:
“Fifty years since, geology had barely obtained a standing among the sciences even in Europe. In Ohio it was scarcely recognized. The state at that time was more of a wilderness than a cultivated country, and the survey was in progress little more than two years. It was unexpectedly brought to a close without a final report. No provision was made for the preservation of papers, field notes and maps.”
Report of Progress in 1869, by J. S. Newberry, Chief Geologist, by the Geological Survey of Ohio, 1870.
Professor Newbury, in a brief resume of the work of the first survey (report of 1869), says the benefits derived “conclusively demonstrate that the geological survey was a producer and not a consumer, that it added far more than it took from the public treasury and deserved special encouragement and support as a wealth producing agency in our darkest financial hour.” The publication of the first board, “did much,” says Professor Newberry, “to arrest useless expenditure of money in the search for coal outside of the coal fields and in other mining enterprises equally fallacious, by which, through ignorance of the teachings of geology, parties were constantly led to squander their means.” “It is scarcely less important to let our people know what we have not, than what we have, among our mineral resources.”
“Descriptions of Ancient Works in Ohio. By Charles Whittlesey, of the late Geological Corps of Ohio.”
~ Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume III., Article 7, 1852.
The topographical and mathematical parts of the survey were committed to Colonel Whittlesey. He made partial reports, to be found in the ‘State Documents’ of 1838 and 1839, but his knowledge acquired in the survey was of vastly greater service in many subsequent writings, and, as a foundation for learning, made useful in many business enterprises of Ohio. He had, during this survey, examined and surveyed many ancient works in the state, and, at its close, Mr. Joseph Sullivant, a wealthy gentleman interested in archaeology, residing in Columbus, proposed that, he bearing the actual expense, Whittlesey should continue the survey of the works of the Mound Builders, with a view to joint publication. During the years 1839 and 1840, and under the arrangement, he made examination of nearly all the remaining works then discovered, but nothing was done toward their publication. Many of his plans and notes were used by Messrs. Squier & Davis, in 1845 and 1846, in their great work, which was the first volume of the Smithsonian Contributions, and in that work these gentlemen said:
“Among the most zealous investigators in the field of American antiquarian research is Charles Whittlesey, esq., of Cleveland, formerly topographical engineer of Ohio. His surveys and observations, carried on for many years and over a wide field, have been both numerous and accurate, and are among the most valuable in all respects of any hitherto made. Although Mr. Whittlesey, in conjunction with Joseph Sullivant, esq., of Columbus, originally contemplated a joint work, in which the results of his investigations should be embodied, he has, nevertheless, with a liberality which will be not less appreciated by the public than by the authors, contributed to this memoir about twenty plans of ancient works, which, with the accompanying explanations and general observations, will be found embodied in the following pages.
“It is to be hoped the public may be put in possession of the entire results of Mr. Whittlesey’s labor, which could not fail of adding greatly to our stock of knowledge on this interesting subject.”
“Marietta Works, Ohio. Charles Whittlesey, Surveyor 1837.”
~ Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume I., Plate XXVI.
It will be seen that Mr. Whittlesey was now fairly started, interested and intelligent, in the several fields which he was to make his own. And his very numerous writings may be fairly divided into geology, archaeology, history, religion, with an occasional study of topographical geology. A part of Colonel Whittlesey’s surveys were published in 1850, as one of the Smithsonian contributions; portions of the plans and minutes were unfortunately lost. Fortunately the finest and largest works surveyed by him were published. Among those in the work of Squier & Davis, were the wonderful extensive works at Newark, and those at Marietta. No one again could see those works extending over areas of twelve and fifteen miles, as he did. Farmers cannot raise crops without plows, and the geography of the works at Newark must still be learned from the work of Colonel Whittlesey.
~ Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume XIII., Article IV., page 2 of “Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior” by Charles Whittlesey.
He made an agricultural survey of Hamilton county in 1844. That year the copper mines of Michigan began to excite enthusiasm. The next year a company was organized in Detroit, of which Colonel Whittlesey was the geologist. In August they launched their boat above the rapids of the Sault St. Marie and coasted along the shore to where is now Marquette. Iron ore was beneath notice, and in truth was no then transportable, and they pulled away for Copper Harbor, and then to the region between Portage lake and Ontonagon, where the Algonquin and Douglas Houghton mines were opened. The party narrowly escaped drowning the night they landed. Dr. Houghton was drowned the same night not far from them. A very interesting and life-like account of their adventures was published by Colonel Whittlesey in the National Magazine of New York City, entitled “Two Months in the Copper Regions.” From 1847 to 1851 inclusive, he was employed by the United States in the survey of the country around Lake Superior and the upper Mississippi, in reference to mines and minerals. After that he spent much time in exploring and surveying the mineral district of the Lake Superior basin. The wild life of the woods with a guide and voyageurs threading the streams had great attractions for him and he spent in all fifteen seasons upon Lake Superior and the upper Mississippi, becoming thoroughly familiar with the topography and geological character of that part of the country.
“Pictograph C. Okundekund [Okandikan] and his Band of Ontonagon – Michigan,” as reproduced from birch bark by Seth Eastman, and published as Plate 62 in Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Volume I., by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, 1851. This was one of several pictograph petitions from the 1849 Martell delegation:
“By this scroll, the chief Kun-de-kund of the Eagle totem of the river Ontonagon, of Lake Superior, and certain individuals of his band, are represented as uniting in the object of their visit of Oshcabewis. He is depicted by the figure of an eagle, Number 1. The two small lines ascending from the head of the bird denote authority or power generally. The human arm extended from the breast of the bird, with the open hand, are symbolic of friendship. By the light lines connecting the eye of each person with the chief, and that of the chief with the President, (Number 8,) unity of views or purpose, the same as in pictography Number 1, is symbolized. Number 2, 3, 4, and 5, are warriors of his own totem and kindred. Their names, in their order, are On-gwai-sug, Was-sa-ge-zhig, or The Sky that lightens, Kwe-we-ziash-ish, or the Bad-boy, and Gitch-ee-man-tau-gum-ee, or the great sounding water. Number 6. Na-boab-ains, or Little Soup, is a warrior of his band of the Catfish totem. Figure Number 7, repeated, represents dwelling-houses, and this device is employed to deonte that the persons, beneath whose symbolic totem it is respectively drawn, are inclined to live in houses and become civilized, in other words, to abandon the chase. Number 8 depicts the President of the United States standing in his official residence at Washington. The open hand extended is employed as a symbol of friendship, corresponding exactly, in this respect, with the same feature in Number 1. The chief whose name is withheld at the left hand of the inferior figures of the scroll, is represented by the rays on his head, (Figure 9,) as, apparently, possessing a higher power than Number 1, but is still concurring, by the eye-line, with Kundekund in the purport of pictograph Number 1.”
“Studio portrait of geologist Charles Whittlesey dressed for a field trip.” Circa 1858.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
His detailed examination extended along the copper range from the extreme east of Point Keweenaw to Ontonagon, through the Porcupine mountain to the Montreal river, and thence to Long lake in Wisconsin, a distance of two hundred miles. In 1849, 1850 and 1858 he explored the valley of the Menominee river from its mouth to the Brule. He was the first geologist to explore the South range. The Wisconsin Geological Survey (Vol. 3 pp. 490 and 679) says this range was first observed by him, and that he many years ago drew attention to its promise of merchantable ores which are now extensively developed from the Wauceda to the Commonwealth mines, and for several miles beyond. He examined the north shore from Fond du Lac east, one hundred miles, the copper range of Minnesota and on the St. Louis river to the bounds of our country. His report was published by the state in 1865, and was stated by Professor Winchill to be the most valuable made.
All his geological work was thorough, and the development of the mineral resources which he examined, and upon which he reported, gave the best proofs of his scientific ability and judgment.
“Outline Map Showing the Position of the Ancient Mine Pits of Point Keweenaw, Michigan by Charles Whittlesey.”
~ Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume XIII., Article IV., frontpiece of “Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior” by Charles Whittlesey, 1863.
With the important results from his labors in Ohio in mind, the state of Wisconsin secured his services upon the geological survey of that state, carried on in 1858, 1859 and 1860, and terminated only by the war. The Wisconsin survey was resumed by other parties, and the third volume of the Report for Northern Wisconsin, page 58, says:
The Contract of James Hall with Charles Whittlesey is available from the Journal of the Assembly of Wisconsin, Volume I, pages 178-179, 1862. Whittlesey was to perform “a careful geological survey of the country lying between the Montreal river on the east, and the westerly branches of [the] Bad River on west”. This contract was unfulfilled due to the outbreak of the American Civil War. Whittlesey independently published his survey of the Penokee Mountains in 1865 without Hall. Some of Whittlesey”s pamphlets have been republished here on Chequamegon History in the Western Reserve category of posts.“The only geological examinations of this region, however, previous to those on which the report is based, and deserving the name, were those of Colonel Charles Whittlesey of Cleveland, Ohio. This gentleman was connected with Dr. D. D. Owen’s United States geological survey of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, and in this connection examined the Bad River country, in 1848. The results are given in Dr. Owen’s final report, published in Washington, in 1852. In 1860 (August to October) Colonel Whittlesey engaged in another geological exploration in Ashland, Bayfield and Douglass counties, as part of the geological survey of Wisconsin, then organized under James Hall. His report, presented to Professor Hall in the ensuing year, was never published, on account of the stoppage of the survey. A suite of specimens, collected by Colonel Whittlesey during these explorations, is at present preserved in the cabinet of the state university at Madison, and it bears testimony to the laborious manner in which that gentleman prosecuted the work. Although the report was never published, he has issued a number of pamphlet publications, giving the main results obtained by him. A list of them, with full extracts from some of them, will be found in an appendix to the report. In the same appendix I have reproduced a geological map of this region, prepared by Colonel Whittlesey in 1860.”
“Geological Map of the Penokie Range.” by Charles Whittlesey, Dec. 1860.
~ Geology of Wisconsin. Survey of 1873-1879. Volume III., 1880, Plate XX, page 214.
~ Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, since its establishment in 1802 by George W. Cullum, page 496.
“The Baltimore Plot was an alleged conspiracy in late February 1861 to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln en route to his inauguration. Allan Pinkerton, founder of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, played a key role by managing Lincoln’s security throughout the journey. Though scholars debate whether or not the threat was real, clearly Lincoln and his advisors believed that there was a threat and took actions to ensure his safe passage through Baltimore, Maryland.”
~ Wikipedia.org
Such was Colonel Whittlesey’s employment when the first signs of the civil war appeared. He abandoned it at once. He became a member of one of the military companies that tendered its services to President-elect Lincoln, when he was first threatened, in February, 1861. He became quickly convinced that war was inevitable, and urged the state authorities that Ohio be put at once in preparation for it; and it was partly through his influence that Ohio was so very ready for the fray, in which, at first, the general government relied on the states. Two days after the proclamation of April 15, 1861, he joined the governor’s staff as assistant quartermaster-general. He served in the field in West Virginia with the three months’ men, as state military engineer; with the Ohio troops, under General McClellan, Cox and Hill. At Seary Run, on the Kanawha, July 17, 1861, he distinguished himself by intrepidity and coolness during a severe engagement, in which his horse was shot under him. At the expiration of the three months’ service, he was appointed colonel of the Twentieth regiment, Ohio volunteers, and detailed by General Mitchell as chief engineer of the department of Ohio, where he planned and constructed the defenses of Cincinnati.
“[Brother] Asaph Whittlesey [Jr.] dressed for his journey from Ashland to Madison, Wisconsin, to take up his seat in the state legislature. Whittlesey is attired for the long trek in winter gear including goggles, a walking staff, and snowshoes.” Circa 1860.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
“SIR: Will you allow me to suggest the consideration of a great movement by land and water, up the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers.
“First, Would it not allow of water transportation half way to Nashville?
“Second, Would it not necessitate the evacuation of Columbus, by threatening their railway communications?
“Third, Would it not necessitate the retreat of General Buckner, by threatening his railway lines?
“Fourth, Is it not the most feasible route into Tennessee?”
This plan was adopted, and Colonel Whittlesey’s regiment took part in its execution.
In April, 1862, on the second day of the battle of Shiloh, Colonel Whittlesey commanded the Third brigade of General Wallace’s division — the Twentieth, Fifty-sixth, Seventy-sixth and Seventy-eighth Ohio regiments. “It was against the line of that brigade that General Beauregard attempted to throw the whole weight of his force for a last desperate charge; but he was driven back by the terrible fire, that his men were unable to face.” As to his conduct, Senator Sherman said in the United States senate.1
The official report of General Wallace leaves little to be said. The division commander says, “The firing was grand and terrible. Before us was the Crescent regiment of New Orleans; shelling us on our right was the Washington artillery of Manassas renown, whose last charge was made in front of Colonel Whittlesey’s command.”
“This is an engraved portrait of Charles Whittlesey, a prominent soldier, attorney, scholar, newspaper editor, and geologist during the nineteenth century. He participated in a geological survey of Ohio conducted in the late 1830s, during which he discovered numerous Native American earthworks. In 1867, Whittlesey helped establish the Western Reserve Historical Society, and he served as the organization’s president until his death in 1886. Whittlesey also wrote approximately two hundred books and articles, mostly on geology and Ohio’s early history.”
~ Ohio History Central
General Force, then lieutenant-colonel under Colonel Whittlesey, fully describes the battle,2 and quotes General Wallace. “The nation is indebted to our brigade for the important services rendered, with the small loss it sustained and the manner in which Colonel Whittlesey handled it.”
Colonel Whittlesey was fortunate in escaping with his life, for General Force says, it was ascertained that the rebels had been deliberately firing at him, sometimes waiting to get a line shot.
Colonel Whittlesey had for some time been in bad health, and contemplating resignation, but deferring it for a decisive battle. Regarding this battle as virtually closing the campaign in the southwest, and believing the Rebellion to be near its end, he now sent it in.
General Grant endorsed his application, “We cannot afford to lose so good an officer.”
“Few officers,” it is said, “retired from the army with a cleaner or more satisfactory record, or with greater regret on the part of their associates.” The Twentieth was an early volunteer regiment. The men were citizens of intelligence and character. They reached high discipline without severity, and without that ill-feeling that often existed between men and their officers. There was no emergency in which they could not be relied upon. “Between them and their commander existed a strong mutual regard, which, on their part, was happily expressed by a letter signed by all the non-commissioned officers.”
“CAMP SHILOH, NEAR PITTSBURGH LANDING, TENNESSEE, April 21, 1862.
“COL. CHAS. WHITTLESEY:
“Sir — We deeply regret that you have resigned the command of the Twentieth Ohio. The considerate care evinced for the soldiers in camp, and, above all, the courage, coolness and prudence displayed on the battle-field, have inspired officers and men with the highest esteem for, and most unbounded confidence in our commander.
“From what we have seen at Fort Donelson, and at the bloody field near Pittsburgh, on Monday, the seventh, all felt ready to follow you unfalteringly into any contest and into any post of danger.
“While giving expression to our unfeigned sorrow at your departure from us, and assurance of our high regard and esteem for you, and unwavering confidence as our leader, we would follow you with the earnest hope that your future days may be spent in uninterrupted peace and quiet, enjoying the happy reflections and richly earned rewards of well-spent service in the cause of our blessed country in its dark hour of need.”
Said Mr. W. H. Searles, who served under him, at the memorial meeting of the Engineers Club of Cleveland: “In the war he was genial and charitable, but had that conscientious devotion to duty characteristic of a West Point soldier.”
Since Colonel Whittlesey’s decease the following letter was received:
“CINCINNATI, November 10, 1886.
“DEAR MRS. WHITTLESEY: — Your noble husband has got release from the pains and ills that made life a burden. His active life was a lesson to us how to live. His latter years showed us how to endure. To all of us in the Twentieth Ohio regiment he seemed a father. I do not know any other colonel that was so revered by his regiment. Since the war he has constantly surprised me with his incessant literary and scientific activity. Always his character was an example and an incitement. Very truly yours,
“M. F. Force.”
Colonel Whittlesey now turned his attention at once again to explorations in the Lake Superior and upper Mississippi basins, and “new additions to the mineral wealth of the country were the result of his surveys and researches.” His geological papers commencing again in 1863, show his industry and ability.
It happened during his life many times, and will happen again and again, that his labors as an original investigator have borne and will bear fruit long afterwards, and, as the world looks at fruition, of much greater value to others than to himself.
~ Report of a geological survey of Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota: and incidentally of a portion of Nebraska Territory, by David Dale Owen, 1852, page 420.
He prognosticated as early as 1848, while on Dr. Owen’s survey, that the vast prairies of the northwest would in time be the great wheat region. These views were set forth in a letter requested by Captain Mullen of the Topographical Engineers, who had made a survey for the Northern Pacific railroad, and was read by him in a lecture before the New York Geographical society in the winter of 1863-4.
He examined the prairies between the head of the St. Louis river and Rainy Lake, between the Grand fork of Rainy Lake river and the Mississippi, and between the waters of Cass Lake and those of Red Lake. All were found so level that canals might be made across the summits more easily than several summits already cut in this country.
In 1879 the project attracted attention, and Mr. Seymour, the chief engineer and surveyor of New York, became zealous for it, and in his letters of 1880, to the Chambers of Commerce of Duluth and Buffalo, acknowledged the value of the information supplied by Colonel Whittlesey.
Says the Detroit Illustrated News:
“A large part of the distance from the navigable waters of Lake Superior to those of Red river, about three hundred and eight miles, is river channel easily utilized by levels and drains or navigable lakes. The lift is about one thousand feet to the Cass Lake summit. At Red river this canal will connect with the Manitoba system of navigation through Lake Winnipeg and the valleys of the Saskatchewan. Its probable cost is given at less than four millions of dollars, which is below the cost of a railway making the same connections. And it is estimated that a bushel of wheat may be carried from Red river to New York by water for seventeen cents, or about one-third of the cost of transportation by rail.”
We approach that part of the life of Colonel Whittlesey which was so valuable to our society. The society was proposed in 1866.3 Colonel Whittlesey’s own account of its foundation is: “The society originally comprised about twenty persons, organized in May, 1867, upon the suggestion of C. C. Baldwin, its present secretary. The real work fell upon Colonel Whittlesey, Mr. Goodman and Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Goodman devoting nearly all of his time until 1872 (the date of his death).” The statement is a very modest one on the part of Colonel Whittlesey. All looked to him to lead the movement, and none other could have approached his efficiency or ability as president of the society.
The society seemed as much to him as a child is to a parent, and his affection for it has been as great. By his learning, constant devotion without compensation from that time to his death, his value as inspiring confidence in the public, his wide acquaintance through the state, he has accomplished a wonderful result, and this society and its collections may well be regarded as his monument.
Mr. J. P. Holloway, in his memorial notice before the Civil Engineer’s club, of which Colonel Whittlesey was an honorary member, feelingly and justly said:
“Colonel Whittlesey will be best and longest remembered in Cleveland and on the Reserve, for his untiring interest and labors in seeking to rescue from oblivion the pioneer history of this portion of the state, and which culminated in the establishment of the present Western Reserve Historical society, of which for many years he was the presiding officer. It will be remembered by many here, how for years there was little else of the Western Reserve Historical society, except its active, hard working president. But as time moved on, and one by one the pioneers were passing away, there began to be felt an increasing interest in preserving not only the relics of a by-gone generation, but also the records of their trials and struggles, until now we can point with a feeling of pride to the collections of a society which owes its existence and success to a master spirit so recently called away.”
The colonel was remarkably successful in collecting the library, in which he interested with excellent pecuniary purpose the late Mr. Case. He commenced the collection of a permanent fund which is now over ten thousand dollars. It had reached that amount when its increase was at once stopped by the panic of 1873, and while it was growing most rapidly. The permanent rooms, the large and very valuable museum, are all due in greatest measure to the colonel’s intelligent influence and devotion.
I well remember the interest with which he received the plan; the instant devotion to it, the zeal with which at once and before the society was started, he began the preparation of his valuable book, The Early History of Cleveland, published during the year.
Colonel Whittlesey was author of — I had almost said most, and I may with no dissent say— the most valuable publications of the society. His own very wide reputation as an archaeologist and historian also redounded to its credit. But his most valuable work was not the most showy, and consisted in the constant and indefatigable zeal he had from 1867 to 1886, in its prosperity. These were twenty years when the welfare of the society was at all times his business and never off his mind. During the last few years Colonel Whittlesey has been confined to his home by rheumatism and other disorders, the seeds of which were contracted years before in his exposed life on Lake Superior, and he has not been at the rooms for years. He proposed some years since to resign, but the whole society would have felt that the fitness of things was over had the resignation been accepted. Many citizens of Cleveland recall that if Colonel Whittlesey could no longer travel about the city he could write. And it was fortunate that he could. He took great pleasure in reading and writing, and spent much of his time in his work, which continued when he was in a condition in which most men would have surrendered to suffering.
Colonel Whittlesey did not yet regard his labors as finished. During the last few years of his life religion, and the attitude and relation of science to it, engaged much of his thought, and he not unfrequently contributed an editorial or other article to some newspaper on the subject. Lately these had taken more systematic shape, and as late as the latter part of September, and within thirty days of his death, he closed a series of articles which were published in the Evangelical Messenger on “Theism and Atheism in Science.” These able articles were more systematic and complete than his previous writings on the subject, and we learn from the Messenger that they will be published in book form. The paper says:
Colonel Charles Whittlesey of this city, known to our readers as the author of an able series of articles on “Theism and Atheism in Science” just concluded, has fallen asleep in Jesus. One who knew the venerable man and loved him for his genuine worth said to us that “his last work on earth was the preparation of these articles . . . which to him was a labor of love and done for Christ’s sake.”
!["The Old Whittlesey Homestead, Euclid Avenue [Cleveland, Ohio]." ~ Historical Collections of Ohio in Two Volumes, by Henry Howe, 1907, page 521.](https://chequamegonhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/whittlesey-home-cleveland.jpg)
“The Old Whittlesey Homestead, Euclid Avenue.” [Cleveland, Ohio]
~ Historical Collections of Ohio in Two Volumes by Henry Howe, 1907, page 521.
Colonel Whittlesey was married October 4, 1858, to Mrs. Mary E. (Lyon) Morgan4 of Oswego, New York, who survives him; they had no children.
!["Char. Whittlesey - Cleveland Ohio, Oct. 30, 1895[?] - Geologist of Ohio." ~ Wisconsin Historical Society](https://chequamegonhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/charles-whittlesey-geologist.jpg)
Charles Whittlesey died on October 18th, 1886, and was never Ohio’s State Geologist.
“Char. Whittlesey – Cleveland Ohio, Oct. 30, 1895[?] – Geologist of Ohio.”
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Much of his work does not therefore appear in that complete and systematic shape which would make it best known to the general public. But by scholars in his lines of study in Europe and America, he was well known and very highly respected. “His contributions to literature,” said the New York Herald,5 “have attracted wide attention among the scientific men of Europe and America.”
Whittlesey Culture:
A.D. 1000 to 1600
“‘Whittlesey Culture’ is an archaeological designation referring to a Late Prehistoric (more appropriately: Late Pre-Contact) North American indigenous group that occupied portions of northeastern Ohio. This culture isdistinguished from other so-called Late Prehistoric societies mainly by distinctive kinds of pottery. Many Whittlesey communities were located on plateaus overlooking stream valleys or the shores of Lake Erie. The villages often were surrounded with a pallisade or a ditch, suggesting a need for defense.
“The Whittlesey culture is named for Charles Whittlesey, a 19th century geologist and archaeologist who was a founder of the Western Reserve Historical Society.”
As an American archaeologist, Colonel Whittlesey was very learned and thorough. He had in Ohio the advantage of surveying its wonderful works at an early date. He had, too, that cool poise and self-possession that prevented his enthusiasm from coloring his judgment. He completely avoided errors into which a large share of archaeologists fall. The scanty information as to the past and its romantic interest, lead to easy but dangerous theories, and even suffers the practice of many impositions. He was of late years of great service in exposing frauds, and thereby helped the science to a healthy tone. It may be well enough to say that in one of his tracts he exposed, on what was apparently the best evidence, the supposed falsity of the Cincinnati tablet so called. Its authenticity was defended by Mr. Robert Clarke of Cincinnati, successfully and convincingly, to Colonel Whittlesey himself. I was with the colonel when he first heard of the successful defense and with a mutual friend who thought he might be chagrined, but he was so much more interested in the truth for its own sake, than in his relations to it, that he appeared much pleased with the result.
Whittlesey Culture artifacts: “South Park Village points (above) and pottery fragment (below)”
~ Cuyahoga Valley National Park
Among American writers, Mr. Short speaks of his investigations as of “greater value, due to the eminence of the antiquarian who writes them.” Hon. John D. Baldwin says, “in this Ancient America speaks of Colonel Whittlesey as one of the best authorities.” The learned Frenchman, Marquis de Nadaillac and writers generally upon such subjects quote his information and conclusions with that high and safe confidence in his learning and sound views which is the best tribute to Colonel Whittlesey, and at the same time a great help to the authors. And no one could write with any fullness on the archaeology of America without using liberally the work of Colonel Whittlesey, as will appear in any book on the subject. He was an extensive, original investigator, always observing, thoughtful and safe, and in some branches, as in Ancient Mining at Lake Superior, his work has been the substantial basis of present learning. It is noticeable that the most eminent gentlemen have best appreciated his safe and varied learning. Colonel Whittlesey was early in the geological field. Fifty years ago little was known of paleontology, and Colonel Whittlesey cared little for it, perhaps too little; but in economic geology, in his knowledge of Ohio, its surface, its strata, its iron, its coal and its limestone in his knowledge of the copper and iron of the northwest, he excelled indeed. From that date to his death he studied intelligently these sections. As Professor Lapham said he was studying Wisconsin, so did Colonel Whittlesey give himself to Ohio, its mines and its miners, its manufactures, dealings in coal and iron, its history, archaeology, its religion and its morals. Nearly all his articles contributed to magazines were to western magazines, and anyone who undertook a literary enterprise in the state of Ohio that promised value was sure to have his aid.6
In geology his services were great. The New York Herald, already cited, speaks of his help toward opening coal mines in Ohio and adds,“he was largely instrumental in discovering and causing the development of the great iron and copper regions of Lake Superior.” Twenty-six years ago he discovered a now famous range of iron ore.
“ On the Mound Builders and on the geological character and phenomena of the region of the lakes and the northwest he was quoted extensively as an authority in most of the standard geological and anthropological works of America and Europe,” truthfully says the ‘Biographical Cyclopedia.
Colonel Whittlesey was as zealous in helping to preserve new and original material for history as for science. In 1869 he pushed with energy the investigation, examination and measures which resulted in the purchase by the State of Ohio of the St. Clair papers so admirably, fully and ably edited by Mr. William Henry Smith, and in 1882 published in two large and handsome volumes by Messrs. Robert Clarke and Co. of Cincinnati.
Colonel Whittlesey was very prominent in the project which ended in the publication of the Margry papers in Paris. Their value may be gathered from the writing of Mr. Parkman (La Salle) and The Narrative and Critical History of America, Volume IV., where on page 242 is an account of their publication.7 In 1870 and 1871 an effort to enlist congress failed. The Boston fire defeated the efforts of Mr. Parkman to have them published in that city. Colonel Whittlesey originated the plan eventually adopted, by which congress voted ten thousand dollars as a subscription for five hundred copies, and, as says our history: “at last by Mr. Parkman’s assiduous labors in the east, and by those of Colonel Whittlesey, Mr. O. H. Marshall and others in the west,” the bill was passed.
The late President Garfield, an active member of our society, took a lively interest in the matter, and instigated by Colonel Whittlesey used his strong influence in its favor. Mr. Margry has felt and expressed a very warm feeling for Colonel Whittlesey for his interest and efforts, and since the colonel’s death, and in ignorance of it, has written him a characteristic letter to announce to the colonel, first of any in America, the completion of the work. A copy of the letter follows :
“PARIS, November 4, 1886.
“VERY DEAR AND HONORED SIR: It is to-day in France, St. Charles’ day, the holiday I wished when I had friends so called. I thought it suitable to send you to-day the good news to continue celebrating as of old. You will now be the first in America to whom I write it. I have just given the check to be drawn, for the last leaves of the work, of which your portrait may show a volume under your arm.8 Therefore there is no more but stitching to be done to send the book on its way.
“In telling you this I will not forget to tell you that I well remembered the part you took in that, publication as new, as glorious for the origin of your state, and for which you can congratulate yourself, in thanking you I have but one regret, that Mr. Marshall can not have the same pleasure. I hope that your health as well as that of Madame Whittlesey is satisfactory. I would be happy to hear so. For me if I am in good health it is only by the intervention of providence. However, I have lost much strength, though I do not show it. We must try to seem well.
“Receive, dear and honored sir, and for Madame, the assurance of my profound respect and attachment.
“PIERRE MARGRY.”
Colonel Whittlesey views of the lives of others were affected by his own. Devoted to extending human learning, with little thought of self interest, he was perhaps a little too impatient with others, whose lives had other ends deemed by them more practical. Yet after all, the colonel’s life was a real one, and his pursuits the best as being nearer to nature and far removed from the adventitious circumstances of what is ordinarily called polite life.
He impressed his associates as being full of learning, not from books, but nevertheless of all around — the roads the fields, the waters, the sky, men animals or plants. Charming it was to be with him in excursions; that was really life and elevated the mind and heart.
He was a profoundly religious man, never ostentatiously so, but to him religion and science were twin and inseparable companions. They were in his life and thought, and he wished to and did live to express in print his sense that the God of science was the God of religion, and that the Maker had not lost power over the thing made.
He rounded and finished his character as he finished his life, by joint and hearty affection and service to the two joint instruments of God’s revelation, for so he regarded them. Rev. Dr. Hayden testifies: “He had no patience with materialism, but in his mature strength of mind had harmonized the facts of science with the truths of religion.”
Charles Whittlesey
~ Magazine of Western History, Volume V, page 536.
Colonel Whittlesey’s life was plain, regular and simple. During the last few years he suffered much from catarrhal headache, rheumatism and kindred other troubles, and it was difficult for him to get around even with crutches. This was attributed to the exposure he had suffered for the fifteen years he had been exposed in the Lake Superior region, and his long life and preservation of a clear mind was no doubt due to his simple habits. With considerable bodily suffering, his mind was on the alert, and he seemed to have after all considerable happiness, and, to quote Dr Hayden, he could say with Byrd, “thy mind to me a kingdom is.”
Colonel Whittlesey was an original member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an old and valued member of the American Antiquarian society, an honorary member of the Ohio State Archaeological and Historical society, with headquarters at Columbus. He was trustee of the former State Archaeological society (making the archaeological exhibition at the Centennial), and although each of these is necessarily to some extent a rival of his pet society, he took a warm interest in the welfare of each.
He was a member of the Society of Americanites of France, and his judgment, learning and communications were much esteemed by the French members of that society. Of how many other societies he was an honorary or other member I can not tell.
C. C. Baldwin.
1 – Speech of May 9, 1862.
2 – Cincinnati Commercial, April 9, 1862.
3 – The society was organized under the auspices of the Cleveland Library Association (now Case Library). The plan occurred to the writer while vice-president of that association. At the annual meeting in 1867, the necessary changes were made in the constitution, and Colonel Whittlesey was elected to the Case Library board for the purpose of heading the historical committee and movement. The result appears in a scarce pamphlet issued in 1867 by the library association, containing, among other things, an account of the formation of the society and an address by Colonel Whittlesey, which is an interesting sketch of the successive literary and library societies of Cleveland, of which the first was in 1811.
4 – Mary E. Lyon was a daughter of James Lyon of Oswego, and sister of John E. Lyon, now of Oswego but years ago a prominent citizen of Cleveland. She m. first Colonel Theophilus Morgan,6 Theophilus,5 Theophilus,4 Theophilus,3 John,2 James Morgan.1 Colonel Morgan was an honored citizen of Oswego. Colonel Morgan and his wife Mary, had a son James Sherman, a very promising young man, killed in 1864 in a desperate cavalry charge in which he was lieutenant, in Sherman’s march to the sea. Mrs. Whittlesey survives in Cleveland.
5 – October, 19, 1886.
6 – The Hesperian, American Pioneer, the Western Literary Journal and Review of Cincinnati, the Democratic Review and Ohio Cultivator of Columbus, and later the Magazine of Western History at Cleveland, all received his hearty support.
7 – These papers were also described in an extract from a congressional speech of the late President Garfield. The extract is in Tract No. 20 of the Historical society.
8 – Alluding to a photograph of Colonel Whittlesey
then with a book under his arm.
By Amorin Mello
A curious series of correspondences from “Morgan”
… continued from Copper Harbor Redux.
The Daily Union (Washington D.C.)
“Liberty, The Union, And The Constitution.”
August 29, 1845.
EDITOR’S CORRESPONDENCE.
—
[From our regular correspondent.]
ST. LOUIS, Mo. Aug. 19, 1845.
One of the most interesting sections of the North American continent is the basin of the Upper Mississippi, being, as it is, greatly diversified by soil, climate, natural productions, &c. It embraces mineral lands of great extent and value, with immense tracts of good timber, and large and fertile bodies of farming land. This basin is separated by elevated land o the northeast, which divides the headwaters of rivers emptying into the Mississippi from those that flow into the lakes Superior and Michigan, Green Bay, &c. To the north and northwest, it is separated near the head of the Mississippi, by high ground, from the watercourses which flow towards Hudson’s bay. To the west, this extensive basin is divided from the waters of the Missouri by immense tracts of elevated plateau, or prairie land, called by the early French voyageurs “Coteau des Prairies,” signifying “prairie coast,” from the resemblance the high prairies, seen at a great distance, bear to the coast of some vast sea or lake. To the south, the basin of the Upper Mississippi terminates at the junction of the Mississippi with the Des Moines river.
The portion of the valley of the Mississippi thus described, if reduced to a square form, would measure about 1,000 miles each way, with St. Anthony’s falls near the centre.
1698 detail of Saint Anthony’s Falls and Lake Superior from Amerique Septentrionalis Carte d’un tres grand Pays entre le Nouveau Mexique et la Mer Glaciace Dediee a Guilliaume IIIe. Roy de La Grand Bretagne Par le R. P. Louis de Hennepin Mission: Recol: et Not: Apost: Chez c. Specht a Utreght 1698.
~ Commons.Wikimedia.org
For a long time, this portion of the country remained unexplored, except by scattered parties of Canadian fur-traders, &c. Its physical and topographical geography, with some notions of its geology, have, as it were, but recently attracted attention.
Douglas Volk painting of Father Hennepin at Saint Anthony Falls.
~ Commons.Wikimedia.org
Father Antoine “Louis” Hennepin
~ Wikipedia.org
Father Hennepin was no doubt the first white man who visited St. Anthony’s falls. In reaching them, however, he passed the mouth of St. Peter’s river, a short distance below, without noticing it, or being aware of its existence. This was caused by the situation of an island found in the Mississippi, directly in front of the mouth of St. Peter’s, which, in a measure, conceals it from view.
After passing the falls, Father Hennepin continued to ascend the Mississippi to the St. Francis river, but went no higher.
Portrait of Jonathan Carver from his book, Travels through the interior parts of North America in the years 1766, 1767 and 1768.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
In the year 1766, three years after the fall of Canada, Captain Johnathan Carver, who had taken an active part as an officer in the English service, and was at the surrender of Fort William Henry, where (he says) 1,500 English troops were massacred by the Indians, (he himself narrowly escaping with his life,) prepared for a tour among the Indian tribes inhabiting the shores of the upper lakes and the upper valley of the Mississippi. He left Boston in June of the year stated, and, proceeding by way of Albany and Niagara, reached Mackinac, where he fitted out for the prosecution of his journey to the banks of the Mississippi.
From Mackinac, he went to Green Bay; ascended the Fox river to the country of the Winnebago Indians; from thence, crossing some portages, and passing through Lake Winnebago, he descended the Wisconsin river to the Mississippi river; crossing which, he came to a halt at Prairie du Chien, in the country of the Sioux Indians. At the early day, this was an important trading-post between French traders and the Indians. Carver says: “It contains about three hundred families; the houses are well built, after the Indian manner, and well situated, on a very rich soil, from which they raise every necessary of life in great abundance. This town is the great mart whence all the adjacent tribes – even those who inhabit the most remote branches of the Mississippi – annually assemble about the latter end of May, bringing with them their furs to dispose of to the traders.” Carver also noticed that the people living there had some good horses.
Detail of Prairie du Chien from Carver [Jonathan], Captain. Journal of his travels with maps and drawings, 1766.
~ Boston Public Library
The fur-trade, which at one time centred here, and gave it much consequence, has been removed to St. Peter’s river. Indeed, this trade, which formerly gave employment to so many agents, traders, trappers, &c., conferring wealth upon those prosecuting it, is rapidly declining on this continent; in producing which, several causes conspire. The first is, the animals caught for their furs have greatly diminished; and the second is, that competition in the trade has become more extensive and formidable, increasing as the white settlements continue to be pushed out to the West.
John Jacob Astor established the American Fur Company.
~ Wikipedia.com
At Prairie du Chien is still seen the large stone warehouse erected by John Jacob Astor, at a time when he ruled the trade, and realized immense profits by the business. The United States have a snug garrison at this place, which imparts more or less animation to the scene. It stands on an extensive and rather low plain, with high hills in the rear, running parallel with the Mississippi.
The house in which Carver lodged, when he visited this place, is still pointed out. There are some men living at this post, whose grandfather acted as interpreter to Carver. The Sioux Indians, whom Carver calls in his journal “the Nadowessies,” which is the Chippewa appellation for this tribe of Indians, keep up the tradition of Carver’s visit among them. The inhabitants, descendants of the first settlers at Prairie du Chien, now living at this place, firmly believe in the truth of the gift of land made to Carver by the Sioux Indians.
From this point Carver visited St. Anthony’s falls, which he describes with great accuracy and fidelity, accompanying his description with a sketch of them.
![Detail of Saint Anthony's Falls from Carver [Jonathan], Captain. Journal of his travels with maps and drawings, 1766. ~ Boston Public Library](https://chequamegonhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/carver-detail-of-st-anthony-falls.jpg)
Detail of Saint Anthony’s Falls from Carver [Jonathan], Captain. Journal of his travels with maps and drawings, 1766.
~ Boston Public Library
From the Mississippi river Carver crossed over to the Chippewa river; up which he ascended to its source, and then crossed a portage to the head of the Bois Brulé, which he called “Goddard’s river.” Descending this latter stream to Lake Superior, he travelled around the entire northern shore of that lake from west to east, and accurately described the general appearance of the country, including notices of the existence of the copper rock on the Ontonagon, with copper-mineral ores at points along the northeastern shore of the lake, &c.
![Detail of "Goddard's River," La Pointe, and Ontonagon from Carver [Jonathan], Captain. Journal of his travels with maps and drawings, 1766. ~ Boston Public Library](https://chequamegonhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/carver-detail-of-goddard-river-and-la-pointe.jpg)
Detail of “Goddard River,” La Pointe, and Ontonagon from Carver [Jonathan], Captain. Journal of his travels with maps and drawings, 1766.
~ Boston Public Library
He finally reached the Sault St. Marie, where he found a French Indian trader, (Monsieur Cadot,) who had built a stockade fort to protect him in his trade with the Indians.
![Detail of Sault Ste Marie from Carver [Jonathan], Captain. Journal of his travels with maps and drawings, 1766. ~ Boston Public Library](https://chequamegonhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/carver-detail-of-sault-ste-marie.jpg)
Detail of Sault Ste Marie from Carver [Jonathan], Captain. Journal of his travels with maps and drawings, 1766.
~ Boston Public Library
Descendants of this Monsieur Cadot are still living at the Sault and at La Pointe. We met one of them returning to the latter place, in the St. Croix river, as we were descending it. They, no doubt, inherit strong claims to land at the falls of the St. Mary’s river, which must ere long prove valuable to them, if properly prosecuted.
From the Sault St. Marie, Carver went to Mackinac, then garrisoned by the English, where he spent the winter. The following year he reached Boston, having been absent about two years.
From Boston he sailed for England, with a view of publishing his travels, and securing his titles to the present of land the Sioux Indians have made him, and which it is alleged the English government pledged itself to confirm, through the command of the King, in whose presence the conveyance made to Carver by the Sioux Indians was read. He not only signified his approval of the grant, but promised to fit out an expedition with vessels to sail to New Orleans, with the necessary men, &c., which Captain Carver was to head, and proceed from thence to the site of this grant, to take possession of it, by settling his people on it. The breaking out of the American revolution suspended this contemplated expedition.
Captain Carver died poor, in London, in the year 1780, leaving two sons and five daughters. I consider his description of the Indians among whom he travelled, detailing their customs, manners, and religion, the best that has ever been published.
In this opinion I am sustained by others, and especially by old Mr. Duncan Graham, whom I met on the Upper Mississippi. He has lived among the Indians ever since the year 1783. He is now between 70 and 80 years old. He told me Carver’s book contained the best account of the customs and manners of the Indians he had ever read.
His valuable work is nearly out of print, it being rather difficult to obtain a copy. It went through three editions in London. Carver dedicated it to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society. Almost every winter on the Indians and Indian character, since Carver’s time, has made extensive plagiarisms from his book, without the least sort of acknowledgement. I could name a number of authors who have availed themselves of Carver’s writings, without acknowledgement; but as they are still living, I do not wish to wound the feelings of themselves or friends.
One of the writers alluded to, gravely puts forth, as a speculation of his own, the suggestion that the Winnebagoes, and some other tribes of Indians now residing at the north, had, in former times, resided far to the south, and fled north from the wars and persecutions of the bloodthirsty Spaniards; that the opinion was strengthened from the fact, that the Winnebagoes retained traditions of their northern flight, and of the subsequent excursions of their war parties across the plains towards New Mexico, where, meeting with Spaniards, they had in one instance surprised and defeated a large force of them, who were travelling on horseback.
Now this whole idea originated with Carver; yet Mr. ——— has, without hesitation, adopted it as a thought or discovery as his own!
Alexander Henry, The Elder.
~ Wikipedia.com
The next Englishman who visited the northwest, and explored the shores of Lake Superior, was Mr. Henry, who departed from Montreal, and reached Mackinac through Lake Huron, in a batteau laden with some goods. His travels commenced, I believe, about 1773-‘4, and ended about 1776-‘7. Mr. Henry’s explorations were conducted almost entirely with the view of opening a profitable trade with the Indians. He happened in the country while the Indians retained a strong predilection in favor of the French, and strong prejudices against the English. It being about the period of the Pontiac war, he had some hazardous adventures among the Indians, and came near losing his life. He continued, however, to prosecute his trade with the Indians, to the north and west of Lake Superior. Making voyages along the shores of this lake, he became favorably impressed with the mineral appearances of the country. Finding frequently, through is voyageurs, or by personal inspections, rich specimens of copper ore, or of the metal in its native state, he ultimately succeeded in obtaining a charter from the English government, in conjunction with some men of wealth and respectability in London, for working the mines on Lake Superior. The company, after making an ineffectual attempt to reach a copper vein, through clay, near the Ontonagon, the work was abandoned, and was not afterwards revived.
General Cass, with Colonel Allen, &c., were the next persons to pass up the southern coast of Lake Superior, and, in going to the west and northwest of the lake, they travelled through Indian tribes in search of the head of the Mississippi river. Their travels and discoveries are well known to the public, and proved highly interesting.
Mr. Schoolcraft’s travels, pretty much over the same ground, have also been given to the public; as also the expedition of General Pike on the Upper Mississippi.
Major Stephen Harriman Long published his expedition as Voyage in a Six-oared Skiff to the Falls of St. Anthony in 1817.
~ Wikipedia.org
More lately, the basin of the Upper Mississippi has received a further and more minute examination under the explorations directed by Major Long, in his two expeditions authorized by government.
Joseph Nicholas Nicollet
~ Wikipedia.org
Lastly, Mr. J. N. Nicollet, a French savan, travelling for some years through the United States with scientific objects in view, made an extensive examination of the basin of the Upper Mississippi.
He ascended the Missouri river to the Council Bluffs; where, arranging his necessary outfit of men, horses, provisions, &c., (being supplied with good instruments for making necessary observations,) he stretched across a vast tract of country to the extreme head-waters of the St. Peter’s, determining, as he went, the heights of places above the ocean, the latitude and longitude of certain points, with magnetic variations. He reached the highland dividing the waters of the St. Peter’s from those of the Red river of the North. He descended the St. Peter’s to its mouth; examined the position and geology of St. Anthony’s falls, and then ascended the same river as high as the Crow-wing river. The secondary rock observed below the falls, changes for greenstone, sienite, &c., with erratic boulders. On the east side of the river, a little below Pikwabik, is a large mass of sienitic rock with flesh-colored feldspar, extending a mile in length, half a mile in width, and 80 feet high. This is called the Little Rock. Higher up, on the same side, at the foot on the Knife rapids, there are sources that transport a very fine, brilliant, and bluish sand, accompanied by a soft and unctuous matter. This appears to be the result of the decomposition of a steachist, probably interposed between the sienitic rocks mentioned. The same thing is observed at the mouths of the Wabezi and Omoshkos rivers.
Detail of Saint Anthony’s Falls and Saint Peter’s River from Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River from Astronomical and Barometrical Observations Surveys and Information by Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, 1843.
~ David Rumsey Map Collection
Ascending the Crow-wing river a short distance, Mr. Nicollet turned up Gull river, and proceeded as far as Pine river, taking White Fish lake in his way; and again ascended the east fork of Pine river, and reached Little Bay river, which he descended over rapids, &c., to Leech lake, where he spent some days in making astronomical observations, &c. From Leech lake, he proceeded, through small streams and lakes, to that in which the Mississippi heads, called Itasca. Having made all necessary observations at this point, he set out on his return down the Mississippi; and finally, reaching Fort Snelling at St. Peter’s, he spent the winter there.
Detail of Leech Lake and Lake Itasca from Hydrographical Basin of the Upper Mississippi River from Astronomical and Barometrical Observations Surveys and Information by Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, 1843.
~ David Rumsey Map Collection
Lake Itasca, in which the Mississippi heads, Mr. Nicollet found to be about 1,500 feet above the level of the ocean, and lying in lat. about 47° 10′ north, and in lon. 95° west of Greenwich.
This vast basin of the Upper Mississippi forms a most interesting and valuable portion of the North American continent. From the number of its running streams and fresh-water lakes, and its high latitude, it cannot fail to prove a healthy residence for its future population.
It also contains the most extensive body of pine timber to be found in the entire valley of the Mississippi, and from which the country extending from near St. Anthony’s falls to St. Louis, for a considerable distance on each side of the river, and up many of its tributaries, must draw supplies of lumber for building purposes.
In addition to these advantages, the upper basin is rich in mines of lead and copper; and it is not improbable that silver may also be found. Its agricultural resources are also very great. Much of the land is most beautifully situated, and fertile in a high degree. The climate is milder than that found on the same parallel of latitude east of the Alleghany mountains. Mr. Nicollet fixes the mean temperature at Itasca lake at 43° to 44°; and at St. Peter’s near St. Anthony’s falls, at 45° to 46°
“Maiden Rock. Mississippi River.“ by Currier & Ives. Maiden’s Rock Bluff. This location is now designated as Maiden Rock Bluff State Natural Area.
~ SpringfieldMuseums.org
Every part of this great basin that is arable will produce good wheat, potatoes, rye, oats, Indian corn to some extent, fine grasses, fruits, garden vegetables, &c. There is no part of the Mississippi river flanked by such bold and picturesque ranges of hills, with flattened, broad summits, as are seen extending from St. Anthony’s falls down to Prairie du Chien, including those highlands bordering Lake Pepin, &c. Among the cliffs of sandstone jutting out into perpendicular bluffs near the river, (being frequently over 100 feet high,) is seen one called Maiden’s rock. it is said an Indian chief wished to force his daughter to marry another chief, while her affections were placed on another Indian; and that, rather than yield to her father’s wishes, she cast herself over this tall precipice, and met an instant death. On hearing of which, her real lover, it is said, also committed suicide. Self-destruction is very rare among the Indians; and we imagine, when it does occur, it must be produced by the strongest kind of influence over their passions. Mental alienation, if not entirely unknown among them, must be exceedingly rare. I have no recollection of ever having heard of a solitary case.
From St. Anthony’s falls to St. Louis is 900 miles. The only impediment to the regular navigation of the river by steamboats, is experienced during low water at the upper and lower rapids.
“St. Louis Map circa 1845”
~ CampbellHouseMuseum.org
The first are about 14 miles long, with a descent of only about 25 feet. The lower rapids are 11 miles long, with a descent of 24 feet. In each case, the water falls over beds of mountain or carboniferrous limestone, which it has worn into irregular and crooked channels. By a moderate expenditure of money on the part of the general government, which ought to be made as early as practicable, these rapids could be permanently opened to the passage of boats. As it is at present, boats, in passing the rapids at low water, and especially the lower rapids, have to employ barges and keel-boats to lighten them over, at very great expense.
From the rapid settlement of the country above, with the increasing trade in lumber and lead, the business on the Upper Mississippi is augmenting at a prodigious rate. When the river is sufficiently high to afford no obstruction on the lower rapids, not less than some 28 or 30 boats run regularly between Galena and St. Louis – the distance being 500 miles. Besides these, two or three steam packets run regularly to St. Anthony’s falls, or to St. Peter’s, near the foot of them. Every year will add greatly to the number of these boats. Other fine large and well-found packets run from St. Louis to Keokuk, at the foot of the lower rapids, four miles below which the Des Moines river enters the Mississippi river. It is the opinion of Mr. Nicollet, that this river can be opened, by some slight improvements, for 100 miles above its mouth. It is said the extensive body of land lying between the Des Moines and the Mississippi, and running for a long distance parallel with the left bank of the latter, contains the most lovely,rich and beautiful land to be found on the continent, if not in the world. It is already pretty thickly settled. Splendid crops of wheat and corn have been raised on farms opened upon it, the present year. Much of the former we found had already arrived at depots on the river, in quantities far too great to find a sufficient number of boats, at the present low water, to carry it to market.
I do not see but the democratic party are regularly gaining strength throughout the great West, as the results of the recent elections, which have already reached you, sufficiently indicate.
Those who wish to obtain more general, as well as minute information, respecting the basin of the Upper Mississippi, I would recommend to consult the able report, accompanied with a fine map of the country, by Mr. J. N. Nicollet, and reprinted by order of the Congress at their last session.
I am, very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
MORGAN.
This curious series of correspondences from “Morgan” is continued in the September 1 and September 5 issues of The Daily Union, where he arrived in New York City again after 4,200 miles and two and a half months on this delegation. As those articles are not pertinent to the greater realm of Chequamegon History, this concludes our reproduction of these curious correspondences.
The End.
Biographical Sketch of Vincent Roy, Jr.
March 3, 2016
By Amorin Mello
Portrait of Vincent Roy, Jr., from “Short biographical sketch of Vincent Roy,” in Life and Labors of Rt. Rev. Frederic Baraga, by Chrysostom Verwyst, 1900, pages 472-476.
Miscellaneous materials related to Vincent Roy,
1861-1862, 1892, 1921
Wisconsin Historical Society
“Miscellaneous items related to Roy, a fur trader in Wisconsin of French and Chippewa Indian descent including a sketch of his early years by Reverend T. Valentine, 1896; a letter to Roy concerning the first boats to go over the Sault Ste. Marie, 1892; a letter to Valentine regarding an article on Roy; an abstract and sketch on Roy’s life; a typewritten copy of a biographical sketch from the Franciscan Herald, March 1921; and a diary by Roy describing a fur trading journey, 1860-1861, with an untitled document in the Ojibwe language (p. 19 of diary).”
Reuben Gold Thwaites was the author of “The Story of Chequamegon Bay”.
St. Agnes’ Church
205 E. Front St.
Ashland, Wis., June 27 1903
Reuben G. Thwaites
Sec. Wisc. Hist Soc. Madison Wis.
Dear Sir,
I herewith send you personal memories of Hon. Vincent Roy, lately deceased, as put together by Rev. Father Valentine O.F.M. Should your society find them of sufficient historical interest to warrant their publication, you will please correct them properly before getting them printed.
Yours very respectfully,
Fr. Chrysostom Verwyst O.F.M.
~ Proceedings of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Issue 51, 1904, page 71.
~ Biographical Sketch – Vincent Roy. ~
~ J. Apr. 2. 1896 – Superior, Wis. ~
I.
Vincent Roy was born August 29, 1825, the third child of a family of eleven children. His father Vincent Roy Sen. was a halfblood Chippewa, so or nearly so was his mother, Elisabeth Pacombe.1
Three Generations:
I. Vincent Roy
(1764-1845)
II. Vincent Roy, Sr.
(1795-1872)
III. Vincent Roy, Jr.
(1825-1896)
His grandfather was a french-canadian who located as a trader for the American Fur Company first at Cass Lake Minn, and removed in 1810 to the bank of Rainy River at its junction with Little Fork, which is now in Itasca Co. Minn.2 At this place Vincent saw at first the light of the world and there his youth passed by. He had reached his twentieth year, when his grandfather died, who had been to him and all the children an unmistakable good fortune.
‘I remember him well,’ such are Vincent’s own words when himself in his last sickness.3 ‘I remember him well, my grandfather, he was a well-meaning, God-fearing frenchman. He taught me and all of us to say our prayers and to do right. He prayed a great deal. Who knows what might have become of us, had he not been.’
The general situation of the family at the time is given by Peter Roy thus:4
“My grandfather must have had about fifty acres of land under cultivation. About the time I left the place (1839) he used to raise quite a lot of wheat, barley, potatoes and tobacco – and had quite a lot of stock, such as horses, cattle, hogs and chickens. One winter about twenty horses were lost; they strayed away and started to go back to Cass Lake, where my grandfather first commenced a farm. The horses came across a band of Indians and were all killed for food. – When I got to be old enough to see what was going on my father was trading with the Bois Forte bands of Chippewa Indians. he used to go to Mackinaw annually to make his returns and buy goods for a year’s supply.”
This trading of the Roys with the Indians was done in commission from the American Fur Company; that is they were conducting one of the many trading posts of this Company. What is peculiar is that they were evidently set up to defeat the hostile Hudson Bay Company, which had a post at Fort St. Francis, which was across the river, otherwise within sight. Yet, the Roys appear to have managed things peaceably, going at pleasure to the Fort at which they sold the farm-products that were of no use to themselves.
II.
LaPointe – School – Marriage
Grandfather Roy died and was buried on the farm in 1845. Soon after, the family broke away from the old homestead and removed to LaPointe, where a boy had been placed at school already 6 or 7 years before.5
“About the year 1838 or 1839,” says Peter Roy,6 “my father took me down to LaPointe, it then being the headquarters of the American Fur Company. He left me with my uncle Charles LaRose. (Mr. LaRose was married to his mother’s sister.) At that time my uncle was United States interpreter for Daniel P. Bushnell, U.S. Indian Agent. I went to the missionary school (presbyterian), which was under the charge of Rev. Sherman Hall. Grenville T. Sprout was the teacher.”
Officers | Where employed | Where born | Compensation
~ “War Department – Indian Agencies,” Official Register of the United States, 1839
The family was acting on wise principles. Where they lived church and school were things unknown and would remain such for yet an indefinite future. The children were fast growing from under the care of their parents; yet, they were to be preserved to the faith and to civilization. It was intended to come more in touch with either. LaPointe was then a frontier-town situated on Madaline Island; opposite to what is now Bayfield Wis. Here Father Baraga had from upwards ten years attended the spiritual wants of the place.
“View of La Pointe,” circa 1842.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Our Vincent came, of course, along etc. etc. with the rest. Here for the first time in his life, he came within reach of a school which he might have attended. He was however pretty well past school age. The fact is he did not get to see the inside of a school a ten months and may be, much less, as there is an opinion he became an employ for salary in 1845, which was the year of his arrival.7 But with his energy of will made up for lack of opportunity. More than likely his grandfather taught him the first rudiments, upon which he kept on building up his store of knowledge by self-instruction.
‘At any spare moment,’ it is said,8 ‘he was sure to be at some place where he was least disturbed working at some problem or master some language lesson. He acquired a good control of the English language; his native languages – French and Ojibway – were not neglected, & he nibbled even a little at Latin, applying the knowledge he acquired of that language in translating a few church hymns into his native Ojibway. Studying turned into a habit of life with him. When later on he had a store of his own, he drew the trade of the Scandinavians of that locality just because he had picked up quite a few words of their language. Having heard a word he kept repeating it half loud to himself until he had it well fixed on his memory and the stock laid up in this manner he made use of in a jovial spirit as soon as often as an opportunity was open for it.’
“Boardwalk leading to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in La Pointe.” Photograph by Whitney and Zimmerman, circa 1870.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
About three years after his coming to LaPointe, Vincent chose for his life’s companion Elisabeth Cournoyer. The holy bond of matrimony between them was blessed by Reverend Otto Skolla in the LaPoint catholic church, August 13th, 1848. They did not obtain the happiness to see children born to them. Yet, they lived with each other nearly 48 years and looking back over those years there appears nothing which could not permit their marriage to be called a happy one. Their home had a good ordinary measure of home sunshine in which, in a way, children came yet to do their share and have their part.
III.
His occupation.
Vincent was employed in the interest of the fur trade with little intermission up to the forty third year of his life and thereafter until he retired from business he was engaged in keeping a general store.
“Lapointe was a quiet town in the early days and many Indians lived there. The government pay station was there and the Indians received certain monies from the government.”
“The Austrians, a fine Jewish family, established a store and maintained a good Indian trade.”
“Knowing the Indians lack of providing for the future, the Austrians always laid in extra supplies for the winter and these were doled out when necessary.”
~ Tales of Bayfield Pioneers by Eleanor Knight, 2008.
“Mr. and Mrs. Julius Austrian were among the first settlers. Splendid people they were and especially kind to the Indians. It was their custom to lay in extra supplies of flour and corn meal for they knew the Indians would be begging for them before the winter was over. On this particular occassion the winter had been extra cold and long. Food supplies were running low. The Indians were begging for food every day and it was hard to refuse them. The flour was used up and the corn meal nearly so. Still Mrs. Austrian would deal it out in small quantities. Finally they were down to the last sack, and then to the last panful. She gave the children half of this for their supper, but went to bed without tasting any herself. About midnight she was awakened by the cry of ‘Steamboat! Steamboat!’ And looking out the window she saw the lights of the North Star approaching the dock. She said that now she felt justified in going downstairs and eating the other half of the corn bread that was left.”
~ The Lake Superior Country in History and in Story by Guy M. Burnham, 1930, pg. 288.
It was but natural that Vincent turned to the occupation of his father and grandfather. There was no other it may have appeared to him to choose. He picked up what was lying in his way and did well with it. From an early age he was his father’s right hand and business manager.9 No doubt, intelligent and clever, as he was, his father could find no more efficient help, who, at the same time, was always willing and ready to do his part. Thus he grew up. By the time the family migrated south, he was conversant with the drift of the indian trade knowing all its hooks and crooks; he spoke the language of the indians and had their confidence; he was swift a foot and enduring against the tear and wear in frontier life; and there was no question but that he would continue to be useful in frontier business.
Leopold and Austrian (Jews) doing a general merchandize and fur-trading business at LaPointe were not slow in recognizing ‘their man.’ Having given employment to Peter Roy, who by this time quit going to school, they also, within the first year of his arrival at this place, employed Vincent to serve as handy-man for all kind of things, but especially, to be near when indians from the woods were coming to trade, which was no infrequent occurrence. After serving in that capacity about two years, and having married, he managed (from 1848 to 1852) a trading post for the same Leopold and Austrian;10 at first a season at Fond du Lac, Minn., then at Vermillion Lake, and finally again at Fond du Lac.11 Set up for the sole purpose to facilitate the exchange trade carried on with the indians, those trading-posts, nothing but log houses of rather limited pretensions, were nailed up for the spring and summer to be reopened in the fall. Vincent regularly returned with his wife to LaPointe. A part of the meantime was then devoted to fishing.12
A Dictionary of the Otchipwe Language, Explained in English was published by Bishop Frederic Baraga in 1853.
It was also in these years that Vincent spent a great deal of the time, which was at his disposal, with Father Frederic Baraga assisting him in getting up the books of the Ojibway language, which that zealous man has left.13
In the years which then followed Vincent passed through a variety of experience.
IV.
His first Visit to Washington, D.C. – The Treaty of LaPointe.
Read Chief Buffalo Really Did Meet The President on Chequamegon History for more context about this trip.
At the insistence of Chief Buffalo and in his company Vincent made his first trip to Washington D.C. It was in the spring of the year 1852. – Buffalo (Kechewaishke), head chief of the Lake Superior Ojibways had seen the day, when his people, according to indian estimation, was wealthy and powerful, but now he was old and his people sickly and starving poor. Vincent referring once to the incidents of that time spoke about in this way:14
“He (Buffalo) and the other old men of the tribe, his advisors, saw quite well that things could not go on much longer in the way they had done. The whites were crowding in upon them from all sides and the U.S. government said and did nothing. It appeared to these indians their land might be taken from them without they ever getting anything for it. They were scant of food and clothing and the annuities resulting from a sale of their land might keep them alive yet for a while. The sire became loud that it might be tried to push the matter at Washington admitting that they had to give up the land but insisting they be paid for it. Buffalo was willing to go but there was no one to go with him. He asked me to go with him. As I had no other business just then on hand I went along.”
Ashland, Wisconsin, is named in honor of Henry Clay’s Estate.
They went by way of the lakes. Arriving at Washington, they found the City and the capitol in a barb of morning and business suspended.15 Henry Clay, the great statesman and orator, had died (June 29) and his body was lying in state. Vincent said:
“we shook hands and spoke with the President (Fillmore) and with some of the headmen of the government. They told us that they could not do anything at the moment, but that our petition should be attended to as soon as possible. Unable to obtain any more, we looked around a few days and returned home”.
The trip had entailed a considerable drain on their private purses and the result towards the point at issue for them, the selling of the land of the indians, was not very apparent.
Henry C. Gilbert
~ Branch County Photographs
After repeated urging and an interval of over two years, during which Franklin Pierce had become President of the United States, the affairs of these Indians were at last taken up and dealt with at LaPointe by Henry C. Gilbert and David B. Herriman, commissioners on the part of the United States. A treaty was concluded, September 30th, 1854. The Lake Superior Ojibways thereby relinquished their last claims to the soil of northwest Michigan, north east Wisconsin and an adjoining part of Minnesota, and, whilst it was understood that the reserves, at L’Anse Michigan, Odanah, and Courte Oreille Wisconsin and Fond du Lac Minnesota, were set apart for them, they received in consideration of the rest the aggregate sum of about four hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, which, specified as to money and material, ran into twenty years rations.
Chief Buffalo, in consideration of services rendered, was allowed his choice of a section of land anywhere in the ceded terrain.
‘The choice he made,’ it is said,16 ‘were the heights of the city of Duluth; but never complying with the incident law formalities, it matters little that the land became the site of a city, his heirs never got the benefit of it. Of Vincent who had been also of service to the indians from the first to the last of the deal, it can only be said that he remained not just without all benefit from it.’
Julius Austrian‘s capitalization of the Mixed Blood clause from the 1854 Chippewa Treaty will be published on Chequamegon History.
A clause was inserted in the treaty (art. 2. n. 7.) 17 by which heads of families and single persons over twenty one years of age of mixed blood were each entitled to take and hold free of further charge eighty acres of the ceded lands.; – this overruled in a simple and direct way the difficulties Vincent had met with of late in trying to make good his claim to such a property. The advantage here gained was however common to others with him. For the sacrifices he made of time and money in going with Chief Buffalo to Washington he was not reimbursed, so it is believed, and it is very likely time, judging from what was the case when later on he made the same trip a second time.
V.
The small-pox.
During the two years the Lake Superior indians waited for the United States to settle their claims, important events transpired in which Vincent took part. In the fall of 1853 those indians were visited by the smallpox which took an epidemic run among them during the following winter. The first case of that disease appeared in the Roy family and it is made a circumstance somewhat interesting in the way it is given.18 Vincent and his oldest brother John B. were on some business to Madison, Wisconsin. Returning they went around by way of St. Paul Minnesota to see their brother Peter Roy who was at the time acting representative of a northern district, at the Minnesota territorial legislation which had then, as it seems, convened in extra session. On the evening previous to their departure from St. Paul, John B. paid a short visit to a family he knew from Madaline Island. In the house in which that family lived a girl had died about a year before of small-pox, but no one was sick there now at the time of the visit. If John B.’s subsequent sickness should have to be attributed to infection, it was certainly a peculiar case. The two brothers started home going by way of Taylor’s Falls, up the St. Croix river on the Wisconsin side, till Yellow Lake river, then through the woods to what is now Bayfield where they crossed over to Madaline Island. John B. began feeling sick the second day of the journey. Vincent remembered ever after the anxiety which he experienced on that homeward journey.19 It costed him every effort to keep the energies of his brother aroused. Had the same been allowed to rest as he desired he had inevitably perished in the woods. All strengths was however spent and the sick man lay helpless when the boat which carried them from the mainland touched Madaline Island. Willing hands lifted him from the boat and carried him to his house. His sickness developed into a severe case of small-pox of which he finally recovered. The indians of whom the settlement was chiefly made up did not as yet understand the character of that disease which was all the more dangerous with them for their exposed way of living. Before they were aware of it they were infected. General sickness soon prevailed. Deaths followed. Some fled in dismay from the settlement, but it may be said only to carry the angel of death to other habitations and to die after all.
Several members of the Roy family were laid up with the sickness, none of them died though.20 Vincent had been in close contact with his brother while yet on the road and had been more than any attending his brother and other members of the family in their sickness, yet he passed through the ordeal unscathed. The visitation cased with the return of spring.
VI.
Superior.
Vincent had barely emerged from the trouble just described when it was necessary for him to exert himself in another direction. A year or so previously he had taken up a claim of land at the headwaters of Lake Superior and there was improvement now on foot for that part of the country, and danger for his interests.21
Vincent Roy Jr. storage building, circa 1933.
The following is a statement by John A. Bardon of Superior accompanying the photography, “Small storehouse building erected by the late Vincent Roy [Jr] at Old Superior. The timbers are 4′ x 8′. After the one mile dike across Superior Bay had served its purpose, it was allowed to gradually go to pieces. The timbers floating in the Bay for a while were a menace to navigation. You would find them drifting when least expected. The U.S. War Department caused the building of this dike from the end of Rice’s Point, straight across to Minnesota Point to prevent the waters of the St. Louis River being diverted from the natural entry at Superior, to the newly dug canal, across Minnesota Point in Duluth. The contention was that, if the waters of the St. Louis were diverted, the natural entrance at Superior would become shoaled from lack of the rivers scouring current. However, when the piers were extended into 18 feet of water at both the old entrance and the Duluth Canal, it was found that the currents of the river had no serious effect. The dike was never popular and was always in the way of the traffic between Superior and Duluth. Several openings were made in it to allow the passage of smaller boats. It was finally condemned by the Government Engineers as a menace to navigation. This all happened in the early 70’s. This building is now the only authentic evidence of the dike. It is owned by the Superior and Douglas County Historical Society. The writer is the man in the picture.”
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Read more about Vincent Roy, Jr.’s town-site at Superior City here on Chequamegon History.
The ship canal at Sault St Marie was in course of construction and it was evidently but a question of days that boats afloat on Lakes Huron and Michigan would be able to run up and unload their cargo for regions further inland somewhere on the shore at the further end of Lake Superior, at which a place, no doubt, a city would be built. The place now occupied by the city of Superior was suitable for the purposes in view but to set it in order and to own the greatest possible part of it, had become all at the same time the cherished idea of too many different elements as that developments could go on smoothly. Three independent crews were struggling to establish themselves at the lower or east end of the bay when a fourth crew approached at the upper or west end, with which Vincent, his brother Frank, and others of LaPointe had joined in.22 As this crew went directly to and began operations at the place where Vincent had his property it seems to have been guided by him, though it was in reality under the leadership of Wm. Nettleton who was backed by Hon. Henry M. Rice of St. Paul.23 Without delay the party set to work surveying the land and “improving” each claim, as soon as it was marked off, by building some kind of a log-house upon it. The hewing of timber may have attracted the attention of the other crews at the lower end about two or three miles off, as they came up about noon to see what was going on. The parties met about halfway down the bay at a place where a small creek winds its way through a rugged ravine and falls into the bay. Prospects were anything but pleasant at first at the meeting; for a time it seemed that a battle was to be fought, which however did not take place but the parceling out of ‘claims’ was for the time being suspended. This was in March or April 1854. Hereafter some transacting went on back the curtain, and before long it came out that the interests of the town-site of Superior, as far as necessary for efficient action, were united into a land company of which public and prominent view of New York, Washington, D.C. and other places east of the Mississippi river were the stockholders. Such interests as were not represented in the company were satisfied which meant for some of them that they were set aside for deficiency of right or title to a consideration. The townsite of the Superior of those days was laid out on both sides of the Nemadji river about two or three miles into the country with a base along the water edge about half way up Superior bay, so that Vincent with his property at the upper end of the bay, was pretty well out of the way of the land company, but there were an way such as thought his land a desirable thing and they contested his title in spite of his holding it already for a considerable time. An argument on hand in those days was, that persons of mixed blood were incapable of making a legal claim of land. The assertion looks more like a bugaboo invented for the purpose to get rid of persons in the way than something founded upon law and reason, yet at that time some effect was obtained with it. Vincent managed, however, to ward off all intrusion upon his property, holding it under every possible title, ‘preemption’ etc., until the treaty of LaPointe in the following September, when it was settled upon his name by title of United States scrip so called, that is by reason of the clause,as said above, entered into the second article of that treaty.
The subsequent fate of the piece of land here in question was that Vincent held it through the varying fortune of the ‘head of the lake’ for a period of about thirty six years until it had greatly risen in value, and when the west end was getting pretty much the more important complex of Superior, an English syndicate paid the sum of twenty five thousand dollars, of which was then embodied in a tract afterwards known as “Roy’s Addition”.
VII.
– On his farm – in a bivonac – on the ice.
Superior was now the place of Vincent’s home and continued to be it for the remaining time of his life. The original ‘claim’ shanty made room for a better kind of cover to which of course the circumstances of time, place, and means had still prescribed the outlines.24 Yet Vincent is credited with the talent of making a snug home with little. His own and his wife’s parents came to live with him. One day the three families being all seated around a well filled holy-day table, the sense of comfort called forth a remark of Vincent’s mother to her husband:25
“Do you remember, man,” she said, “how you made our Vincent frequently eat his meals on the ground apart from the family-table; now see the way he repays you; there is none of the rest of the children that could offer us as much and would do it in the way he does.”
It was during this time of his farming that Vincent spent his first outdoor night all alone and he never forgot it.26 It was about June. Spring had just clothed the trees with their full new foliage. Vincent was taking a run down to Hudson, Wisconsin, walking along the military wagon road which lead from Superior to St. Paul. Night was lowering when he came to Kettle river. Just above the slope he perceived a big bushy cedar tree with its dense branches like an inscrutable pyramid set off before the evening light and he was quickly resolved to have his night’s quarters underneath it. Branches and dry leaves being gathered for a bed, his frugal meal taken he rolled up in the blanket carried along for such purposes, and invited sleep to come and refresh his fatigued mortality. Little birds in the underbrush along the bank had twittered lower and lower until they slept, the frogs were bringing their concert to a close, the pines and cedars and sparse hardwood of the forest around were quiet, the night air was barely moving a twig; Vincent was just beginning to forget the world about him, when his awakening was brought on upon a sudden. An unearthly din was filling the air about him. As quick as he could extricate himself from his blanket, he jumped to his feet. If ever his hair stood up on end, it did it now; he trembled from head to foot. His first thoughts as he afterwards said, were, that a band of blood-thirsty savages had discovered his whereabouts and were on the point to dispatch him. In a few moments, everything around was again dead silence. He waited, but he heard nothing save the beating of his own heart. He had no other weapon than a muzzle-loaded pistol which he held ready for his defense. Nothing coming in upon him, he walked cautiously from under his shelter, watching everything which might reveal a danger. He observed nothing extraordinary. Facing about he viewed the tree under which he had tried to sleep. There! – from near the top of that same tree now, as if it had waited to take in the effect of its freak and to ridicule all his excitement, a screeching owl lazily took wing and disappeared in the night. The screeching of this bird with its echo in the dead of night multiplied a hundred times by an imagination yet confused from sleep had been the sole cause of disturbance. Vincent used to say that never in his life he had been so upset as on this night and though all had cleared up as a false alarm, he had had but little sleep when at daybreak he resumed his journey.
Another adventure Vincent had in one of these years on the ice of Lake Superior.27 All the family young and old had been on Bass Island near Bayfield for the purpose of making maple-sugar. That meant, they had been some three weeks in March-April at work gathering day and night the sap tapped from maple-trees and boiling down to a mass which they stored in birch bark boxed of fifty to hundred and fifty pounds each. At the end of the season Vincent got his horse and sleigh and put aboard the product of his work, himself, his wife and two young persons, relatives of his wife, followed; they were going home to Superior on the ice of the lake along the shore. When they came however towards Siskowit bay, instead of following the circuit of the shore, they made directly for Bark Point, which they saw standing out before them. This brought them out on a pretty big field of ice and the ice was not to be trusted so late in spring as it was now. Being almost coming in upon the point they all at once noticed the ice to be moving from shore – a split was just crossing through ahead of them. No time was to be lost. With a providential presence of mind, Vincent whipped his horse, which seemed to understand the peril of the situation; with all the speed it could gather up in a few paces it jumped across the gap. The sleigh shooting over the open water struck the further ice edge with a thump yet without harm – they were safe.
By pressure of other ice wedging in at a distance or from the hold which wind and wave get upon it, a considerable area of ice may, sometimes in spring, break loose with a report as that of a cannon and glide apart some ten feet right out upon the start. That it happened different this time and that our travelers did not drift out into the lake with a cake of ice however large yet, any thawing away or breaking up under them, was their very good fortune.
VIII.
– Superior’s short-lived prosperity – V. at his old profession – a memorable tour.
Built circa 1857, photographed circa 1930.
“The trading post was owned by Vincent Roy [Jr]. The Roy family was prominent in the early history of the Superior area.”
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Vincent was too near Superior as not to feel the pulsation of her life and to enter into the joys and sorrows of already her infant days.28 The place had fast donned the appearance of a city; streets were graded, lines of buildings were standing, trades were at work. Indeed, a printing office was putting out at convenient intervals printed matter for the benefit of the commonwealth at home and abroad; then was a transfer of real-estate going on averaging some thousand dollars a week, town lots selling at two to three hundred dollars each; and several stores of general merchandise were doing business.
The scarcity of provision the first winter was but an incident, the last boat which was to complete the supply being lost in a gale. It did not come to severe suffering and great was the joy, when a boat turned up in spring especially early.
In short, the general outlook had great hopes on the wing for the place, but its misgivings came. Its life blood ceased to flow in the financial crisis of September 1857, as the capital which had pushed it was no more forthcoming. It was a regular nor’easter that blew down the young plant, not killing it outright but stunting its growth for many, many years to come. The place settled down to a mere village of some hundred inhabitants, doing duty of course as county seat but that was not saying much as the whites stood in that part of the country all the way to pretty well up in the eighties.
~ The Superior Chronicle, July 7th, 1860.
About 1856 Vincent embarked again in the profession of his youth, the fur trade. Alexander Paul who did business in “The Superior Outfit” on Second Street, engaged his services. After a few years the business passed into the hands of Peter E. Bradshaw; which however did not interfere with Vincent. He was required to give all his attention to fur and peltry; first to getting them in, then to sorting them and tending to them until they were set off in the east. His employers had trading posts along the north shore at Grand Marais and Grant Portage, about the border line at the Lakes Basswood, Vermillion and Rainy, then at Lower Red Lake, at Mud Lake east of Leech Lake and at Cross Lake about thirty miles north of Crow Wing Minnesota. A tour of inspection of these posts was necessary on the average in the fall to see what was needed to be sent out, and in the spring to get home the peltries which had been obtained.29 One tour in which Vincent, Mr. P Bradshaw, Francis Blair, and one or two others, made up the party, was regarded especially memorable. It was undertaken early in spring, perhaps in February since the calculation was to find brook and lake yet passable on the ice. The party set out with the usual train of three dogs harnessed to a toboggan which carried as long as the dogs did not give out, the most necessary luggage; to wit, a blanket for each the men to roll up in at night and the supply of food consisting in a packet of cornmeal with a proportionate amount of tallow for the dogs and bacon for the men to add, the Canadian snowshoes being carried in hand any way as long and wherever they would be but an incumbrance to the feet. Their way led them along the wagon road to Kettle river, then across the country passing Mille lac Lake to Crow Wing, then northward to touch their posts of Cross and Mud Lake, moving nearly always on the ice in that region of lakes in which the Mississippi has its beginning. After leaving the Mud Lake post a swamp of more than a day in crossing was to be traversed to reach the Red Lake post. They were taking the usual trail but this time they were meeting more than usual inconvenience. They had been having a few days soft weather and here where the water would not run off they found themselves walking knee-deep in the slush, to increase their annoyance it set in drizzling. Still they trudged along till about mid-afternoon when they halted. The heavens scowling down in a gray threatening way, all around snow, from which looked forth, an occasional tuft of swamp grass, otherwise shrubby browse with only at places dwarfed pine and tamarack, were sticks of an arm’s thickness and but thinly scattered, they were in dread of the night and what it might bring them in such dismal surrounding. They were to have a fire and to make sure of it, they now began to gather sticks at a place when they were to be had, until they had a heap which they thought would enable them to keep up a fire till morning. The next thing and not an easy one was to build a fire. They could not proceed on their usual plan of scraping away the snow and set it up around as a fortification against the cold air, it would have been opening here a pit of clear water. So they began throwing down layers of sticks across each other until the pile stood in pierform above water and snow and furnished a fire-place. Around the fire they built a platform of browse-wood and grass for themselves to lie upon. But the fire would not burn well and the men lay too much exposed. Luckily the heavens remained clouded, which kept up the temperature. A severe cold night easily have had serious results in those circumstances. The party passed a very miserable night, but it took an end, and no one carried any immediate harm from it.
Next morning, the party pushed forward on its way and without further adventure reached the Red Lake post. Thence they worked their way upwards to the Lake of the Woods, then down the Rainy Lake River and along Rainy Lake, up Crane Lake, to Pelican Lake, and finally across Vermillion Lake to the Vermillion post, about the spot where Tower, Minn. now stands. Thence back to Superior, following the water courses, chiefly the St. Louis river. The distance traveled, if it is taken in a somewhat straight line, is from five to six hundred miles, but for the party it must have been more judging from the meandering way it went from lake to lake and along the course of streams. That tour Messrs. Bradshaw required for their business, twice a year; once in the winter, to gather in the crops of furs of the year and again in the fall to furnish the posts with provision and stock in trade and the managing there lay chiefly upon Mr. Roy. As to the hardships on these tours, dint of habit went far to help them endure them. Thus Mr. Bradshaw remarked yet in 1897 – he did not remember that he or any of his employees out on a trip, in the winter, in the open air, day and night, ever they had to be careful or they get a cold then.
“As any who have tried snowshoes will know, there is a trick to using them. The novice will spread his legs to keep the snowshoes from scraping each other, but this awkward position, like attempting too great a distance before conditioning oneself to the strain, will cause lameness. Such invalids, the old voyageur type would say, suffer from ‘Mal de raquette.’“
~ Forest & Outdoors, Volume 42, by the Canadian Forestry Assocation, 1946, page 380.
Not infrequently a man’s ingenuity came into action and helped to overcome a difficulty. An instance in case happened on the above or a similar tour. Somewhere back of Fond du Lac, Minn, notwithstanding the fact that they were approaching home, one of the men declared himself incapable of traveling any longer, being afflicted most severely with what the “courreurs du bois” called “mal de la raquette.” This was a trouble consequent to long walks on snow shoes. The weight and continual friction of the snow-shoe on the forefoot would wear this so much that blood oozed from it and cramps in foot and leg set in. In this unpleasant predicament, the man was undismayed, he advised his companions to proceed and leave him to his fate, as he would still find means to take care of himself. So he was left. After about a week some anxiety was felt about the man and a search-party set out to hunt him up. Arriving at his whereabouts, they found their man in somewhat comfortable circumstances, he had built for himself a hut of the boughs of trees and dry grass and have lived on rabbits which he managed to get without a gun. So far from being in need of assistance, he was now in a condition to bestow such for it being about noon and a rabbit on the fire being about ready to be served he invited his would-be-rescuers to dinner and after he had regaled them in the best manner circumstances permitted, he returned home with them all in good spirits.
The following incidents shows how Mr. Roy met an exigency. Once at night-fall he and the men had pitched for a night’s stay and made preparations for supper. No game or fish was at hand. A brook flowed near by but there was nothing in the possession of the crew to catch a fish with. But Roy was bent upon making the anyway scant fare more savory with a supply of fish, if it could be. Whilst the rest made a fire, he absented himself and in a very short time he returned with a couple of fish fresh from the water and sufficiently large to furnish a dish for all. He had managed to get them out from the brook with no other contrivance than the forked twig of a tree.
The following trip of Mr. Roy is remembered for the humorous incidents to which it gave occasion. One summer day probably in August and in the sixties, a tourist party turned up at Superior. It consisted of two gentlemen with wives and daughters, some six or seven persons. They were from the east, probably New York and it was fairly understood that it was the ambition of the ladies to pose as heroines, that had made a tour through the wild west and had seen the wild indian in his own country. The Bradshaws being under some obligation to these strangers detailed Roy and a few oarsmen to take them by boat along the north shore to Fort William, where they could take passage on a steamer for the continuation of their journey.
Now the story goes that Roy sent word ahead to some family at Grand Marais, Minn. or thereabouts that his crew would make a stop at their house. The unusual news, however, spread and long before Roy’s boat came in sight, not only the family, which was to furnish hospitality, was getting ready, but also their friends; men, women and children, in quite a number, had come gathering in from the woods, each ready for something, if no more, at least to show their wild indian faces.
Maple sugar in a birch bark container.
~ Minnesota Historical Society
When Roy and the gentlemen and ladies in his custody had arrived and were seated at table, the women and girls busied themselves in some way or another in order to make sure not to miss seeing, what was going on, above all how the strange ladies would behave at table. The Indian woman, who had set the table, had put salt on it – simply enough it is said for the boiled eggs served; – but what was peculiar, was that the salt was not put in salt-dishes, but in a coffee cup or bowl. If sugar was on the table, it was maple-sugar, which any Indian of the country could distinguish from salt, but the ladies at the table were not so versed in the customs of the country through which they were travelling, they mistaking the salt for sugar, reached for it and put a tea-spoonful of it into their tea or coffee. A ripple of surprise ran over the numerous spectators, the features of the older ones relaxing somewhat from their habitual rigor and a half-suppressed titter of the younger being heard – possibly in their judgement, the strange ladies of the city in the east were the less civilized there. In fact, the occurrence was never forgotten by those who witnessed it.
Proceeding on their journey, one night Roy and those in his custody had not been able to take their night’s rest at a human habitation and had chanced to pitch their tents on a high embankment of the lake. During the night the wind arose and blew a gale from the lake, so strong that the pegs of the tents, in which the ladies were lodged, pulled up and the canvass blew away. When the ladies were thus on a sudden aroused from sleep and without a tent out in the storm they screamed for their life for Roy to come to their aid. The men helped along with Roy to set up the tent again. Roy often afterwards amusingly referred to this that the ladies had not screamed for their husbands or fathers, but for Roy. The ladies gave later on their reasons for acting thus. Not knowing the real cause of what was transpiring, they in their freight thought the wild Indians were now indeed upon them that they were on the point of being carried off into the woods. In such a peril they of course thought of Roy as the only one who could rescue them. After the excitement things were soon explained and set aright and the ladies with their husbands and fathers arrived safely at Fort William and took passage in due season on an east-bound steamer.
A Friend of Roy.
Sources of Inform:tion
“Top: Frank Roy, Vincent Roy, E. Roussin, Old Frank D.o., Bottom: Peter Roy, Jos. Gourneau (Gurnoe), D. Geo. Morrison.” The photo is labelled Chippewa Treaty in Washington 1845 by the St. Louis Hist. Lib and Douglas County Museum, but if it is in fact in Washington, it was probably the Bois Forte Treaty of 1866, where these men acted as conductors and interpreters (Digitized by Mary E. Carlson for The Sawmill Community at Roy’s Point).
1 His journal and folks.
2 Pet. Roy’s sketch.
3 Mr. Roy to V.
4 P. R.’s sketch
5 Mr. Geo. Morrison says, the place was in those days always called Madelaine Island.
~ The Superior Chronicle, July 7, 1860.
6 P. Roy’s sketch.
7 His wife.
8 His folks.
9 Cournoyer.
10 Mrs. Roy.
11 See foot-note.
12 Mrs. Roy.
13 Fr. Eustachius said smthng to this effect.
14 Mr. Roy to V.
15 Cournoyer or Mr. Roy to V.
16 Cournoyer.
18 by Geo. Morrison & others.
19 Mr. Roy to V.
20 The family.
21 Mr. Roy to V.
22 Mr. Roy to V.
23 History of Superior as to the substce.
Vincent Cournoyer was Vincent Roy Jr’s brother-in-law. The Roy brothers, Cournoyer, Morrison, and La Fave were all Mixed-Blood members of the Lake Superior Chippewa, and elected officials in Douglas County, Wisconsin.
24 The family.
25 Cournoyer.
26 Mr Roy to V. – His family also.
27 Mr. Roy to V. – His family also.
28 History aS subst.e
29 Mr. J. Bradshaw and J. La Fave.
Father Valentine wishes his name to be suppressed in this communication and hence signs himself as above: “A Friend of Roy.”
Fr. Chrysostom Verwyst O.F.M.
Reverend Chrysostome Verwyst, circa 1918. ~ Wisconsin Historical Society
The Story of Chequamegon Bay
March 1, 2016
By Amorin Mello
This is a reproduction of Reuben Gold Thwaites’ 1895 “The Story of Chequamegon Bay” to demonstrate how our local history has been institutionalized and portrayed since the end of the 19th century. Thwaites’ professional legacy as a journalist is embedded in many institutions, including the following:
- American Library Association
- American Antiquarian Society
- University of Wisconsin
- Wisconsin State Journal
- Wisconsin Historical Society
- Mississippi Valley Historical Association
According to Wikipedia:
Thwaites was well-known for not being a mere academic, but rather as a historian who attempted to understand history by experiencing those aspects that he could, and bringing those experiences to life. In 1888 he took canoe trips on the Wisconsin, Fox and Rock rivers. In 1892 he took a bicycle trip across England. In 1903 he took a trip down the Ohio River in a rowboat.
Thwaites’ approach and work has been questioned, to some degree by his contemporaries but more so in modern times. His summaries include phraseology such as “[Europeans] left the most luxurious country in Europe to seek shelter in the foul and unwelcome huts of one of the most wretched races of man.” When editing the Jesuit Relations, he included background information that is generally credible and thorough with respect to events and Europe, but is far less thorough in regard to the disruptions from disease and other sources that the indigenous people themselves were facing. In other words, the criticism is that the original works were insensitive, and Thwaites failed to fully account for the prejudicial and inaccurate reporting in the Relations. However, Thwaites is also recognized as being the pioneer in an approach to using the Relations that is continuing to be enriched by modern scholarship, and so in a sense he started a process by which his very work could be corrected and improved as historians learn more about the periods in question.
The purpose of reproducing this story is to serve as an introduction to Chequamegon Bay history, and as a reference point for modern scholarship and primary research about Chequamegon Bay before 1860.
The Story about Chequamegon Bay was originally published in Collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin: Volume XIII, by Reuben Gold Thwaites, 1895, pages 397-425.
The Story Of Chequamegon Bay.
by the Editor.
Reuben Gold Thwaites
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
WE commonly think of Wisconsin as a young State. In a certain sense she is. There are men now living, two or three of whom I meet almost daily, who were blazing paths through the Wisconsin wilderness, only sixty years ago: men who cleared the forests and broke the prairies; who founded frontier communities which have developed into cities; who upon this far away border sowed the seeds of industries which to-day support tens of thousands of their fellows; who threw up their hats when the Territory was erected; and who sat in the convention which gave to the new State a constitution. The Wisconsin of to-day, the Wisconsin which we know, is indeed young; for the lively octogenarians who were in at the birth will not admit that they are now old. But there was an earlier, a less prosaic, a far more romantic Wisconsin,—the French Wisconsin; and it had flourished in its own fashion for full two centuries before the coming of the Anglo-Saxon, who, brusquely crowding the Creole to the wall, made of his old home an American Commonwealth.
In 1634, when the child born upon the Mayflower was but in her fourteenth year, Jean Nicolet, sent out by the enterprising Champlain as far as Wisconsin,— a thousand miles of canoe journey west from Quebec,— made trading contracts, such as they were, with a half-score of squalid tribes huddled in widely-separated villages throughout the broad wilderness lying between Lakes Superior and Michigan. It was a daring, laborious expedition, as notable in its day as Livingstone’s earliest exploits in Darkest Africa ; and although its results were slow of development,—for in the seventeenth century man was still cautiously deliberate,— this initial visit of the forest ambassador of New France to the country of the Upper Lakes broke the path for a train of events which were of mighty significance in American history.1
“Jean Nicolet, landing at the Bay of Green Bay in 1634. Painted by Franz Edward Rohrbeck (1852-1919) in 1910 into the mural in the rotunda of the Brown County Courthouse, Green Bay, Wisconsin. It shows Nicolet wearing a Chinese damask tunic strewn with flowers and birds, and discharging two pistols into the air.”
~ Wikipedia.org
Let us examine the topography of Wisconsin. The State is situated at the head of the chain of Great Lakes. It is touched on the east by Lake Michigan, on the north by Lake Superior, on the west by the Mississippi, and is drained by interlacing rivers which so closely approach each other that the canoe voyager can with case pass from one great water system to the other; he can enter the continent at the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and by means of numerous narrow portages in Wisconsin emerge into the south-flowing Mississippi, eventually returning to the Atlantic through the Gulf of Mexico. From Lake Michigan, the Fox-Wisconsin river system was the most popular highway to the great river; into Lake Superior, there flow numerous turbulent streams from whose sources lead short portage trails over to the headwaters .of feeders of the Mississippi. From the western shore of Lake Superior, Pigeon River invites to exploration of the Winnipeg country, whence the canoeist can by a half-hundred easy routes reach the distant regions of Athabasca and the Polar Sea. In their early voyages to the head of lake navigation, it was in the course of nature that the French should soon discover Wisconsin; and having discovered it, learn that it was the key-point of the Northwest — the gateway to the entire continental interior. Thus, through Wisconsin’s remarkable system of interlacing waterways, to which Nicolet led the way, New France largely prosecuted her far-reaching forest trade and her missionary explorations, securing a nominal control of the basin of the Mississippi at a time when Anglo-Saxons had gained little more of the Atlantic slope than could be seen from the mast-head of a caravel. Thus the geographical character of Wisconsin became, early in the history of New France, an important factor. The trading posts and Jesuit missions on Chequamegon Bay2 of Lake Superior, and on Green Bay of Lake Michigan, soon played a prominent part in American exploration. The career of Green Bay is familiar to us all.3 I have thought it well hastily to summarize, in the brief space allowed me, the equally instructive story of Chequamegon Bay.
“Outline Map showing the position of the ancient mine-pits of Point Keweenaw, Michigan”
~ Ancient Mining on the Shores of Lake Superior, by Charles Whittlesey
The sandstone cliffs of Lake Superior were, many geologists think, among the first Laurentian islands to arise from the ancient ocean; if this be so, then the rim of our greatest inland sea is one of the oldest spots on earth. In its numerous mines of copper, prehistoric man long delved and wrought with rude hammers and chisels of stone, fashioning those curious copper implements which are carefully treasured in American museums of archaeology;4 and upon its rugged shores the Caucasian early planted his stake, when between him and New England tidewater all was savagery.
Pierre d’Esprit Sieur Radisson
~ Dictionary of Canadian Biography
After the coming to Wisconsin of Nicolet, a long period followed, in which the energies of New France were devoted to fighting back the Iroquois, who swarmed before the very gates of Quebec and Montreal. Exploration was for the time impossible. A quarter of a century passes away before we have evidence of another white man upon Wisconsin soil. In the spring of 1659, the Indians of the valley of the Fox were visited by two French fur-traders from the Lower St. Lawrence – Pierre d’Esprit, Sieur Radisson, and his sister’s husband, Medard Chouart, Sieur de Groseilliers. In all American history there are no characters more picturesque than these two adventurous Creoles, who, in their fond desire to “travell and see countries,” and “to be known as the remotest people,” roamed at will over the broad region between St. Jame’s seaway and the Wisconsin River, having many curious experiences with wild beasts and wilder men. They made several important geographical discoveries, – among them, probably, the discovery of the Mississippi River in 1659, fourteen years before the visit of Joliet and Marquette; and from a trading settlement proposed by them to the English, when their fellow-countrymen no longer gave them employment, developed the great establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The unconsciously-amusing narrative which Radisson afterwards wrote, for the editication of King Charles II, of England, is one of the most interesting known to American antiquaries.5
“Arrival of Radisson in an Indian camp, 1660”
by Charles William Jefferys
~ Wikimedia.org
Two years after Radisson and Groseilliers were upon the Fox River, and made their notable trip to the Mississippi, they were again in the Northwest (autumn of 1661), and this time upon Lake Superior, which they had approached by carrying around the Sault Ste. Marie. Skirting the southern shore of the lake, past the now famous Pictured Rocks, they carried across Keweenaw Point, visited a band of Christino Indians6 not far from the mouth of Montreal River, now the far western boundary between Upper Michigan and Wisconsin, and, portaging across the base of the Chequamegon Island of to-day, – then united to the mainland,- entered beautiful Chequamegon Bay. Just where they made their camp, it is impossible from Radisson’s confused narrative to say; but that it was upon the mainland no Wisconsin antiquary now doubts, and we have reason to believe that it was upon the southwest shore, between the modern towns of Ashland and Washburn.7
“Close-up of the Radisson and Groseilliers house historic site marker, commemorating the first house built in Wisconsin by white men. The house was believed to have stood in the vicinity of Ashland at the mouth of Fish Creek where it empties into Chequamegon Bay.”
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Our chronicler writes, with a particularity of detail suggestive of De Foe:
“We went about to make a fort of stakes, w’ was in this manner. Suppose that the watter-side had ben in one end; att the same end there should be murtherers, and att need we made a bastion in a triangle to defend us from assault. The doore was neare the watter side, our fire was in the midle, and our bed on the right hand, covered. There were boughs of trees all about our fort layed acrosse, one uppon an other. Besides those boughs, we had a long cord tyed w’ some small bells, w’ weare sentereys. Finally, we made an ende of that fort in 2 dayes’ time.”
“Front view of the Radisson cabin, the first house built by a white man in Wisconsin. It was built between 1650 and 1660 on Chequamegon Bay, in the vicinity of Ashland. This drawing is not necessarily historically accurate.”
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Modernize this statement, and in imagination we can see this first dwelling erected by man on the shores of Lake Superior; a small log hut, built possibly on the extremity of a small rocky promontory; the door opens to the water front, while the land side, to the rear of the hut, is defended by a salient of palisades stretching from bank to bank of the narrow promontory; all about the rude structure is a wall of pine boughs piled one upon the other, with a long cord intertwined, and on this cord are strung numbers of the little hawk-bells then largely used in the Indian trade for purposes of gift and barter. It was expected that in case of a night attack from savages, who might be willing to kill them for the sake of their stores, the enemy would stir the boughs and unwittingly ring the bells, thus arousing the little garrison. These ingenious defenses were not put to the test, although no doubt they had a good moral effect; in keeping the thieving Hurons at a respectful distance.
Winter was just setting in. The waters of the noble bay were taking on that black and sullen aspect peculiar to the season. The beautiful islands, later named for the Twelve Apostles,8 looked gloomy indeed in their dark evergreen mantles. From the precipitous edges of the red-sandstone cliffs, which girt about this estuary of our greatest inland sea, the dense pine forests stretched westward and southward for hundreds of miles. Here and there in the primeval depths was a cluster of starveling Algonkins, still trembling from fear of a return of the Iroquois, who had chased them from Canada into this land of swamps and tangled woods, where their safety lay in hiding. At wide intervals, uncertain trails led from village to village, and in places the rivers were convenient highways; these narrow paths, however, beset with danger in a thousand shapes, but emphasized the unspeakable terrors of the wilderness.
Père René Ménard
“The Search for Wisconsin’s First Priest”
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Radisson and Groseilliers, true coureurs de bois, were not daunted by the dangers which daily beset them. After caching their goods, they passed the winter of 1661-62 with their Huron neighbors, upon a prolonged hunt, far into the Mille Lacs region of Minnesota. The season was phenomenally severe, and the Indians could not find game enough to sustain life. A famine ensued in the camp, the tragical details of which are painted by our friend Radisson with Hogarthian minuteness. In the spring of 1662, the traders were back again at Chequamegon, and built another fortified shelter, this time possibly on the sand-spit of Shagawaumikong,9 from which base they once more wandered in search of adventures and peltries, going as far northwest as Lake Assiniboine, and later in the season returning to their home on the Lower St. Lawrence.
When Radisson’s party went to Lake Superior, in the autumn of 1661, they were accompanied as far as Keweenaw Bay by a Jesuit priest. Father Pierre Ménard, who established there a mission among the Ottawas. The following June, disheartened in his attempt to convert these obdurate tribesmen, Ménard set out for the Huron villages on the upper waters of the Black and Chippewa, but perished on the way.10
It was not until August of 1665, three years later, that Father Claude Allouez, another Jesuit, was sent to reopen the abandoned Ottawa mission on Lake Superior. He chose his site on the southwestern shore of Chequamegon Bay, possibly the same spot on which Radisson’s hut had been built, four years previous, and piously called his mission and the locality La Pointe du Saint Esprit, which in time was shortened to La Pointe.11
Detail of La Pointe du Saint Esprit
from Claude Allouez map’s of New France, 1669.
~ Research Laboratories of Archaeology
Portrayal of Claude Allouez
~ National Park Service
At the time of Radisson’s visit, the shores of Chequamegon Bay were uninhabited save by a few half-starved Hurons ; but soon thereafter it became the centre of a considerable Indian population, residents of several tribes having been drawn thither, first, by the fisheries, second, by a fancied security in so isolated a region against the Iroquois of the East and the wild Sioux of the West. When Allouez arrived in this polyglot village, October 1, he found there Chippewas, Pottawattómies, Kickapoos, Sauks, and Foxes, all of them Wisconsin tribes; besides these were Hurons, Ottawas, Miamis, and Illinois,— victims of Iroquois hate who had fled in droves before the westward advances of their merciless tormentors.
Jacques Marquette
aka James (Jim) or Père Marquette
~ Wikipedia
Despite his large congregations, Allouez made little headway among these people, being consoled for his hardships and ill-treatment by the devotion of a mere handful of followers. For four years did he labor alone in the Wisconsin wilderness, hoping against hope, varying the monotony of his dreary task by occasional canoe voyages to Quebec, to report progress to his father superior. Father James Marquette, a more youthful zealot, was at last sent to relieve him, and in September, 1669, arrived at La Pointe from Sault Ste. Marie, after spending a full month upon, the journey,—so hampered was he, at that early season, by snow and ice. Allouez, thus relieved from a work that had doubtless palled upon him, proceeded upon invitation of the Pottawattomies to Green Bay, where he arrived early in December, and founded the second Jesuit mission in Wisconsin, St. Francis Xavier, on the site of the modern town of Depere.12
Marquette had succeeded to an uncomfortable berth. Despite his strenuous efforts as a peacemaker, his dusky parishioners soon unwisely quarreled with their western neighbors, the Sioux,13 with the result that the La Pointe bands, and Marquette with them, were driven like leaves before an autumn blast eastward along the southern shore of the great lake: the Ottawas taking up their home in the Manitoulin Islands of Lake Huron, the Hurons accompanying Marquette to the Straits of Mackinaw, where he established the mission of St. Ignace.
With La Pointe mission abandoned, and Lake Superior closed to French enterprise by the “raging Sioux,” the mission at Depere now became the centre of Jesuit operations in Wisconsin, and it was a hundred and sixty-four years later (1835), before mass was again said upon the forest-fringed shores of Chequamegon Bay.
“‘Daniel Greysolon Sieur Dulhut at the Head of the Lakes – 1679.’ Painted by artist Francis Lee Jaques, c.1922.”
~ Minnesota Historical Society
Although the missionary had deserted La Pointe, the fur trader soon came to be much in evidence there. The spirit of Radisson and Groseilliers long permeated this out-of-the-way corner of the Northwest. We find (1673), three years after Marquette’s expulsion. La Salle’s trading agent, Sieur Raudin, cajoling the now relentent Sioux at the western end of Lake Superior. In the summer of 1679, that dashing coureur de bois, Daniel Grayson du l’ Hut,14 ascended the St. Louis River, which divides Wisconsin and Minnesota, and penetrated with his lively crew of voyageurs to the Sandy Lake country, being probably the first white trader upon the head-waters of the Mississippi. The succeeding winter, he spent in profitable commerce with the Assiniboines, Crees, and other northern tribes in the neighborhood of Grand Portage,15 on the boundary between Minnesota and Canada. In June, 1680, probably unaware of the easier portage by way of the Mille Lacs and Rum River, Du I’ Hut set out at the head of a small company of employees to reach the Mississippi by a new route. Entering the narrow and turbulent Bois Brulé,16 half-way along the southern shore of Lake Superior, between Red Cliff and St. Louis River, he with difficulty made his way over the fallen trees and beaver dams which then choked its course. From its head waters there is a mile-long portage to the upper St. Croix; this traversed. Du l’ Hut was upon a romantic stream which swiftly carried him, through foaming rapids and deep, cool lakes, down into the Father of Waters. Here it was that he heard of Father Louis Hennepin’s captivity among the Sioux, and with much address and some courage rescued that doughty adventurer, and carried him by way of the Fox-Wisconsin route in safety to Mackinaw.
…
“In 1693, Le Sueur founded a trading post on the site of present-day La Pointe on Madeline Island, the largest of Chequamegon Bay’s Apostle Islands. After hearing reports of what he believed were valuable deposits of copper ore south of Lake Superior, he traveled to France in 1697, where the French government granted him permission to mine these resources.”
~ Encyclopedia of Exploration, vol. 1, 2004.
An adventurous forest trader, named Le Sueur, was the next man to imprint his name on the page of Lake Superior history. The Fox Indians, who controlled the valleys of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers, had for various reasons become so hostile to the French that those divergent streams were no longer safe as a gateway from the Great Lakes to the Great River. The tendency of the prolonged Fox War was to force fur trade travel to the portages of Chicago and St. Joseph’s on the south, and those of Lake Superior on the north.17 It was with a view to keeping open one of Du l’ Hut’s old routes, – the Bois Brulé and St. Croix Rivers,- that Le Sueur was despatched by the authorities of New France in 1693. He built a stockaded fort on Madelaine island, convenient for guarding the northern approach,18 and another on an island in the Mississippi, below the mouth of the St. Croix, and near the present town of Red Wing, Minnesota. The post in the Mississippi soon became “the centre of commerce for the Western parts”; and the station in Chequamegon Bay also soon rose to importance, for the Chippewas, who had drifted far inland into Wisconsin and Minnesota with the growing scarcity of game,- the natural result of the indiscriminate slaughter which the fur trade encouraged, – were induced by the new trading facilities to return to their old bay shore haunts, massing themselves in an important village on the southwestern shore.
This incident strikingly illustrates the important part which the trader early came to play in Indian life. At first an agriculturalist in a small way, and a hunter and fisher only so far as the daily necessities of food and clothing required, the Indian was induced by the white man to kill animals for their furs, – luxuries ever in great demand in the marts of civilization. The savage wholly devoted himself to the chase, and it became necessary for the white man to supply him with clothing, tools, weapons, and ornaments of European manufacture; the currency as well as the necessities of the wilderness.19 These articles the savage had heretofore laboriously fashioned for himself at great expenditure of time; no longer was he content with native manufactures, and indeed he quickly lost his old-time facility for making them. It was not long before he was almost wholly dependent on the white trader for the commonest conveniences of life; no longer being tied to his fields, he became more and more a nomad, roving restlessly to and fro in search of fur-bearing game, and quickly populating or depopulating a district according to the conditions of trade. Without his trader, he quickly sank into misery and despair; with the advent of the trader, a certain sort of prosperity once more reigned in the tepee of the red man. In the story of Chequamegon Bay, the heroes are the fur trader and the missionary; and of these the fur trader is the greater, for without his presence on this scene there would have been no Indians to convert.
~ State of Wisconsin Blue Book, 1925, page 66.
Although Le Sueur was not many years in command upon Chequamegon Bay,20 we catch frequent glimpses thereafter of stockaded fur trade stations here, – French, English, and American, in turn, – the most of them doubtless being on Madelaine Island, which was easily defensible from the mainland.21 We know that in 1717 there was a French trader at La Pointe – the popular name for the entire bay district—for he was asked by Lt. Robertel de la Noüe, who was then at Kaministiquoya, to forward a letter to a certain Sioux chief. In September, 1718, Captain Paul Legardeur St. Pierre, whose mother was a daughter of Jean Nicolet, Wisconsin’s first explorer, was sent to command at Chequamegon, assisted by Ensign Linctot, the authorities of the lower country having been informed that the Chippewa chief there was, with his fellow-chief at Keweenaw, going to war with the Foxes. St. Pierre was at Chequamegon for at least a year, and was succeeded by Linctot, who effected an important peace between the Chippewas and Sioux.22
The Indians at La Pointe told the French of an island of copper guarded by spirits; La Ronde, when he heard of the mineral, requested permission from the French Government to combine his duties at the fort with mining. he was not given permission to operate the mines until 1733, and in 1740 his mining activities were halted by an outbreak between the Sioux and the Chippewa. Nonetheless, La Ronde is known as the first practical miner on Lake Superior, and the man who opened this region for settlement by white men.”
~ The WPA Guide to Wisconsin, by Federal Writers’ Project, 2013, page 348.
~ Dictionary of Canadian Biography
Whether a garrisoned fort was maintained at Chequamegon Bay, from St. Pierre’s time to the close of the French domination, it is impossible to say; but it seems probable; for the geographical position was one of great importance in the development of the fur trade, and the few records we have mention the fort as one of long standing.23 In 1730, it is recorded, that a nugget of copper was brought to the post by an Indian, and search was at once made for a mine; but October 18, 1731, the authorities of New France wrote to the home office in Paris that, owing to the superstitions of the Indians, which led them to conceal mineral wealth from the whites, no copper mine had thus far been found in the neighborhood of Chequamegon Bay. The commandant of Chequamegon at this time was Sieur La Ronde Denis, known to history as La Ronde,— like his predecessors, for the most part, a considerable trader in these far Western parts, and necessarily a man of enterprise and vigor. La Ronde was for many years the chief trader in the Lake Superior country, his son and partner being Denis de La Ronde. They built for their trade a boat of 40 tons, which was without doubt “the first vessel on the great lake, with sails larger than an Indian blanket.” 24 On account of the great outlay they had incurred in this and other undertakings in the wilderness, the post of Chequamegon, with its trading monopoly, had been given to the elder La Ronde, according to a despatch of that day, “as a gratuity to defray expenses.” Other allusions to the La Rondes are not infrequent: in 1736,25 the son is ordered to investigate a report of a copper mine at Iron River, not far east of the Bois Brulé; in the spring of 1740, the father is at Mackinaw on his return to Chequamegon from a visit to the lower country, but being sick is obliged to return to Montreal;26 and in 1744, Bellin’s map gives the name “Isle de la Ronde” to what we now know as Madelaine, fair evidence that the French post of this period was on that island.
Detail of Isle de la Ronde from Carte des lacs du Canada by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, 1744.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
Pierre-Joseph was the son of Joseph Hertel de St.Francois & Catherine Philippe, born in Trois-Rivieres. He married Catherine-Madeleine Jarrot (daughter of Jean Bte.Jarrot, sieur de Vercheres & Madeleine Francoise d’Ailleboust de Manthet) in 1751. [Her father commanded the post at Green Bay in 1747].
Pierre-Joseph followed in his families tradition and was a captain on a raid of Albany in 1756 during the King George’s War. From 1756 to 1758 he was commander of the post of Lapointe (in today’s northern Wisconsin) and sailed for France after the loss of Canada to the British.”
~ [Unknown].
We hear nothing more of importance concerning Chequamegon until about 1756, when Hertel de Beaubassin, the last French commandant there, was summoned to Lower Canada with his Chippewa allies, to do battle against the English.27 For several years past, wandering English fur traders had been tampering with the Chippewas of Lake Superior, who in consequence frequently maltreated their old friends, the French;28 but now that the tribe were summoned for actual fighting in the lower country, with extravagant promises of presents, booty, and scalps, they with other Wisconsin Indians eagerly flocked under the French banner, and in painted swarms appeared on the banks of the St. Lawrence, with no better result than to embarrass the French commissariat and thus unwittingly aid the ambitious English.
New France was tottering to her fall. The little garrison on Madelaine Island had been withdrawn from the frontier, with many another like it, to help in the defense of the lower country ; and the Upper Lakes, no longer policed by the fur trade monopoly, were free plunder for unlicensed traders, or coureurs des bois. Doubtless such were the party who encamped upon the island during the autumn of 1760. By the time winter had set in upon them, all had left for their wintering grounds in the forests of the far West and Northwest, save a clerk named Joseph, who remained in charge of the stores and the local traffic. With him were his little family,—his wife, who was from Montreal, his child, a small boy, and a man-servant, or voyageur. Traditions differ as to the cause of the servant’s action,— some have it, a desire for wholesale plunder; others, the being detected in a series of petty thefts, which Joseph threatened to report; others, an unholy and unrequited passion for Joseph’s wife. However that may be, the servant murdered first the clerk, and then the wife; and in a few days, stung by the piteous cries of the child, the lad himself. When the spring came, and the traders returned to Chequamegon, they inquired for Joseph and his family, but the servant’s reply was unsatisfactory and he finally confessed to his horrid deed. The story goes, that in horror the traders dismantled the old French fort as a thing accursed, sunk the cannon in a neighboring pool, and so destroyed the palisade that to-day naught remains save grassy mounds. Carrying their prisoner with them on their return voyage to Montreal, he is said to have escaped to the Hurons, among whom he boasted of his deed, only to be killed as too cruel a companion even for savages.29
Detail of “The 12 Apostles” from Captain Jonathan Carver’s journal of his travels with maps and drawings, 1769. ~ Boston Public Library
Alexander Henry , The Elder.
~ Wikipedia.com
New France having now fallen, an English trader, Alexander Henry, spent the winter of 1765-66 upon the mainland, opposite the island.30 Henry had obtained from the English commandant at Mackinaw the exclusive trade of Lake Superior, and at Sault Ste. Marie took into partnership with him Jean Baptiste Cadotte,31 a thrifty Frenchman, who for many years thereafter was one of the most prominent characters on the Upper Lakes. Henry and Cadotte spent several winters together on Lake Superior, but only one upon the shores of Chequamegon, which Henry styles “the metropolis of the Chippeways.”32
John Johnston
~ Homestead.org
The next dweller at Chequamegon Bay, of whom, we have record, was John Johnston, a Scotch-Irish fur trader of some education. Johnston established himself on Madelaine Island, not far from the site of the old French fort; some four miles across the water, on the mainland to the west, near where is now the white town of Bayfield, was a Chippewa village with whose inhabitants he engaged in traffic. Waubojeeg (White Fisher), a forest celebrity in his day, was the village chief at this time, and possessed of a comely daughter whom Johnston soon sought and obtained in marriage. Taking his bride to his island home, Johnston appears to have lived there for a year or two in friendly commerce with the natives, at last retiring to his old station at Sault Ste. Marie.33
Mention has been made of Jean Baptiste Cadotte, who was a partner of Alexander Henry in the latter’s Lake Superior trade, soon after the middle of the century. Cadotte, whose wife was a Chippewa, after his venture with Henry had returned to Sault Ste. Marie, from which point he conducted an extensive trade through the Northwest. Burdened with advancing years, he retired from the traffic in 1796, and divided the business between his two sons, Jean Baptiste and Michel.
Michel Cadotte
~ Findagrave.com
About the opening of the present century,34 Michel took up his abode on Madelaine Island, and from that time to the present there has been a continuous settlement upon it. He had been educated at Montreal, and marrying Equaysayway, the daughter of White Crane, the village chief of La Pointe,35 at once became a person of much importance in the Lake Superior country. Upon the old trading site at the southwestern corner of the island, by this time commonly called La Pointe,— borrowing the name, as we have seen, from the original La Pointe, on the mainland, and it in turn from Point Chequamegon,—Cadotte for over a quarter of a century lived at his ease; here he cultivated a “comfortable little farm,” commanded a fluctuating, but often far-reaching fur trade, first as agent of the Northwest Company and later of Astor’s American Fur Company, and reared a considerable family, the sons of which were, as he had been, educated at Montreal, and became the heads of families of Creole traders, interpreters, and voyageurs whom antiquarians now eagerly seek when engaged in bringing to light the French and Indian traditions of Lake Superior.36
La Pointe Beaver Money
Northern Outfit, American Fur Company
~ Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, & Letters, volume 54, page 159.
In the year 1818 there came to the Lake Superior country two sturdy, fairly-educated37 young men, natives of the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts,—Lyman Marcus Warren, and his younger brother, Truman Abraham. They were of the purest New England stock, being lineally descended from Richard Warren, one of the “Mayflower” company. Engaging in the fur trade, the brothers soon became popular with the Chippewas, and in 1821 still further entrenched themselves in the affections of the tribesmen by marrying the two half-breed daughters of old Michel Cadotte,—Lyman taking unto himself Mary, while Charlotte became the wife of Truman. At first the Warrens worked in opposition to the American Fur Company, but John Jacob Astor’s lieutenants were shrewd men and understood the art of overcoming commercial rivals. Lyman was made by them a partner in the lake traffic, and in 1824 established himself at-La Pointe as the company’s agent for the Lac Flambeau, Lac Courte Oreille, and St. Croix departments, an arrangement which continued for some fourteen years. The year previous, the brothers had bought out the interests of their father-in-law, who now, much reduced in means, retired to private life after forty years’ prosecution of the forest trade.38
American Fur Company “Map of La Pointe”
by Lyman Marcus Warren, 1834.
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
The brothers Warren were the last of the great La Pointe fur traders.39 Truman passed away early in his career, having expired in 1825, while upon a voyage between Mackinaw and Detroit. Lyman lived at La Pointe until 1838, when his connection with the American Fur Company was dissolved, and then became United States sub-agent to the Chippewa reservation on Chippewa River, where he died on the tenth of October, 1847, aged fifty-three years.40
Iu Otoshki-Kikindiuin Au Tebeniminvng Gaie Bemajiinung Jesus Christ, Ima Ojibue Inueuining Giizhitong:
The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
by Sherman Hall and Henry Blatchford, 1856.
~ Archive.org
Lyman Marcus Warren was a Presbyterian, and, although possessed of a Catholic wife, was the first to invite Protestant missionaries to Lake. Superior. Not since the days of Allouez had there been an ordained minister at La Pointe; Warren was solicitous for the spiritual welfare of his Chippewa friends, especially the young, who were being reared without religious instruction, and subject to the demoralizing influence of a rough element of white borderers. The Catholic Church was not just then ready to reenter the long-neglected field; his predilections, too, were for the Protestant faith. In 1830, while upon his annual summer trip to Mackinaw for supplies, be secured the cooperation of Frederick Ayer, of the Mackinaw mission, who returned with him in his batteau as lay preacher and school-teacher, and opened at La Pointe what was then the only mission upon the shores of the great lake. Thither came in Warren’s company, the latter part of August, the following year (1831), Rev. Sherman Hall and wife, who served as missionary and teacher, respectively, and Mrs. John Campbell, an interpreter.41
La Pointe was then upon the site of the old French trading post at the southwest corner of Madelaine Island; and there, on the first Sunday afternoon after his arrival, Mr. Hall preached “the first sermon ever delivered in this place by a regularly-ordained Christian minister.” The missionaries appear to have been kindly received by the Catholic Creoles, several of whom were now domiciled at La Pointe. The school was patronized by most of the families upon the island, red and white, who had children of proper age. By the first of September there was an average attendance of twenty-five. Instruction was given almost wholly in the English language, with regular Sunday-school exercises for the children, and frequent gospel meetings for the Indian and Creole adults.
We have seen that the first La Pointe village was at the southwestern extremity of the island. This was known as the “Old Fort” site, for here had been the original Chippewa village, and later the fur-trading posts of the French and English. Gradually, the old harbor became shallow, because of the shifting sand, and unfit for the new and larger vessels which came to be used in the fur trade.
The American Fur Company therefore built a “New Fort” a few miles farther north, still upon the west shore of the island, and to this place, the present village, the name La Pointe came to be transferred. Half-way between the “Old fort” and the “New fort,” Mr. Hall erected (probably in 1832) “a place for worship and teaching,” which came to be the centre of Protestant missionary work in Chequamegon Bay.
Leonard Hemenway Wheeler
~ Unnamed Wisconsin by John Nelson Davidson, 1895.
At that time, the Presbyterians and Congregationalists were, in the American Home Missionary Society and the American Board, united in the conduct of Wisconsin missions, and it is difficult for a layman to understand to which denomination the institution of the original Protestant mission at La Pointe may properly be ascribed. Warren was, according to Neill, a Presbyterian, so also, nominally, were Ayer and Hall, although the last two were latterly rated as Congregationalists. Davidson, a Congregational authority, says: “The first organization of a Congregational church within the present limits of Wisconsin took place at La Pointe in August, 1833, in connection with this mission”;42 and certainly the missionaries who later came to assist Hall were of the Congregational faith; these were Rev. Leonard Hemenway Wheeler and wife, Rev. Woodbridge L. James and wife, and Miss Abigail Spooner. Their work appears to have been as successful as such proselyting endeavors among our American Indians can hope to be, and no doubt did much among the Wisconsin Chippewas to stem the tide of demoralization which upon the free advent of the whites overwhelmed so many of our Western tribes.
James’ family did not long remain at La Pointe. Wheeler was soon recognized as the leading spirit there, although Hail did useful service in the field of publication, his translation of the New Testament into Chippewa (completed in 1836) being among the earliest of Western books. Ayer eventually went to Minnesota. In May, 1845, owing to the removal of the majority of the La Pointe Indians to the new Odanah mission, on Bad River, Wheeler removed thither, and remained their civil, as well as spiritual, counselor until October, 1866, when he retired from the service, full of years and conscious of a record of noble deeds for the uplifting of the savage. Hall tarried at La Pointe until 1853, when he was assigned to Crow Wing reservation, on the Mississippi, thus ending the Protestant mission on Chequamegon Bay. The new church building, begun in 1887, near the present La Pointe landing, had fallen into sad decay, when, in July, 1892, it became the property of the Lake Superior Congregational Club, who purpose to preserve it as an historic treasure, being the first church-home of their denomination in Wisconsin.
Not far from this interesting relic of Protestant pioneering at venerable La Pointe, is a rude structure dedicated to an older faith. Widely has it been advertised, by poets, romancers, and tourist agencies, as “the identical log structure built by Père Marquette”; while within there hangs a picture which we are soberly told by the cicerone was “given by the Pope of that time to Marquette, for his mission church in the wilderness.” It is strange how this fancy was born; stranger still that it persists in living, when so frequently proved unworthy of credence. It is as well known as any fact in modern Wisconsin history,— based on the testimony of living eyewitnesses, as well as on indisputable records,—that upon July 27, 1835, five years after Cadotte had introduced Ayer to Madelaine Island, there arrived at the hybrid village of La Pointe, with but three dollars in his pocket, a worthy Austrian priest. Father (afterwards Bishop) Frederic Baraga. By the side of the Indian graveyard at Middleport, he at once erected “a log chapel, 50×20 ft. and 18 ft. high,” and therein he said mass on the ninth of August, one hundred and sixty-four years after Marquette had been driven from Chequamegon Bay by the onslaught of the Western Sioux.43 Father Baraga’s resuscitated mission, still bearing the name La Pointe, as had the mainland missions of Allouez and Marquette,—throve apace. His “childlike simplicity,” kindly heart, and self-sacrificing labors in their behalf, won to him the Creoles and the now sadly-impoverished tribesmen; and when, in the winter of 1836-37, he was in Europe begging funds for the cause, his simpIe-hearted enthusiasm met with generous response from the faithful.
“Bishop Frederic Baraga, three-quarter length portrait, facing three-quarters to right, seated, in clerical robes, holding his Dictionary of the Otchipwe Language”
~ Library of Congress
Returning to La Pointe in 1837, he finished his little chapel, built log-houses for his half-starved parishioners, and lavished attentions upon them; says Father Verwyst, himself an experienced missionary among the Chippewas : “In fact, he gave them too much altogether—so to say— spoiled them by excessive kindness.” Four years later, his chapel being ill-built and now too small, he had a new one constructed at the modern village of La Pointe, some of the materials of the first being used in the second. This is the building, blessed by Father Baraga on the second Sunday of August, 1841, which is to-day falsely shown to visitors as that of Father Marquette. It is needless to say that no part of the ancient mainland chapel of the Jesuits went into its construction; as for the picture, a “Descent from the Cross,” alleged to have once been in Marquette’s chapel, we have the best of testimony that it was imported by Father Baraga himself from Europe in 1841, he having obtained it there the preceding winter, when upon a second tour to Rome, this time to raise funds for the new church.44 This remarkable man though later raised to a missionary bishopric, continued throughout his life to labor for the uplifting of the Indiana of the Lake Superior country with a self-sacrificing zeal which is rare in the annals of any church, and established a lasting reputation as a student of Indian philology. He left La Pointe mission in 1853, to devote himself to the Menomonees, leaving his work among the Chippewas of Chequamegon Bay to be conducted by others. About the year 1877, the white town of Bayfield, upon the mainland opposite, became the residence of the Franciscan friars who were now placed, in charge. Thus, while the Protestant mission, after a relatively brief career of prosperity, has long, since been removed to Odanah, the Catholics to this day retain possession of their ancient field in Chequamegon Bay.
View of La Pointe, circa 1843.
“American Fur Company with both Mission churches. Sketch purportedly by a Native American youth. Probably an overpainted photographic copy enlargement. Paper on a canvas stretcher.”
~ Wisconsin Historical Society
In closing, let us briefly rehearse the changes in the location of La Pointe, and thus clear our minds of some misconceptions into which several historians have fallen.
- As name-giver, we have Point Chequamegon (or. Shagawaumikong). Originally a long sand-spit hemming in Chequamegon Bay on the east, it is now an island. The most conspicuous object in the local topography, it gave name to the district; and here, at the time of the Columbian discovery, was the Chippewa stronghold.
- The mission of La Pointe du St. Esprit, founded by Allouez, was, it seems well established, on the mainland at the southwestern corner of the bay, somewhere between the present towns of Ashland and Washburn, and possibly on the site of Radisson’s fort. The point which suggested to Allouez the name of his mission was, of course, the neighboring Point Chequamegon.
- The entire region of Chequamegon Bay came soon to bear this name of La Pointe, and early within the present century it was popularly attached to, the island which had previously borne many names, and to-day is legally designated Madelaine.
- When Cadotte’s little trading village sprang up, on the southwestern extremity of the island, on the site of the old Chippewa village and the old French forts, this came to be particularly designated as La Pointe.
- When the American Fur Company established a new fort, a few miles north of the old, the name La Pointe was transferred thereto. This northern village was in popular parlance styled “New Fort,” and the now almost-deserted .southern village “Old Fort”; while the small settlement around the Indian graveyard midway, where Father Baraga built his first chapel, was known as “Middleport.”
La Pointe, Madelaine Island, Chequamegon Bay, circa 1898.
“The large building in the foreground is an old American Fur Company’s warehouse. The mainland town of Bayfield rests in a hollow of the opposite hills, which appears to merge into the island. This La Pointe, early established as a French military and trading post, must not be confounded with the still earlier missions of La Pointe served by Allouez and Marquette, which is on the mainland on the southwest shore of Chequamegon Bay, between Washburn and Ashland.”
~ Wisconsin Historical Collections, Volume XVI, page 80.
La Pointe has lost much of its old-time significance. No longer is it the refuge of starveling tribes, chased thither by Iroquois, harassed by unneighborly Sioux, and consoled in a measure by the ghostly counsel of Jesuit fathers; no longer a centre of the fur-trade, with coureurs de bois gayly dight, self-seeking English and American factors, Creole traders dispensing largesse to the dusky relatives of their forest brides, and rollicking voyageurs taking no heed of the morrow. Its forest commerce has departed, with the extinction of game and the opening of the Lake Superior country to industrial and agricultural occupation; the Protestant mission has followed the majority of the Indian islanders to mainland reservations; the revived mission of Mother Church has also been quartered upon the bay shore. But the natural charms of Madelaine island, in rocky dell, and matted forest, and sombre, pine-clad shore, are with us still, and over all there floats an aroma of two and a half centuries of historic association, the appreciation of which we need to foster in our materialistic West, for we have none too much of it.
1 The chief authority on Nicolet is Butterfield’s Discovery of the Northwest (Cincinnati, 1881). See also Wis. Hist. Colls., xi, pp. 1-25.
2 In his authoritative “History of the Ojibway Nation,“ in Minn. Hist. Colls., v., Warren prefers the spelling “Chagoumigon,” although recognizing “Shagawaumikong” and “Shaugahwaumikong.” “Chequamegon” is the current modern form. Rev. Edward P. Wheeler, of Ashland, an authority on the Chippewa tongue and traditions, says the pronunciation should be “Sheh-gu-wah-mi-kung,” with the accent on the last syllable.
3 See Nevill and Martin’s Historic Green Bay (Milwaukee,1894); and various articles in the Wisconsin Historical Collections.
4 See Minn. Hist. Colls., v., pp.98, 99, note, for account of early copper mining on Lake Superior by Indians. In the summer of 1892, W. H. Holmes, of the Smithsonian Institution, found on Isle Royale no less than a thousand abandoned shafts which had been worked by them; and “enough stone implements lay around, to stock every museum in the country.”
5 Radisson’s Voyages was published by the Prince Society (Boston, 1895); that portion relation to Wisconsin is reproduced, with notes, in Wis. Hist. Colls., xi. See also Jesuit Relations, 1660, for Father Lallemant’s report of the discoveries of the “two Frenchmen,” who had found “a fine river, great, broad, deep, and comparable, they say, to our great St. Lawrence.”
In Franquelin’s map of 1688, what is now Pigeon River, a part of the international boundary between Minnesota and Canda, is called Groseilliers. An attempt was made by members of the Wisconsin State Historical Society, in the Wisconsin Legislature,during the session of 1895, to have a proposed new county called Radisson; the name was adopted by the friends of the bill, but the measure itself failed to pass.
6 Now called Crees.
7 Radisson’s Voyages plainly indicates that the travelers portaged across the long, narrow sand-spit formerly styled Shagawaumikong, in their day united with the mainland, but now insular, and bearing the name Chequamegon Island; this Radisson describes as “a point of 2 leagues long and some 60 paces broad,”and later he refers to it as “the point that forms that Bay, wch resembles a small lake.” After making this portage of Shagawaumikong, they proceeded in their boats, and “att the end of this bay we landed.” The Ottawas of the party desired to cross over to their villages on the head-waters of the Black and Chippewa, and no landing-place was so advantageous for this purpose as the southwest corner of the bay. It is plain from the narrative that the Frenchmen, now left to themselves, built their fortified hut at or near the place of landing, on the mainland. The Chippewa tradition of the coming of Radisson and Groseilliers, as given by Warren in Minn. Hist. Colls., v., pp. 121, 122, places the camp of the first white men on the eastern extremity of Madeline (or La Pointe) Island. The tradition runs close to the fact in most other particulars; but in the matter of location, Radisson’s journal leaves no room to doubt that the tradition errs.
See post, Father Verwyst’s article, “Historic Sites on Chequamegon Bay,”with notes on the site of Radisson’s fort, by Sam. S. Fifield and Edward P. Wheeler. Verwyst thinks the location to have been “somewhere between Whittlesey’s Creek and Shore’s Landing;” Fifield and Wheeler are confident that it was at Boyd’s Creek.
8 Apparently by Johnathan Carver, in the map accompanying his volume of Travels.
9 Says Warren (Minn. Hist. Colls., v., p. 102): “Shag-a-waum-ik-ong is a narrow neck or point of land about our miles long, and lying nearly parallel to the island of La Pointe, toward the western end of which it converges, till the distance from point to point is not more than two miles.” In first entering the bay, the previous autumn, Radisson describes the point of Shagawaumikong, and says: “That point should be very fitt to build & advantageous for the building of a fort, as we did the spring following.” But later on in his journal, in describing the return to the bay from their winter with the Indians in the Mille Lacs region, he does not mention the exact location of the new “fort.” While in this fort, they “received [news] that the Octanaks [Ottawas] [had] built a fort on the ponit that forms that Bay, wch resembles a small lake. We went towards it with all speede,” – and had a perilous trip thither, across thin ice. This would indicate that the French camp was not on the point. As with many other passages in the journal, it is impossible to reconcile these two statements. Verwyst thinks that the traders were stationed on Houghton Point.
Warren, who had an intimate acquaintance with Chippewa traditions’ believed that that tribe, driven westward by degrees from the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, reached Lake Superior about the time of the Columbian discovery, and came to a stand on Shagaqaumikong Point. “On this spot they remained not long, for they were harassed daily by their warlike foes, and for greater security they were obliged to move their camp to the adjacent island of Mon-in-wun-a-kauning (place of the golden-breasted woodpecker, but known as La Pointe). Here, they chose the site of their ancient town, and it covered a space about three miles long and two broad, comprising the western end of the island.” – (Minn. Hist. Colls., v., p. 96). They remained in this large town “for the space of three generations, or one hundred and twenty years,” but for various reasons (see Ibid, p. 108 et seq., for the details) evacuated the place, and settling on the adjacent mainland came to regard La Pointe Island (now Madeline) as an abode of evil spirits, upon which, it is said, until the days of Cadotte, no Indian dare stay over night alone. Gradually, as the beaver grew more scarce, the Chippewas radiated inland, so that at the time of Radisson’s visit the shores of the bay were almost unoccupied, save during the best fishing season, when Chippewas, Ottawas, Hurons, and others congregated there in considerable numbers.
10 The route which Ménard took, is involved in doubt. Verwyst, following the Jesuit Relations, thinks he ascended some stream flowing into Lake Superior, and portaged over to the head-waters of Black river. Others, following Tailhan’s Perrot, believe that he crossed over to Green Bay, then ascended the Fox, descended the Wisconsin, and ascended the Mississippi to the mouth of the black. If the latter was his route, his visit to the Mississippi preceded Joliet’s by eleven years.
11 Neill (in Minn. Hist. Colls., v., p. 116) is of the opinion that Allouez “built a bark chapel on the shores of the bay, between a village of Petun Hurons and a village composed of three bands of Ottawas.” That Allouez was stationed upon the mainland, where the Indians now were, is evident from his description of the bay (Jesuit Relations for 1666-67): “A beautiful bay, at the bottom of which is situated the great village of the savages, who there plant their fields of Indian corn, and lead a stationary life. There are there, to the number of eight hundred men bearing arms, but collected from seven different nations, who dwell in peace with each other.” Verwyst, whose local knowledge is thorough, thinks that Allouez’s mission was at the mouth of Vanderventer’s Creek, and I have followed him in this regard.
There has always been some confusion among antiquarians as to what particular topographical feature gave name to the region. In christening his mission “La Pointe,” he had reference, I think, not to the particular plot of ground on which his chapel lay, but to the neighboring sandy point of Shagawaumikong, hemming in the bay on the east, in which he must have had a poetic interest, for tradition told him that it was the landfall of the Chippewas, and the place where, perhaps a century before, had been fought a great battle between them and the Dakotah’s (or Sioux), relics of which were to be found in our own day, in the human bones scattered freely through the shifting soil; doubtless in his time, these were much in evidence.
The map of in the Jesuit Relations for 1670-71 styles the entire Bayfield peninsula, forming the west shore of the bay, “La Pointe du St. Esprit,” of 1688, more exact in every particular, places a small settlement near the southwestern extremity of the bay. See also Verwyst’s Missionary Labors of Fathers Marquette, Ménard, and Allouez (Milwaukee, 1886), p. 183.
In 1820, Cass and Schoolcraft visited Chequamegon Bay, and the latter, in his Narrative, says: “Passing this [Bad] River, we continued along the sandy formation to its extreme termination, which separates the Bay of St. Charles [Chequamegon] 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 no shortened to La Pointe.”
12 By this time, fear of the Iroquois had subsided, and many Hurons had lately returned with the Pottawattomies, Sauks, and Foxes, to the oldhaunts of the latter, on Fox River. Cadillac, writing in 1703 from Detroit, says (Margry, v., p. 317): “It is proper that you should be informed that more than fifty years since [about 1645] the Iroquois by force of arms drove nearly all of the other Indian nations from this region [Lake Huron] to the extremity of Lake Superior, a country north of this post, and frightfully baren and inhispitable. About thirty-two years ago [1671] these exiled tribes collected themselves together at Michillimakinak.”
13 “The cause of the perpetual war, carried on between these two nations, is this, that both claim, as their exclusive hunting ground, the tract of country which lies between them, and uniformly attack each other when they meet upon it.” – Henry’s Travels and Adventures (N. Y., 1809), pp. 197, 198.
14 From whom the city of Duluth, Minn. was named.
15 For an account of Grand Portage see Wis. Hist. Colls., xi., pp. 123-125.
16 See ante, p. 203, note, for description of the Bois Brulé-St. Croix route.
17 See Parkman’s Half Century of Conflict, and Hebberd’s Wisconsin under French Domination (Madison, 1890).
18 Neill, in Minn. Hist. Colls., v. p 140, says that soon after St. Lusson’s taking possession of the Northwest for France, at Sault. Ste. Marie (1671), French traders built a small fort set about with cedar palisades, on which a cannon was mounted, “at the mouth of a small creek or pond midway between the present location of the American Fur Company’s establishment and the mission-house of the American Board of Foreign Missions.”
19 Minn. Hist. Colls., v., p. 125. Originally, the Indians of Lake Superior went to Quebec to trade; but, as the whites penetrated westward by degrees, these commercial visits were restricted to Montreal, Niagara, Detroit, Mackinaw, Sault Ste. Marie, as each in turn became the outpost of French influence; finally trading-posts were opeend at La Pointe, St. Louis River, and Pigeon River, and in time traders even followed the savages on their long hunts after the ever-decreasing game.
20 In July, 1695, Chingouabé, Chief of the Chippewas, voyaged with Le Sueur to Montreal, to “pay his respects to Onontio, in the name of the young warriors of Point Chagouamigon, and to thank him for having given them some Frenchmen to dwell with them; and to testify their sorrow for one Jobin, a Frenchmen killed at a feast. It occurred accidentally, not maliciously.” In his reply (July 29), Governor Frontenac gave the Chippewas some good advice, and said that he would again send Le Sueur “to command at Chagouamigon.” – Minn. Hist. Colls., v., p. 421.
21 It is evident that hereafter Madelaine Island was the chief seat of French power in Chequamegon Bay, but it was not until the present century that either the name La Pointe or Madelaine was applied to the island. Franquelin’s map (1688) calls it “Isle Detour ou St Michel.” Bellin’s French map of Lake Superior (in Charlevoix’s Histoire et Description Générale de Nouvelle France, Paris, 1744) calls the long sand-point of Shagawaumikong (now Chequamegon Island), “Pointe de Chagauamigon,” and styles the present Madelain Island “Isle La Ronde” after the trader La Ronde; what is now Basswood Island, he calls “Isle Michel,” and at the southern extremity of the bay indicates that at that place was once an important Indian village. In De l’ Isle’s map, of 1745, a French trading house (Maison Francoise) is shown on Shagawaumikong Point itself. Madelaine Island has at various times been known as Monegoinaiccauning (or Moningwnakauning, Chippewa for “golden-breasted woodpecker”), St. Michel, La Ronde, Woodpecker, Montreal, Virginia (Schoolcraft, 1820), Michael’s (McKenney, 1826), Middle (because midway between the stations of Saulte Ste. Marie and Fort William, at Pigeon River), Cadotte’s, and La Pointe (the latter because La pointe village was situated thereon).
22 Minn. Hist. Colls., v., pp. 423-425.
23 It was during this period the only fur-trading station on the south shore of Lake Superior, and was admirably situated for protecting not only the west end of the lake, but the popular portage route between Lake Superior and the Mississippi River, – the Bois Brulé and the St. Croix Rivers.
24 J. D. Butler’s “Early Shipping on Lake Superior,” in Wis. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1894, p. 87. The rigging and material were taken in canoes from the lower country to Sault Ste. Marie, the vessel being built at Point aux Pins, on the north shore, seven miles above the Sault. Butler shows that Alexander Henry was interested with a mining company in launching upon the lake in May, 1771, a sloop of 70 tons. After this, sailing vessels were regularly employed upon Superior, in the prosecution of the fur trade and copper mining. The Hudson’s Bay Company’s “Speedwell” was upon the lake as early as 1789; the Northwest Company’s principal vessel was the “Beaver.”
25 In this year there were reported to be 150 Chippewa braves living on Point Chagouamigon. — N. Y. Colon. Docs., ix.
26 Martin MSS., Dominion Archives, Ottawa, – letter of Beauharnois. For much of the foregoing data, see Neill’s “History of the Ojibways,” Minn. Hist. Colls., v.
27 N. Y. Colon. Docs., x., p. 424
28 Says Governor Galissoniére, in writing to the colonial office at Paris, under date of October, 1748: “Voyageurs robbed and maltreated at Sault Ste. Marie, and elsewhere on Lake Superior; in fine there appears to be no security anywhere.” – N. Y. Colon. Docs., x. p. 182.
29 See the several versions of this tale, Wis. Hist. Colls., viii., pp. 224 et seq.; and Minn. Hist. Colls., v., pp. 141-145, 431-432. Warren says that some Chippewa traditions ascribe this tragedy to the year 1722, but the weight of evidence is as in the text above.
30 “My house, which stood in the bay, was sheltered by an island of fifteen miles in length, and betwen which and the main the channel is four miles broad. On the island there was formerly a French trading post, much frequented; and in its neighborhood a large Indian village.” – Henry’s Travels, p. 199. Henry doubtless means that formerly there was an Indian village on the island; until after the coming of Cadotte, Warren says, the island was thought by the natives to be bewitched.
31 Jean Baptiste Cadotte (formerly spelled Cadot) was the son of one Cadeau, who is said to have come to the Northwest in the train of Sieur de St. Lusson, who took possession of the region centring at Sault Ste. Marie, in 1671. See St. Lusson’s procés verbal in Wis. Hist. Colls., xi., p. 26. Jean Baptiste, who was legally married to a Chippewa woman, had two sons, Jean Paptiste and Michel, both of whom were extensive traders and in their turn married Chippewas. See Minn. Hist. Colls., v., index.
32 “On my arrival at Chagouenig, I found fifty lodges of Indians there. These people were almost naked, their trade having been interrupted first by the English invasion of Canada, and next by Pontiac’s war.” – Travels, p. 193.
33 McKenny, in History of the Indian Tribes (Phila., 1854), i., pp. 154, 155, tells the story. He speaks of Johnston as “the accomplished Irish gentleman who resided so many years at the Sault de Ste. Marie, and who was not better known for his intelligence and polished manners than for his hospitality.” See also, ante, pp. 180, 181, for Schoolcraft and Doty’s notices of Johnston, who died ([ae]t. 66) at Sault Ste. Marie, Sept. 22, 1828. His widow became a Presbyterian, and built a church of that denomination at the Sault. Her daughter married Henry B. Schoolcraft, the historian of the Indian tribes. Waubojeeg died at an advanced age, in 1793.
34 Warren thinks he settled there about 1792 (Minn. Hist. Colls., v., p.111), but there is good evidence that it was at a later date.
35 “The Cranes claim the honor of first having pitched their wigwam and lighted the fire of the Ojibways, at Shaug-ah-waum-ik-ong, a sand point or peninsula lying two miles immediately opposite the Island of La Pointe.” – Warren in Minn. Hist. Colls., v., p. 86.
36 “Kind-hearted Michel Cadotte,” as Warren calls him, also had a trading-post at Lac Courte Oreille. He was, like the other Wisconsin Creole traders, in English employ during the War of 1812-15, and was at the capture of Mackinaw in 1812. He died on the island, July 8, 1837, aged 72 years, and was buried there. As with most of his kind, he made money freely and spent it with prodigality, partly in high living, but mainly in supporting his many Indian relatives; as a consequence, he died poor, the usual fate of men of his type. – (Minn. Hist. Colls., v., p. 449.) Warren says (Ibid., p. 11), the death occurred “in 1836,” but the tombstone gives the above date.
Cass, Schoolcraft, and Doty visited Chequamegon Bay in 1820. Schoolcraft says, in his Narrative, pp. 192, 193: “Six mile beyond the Mauvaise is Pointe Che-goi-me-gon, once the grand rendezvous of the Chippeway tribe, but now reduced to a few lodges. Three miles further west is the island of St. Michel (Madelaine), which lies in the traverse across Chegoimegon Bay, where M. Cadotte has an establishment. This was formerly an important trading post, but is now dwindled to nothing. There is a dwelling of logs, stockaded in the usual manner of trading-housess, besides several out-buildings, and some land in cultivation. We here also found several cows and horses, which have been transported with great labor.” See ante, pp. 200, 201, for Doty’s account of this visit.
37 Alfred Brunson, who visited Lyman Warren at La Pointe, in 1843, wrote: “Mr. Warren had a large and select library, an unexpected sight in an Indian country, containing some books that I had never before seen.” – Brunson, Western Pioneer (Cincinnati, 1879), ii., p. 163.
38 Minn. Hist. Colls., v., pp. 326, 383, 384, 450. Contemporaneously with the settlement of the Warrens at La Pointe, Lieutenant Bayfield of the British navy made (1822-23) surveys from which he prepared the first accurate chart of Lake Superior; his name is preserved in Bayfield peninsula, county, and town.
39 Borup had a trading-post on the island in 1846; but the forest commence had by this time sadly dwindled.
40 He left six children, the oldest son being William Whipple Warren, historian of the Chippewa tribe. See William’s “Memoir of William W. Warren,” in Minn. Hist. Colls., v.
41 See Davidson’s excellent “Missions on Chequamegon Bay,” in Wis. Hist. Colls., xii., to which I am chiefly indebted for information concerning the modern La Pointe missions. Mr. Davidson has since given us, in his Unnamed Wisconsin (Milw., 1895), fuller details of this mission work.
42 Wis. Hist. Colls., xii., p. 445. Mr. Davidson writes to me that in his opinion Ayer leaned to independency, and was really a Congregationalist; Hall is registered as such in the Congregational Year Book for 1859. “As to the La Pointe-Odanah church,” continues Mr. Davidson, in his personal letter, “its early records make no mention of lay elders, – of organization it was independent, rather than strictly Congregational. This could not be otherwise, with no church nearer than the one at Mackinaw. That was Presbyterian, as was its pastor, Rev. William M. Ferry. The La Pointe church adopted articles of faith of its own choosing, instead of holding itself bound by the Westminster confession. Moreover, the church was reorganized after the mission was transferred to the Presbyterian board. For this action there may have been some special reason that I know nothing about. But it seems to me a needless procedure if the church were Presbyterian before.”
43 See Verwyst’s Missionary Labors, pp. 146-149. This chapel was built partly of new logs, and partly of material from an old building given to Father Baraga by the American Fur Company
44 See Wis. Hist. Colls., xii., pp. 445, 446, note, also, Verwyst’s Missionary Labors, pp. 183, 184. Father Verwyst also calls attention to certain vestments at La Pointe, said to be those of Marquette: “That is another fable which we feel it our duty to explode. The vestments there were procured by Bishop Baraga and his successors; not one of them dates from the seventeenth century.”
Oshogay
August 12, 2013
At the most recent count, Chief Buffalo is mentioned in over two-thirds of the posts here on Chequamegon History. That’s the most of anyone listed so far in the People Index. While there are more Buffalo posts on the way, I also want to draw attention to some of the lesser known leaders of the La Pointe Band. So, look for upcoming posts about Dagwagaane (Tagwagane), Mizay, Blackbird, Waabojiig, Andeg-wiiyas, and others. I want to start, however, with Oshogay, the young speaker who traveled to Washington with Buffalo in 1852 only to die the next year before the treaty he was seeking could be negotiated.
I debated whether to do this post, since I don’t know a lot about Oshogay. I don’t know for sure what his name means, so I don’t know how to spell or pronounce it correctly (in the sources you see Oshogay, O-sho-ga, Osh-a-ga, Oshaga, Ozhoge, etc.). In fact, I don’t even know how many people he is. There were at least four men with that name among the Lake Superior Ojibwe between 1800 and 1860, so much like with the Great Chief Buffalo Picture Search, the key to getting Oshogay’s history right is dependent on separating his story from those who share his name.
In the end, I felt that challenge was worth a post in its own right, so here it is.
Getting Started
According to his gravestone, Oshogay was 51 when he died at La Pointe in 1853. That would put his birth around 1802. However, the Ojibwe did not track their birthdays in those days, so that should not be considered absolutely precise. He was considered a young man of the La Pointe Band at the time of his death. In my mind, the easiest way to sort out the information is going to be to lay it out chronologically. Here it goes:
1) Henry Schoolcraft, United States Indian Agent at Sault Ste. Marie, recorded the following on July 19, 1828:
Oshogay (the Osprey), solicited provisions to return home. This young man had been sent down to deliver a speech from his father, Kabamappa, of the river St. Croix, in which he regretted his inability to come in person. The father had first attracted my notice at the treaty of Prairie du Chien, and afterwards received a small medal, by my recommendation, from the Commissioners at Fond du Lac. He appeared to consider himself under obligations to renew the assurance of his friendship, and this, with the hope of receiving some presents, appeared to constitute the object of his son’s mission, who conducted himself with more modesty and timidity before me than prudence afterwards; for, by extending his visit to Drummond Island, where both he and his father were unknown, he got nothing, and forfeited the right to claim anything for himself on his return here.
I sent, however, in his charge, a present of goods of small amount, to be delivered to his father, who has not countenanced his foreign visit.
Oshogay is a “young man.” A birth year of 1802 would make him 26. He is part of Gaa-bimabi’s (Kabamappa’s) village in the upper St. Croix country.
2) In June of 1834, Edmund Ely and W. T. Boutwell, two missionaries, traveled from Fond du Lac (today’s Fond du Lac Reservation near Cloquet) down the St. Croix to Yellow Lake (near today’s Webster, WI) to meet with other missionaries. As they left Gaa-bimabi’s (Kabamappa’s) village near the head of the St. Croix and reached the Namekagon River on June 28th, they were looking for someone to guide them the rest of the way. An old Ojibwe man, who Boutwell had met before at La Pointe, and his son offered to help. The man fed the missionaries fish and hunted for them while they camped a full day at the mouth of the Namekagon since the 29th was a Sunday and they refused to travel on the Sabbath. On Monday the 30th, the reembarked, and Ely recorded in his journal:
The man, whose name is “Ozhoge,” and his son embarked with us about 1/2 past 9 °clk a.m. The old man in the bow and myself steering. We run the rapids safely. At half past one P. M. arrived at the mouth of Yellow River…
Ozhoge is an “old man” in 1834, so he couldn’t have been born in 1802. He is staying on the Namekagon River in the upper St. Croix country between Gaa-bimabi and the Yellow Lake Band. He had recently spent time at La Pointe.
3) Ely’s stay on the St. Croix that summer was brief. He was stationed at Fond du Lac until he eventually wore out his welcome there. In the 1840s, he would be stationed at Pokegama, lower on the St. Croix. During these years, he makes multiple references to a man named Ozhogens (a diminutive of Ozhoge). Ozhogens is always found above Yellow River on the upper St. Croix.
Ozhogens has a name that may imply someone older (possibly a father or other relative) lives nearby with the name Ozhoge. He seems to live in the upper St. Croix country. A birth year of 1802 would put him in his forties, which is plausible.
Ke-che-wask keenk (Gichi-weshki) is Chief Buffalo. Gab-im-ub-be (Gaa-bimabi) was the chief Schoolcraft identified as the father of Oshogay. Ja-che-go-onk was a son of Chief Buffalo.
4) On August 2, 1847, the United States and the Mississippi and Lake Superior Ojibwe concluded a treaty at Fond du Lac. The US Government wanted Ojibwe land along the nation’s border with the Dakota Sioux, so it could remove the Ho-Chunk people from Wisconsin to Minnesota.
Among the signatures, we find O-sho-gaz, a warrior from St. Croix. This would seem to be the Ozhogens we meet in Ely.
Here O-sho-gaz is clearly identified as being from St. Croix. His identification as a warrior would probably indicate that he is a relatively young man. The fact that his signature is squeezed in the middle of the names of members of the La Pointe Band may or may not be significant. The signatures on the 1847 Treaty are not officially grouped by band, but they tend to cluster as such.
5) In 1848 and 1849 George P. Warren operated the fur post at Chippewa Falls and kept a log that has been transcribed and digitized by the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. He makes several transactions with a man named Oshogay, and at one point seems to have him employed in his business. His age isn’t indicated, but the amount of furs he brings in suggests that he is the head of a small band or large family. There were multiple Ojibwe villages on the Chippewa River at that time, including at Rice Lake and Lake Shatac (Chetek). The United States Government treated with them as satellite villages of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band.
Based on where he lives, this Oshogay might not be the same person as the one described above.
6) In December 1850, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in the case Oshoga vs. The State of Wisconsin, that there were a number of irregularities in the trial that convicted “Oshoga, an Indian of the Chippewa Nation” of murder. The court reversed the decision of the St. Croix County circuit court. I’ve found surprisingly little about this case, though that part of Wisconsin was growing very violent in the 1840s as white lumbermen and liquor salesmen were flooding the country.
Pg 56 of Containing cases decided from the December term, 1850, until the organization of the separate Supreme Court in 1853: Volume 3 of Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin: With Tables of the Cases and Principal Matters, and the Rules of the Several Courts in Force Since 1838, Wisconsin. Supreme Court Authors: Wisconsin. Supreme Court, Silas Uriah Pinney (Google Books).
The man killed, Alexander Livingston, was a liquor dealer himself.
Alexander Livingston, a man who in youth had had excellent advantages, became himself a dealer in whisky, at the mouth of Wolf creek, in a drunken melee in his own store was shot and killed by Robido, a half-breed. Robido was arrested but managed to escape justice.
~From Fifty Years in the Northwest by W.H.C Folsom
Several pages later, Folsom writes:
At the mouth of Wolf creek, in the extreme northwestern section of this town, J. R. Brown had a trading house in the ’30s, and Louis Roberts in the ’40s. At this place Alex. Livingston, another trader, was killed by Indians in 1849. Livingston had built him a comfortable home, which he made a stopping place for the weary traveler, whom he fed on wild rice, maple sugar, venison, bear meat, muskrats, wild fowl and flour bread, all decently prepared by his Indian wife. Mr. Livingston was killed by an Indian in 1849.
Folsom makes no mention of Oshoga, and I haven’t found anything else on what happened to him or Robido (Robideaux?).
It’s hard to say if this Oshoga is the Ozhogen’s of Ely’s journals or the Oshogay of Warren’s. Wolf Creek is on the St. Croix, but it’s not far from the Chippewa River country either, and the Oshogay of Warren seems to have covered a lot of ground in the fur trade. Warren’s journal, linked in #4, contains a similar story of a killing and “frontier justice” leading to lynch mobs against the Ojibwe. To escape the violence and overcrowding, many Ojibwe from that part of the country started to relocate to Fond du Lac, Lac Courte Oreilles, or La Pointe/Bad River. La Pointe is also where we find the next mention of Oshogay.
7) From 1851 to 1853, a new voice emerged loudly from the La Pointe Band in the aftermath of the Sandy Lake Tragedy. It was that of Buffalo’s speaker Oshogay (or O-sho-ga), and he spoke out strongly against Indian Agent John Watrous’ handling of the Sandy Lake payments (see this post) and against Watrous’ continued demands for removal of the Lake Superior Ojibwe. There are a number of documents with Oshogay’s name on them, and I won’t mention all of them, but I recommend Theresa Schenck’s William W. Warren and Howard Paap’s Red Cliff, Wisconsin as two places to get started.
Chief Buffalo was known as a great speaker, but he was nearing the end of his life, and it was the younger chief who was speaking on behalf of the band more and more. Oshogay represented Buffalo in St. Paul, co-wrote a number of letters with him, and most famously, did most of the talking when the two chiefs went to Washington D.C. in the spring of 1852 (at least according to Benjamin Armstrong’s memoir). A number of secondary sources suggest that Oshogay was Buffalo’s son or son-in-law, but I’ve yet to see these claims backed up with an original document. However, all the documents that identify by band, say this Oshogay was from La Pointe.
The Wisconsin Historical Society has digitized four petitions drafted in the fall of 1851 and winter of 1852. The petitions are from several chiefs, mostly of the La Pointe and Lac Courte Oreilles/Chippewa River bands, calling for the removal of John Watrous as Indian Agent. The content of the petitions deserves its own post, so for now we’ll only look at the signatures.
November 6, 1851 Letter from 30 chiefs and headmen to Luke Lea, Commissioner of Indian Affairs: Multiple villages are represented here, roughly grouped by band. Kijiueshki (Buffalo), Jejigwaig (Buffalo’s son), Kishhitauag (“Cut Ear” also associated with the Ontonagon Band), Misai (“Lawyerfish”), Oshkinaue (“Youth”), Aitauigizhik (“Each Side of the Sky”), Medueguon, and Makudeuakuat (“Black Cloud”) are all known members of the La Pointe Band. Before the 1850s, Kabemabe (Gaa-bimabi) and Ozhoge were associated with the villages of the Upper St. Croix.
November 8, 1851, Letter from the Chiefs and Headmen of Chippeway River, Lac Coutereille, Puk-wa-none, Long Lake, and Lac Shatac to Alexander Ramsey, Superintendent of Indian Affairs: This letter was written from Sandy Lake two days after the one above it was written from La Pointe. O-sho-gay the warrior from Lac Shatac (Lake Chetek) can’t be the same person as Ozhoge the chief unless he had some kind of airplane or helicopter back in 1851.
Undated (Jan. 1852?) petition to “Our Great Father”: This Oshoga is clearly the one from Lake Chetek (Chippewa River).
Undated (Jan. 1852?) petition: These men are all associated with the La Pointe Band. Osho-gay is their Speaker.
In the early 1850s, we clearly have two different men named Oshogay involved in the politics of the Lake Superior Ojibwe. One is a young warrior from the Chippewa River country, and the other is a rising leader among the La Pointe Band.
Washington Delegation July 22, 1852 This engraving of the 1852 delegation led by Buffalo and Oshogay appeared in Benjamin Armstrong’s Early Life Among the Indians. Look for an upcoming post dedicated to this image.
8) In the winter of 1853-1854, a smallpox epidemic ripped through La Pointe and claimed the lives of a number of its residents including that of Oshogay. It had appeared that Buffalo was grooming him to take over leadership of the La Pointe Band, but his tragic death left a leadership vacuum after the establishment of reservations and the death of Buffalo in 1855.
Oshogay’s death is marked in a number of sources including the gravestone at the top of this post. The following account comes from Richard E. Morse, an observer of the 1855 annuity payments at La Pointe:
The Chippewas, during the past few years, have suffered extensively, and many of them died, with the small pox. Chief O-SHO-GA died of this disease in 1854. The Agent caused a suitable tomb-stone to be erected at his grave, in La Pointe. He was a young chief, of rare promise and merit; he also stood high in the affections of his people.
Later, Morse records a speech by Ja-be-ge-zhick or “Hole in the Sky,” a young Ojibwe man from the Bad River Mission who had converted to Christianity and dressed in “American style.” Jabegezhick speaks out strongly to the American officials against the assembled chiefs:
…I am glad you have seen us, and have seen the folly of our chiefs; it may give you a general idea of their transactions. By the papers you have made out for the chiefs to sign, you can judge of their ability to do business for us. We had but one man among us, capable of doing business for the Chippewa nation; that man was O-SHO-GA, now dead and our nation now mourns. (O-SHO-GA was a young chief of great merit and much promise; he died of small-pox, February 1854). Since his death, we have lost all our faith in the balance of our chiefs…
This O-sho-ga is the young chief, associated with the La Pointe Band, who went to Washington with Buffalo in 1852.
9) In 1878, “Old Oshaga” received three dollars for a lynx bounty in Chippewa County.
Report of the Wisconsin Office of the Secretary of State, 1878; pg. 94 (Google Books)
It seems quite possible that Old Oshaga is the young man that worked with George Warren in the 1840s and the warrior from Lake Chetek who signed the petitions against Agent Watrous in the 1850s.
10) In 1880, a delegation of Bad River, Lac Courte Oreilles, and Lac du Flambeau chiefs visited Washington D.C. I will get into their purpose in a future post, but for now, I will mention that the chiefs were older men who would have been around in the 1840s and ’50s. One of them is named Oshogay. The challenge is figuring out which one.
Ojibwe Delegation c. 1880 by Charles M. Bell. [Identifying information from the Smithsonian] Studio portrait of Anishinaabe Delegation posed in front of a backdrop. Sitting, left to right: Edawigijig; Kis-ki-ta-wag; Wadwaiasoug (on floor); Akewainzee (center); Oshawashkogijig; Nijogijig; Oshoga. Back row (order unknown); Wasigwanabi; Ogimagijig; and four unidentified men (possibly Frank Briggs, top center, and Benjamin Green Armstrong, top right). The men wear European-style suit jackets and pants; one man wears a peace medal, some wear beaded sashes or bags or hold pipes and other props.(Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian).
- Upper row reading from the left.
- 1. Vincent Conyer- Interpreter 1,2,4,5 ?, includes Wasigwanabi and Ogimagijig
- 2. Vincent Roy Jr.
- 3. Dr. I. L. Mahan, Indian Agent Frank Briggs
- 4. No Name Given
- 5. Geo P. Warren (Born at LaPointe- civil war vet.
- 6. Thad Thayer Benjamin Armstrong
- Lower row
- 1. Messenger Edawigijig
- 2. Na-ga-nab (head chief of all Chippewas) Kis-ki-ta-wag
- 3. Moses White, father of Jim White Waswaisoug
- 4. No Name Given Akewainzee
- 5. Osho’gay- head speaker Oshawashkogijig or Oshoga
- 6. Bay’-qua-as’ (head chief of La Corrd Oreilles, 7 ft. tall) Nijogijig or Oshawashkogijig
- 7. No name given Oshoga or Nijogijig
The Smithsonian lists Oshoga last, so that would mean he is the man sitting in the chair at the far right. However, it doesn’t specify who the man seated on the right on the floor is, so it’s also possible that he’s their Oshoga. If the latter is true, that’s also who the unknown writer of the library caption identified as Osho’gay. Whoever he is in the picture, it seems very possible that this is the same man as “Old Oshaga” from number 9.
11) There is one more document I’d like to include, although it doesn’t mention any of the people we’ve discussed so far, it may be of interest to someone reading this post. It mentions a man named Oshogay who was born before 1860 (albeit not long before).
For decades after 1854, many of the Lake Superior Ojibwe continued to live off of the reservations created in the Treaty of La Pointe. This was especially true in the St. Croix region where no reservation was created at all. In the 1910s, the Government set out to document where various Ojibwe families were living and what tribal rights they had. This process led to the creation of the St. Croix and Mole Lake reservations. In 1915, we find 64-year-old Oshogay and his family living in Randall, Wisconsin which may suggest a connection to the St. Croix Oshogays. As with number 6 above, this creates some ambiguity because he is listed as enrolled at Lac Courte Oreilles, which implies a connection to the Chippewa River Oshogay. For now, I leave this investigation up to someone else, but I’ll leave it here for interest.
United States. Congress. House. Committee on Indian Affairs. Indian Appropriation Bill: Supplemental Hearings Before a Subcommittee. 1919 (Google Books).
This is not any of the Oshogays discussed so far, but it could be a relative of any or all of them.
In the final analysis
These eleven documents mention at least four men named Oshogay living in northern Wisconsin between 1800 and 1860. Edmund Ely met an old man named Oshogay in 1834. He is one. A 64-year old man, a child in the 1850s, was listed on the roster of “St. Croix Indians.” He is another. I believe the warrior from Lake Chetek who traded with George Warren in the 1840s could be one of the chiefs who went to Washington in 1880. He may also be the one who was falsely accused of killing Alexander Livingston. Of these three men, none are the Oshogay who went to Washington with Buffalo in 1852.
That leaves us with the last mystery. Is Ozhogens, the young son of the St. Croix chief Gaa-bimabi, the orator from La Pointe who played such a prominent role in the politics of the early 1850s? I don’t have a smoking gun, but I feel the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests he is. If that’s the case, it explains why those who’ve looked for his early history in the La Pointe Band have come up empty.
However, important questions remain unanswered. What was his connection to Buffalo? If he was from St. Croix, how was he able to gain such a prominent role in the La Pointe Band, and why did he relocate to La Pointe anyway? I have my suspicions for each of these questions, but no solid evidence. If you do, please let me know, and we’ll continue to shed light on this underappreciated Ojibwe leader.
Sources:
Armstrong, Benj G., and Thomas P. Wentworth. Early Life among the Indians: Reminiscences from the Life of Benj. G. Armstrong : Treaties of 1835, 1837, 1842 and 1854 : Habits and Customs of the Red Men of the Forest : Incidents, Biographical Sketches, Battles, &c. Ashland, WI: Press of A.W. Bowron, 1892. Print.
Ely, Edmund Franklin, and Theresa M. Schenck. The Ojibwe Journals of Edmund F. Ely, 1833-1849. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2012. Print.
Folsom, William H. C., and E. E. Edwards. Fifty Years in the Northwest. St. Paul: Pioneer, 1888. Print.
KAPPLER’S INDIAN AFFAIRS: LAWS AND TREATIES. Ed. Charles J. Kappler. Oklahoma State University Library, n.d. Web. 12 August 2013. <http:// digital.library.okstate.edu/Kappler/>.
Nichols, John, and Earl Nyholm. A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1995. Print.
Paap, Howard D. Red Cliff, Wisconsin: A History of an Ojibwe Community. St. Cloud, MN: North Star, 2013. Print.
Redix, Erik M. “The Murder of Joe White: Ojibwe Leadership and Colonialism in Wisconsin.” Diss. University of Minnesota, 2012. Print.
Schenck, Theresa M. The Voice of the Crane Echoes Afar: The Sociopolitical Organization of the Lake Superior Ojibwa, 1640-1855. New York: Garland Pub., 1997. Print.
———–William W. Warren: The Life, Letters, and times of an Ojibwe Leader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2007. Print.
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe. Personal Memoirs of a Residence of Thirty Years with the Indian Tribes on the American Frontiers: With Brief Notices of Passing Events, Facts, and Opinions, A.D. 1812 to A.D. 1842. Philadelphia, [Pa.: Lippincott, Grambo and, 1851. Print.
Warren, William W., and Theresa M. Schenck. History of the Ojibway People. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 2009. Print.
Fun With Maps
June 28, 2013
I’m someone who loves a good historical map, so one of my favorite websites is memory.loc.gov, the digital collections of the Library of Congress. You can spend hours zooming in on neat vintage maps. This post has snippets from eleven of them, stretching from 1674 to 1843. They are full of cool old inaccuracies, but they also highlight important historical trends and eras in our history. This should not be considered an exhaustive survey of the best maps out there, nor is it representative of all the LOC maps. Really, it’s just 11 semi-random maps with my observations on what I found interesting. Click on any map to go to the Library of Congress site where you can browse more of it. Enjoy:
French 1674
Nouvelle decouverte de plusieurs nations dans la Nouvelle France en l’année 1673 et 1674 by Louis Joliet. Joliet famously traveled from the Great Lakes down the Mississippi with the Jesuit Jacques Marquette in 1673.
- Cool trees.
- Baye des Puans: The French called the Ho-Chunk Puans, “Stinky People.” That was a translation of the Ojibwe word Wiinibiigoo (Winnebago), which means “stinky water people.” Green Bay is “green” in summer because of the stinky green algae that covers it. It’s not surprising that the Ho-Chunk no longer wish to be called the Winnebago or Puans.
- 8tagami: The French used 8 in Indian words for the English sound “W.” 8tagami (Odagami) is the Ojibwe/Odawa/Potawatomi word for the Meskwaki (Fox) People.
- Nations du Nord: To the French, the country between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay was the home of “an infinity of nations,” (check out this book by that title) small bands speaking dialects of Ojibwe, Cree, and Assiniboine Sioux.
- The Keweenaw is pretty small, but Lake Superior has generally the right shape.
French 1688
Carte de l’Amerique Septentrionnale by Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin: Franquelin created dozens of maps as the royal cartographer and hydrographer of New France.
- Lake Superior is remarkably accurate for this time period.
- Nations sous le nom d’Outouacs: “Nations under the name of Ottawas”–the French had a tendency to lump all Anishinaabe peoples in the west (Ojibwe, Ottawa, Potawatomi, etc.) under the name Outouais or Outouacs.
- River names, some are the same and some have changed. Bois Brule (Brule River) in French is “burnt wood” a translation of the Ojibwe wiisakode. I see ouatsicoto inside the name of the Brule on this map (Neouatsicoton), but I’m not 100% sure that’s wiisakode. Piouabic (biwaabik is Ojibwe word for Iron) for the Iron River is still around. Mosquesisipi (Mashkiziibi) or Swampy River is the Ojibwe for the Bad River.
- Madeline Island is Ile. St. Michel, showing that it was known at “Michael’s Island” a century before Michel Cadotte established his fur post.
- Ance Chagoüamigon: Point Chequamegon
French 1703
Carte de la riviere Longue : et de quelques autres, qui se dechargent dans le grand fleuve de Missisipi [sic] … by Louis Armand the Baron de Lahontan. Baron Lahontan was a military officer of New France who explored the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys.
- Lake Superior looks quite strange.
- “Sauteurs” and Jesuits at Sault Ste. Marie: the French called the Anishinaabe people at Sault Ste. Marie (mostly Crane Clan) the Sauteurs or Saulteaux, meaning “people of the falls.” This term came to encompass most of the people who would now be called Ojibwe.
- Fort Dulhut: This is not Duluth, Minnesota, but rather Kaministiquia (modern-day Thunder Bay). It is named for the same person–Daniel Greysolon, the Sieur du Lhut (Duluth).
- Riviere Du Tombeau: “The River of Tombs” at the west end of the Lake is the St. Croix River, which does not actually flow into Lake Superior but connects it to the Mississippi over a short portage from the Brule River.
- Chagouamigon (Chequamegon) is placed much too far to the east.
- The Fox River is gigantic flowing due east rather than north into Green Bay. We see the “Savage friends of the French:” Outagamis (Meskwaki/Fox), Malumins (Menominee), and Kikapous (Kickapoo).
French 1742
Carte des lacs du Canada by Jacques N. Bellin 1742. Bellin was a famous European mapmaker who compiled various maps together. The top map is a detail from the Carte de Lacs. The bottom one is from a slightly later map.
- Of the maps shown so far, this has the best depiction of Chequamegon, but Lake Superior as a whole is much less accurate than on Franquelin’s map from fifty years earlier.
- The mysterious “Isle Phillipeaux,” a second large island southeast of Isle Royale shows prominently on this map. Isle Phillipeaux is one of those cartographic oddities that pops up on maps for decades after it first appears even though it doesn’t exist.
- Cool river names not shown on Franquelin’s map: Atokas (Cranberry River) and Fond Plat “Flat-bottom” (Sand River)
- The region west of today’s Herbster, Wisconsin is lablled “Papoishika.” I did an extensive post about an area called Ka-puk-wi-e-kah in that same location.
- Ici etoit une Bourgade Considerable: “Here there was a large village.” This in reference to when Chequamegon was a center for the Huron, Ottawa (Odawa) and other refugee nations of the Iroquois Wars in the mid-1600s.
- “La Petite Fille”: Little Girl’s Point.
- Chequamegon Bay is Baye St. Charles
- Catagane: Kakagon, Maxisipi: Mashkizibi
- The islands are “The 12 Apostles.”
British 1778
A new map of North America, from the latest discoveries 1778. Engrav’d for Carver’s Travels. In 1766 Jonathan Carver became one of the first Englishmen to pass through this region. His narrative is a key source for the time period directly following the conquest of New France, when the British claimed dominion over the Great Lakes.
- Lake Superior still has two giant islands in the middle of it.
- The Chipeway (Ojibwe), Ottaway (Odawa), and Ottagamie (Meskwaki/Fox) seem to have neatly delineated nations. The reality was much more complex. By 1778, the Ojibwe had moved inland from Lake Superior and were firmly in control of areas like Lac du Flambeau and Lac Courte Oreilles, which had formerly been contested by the Meskwaki.
Dutch 1805
Charte von den Vereinigten Staaten von Nord-America nebst Louisiana by F.L. Gussefeld: Published in Europe.
- The Dutch never had a claim to this region. In fact, this is a copy of a German map. However, it was too cool-looking to pass up.
- Over 100 years after Franquelin’s fairly-accurate outline of Lake Superior, much of Europe was still looking at this junk.
- “Ober See” and Tschippeweer” are funny to me.
- Isle Phillipeau is hanging on strong into the nineteenth century.
American 1805
A map of Lewis and Clark’s track across the western portion of North America, from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean : by order of the executive of the United States in 1804, 5 & 6 / copied by Samuel Lewis from the original drawing of Wm. Clark. This map was compiled from the manuscript maps of Lewis and Clark.
- The Chequamegon Region supposedly became American territory with the Treaty of Paris in 1783. The reality on the ground, however, was that the Ojibwe held sovereignty over their lands. The fur companies operating in the area were British-Canadian, and they employed mostly French-Ojibwe mix-bloods in the industry.
- This is a lovely-looking map, but it shows just how little the Americans knew about this area. Ironically, British Canada is very well-detailed, as is the route of Lewis and Clark and parts of the Mississippi that had just been visited by the American, Lt. Zebulon Pike.
- “Point Cheganega” is a crude islandless depiction of what we would call Point Detour.
- The Montreal River is huge and sprawling, but the Brule, Bad, and Ontonagon Rivers do not exist.
- To this map’s credit, there is only one Isle Royale. Goodbye Isle Phillipeaux. It was fun knowing you.
- It is striking how the American’s had access to decent maps of the British-Canadian areas of Lake Superior, but not of what was supposedly their own territory.
English 1811
A new map of North America from the latest authorities By John Cary of London. This map was published just before the outbreak of war between Britain and the United States.
- These maps are starting to look modern. The rivers are getting more accurate and the shape of Lake Superior is much better–though the shoreline isn’t done very well.
- Burntwood=Brule, Donagan=Ontonagon
- The big red line across Lake Superior is the US-British border. This map shows Isle Royale in Canada. The line stops at Rainy Lake because the fate of the parts of Minnesota and North Dakota in the Hudson Bay Watershed (claimed by the Hudson Bay Company) was not yet settled.
- “About this place a settlement of the North West Company”: This is Michel Cadotte’s trading post at La Pointe on Madeline Island. Cadotte was the son of a French trader and an Anishinaabe woman, and he traded for the British North West Company.
- It is striking that a London-made map created for mass consumption would so blatantly show a British company operating on the American side of the line. This was one of the issues that sparked the War of 1812. The Indian nations of the Great Lakes weren’t party to the Treaty of Paris and certainly did not recognize American sovereignty over their lands. They maintained the right to have British traders. America didn’t see it that way.
American 1820
Map of the United States of America : with the contiguous British and Spanish possessions / compiled from the latest & best authorities by John Melish
- Lake Superior shape and shoreline are looking much better.
- Bad River is “Red River.” I’ve never seen that as an alternate name for the Bad. I’m wondering if it’s a typo from a misreading of “bad”
- Copper mines are shown on the Donagon (Ontonagon) River. Serious copper mining in that region was still over a decade away. This probably references the ancient Indian copper-mining culture of Lake Superior or the handful of exploratory attempts by the French and British.
- The Brule-St. Croix portage is marked “Carrying Place.”
- No mention of Chequamegon or any of the Apostle Islands–just Sand Point.
- Isle Phillipeaux lives! All the way into the 1820s! But, it’s starting to settle into being what it probably was all along–the end of the Keweenaw mistakenly viewed from Isle Royale as an island rather than a peninsula.
American 1839 
From the Map of Michigan and part of Wisconsin Territory, part of the American Atlas produced under the direction of U.S. Postmaster General David H. Burr.
- Three years before the Ojibwe cede the Lake Superior shoreline of Wisconsin, we see how rapidly American knowledge of this area is growing in the 1830s.
- The shoreline is looking much better, but the islands are odd. Stockton (Presque Isle) and Outer Island have merged into a huge dinosaur foot while Madeline Island has lost its north end.
- Weird river names: Flagg River is Spencer’s, Siskiwit River is Heron, and Sand River is Santeaux. Fish Creek is the gigantic Talking Fish River, and “Raspberry” appears to be labeling the Sioux River rather than the farther-north Raspberry River.
- Points: Bark Point is Birch Bark, Detour is Detour, and Houghton is Cold Point. Chequamegon Point is Chegoimegon Point, but the bay is just “The Bay.”
- The “Factory” at Madeline Island and the other on Long Island refers to a fur post. This usage is common in Canada: Moose Factory, York Factory, etc. At this time period, the only Factory would have been on Madeline.
- The Indian Village is shown at Odanah six years before Protestant missionaries supposedly founded Odanah. A commonly-heard misconception is that the La Pointe Band split into Island and Bad River factions in the 1840s. In reality, the Ojibwe didn’t have fixed villages. They moved throughout the region based on the seasonal availability of food. The traders were on the island, and it provided access to good fishing, but the gardens, wild rice, and other food sources were more abundant near the Kakagon sloughs. Yes, those Ojibwe married into the trading families clustered more often on the Island, and those who got sick of the missionaries stayed more often at Bad River (at least until the missionaries followed them there), but there was no hard and fast split of the La Pointe Band until long after Bad River and Red Cliff were established as separate reservations.
American 1843
Hydrographical basin of the upper Mississippi River from astronomical and barometrical observations, surveys, and information by Joseph Nicollet. Nicollet is considered the first to accurately map the basin of the Upper Mississippi. His Chequamegon Region is pretty good also.
- You may notice this map decorating the sides of the Chequamegon History website.
- This post mentions this map and the usage of Apakwa for the Bark River.
- As with the 1839 map, this map’s Raspberry River appears to be the Sioux rather than the Miskomin (Raspberry) River.
- Madeline Island has a little tail, but the Islands have their familiar shapes.
- Shagwamigon, another variant spelling
- Mashkeg River: in Ojibwe the Bad River is Mashkizibi (Swamp River). Mashkiig is the Ojibwe word for swamp. In the boreal forests of North America, this word had migrated into English as muskeg. It’s interesting how Nicollet labels the forks, with the White River fork being the most prominent.
That’s all for now folks. Thanks for covering 200 years of history with me through these maps. If you have any questions, or have any cool observations of your own, go ahead and post them in the comments.
Chequamegon History 