History of the Ojibways - Chapter 5

Congregation of the Ojibways in one town at Pt. Shag-awaum-ik-ong and on La Pointe Island, till their final dispersion into smaller bands and villages--Comprising three generations--They first light their fires on Pt. Shag-awaum-ik-ong--Harassed by the Dakotas and Foxes--They finally locate their town on the Island of La Pointe--Mode of gaining a livelihood--Primitive utensils and weapons--Means used to kill game--Copper mines of Lake Superior not worked by them--Primitive usages, rites, and customs--Severely harassed by their enemies--Dakotas even secure scalps on the Island of their town--Battle of Pt. Shag-awaum-ik-ong and almost total destruction of a Dakota war party--Foxes take four captives on the island--Pursued by the Ojibways--Naval engagement near Montreal River--Destruction of Fox war party--Nature of the warfare between the Ojibways and Foxes--Captives are tortured with fire--Origin of this horrid custom--Tradition of the uncle and nephew.

In the previous chapter we have gradually traced the Ojibways from the Atlantic coast, to their occupation of the surrounding shores of Lake Superior.

Computing their generations as consisting of forty years each, it is three hundred and sixty years since the main body of this tribe first reached Pt. Sha-ga-waum-ik-ong on the Great Lake, where for many years they concentrated their numbers in one village. (For the tribes living at Chagouamigon Bay, 1660--1670, see another article in this volume.--N. )

They were surrounded by fierce and inveterate enemies whom they denominate the O-dug-aum-eeg (opposite side people, best known at this day as Foxes), and the "A-boin-ug" or (roasters), by which significant name they have ever known the powerful tribe of Dakotas. These two tribes claimed the country bordering Lake Superior, towards the south and west, and of which, the migrating Ojibways now took possession as intruders. The opposition to their further advance westward commenced when the Ojibways first lighted their fires at Sault Ste. Marie, and it is from their first acquaintance with them, while located at this spot, that the Dakotas have given them the appellation of Ra-ra-to-oans (People of the Falls).

At every step of their westward advance along the southern shores of the Great Lake, the Ojibways battled with the Foxes and Dakotas; but they pressed onward, gaining foot by foot, till they finally ]it their fires on the sand point of Sha-ga-waum-ik-ong. 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-ing-wun-a-kaun-ing (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.

The vestiges or signs to prove this assertion are still visible, and are especially observable in the young growth of trees now covering the spot, compared to trees standing on other portions of the island where oaks and pines apparently centuries old, rear their branches aloft, or lie prostrate on the ground.

In the younger days of old traders and half-breeds still living, they tell of deep beaten paths being plainly visible in different parts of the island and even the forms of their ancient gardens, now overgrown with trees, could still be traced out. When my maternal grandfather, Michel Cadotte, first located a trading post on this island, now upwards of sixty years ago, these different signs and vestiges were still discernible, and I have myself noticed the difference in the growth of trees and other marks, as I have a thousand times wandered through this, the island of my nativity.

While hemmed in on this island by their enemies, the Ojibways lived mainly by fishing. They also practiced the arts of agriculture to an extent not since known amongst them. Their gardens are said to have been extensive, and they raised large quantities of Mun-dam-in (Indian corn), and pumpkins.

The more hardy and adventurous hunted on the lakeshore opposite their village, which was overrun with moose, bear, elk, and deer. The buffalo, also, are said in those days to have ranged within half a day's march from the lakeshore, on the barrens stretching towards the headwaters of the St. Croix River. Every stream, which emptied into the lake, abounded in beaver, otter, and muskrat, and the fish, which swam in its clear water, could not be surpassed in quality or quantity in any other spot on earth. They manufactured their nets of the inner bark of the bass and cedar trees, and from the fibers of the nettle. They made thin knives from the rib bones of the moose and buffalo. And a stone tied to the end of a stick, with which they broke branches and sticks, answered them the purpose of an axe. From the thighbone of a muskrat they ground their awls, and fire was obtained by the friction of two dry sticks. Bows of hard wood, or bone, sharp stone-headed arrows, and spear points made also of bone, formed their implements of war and hunting. With ingeniously made traps and deadfalls, they caught the wily beaver, whose flesh was their most dainty food, and whose skins made them warm blankets. To earth the moose and larger animals, they built long and gradually narrowing enclosures of branches, wherein they would first drive and then kill them, one after another, with their barbed arrows. They also caught them in nooses made of tough hide and hung from a strong bent tree, over the road that these animals commonly traveled to feed, or find water. Bear they caught in deadfalls, which were so unfailing that they have retained their use to this day, in preference to the steel traps of the pale faces.

Their old men tell of using a kind of arrow in hunting for the larger animals in those primitive days, which I have never seen described in books. The arrow is made with a circular hole bored or burnt in the end, in which was loosely inserted a finely barbed bone. Being shot into an animal, the arrow would fall off leaving the barb in the body, and as the animal moved this would gradually work into its vitals and soon deprive it of life.

In those days their shirts and leggings were made of finely dressed deer and elk skins sewed together with the sinews of these animals. They made their wigwam covering of birch bark and rushes; their canoes of birch bark and thin strips of cedar wood, sewed together with the small roots of the pine tree, and gummed with the pitch of the pine, balsam, or tamarac. They made kettles from clay and pulverized stone, and judging from specimens found occasionally throughout the country, they give evidence of much proficiency and ingenuity in this line of manufacture. Copper, though abounding on the lake shore, they never used for common purposes; considering1 The tribes of the lakes were workers in copper at an early period. Champlain in an account published in 1613, at Paris, writes: "Shortly after conferring with them about many matters concerning their wars, the Algonquin Savage, one of their chiefs, drew from a sack a piece of copper a foot long, which he gave me. This was very handsome and quite pure. He gave me to understand that there were large quantities where he had taken this, which was on the hank of a river, now a great lake. He said they gathered it in lumps, and having melted it, spread it in sheets, smoothing it with stones."

Pierre Boucher, the grandfather of Sieur Verendrye, the explorer of the Lake Winnipeg region, in a book published in 1664, at Paris, writes that "in Lake Superior there is a great island fifty leagues in circumference, in which there is a very beautiful mine of copper. There are other places in those quarters where there are similar mines; so I learned from four or five Frenchmen, who lately returned. They were gone three years, without finding an opportunity to-return; they told me they had seen an ingot of copper, all refined, which was on the coast, and weighed more than eight hundred pounds, according to their estimate. They said that the savages, in passing it made a tire on it, after which they cut off pieces with their axes."

Isle Royale abounds in pits containing ashes, coals, stone hammers, and chips of copper, and in some places the scales of the fishes, which had been eaten by the ancient miners. The vein rock appears to have been heated by fire, and the water dashed thereon, by which the rock was fractured, and the exposed copper softened.
Talon, Intendant of Justice in Canada, visited France, taking a voyageur with him, and while in Paris on the 26th of February, 1669, wrote to Colbert, Minister of the Colonial Department, "that this voyageur had penetrated among the western natives farther than any other man, and had seen the copper mine on Lake Huron," and on the 2d of November, 1671, Talon writes from Quebec: "The copper which I sent from Lake Superior and the river Nantaouagan [Ontonagon], proves that there is a mine on the border of some stream. More than twenty Frenchmen have seen one lump at the lake which they estimate weighs more than eight hundred pounds." Alexander Henry also alludes to copper working on Lake Superior.--E. D. N. It is sacred; they used it only for medicinal rites, and for ornament on the occasion of a grand Me-da-we.

They are not therefore, the people whose ancient tools and marks are now being discovered daily by the miners on Lake Superior; or, if they are those people, it must have been during a former period of their ancient history; but their preserving no traditional account of their ancestors ever having worked these copper mines, would most conclusively prove that they are not the race whose signs of a former partial civilized state, are being daily dug up about the shores of the Great Lake.
During this era in their history, some of their old men affirm that there was maintained in their central town, on the Island of La Pointe, a continual fire as a symbol of their nationality. They maintained also, a regular system of civil polity, which, however, was much mixed with their religious and medicinal practices. The Crane and Aw-ause Totem families were first in council, and the brave and unflinching warriors of the Bear family, defended them from the inroads of their numerous and powerful enemies.
L. of C.

The rites of the Me-da-we-win (their mode of worshipping the Great Spirit, and securing life in this and a future world, and of conciliating the lesser spirits, who in their belief, people earth, sky, and waters) was practiced in those days in its purest and most original form. Every person who had been initiated into the secrets of this mysterious society from the first to the eighth degree, were imperatively obliged to be present on every occasion when its grand ceremonies were solemnized. This created yearly a national gatherings and the bonds which united one member to another were stronger than exist at the present day, when each village has assumed, at unstated periods, to perform the ceremonies of initiation. Tradition says that a large wigwam was permanently erected in the midst of their great town, which they designated as the Me-da-we-gun, wherein the rites of their religion were performed. Though probably rude in its structure, and not lasting in its materials, yet was it the temple of a numerous tribe, and so sacredly was it considered, that even to this day, in their religious phraseology, the island on which it stood is known by the name of Me-da-we-gaun.

In those days their native and primitive manners and usages were rigidly conformed with man nor woman never passed the age of puberty without severe and protracted fasts, in which they sought communion with some particular guardian spirit whom they considered in the light of a medium spirit between them and the "One Great Master of Life," toward whom they felt too deep a veneration, than to dare to commune with directly. Sacrificial feasts were made with the first fruit of the field and the chase. When a person fell sick, a small lodge was made, apart from the village, purposely for his sole use, and a medicine man summoned to attend and cure, and only he, held intercourse with the sick. If a person died of some virulent disease, his clothing, the barks that covered his lodge, and even the poles that framed it, were destroyed by fire. Thus of old did they guard against pestilence; and disease of all kinds appears to have been less common among them than at the present day; and it is further stated that many more persons than now, lived out the full term of life allotted to mankind by the "Great Spirit." Many even lived with the "weight of over a hundred winters on their backs."

conclude chapter 5