In the summer the echo at the Hegman Lake site is remarkable. The Ojibwe have a legend that two close brothers separated and one went up to the sky and became the "Star of the North" and the other stayed on earth and became Echo.

As Grace Rajnovich (1994) has pointed out, in stories of Nanaboujou, the creation of the earth, and Ojibwe stories of the Great Flood, Wolf is an important figure. Wolf was sent by Nanaboujou to the world of the dead to be their chief. She suggests that rock "paintings, like the stories, have many meanings" (Rajnovich 1994:156)

Michael Furtman (2000), in his book Magic on the Rocks: Canoe Country pictographs has also noted that Nanaboujo (or Nanabush)

. . . had been befriended by the wolf, Myeengun, who not only taught him to hunt moose (the knowledge of which Nanabush then shared with the Ojibwe), but also gave Nanabush the first arrowhead (one of Myeengun=s teeth). The power of flint is symbolized by the wolf. In some versions of this tale, the "flinty" wolf was responsible for teaching Nanbush how to make fire (sparks can be made by striking flint). . . . Nanabush sends [Myeengun] back to the "other side" to await all Ojibwe who die so that Myeengun can show them the way to heaven.

Finally, in some versions of this tale, Nanubush's fight with the evil manitous leads to the flooding of the earth, after which the world is reborn in its present form. Of the different versions of the Nanbush-Wolf legend I have read, there are constants: all three involved the use of the wolf's sense of smell to find moose, all three demonstrated the importance of the human-wolf teamwork to successfully hunt moose, and all three Myeengun drove the moose to Nanabush, who hid with his bow and arrows in ambush (Furtman 2000:148-9).

Carl Gawboy, an Anishinaabe artist from the Bois Forte Reservation and Associate Professor of Indian Studies at the College of St. Scholastica, whose father was a Nett Lake Ojibwe, was the first person to propose that the meaning of the panel was linked to a series of Ojibwe constellations in the sky. In a newspaper article in the Duluth News-Tribune (April 6, 2024) entitled "Ely Pictographs Linked to the Heavens" Gawboy suggested that the man with the outstretched arms is the Ojibwe version of a constellation in the area that we think of today as the constellation Orion. This figure is the Winter-maker and Gawboy suggested that the position of the pictographs on the cliff is oriented towards viewing the constellations in the winter sky. Gawboy also recognized later that the canoes are probably paddlers on the Path of Souls or Milky Way.

German ethnographer, Johann Georg Kohl, wrote that "the Indians [call] the milky way 'the path of the dead,' or the 'path of the souls.' Among the Ojibbeways, the milky way is called 'Jibekana,' which word has that meaning" (Kohl 1985::213).

In The Island of the Blessed; or the Hunter's Dream (Schoolcraft 1851:pp.321-3) Schoolcraft described an Ojibwe hunter's dream of paddling canoes of white shining stone with shining paddles on the path of souls to get to heaven with his beautiful girlfriend. When the hunter awoke "he was still in the bitter land of snows and hunger, death and tears" (p.323).

I agree with Carl Gawboy's early insight that this appears to be a star chart of Ojibwe constellations, with Winter-maker the near equivalent of Orion, and the Three Canoes as paddlers along the Path of Souls. Unlike Gawboy's early reconstructions, I suspect that the Dog (or Wolf ) constellation and the Moose constellation shown in the panel were most likely composed of stars directly below Orion. In my view the best fit for the Ojibwe Dog or Wolf constellation is the combination of the modern Canis Major (large dog) and Columba constellations, the Moose constellation is a combination of the modern Eridanus, Caelum, and Fornax constellations and the passengers in the Three Canoes are bright first magnitude stars in the constellations Gemini, Auriga, and Taurus.

The panel is remarkably accurate as a representation of the positions of the stars and constellations relative to each other in the winter night sky. Its accuracy would be sufficient for it to be used today for navigation through the deep woods in winter without a compass. The same kind of care and detailed attention that this rock artist put into accurately drawing all of the features of the bull moose (our word comes from the Ojibwe "mooz"), also apparently went into carefully laying out the correct positions of the surrounding figures. It could not have been easy to have drawn these figures on uneven granite using red ochre, and this does not appear to be the work of an unskilled or beginning artist.

The way that the ground line was drawn at the bottom of the panel may also have been important. It deliberately slopes down a bit on the right where the rock artist apparently wanted to make sure to show that the feet of the wolf and the moose were slightly above the horizon. The artist was careful to include the dew claw or the rudimentary hind toe of the moose, which is also an important star grouping in the Ptolemaic constellation Eridanus. The star that is the dew claw used to mark the end point of the Ptolemaic constellation. This constellation however was revised in modern times to extend far below the horizon. The distance above the horizon of the dog's front paw and the height of the moose's dew claw above the horizon are important because like a sextant in the sky, they could tell you the latitude and how far away you were from home e.g., if you were traveling south from Canada or north from Mille Lacs or Fond du Lac, Minnesota.

According to Schoolcraft, in Ojibwe pictographic writing horizontal dashes piled vertically are "chronological and arithmetic devices" (vol.1: p.407). For example, the number of days of a woman's vision quest or the number of enemies a warrior killed could be pictographically recorded using horizontal dashes.

There are many possible "chronometric or arithmetic" referents for the horizontal marks above Winter-maker's shoulder. Arguably the most important chronometric object for tracking the passage of time in Ojibwe culture was the moon, which also travels on the ecliptic above Orion's shoulder. The Wabenos or members of the Ojibwe "Society of the Dawn" kept track of the moon and periodically added an unnamed thirteenth moon to keep the calendar congruent with the sun. One possibility then is that the four horizontal marks could represent something like the four moons that make up the winter season (December, January, February, and March) and the three horizontal marks could mean along the lines that this is "the winter sky in February."

Another possibility is that, like the moon, the planets also follow the path of the ecliptic above Orion and below the Three Canoes. The Ojibway called the planets the "wolves" and the ecliptic was known as "the path of the wolves."

The Path of Souls or Milky Way, which the souls of the dead paddle on in Ojibwe folklore, also passes between the three canoes. There are star patterns that seem to fit the Three Canoes. The canoe with the two passengers on the left are probably the two brightest stars in Gemini. These equally bright first magnitude stars make up the two heads of Gemini; there is even a series of small stars in the shape of a curve underneath them.

The other canoe with two passengers above it may be the two brightest stars in Auriga, which includes the star Capella. In winter, Capella is the second brightest star in the sky (after Sirius -- the "dog" star) and it is directly over a viewer=s head any time that Orion is in the south and upright. Capella is very useful at night in the deep north woods because you can more easily find it overhead than the North Star, which is off at an angle.

The North Star at Ely's latitude is 48 degrees above the horizon and the view of it is frequently blocked by trees. Knowing the seasonally important zenith constellations (those directly overhead) is very useful for navigation through deep woods in any landscape where the landscape is such that it would be easy to get turned around in.

The canoe with one star is most likely Aldebaran, (the bright red "eye" of Ptolemy's constellation Taurus). Aldebaran has a series of small blue stars in the shape of a curve underneath it.

As has been mentioned, if a star chart for February, such as regularly appears in Astronomy or Sky and Telescope magazine, is overlaid with the Ojibwe constellations, the cross above all of the others is probably a representation of the a Star of the North."

Sending dogs out to pick up the scent of a moose and drive it back towards the hunter is a hunting technique called "coursing" and is specifically described as being used in moose hunting in Kohl's ethnography of the Ojibwe from the late nineteenth century. The moose was admired by the Ojibwe for its wariness and ability to hear, and the acoustics at the Hegman site would probably have been excellent for a hunter if a moose was being driven towards him from the north or south by a dog.

The ledge probably overlooked a wildlife travel corridor since North Hegman Lake is shaped like a very long hourglass and this cliff face is at the narrowest part of the hourglass. It may have been a yearly hunting stand. The moderate height would have allowed a hunter to ambush game, either with a bow and arrow or gun, by firing down on it. The stone ledge is high enough to be out of reach of a rack of antlers and no wounded bull moose could knock it over. 

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6