SKETCHES OF THE LIVES OF

NOTED RED MEN AND WOMEN

WHO HAVE APPEARED ON THE WESTERN CONTINENT.

WABOJEEG, OR THE WHITE FISHER.

This individual has indelibly interwoven his name with the history of the Chippewa nation, during the latter half of the 18th century. His ancestors had, from the earliest times, held the principal chieftainship in lake Superior. His father, Ma-mongazida, was the ruling chief during the war of the conquest of the Canadas by the British crown. In common with his tribe and the northern nations generally, he was the fast friend of the French government, and was present with his warriors, under Gen. Montcalm, at the loss of Quebec, in 1759. He carried a short speech from that celebrated officer to his people in the north, which is said to have been verbally delivered a short time before he went to the field.

The period of the fall of the French power in the Canadas, is one of the most marked events in Indian reminiscence throughout all northwest America. They refer to the days of French supremacy as a kind of golden era, when all things in their affairs were better than they now are; and I have heard them lament over the change as one which was in every respect detrimental to their power and happiness. No European nation, it is evident from these allusions, ever pleased them as well. The French character and manners adapted themselves admirably to the existing customs of forest life. The common people, who went up into the interior to trade, fell in with their customs with a degree of plasticity and an air of gaiety and full assent, which no other foreigners have, at least to the same extent, shown. These Couriers du Bois had not much to boast of on the score of rigid morals themselves. They had nearly as much superstition as the wildest Indians. They were in fact, at least nine-tenths of them, quite as illiterate. Very many of them were far inferior in their mental structure and capacity to the bold, eloquent, and well formed and athletic northern chiefs and hunters. They respected their religious and festive ceremonies. They never, as a chief once told me, laughed at them. They met their old friends on their annual returns from Montreal, with a kiss. They took the daughters of the red men for wives, and reared large families, who thus constituted a strong bond of union between the two races, which remains unbroken at this day.

This is the true secret of the strenuous efforts made by the nortnern and western Indians to sustain the French power, when it was menaced in the war of 1744, by the fleets and armies of Great Britain. They rallied freely to their aid at Detroit, Vincennes, the present sites of Pittsburg and Erie, at Fort Niagara, Montreal, and Quebec, and they hovered with infuriated zeal around the outskirts of the northern and western settlements, during the many and sanguinary wars carried on between the English and French. And when the French were beaten they still adhered to their cause, and their chiefs stimulated the French local commanders to continue and renew the contest, even after the fall of Niagara and Quebec, with a heroic consistency of purpose, which reflects credit upon their foresight, bravery, and constancy. We hope in a future number to bring forward a sketch of the man who put himself at the head of this latter effort, who declared he would drive the Saxon race into the sea, who beseiged twelve and took nine of the western stockaded forts, and who for four years and upwards, maintained the war, after the French had struck their colours and ceded the country. We refer to the great Algic leader, Pontiac.

At present our attention is called to a cotemporary chief, of equal personal bravery and conduct, certainly, but who lived and exercised his authority at a more remote point, and had not the same masses and means at his command. This point, so long hid in the great forests of the north, and which, indeed, has been but lately revealed in our positive geography, is the AREA OF LAKE SUPERIOR. It is here that we find the Indian tradition to be rife with the name of Wabojeeg and his wars, and his cotemporaries. It was one of the direct consequences of so remote a position, that it withdrew his attention more from the actual conflicts between the French and English, and fixed them upon his western and southern frontiers, which were menaced and invaded by the numerous bands of the Dacotahs, and by the perfidious kinsmen of his nation, the Outagamies and Saucs. He came into active life, too, as a prominent war leader, at the precise era when the Canadas had fallen into the British power, and by engaging zealously in the defence of the borders of his nation west, he allowed time to mitigate and adjust those feelings and attachments which, so far as public policy was concerned, must be considered to have moulded the Indian mind to a compliance with, and a submission to, the British authority. Wabojeeg was, emphatically, the defender of the Chippewa domain against the efforts of other branches of the Red Race. He did not, therefore, lead his people to fight, as his father, Ma-mongazida, and nearly all the great Indian war captains had, to enable one type of the foreign race to triumph over another, but raised his parties and led them forth to maintain his tribal supremacy. He may be contemplated, therefore, as having had a more patriotic object for his achievement.

Lake Superior, at the time of our earliest acquaintance with the region, was occupied, as it is at this day, by the Chippewa race. The chief seat

of their power appeared to be near the southwestern extremity of the lake, at Chagoimegon, where fathers Marquette and Alloez found their way, and established a mission, so early as 1668. Another of their principal, and probably more ancient seats, was at the great rapids on the outlet of that lake, which they named the Sault de Ste. Marie. It was in allusion to their residence here that they called this tribe Saulteur, that is to say people of the leap or rapid.

Indian tradition makes the Chippewas one of the chief, certainly by far the most numerous and widely spread, of the Algonquin stock proper. It represents them to have migrated from the east to the west. On reaching the vicinity of Michilimackinac, they separated at a comparatively moderate era into three tribes, calling themselves, respectively, Odjibwas, Odawas, and Podawadumees. What their name was before this era, is not known. It is manifest that the term Odjibwa is not a very ancient one, for it does not occur in the earliest authors. They were probably of the Nipercinean or true Algonquin stock, and had taken the route of the Uta was river, from the St. Lawrence valley into lake Huron. The term itself is clearly from Bwa, a voice; and its prefix in Odji, was probably designed to mark a peculiar intonation which the muscles are, as it were, gathered up, to denote.

Whatever be the facts of their origin, they had taken the route up the straits of St. Mary into lake Superior, both sides of which, and far beyond, they occupied at the era of the French discovery. It is evident that their course in this direction must have been aggressive. They were advancing towards the west and northwest. The tribe known as Kenistenos, had passed through the Lake of the Woods, through the great lake Nipesing, and as far as the heads of the Saskatchewine and the portage of the Missinipi of Hudson's bay. The warlike band of Leech Lake, called Mukund was, had spread themselves over the entire sources of the Mississippi and extended their hunting excursions west to Red River, where they came into contact with the Assinaboines, or Stone Sioux. The central power, at this era, still remained at Chagoimegon, on Superior, where indeed, the force of early tradition asserts there was maintained something like a frame of both civil and ecclesiastical polity and government.

It is said in the traditions related to me by the Chippewas, that the Outagamies, or Foxes, had preceded them into that particular section of country which extends in a general course from the head of Fox River, of Green Bay, towards the Falls of St. Anthony, reaching in some points well nigh to the borders of lake Superior. They are remembered to have occupied the interior wild rice lakes, which lie at the sources of the Wisconsin, the Ontonagon, the Chippewa, and the St. Croix rivers. They were associated with the Saucs, who had ascended the Mississippi some distance above the Falls of St. Anthony, where they lived on friendly terms with the Dacotahs or Sioux. This friendship extended also to the Outagamies, and it was

the means of preserving a good understanding between the Dacotahs and Chippewas.

The Fox tribe is closely affiliated with the Chippewas. They call each other brothers. They are of the same general origin and speak the same general language, the chief difference in sound being that the Foxes use the letter 1, where the Odjibwas employ an n. The particular cause of their disagreement is not known. They are said by the Chippewas to have been unfaithful and treacherous. Individual quarrels and trespasses on their hunting grounds led to murders, and in the end to a war, in which the Menomonees and the French united, and they were thus driven from the rice lakes and away from the Fox and upper Wisconsin. To maintain their position they formed an alliance with the Sioux, and fought by their side.

It was in this contest that Wabojeeg first distinguished himself, and vindicated by his bravery and address the former reputation of his family, and laid anew the foundations of his northern chieftaindom. Having heard allusions made to this person on my first entrance into that region, many years ago, I made particular enquiries, and found living a sister, an old white-headed woman, and a son and daughter, about the age of middle life. From these sources I gleaned the following facts. He was born, as nearly as I could compute the time, about 1747. By a singular and romantic incident his father, Ma-mongazida, was a half-brother of the father of Wabashaw, a celebrated Sioux chief, who but a few years ago died at his village on the upper Mississippi. The connexion happened in this way.

While the Sioux and Chippewas were living in amity near each other, and frequently met and feasted each other on their hunting grounds and at their villages, a Sioux chief, of distinction, admired and married a Chippewa girl, by whom he had two sons. When the war between these two nations broke out, those persons of the hostile tribes who had married Chippewa wives, and were living in the Chippewa country, withdrew, some taking their wives along and others separating from them. Among the latter was the Sioux chief. He remained a short time after hostilities commenced, but finding his position demanded it, he was compelled, with great reluctance, to leave his wife behind, as she could not, with safety, have accompanied him into the Sioux territories. As the blood of the Sioux flowed in the veins of her two sons, neither was it safe for her to leave them among the Chippewas. They were, however, by mutual agreement, allowed to return with the father. The eldest of these sons became the father of Wabashaw.

The mother thus divorced by the mutual consent of all parties, remained inconsolable for some time. She was still young and handsome, and after a few years, became the wife of a young Chippewa chief of Chagoimegon, of the honoured totem of the ADDICK or reindeer. Her

first child by this second marriage, was Ma Mongazida, the father of Wabojeeg. In this manner, a connexion existed between two families, of separate hostile nations, each of which distinguished itself, for bravery and skill in war and council. It has already been stated that Ma Monga. zida, was present, on the side of the French, in the great action in which both Montcalm and Wolf fell, and he continued to exercise the chieftainsnip till his death, when his second son succeeded him.

It was one of the consequences of the hostility of the Indians to the English rule, that many of the remote tribes were left, for a time, without traders to supply their wants. This was the case, tradition asserts, with Chagoimegon, which, for two years after the taking of old Mackinac, was left without a trader. To remonstrate against this, Ma Mongazida visited Sir William Johnson, the superintendant general of Indian affairs, by whom he was well received, and presented with a broad wampum belt and gorget. This act laid the foundation of a lasting peace between the Chippewas and the English. The belt, it is added, was of blue wampum, with figures of white. And when Wabojeeg came to the chieftainship, he took from it the wampum employed by him to muster his war parties.

In making traditionary enquiries I have found that the Indian narrators were careful to preserve and note any fact, in the early lives of their distinguished men, which appeared to prefigure their future eminence, or had any thing of the wonderful or premonitory, in its character. The following incident of this sort, was noticed respecting this chief. Ma Mongazida generally went to make his fall hunts on the middle grounds towards the Sioux territory, taking with him all his near relatives, amount. ing usually to twenty persons, exclusive of children. Early one morning while the young men were preparing for the chase, they were startled by the report of several shots, directed towards the lodge. As they had thought themselves in security, the first emotion was surprise, and they had scarcely time to fly to their arms, when another volley was fired, which wounded one man in the thigh, and killed a dog. Ma Mongazida immediately sallied out with his young inen, and pronouncing his name aloud in the Sioux language, demanded if Wabasha or his brother, were among the assailants. The firing instantly ceased-a pause ensued, when a tall figure, in a war dress, with a profusion of feathers upon his head, stepped forward and presented his hand. It was the elder Wabasha, his half brother. The Sioux peaceably followed their leader into the lodge, upon which they had, the moment before, directed their shots. At the instant the Sioux chief entered, it was necessary to stoop a little, in passing the door. In the act of stooping, he received a blow from a warclub wielded by a small boy, who had posted himself there for the purpose. It was the young Wabojeeg. Wabasha, pleased with this early indication of courage, took the little lad in his arms, caressed him, and