| BOWATING IN IMMEMORIAL TIMES "Aboriginal history on this continent," says Schoolcraft, "is more celebrated for preserving its fables than its facts. A world growing out of a tortoise's back -- the globe reconstructed from the earth clutched in a muskrat's paw, after a deluge, -- such are the fables or allegories from which we are to frame their ancient history." Such criticism seems unjust. Napoleon Bonaparte, who was certainly a much greater man than Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, was fond of saying that history is a lie agreed upon. Now if we agree on this -- and many do -- we cannot impugn consistently the Ojibways' stories of their origin, their forbears, their achievements and their gods. When an Indian good friend of mine tells me that the demi-god Manibosho found safety in a tree when the world was deluged, and afterward builded another word from the abysmal ooze which a hell-diver brought him, I am an interested listener. Further, when I am told that the Sault Rapids were once at Iroquois POint, where a giant dam stretched from cape to cape, and that Manibosho killed his wife for not guarding the dam in his absence, I am convinced. For I have seen the old lady lying there on the Goulais side of Gros Cap, turned to red stone and half submerged in the waters of Lake Superior. At least I am as much convinced as my informant would be if I told him the story of Noah and the Ark. Neither version is capable of proof, each must be taken on faith. Great numbers of Ojibway Indians, commonly called Chippewas have believed the stories I am about to relate. For all I know, many of them still believe. These stories are placed in the opening chapters of this book, with a brief examination of the ancient life of the Bowating Indians, in order that you may the better understand the reaction of Indian to white man in the recorded history which follows. Every normal white man or woman is just naturally interested in Indians. They were our first families. Their roving lives, wild and free, their deer and bear hunting, their burnings at the stake, the devilishly painted face, the tomahawk, the scalping knife, the necklace of scalps, the medicine man, the unsurpassed Indian orator in council, the pipe of peace -- ah, what a treasure trove of breathless interest are these! He who eyes for the first time an old Indian stone axe, instinctively visualizes the skulls it has split. The child on your knee by the evening fire craves Injun stories. There's a wonderfully satisfying thrill in the yelling, galloping Indian at the Wild West show. We of the North take a decent pride in the wilderness of our ancient Indians. They were as fierce, as gentle, as high minded, as eloquent, as cruel, as efficient in their way as any other tribes the continent has mothered. This north country was the home of Manito, The Great Spirit. It was the abiding place of Manibosho, Protector of all good Chippewas. And by the way, when you pronounce the name of the Chippewas' demigod, bring it up as it were from the bottom of your lungs, accent on the last syllable almost to the point of coughing, -- Manibo-sho, a most remarkable being worthy of your deepest consideration, whose grandmother was a toad, and whose great-grandmother was the Moon. You may doubt this statement, but I defy you to disprove it. And his true, his authentic home was on the very spot where this book was written and printed. Once upon a time the banks of St. Mary's River at the rapids were the greatest Indian camping place in the whole Northwest if not in America. Here was the Chippewa capital, the great central meeting-place from time immemorial. Here was the joining of the three greatest lakes -- Gitchi Gumi, or Superior; Meetchigong, or Michigan; and Tionnontateronnon, or Huran and Georgian Bay. Hither the northern Indian gravitated by birch-bark canoe in summer, or by snow-shoe over the smooth frozen surfaces in winter. The deer hunting was good. The rapids afforded a seldom failing supply of delicious whitefish, a food of which one never tires. The fertile clay meadows along the river yielded hardy Indian corn abundantly. Fire-wood was plentiful. The Chippewas were powerful and content, and held their wigwams and the revered resting place of their dead against all comers. It was a northern Indian paradise. Let us go back in fancy to the year 1600, half a century or so before the first white man ascended the mighty river, and consider the life of a typical Chippewa Indian in the vicinity of what is now Sault Ste. Marie. Wabish was born at dawn of a June morning on the present site of the Sault Ste. Marie postoffice. He first saw the light of day in a pole and bark wigwam, one of the many constructed here by the women of his band. Their hands had cut and dragged from the woods near by the young trees constituting the framework of the dwelling. These trees had been trimmed and stuck in the ground in a quadrangular parallelogram, the longest sides running from the entrance to the back of the hut. Two trees were planted in front, forming the door, and two at the rear, whre the seat of honor was raised. The side rows of trees had been bent forward at their tops, and the ends twisted around each other and secured with tough bast of the cedar tree. The skeleton thus formed was clothed with apakwas or rolls of birch-bark, the operation of covering having begun at the bottom. The second row hung down over the first, thus shedding the rain, and a third and fourth row completed the sides. Other apakwas were thrown crossways over the hut, and were weighted with stones hanging from cords of sinews. There was a smoke-hole in the center of the roof, and a mat of deer-skins over the space left as a doorway. Immediately after his birth young Wabish ke pe nace -- for so his father named him -- was stretched out by the midwives in the waiting cradle or tikinagan. His tender limbs were laid straight on a board of poplar wood on which a thin peeled frame, also of poplar, was fastened, conforming in shape to his body, and standing up like the sides of a violin from its sounding board. A stout mat over this completed a cavity in which he was carefully packed in a mixture composed of dry moss, rotted cedar wood and the wool from the seeds of water-reeds and cat-o'-nine tails. But first his feet were placed exactly perpendicular, parallel, and close together. Thus, even in the cradle, care was taken that they should not turn outward. A Chippewa INdian must be a good walker, adn Wabish, when he grew up, covered a good inch more gorund at each step than the coming white men who turned their feet out. There was the winter to think of, too, and the straight ahead footing on snow-shoes. The women paid great attention to his nose also, and tried to pull it out as long as the cartilage remained soft, for a large nose was an ornament among the Chippewas. Shortly after the boy's birth, his father [rpceeded to dream for a name for him. You must understand that some Chippewa fathers named their children after a particular phenomenon of nature occuring about the time of its birth. Others commemorated in such names the happening of anything unusual among the people or animals in the vicinity of the birthplace. But commonly a name was selected that was based on one of the fantastic dreams constantly experienced by the Indians, and which exerted so tremendous an influence on their daily lives. The father, then, dreamed for a name, and having seen a gull in his dream, he called the boy Wabish ke pe nace, The White Bird. When the lad grew old enough to have companions they shortened this name of course to Wabish, which is to say, White. Wabish is the Chippewa name for rabbit, the animal which turns white in winter. Wabish was well named, for the day came when he was as fleet as any rabbit, when he could run down and tire out the fleet-footed deer in the forest, especially after snow had fallen. But in the council-house and on formal occasions he was, when grown to man's estate, Wabish ke pe nace, and he took as his device and painted on his war axe the totem sign of his band, the Crane. In the years of his childhood even his toys were warlike. He played with arrowheads and flints, and his father made for him a tiny war-club, lightly weighted at the end with pebbles sewn in deerskin. He tickled the ribs of his paymates with real arrows shot from a small bow. He learned to swim in the river's shallow waters where Brady Field now stretches, for at that time the river bank was just north of the lodge where he was born. He learned to make rabbit-snares and dreamed of the day when he might dead-fall a bear. He word crackly hides of the red deer, skins scraped, stretched, tanned and sewed by his mother. The spring of the year found him on Sugar Island with his parents, where they gashed hundreds of trees for the sweet sap which he never tired of licking from his fingers. He helped to make the birch-bark kettles -- in flammable receptacles which did not burn when filled with sap and hung over the fire/ He collected dozy maple wood and moss for his father, who each morning started the fire in no time by holding a flint stone over the tindery mass and striking sparks into it with a piece of granite. It was almost as handy as a pocket full of matches. When the hunting was poor and the whitefish failed to run in the rapids, Wabish lived for days on maple sugar and waxed fat on it. He knew where the wild onions and cucumbers grew in season and found many a bed of truffles or Indian potatoes in the black loamy soil on the edge of the swamp. He took his meat roasted underdone. Sometimes his mother prepared it on spits from which the bitter bark had been carefully removed. Or for a change she would heat a rock red hot by building a fireupon it, afterwards roasting the meat on the surface where fire had been. This process she varied by firing a small pit which she used for an oven for the meat and fish. Some gritty sand came out with thefood, but the sand was clean. And for many summer weeks he took his fill of strawberries and blueberries which grew in unbelievable profusion all around. By and large he lived well, and if in the long winter the deer went far back into the country and the whitefish forsook the open rapids for a time, he usually found the family with a supply of jerked venison and smoked whitefish hanging from the cross-pieces of the paternal nest, and dined nearly as well as ever. The mighty river was his foster-mother, as it is ours. For untold centuries it was the Chippewa highway. Winter and summer its heavenly manna of whitefish fed the multitudes. Wabish knew that the whitefish grew from the brain of a wicked adultress who had been cast into the rapids to drown, and whose head had been dashed to pieces on the shining black rocks. Every now and then the medicine-man or jossakeed of the Saulteur Chippewas propitiated the fishing-nets of the tribe and persuaded them to make great catches of fish, by marrying the nets to young girls of the band with formal and solemn ceremonies. As it was indispensable that the brides should be virgins mere children were chosen. Now this may appear absurd to you, but did not the spirit of the nets appear to the forefathers of the Chippewas, saying that he had lost his wife and must have another equally as virtuous? Wabish realized that if the ceremony was neglected, or girls provided who were not immaculate, he would catch no more fish, and he was grateful to the jossakeed accordingly. The fish no less than the nets required propitiation. On an evening they were eloquently addressed from the banks at the foot of the rapids, flattered, complimented, and exhorted to come and be caught, with the assurance that the utmost respect would be shown to their bones. This oration was according to the form laid down from olden times, and while it lasted those present except the jossakeed were required to lie flat on their backs and refrain from speaking a word. In those days St. Mary's River and its environs swarmed with Manitos, little gods, very potent for good or evil, mostly evil. All Nature was spititualized by Wabish and his friends. Every tree, rock, wind, stream and star had a spirit. The thunder was an angry spirit, the milky way was the path of spirits on their way to celestial hunting-grounds beyond the Northern Lights. The four cardinal points were spirits, the west being the oldest and the father of the others. Their mother was a beautiful girl who one day had permitted the west wind to blow upon her. Then there were endless legends of windigos, great giants and cannibals, and tiny spirits and fays who haunted the woods, and the cataracts of Bowating and Tahquamenon. The Nibanaba mermaids, half fish, half woman, frolicked in the waters of Lake Superior. Many animals had a miraculous origin. The raccoon, for instance, was once a shell lying on the lake shore, until vivified by the sunbeam. The Chippewa name for raccoon, Ais e bun, means "he was a shell." Wabish never wantonly stepped on any of the big boulders in St. May's Rapids. He held them sacred, for he knew that a living spirit of flesh and blood breathed within their thin, hard shells. Once his father took Wabish to the funeral of a chief on Michilimackinac, and the boy's knees fluttered as he stood before Sugar Loaf, the abode of The One Great Spirit, the Maker of all. There he knelt in awed silence behind his father, who left votive offerings. Not his tribe alone worshipped here; hither came also the Hurons, Ottawas, Potawatomies, ans Sioux in superstitious reverence. Even the blood-thirsty Iroquois, having drifted north on some wild foray, laid aside their arms for a moment and meditated here. For, eons before, the divine Gitchi Manito had taken residence in this mighty thumb of rock, when he flew from the North through Arch Rock to the Loaf. Wabish sensed the impenetrable dignity and majesty of the place and its occupent, and felt the ground was sacred. Indeed, so sacred had the ancient Chippewas held it, that Michilimackinac was inhabited by Indians only in comparative recent times. Formerly it was left to Gitchi Manito and the dead. It was the sanctuary of the benign Keeper of Souls, who welcomed in silence the suplications and sacrifices of his living red children and spread his protecting mantle over the shades of the departed. Wabish, then, enjoyed his visit to the national shrine, and was mightily interested, but he did not neglect his local religious duties. There was a Manito tree at Bowating, on the present site of Bingham avenue Bridge. This tree was a big mountian-ash, and sometimes even on calm and cloudless days Wabish and his friends heard the sounds of distant war-drums rolling among its leaves. They knew from this that the tree was the abode of spirits, and they deemed it sacred. So they made frequent offerings there, and their descendants continued to add to the pile at its foot even after a storm had wrecked the tree, until at last the whites cleared the ruins away and violated the site with a wagon road. Almost upon the site of the Chippewa County court-house there was formerly a limestone boulder of huge dimensions, where no doubt Wabish came often for devotions. One side of this stone was covered with Indian inscriptions and piture writing. Clearly the stone wa regraded as a Manito's dwelling by the ancient Chippewas, and tradition tells us that many worshipped there. When the contract was made for the construction of the court-house, Judge Steere, recognizing the value of the stone as an historical ethnological landmark, arranged with the contractor to guard carefully this boulder from desecration. But in the absence of the contractor some of his men built a fire against the stone and cracked off the face bearing the inscriptions. Afterward the rock was broken into pieces and used for building. ON the premises of a Ridge street home in Sault Ste. Marie there is a peculiar stone about six feet square, which probably was venerated by the Chippewas as the home of Manito. The stone bears no glyphs, but the Indidans say it was once much larger than at present, and was believed by their ancestors to be the abode of a Spirit to whom they prayed. Wabish had a regard amounting almost to veneration for his family sign or totem, the Crane. When as a brave he went to war, he painted the sign of the Crane in vermilion upon his forehead. Most of his Saulteur friends belonged to the Crane or the Owl band. The Chippewas in the vicinity of the Michilimackinac were the sons of the Turtle. Others wore the Snake insignia, or the Wold, the Bear, or the Weasel. The word "totem" appears to have been derived from the Indian word for "town." It is likely that the inhabitants of a town or village once were considered to be of the same family or clan, consequently they all assumbed the same badge or totem. The symbol became the evidence of consanguinity, hence the importance of totems, which denoted the family branch. The meanest Indian had his totem. He took pride in his ancestry, followed its honorable traditions and strove to measure up to the greatest of his clan. But when married his wife retained her family mark. Wabish became a great traveler, and often used his totem mark when traversing the forests, to convey desired intelligence to his friends. He would take a piece of birch-bark and scrawl his totem theron with a coal, and the totems of any other travelers or hunters accompanying him, drawing each in size of the order of his importance. If at the time of writing he had been absent say three days from Bowating, he drew three suns on the bark. If any of the party had died or suffered serious accident, he was represented without a head or lying on his side. This sign-writing Wabish would place in the cleft of a pole, angling the pole in the direction he was going. In summer he left beneath it a handful of green leaves, and the degree of thier withering conveyed a good idea of the time he had passed that way. In winter his snow-shoe tracks told their own story. When Wabish's ancestors invented the snow-shoe they conceived something wonderfully adapted to its purpose. Wabish learned to make his own snow-shoes and found them indispensable for winter travelling in the Bowating country. The only wood he used in their construction was their encircling bows and the cross-pieces, the rest being made of inter-laced thongs of buckskin, deer sinews or rawhide. Though light, his shoes were strong enough to support his weight easily even in very soft snow. His heelless moccasins adjusted themselves perfectly to the shoes, and he kept his feet and legs warm on the trail by strips of "nip" or fur, wound around them. The snow-shoes were attached only at the toes, so that when his feet rose in walking, the tails of the shoes dragged and needed to be lifted partially only. Wabish once walked on snow-shoes from Bowating to Michilimackinac in a day, a distance of sixty miles. Stretches of seventy-five miles by Chippewas in a day were not uncommon. More than once Wabish ran down a deer on his snow-shoes, for the narrow hoofs of the deer did not support them in the snow. Another striking characteristic of old Bowating, used by Wabish and his fellow-Chippewas, was the dog train. In ancient times nearly every Indian of any importance had his dog-train. Thousands of people now living in the north do not know what a dog-train is. The train was a thin board of elm or other tough wood, about fifteen inches wide and four to six feet long. The front of the board was turned up and lashed back, with cross-pieces or stiffeners along the top of the board, and cords or thongs running along the side. The modern toboggan is white civilization's adaption of the Chippewa dog-train. The train was made flat and broad of course that it might draw easily on lightly crusted snow, and the load was strapped to the train. The dogs used by Wabish and his pals were good-sized ones of no particular species, though commonly dark in color. The Chippewa dogs probably descended from Artic wolves caught young and brought down to Bowating land centuries ago, when the tribe made its migration from Asia -- if indeed the tribul flux came that way. They were harnesses some what as horses are harnessed, having breast-straps to which the traces were attached. The dogs were driven either tandem or tow abreast, and two dogs could draw about 600 pounds on a good road. When the road was heavy or hilly Wabish would walk ahead of the dogs on snow-shoes, and another Indian behind held a line fastened to the rear of the train, with which he checked it when going down hill. Ona long journey the food for the dogs was corn meal cooked with a little tallow. This kept the dogs in good wokring condition without fattening them. Each winter found the Bowating dogs fit and eager for work or play, and many a dog-train race had Wabish with the teams of his cronies on the level winter ice below the rapids. The Saulteur Chippewas employed canoes almost as constantly as other nomadic races do horses or camels. In the long days of summer Wabish fairly lived in his birch-bark. Bowating was the home of the birch tree, and here Manibosho had taught his children how to make their fairy-like and feathery canoes from the bark of the birch. It was Wabish's uncle who showed the boy how to make a real canoe. Just above the rapids was a grove of birch trees, and to these the man and boy made their appeal, not in the fabled words of Hiawatha -- but with good sharp axes of stone. They picked the largest and smoothest trees, so that the piece of bark might be as large and clean as possible, and less sewing would be necessary. They scraped and scraped with stones the inner side of the fresh bark, just as a tanner does a hide. These great leaves of bark they brought to the squaws in the village, who sewed them with bone needles and spruce-root thread into sheets big enough to covoer the whole frame of the canoe. The boy's uncle, My een gun, The Wolf, and Wabish meanwhile made the framework of the boat from the elastic branches of cedar trees. The Wolf was the expert canoe-builder of his clan, and he kept back of his wigwam on the shore two or three rude models of canoes, around one of which he now bent the branches or ribs of Wabish's canoe. These ribs were peeled almost unbelievably thin by The Wolf, as he explained to Wabish the prime necessity of lightness and easy carriage in a canoe. Then he fastened thin cross-pieces between the upper ends of the ribs. Wabish thought at first they were very narrow seats, much too narrow, but they served merely to give strength to the sides. In modern boats the ribs are supported by the keel, from which they stand out like branches of a tree. But Wabish's canoe had no keel, and the ribs and cross-pieces were tied necessarily to a piece of wood at the top. This strip ran all the way around the gunwale of the boat, so that, in lieu of a keel, it acted as the back bone of the canoe. There wasn't a nail or screw in the whole affair. Everything was sewn, tied, or pitched together. And the seams, stitches and knots were so strong, so regular, firm and artistic that nails weren't needed at all. The bast of cedars made a perfect substitute. The framework had been made in this way by the two, with much advice and some assistance by lookers-on, the bark covering was spread out on the ground and the skeleton laid over it. When the bark was pulled up over the frame the job looked for all the world like the handiwork of a cobbler upon a giant shoe, with the leather wrapped around a huge last. With great care they drew the bark sheet as tightly as possible around the frame, and turned down the edges over the gunwale strip, to which they firmly bound them. Finally, a reinforcement of birch-bark armor was fastened all along the edge, protecting in some small measure the frail craft from the coming inevitable bumps. After this they lined the bottom of the canoe with thin strips, laid across the ribs and lengthwise of the canoe. These were vital, but for their protection even the soft moccasined foot of Wabish would have punctured the canoe bottom as if it had been paper. Birch-barks were not suited to the nailed boots of the whites, or to the carriage of thier heavy iron-shod boxes. They welcomed only the pussy-footing tread of the Indian or the soft thud of his bundles of furs. When the women of Bowating had nothing else to do, those always found a demand for wa tap, the twisted thin split roots of the spruce. They could make either fine twine or heavy stout cords from these roots, and great quantities were used yearly at Bowating, in fishing-nets as well as the building of boats. The ropes or cords in the nets used so freely in the rapids were often fifty yards long. These strong nets resisted the action of the water for years. When laid up they became very dry and brittle, but a good damping made them supple as leather again. Wabish's canoe was sharp, front and back, it was slightly broader in front, and the ends stood up a little. A small piece of wood was inserted in either end, to lend increased strength to the frame; and on one of these Wabish painted with infinite care, and on the other he carved with infinite labor, facsimilies of his paternal totem, the Crane. The ends of his craft he also daubed most beautifully and artistically with yellow ochre and vermilion from the south shore of Gitchi Gumi. The final process was one of pitching and repitching all the little holes, seams and stitches in the canoe. For this purpose the heated resin of the pine or fir was used freely. The weak parts of the bark, or the holes of small branches were also plastered with this water-defying resin or pitch. Wabish paddled his canoe in much the same manner as Charon propelled his bark on the rive Styx, or as men and women have used paddles in small boats the world over. His paddle was short and broad, made of cedar, light and tough. But on long water-joourneys he carried paddles of hard maple, alternately kneeling on the fur-covered strips, or sitting on the small seat slung from the stiffened gunwale by thongs of rawhide. Wabish's first canoe accommodated two people. It lasted four years because he took great care of it. After he became proficient in canoe making he waxed careless, and sometimes a canoe lasted him but a moon or two. Then, too, he was forever shooting the rapids, and forever getting nicked there. When this happened he found it wise to seek the shore without undue delay. Sometimes he brought his craft to the beach; occasionally the knife-thin bark took water so quickly that it sank beneath him and he had to swim for it. That meant another canoe, generally a better and more elaborate one. Nothing could exceed the lightness and grace of Wabish's canoes in the water, or their ease of carriage out of it. Each was Like a yellow water-lily, And the forest's life was in it, All its mystery and magic, All the lightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch's supple sinews. Wabish realized this, and gave great praise to Manibosho, who was the real inventor of the birch-bark canoe who bestowed it upon the Chippewas thousands of years ago. This act of invention he was able to visualize much more clearly after he visited Manitoulin Island, and saw there the very rocks between which Manibosho had built the first canoe, and upon which he had hung it up to dry after pitching. Truly, Manibosho confirmed his friendship for the red man when he brought down the bark canoe. What other appliance is there that equals the bird in its swift flight over the water, that can be so easily transported around the portage or over the divide, or, turned bottom up on the beach, that affords so perfect a shelter when camping out on a rainy night? You may be sure that when Wabish and his compeers went on a long canoe journey, a part of the outfit was a supply of pitch. When the Evil Spirits in the submerged rocks split the fragile bottom with a touch, the canoe was beached, unloaded and reversed. Then the pitch was heated and poured over the crack in the bark until it was well sealed, upon which the voyage could be resumed in safety. What a delight were the long, long, lazy summer days on the beautiful river! When the Hot Moon of June had come and gone, and the mosquitoes, black flies and no-see-ums had reveled in their brief day, then Wabish and his friends, bereft of all care and fancy-free fared forth on the broad and placid bosom of their foster-mother. The river we call St. Mary's -- it is really a strait -- the Chippewas named Gitchi Gumi Sippi, the River of the Great Lake. They knew it for a powerful outpour of water dividing here and there into broad arms which separated, united and divided again. Repeatedly these arms collected in large pools, almost lakes, dreaming calm in the summer sun; but these again shot in narrow passages from one lake to another, thus forming several rapids. And every passage was fringed and girdled by a maze of lovely islands, large and small. Canoe voyages in this wild water labyrinth were exquisite indeed. The shores of the islands and mainlands were covered with dense forests of hardwoods and conifers, whose bright and dark greens met the eye in pleasing contrast. On the eastern side the Algoma Mountains came down to meet the lake and halted there, having been torn away by Manibosho to give the mighty lake above a chance to breathe and to escape southward. These heights, too, were tossing with massed woods, and here and there the naked primeval Laurentian rock made hard faces at Gitchi Gumi Sippi and stuck its black tongues into the mocking stream. It was a vast country, where distances were long, and where Nature preformed on a big scale. some of the islands in the river were as large as an English County. England itself could have been sunk in Gitchi Gumi without raising the water very much. And there were countless other islands as small as the floor of a wigwam, and in some places the roving Indians found themselves surrounded by tiny islets on which there was scarcely room for a tree. All these islands and shores were then in a state of primitive savageness. Their interior was uninhabited and uncultivated, and so covered with rocks and swamps, fallen trees and rotting stumps that the bears could not wish for a better thicket. Even the nearest hill-tops, protected by this tangled wilderness, had never endured the foot of man. The river's easy highway led to many a hospitable beach, where fishing was good and an occasional runway brought the deer down to drink and be captured. Even as a youthful bowman Wabish could drive his flint-headed arrows clean through the bodies of the flying deer. Oh ta gee zig, a handsome, burly Indian hereditary chief, who must have been about 30 years of age when Wabish was born, was the friend, hero and mentor of Wabish in his boyhood days. Oh ta gee zig had been born at noon, hence his name, meaning "half a day." Once upon a time Oh ta had strangled a bear with his two hands, a deed that won him great renown. On ceremonial days he wore twelve feathers in his hair. Each feather meant the death of a Sioux in battle. Oh ta was of the Owl totem, and his camp-fire on the river bank at Bowating was a favorite resorting place of the boy Wabish and his chums. Right cheerfully it burned of a summer evening, where the bicentennial monument stands now. Did you ever hear of the story of the first man and woman? asked Oh ta of the group of Indians around his fire one evening. He was a famous story teller, especially when his piep of kinnikinnick was drawing well. Tell it to us, "said Wabish and his friend Ka ba konse, a brother of the Crane. "You must know," began Oh ta, "that Gitchi Manito, The Great Spirit, made first the land aboout Bowating and along the south shore of Gitchi Gumi. At first there was nothing here but sand and rocks, and the rapids were away up at Nad o way an ing, the Place of the Iroquois. This was long before Manibosho trapped beavers there. "One day Manito was walking along here when he saw something lying on the ground, and he picked it up. It was a tiny root. He wondered whether it would grow, and he planted it on the river bank, close to the water. When he came back next day a lot of shoots had sprung up, and the wind blowing through them made a pleasant sound. This pleased him, and he sought for and found more little roots and some seeds from the soil, and he spread them around, so that they soon covered the rocks and land with grass and fine forests, in which birds and other animals came to live. Every day he added something new to his creation, and he did not forget to place various kinds of fish in the water. But the best fish of all, the at ti ma kaig, the deer-of-the-water, the whitefish, came long after. "Another day when Manito was walking near this place, he saw something coming out of the water, covered with glistening scales like a fish, but formed like a man. Watching it further, Manito saw it stoop and pluck herbs, which it swallowed. It sighed and groaned, but did not speak. "The sight filled Manito with compassion, and a good thought occurred to him. Immediately he set to work to provide this forlorn being with a squaw. He formed her nearly as he had seen the man to be and also covered her body with scales. Then he breathed a little of his life into her and set her feet upon the bank, telling her that if she would walk along the shore and look about her she might find something to please her. "At first neither saw the other, and the woman, after wandering about for awhile, sat down beside a log and fell asleep. Presently the man spied her footsteps in the sand, and following them he approached her timidly. He found his voice as he touched her gently on the shoulder and asked: "Who art thou?" Whence came you?' "My name is Mani, she replied. Gitchi Manito brought me here, telling me I should find something here I like. I think thou art the rpomised one.' "I think so too,' said the man. 'On what dost thou live?' "'I have eaten nothing, for I was looking for thee. But now I feel hungry. Hast thou anything to eat?' "Straitway the man hurried to collect some roots and herbs that he had found edible. He brought them to the squaw, who devoured them greedily. "Again the sight moved Manito to pity, and in the twinkling of an eye he built a handsome wigwam for them, with a splendid garden beside it, in which grew many plants and berries, and trees of various kinds. Here they lived happily for many days, and Gitchi Manito came often to converse with them. "'Let me warn you against one thing,' he told them. 'See this tree in the middle of the garden is not good, for it was planted here by Matchi Manito, the Spirit of Evil. See how it blossoms, presently it will bear fruits, and they will look very fine and taste very sweet. But do not eat of them, or death shall be thy portion.' "You may believe that they paid attention to this formidable warning, and they kept the command a long time, even when the blossoms passed and the fruit was ripened. One day, however, when Mani was walking alone in the garden, she heard a friendly and musical voice calling, 'Mani, why dost thy not eat of this beautiful fruit? It tastes splendidly. Started, she looked around, but saw no one. She was afraid, and hurried into the house. "Next day she went again into the garden, being curious to hear the voice again. When she approached the forbidden tree it sounded: 'Mani, Mani, taste this splendid fruit, it will gladden they heart!' And with this a young and handsome Indian came out of the bushes, plucked some fruit and placed it in her hand. 'Eat,' he said. It looked so good, and smelled so good, that she promptly ate it up and more with it. The young Indian, who was of course the agent of Matchi Manito, disappeared, and when her husband came soon after, she persuaded him to eat also. But scarcely had he swallowed the fruit she gave him when the silver scales fell off their bodies; only twenty scales remained to each, ten on the fingers and ten on the toes, but these lost their brillancy. They saw themselves quite uncovered, and were ashamed and withdrew into the bushes. "Then came the angry Gitchi Manito, and said: 'Did I not tell you to abstain from the wiles of Matchi Manito? You have disobeyed, and presently death shall come upon you. These poor uncovered physical frames of yours shall perish, but the life that is in you shall live in your children and their descendants. Begone from my garden!' "So they went forth in banishment. But Manito loved them and had mercy on them. He gave the man a bow and some arrows, and showed him how to shoot deer, and told Mani how to prepare the meat on them, and how to make clothing and moccasins of the hides. "So Mani and her husband left the garden, the man trying his bow and arrows. being not yet practiced in their use he shot into the sand, and the arrows went thus deep into the ground." Here Oh ta picked up an arrow, thrust it into the earth and withdrew it with his thumb on the shaft, showing to each one there separately how deep the arrow had gone in, saying, "see, so far." They looked at it carefully and said, "good, now go on." Oh ta proceeded: "So Mani's husband went out to hunt, saw a deer and shot an arrow at it. The animal sank on its knees and died. "The hunter ran up and drew his arrow from the wound, found it uninjured and placed it in his quiver to be used again. When he brought the deer to his squaw she cut it into pieces and washed them, laying the hide aside for moccasins and clothing. Then she sensed the need of fire, for they could not eat the meat raw as the barbarous Kiristinons of the north do. "This demand for fire stumped the man for a time, but finally the thought came to him to rub against each other a piece of hardwood and one of softwood, and he soon had a bright fire for his squaw. "After that Mani's husband killed many deer, and soon they had plenty of clothing and bedding, and his squaw built a fine lodge for him. One day while out hunting he found a birch-bark book lying under a tree. While he was looking at the book it spoke to him in the pure Ojibway language, instructing him in the use of every plant in the forest and the meadow. Delighted, he put the book in his hunting-bag and collected all the plants, roots, flowers and herbs which it pointed out to him. With these he returned to Mani, and found they were all good medicine, good in every accident and sickness in life. So in this way he became a great medicine man as well as a mighty hunter. The children his wife bore him became great hunters also. He taught them to use the bow, explained to them the medicine book, which never talked to anyone but him, and told them the history of his and Mani's creation. And through them the true story of the Ojibways has come down to us." "What was Mani's husband's name, Oh ta?" asked Wabish. "That was not revealed to us," replied Oh ta, as he tamped his pipe with a finger and looked very wise. "And anyway, it was the woman who made all the trouble." "Who revealed to the Chippewas that Gitchi Manito lived here? inquired Miz ye, the Cat-Fish. Miz ye was a captive Sioux boy, a slave, a friend to everybody, and he had the freedom of the village. "I always though Gitchi Manito lived at Torch Lake, many days journey toward the setting sun," he said. "You thought wrong," replied Oh ta, "and I'll prove it to you. In the first place Manibosho told us about the Great Spirit, when he had recreated the world and the Chippewa nation after the flood. But see here. WE know that Gitchi Manito lives now in the great rock temple on Michilimackinac, don't we?" "Certainly," they chorused. "And we know he flew from the north, through the great curved stone door on the beach, don't we?" "Oh, yes." "Well, then that's it. Don't you see, he started from here." Oh ta looked triumphantly from face to face in the circle. "Maybe he came from beyond Gitchi Gumi somewhere," suggested somebody doubtfully. No, no, no," Oh ta replied positively. "Do you think the Great Spirit would ever live in the wreched land of the Kiristinons, where it is always cold, and where the people wander about half-starved from place to place, and eat their meat and raw fish? It is impossible. We are his people, and the people of the great Manibosho." "Was Manibosho here then?" another inquired. "No, he came to us after Gitchi Manito withdrew to his temple. Many moons ago Manibosho leved on earth and was a great War Chief of the Chippewas, and the Ottawas, the Hurons and the Potawatomies as well. Once, when the winter was cold and windy, with deep snows, the INdians had great trouble in keeping their wigwam-fires alight. Seeing them so forlorn and cold, Manibosho brought down fire from heaven, causing the lightning to strike a great tree and set it glowing. From this tree came the sacred fire whcih the Potawatomies keep ever burning in their head jossakeed's lodge on the shores of Lake Meetch i gong. This is our time-honored council fire; and whenever the tribes meet ceremonially in the north country, we sent to the Potawatomies for the sacred fire and bring it carefully guarded to our council seat. For to tell lies in the presence of that fire is impossible. Animosities die down before it, peace and harmony must prevail where burns the fire from heaven. So we gather before it only when meeting with our allies, never before going on the war-path. |
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