Chippewa

“ Once, indeed, the great Chippewa chief, Haw-waw-many-squaw, having thrown the town into consternation by placards of himself scalping his enemies and smoking their tobacco, makes a triumphal entry into the main street at full gallop, and pitching his tent before the court-house, walks into the parsonage—war plumes, moccasins, and all—gives us complimentary seats, and eats the better half of our dinner. ”

“ Just below Navy Island are Chippewa on the British shore, and Fort Schlosser on that of the United States.
Chippewa is a village, situated at the mouth of a river or creek of that name. It is within the range of guns or mortars from Navy Island. Close to this place, a battle was fought in the summer of 1814, which, like all the American engagements where the rifle was used, was severe. Both sides claimed victory, but the Americans had rather the advantage. ”

“ A populous Chippewa village and a trading-post are located at its outlet, and a numerous Indian population subsists in the vicinity. It is situated in a district of country which abounds in rice lakes, has a proportion of prairie or burnt land, caused by the ravages of fire, and, in addition to the small fur-bearing animals, has several of the deer species. It occupies, geographically, a central situation, being intermediate, and commanding the communications between the St. Croix and Chippewa Rivers, and between Lake Superior and the Upper Mississippi. ”

“ Fruits of various kind arrive at great perfection, cargoes of which are exported to Montreal, Quebec, and other places situated in the less genial parts of the eastern province. Mrs. Jameson speaks of this district as "superlatively beautiful." The only place approaching a town in size and the number of inhabitants, from the Falls along the shores of Lake Erie for a great distance, beyond even Grand River, is Chippewa, situated on the river Welland, or Chippewa, which empties itself into Niagara Strait, just where the rapids commence and navigation terminates. ”

“ This wide section, which includes the wooded Turtle Mountains and the level bottom of another glacial lake, Lake Souris, was once a hunters' paradise—a prize which involved the Chippewa Indians, who long held it, in frequent conflict with their enemies the Sioux. With the coming of the whites the region saw new rivals, as the XY, North West, and Hudson's Bay Companies struggled savagely and often bloodily for domination of the fur trade. Most of the Chippewa in the State now live on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, through which the route passes. ”

“ A few days later, when he and Ray were alone in the tepee with Ganawa, Bruce unburdened his mind to the Chippewa hunter, who was now looked upon by the Indians as the father and protector of the two Americans who had for some mysterious reasons come to the region of the Upper Great Lake.
“My father,” he began, “I must now tell you why your white sons have come to the Chippewa country. We know that the [18] Chippewas and the Ottawas still love the French better than the English. ”

“ Desset had endeavoured to explain that the cat broke through while trying to cross the thin ice, which forms every night only to float out at midday, and had become tangled in the net and drowned. But nothing so simple as that could content a Chippewa when he could read so many signs from the curious happening. Optimistic from liquor, they read the sign favourably. The sturgeon net was the Chippewa Nation. Some of the hunters at the post were of the sturgeon gens. The lynx, of course, was a symbol for the Sioux. The Chippewas were to exterminate the Sioux. ”

“ In '52 I saw a party of Chippewa Indians hiding in the rough ground near Taylor's Falls. They said they were going to fight the Sioux. Some white men came and drove them away. They killed a Chippewa. A Sioux warrior, looking for Chippewa scalps found the dead Indian, skinned his whole head and rode away with the white men, with the scalp in his hand, whooping and hollering. ”

“ The Chippewa wandered from the Lake region across Minnesota to the Turtle Mountains. They cultivated maize and were apparently more or less at peace with the Sioux until in the early eighteenth century the coming of the whites brought them firearms. ”

“ I believed that inside a month the river would be back to normal conditions. "Let the Chippewa magic be ever so strong, there is no medicine as strong as the white man's. But there must be no fighting with the Chippewas. If any blows are struck, the Voice will refuse to return."
My bold assurance seemed to put a little heart in them, although White Buffalo was curious to know why it took a moon for my strong medicine to work. ”

“ I think it questionable whether some literary hack was not employed, by the booksellers, to draw up the part of the work "On the origin, manners, customs, religion, and language of the Indians." Considerable portions of the matter are nearly verbatim in the language of Charlevoix, La Hontan, and other authors of previous date. The "vocabulary of Chippewa," so far as it is Chippewa at all, has the French or a mixed orthography, which it is not probable that an Englishman or an American would, de novo, employ. ”

“ A small Chippewa village, under the chieftainship of Tshwee-tshweesh-ke-wa, or the Plover, and Kundekund, the Net Buoy, was found on the west bank of the river, near its mouth, the chiefs and warriors of which received us in the most friendly manner. If not originally a people of a serene and placid temperament, they have been so long in habits of intercourse with the white race that they are quite familiar with their manners and customs, and mode of doing business. ”

“ The correct translation of a Connecticut or Narragansett name is not likely to be attained by searching for its several components in a Chippewa vocabulary; or of the name of a locality near Hudson's River, by deriving its prefix from an Abnaki adverb and its ground-word from a Chippewa participle,—as was actually done in a recently published list of Indian names. ”

“ And every Ottawa and Chippewa believes to this day that they are still in existence and roaming in the wildest part of the land, but as supernatural beings —that is, they can be seen or unseen, just as they see fit to be ”

“ The old Chippewa has never deviated from the faith of his fathers, as he still adheres to all their rites and ceremonies. He uses the red pipe-stone and other materials in the production of his pipes, which are ingenious specimens of sculpture. The calumet, or pipe of (p. 128) peace, is still an object of special reverence with the Indian tribes, and the pipe-stem is ornamented with six or eight eagle's feathers. Each tribe has an official who takes charge of the calumet, which he keeps rolled up in a bearskin robe ”

“ The red aborigines,
Leaving natural breaths, sounds of rain and winds, calls as of birds and animals in the woods, syllabled to us for names,
Okonee, Koosa, Ottawa, Monongahela, Sauk, Natchez, Chattahoochee, Kaqueta, Oronoco,
Wabash, Miami, Saginaw, Chippewa, Oshkosh, Walla-Walla,
Leaving such to the States they melt, they depart, charging the water and the land with names. ”

“ At this island, story says, formerly lived the noted warrior and meta, Sagima; and it was also, according to Indian mythology, the residence of Mishosha, who owned a magic canoe, that would shoot through the water by uttering a charmed word.
22d. I have heard much of the ancient Chippewa capital of La Pointe, as the French call it, or Chegoimegon, in Lake Superior, situated near its west end, or head. The Chippewas and their friends, the old traders and Boisbrules, and Canadians, are never tired of telling of it. All their great men of old times are located there. ”

“ The Chippewa has no auxiliary verbs. The Chippewa primitive pronouns are, Neen, Keen, and Ween (I, Thou, He or She) . They are rendered plural in wind and wau. They are also declined for tense, and thus, in the conjugation of verbs, take the place of our auxiliary verbs.
19th. Resumed the perusal of Holmes on "Revelations." He establishes a dictionary of symbols, which are universally interpreted. In this system, a day signifies a natural year; a week seven years; a month thirty years; a year a period of 360 years. The air means "church and state;" waters, "peoples, multitudes, tongues;" ”

“ Aug. 2, 1847, at Fond du Lac of Lake Superior, the Chippewa Indians of the Mississippi and Lake Superior ceded to the United States the country beginning at the junction of the Crow Wing and Mississippi rivers, thence up the Crow Wing river to the junction of that river with the Long Prairie river; thence up the Long Prairie river to the boundary line between the Sioux and Chippewa Indians ”

“ The Indian children always had to have prizes for coming. These prizes were generally turnips. Often they gave a bushel in one day.
In 1839 some Chippewa Indians ambushed a Sioux father who was hunting with his little son. The child escaped and told the story. The Sioux went on the warpath immediately and brought home forty or [Pg 108] fifty Chippewa scalps. They had been "lucky" as they found a camp where the warriors were all away. They massacred the old men, women and children and came home to a big scalp dance. ”

“ In 1840 Jeremiah Russell, the Indian farmer at Pokegama, Pine county, Minnesota, sent two Chippewa Indians to St. Croix Falls for supplies, who arrived in safety. A band of fifty Sioux Indians were concealed at this (St. Croix Falls) settlement for some days. Within an hour after the arrival of the two Chippewas, the settlement was surrounded by these Sioux. The whites, seeing that trouble was brewing, secreted the Chippewas for two days, the Sioux closely watching. The white men were restless, and afraid to go to work. ”

“ It was reported that the king was only resting, and that the Americans yet had no right to any land west of the Ohio River.
So the Miamis, the Potawatomis, the Ottawas, the Shawnees, the war Delawares, the Chippewas, the Kickapoos, the Wyandots, the Senecas, refused to meet the Americans in council or to bury the hatchet. They formed a league of defense.
The Miamis were the central nation. "People who live on the peninsula" was their Chippewa name—for they were Algonquins from the Chippewa and Ottawa country north of the Great Lakes. ”

“ Next it is insisted that even though the Indian title was in the Red Lake bands, Congress, in section 1 of the act of 1889, declared that as to the Red Lake Reservation the cession should be sufficient if made by 'two-thirds of the male adults of all the Chippewa Indians in Minnesota,' and thereby enabled the Chippewas as a whole to cede that reservation, even over the objection of the Red Lake bands. ”

“ This lake was for many years the home and headquarters of the noted Chippewa chief, Hole-in-the-day, and has been the scene of many sanguinary struggles between his braves and those of the equally noted Sioux chief, Little Crow. The ruins of a block-house, remains of wigwams, and a few scattered graves are all that is now left to tell the story of its aboriginal conflicts. A family of four persons living in a log-house form the white population of the place. ”

“ The Chippewa Indians had very few ponies, having no use for them, as it was more convenient to use their birch bark canoes in traveling about the lakes and rivers. At that time the Chippewas were capable of making good living without the Government annuities, which consisted of a cash payment to each man, woman and child of from $5.00 to $10.00 and about an equal amount in value of flour, pork, tobacco, blankets, shawls, linsey-woolsy, flannels, calico, gilling twine for fish nets, thread, etc. ”

“ If you had told Chippewa that it was criminally ignoring Chug's crying need it would have put you down as mad.
Boiled down, Chug Scaritt's crying need was girls. At twenty-two or three you must have girls in your life if you're normal. Chug was, but Chippewa wasn't. It had too many millionaires at one end and too many labourers at the other for a town of thirty thousand. Its millionaires had their golf club, their high-powered cars, their smart social functions. They were always running down to Chicago to hear Galli-Curci ”

“ In this view the living Chippewas are beneficiaries of the income of the fund during the fifty year period, and individual Chippewa Indians who may be living at the expiration of the period, as a class, are remaindermen. ”

“ This band appear to have separated themselves from the other Chippewas, at an early day, and to have taken upon themselves the duty which Reuben, Gad, and Menasseh assumed, when they crossed the Jordan. They have “passed armed before their brethren,” in their march westward. Their geographical position is one, which imposes upon them the defence of this portion of the Chippewa frontier. And it is a defence in which they have distinguished themselves as brave and active warriors. ”

“ A doubtful sort of philanthropy, methinks! but it shows how one-sided a life's devotion to one particular object will make even a benevolent and a just man.
THE CHIPPEWAS.
Higher up, on the river Thames, and above the Moravian settlements, a small tribe of the Chippewa nation has been for some time located. They have apparently attained a certain degree of civilisation, live in log-huts instead of bark wigwams, and have, from necessity, turned their attention to agriculture. I have now in my pocket-book an original document sent up from these Indians to the Indian agency at Toronto. ”

“ I understand you now, Chippewa; you wish to know how many of us there are in the country we call America?”
“Juss so,” returned Pigeonswing, nodding in assent. “Dat juss it—juss what Injin want to know.”
“Well, we do have a count of our own people, from time to time, and I suppose come about as near to the truth as men can come in such a matter. There must be about eight millions of us altogether; that is, old and young, big and little, male and female.”
“How many warrior you got?—don't want hear about squaw and pappoose.” ”