Ojibwe language

“ Education has been of great assistance to the Ojibwe, who have many times proven that they have the same capabilities as their white brothers. The Indian has the same anatomical characteristics as the Caucasian race and is capable of going far along the road of education.
Since the field work among the Ojibwe was completed in 1923 and [346] 1924, some scattering members of the tribe have adopted the peyote lodge. The Ojibwe are fond of visiting and, in the summer time, some are always away on visits to other tribes in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Kansas or Oklahoma. ”

“ They never occupy a house in which one of the other Indians died.
[pg 499]
OJIBWA DIALOGUE. [Communicated by the Very Rev. Edward Jacker.]
The following short dialogue forms part of the scanty tradition the civilized Ojibwas possess regarding their ancestors' sign language:
Two Indians of different tongue meet on a journey. First Indian points to second Indian with the outstretched forefinger of the right hand, bringing it within a few inches of his breast; next he extends both forearms horizontally, clinches all but the forefingers, and bends the hands inward ”

“ The Ojibwe are the most numerous of any of our tribes and as long as they live in the northern forest and lake district of Wisconsin, so long will the older Indians continue to explain the natural history of their environment to the young men and women of the tribe. ”

“ Many Milwaukee sportsmen have much appreciated friends among the Ojibwe, who have ever been strict and upright in their dealings with them.
There remains a considerable amount of folk lore or ethnology to be studied and recorded, and since it is easy to find well educated men and women among them, who still recall the traditions and stories of their early life, it should prove a fertile field of investigation for some student. ”

“ The Ojibwe have always lived far from the haunts of civilization. They were too far in the back country to participate in the colonial and pre-colonial wars. They have always preferred to live where game is abundant, and even today they are still able to subsist partly on deer and fish. The products of the hunt were very important to them, and they possess a very large number of hunting charms, which are roots, seeds or blossoms that are used as good luck omens or actual lures in trapping and fishing. ”

“ One of the chief difficulties was to find a servant who could speak the requisite languages and who was willing to accompany me to Algiers. In West Africa the language problem is always a difficult one. Tribes are so numerous, and all speak different languages. In many cases these languages bear not the slightest resemblance to one another, and are exceedingly hard to acquire. By a stroke of good fortune I succeeded in procuring a Susu native, who had a fair idea of cooking for white men, and according to himself, “saveed plenty all the talk master want.” ”

“ Among these terrified tribes, the traditions of the Ojibwais affirm that their ancestors came, and that they originally dwelt in a country destitute [375] of snows. Many tribes who now speak idioms of their language were left upon the way, and have since taken distinctive names. ”

“ It requires a most intimate acquaintance with them as a people, and individually with their old story tellers, also with their language, beliefs, and customs, to procure their real beliefs and to analyze the tales they seldom refuse to tell, and separate the Indian or original from those portions which they have borrowed or imbibed from the whites. Their innate courtesy and politeness often carry them so far that they seldom, if ever, refuse to tell a story when asked by a white man, respecting their ideas of the creation and the origin of mankind. ”

“ The old idea of fighting other tribes was forgotten long ago and they feel that all red men are their brothers. Those Ojibwe who have visited the Winnebago Indians in Wisconsin have been especially influenced to adopt the peyote cult. This rarely happens where the Ojibwe live in close contact with their tribesmen on reservations. But several live as isolated families on the shores of our northern lakes, and when they adopt the peyote religion they throw overboard all of their medicine lodge paraphernalia and beliefs. ”

“ Among these may be mentioned the Ojibway, who are at the present day, the most numerous and important tribe of the formerly wide extended Algic family of tribes. They occupy the area of Lake Superior and the sources of the Mississippi, and as a general fact, they still live in the ways of their ancestors. Even among these, a change is so rapidly taking place, caused by a close contact with the white race, that ten years hence it will be too late to save the traditions of their forefathers from total oblivion. ”

“ It is true that they assimilate in color and in their physical formation, which can be accounted for by their residence in the same climate, and sustaining life through the same means. Many of their customs are also alike, but these have been naturally similarized and entailed on them by living in the same wild hunter state, and many they have derived from one another during their short fitful terms of peace and intercourse. Here all similitude between the two tribes ends. They cannot differ more widely than they do in language ”

“ It is only from such religious and genuine traditions that the fact is to be ascertained. The common class of the tribe who are spread in numerous villages north and west of Lake Superior, when asked where they originally came from, make answer that they originated from Mo-ning-wuna-kaun-ing (La Pointe) , and the phrase is often used in their speeches to the whites, that "Mo-ning-wuna-kaun-ing" is the spot on which the Ojibway tribe first grew, and like a tree it has spread its branches in every direction, in the bands that now occupy the vast extent of the Ojibway earth ”

“ In the light of recent investigation the cause of this antagonism is seen to lie in the fact that the traditions of Indian genesis and cosmogony and the ritual of initiation into the Society of the Midē ́ constitute what is to them a religion, even more powerful and impressive than the Christian religion is to the average civilized man. This opposition still exists among the leading classes of a number of the Algonkian tribes, and especially among the Ojibwa, many bands of whom have been more or less isolated and beyond convenient reach of the Church. The purposes of the society are twofold ”

“ Cushing has shown, the Zuñi language possesses many words relating to art-processes, the Iroquois and Algonkin dialects supply such terms, for the most part, in descriptive holophrasms, and not in primitive roots. Nevertheless, alike in their pottery and carvings, and in their picture-writing, they show a degree of artistic capacity of which few traces are found in Europe’s Neolithic age.
In the Ojibway, oozhebegawin is used indiscriminately for “writing, drawing, painting,” wazhebeegad, for “a man who writes, draws.” ”

“ As regards this point, it is especially the African languages of the Soudan that offer a typical field for linguistic study. If we analyse the syntax of such a language and the forms of thought which the sentence structure allows us to infer, we gain the impression that it is hardly possible to imagine a form of human thought whose essential characteristics could be more primitive. This is clearly apparent from a consideration of the Ewe language of the peoples of Togo, a German colonial possession. ”

“ Ever having lived in the wilderness, even beyond what is known as the western frontiers of white immigration, where books are scarce and difficult to be procured, I have never had the coveted opportunity and advantage of reading the opinions of the various eminent authors who have written on this subject, to compare with them the crude impressions which have gradually, and I may say naturally, obtained possession in my own mind, during my whole life, which I have passed in a close connection of residence and blood with different sections of the Ojibway tribe. ”

“ It will be understood that in all instances presented scrupulous care has been taken to eliminate European influence and to obtain assurance of the aboriginal and ancient origin of the legends.
An Ojibwa tradition tells the adventures of eight, ten, and sometimes twelve brothers, the youngest of whom is the wisest and the most beloved of their father and especially favored by the high powers. He delivers his brothers from many difficulties which were brought about by their folly and disobedience. ”

“ See H.R. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, Vol. v, pp. 418, 419. Relations des Jesuites, 1634, p. 14, 1637, p. 46.]
[Footnote 6: In the Ojibway dialect of the Algonkins, the word for day, sky or heaven, is gijig. This same word as a verb means to be an adult, to be ripe (of fruits) , to be finished, complete. Rev. Frederick Baraga, A Dictionary of the Olchipwe Language, Cincinnati, 1853. This seems to correspond with the statement in the myth.] ”

“ Of the eight children born to them, two died in infancy. Truman A. is now interpreter at White Earth Agency, Minn., and Mary, now Mrs. English, is a teacher at the Red Lake Mission School. Charlotte, Julia, and Sophia are married, and live on White Earth Reservation. Of William, their oldest son, we now propose to give a brief memoir.
William Whipple Warren was born at La Pointe, May 27, 1825. In his very earliest childhood, he learned to talk the Ojibway language, from playing with the Indian children. His father took every means to give him a good English education. Rev. Mr. ”

“ Thus the Tshi, Ewe, and Yoruba, surviving members of a now extinct stock-language, formerly diffused over the whole region between Cape Palmas and the Niger Delta, have become so burdened with monosyllabic homophones (like-sounding monosyllables) , that to indicate their different meanings several distinguishing tones have been evolved, exactly as in the Indo-Chinese group. In Ewe (Slave Coast) the root do, according as it is toned may mean to put, let go, tell, kick, be sad, join, change, grow big, sleep, prick, or grind. ”

“ From this period the Ojibways are traditionally well possessed of the most important events which have happened to them as a tribe, and from nine generations back, I am prepared to give, as obtained from their most veracious, reliable, and oldest men, their history, which may be considered as authentic. ”

“ Everything, therefore, favored the scheme which the Ojibway chieftain had laid to ensnare his confident enemies. On the eve of the great English king's birthday, he informed the British commandant that as the morrow was to be a day of rejoicing, his young men would play the game of ball, or Baug-ah-ud-o-way, for the amusement of the whites, in front of the gate of the fort. In this game the young men of the Osaugee tribe would play against the Ojibways for a large stake. ”

“ The French early gained the utmost confidence of the Ojibways, and thereby they became more thoroughly acquainted with their true and real character, even during the comparative short season in which they mingled with them as a nation, than the British and Americans are at this present day, after over a century of intercourse. The French understood their division into clans, and treated each clan according to the order of its ascendency in the tribe. ”

“ Going a little further east we find the Ojibwa, who live in Minnesota and around the shores of Lake Superior with a myth of the thunderer which makes it entirely a good spirit, a sort of servant of the medicine man, shaman or priest, and who helps them to work cures, find good medicine plants, and many other things which have a good influence. ”

“ The name of Ab-boin-ug (roasters) , which the Ojibways have given to the Dahcotas or Sioux, originated in their roasting their captives, and it is as likely that the word Ojibwa (to roast till puckered up) , originated in the same manner. They have a tradition which will be given under the head of their wars with the Foxes, which is told by their old men as giving the origin of the practice of torturing by fire, and which will fully illustrate the meaning of their tribal name. The writer is even of the opinion that the name is derived from a circumstance which forms part of the tradition. ”

“ The Ojibwa is one of the largest tribes of the United States, and it is scattered over a considerable area, from the Province of Ontario, on the east, to the Red River of the North, on the west, and from Manitoba southward through the States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. This tribe is, strictly speaking, a timber people, and in its westward migration or dispersion has never passed beyond the limit of the timber growth which so remarkably divides the State of Minnesota into two parts possessing distinct physical features. ”

“ An individual of any one of the several Totems belonging to a distinct tribe, as for instance, the Ojibway, is a close blood relation to all other Indians of the same Totem, both in his own and all other tribes, though he may be divided from them by a long vista of years, interminable miles, and knows not even of their existence. ”

“ This is the first visit made by white men to this point on Lake Superior, of which we have any reliable written testimony. The account as given in Bancroft's "History" is not altogether corroborated by the Ojibways. It is only through minute and repeated inquiry, that I have learned the fact from their own lips, of this early visit of a "black gowned priest," but not of his having resided with them for any length of time. ”