The following essay was written by Lake Superior State University student Matt Collins with the assistance of Bay Mills historians Wanda Perron and Paula Carrick.
Part one
It is spring of 1650. Bahweting is alive with abundance again; many nations have gathered here to fish the rapids and strengthen alliances with each other. This spring, however, has come with unsettling news. The Iroquois Indians, who have formed a Confederacy amongst five nations, have decimated our neighbors to the east, the Huron, and forced them to flee as refugees. With relentless and persistent raids, the Iroquois' initiative is clear and troublesome: they intend to destroy anyone that gets in their way in their efforts to obtain the valuable furs in our land, the Lake Superior region. They will rage violent war on every tribe and every missionary in our area. The Iroquois' "Five Nations Confederacy", an army that would rival any nations, will stop at nothing in an effort to rid our area of our neighbors and us. We will soon be involved in a deadly fight, defending our land against the Iroquois. United with our neighbors, we will fight back against our heavily armed enemies. Over the next 12 years, we will become a centerpiece in the Iroquois Wars. The Iroquois Wars are the bloodiest wars ever fought between Native Americans.
Bahweting was a marvelous place. Our people were hospitable, proud and dreaded by our enemies (Kinietz, 1940). Our people lived here, for the most part, year round. Some families would spend winter in patrilineal bands, the smallest unit of Ojibwe society. A patrilineal band consists of a single family living in the woods where they have a better chance of finding wild game to live off of (Schenck, 1997). Although the Lake Superior shores had an abundance of beaver, deer and moose, the main attraction at Bahweting was the plentiful whitefish flowing through the rapids. Fishing at Bahweting was different from most other places. The following is an account by French Jesuit Claude Dablon: "Dexterity and strength are needed to fish like the Ojibwe at Bahweting. They stand up straight in a bark canoe, and there, among the rapids, with muscles tense, must thrust deep into the water a rod, of which is attached at the end to a net, made to look like a pocket, which the fish are to enter. They must see and pursue the fish as they glide by rocks and raise them, six or seven large fish at a time, into the canoe (Kinietz, 1940)." The Saulteurs were the only people to master fishing in turbulent waters. They caught more whitefish then they could eat, and then carried their surplus to Mackinac, where it was sold to the French and Indian neighbors. They also dried a large, late autumn supply of fish over a fire to preserve it for winter use.
In September of 1641, our ancestors, the "crane people" made the 17-day journey to the Huron Nation to celebrate the Feast of the Dead. Along with other Ojibwe tribes, we met and talked with the Huron's friend and ally, the Jesuit missionaries. We asked the Jesuits to visit our country in hopes of learning their teachings. The Jesuits accepted our offer. Fathers Charles Raymbault and Isaac Jogues made the journey back with us and set up a missionary at Bahweting, naming the rapids "Sault de Sainte Marie"(Danzinger, 1979).
The Mission did not take long to show signs of success. Large numbers of adult Ojibwe accepted Catholicism. This was only, as Jesuits readily admitted, because the Indians desired salvation from the epidemic diseases brought on by the Europeans (Greer, 2000).
Along with the Jesuits and their missionaries came the French fur traders. The Ojibwe fur trade had been in existence for many years. We had been receiving European goods from the Huron, who acted as middlemen between the French and other Indian tribes. The Huron would trade with the French at Montreal, and bring back European goods to trade with other Indians. Now we were able to trade directly with them and take advantage of better profits.
The French traders were supplying us with knives, axes, guns and kettles. We had never seen metal, so these objects changed our lives. They gave us beads and other material to decorate ourselves with. They presented our people a chance to advance our societies, and at the same time created a dependency. It was not long before our heritage, traditions, faith and bloodlines were mixed with those of the French.
Nobody took advantage of the fur trade as well as the Iroquois. The Iroquois occupied present-day northern New York. Being further east, they were contacted first. They traded heavily with the British and the Dutch, who did not get along well with our French allies. The Iroquois were able to make major social and economical advancements in a short period of time. However, their lands' supply of fur pelts quickly diminished.
Their biggest achievement, unarguably, was the ability to form the "Confederacy of Five Nations" The five Iroquois nations: The Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Cuyoga, put aside their historical differences and aimed their violence elsewhere as they quickly amassed a large quantity of firearms. The Iroquois placed a big emphasis on military strength and tactics. They trained their boys to be warriors at very young ages.
In the same year that we invited Jesuit missionaries to Bahweting, the Iroquois Confederacy began attacking Algonquin tribes. Raids became persistent on the St.Lawrance River as the Iroquois attempted to take control of the fur trade route. They met little resistance as they tried to cut off the gateway to the Atlantic Ocean and stop the trade between the French and the Great Lakes Indians.
The Iroquois' ultimate intentions were to obtain the furs we had for trading and to harvest the furs in the Great Lakes region. Throughout the 1640's, they ruthlessly patrolled the St. Lawrence waterways, but they were unable to control our ability to trade with the French. At the end of the decade, they would unleash all fury.
In 1649, the Iroquois Wars were well underway. The Iroquois enforced an adoption policy amongst their enemies' women and children (Cleland, 1992) The captured women and children would be tortured until their spirits were broken down, often with dismembered fingers. They would then be built back up into Iroquois. If they accepted their fate and joined the Iroquois, then they were accepted into the tribe. If they did not, the Iroquois reasoned that they had not been tortured enough, and so the ritual continued.
Stay tuned for part two in the June 1 issue.
