Preserving the Ojibwe Language in Upper Michigan

A piece of land in Michigan's Upper Peninsula that sticks out into Lake Superior, forming a peninsula of its own, the Keweenaw Peninsula. Next to it, is a bay with the same name. The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (or KIBC) is an Ojibwe tribe or band located along the shores of the Keweenaw Bay near the towns of Baraga and L'Anse.

 
[caption id="attachment_5645" align="aligncenter" width="938"] The yellow arrow points to Baraga, Michigan and the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community.[/caption]

 

ABC-10, the TV station in the area, recently did a piece about the Ojibwe Language Nest, a preschool that teaches the Ojibwe language, Anishinaabemowin.



 

An excellent collection of links for Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe was compiled by weshki-ayaad.

Father Baraga, also known as "the snowshoe priest," is the author of one of probably the most famous Ojibwe/English dictionaries. It was completed in 1853 and can be accessed here thanks to the Wisconsin State Historical Society.

 

A Brief and Somewhat Politically Incorrect History of Calumet County, Wisconsin

[caption id="attachment_5470" align="aligncenter" width="241"] The Calumet County seal, or insignia, as copied from Orrin W. Meyer's booklet, Se Souvenir.[/caption]

On the east shore of Lake Winnebago, Calumet County was home to the Stockbridge and Brothertown Indians both before and after Wisconsin became a state. Of course, before those "New York Indians" came on the scene, people were already living in what is now Calumet County, Wisconsin.

In 1964, Orrin W. Meyer, the Calumet County Agricultural agent (he may have already been retired by that time), typed up a history of Calumet County.  Se Souvenir was the title of his booklet. On the first page, Meyer tells us about the original Natives in the area.

What is Calumet County now was,  at various times, the home of six Indian Nations. These were the Menominee, Chippewa, Sac, Fox, Potawatomi and Winnebago. All were of eastern Algonquian stock except the Winnebagoes [now known as Ho-Chunk]. The Winnebagoes [Ho-Chunk] migrated from the west and were of the Dakotas, tracing their lineage to the Sioux. the Algonquians were peaceful and easy going....

Not so with the Winnebagoes [Ho-Chunk]. They were war-like, treacherous and scheming.

I don't know enough about the Ho-Chunk to comment directly on that authoritatively (but my gut reaction is that it is a harsh judgment). Maybe Meyer should have left that part out of his history. However, I should point out that Meyer probably wasn't just taking a jab at the Ho-Chunk for absolutely no reason. At least in his mind, he was setting up his explanation for the naming of Calumet County.

The coming of the white man plus the six Indian Nations took some doing to get along. Many councils were held on the east shore of Lake Winnebago. Many times the pipe of peace was passed from chief to chief as he made a solemn pledge and puffed on the calumet, a reed pipe. The French would likewise council with the Indians and it was they who called the peace pipe the calumet. It is by this derivation that Calumet County gets its name (pages 1-2).

In future posts I'll have more from Se Souvenir by Orrin Meyer.

Mohican Genealogy: Correct Lineage of "King Ben" through John W. Quinney Revealed

In one of my first posts about genealogy, I cautioned people to approach the topic with care, I warned people that even good genealogical sources are usually not quite reliable.

In that same post was an error that went unnoticed for five years.

In that 2009 post I stated that in 1740 the

...Chief Sachem was Benjamin Kokhkewenaunaunt, or King Ben for short. Patrick Frazier tells us that King Ben was David Naunauneekanuk’s father (see pages 55 and 254). Naunauneekanuk was John W. Quinney’s grandfather (Quinney said so in front of the United States Congress)

I've since made some corrections to that part of the old blogpost. I'd like to thank Robert Shubinski for catching my error.  When he read that post he remembered from his own research that there were two David Naunauneekanuks (a father and son).

So there is an additional generation in there. As Dr. Shubinski puts it

Naunauneekanuk the elder was the son of the King Ben and the great grandfather of JWQ. His son, Naunauneekanuk the younger was the grandfather of JWQ. The proof is 1) Frazier book: the index shows references to both David Naunauneekanuks the elder and the younger. The elder could not have been JWQ's grandfather since the John W Quinney Memorial includes an affadavit by John Haddocks who identifies this grandfather for the congress of the US and states this man died in 1821. Frazier tells us that David N the elder was in his 60s at the time of the French Indian war so he could not be that David who died in 1821.

To confirm this, you may want to check out page 214 of The Mohicans of Stockbridge, where Patrick Frazier mentions "David Naunauneekanuk, the younger. He mentions both the elder and the younger in the index. Also thanks to Robert Shubinski for this link to John W. Quinney's congressional testimony.

What is Religion?

[caption id="attachment_4704" align="aligncenter" width="604"] The medicine wheel, also known as the sacred hoop, is part of the system of belief and action of an indigenous culture. This image was taken from http://healing.about.com/cs/native/a/medicinewheel.htm[/caption]

The simple functional definition of religion that I use for this website is: a system of belief and action.

Actually, it is a little more complicated. Historically speaking, I think religion is: a system of belief and action of a particular group of people.

I've been thinking about definitions like that for a long time. Since 2008 I've managed to write about church history without writing about religion per se. But I'm crossing the line now. I'm doing so - not to bring anybody over to my very own "system of belief and action," but rather, because the discussion of my blogposts in a (closed) Facebook group is already starting to focus on this topic.

I've made an offer to Brent Michael Davids to write one or more guestposts. It seems that he and I are engaged in a friendly online disagreement. Anyway, Brent, I still hope that you'll take some time to write a blogpost for Stock-Mo-History.

It seems the two biggest things that Brent and I disagree on are over the questions of 1)"what is religion" and 2)"did Indians (ever) have religion?" Obviously the answer to the second question depends on the answer to the first. So I have to explain my definition of religion before I can fairly address the second question.

Admittedly, there is such a thing as "personal religion," one's own consciously chosen and unique system of belief and action. But I suspect that personal religion is about as recent a development as the personal pizza.

When Brent Michael Davids said that I "conflate" religion with culture he was right: I've tried, but haven't been able to separate religion from culture in my thinking about history.

Why do I think "personal religion" is a new development? For a number of reasons, including a relative lack of information technology until recent decades, social structures of power, and the fact that it is probably just a natural thing to "do religion" with other people. But probably my main point is that It is only because we modern Americans live in a society that values a certain kind of "individualism" that many of us are able to pull off the now-popular thing known as personal religion. We Americans value a false kind of "individualism." I say it is false because we don't usually realize that we are still as dependent on others as before, but we are just much farther removed from most of them than we ever have been before.

I know that there always have been people who were... uh... "smart enough to think for themselves." There always were people who weren't onboard with the official system of belief and action of their community. As Steve Comer pointed out in a recent Mohican News article, when indigenous people had a strong enough disagreement with the leadership of the village there was an easy solution: move to a different village. If one shaman wasn't doing it for you spiritually, you could hang with a different shaman. Then again, there probably weren't huge differences between different Mohican shamans. And again, that is my point: religion is a cultural entity.

Well, I have to admit that I have a broad definition of religion. I mean, if vision quests and special dreams are part of one's culture, that is religion to me. (Other people that probably just don't like the word "religion" might prefer to call that "spirituality.")

I suppose it is possible if somebody else has a more narrow definition of religion than I do that they might be able to successfully argue that Indians "didn't have religion" prior to white contact. But who would ever say that indigenous people didn't have a culturally-based system of belief and action? Of course they did. I think that was the norm for centuries for groups of people from all races.

 

 

Blogger's note: On Facebook, Steve Comer made the point that the Algonquians' shamans were called Powwows. I purposely used the term Shaman, because it is a more well-known word. If I was only writing for Indians (who already have knowledge of their people's pre-history, there would be no need to use the more easily understood term. July 1, 2014.

 

Some More Thoughts about the Pre-contact Religion of Algonquian-Speaking Peoples

[caption id="attachment_4010" align="aligncenter" width="800"] Pictured above is the calumet or ceremonial pipe used by the Sac and Fox chief, Black Hawk.[/caption]

Caroline Andler, the former tribal genealogist of the Brothertown Indian Nation of Wisconsin, has created some pages on genealogy.com, related to the Brothertown people.

These pages include "The Spirituality of the New England Indians pre Samson Occom's Conversion to Chritianity," an article in which Andler quotes Rudi Ottery. Ottery, Andler tells us, wrote a Master's thesis on "the spirituality of early New England Indians and their conversion to Christianity." I'm going to try to get access to that thesis if possible, but the quotes that Andler provides in her article will do just fine for this blogpost.

Andler starts off by asserting that "Our ancient ancestors used the pipe and tobacco to pray to their gods."

Then she introduces Rudi Ottery and the following quote comes from Ottery:

...a belief in spiritual forces and a powerful religion ordered Indian lives...
...the Indians percieved all of life as a series of interactions with spiritual powers and they were conscious of these forces regulating their daily lives. All of nature was sacred, created by a spirit... There was no desire to subdue or dominate any living thing.

What are your thoughts?

Feel free to leave a comment below.



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Was the pre-contact Religion of Algonquian-speaking Indians Similar to Christianity?

When I first started blogging in the fall of 2008 I published a post called "The Mohican Ten Commandments." While there appears to be only nine of them and they weren't actually called "commandments," Captain Hendrick Aupaumut's teachings bore an unmistakable resemblance to the Calvinist Christianity of his time. And I think that the first person to make that observation was Captain Hendrick himself. Captain Hendrick also said that the Mohicans were once more "civilized" and they had some kind of a holy book like the Christian Bible, but when hard times came they lost their ability to read it and buried it with a chief. (The source for that is somewhere in Electa Jones' Stockbridge Past and Present.)

Captain Hendrick's way of looking at things is that Christian missions were giving Indians a chance to get their old, "civilized" ways back - after they had been corrupted by the fur trade.

I buy into that viewpoint myself. I mean I agree with the sequence: 1) Indians were doing alright prior to white contact, 2) the fur trade sent eastern seaboard Indians into a horrible downward spiral in which they lost much of their population and much of their culture, and 3) many of the Indians who survived the disasters of the fur trade became receptive to Christian missions which offered them "something."

I don't claim that sequence applies to all Native Americans, but it is an accepted reality among those who study the eastern seaboard Indians.

Of course, Captain Hendrick took it farther. In a scholarly article that is not available on the free web, Rachel Wheeler went into a lot of detail about Captain Hendrick's work to revitalize his people through participation in Christian missions and "civilization" programs. (The title of that article, if you want to try to access it, is "Hendrick Auapumut: Christian Mahican Prophet.")

However, after reading Wheeler's article a few times, I don't think she buys into the idea that the religions of Algonquian-speaking peoples were a lot like Christianity. Instead, I think Wheeler's understanding of Captain Hendrick is that he masterfully employed rhetoric to motivate his people. He knew there would be more energy in accepting Christianity and "civilization" if he could present it in a "back to traditional ways" package. And that is what he did.

 

Of course it goes without saying that Indians who took on Christianity  and "civilization" didn't give up all of their "Indian-ness." Of course their understanding of their new religion was influenced by whatever was left of their Native culture. In that sense, there likely were some similarities.

To my way of thinking, Captain Hendrick Aupaumut was not a sellout. Far from it. Instead, he promoted Christian missions and the "arts of civilized life" because he thought they were the best thing for his people. Probably the most effective way to do that was to make it seem like Christianity was rather similar to traditional Mohican religion.


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Who Were the "Red Sticks"?

The Red Sticks were Creek Indians from present-day Alabama. They resisted the western expansion of the United States at the same time that Tenskwatawa's movement and his brother Tecumseh's confederacy were resisting the United States in the Great Lakes region.

According to the Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (443), there were a total of about 4,000 Red Sticks coming from sixty townships. (The townships were loosely organized into a confederacy.)

Despite having two centuries of contact with white "civilization," the Red Sticks had largely "held firm to their traditional religious beliefs"(444).

Why were they called Red Sticks?

According to Gregory Evans Dowd (A Spirited Resistance, 147), they were named after their war clubs. However, another answer (that I prefer to believe) comes from the Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (444).

The name "Red Stick" evidently derived from the Creek practice of counting down the days to an important event (such as the advent of war) by remvoing sticks from a red stick bundle.

 

[caption id="attachment_3006" align="aligncenter" width="471"] This section of a map of the War of 1812 was originally produced by the WW Norton company and is re-used here under fair use for commentary.[/caption]


To read about the Red Sticks' Creek War of 1813-1814 - one part of the War of 1812 - see The Warfare Historian.


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How the Housatonic Mohicans Opened the Door to the Stockbridge Mission

Two of my recent posts, spirituality and Reactions to the Hard Times Brought on by White Contact and Death of the Spirit: How did the Eastern Woodland Indians Lose their Traditional Religion? were written in general or abstract terms. But even as I was writing them, I was trying to locate a quote that describes the Mohicans on the Housatonic River in 1734 as having a variety of religious beliefs. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find that quote.

The title of one of my two recent posts borrowed the phrase "Death of the Spirit" from a chapter title in Patrick Frazier's The Mohicans of Stockbridge. The phrase is simply a poetic way of saying that the Mohican religion was no longer intact after 125 years of white contact.

Maybe this should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: the disasters of the fur trade didn't damage the Mohicans' need for spirituality. (Otherwise why would they have ever accepted a new religion?) Instead, the fur trade irreparably damaged the Mohicans' orally transmitted system of rituals and beliefs.

Konkapot and Umpachenee, the chiefs of the two Housatonic villages, were approached by the British with the offer of a Christian mission. The proposal was discussed and debated in council in July of 1734.

It was not a decision that the residents of the two villages took lightly. The council lasted four days! And the winning argument - coming down on the side in favor of Christianity - was made by Poohpoonuc. When translated into English (by Nathaniel Appleton, see bibliography below), Poohpoonuc's argument sounded like this:

Since my remembrance, there were ten Indians where now there is one. But the Christians greatly increase and multiply and spread across the land. Let us therefore leave our former courses and become Christians.

Does that sound like a religious statement to you? Maybe not, but it is a religious statement in the context of the things Gregory Evans Dowd wrote about on page 19 of A Spirited Resistance. Dowd said that Indians were trying to understand the disasters they endured in the context of sacred power. And some Indians decided that there was more sacred power in Christianity. This explains why the Housatonic Mohicans accepted a Christian mission. But it also explains more. A lot more.

By 1737 the Mohicans had a missionary that was preaching in their own language and, according to Patrick Frazier (page 37), Indians came "from near and far" to listen to the sermons and "witness the new Indian life." Some of those visiting Indians permanently joined the tribe. For that reason, (and others) I continue to believe that Christianity was an essential element in the history of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians.

 

Printed Sources:

Appleton, Nathaniel. Gospel ministers Must be Fit for the Master's Use. (An ordination sermon, printed by S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1735.)

Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745-1815. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

Frazier, Patrick. The Mohicans of Stockbridge Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

 
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