Ojibway

A Trip Up Lake Superior.

It had been arranged that directly the holidays commenced at the Shingwauk Home, the Bishop and myself should start on a Missionary tour up Lake Superior, the plan being simply as follows:–We would take with us our boat, _The Missionary_, five or six Indian boys to man it, and provisions for six or seven weeks. We would first proceed by steamboat 300 miles direct to Prince Arthur’s Landing, taking our boat on board; remain there about a week, during which we would pay a visit into the interior; then coast the whole way back, visiting all the Indians along the … Read more

A Trip To Batcheewauning.

Besides the Indian Home which was being built I had various other objects to attend to. There were the Garden River Indians to visit from time to time, and I wanted, if possible, to make another trip up Lake Superior. One Indian settlement, about fifty miles up the lake, called Batcheewauning, I had already visited, and the Bishop had consented to my building a school-church there and placing a catechist in charge. So, as soon as the new Institution was fairly started, I arranged to pay a visit to this place, accompanied by Mr. Frost. We took with us a … Read more

A Trial Of Faith.

After this, meetings were held at Hastings, Reading, Eynsford, Bayswater, Hampstead, Tooting, Wimbledon, Coleshill, Kensington, Ware, and many other places; all much of the same character–money was collected, and photographs and articles of birchbark sold. The Chief excited much interest by recounting the circumstances of his own conversion to Christianity. “When I was a little boy, not older than that little fellow there,” he said, pointing to a child in the assembly, “I was very badly off. My mother was dead, and my father loved the fire-water. I was often cold and hungry, and at night would sometimes crawl into … Read more

A Pow-Wow At Garden River.

The following is an account of a visit paid by the Bishop and Mrs. Sullivan to Garden River, where Indian names were conferred on them:– Garden River was reached about 6 p.m. on Saturday, August 29th, the tent pitched, the vacant Mission house occupied, fires lighted, water brought from the river, and other preparations made for the night, the boys of the party voting, with true tramp-like instinct, that they preferred slumbering in the new mown hay in the barn. After tea under the shade of a spreading pine tree, the Bishop and myself spent some time visiting the Indian … Read more

A Sad Winter.

The winter of 1882 was a sad time. There was great mortality all through the country, and our Homes did not escape. Our kind friend, Mrs. Fauquier, who, though a constant invalid, had done very much to promote the interests and welfare of our Girls’ Home, was called away to the Heavenly Rest on the 4th of November, 1881. During the last few years of her life she had made the Wawanosh Home her special care, her work for Christ. Those girls were always in her thoughts: she it was who devised their uniform dress of blue serge trimmed with … Read more

Indians of the Great Western Prairies

Crow Indian

Upon the Yellowstone, and about the headwaters of the Missouri, the most noted tribes are the Crows and Blackfeet. Bordering upon them at the north and northeast are their enemies, the Ojibbeways, Knisteneaux, and Assinaboins, of some of whom brief mention has been made in former chapters. In 1834 the Blackfeet were computed to number over thirty thousand, but when the small-pox swept over the western country, in 1838, they were frightfully reduced. By the returns of 1850, they were represented as amounting to about thirteen thousand. As these Indians are among the farthest removed from the contaminating influence of … Read more

Houses of the Ojibway Tribe

Ojibway birch bark dish.

The Ojibway (the Sauteux of many writers) formed the connecting link between the tribes living east of the Mississippi and those whose homes were across the ” Great River.” A century ago their lands extended from the shores of Lake Superior westward, beyond the headwaters of the Mississippi to the vicinity of the Turtle Mountains, in the present State of North Dakota. Thus they claimed the magnificent lakes of northern and central Minnesota, Mille Lac, Leech Lake, Cass Lake, and Red Lake, on the shores of which stood, many of their camps and villages, serving as barriers against invasions and … Read more

Missionary Work Among the Ojibway Indians

Caatousee

The largest freshwater lake in the world is Lake Superior, through the centre of which runs the boundary line between the United States of America and the Dominion of Canada. The Indians call it the “Ojebway Kecheguramee,” that is–literally translated–the Great water of the Ojebways, or as they are often called the Chippeways. The Ojebways are an extensive Indian tribe spreading over a large part of Canada, the Northern States, and the North West; specimens of their language and customs appear in Longfellow’s song of Hiawatha. Lake Superior may be regarded as the centre of their ancient possessions. Along its … Read more

Caatousee, An Ojibway

Caatousee

It is, perhaps, not to be regretted, that some of the portraits contained in our gallery, are those of persons of little repute; for, although many of the biographies may, on this account, be less interesting in themselves, a greater variety of the aspects of the Indian character will, on the whole, be presented to our readers. The wandering Indians who inhabit the sterile and inhospitable shores of the northern lakes, are the most miserable and degraded of the native tribes. Exposed to the greatest extremities of climate, and forced by their situation to spend the greater portion of their … Read more