They built a high embankment of earth, for defence, around their lodges, and took every means in their power to escape the notice of the Ojibways—even discarding the use of the gun on account of its loud report, and using the primitive bow and arrows.
WILLIAM WARREN, on the secret Dakota village at what would become Thief River Falls
The Ojibwe (Chippewa) at Red Lake grew in numbers and solidified their control over the land after the Battle River fight, keeping a constant eye on the horizon. By 1770, the Dakota could no longer challenge Ojibwe ownership of Red Lake, but they could still make them pay for taking the land. One day a group of warriors encountered a small Dakota war party somewhere in the vicinity of Mahnomen Creek by the northeast shore of Lower Red Lake. They used eagle bone whistles, war whoops, and runners to call for reinforcements, and chased the Dakota on land and by canoe. After driving them off, the Ojibwe were returning to their daily activities when one of the warriors discovered a young Dakota boy crouched down in the brush where the Dakota war party had originally been hiding. The boy was too small to successfully run away from grown men, and now he was without family or community. In tribal warfare, anyone could be an honorable target—elders or children, women or men. Ponemah warriors were seasoned and tough, but not heartless. They saw an innocent brown face and, taking pity on the young boy, one of the warriors took him as a captive, but made him his son.1
The adoption of child war captives was not unique to Red Lake. In 1824, William H. Keating observed that throughout Ojibwe country, “The children are generally spared and incorporated into families, where they frequently meet with tolerably good treatment.” But this time the impact was greater than anyone could have foreseen.2
The boy was given an Ojibwe name—White Thunderbird (Waabi-bines). He was raised as an Ojibwe and lived the rest of his years in the Red Lake village of Ponemah, taking an Ojibwe wife and having children. Today his descendants make up one of the largest family groups at Red Lake—including the Greenleaf, Hawk, Oakgrove, and Whitefeather families—and among them are some of Red Lake’s most prominent leaders, including hereditary chiefs, spiritual leaders, and elected tribal chairmen. The adoption of this Dakota boy, this simple act of kindness, both enabled and symbolized a powerful change in the cultural and political configuration of the Ojibwe people at Red Lake.
The Ojibwe families at Red Lake grew stronger every year after the Battle River fight. The primary villages at Warroad, Ponemah, Redby, and Red Lake swelled with new children. New people migrated to Red Lake as well. Among them was Sweet Leaf (Wiishkoobag), veteran of an Ojibwe–Dakota battle at Crow Wing in 1768 and chief at Leech Lake for several years afterward. He quickly rose to prominence at Red Lake. Sweet Leaf’s acceptance as a leader at Red Lake, like White Thunderbird’s, showed Red Lake’s readily evolving and adaptable political culture.
Wild rice, game, berries, and fish were abundant throughout the region. Red Lake warriors ranged freely for a hundred miles in all directions, pressing their territorial claims, protecting their people, hunting, trapping, and fishing. Small villages and family enclaves were established at present-day Warren, Minnesota, then at Pembina, North Dakota, and eventually along the Red River of the North. By 1800, some groups had established new villages at Roseau River, Manitoba, and soon after that at Turtle Mountain, North Dakota. Even today those Ojibwe communities claim Red Lake as their motherland.3
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, more Ojibwe and even a few Ottawa and Cree families came from all over the Great Lakes to settle and live at Red Lake. The newcomers brought some new ideas and even some different ways of expressing them. The fabric of social life and political function at Red Lake was evolving, even while the seasons and cycle of the traditional harvest economy remained steadfast. Some kinds of change were obvious, such as the creation of a new Ojibwe political nexus for the people at Red Lake. Other kinds of change, such as language and culture variation, are harder to identify. What made the Red Lake Ojibwe different from the Leech Lake Ojibwe and other communities in the same language group was more than physical location. Language, culture, customs, natural-resource harvest practices, political traditions, and relations with other tribes morphed into something entirely new. This metamorphosis was an ongoing process long before nonnative people came to the region or made an effort to change native people. The Red Lake Ojibwe were an ancient people, but they were something new at the same time. The contrast between cultural continuity and change was a defining feature in the emergence of the Red Lake Ojibwe as a distinct group, and it remains so today.4
The Battle River fight cemented Ojibwe control of Red Lake in 1760. But the things that made the Red Lake Ojibwe such a distinct and dynamic people had been developing for fifteen hundred years before their occupation of northwestern Minnesota. The structure of chieftainship, the clan system, the unique positions of spiritual leaders, the role of women in society, and the relationships between the Ojibwe and the Dakota, the French, the British, and eventually the Americans all served to separate and distinguish the people of Red Lake from other Ojibwe communities and tribes. Those distinctions are what strengthened the people at Red Lake and enabled them to build a small collection of warriors and their families into one of the most powerful tribal nations in North America.
In 1989, Johnson Loud was among hundreds who attended the one hundredth anniversary commemoration of the 1889 Nelson Act, an act of the U.S. Congress and subsequent negotiation with Red Lake tribal chiefs that ceded vast tracts of Red Lake land and converted the remaining unceded Red Lake lands into a reservation. Loud was more than a Red Lake band member; he was a student of his tribe’s history and leadership and a gifted artist. He had been commissioned to develop a new symbol for the Red Lake Nation, one that resonated with its rich history, tradition, and continued sovereignty. That symbol was officially adopted by the Red Lake government as its flag and seal in 1989.5
When Loud developed the Red Lake tribal flag, he studied clan representation on the reservation. Although he did not include every clan at Red Lake on the flag, he did include the clans of all hereditary chiefs and the largest and most common ones represented among the tribal population. Seven original Red Lake clans were put on the flag: bear (makwa), turtle (mikinaak), bullhead (owaazisii), otter (nigig), eagle (migizi), marten (waabizheshi), and kingfisher (ogiishkimanisii).
Formally acknowledging these seven clans as primary symbols on the Red Lake Nation flag said a great deal about the culture, government, and history of Red Lake. Although some of the research is contradictory, scholars who have studied Ojibwe clans all agree on one thing: the traditional Ojibwe leadership clans were loon (maang) and crane (ajijaak). Chieftainship was passed down hereditarily through the father’s side, and these two clans dominated all of the civil chieftainships in Ojibwe country. Red Lake had more than a dozen hereditary chiefs in 1989. Their lineage could be traced all the way back to the Ojibwe settlement of Red Lake. But not one of them was from the loon or crane clans.6
The people of Red Lake are quintessentially Ojibwe, as reflected in their language, culture, and customs. Red Lake has one of the most intact chieftainship traditions of all Ojibwe communities anywhere. Many tribes do not know or keep records of important genealogical information, and almost none use that information to determine leadership responsibilities or for other political purposes (other than tribal enrollment). But at Red Lake, genealogy is the primary determining factor in civil chieftainship even today. And though Red Lake also has adopted a democratic process for electing tribal representatives and the tribal chair, the chiefs are determined by heredity and participate in all political functions of the tribal council today as hereditary civil chiefs.
The lack of traditional Ojibwe leadership clans among the Red Lake chieftainship reflects a dynamic that was introduced in the late 1700s. To understand it, we return again to the Dakota boy adopted and raised as an Ojibwe—White Thunderbird.
When White Thunderbird was captured and adopted he was old enough to know who he was. He was Dakota, and the Dakota had a complicated kin system that established relationships and obligations throughout one’s extended family. The Dakota also had a clan system like their Siouan cousins the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) and most tribes in North America. Since the 1900s, the Dakota clan system has become defunct—a thread pulled from their cultural tapestry that is no longer recoverable. Their kin system remains intact, as do many other critical features of Dakota culture, but clan is no more.
All of this becomes very important in understanding Red Lake chiefs, clans, and governance today. When White Thunderbird was adopted, the adopting family had a choice: they could formally adopt White Thunderbird into the clan of the family patriarch, or they could adopt him without formally changing his clan. They chose the latter. As a result, even though White Thunderbird was adopted as an Ojibwe he retained his Dakota clan, becoming the first Ojibwe person at Red Lake from the kingfisher clan. Even today his clan is emblazoned on the Red Lake Nation flag and on Red Lake Nation automobile license plates, and his clan is one of the most widely represented at Red Lake. In addition, as people from Red Lake established new villages at Turtle Mountain, North Dakota, and Roseau River, Manitoba, members of the kingfisher clan were among the settlers of the new Ojibwe communities there. Today the kingfisher clan is common at Red Lake, Roseau River, and Turtle Mountain, rare almost everywhere else, and virtually unheard of in the eastern reaches of Ojibwe country.7
White Thunderbird introduced the kingfisher clan to Red Lake. But his story was not completely anomalous. The wolf clan was also introduced to the Ojibwe through Dakota paternity. More common among the St. Croix, Mille Lacs, and White Earth bands, the wolf clan is also a large and important clan in Ojibwe culture. The Dakota exerted a profound influence and sparked many transformations in Ojibwe culture. The spiritual and political impacts reverberate to this day.8
Clans are vital to Ojibwe identity today, and in the 1700s they were even more important. The nature of clans underwent significant changes, but many clan taboos and protocols were established early on and remain unchanged. Clan was central to Ojibwe spirituality. Clan protocol structured marriage and village life. Marriage between people of the same clan was one of the strongest taboos in Ojibwe culture and people could be killed for violating it.9
Clans were a strictly patrilineal birthright and established a spiritual connection for the clan member with an animal, bird, or water creature. Even when Ojibwe married non-Indians, the patrilineal structure of the clan system was not altered. Instead, as a birthright (not a ceremonial adoption), children with a nonnative father were automatically adopted into an existing clan. The eagle clan was the adopting clan at Red Lake. As Red Lake grew with new migrants from other parts of Ojibwe country and new additions like White Thunderbird, the number of clans there grew to more than twenty. While some Ojibwe communities struggled with cultural retention in the face of missionary activity, clans stayed strong at Red Lake regardless of the people’s changing faith traditions.10
Red Lake was settled by warriors, and warrior clans dominate the membership of Red Lake even today, especially marten and bear. Because the Red Lake warrior clans found themselves occupying new territory without significant representation from the traditional chief clans, political duties had to be assumed by members of other clans.11
In 1850, Ojibwe missionary George Copway wrote: “The rulers of the Ojibways were inheritors of the power they held. However, when new country was conquered, or new dominions annexed, the first rulers were elected to their offices. Afterwards, the descendants of these elected chiefs ruled the nation, or tribe, and thus power became hereditary.” Explorers Henry Schoolcraft, James Duane Doty, and Charles Christopher Trowbridge concur. In 1820, Trowbridge wrote:
The Chieftainship descends from father to son, and the women are always excluded, so that the line becomes extinct on the death of the last male of the old line. When this happens to be the case (but I believe it seldom happens), the vacancy is filled by election of the man most valiant, brave and powerful, or the most celebrated for wisdom and eloquence; and he inherits the title of chief together with all the honors of the last in power. This practice is never deviated from except by some daring fellow, who usurping the authority holds the tribe in awe by his ferocity or the influence of numerous relatives devoted to his interest. Such a one however is soon disposed of by his enemies.12
The first chiefs at Red Lake were elected, but the succession of chieftainship lines afterward remained for the most part hereditary, passed on from father to son, much as it had been for centuries. The initial election of chiefs at Red Lake meant that hereditary leadership rights were dispersed among various warrior clans, primarily bear, marten, and kingfisher. Ironically, Dakota bloodlines and clans were well represented among the Ojibwe warriors and chiefs at Red Lake—including those who continued to fight and dispossess the Dakota.13
The clans represented when chiefs were originally elected at Red Lake retained their leadership positions even when new waves of Ojibwe people from other clans settled there. The overwhelming majority of Red Lake Ojibwe today are of the bear, eagle, marten, bullhead, kingfisher, and turtle clans. Other clans include sturgeon (name) and caribou (adik). Not all are represented on the tribal flag. Marriage with people from other tribal communities accounts for most of the expanding clan representation at Red Lake today.14
At Red Lake many different people led in war, ceremony, and politics. Red Lakers were warriors. There were no formal military leaders. Nobody ever told someone else to fight or told others to follow. When tough, successful warriors went off to war, less-experienced warriors went with them. When Red Lake was attacked, everyone fought back. In some Ojibwe communities, such as Mille Lacs, there were designated head warriors or war chiefs, but not at Red Lake. At Red Lake, people were inspired not by position, but by action.15
Religious leadership at Red Lake was similar to military leadership in many ways. Nobody was obligated to lead and nobody had to follow. People went to successful healers and stayed away from those who did not have the gift. They went to ceremonies with people they trusted and could not be bothered with anyone else. Spiritual leaders did teach what they knew to the people closest to them, and there were some ceremonial leadership dynasties at Red Lake, especially in Ponemah. But spiritual leaders, like military ones, had to prove their worth.
Political leadership was a hereditary birthright. But here too, leaders had to earn their position. If a hereditary chief tried to control anyone or tell people what to do, he was shunned, or people would move a little farther down the lakeshore, or to a different village. If a chief upset or offended a large family, they would move to a new area, start a new village, and elect a new chief. This happened many times at Red Lake, and the base of hereditary chiefs grew and diversified (by family and clan) as the tribe expanded throughout northwestern Minnesota.
White Thunderbird was born a Dakota, raised Ojibwe, and rose to a position of respect in Ponemah, eventually becoming one of the first elected chiefs at Miquam Bay (Mikwami-wiikwedong, or Ice Bay), southeast of Ponemah. Cultural change at Red Lake made possible his rise in status. Cultural continuity enabled him to pass not just the kingfisher clan, but also his leadership position, on to his son.
They call it the White Sand Dunes (Chi-waasadaawangideg). It is the most exposed and windward part of Red Lake. Prevailing northwest winds whip at the trees and pound surf against the shore. In the winter, snowdrifts sometimes reach twenty feet in height because all the snow on the lake is piled up on the southeast shore, burying the road. In the spring, ice heaves topple trees and push the earth into large, sandy ridges. The dunes closest to the water, devoid of plants and covered in translucent sand, glow white as they reflect sunlight and are visible from twelve miles across the lake.16
When the Dakota lived at Red Lake, they buried their dead at the White Sand Dunes in large earthen mounds, still discernible among the natural ridges farthest from the shore, now topped with maple and ash trees. The Ojibwe never adopted mound burials at Red Lake, preferring instead to inter their dead wherever they lived. In the winter, they buried their dead in spirit homes above the earth, and even built scaffolds to house them. In all other seasons they were buried in shallow graves in front of the family wigwams, and later houses. At Ponemah, that remains the custom today, although scaffolds have been abandoned now in favor of ground burials, even in winter.17
The White Sand Dunes is a sacred place. Bald eagles nest in the trees along the shore and feed in large numbers on smaller fish forced into the shallows by wave action. The dunes are exposed to the wind and water, and bird, water, and animal life of all kinds abounds. So do powerful spirits. People do water ceremonies here in the spring and fall, make offerings, pray, and come searching for answers. There are platforms in the trees all along the lakeshore where young men and women come to fast, giving up food and water for up to four days to seek visions—spiritual awakenings to help them heal, teach, and lead. Some come away with medicine, Indian names to give to others, authority to run sweat-lodge ceremonies, or new songs.
Political, military, social, and religious leaders at Red Lake have always been guided by spiritual practice. From the Battle River fight to the present, meetings of peace and war, endeavors of hunting and harvest, and all of Red Lake’s political councils have always begun with a pipe ceremony. Tribal chairmen at Red Lake customarily introduce themselves with their clans and the native names obtained from dreams or visions while fasting. In 1827, Thomas L. McKenney wrote, “[They] live, and die, confirmed in the belief that they are acting the part which the dream, or some other impression, pointed out to them as indispensable.” At Red Lake, that tradition has never died.18
Red Lakers often say that they fiercely embrace one of the most libertarian cultures in the world. If someone has a vision while fasting, he or she could use that vision to give people their Indian names. If someone dreamed about a hand drum with a blue circle and cedar sticks tied inside of it, the person would make that drum. If someone dreamed about songs for a ceremony, he or she would bring those songs to that ceremony. If a Dakota boy was adopted into the Ojibwe community and his clan was kingfisher, everyone accepted it. The people were free and empowered. Red Lake was spiritually vibrant. New ceremonies and new ways of doing old ceremonies were born and reborn at the White Sand Dunes many times. That freedom was the heart of Red Lake’s libertarianism—broad-minded, open, and growing. This dynamic explains why one family did its first animal-kill feast (oshkinitaagewin) one way, while two hundred yards away another family did it just a little bit differently. Both families were right. There was no rulebook, bible, or institution to shape such decisions. Creating formal social and ceremonial positions was avoided. People were guided by spiritual processes more than by ancient rules.19
The spiritual freedom enjoyed at Red Lake had its frustrations. If someone dreamed about doing a ceremony a certain way, nobody was obligated to attend. In fact, although people were not apt to judge their neighbors for their unique ways of doing things, they were also unlikely to abandon their own. And they would never tolerate someone else trying to impose a cultural idea or practice on others. Time and again, Red Lakers struggled to lead when presenting new and revolutionary ideas—whether around spirituality, war, or politics. The idea or the vision wasn’t rejected, but people could rarely tolerate its being implemented.
When Red Lakers were expanding their domain, it was easy to accommodate divergent social, political, and cultural ideas. People just packed up and moved to a new part of the expanding territory where there was nobody to question the legitimacy of the ideas or their leaders. But when the treaty period began, land loss froze the freedom to expand. Culture did not change overnight, but the physical space had helped create the cultural space, and both were increasingly confined. Now when people had different ways of doing things, they had to tolerate and even accommodate one another.
Compounding the tension this cultural dynamic created was the fact that Red Lake, being on the western frontier of Ojibwe country, was dominated by Ojibwe people from farther east who had the greatest motivation to move. That motivation often emerged from this same cultural process farther east—people with new ideas moved west to get the space they needed to carry out new visions. This is part of what made Red Lake so vibrant and innovative, so full of new ideas and new visions, yet at the same time so resistant to picking up other people’s visions. Red Lake was also dominated by warriors—anyone who told them what to do was in for a fight.
The cultural process was not gender-specific. Women and men both innovated, fasted, dreamed, and led. Clans and chieftainship at Red Lake were patrilineal, but society was matrilocal. Women owned the family dwelling and had great authority in marriage and divorce, even more so than in eastern parts of Ojibwe country. In ceremonies, both men and women played important leadership roles. Women and men often sat on opposite sides of ceremonial lodges to symbolically reinforce the understanding that men and women had equal voice in rituals.20
Women at Red Lake controlled the most important endeavor of the people there: they ran the economy. Groundbreaking scholarship by Brenda Child has illuminated and deepened our understanding of the role of women in Ojibwe economies, especially at Red Lake. Women dominated the economic activity of Ojibwe communities by producing most of the food, clothes, and lodges, and tanning most of the furs for trade. They also did most of the wild rice harvesting, gathering of berries, drying and storing of meat, and maple sugar harvesting, although there was no gender taboo for anyone who participated, and whole families engaged in all such activities.21
The gendered division of labor at Red Lake meant that families functioned best with both men and women, which put economic pressure on the marriage structure. There were fewer men at Red Lake because many died in warfare, arduous travel, and fishing on dangerously thin ice or rough water. As a result, Red Lake, like many Ojibwe communities, embraced polygamy through the 1800s. Polygamy evolved out of need, but persisted after the need began to dissipate. Men sometimes had more than one wife, but women could not have more than one husband. As mortality rates declined for men at Red Lake, women rejected the practice of polygamy. Their power to do so shows that polygamy was more about economic family structure than about sexual power. Assimilation pressure from missionaries and government officials surely played a role in influencing Ojibwe perceptions of family, but polygamy was abandoned in Ponemah (where nobody converted to Christianity) at the same time that it was abandoned in Redby, Red Lake, and Little Rock (where most people converted).22
When Red Lake was attacked, both men and women defended themselves. Men usually pursued war away from home, but not exclusively. Chiefs were usually men, but women often exerted leadership influence. Over time, women at Red Lake grew their authority in many realms. Fannie Johns and Susan Hallett each in turn became village matriarchs and history keepers. Anna Gibbs broke through gender barriers and became the most widely respected spiritual leader in Ponemah.23
Because Red Lake was so fiercely libertarian, because people had their own deep sense of personal spiritual empowerment and agency, because the people were so resistant to being told what to do, leading was a challenge. People loved their freedom so much that they required consensus to engage in joint political action, rather than anyone having to suffer the imposition of someone else’s will. Red Lake was so spiritually vibrant and innovative that there was great diversity in local customs. Consensus was expected but hard to achieve. But on rare and special occasions, when someone had a truly compelling spiritual vision, it motivated broad and sometimes permanent change. The people who brought such visions forward had great influence, and their leadership prevailed across generations.
King Bird (Ogimaa-bines), who was a spiritual leader in the Battle River area near the White Sand Dunes, was given the gift of song. His vision was so powerful that he reshaped Ojibwe music across the region and his descendants (the large Kingbird family of Red Lake) remain one of the most musically gifted families in the region today. They inherit his spiritual gift, and they embrace it, sitting boys at the drum or on their fathers’ laps to learn Ojibwe music from the age of four. Many of Red Lake’s most prominent political and spiritual leaders built their influence through this same spiritual process, in this same spiritual place—Anna Gibbs, Thomas Stillday Jr., Dan Raincloud, Nodin Wind, and many more.
From the arrival of the first Ojibwe in Red Lake around 1760 to the present, the key to leadership in social, political, and military matters has always been influence, and influence had to be earned. Leadership was not limited to men and it did not happen in great halls of power, through legislation, or by leading armies into battle. It happened at the White Sand Dunes.
There was something in the water at Red Lake, a genuine spiritual force that bonded people to that place and empowered them with a fearless sense of potential. Because seemingly nothing could stop them and nobody outside or inside their communities could tell anybody else what to do, people were inherently resistant to following. In this unique cultural environment, people were forced to build and sharpen certain skills: toughness, resilience, adaptation, and collaboration. The land and people shaped chiefs of remarkable ability to innovate and adapt to new political environments without allowing their own to be assimilated. Those leaders reshaped Red Lake’s political culture over and over—connected and identifiable to their ancestors, but new and forward thinking at the same time.
During the first hundred years of Ojibwe settlement at Red Lake, the Ojibwe became one of the most numerous tribes in North America and built hundreds of primary villages from Quebec to Montana and from Illinois to northern Manitoba. The Ojibwe people did not function as one nation politically in spite of sharing many key aspects of language and culture. Within the Red Lake region there were networks of shared political and military communication, but each village was independent. There was no head chief, king, or other top official; rather, there were numerous chiefs from many distinct villages. Even neighboring places like Ponemah had different chiefs than nearby Battle River, Miquam Bay, and Ponemah Point. Nobody was chief of them all.
Ojibwe leadership dynamics were changing before the Ojibwe came to Red Lake, but its settlement was the catalyst for even more profound cultural changes in leadership. Because clan designation did not restrict chieftainship at Red Lake and new villages were being established not just along the lakeshore but throughout northwestern Minnesota, new leaders and new lines of chieftainship were out of necessity being established throughout the late 1700s and early 1800s.
As had been the custom throughout Ojibwe country, if there was a major political disagreement, one group often moved down the river or along the lakeshore and established a new village—but changes accelerated in Red Lake. New villages and chiefs emerged at Warroad, Blackduck, Warren, Red Lake River, Clearwater River, Sandy River, the north shore of Upper Red Lake, and throughout the region. For generations, anyone who exerted too much control got left behind in Michigan, Wisconsin, or eastern Ontario, and the same thing happened at Red Lake as well, as people left again to establish new villages at Turtle Mountain, Roseau River, and elsewhere.
Red Lake was home to warriors who believed in personal agency and self-directed power. To the people there, that was a sign of strength, and it spoke to the power of the people rather than the power of chiefs. At Red Lake, chiefs did not speak for all the people, and village chiefs never spoke for people outside of their respective villages. But French, British, and American officials always expected them to do so. That made for awkward diplomacy between Red Lake leaders and white folk. It also strained intratribal relations and politics. This caused trouble enough during the fur trade era, but when American officials wanted Red Lake chiefs to permit land cessions, it became painful.
Even though each village was independent, American officials grouped all Indians throughout the Red Lake region together and considered them a single band. This was a Euro-American construct, not an indigenous one. Calling the Ojibwe living in villages on the shores of Upper Red Lake, Lower Red Lake, the Red Lake River, the Thief River, and Lake of the Woods “the Red Lake Band” did not make them a unified political group. The idea of collective political or cultural identity emerged later, and even today is contested by many Red Lake Ojibwe.24
The chiefs of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa (as the Americans called them) never made decisions about politics, economics, or warfare as a united group before the American government tried to convince them to sell their lands at the Old Crossing Treaty in 1863. From then on, although many people at Red Lake took issue with anyone speaking on behalf of people who did not live in a particular chief’s village, the representative nature of Red Lake’s tribal politics increased.
Decision making often took a long time at Red Lake because the political culture made chiefs humble and reluctant to speak on someone else’s behalf. The process was grassroots, cooperative, and consensus-oriented. Political council began with a smoking of the pipe, prayers for guidance, and invoking the creator, the spirits in the wind, the water, mother earth, the clans, and local spirits like those at the White Sand Dunes. The very word for council, zagaswe’idiwin, literally means “a smoking.” When leaders could not arrive at consensus, nobody could overpower a smaller faction or force them to adhere to the will of the majority. Instead, smaller factions and leaders who could not align with the majority simply left the council.25
Chiefs did not have the power to command or control, but they did have the power to abstain from decisions or walk away from council, an act that usually negated the power of the council to speak for the entire community. When a faction or village chief refused to participate in council or broke away from an ongoing council, the council’s authority was diminished and able only to speak for the villages still represented. This posed a major problem at every land cession. In 1863, Redby chief He Who Is Spoken To (Medwe-ganoonind) and all of the Ponemah chiefs refused to sign off on the land cession. He Who Is Spoken To walked away from the treaty signing; Ponemah boycotted the council altogether. In 1889, several chiefs, including all of the Ponemah chiefs, refused to sign the agreement for the land cession. That the government took their land anyway was seen as a fundamental betrayal. U.S. officials called it a binding agreement between nations.
The British and Americans tried to manipulate Red Lake leadership culture to their advantage. Through the gifting of medals and flags, they repeatedly declared that cooperative Indians were chiefs. The people of Red Lake were completely unimpressed by assertions of position from anyone of any race. According to George Copway, “Fear of the nation’s censure acted as a mighty band, binding all in one social, honourable compact. They would not as brutes be whipped into duty. They would as men be persuaded to the right.” Nothing could trump Red Lake reliance on consensus politics, hereditary chieftainship rights, and earned influence.26
Red Lake chiefs who did want to shape the will of a council had two primary ways to do it—showing and telling. Showing meant action—demonstrations of raw spiritual power, bold ideas in motion, or actions of service and self-sacrifice. Telling meant engaged listening first, respectful speaking second. An established reputation and advanced years usually helped. Establishing influence in council required deep relationships and oratorical skill—patient and pointed at the same time. Paul LeJeune wrote of the Ojibwe, “All the authority of their chief is in his tongue’s end, for he is powerful in so far as he is eloquent.”27
The culture at Red Lake was highly resistant to political gamesmanship. Wealth accumulation was a foreign concept, and chiefs often had fewer possessions than their people. In 1838, Anna Jameson noted, “the chief is seldom either so well lodged or so well dressed as the others.” Johann Kohl wrote:
As long as a man has anything, according to the moral law of the Indians, he must share it with those who want; and no one can attain any degree of respect among them who does not do so most liberally. They are almost communists and hence there are no rich men among them…. Frequently, when a chief receives very handsome goods, either in exchange for his peltry, or as a recognition of his high position, he will throw them all in a heap, call his followers, and divide all among them. If he grow[s] very zealous he will pull off his shirt and give it away, and say, “So you see, I have now nothing more to give; I am poorer than any one of you, and I commend myself to your charity.”28
A chief was expected to be generous with food, trade goods, and eventually treaty payments. This kept chiefs humble and service-minded. But during the treaty period, American diplomats undermined this value. Red Lake chiefs became financial arbiters, with the very powerful position of not just negotiating the land deals, but also handing out the cash. Some were even granted private land grants. How chiefs were treated was starting to change. Who was chief mattered more than ever before.29
There was a reason for everything Red Lakers did. The people were devoted to family, collaborative, deeply spiritual, hardworking, and extremely respectful. Red Lake warriors did not look for or live by violence, but they could be fiercely protective of the people and place they loved. War was a means to an end, not a lifeway. But it did have its reasons, and even some rules.
Ojibwe warriors came to Red Lake for territory, for spiritual quest fulfillment, for strategic advantage in protecting their families, and for greater ease of access to food. They stayed in Red Lake for the same reasons. Missionary Samuel Pond summed up the territorial incentives for Ojibwe–Dakota conflict:
If they were to live at all, they must have a country to live in; and if they were to live by hunting, they must have a very large country, from which all others were excluded. Such a country they had, not because their enemies were willing they should occupy it, but because they were able and willing to defend it by force of arms. If they had not resisted the encroachments of their enemies, they would soon have been deprived of the means of subsistence and must have perished. If they would have game to kill, they must kill men too.30
The Red Lake Ojibwe often waged war for practical reasons such as food and safety. But there were cultural beliefs about war that kept Red Lake in conflict even when there were no practical reasons to fight. Red Lakers believed that the body was a temporary house for a person’s soul. They were not humans looking for a spiritual experience; they were spirits having a temporary human experience. They did not have souls; they were souls, and they had bodies for a little while. When someone died, his or her body went back to the earth, but the soul lived forever and traveled to the spirit world. When someone was killed, the killing had the potential to offend the departing soul and inhibit his or her departure to the place of never-ending happiness. Something had to be done about that.
When someone was murdered or killed in war, there were ceremonial options to remove the potential offense to his or her soul and enable a peaceful departure to the spirit world. One way was through initiation into the medicine dance, the primary religious society of the Ojibwe. Another common alternative was through a peaceful reconciliation between the killer and the family of the victim. This custom was variously called “covering the dead,” “paying the body,” or “wiping off the blood.” The murderer, or representatives of that person’s family or community, offered gifts and food, as Frederic Baraga observed: “Sometimes the relatives of the killed are appeased by the relatives of the murderer, by great presents.” William W. Warren called it “to heal the matter Indian fashion, paying in goods for the lives lost.” This usually resolved intratribal Ojibwe–Ojibwe violence but was hard to make happen in intertribal Dakota–Ojibwe violence.31
When peaceful options for removing offense to a departing soul were not available, the bereaved family could remove it themselves by seeking revenge. One early Ojibwe missionary observed: “their departed relatives will not rest in peace unless some human beings are sacrificed to them.” Around 1800, when Red Lakers settled Pembina, one of the early chiefs there, Lynx Head (Bizhiwoshtigwaan), said: “We bear with us … those that were our friends and children, but we cannot lay them down, except [when] we come into the camp of our enemies.” Thus even when it was not critical to Red Lake territorial defense, Red Lake warriors often went to war for this cultural reason. Successful warriors returning from battle performed ceremonies to remove the offenses on the souls of their own dead relatives. Different families had different ways to perform this kind of ceremony. One of the most common was through the scalp dance.32
Red Lakers did scalp. The scalp was brought home and used as a tool to remove the offense on the souls of family members killed by enemies. Henry Schoolcraft observed an Ojibwe scalp dance on July 10, 1832, conducted at the graves of family members killed in war. Scalping was considered honorable because it was not done for the purpose of disrespectful mutilation but for respectful ceremony for beloved relatives. Through prayer and dance, the offended spirit for whom vengeance was taken could be sent on to the spirit world. The scalp was believed to house the spirit of the slain person. Victorious warriors customarily blackened their faces after battle as a symbol of mourning for those they had slain. Often, they put tobacco down at the camp of their overrun enemies as an offering to the spirits whom they may have offended in exacting their revenge.33
Because this custom was shared across the region, it was also considered an honor to be scalped. One Ojibwe warrior said, “we consider it an honour to have the scalps of our countrymen exhibited in the villages of our enemies, in testimony of our valour.” Joseph Nicollet said, “They consider it an honor to be scalped. Not to be scalped is a sign of contempt.” At Warroad, the local chief, Sword (Ashaweshk), led a defensive party against a Dakota raid and was knocked unconscious and half of his scalp was removed. He survived and considered the wound an exceptional honor.34
For the first hundred years of Ojibwe settlement at Red Lake, Ojibwe–Dakota war persisted. Territorial pressure eased after a few decades, but the cultural drivers for conflict endured. At the same time that conflict continued, peaceful interconnections between the Ojibwe and Dakota also deepened. White Thunderbird’s adoption at Ponemah was not anomalous. Many Dakota were adopted into Ojibwe communities and vice versa. There were also many intertribal marriages between the Ojibwe and Dakota. Dakota chiefs Wabasha and Red Wing had Ojibwe heritage. Ojibwe chiefs Big Foot, White Fisher, and Flat Mouth had Dakota ancestors. From the beginning of Ojibwe settlement in northwestern Minnesota to the present, most Red Lake Ojibwe have had Dakota blood running through their veins. Even during periods of conflict, Red Lake Ojibwe traveled far onto the plains to hunt buffalo, often in the peaceful company of Dakota under temporary truces. The Ojibwe called such truces biindigodaadiwin (“to enter one another’s lodges”). Ojibwe and Dakota hunters literally entered one another’s lodges, slept in them together, smoked the same pipes, and formed friendships and sometimes marriages. When they returned to Red Lake, territorial or cultural imperatives might have them at war with one another again at any time.35
The land changes quickly west of Red Lake, and the nature of warfare changed just as fast. Rivers and creeks flow through northwestern Minnesota, coursing west and north to and then through the Red River Valley. In 1800, Alexander Henry reported that the Ojibwe traveled throughout their newly acquired territory by canoe and had few horses compared to Plains tribes. The Dakota had had easy access to horses for nearly one hundred years already. Their transition to plains life was greatly aided by their close relationships with the western Lakota. Horses provided a great advantage in warfare when the Red Lakers stepped out of the shelter of the forests. In 1798, one Red Lake chief said: “While they keep to the Plains with their Horses we are not a match for them; for we being foot men, they could get windward of us, and set fire to the grass. When we marched for the woods, they would be there before us, dismount and under cover fire on us. Until we have horses like them, we must keep to the Woods and leave the Plains to them.”36
In those early days, everything else worked to the benefit of the Ojibwe in war. Red Lake was upstream from Dakota villages. When traveling in their own territory, Red Lakers could cover the distance to enemies quickly by canoe. When retreating, their birchbark canoes were faster and more buoyant than Dakota dugouts.
The lure of better hunting increased their territorial ambitions, and realizing those ambitions required horses. From 1800 to 1820, the Red Lake Ojibwe began to build horse herds for travel, hunting, and war. Red Lakers started to rely heavily on big-game hunting too, especially woodland caribou, moose, elk, deer, and buffalo. That took them everywhere in the Red River Valley and even farther out onto the plains. By the time of the Nelson Act in 1889, most families had at least one horse, and many families had many horses. In Ponemah, a wild horse herd grew from stray and runaway mustangs. The Ponemah feral herd persisted through the 1970s, within the memory of many reservation residents today. The acquisition of horses made Red Lake unique among Minnesota’s Ojibwe communities in the early 1800s, encouraging cultural evolution in hunting and war and setting up Red Lake as the staging ground for Ojibwe settlement of Roseau River, Pembina, Turtle Mountain, and numerous Ojibwe communities in Manitoba.37
Another advantage Red Lake had over the Dakota was geographical. Red Lake was continually being reinforced by Ojibwe migrants from eastern Ojibwe communities. The Ojibwe had greater ease of access to guns in trade and more furs to trade for whatever they needed. All Ojibwe enemies were on one front, whereas the Dakota had enemies in almost every direction. The Ojibwe also had a lot more friends than the Dakota. They had powerful European trade alliances and strong military allies in the Cree and Assiniboine. They even forged an alliance with the Mandan. The Dakota were often overwhelmed—they could not fight everyone all at once.
In 1800, Ojibwe from Red Lake went to one of the Mandan villages to parlay with the Mandan, Cree, and Assiniboine. While they sat in council, the Dakota attacked. The Mandan fought them alone until their chief called out to the attackers, “Depart from our village, or we will let upon you our friends, the Ojibbeways, who have been sitting here all day, and are now fresh and unwearied.” The attackers replied, “This is a vain boast made with a design to conceal your weakness. You have no Ojibbeways in your house, and if you had hundreds, we neither fear nor regard them. The Ojibbeways are women, and if your village were full of them, we would, for that reason, sooner come among you.” The Ojibwe and their allies sallied forth from behind the fortified walls of the Mandan village in a spirited attack and forced the Dakota into a rapid retreat.38
Red Lakers had practical and cultural reasons for fighting, but leading a war party was not an easy thing. If a Red Laker wanted to put a war expedition together, he was rarely stopped, but war leaders also could not command people to follow them. Such actions were entirely voluntary on the part of both participants and leaders. There were times when Ojibwe people did participate en masse in military events—driving the Dakota out of Red Lake, for example, or when attacked. But usually offensive military events were small and lacked any real command-and-control directive. Red Lakers were not soldiers—shaped and molded into uniform fighting machines. They were warriors—unique, independent, highly skilled, and spiritually empowered and motivated. For Red Lakers, the way of the warrior was not a culture of conflict, even though conflict was part of the culture. It was a path to safety, protection, a higher standard of living, and spiritual responsibility. It was about building their communities, not destroying someone else’s.
Wild horses at Red Lake, 1941. Minnesota Historical Society.
As soon as the Ojibwe settled Red Lake, they became a juggernaut of military power in the region. Red Lake was protected by Ojibwe communities to the north, south, and east. In turn, it became the linchpin that buffered and protected those places from Dakota attacks. With the birchbark canoe and the gun, Red Lakers were masters of the water; having horses in significant numbers enabled them to push westward after 1800.
Red Lakers were accomplished fishermen, rice harvesters, hunters, and warriors. They had clear advantages in their conflict with the Dakota—better technology, a more easily defended homeland, greater numbers, and more allies. They intentionally pushed the Dakota westward, but even if someone at Red Lake wanted to stop it, there was no way to control the dynamic at play. More and more Ojibwe people were coming to Red Lake. More and more Red Lakers were spinning off in small family groups and lesser villages throughout northwestern Minnesota. Buffalo, elk, and woodland caribou hunting was excellent. Fish were plentiful. Wild rice was abundant. And it was at least as safe as anywhere else in Ojibwe country. The Red Lake people who spread throughout the region were simply trying to live; they did not intend to have any particular cultural impact beyond their own flourishing. But from 1790 to 1863, Red Lakers gave birth to the Plains Ojibwe and settled Pembina, Turtle Mountain, and many communities in Manitoba. They also contributed greatly to the rise of the Métis.
Red Lake was on the move immediately after the Battle River fight in 1760, and by the late 1700s was sending war parties directly to Sisseton to attack the Dakota. The Dakota sent war parties to Red Lake throughout the early missionary period in the 1850s, but the Dakota had no choice but to relocate most of their people off of the Red River war road to Sisseton and Lake Traverse. When Father George Anthony Belcourt came to Pembina in 1831, he said, “The Crees and Assiniboins regard themselves as equally masters of these lands with the Chippewas, having acquired them jointly with the latter.” The Cree and Assiniboine established new villages in Manitoba while the Red Lake Ojibwe established Roseau River, Manitoba, and Pembina, North Dakota. In 1790, Pembina was populated almost entirely with Ojibwe people from Red Lake and Lake of the Woods. By 1795, it was impervious to Dakota attack. Alexander Henry, who established a trading post at Pembina in 1798, said that the people at Pembina still considered themselves Red Lake Ojibwe, even though the village grew rapidly to more than two thousand, with many Ojibwe and even Ottawa from farther east moving there.39
The Spanish and British sparred over trading rights on the plains in the late 1700s when Red Lakers were settling Pembina. The Spanish had trading posts on the Missouri River; the British had posts at Winnipeg. Tribes from the entire region traveled overland and by canoe to connect with both. In 1796, the Spanish complained that the Red Lake and Pembina Ojibwe were in the British interest and hostile to their traders along the Missouri River. In 1797, the North West Company established a trading post at Pembina. In 1798, the Hudson’s Bay Company followed suit.40
By 1800, the Red Lake Ojibwe were able not just to fortify and build the village at Pembina but to range far onto the plains, hunting buffalo and fighting the Dakota. The Red River Valley was now Ojibwe territory. The Dakota at Lake Traverse were hard-pressed by the Red Lakers. At the same time, Leech Lake Ojibwe established a new village at Otter Tail Lake, Minnesota, which is close to the mouth of the Otter Tail River near Wahpeton, North Dakota. Some reports claimed that Red Lake Ojibwe traveled as far as the Rocky Mountains, and they frequently began to camp at Turtle Mountain, North Dakota. In 1806, Alexander Henry reported a large settlement of Ojibwe and Cree at Turtle Mountain.41
Ojibwe territorial pressure kept mounting. In 1803, Dakota chiefs Red Thunder and Standing Buffalo moved from Sisseton to Lake Traverse to consolidate the Dakota population for better defense because of repeated Ojibwe attacks. The Ojibwe now sought control of Spirit Lake (Devils Lake), North Dakota, a populous Dakota village. In 1805, large numbers of Red Lake and Pembina Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Cree made joint hunting camps around Spirit Lake. That year there were at least three significant battles between the Ojibwe and Dakota around the lake. Pembina Ojibwe chiefs Little Clam (Esens) and Little Chief (Ogimaans) were killed in separate attacks.42
The Dakota tried to push back. In 1821, they killed two whites and several Ojibwe traders in Red Lake territory. In 1823, Dakota scouts ran into Count Giacomo Beltrami’s expedition on the Red Lake River, which was guided by Red Lake Ojibwe. The Ojibwe guides deserted the expedition immediately and fled back to Red Lake. William H. Keating came to the Red River Valley in 1824 and reported that the Red Lake Ojibwe had well-established distinctions between residents of various villages, calling the Ojibwe at the Red River outlet zaagiiwininiwag (“people of the outlet”) and those in villages on the shore of Red Lake miskwaagamiiwi-zaaga’iganininiwag (“people of Red Lake”). Major Stephen Long embarked on five major exploring and surveying expeditions in the region, affirming the observations of Keating and Beltrami about sustained Dakota counterattacks against Red Lake. Long reported that Black Man (Makadewinini) and Great Hare (Chi-waabooz) were chiefs at Red Lake at this time.43
Red Lake’s greatest influence in bringing the Ojibwe to the plains lay in the settlement of Pembina, Roseau, and Turtle Mountain. Once those villages were established, their population grew rapidly. Throughout the region, small, independent villages were popping up as the Ojibwe population moved west and increasingly occupied territory. The independence of each of these communities was soon unquestioned. Red Lake was not controlling new settlements as part of a common polity, but rather was supporting their settlement and independence. From Turtle Mountain and Pembina, the Ojibwe expanded throughout the Northern Plains. In 1824–25, the Ojibwe established a village on the prairie between Turtle Mountain and Bismarck on Buffalo Lodge Lake (Bizhiki Endaad) by present-day Towner, North Dakota, hunting buffalo and planting corn. It was the object of ferocious Dakota attacks. From 1829 to 1832, Kenneth McKenzie and George Catlin observed numerous Ojibwe warriors on the plains as far west as the Yellowstone River.44
Red Lake’s expansion onto the plains was not entirely violent; long periods of genuinely cooperative peace punctuated the territorial advance of the Ojibwe. In 1836–37, the Red Lake, Pembina, and Otter Tail Lake Ojibwe were peacefully hunting together with the Wah’petonwan Dakota. William Aitkin withdrew the American Fur Company trading post at Otter Tail Lake because the Ojibwe preferred to trade at the Dakota post at Lake Traverse. Red Lake Ojibwe frequently journeyed far onto the plains, sometimes independently, sometimes in the company of their relatives from Pembina, Leech Lake, or Otter Tail Lake. In 1836, it was reported that Red Lakers made annual hunting trips to the Sheyenne River, on the edge of the Ojibwe–Dakota territorial boundary.45
Although the Ojibwe gained substantial territory fighting the Dakota, it cost lives and daily stress. Red Lake chief Great Wind (Chi-noodin) claimed to have taken more than fifty Dakota scalps in various battles west of the Red River and in Manitoba. Dakota warriors were equally celebrated, and the cost for both sides was tremendous. In the late 1840s, the Ojibwe built huge breastworks of earth, logs, and stone around their satellite villages in the vicinity of Turtle Mountain to better protect themselves from enemy attack. In 1847, the Ojibwe from Otter Tail and Leech Lakes ceded land for a tiny payment of guns, blankets, and traps, with no financial remuneration, in order to have the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) and Menominee relocated to Long Prairie, Minnesota, as a buffer from Dakota attacks.46
We do not know how long White Thunderbird lived, but his impact rippled through time. He brought the Dakota kingfisher clan to the Ojibwe and his descendants were among the Red Lake warriors who pushed west. Even today the kingfisher is one of the most widely represented clans among the Plains Ojibwe. As the kingfishers spread, so too did the spiritual, military, social, and political culture of Red Lake.
When Red Lakers settled Pembina in the late 1700s it was strictly an Ojibwe community, an offshoot of the population at Red Lake. That changed over the next fifty years. Cree, Assiniboine, and Ottawa Indians settled there along with the Ojibwe, as did many French and British trappers and traders. The French government left Canada after signing the Treaty of Paris in 1763 at the conclusion of the French and Indian War. Their fur traders, many of whom had intermarried with Indians or had Indian blood themselves, were left behind. At Pembina, Indians from these four tribes and two European nations mingled, mixed, and married for generations. Ojibwe and French were the largest groups there, and out of their sustained fraternization a new culture and people was born: the Métis. They had their own language, Michif, largely consisting of Ojibwe verbs and French nouns. Eventually, they evolved their own way of doing things and their own political and military ambitions.
The Métis did not see themselves as French, British, Ojibwe, or Cree. Like the Red Lakers who established Pembina, they highly valued their freedom from European military and political control. Like Red Lakers, they also felt free from one another—nobody could tell them what to do or how to live. But through the 1800s, they increasingly felt distinct from Red Lake. Many of them were Catholic, a belief brought by the French Catholic settlers at Pembina. That was reinforced with the arrival of Catholic missionaries: Fathers Severe Joseph Nicolas Dumoulin and Joseph Norbert Provencher in 1818, Father George Anthony Belcourt in 1831, and Father Joseph Goiffon in 1856. The Métis had operated as traders before coming to Pembina and continued that economic lifestyle afterward, eventually dominating the Red River trade by canoe and overland by oxcart. The Red Lakers who settled at Pembina had no objections to so many Europeans coming to their community to live. They were trading partners for Red Lake trappers and buffalo hunters. They were military allies in fending off Dakota attacks. And they were often friends and family as well. By the time it was evident that the Métis were distinct from the Ojibwe and a force in their own right, there was both no need to interrupt Métis ascension and no way to do it.47
After a few generations, the Métis at Pembina were thoroughly racially mixed, often referred to as bois brûlés (burnt wood) because of their dark complexions. Some of the Métis population called themselves gens libres, or free men, because they were the descendants of liberated French indentured servants. In 1811, the Earl of Selkirk brought many Scottish peasants to Pembina. Like the French coureurs de bois (traders) there, they too absorbed into the Métis population. Joseph Renville, Simon McGillivray, Lyman Warren, and other traders among the Ojibwe married native women. Their children were mixed bloods, but not Métis. Métis did not mean mixed blood—it was more than that. The Métis had a hybrid culture and a distinct language of their own. Many were mixed bloods, but that was not a requirement to be part of the new culture at Pembina.48
The Métis played contending trading companies off of one another with great skill. The Hudson’s Bay Company and the North West Company had a bitter economic rivalry that sometimes got bloody and often engulfed the Métis community. In 1823, Major Stephen Long established an American presence at Pembina. Soon the American Fur Company was competing with the British. The Métis were growing economically, politically, militarily, and in sheer numbers.49
Like the Red Lakers, the Métis acquired horses and hunted buffalo. For decades, Métis friendship and alliance with their relatives at Red Lake kept Pembina safe from overwhelming Dakota attack. By 1830, the Ojibwe and Métis dominated the Red River Valley. Alfred Brunson estimated the population in the valley to be 25,000 people, most being Métis and Ojibwe. The Dakota, who still fought the Ojibwe and Métis, feared being overwhelmed and wrote two letters in 1844 to Métis leader Cuthbert Grant in an attempt to establish peace. Over the next two decades, the Métis increasingly handled their own defense independently and spread across Manitoba. Turtle Mountain, which, like Pembina, began as an Ojibwe community around 1805, was by 1845 populated with large numbers of Métis, Cree, and Ojibwe.50
In many ways, Red Lake helped give birth to the Métis. Then the Métis grew in power, influence, and numbers, imprinting heavily on the Ojibwe community at Turtle Mountain, and forming many independent Métis communities in Canada. They eventually tried to gain independence there, fighting the British during the Louis Riel Rebellion in 1869 along the Red River and then during the North-West Rebellion in 1885. After their military defeats, some Métis maintained independent cultural enclaves in Canada. Some took refuge and absorbed into white communities in the United States and Canada. And some sought refuge in Ojibwe and other tribal communities, especially at Turtle Mountain, White Earth, and Red Lake. Father Thomas Borgerding, who served as Catholic priest at Red Lake for many years, estimated that twenty-five hundred Ojibwe, Métis, and French were buried at St. Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in Red Lake by the time of the Nelson Act in 1889.51
White Thunderbird’s era at Red Lake saw significant cultural and political change, and during that same period the tribal economy was also transformed. Like all Ojibwe, Red Lakers were harvesters. Failure to consistently produce food by traditional harvest methods meant starvation and death. They lived in a place that was cold, harsh, and forbidding, but also lush and full of resources.
The nature of the harvest at Red Lake changed over the first few generations of Ojibwe settlement. West of Red Lake was the Red River Valley—home to the most densely concentrated elk and buffalo herds in the world, with numerous smaller lakes and rivers that were less impressive than Red Lake for fishing but excellent habitat for moose and woodland caribou, which were numerous there. Red Lakers followed the path of least resistance. They hunted the big game west of Red Lake and throughout the Red River Valley. Once Red Lakers had horses, they ranged farther and farther onto the plains and came to depend more and more on the chase. They retained all their other resources and skills, but their diet and culture were transformed.52
Red Lakers were trappers too. As the fur trade grew and Europeans got closer to Red Lake and easier to trade with directly, the importance of trapping increased, which led Red Lakers to diversify their economy. Everyone at Red Lake had to know about harvesting of all kinds. But increasingly, some of the Red Lake people became specialists at trapping while others specialized in buffalo hunting. In 1794–95, the North West Company reported 211 otter pelts and 1,500 beaver harvested at Red Lake and brought to Grand Portage for sale. In 1806, the company established a post at Red Lake.53
In 1796, North West Company trader Jean Baptiste Cadotte Jr. (later Anglicized as John Baptiste Cadotte) spent the winter at Sandy Lake, Minnesota, and traveled extensively around Red Lake. Man of the Rapids (Bawatigoowinini), one of Cadotte’s Ojibwe guides, stayed in Red Lake, got married, and raised a family. When William Warren interviewed him nearly sixty years later, he was the sole surviving member of the expedition. Warren claimed that Red Lake chief Feathers in Different Directions (Wewanjigwan) regarded the arrival of the Cadotte expedition in 1796 as a date when Red Lake was safely and undisputedly in Ojibwe hands.54
The North West Company, Hudson’s Bay Company, and even Spanish traders on the Missouri River were vying for the Red Lake fur business. In 1823, the United States began to assert more influence in the region with a series of exploratory and political missions. In 1847, the American Fur Company built a post on the south shore of Red Lake. That building was still standing in 1888 when Thomas Borgerding and John G. Morrison charted the area.55
The fur trade led to an evolution in the culture at Red Lake. Collaboration and collective harvest had dominated Ojibwe practices there for generations. Now, while those values were still important, they were infused with new ideas about specialized skill, individual ownership of and profit from the harvest, and intratribal trade and commerce. Red Lakers began to supply Leech Lakers with buffalo meat and fish. Red Lake and Leech Lake Ojibwe cut an overland trail from Pike Bay to Lake Andrusia, past the southern tip of Turtle River Lake, across high ground north of Lake Julia, to Mud Lake, and then to the Red Lake villages. Commerce grew. The American Fur Company saw the potential of the intratribal and intertribal trade and built a post on Little Turtle Lake. It was charted by Ralph H. Dickinson in 1897. Many Leech Lake families were soon traveling the trail not just to trade, but to join in hunting the Red River Valley. That deepened relationships between Leech Lake and Red Lake families. In 1849, Jonathan E. Fletcher, Winnebago Indian agent, reported that a Dakota war party attacked the Leech Lakers at Lake Winnibigoshish. Red Lake warriors rallied and ran over the new overland trail to reinforce the Ojibwe at Leech Lake and drove the Dakota war party out.56
As Red Lakers embraced new kinds of hunting, travel, and trade, they also experimented with farming. Northwestern Minnesota is ecologically diverse. The Red River Valley has some of the best farmland in the world. But north of Red Lake is primarily swamp and nearly impossible to cultivate. Along the immediate western shoreline of Red Lake is a microclimate, with nitrate-rich topsoil well suited to farming cereal grains. When the Ojibwe arrived in Red Lake, they had knowledge of traditional tribal crops such as corn, tobacco, and squash—crops that were not widely farmed at first but that grew in importance over time.
In 1837, Ojibwe people in central Minnesota ceded land to the U.S. government for the first time, and white settlers came close to Red Lake territory to stay. That process only grew, and gradually exerted pressure on Red Lakers to become more sedentary. Missionaries came to Red Lake at the same time, and Red Lakers were happy to add to their ancient knowledge of farming with European foods, especially cereal grains.
The initial success of farming at Red Lake was widely documented by government officials and missionaries. In the winter of 1842–43, fifty families from Leech Lake and other Ojibwe communities wintered at Red Lake and were fed from the surplus grain and vegetable harvests. Alfred Brunson, agent at La Pointe, bought a hundred dollars’ worth of the Red Lake corn surplus for agency use in Wisconsin. In 1850, the Office of Indian Affairs reported, “The Red Lake and Pembina bands derive their subsistence chiefly from agriculture. To this mode of life they have been led by the persuasions of their excellent missionaries … according to the estimates of their traders, they will this year produce not less than two thousand bushels of corn. In the winter season they move their camps west of Red River to hunt the buffalo which still abound in that region.” The commissioner of Indian affairs reported the following year:
The prospect of success at Red Lake is more encouraging than at either of the other stations (Cass Lake and Winnipeg Lake). The band at that place will raise the present season an abundant supply of corn and potatoes. They are becoming more industrious and marking more rapid improvement than any other band in the territory. They are beginning to feel in some measure, the importance of educating their children…. The soil at Red Lake is the best I have seen in the territory and produces abundantly almost all kinds of grain and vegetables; and the lake also abounds in excellent fish.57
In 1853, Indian agent D. B. Herriman reported that Indian farmers at Red Lake were producing wheat with a yield of forty-five bushels per acre. In 1869 seven thousand bushels of grain were harvested at Red Lake. Because farming was so successful in the microclimate on Red Lake’s western shore and in the Red River Valley, many government officials assumed it would be the same elsewhere in Red Lake territory; that was a miscalculation for which Red Lakers and many white settlers ultimately paid a heavy price. But where farming was good, it was great, and even today some Red Lake families still operate farms commercially on the west end of the reservation.58
Red Lake chiefs at this time included Feathers in Different Directions and Crooked Arm (Gaawashkweniked). Feathers in Different Directions, Crooked Arm, and other chiefs at Red Lake often parlayed with the U.S. government through councils. In 1856, the chiefs forbade the government from cutting any more timber on Red Lake land unless the government first built a council house and a house for each family in each community. It was a powerful statement, even though they did not get full concessions. The request showed that Red Lake leaders were thinking of their people first and were proactively engaging the U.S. government rather than passively waiting for white men to act. There was no doubt that whites coveted Red Lake land, and the chiefs could feel the pressure building. As early as 1851, Governor Alexander Ramsey tried to initiate a land cession at Red Lake, but he was unsuccessful.59
Red Lake warriors traveled where they wanted. They hunted where they wanted. They suffered few restrictions, except those that were self-imposed. The people respected their chiefs, but chiefs did not rule—they represented. The chiefs were primarily spokesmen, and if they deviated from the will of the people, they simply stood alone. The Americans looked at the chiefs differently than the people of Red Lake did, and when the government finally came after the land, it tested not just the Red Lake harvest, hunting, fur, and farm economy, but the very structure of Red Lake’s political culture. Big changes were at hand.
From the Battle River fight in 1760 to the Old Crossing Treaty in 1863, the influence of the Red Lake Ojibwe continued to grow in the region. It must have seemed like nobody could challenge Red Lake’s rise. Imagine the surprise of the Red Lake warriors to learn that despite everything they had accomplished, there was a secret Dakota village in the heart of their territory.
In the late 1820s, a group of Cree and Assiniboine made a temporary peace with the Dakota, during which someone disclosed the existence of a large Dakota village at the outlet of the Thief River into the Red Lake River. The Cree told the Red Lake Ojibwe, and the Ojibwe dispatched scouts to see if any of this was true.
Red Lake scouts confirmed that there was indeed a secret Dakota village. The Dakota had built a massive earthen palisade around their village. It was impossible to see their lodges from any distance without breaching the dirt embankment, which not only concealed the village but also protected it from enemy attack. The Dakota hunted only with bows and arrows to avoid any discernible noise. They kept fires small and as smokeless as possible to avoid detection. There were Ojibwe villages around that location in every direction for at least one hundred miles. We can only imagine the full scope of lifestyle concessions the Dakota must have made and the constant state of fear they must have lived in. They too must have loved the land and the life it supported to have taken such an incredible risk in staying.
Amazingly, the Dakota had successfully avoided detection at the secret village since the Ojibwe occupied Red Lake in 1760, more than sixty years. There were ten lodges in the village, roughly a hundred people. The Red Lakers called the place Gimoojaki-ziibi (Secret River), because the Dakota had for so long maintained a secret community there even while the Ojibwe were literally living and hunting all around them. Traders mispronounced it as Gimoodaki-ziibi (Thief River), and the translation stuck in English.
The secret village galvanized Red Lake to unite in a way rarely seen. Nobody commanded them, but they all answered the call for war. Moose Dung (Moozoo-moo), who was born around 1800, was already a distinguished warrior, and one of the leaders of the attack. Sun Shining Through (Mizhakiyaasige) was a young and ambitious warrior who had just arrived in Red Lake from Michigan. Together, Moose Dung, Sun Shining Through, and many other warriors whose names are no longer remembered planned a devastating attack. The Red Lake war party was huge, consisting of hundreds of warriors. They surrounded the village and stormed over the earthen palisades, completely annihilating the village—every man, woman, elder, and child.60
Red Lakers won the battle, but they suffered many casualties. The Dakota had been preparing for this attack for generations. They were ready. Fortifications were strong, and the Dakota knew they were fighting for their lives. Sun Shining Through was wounded so severely that he had to be dragged on a travois all the way back to Red Lake, although he lived many more years.61
Crushing the Dakota at Thief River was but one chapter in a long saga of complicated conflict. The battle at Thief River elevated Sun Shining Through to prominence as a Red Lake warrior. He led a subsequent attack at Shakopee, in southern Minnesota, in which two of his brothers were killed. He then led a major retributory offensive and came back to Red Lake with thirty Dakota scalps. By the time he became an elder he had represented Red Lake for so long and led so many successful war parties that people began to call him by a new English nickname, “Business.” He was a monolingual Ojibwe speaker, but he loved this one English word. In 1889, scribes at the Nelson Act councils thought it had to be an Ojibwe word and wrote it down with two different spellings as Pus-se-naus and Pah-se-nos. The interpreters could not figure out the word’s true meaning or origin, so they asked him, and he simply said, “Slapping the Flies,” his metaphor for killing Dakotas.62
Moose Dung stayed at what would become Thief River Falls and built a village. By 1863, forty-two Ojibwe families had moved there and he was widely acclaimed as their chief. The Thief River fight marked the beginning of something else: the many disparate villages in the Red Lake region had done something together. Their village autonomy was unaltered, but the idea and the source for an ideological shift from village to nation was emerging. The people of the Red Lake region had separate villages, but they shared land, resources, and military ambitions. Political cohesion was far from certain, but it was possible.
White Thunderbird’s descendants now served as village chiefs at Ponemah and were members of Ojibwe and Métis communities across millions of acres of territory in the woodlands and the plains, in both the United States and Canada. White Thunderbird was both a symbol of and spark for cultural change. Red Lake’s politics, economics, and culture were altered by the presence of White Thunderbird and others like him, making them distinct from those of other Ojibwe communities, and stronger than ever before. The warrior nation was on the rise.
Moose Dung, before 1877. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution (gn-00574).