Tribal Histories

Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe History

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[bird calling]

– Lac Courte Oreilles has a rich history. It’s part of a larger scheme of things of the fur trade and the need for hunting deer. This past year, I did a genealogy search off of some records that we’ve got and looked at four families. And I traced them back to Esbaanh. We have people here today that are related to one another in many different ways.

And it’s exciting for me to be able to tell the young high school age students how they’re related to one another through Esbaanh’s father and mother. I oftentimes tell them the story of Esbaanh and his 15-year-old wife. How they founded this place Odaawaa-Zaaga’iganiing. The bravery and the courage that they displayed in doing that. Staying here against the dangers of the Dakota and the harshness of the winter and the terrible mosquitoes.

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– Lac Courte Oreilles History was funded in part by: Irene Daniell Kress, Francis A. and Georgia F. Ariens Fund of the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, Evjue Foundation, Ron and Patty Anderson, Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment, Timothy William Trout Education Fund, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

[bone whistle]

– I’m Rick St. Germaine. This is the Lac Courte Oreilles reservation, also known as Odaawaa-Zaaga’iganiing the place that has two names. The first name was labeled Lac Courte Oreilles, “The Lake of Short Ears” by Radisson, who in 1659 was on his way to the Mississippi River from Madeline Island and he had some guides who told him at Madeline that there was a group of Ottawa Huron Indians living down here by a large lake. They were in flight away from Michigan where the Iroquois were chasing them. They wanted to get so far west that they wouldn’t be bothered any more. So they journeyed into the Mississippi River and then up the Mississippi to the Chippewa River and eventually made it up here.

Historians are always trying to figure out why they settled there, why this band of Ottawa Indians stopped here. And it’s pretty clear that this whole northern section of Wisconsin back in the 1600s was heavily covered with coniferous forest. The one thing we know about pine forest is that very little grows underneath that kind of vegetation. In fact, the deer stay out of pine forests because there is so little browse underneath. So why would the Ottawa Indians stop here? There were burn areas. There were forest fires that had ravaged sections of northern Wisconsin. And they would burn about 100,000 acres. And there was such a burn area from Rice Lake all the way up to the village of what is today Reserve. The re-growth in that burn area was pretty much maple forest. It was a pocket. So when the Ottawa Indians got up here they found the burn area and they also noticed the browse, the maple trees, the popple trees. And they noticed a lot of deer. There was also beaver flourishing in the waterway that connects this reservation to the Rice Lake Area. So you had a natural island habitat for deer. And in this case, the village the Ottawa settled on the north end of this burn area. They wanted to stay on the north end because the Dakota were living down on the south end of that burn area and they wanted to stay as far away from the Dakota as they possibly could. So when Radisson got here in 1659, he found the village. The Ottawa Indians used to clip their ears on the bottom. They’d clip pieces of their ear. And he might have looked at these Indians and said, “Wow, their ears are shorter than the other Algonquians we’ve encountered.” And that’s why he named the lake “Lake of the Little Ears,” “Lake of the Short Ears,” “Lac Courte Oreilles” after the Ottawa.

Radisson came here in the late fall and he got trapped here by a huge snow storm. In fact, it was a series of snowstorms. There was widespread famine that winter. My great-aunt told me that they ate their moccasins, they ate their boots. They were boiling boots, then they ran out of firewood to even cook, so they were eating the bark off of the iron wood used in the wigwams. And then they began to gnaw away at their own clothing. That’s how desperate they were. People were dying in the village. And by the time spring allowed them to get outside, there was widespread famine. Death everywhere. And Radisson finally escaped and went downstream into the Chippewa River and eventually Mississippi. But what remained behind was this decimated village of Ottawa Indians and they left. They had had enough. So this place was named Lac Courte Oreilles first. Then, something happened in 1722. The Bear Clan led a hunting voyage down to Lac Courte Oreilles. And they always camped over where the Ottawa village was. And on this occasion, as they were coming in in the late fall to hunt deer, they found the body of an Ottawa Indian

propped up against a small tree. The message was that there might have been several Ottawa Indians that journeyed over from the Sault Ste Marie area. It could have been some grandsons of somebody who lived here 60 years earlier. One of them died, so they propped him up on this tree. The ground was frozen, so they couldn’t bury him. And then the brothers or the cousins of the hunter put tobacco on his lap and off they went back to Sault Ste Marie.

Now the Bear Clan hunters from Madeline Island, this was a very special signal to them. There had been a dream by one of the old hunters, and finding of the Ottawa Indian was a message that this was a very special place for them. They named this site Odaawaa-Zaaga’iganiing. This is the place where they found the frozen Ottawa. After that, the journeys back and forth from Madeline Island took place every fall. After 1736, those journeys got very difficult because as they came down in the late 1730s they were bumping into hunting parties of Dakota. And generally the two groups would just have a standoff. They’d stare at each other. And it was just a sign that, “What are you doing down here in our territory?” and, “You get back up where you belong on Lake Superior.” But now the fur trade was back in place. There was a moratorium that had been placed by the king of France. It seemed that there was a market flood. There were two million pelts coming into Europe from the Great Lakes. And so, after the lifting of the moratorium, the Ojibwe felt that they really had to establish some sites inland to get at the harvest for more beaver pelts. The demand was so great to renew that trade that they decided that at some point they had to establish a village here. Another Bear Clan hunting party journeyed down here in October, led by Esbaanh’s father. Esbaanh was a boy of about 16 years of age,

and he had been on several of these journeys down here. He knew the site. He saw the beaver dams located on all along the streams and the rivers. Esbaanh brought his brand new bride. He had just gotten married that summer. And my aunts used to know her name. They used to tell me her name in Ojibwe, and it was one of those long, long names. And she was pregnant. She was only about six months along. And so they figured they were just coming down to check something out, and then they were going to head back. But they ended up staying into November. And she went into labor. And her baby survived for a couple days and then it died. And then Esbaanh told his father, “We’re not going to leave. “We decided that we’re going to stay here by the baby.” And the father argued with his son. He said, “You won’t survive. Come now. Pack up your goods. We got to get going.” And the son shook his head to his father and said, “No, we’re going to stay.”

His father told his sons to look at the little brother. “This will be the last time you’ll see him.”

And with that, they all turned around and went to their canoes and off they went to Madeline. So the father came back the following year. He expected to see no one there at the encampment. And to their astonishment, there was Esbaanh and his wife. And they had more wigwams set up. He said, “We could live here. We could stay here. We could make a living here.” Well, you can imagine the other hunters were still a little worried about the Dakota to the south of them down at Rice Lake.

But the brothers said, “We’re going to stay. We’re going to stay.” And so the brothers stayed and a couple cousins also stayed. And so the winter of ’43-’44, that’s where the foothold took place. More families stayed, and pretty soon there was a village of 20 families.

And they had some encounters. There were many battles between the Lac Courte Orielle people and the Dakotas to the south. Those battles were historic. We had an old man here: a World War II veteran who used to tell me stories of his grandfather who said that he was raised by his grandfather. And his grandfather told many accounts of his grandfather as a young boy where they were attacked by Dakotas.

And he said he could hear some yelling. And his father grabbed him, lifted him up under his arm, lifted up his sister, and took off running out of their wigwam.

And they ran through the forest, and he said his father was very fleet of foot, and was jumping over logs and eventually– He was running very fast and the brush was hitting them. And eventually, his father jumped down into some logs, a pile of old dead trees that had fallen down. Jumped down in there and then put his hand over the mouths of the two children.

And covered up their mouth and whispered to them to be quiet.

And everything was still. And then, his grandfather’s grandfather said he could see men jumping over the logs and those were Dakotas. Listening to Sam tell these stories, it was almost as if Sam was the child,

[chuckles]

was his grandfather’s grandfather telling the stories. And when my grandmother and aunts were telling me similar stories, I would get lost thinking that my great aunt was actually telling me about herself, when in reality, she was telling me about her great grandmother or her great-great grandfather or something like that. And as I got older, I sort of unraveled some of that.

[chuckles]

Lots of rich stories.

In 1776, John Renville, Frenchman, traveled over to the Minnesota River, and he married a Dakota woman.

They had a son, Joseph Renville, who was raised a Dakota over at Kaposia. Kaposia was a huge Dakota village. If you want to call it a village. It was mostly like a chain of villages along the Mississippi River, right where St. Paul is.

In the 1780s, John Renville decided to send his son to Montreal to get an education. He was just heartbroken. He was a Dakota boy who got sent up to Montreal where there was just hundreds of Ojibwes, his enemy. He was introduced to a boy by the name of John Baptiste Corbine, who was his first cousin.

And John Baptiste Corbine was 100% French, a French boy.

And Renville was a couple years older than him. And so Renville told Corbine, his cousin, about the life of Dakota children,

the life of an Indian. And he got Corbine interested. So Corbine decided at a very early age that he was going to journey over to Kaposia, and he was going to trade with the Dakota Indians.

Renville instilled one thing in Corbine’s head: that the worst people on Earth were Ojibwes.

“Don’t ever trust an Ojibwe. “I’ve watched Ojibwe slaughter my relatives.

“They are the worst people on Earth. “You can’t trust them. “They’re conniving. They’re sneaky. “They’re blood-thirsty. “Just stay away from them. They’re the worst people on Earth.”

So when Corbine was 21 years old, he set out with his cousin Renville, and they left Montreal and they went over to Madeline Island to La Pointe. And everywhere he looked there was Ojibwe people. And so, Renville said, “We got to get out of here.” And sure enough, one morning Corbine woke up and he looked around and Renville was gone. And Corbine was just– I mean the hairs on his neck would stand up along his back every time he saw an Ojibwe.

And he just held on to all the French people he could find, you know? And they were mostly mixed blood, but he held on to them. And finally this Michel Cadotte took a liking to Corbine. And he says, “Why are you so afraid of the Ojibwe? “They’re nice. They’re great people. My mother’s Ojibwe. You like her.” And he says, “Well, to tell you the truth, “I’m a little worried about your mother. “She keeps looking at my leg, and she might end up eating me one of these days.” And he says, “Where do you get these outrageous ideas?” And he says, “I’ve heard about stories.” He said, “So don’t ask me.” So anyway, what Michel Cadotte did was he took Corbine down here, down to the other end of Lac Courte Oreilles Lake. And he introduced him to the area, and he said to Corbine, “I’m going to set you up here. We’re going to build a trading post.” And Corbine says, “The only way I’m going to stay here is if you build me a stockade.” He says, “I’ll do some trading for you. I can see there’s a lot of furs coming in here.” So Cadotte had a stockade built, and he had some cabins built. So Corbine stayed inside of the stockade.

It was so crazy because those Indians could have, at any time, if they wanted to, they could have crawled over that stockade, you know, and killed him, but they could care less. You know? “Who is this crazy Frenchman?” So Corbine eventually looked around him and he said, “Gee, I haven’t seen any of these Ojibwes kill anybody, or cut them up and eat them, or burn them over a fire. You know, actually some of them are pretty decent. Wabiziiwisid, the head man over here, he’s a nice guy. I like him. Not only that, but he’s got two daughters… two young daughters.” One of the things Michel Cadotte told him was, “You’ve got to marry one of the Chief’s daughters.” Corbine fell in love with Wabiziiwisid’s youngest daughter, Gaakabishikwe. And he asked Wabiziiwisid, “Can I marry your daughter?” I think she likes me.” And Wabiziiwisid said, “She’s too young. No. “She’s my youngest daughter. You can marry Chewabaakasie.” And he said, “I haven’t even looked at Chewabaakasie. She doesn’t care about me.” He said, “She’s older. “She knows more about these things. She’d make a better wife for you.”

So, reluctantly, John Baptiste Corbine married Chewabaakasie, the older daughter. There’s an incredible amount of stories of their marriage. They had four children and that’s where my line comes through. I’m a descendent of the Corbines, through my mother here. And my grandmother and her sisters were the storytellers. Thank God I grew up here before TV.

Because the stories were so colorful and they really did share details of those stories. The stories were just incredible. About the Midewiwin ceremonies, the bear feasts, the medicine people, and the drum people– The powers of some of these people and how they could either make themselves disappear, or turn themselves into an animal. And I thought, “These are things that really happened.” And they did. They really did happen.

All of that part of life recycles and so, I’m trying to tell the grandchildren these stories. And my own– I’ve got a couple boys that are in college right now. And I’m trying to keep them connected to that history as much as I can.

So there’s a lot of stuff that’s got to– that they’ve got to learn yet.

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– To learn more about the sovereign Indian Nations in Wisconsin, visit WisconsinFirstNations.org. To purchase a DVD of this and other Tribal Histories programs, visit WPT.org or call 800-422-9707.- Lac Courte Oreilles History was funded in part by: Irene Daniell Kress, Francis A. and Georgia F. Ariens Fund of the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region, Evjue Foundation, Ron and Patty Anderson, Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment, Timothy William Trout Education Fund, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.