Language and Native American Heritage

Frank Boles

Ironies abound in how historical resources are used. One of the most striking differences is how the records created by one generation to accomplish a particular goal can be used by another generation for very different and sometimes very contradictory purposes. Take, for example, Native American language. For decades, the Clarke Historical Library has played an important role in preserving a large body of printed Ojibway-language material, and thus a fundamental part of Anishinaabe culture. How this body of information is used, however, has changed dramatically.

One of the most important aspects of culture is language. Although there are exceptions, the United States is one of the most obvious nations, and people often define themselves around a common tongue. Ojibway (also known as Anishinaabemowin, Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Otchipwe, or Chippewa) is  common language of the Anishinaabe people. In the United States, it is heard from Michigan to Montana. In Canada, the language is spoken from Ontario to Manitoba. 

Although Ojibway speakers are dispersed across a broad part of the North American continent, their communities are small, and the number of people within the communities who speak Ojibway represents only a fraction of the total group. Based on statistics from the 2000 U.S. census and the 2006 Canadian census, in the two nations, there are, approximately, a combined 300,000 people who claim Anishinaabe heritage. But of this group, only about 20 percent, approximately 56,000 people, speak Ojibway.

Ojibway is an endangered language. Today, many groups are trying to preserve it. One way to accomplish this goal uses printed material from the nineteenth century that sought to translate Ojibway words into English and explain Ojibway grammar. The Anishinaabe did not develop a unique set of characters through which to write their words. Instead, alphabets were developed by Europeans who used their Latin script and usually based their work on English or French spelling systems. This attempt to place Ojibway into the Latin alphabet using different spelling systems has numerous limitations, exemplified by the at least six different ways the name of the language can be written in English, but it nevertheless created an indispensable pool of historical information that today can be used to supplement the oral tradition of those who still speak the tongue.

But the goal of the people who created this wealth of information had nothing to do with language preservation, and in fact, was seeking fundamental change within the Anishinaabe community. The people who worked most diligently to place Ojibway on paper were Christian missionaries. Other European language speakers who needed to communicate with the Ojibway, primarily traders, military officers, and government officials, could usually make do with relatively rough translations between their language and Ojibway. Basic communication met their needs. But missionaries, intent on spreading Christianity, believed it necessary to translate Christianity’s sacred writings very precisely into the native language. Thus, missionaries became the primary group who took on the immensely challenging work of developing Ojibway-English dictionaries and Ojibway rules of grammar.

Among the Ojibway-language treasures they created that are found in the Clarke are dictionaries and several bibles.

Frederic Baraga was a Catholic priest from Slovenia who came to America in 1830. In 1831, he was sent to Arbre Croche, (Cross Village) in the northwest corner of Michigan’s lower peninsula, to work among the Indians and master Ojibway. Until his death in 1868, he would spend the rest of his life in the Great Lakes region, much of it in Marquette, working among the Native population and continually developing his understanding of their language. In 1853, this linguistic study resulted in what is usually described as the first complete English-Ojibway dictionary, which he published under the title A Dictionary of Otchipwe Language Explained in English. The Clarke Historical Library has a first edition of the critical work, many of the subsequent reprints editions that have appeared, as well as several other dictionaries and grammars published by later authors.

Baraga and other Christian missionaries’ goal, of course, was to publish the Bible, particularly the New Testament, in Ojibway. The first portion of the New Testament to be published in Ojibway, the gospels of Matthew and John, were translated by Peter and John Jones and printed between 1829 and 1831. The first complete translation of the entire New Testament appeared in 1833, the work of Edwin James. As a better understanding of the language developed, new translations were published in 1844 by Henry Blatchford and in 1854 by Frederick O’Meara. The Clarke holds a first edition of Jones translation of Matthew, as well as first editions of the James, Blatchford, and O’Meara New Testaments. These volumes are supplemented in the Clarke stacks by many Christian prayers, hymns, and other devotional material, all printed in the Ojibway language.

The ultimate goal of nineteenth-century missionaries was to completely change the Anishinaabe’s spiritual values. The missionaries sought to extinguish Anishinaabe belief in a world inhabited by good and evil spirits and replace it with faith in Jesus. Yet the linguistic documentation and examples created by the missionaries to change Anishinaabe culture created a linguistic legacy that helped future Anishinaabe people do the exact opposite: work to preserve their culture by keeping their language alive. 

The Clarke Historical Library’s role in documenting the activity of nineteenth-century Christian missionaries to the Anishinaabe, and making available that same documentation to twenty-first-century library users seeking to preserve Ojibway is one example of the profoundly different way two people can use the same information.

Tshusick

By John Fierst

Of the four lithographs that the Clarke Library recently added to its collection of Native American prints, the one entitled “Tshusick,” was painted by the American portraitist Charles Bird King.  “Tshusick” is a portrait of an Ojibwe woman who visited Washington D.C. in the winter of 1826-1827.  King’s portrait of Tshusick was reproduced in McKenney and Hall’s 1836 History of the Indian Tribes of North America, along with a description of her visit to the Capital.

In 1826 this remarkable woman traveled, on foot, from snowbound Michigan to Washington, hoping to meet the first lady, John Quincy Adam’s wife Louisa.  She knew the first lady’s sister Harriet, who was married to George Boyd, the U.S. Indian agent on Mackinac Island.  Tshusick, ragged and worn from her journey, found her way to the home of Thomas McKenney, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs.  She explained to McKenney that she had recently lost her husband and that she had come to Washington to be instructed and baptized in the religion of the white people.  She convinced him of the truth of her story by answering questions about persons McKenney knew in Detroit. 

According to James Hall, who wrote the sketch that accompanied Tshusick’s portrait, McKenney “conducted her to a neighboring hotel, secured her an apartment, and placed her under the especial care of the hostess.”  Later he provided her with blue and scarlet cloth, feathers, beads, and other "finery," etc. and Cinderella-like Tshusick created the outfit she is shown wearing in Charles Bird King’s painting.  She was “introduced in due form at the presidential mansion, where she was received with great kindness.”  Louisa Adams apparently was delighted to hear fresh news of her sister Harriet.  Tshusick was then introduced to many of McKenney’s friends and to others “whose patronage might be most serviceable” to her.  Hall claimed that she was an immediate favorite, the belle of the Capital for a while. When it was time for her to depart Washington, her new friends showered her with gifts and introductions and sent her on her way.   

Just as remarkable as Tshusick herself, is the exaggerated style in which James Hall described her, an effusive style that at the same time reflected Hall's racial and class biases. Tshusick “had the unstudied grace, and her conversation the easy fluency, of high refinement,” wrote Hall.  “There was nothing about her that was coarse or common-place.  Sprightly, intelligent, and quick, there was also a womanly decorum in all her actions, a purity and delicacy in her whole air and conduct. . . . So agreeable a savage has seldom, if ever, adorned the fashionable circles of civilized life.”  By the time Hall began writing Indian biographies for his and McKenney’s History, he was already a popular writer of western tales—western in the 1820s and 30s referring to the Old Northwest, today’s Midwest.  Edward Watts (in "The Indian Hater” and Other Stories by James Hall, p. xxii) points out that Hall's style was a “smudging of fact, fiction, and narrative.”   In the case of Tshusick's biography, Thomas McKenney undoubtedly supplied the facts; Hall the embellishments.

   

Despite Tschusick’s beauty and her charm, the Cinderella-like fairytale failed to end happily. Thomas McKenney received a letter from Lewis Cass, Territorial Governor of Michigan, telling McKenny in essence that McKenny and all of Washington had been had.  Tshusick was a fraud, an "imposter."  Her husband had not died.  He was “a short squat Frenchman, who officiated as a scullion in the household of Mr. Boyd, the Indian agent at Mackinaw.”  Cass at the time was beginning to take a hard line toward Native Americans that would lead to his support for the Indian Removal Act.  In the North American Review a few months earlier, he had ridiculed British societal elites for having been taken in by John Dunn Hunter.  Cass, Hall stated, found the gullibility of his sympathetic Eastern friends amusing.   Cass held that Easterners (like Tshusick's admirers in Washington), who had little exposure to Indians, had no appreciation of the Indian's inveterate and surreptitious nature.

Unfairly, Tshusick comes to us defined by Hall, Cass, and McKenney—shaping her story to their purposes.  We do not really know how she thought or what she sensed she needed to do to survive in the era of removal.  At this distance we can only reflect on the painting Charles Bird King has left us and imagine.

Library Adds Four New Early Nineteenth Century Native American Portraits to its Holdings

by Frank Boles

With special end-of-year funding, the Clarke Historical Library recently added to its collection of Native American images four new lithograph prints created early in the nineteenth century. Images were acquired of the Sioux Chief Little Crow, Caa-Tou-See, identified as an Ojibway (seen at right), Tshusick, an Ojibway woman who visited Washington, D.C. (seen below), and an unnamed Ojibway woman nursing an infant.

What is particularly significant about these, and the other similar images within the Clarke’s holdings, is that they were all created from life and are the most accurate known images of the people, their dress, and occasionally their culture. The story of their creation, and publication, is a complicated one.

The United States government allowed Michigan Territorial Governor Lewis Cass to employ an artist to go with him to several important Midwest treaty negotiations during the 1820s. The resulting images were both preserved in Washington, and of even greater importance, eventually printed and distributed by two different publication projects.

J.O. Lewis’ Aboriginal Port Folio first appeared in 1835. Lewis had been the artist who had accompanied Cass. Lewis's plan was to issue eight images a month over a ten month period. Seventy-two plates were certainly issued and received modest circulation. But the project ran into deep financial difficulty and the final eight prints, while copies do exist, today are extraordinarily rare.

Lewis's original paintings were sent to Washington, where they, and many other portraits that the government had commissioned, were prominently displayed by Thomas McKenney, United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, from 1824 to 1830. Like Lewis, McKenney believed that there was a market for high quality, printed color copies of the images. In 1836, McKenney and James Hall, who wrote the text that accompanied the images, began to print their, History of the Indian Tribes of North America. The 121 images in this publication had national scope that incorporated, but went beyond, the Lewis Port Folio. Unlike Lewis, the McKenney and Hall work was a financial success and was republished in several editions.

The original art that underlay both the Port Folio and the History of the Indian Tribes eventually found its way to the Smithsonian. Those works of art were all destroyed by a massive fire that swept through the Smithsonian Institution building in 1865. Today, the most detailed portraits of Native American leaders who helped shape our nation in the early nineteenth century are preserved through the prints originally found in these two publications.

To easily see the many portraits and other images the Clarke holds from these two publications, click on the link below to visit our website. https://www.cmich.edu/library/clarke/ResearchResources/Native_American_Material/Treaty_Signers/Pages/default.aspx.

To see the actual images, visit us in person. It’s worth the trip.

Keith Widder Speaks About His Book, Beyond Pontiac's Shadow

On Thursday, October 23, Keith Widder, former curator of history for Mackinac State Historic Parks, will visit Central Michigan University to speak about his book, Beyond Pontiac's Shadow: Michilimackinac and the Anglo-Indian War of 1763.

On June 2, 1763, the Ojibwe captured Michigan’s Fort Michilimackinac from the British. Ojibwe warriors from villages on Mackinac Island and along the Cheboygan River had surprised the unsuspecting garrison while playing a game of baggatiway. On the heels of the capture, Odawa from nearby L’Arbre Croche arrived to rescue British prisoners, setting into motion a complicated series of negotiations among Ojibwe, Odawa, and Menominee and other Indians from Wisconsin. Because nearly all Native people in the Michilimackinac borderland had allied themselves with the British before the attack, they refused to join the Michilimackinac Ojibwe in their effort to oust the British from the upper country; the turmoil effectively halted the fur trade. Beyond Pontiac’s Shadow examines the circumstances leading up to the attack and the course of events in the aftermath that resulted in the regarrisoning of the fort and the restoration of the fur trade. At the heart of this discussion is an analysis of French-Canadian and Indian communities at the Straits of Mackinac and throughout the pays d’en haut.

This presentation, which is free and open to the public, begins at 7:00 pm in the Park Library Auditorium. A reception will follow in the Clarke Historical Library.

Indian Regiment sent to battle in WWI

By Marian Matyn

An oversized scrapbook donated with some Vernon Township (Isabella County, Mich.) records includes an undated article and photograph labeled “20 Indian Boys From Government School at Mt. Pleasant Accepted for Service in Army and Navy.” This immediately peaked my interest! I identified the piece as being from the defunct Mount Pleasant Times(MPT), June 7, 1917, page 1. I wanted to know more about these men and searched online records as well as collections in the Clarke. Most of their names are spelled numerous ways and sometimes they are identified in the records as white, other times as Indian, Ojibwe, or Chippewa. This is common for Native American research.

There are records for many of the men in the census, death records, veteran burial record, Indian rolls, enlistment records, veteran hospital records, and school records.

Here’s a brief summary of some of the information I found on these men:

Eight men had some type of enlistment records and all enlisted in Mount Pleasant on June 2 or 4, 1917: Samuel Shananquitt, James Negack, Clifford Rice, Samuel Asher, Paul Mackey, Silas Bush, Charles Marksman, and Alex Kagebitang. Why June 2 to the 4? Registration Day in Isabella County for the draft was Tuesday, June 5, 1917. All males between 21 and 30, except for a few exceptions, were to register (MPT, May 31, 1917, p.1).

Three men listed in the article, Dewey Beauliu, Charles Shaw, and William Noquon, remained elusive.

Two brothers, Grover and Austin Mandako, wanted to enlist but were prevented from doing so by their parents.

Frank Mackey died in France of wounds from battle in August (must be 1918). He is the only man who died during the War.

L.[ouis] Gouthier is mentioned in the article, but not in other records.

Other men in the image who enlisted were: Floyd Curtis, Clarence Portman, Clarence Portman, W. Gesick (Wasso or Owosso Geshick?), Xavier Miott, Antoine Bonno (Antoine A. Bonneau?), and William Tyosh. Also listed was the athletic director “Chief” Nevitt.

The Clarke has an extensive amount of documents from WWI as part of our holdings. If you are interested in seeing original WWI propaganda posters for the U. S. Food Administration, buying Liberty Bonds, or donating books to the men on the front, check out the hallway exhibit case in the first floor corridor of the Park Library at Central Michigan University.

Rainy River Lives: Stories Told by Maggie Wilson

By Tanya Fox

As a cataloger, I understand the seriousness of misplacing or losing an item in our archives.  Once something is mis-shelved it is often difficult, if not impossible, to find.  Sometimes serendipity steps in and while retrieving a different requested item the missing item appears.  So it is with a collection of stories between Maggie Wilson and Ruth Landes compiled into a book called Rainy River Lives: Stories Told by Maggie Wilson published by University of Nebraska Press and edited by Sally Cole.

Maggie Wilson sent letters and stories to anthropologist Ruth Landes over many years but over the course of time, the correspondence was lost.  Recently, the stories were found in the basement of the Smithsonian Institute in another anthropologist’s papers.  This “rich set of narratives takes us inside the intimate world of Ojibwe families at the turn of the twentieth century, a time of great upheaval when the Ojibwes were being relocated onto reserves and required by the government to abandon their seasonal migrations and subsistence activities.”

Rainy River Lives is a recent acquisition of the Clarke Historical Library.  We are delighted to add it to our Native American collection.  According to the author Lawrence Block, “One aspect of serendipity to bear in mind is that you have to be looking for something in order to find something else.”  Come to the Clarke and see what you can find.