The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1929-08-02
little Journeys ii,
Americana
The Powerful Ojibways
By LESTER B. COLBY

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The Powerful Ojibways
TSHREE hundred years ago the
Holloway nation was the most pow
erEul tribe of Indians in North
A1herica. The Ojibways ruled the for
esAs from central :, Wisconsin and
southern Michigan northward to the
Hudson bay; from the western plains
eastward to beyond Georgian bay.
For several centuriesathe Ojibways
hurled the Sioux back when they in
vaded them from the west and many
were the wars they carried on against
the fierce Iroquois who inhabited
Pennsylvania and New York and con-
trolled the land around Lakes Erie
and Ontario, and narrow strip each
side of the St. Lawrence river to its
mouth.
The Ojibways, too, were probably
the most numerous nation ever de-
veloped among the Indians of North
America. Their language was Algon,
quin. Algonquin was spoken, in its
dialects, by the New England Indians
and by Indian tribes living as far
south as the Carolinas and Kentucky.
The Iroquois were entirely surround
ed by tribes that spoke some form of
Algonquin. The Illinois tribes and the
Pottawatomies were of Algonquin ex-
traction. The Ojibways, often called
the Chippeways, corruption of the
word Ojbway, were by far the strong
est and most powerful division of the
Algonquin family.
1Kah-Ge- CAT ah-Bowh, a chief of
the Ojibway nation, who had studied
in the white mans schools, set out to
compile traditional history of the
Ojibways more, than eighty years ago.
1t was printed in 1850. You will hard
~ recognize Ge-Ga-Gah-Bowh as
the author, for the libraries list the
book as written by George CONWAY.
That was his white mans name"
In fact he was Rev. George Cop
way, lecturer, writer and world-trav-
eler. He visited many nations of
Europe, was favored highly as an
after-dinner speaker, wrote trav-
elogues and was quite fellow. Much
of, his time he spent trying to con-
vert his semi-savage brothers to
Christianity.
If you will read his books, and other
books written by men who knew the
American Indians, you will find your
picture of them changing. For one
thing the Indian was not always on
the warpath. His wars, fierce and
cruel while they lasted, were often
thaeuNesult of long-continued wrongs
ent-up wrath boiled over.
will realize that the Indian
"a hard. He fished and trapped
Anted that his family might
&e would speTd Jnany months
j packs Of furs ogether to trade
lie white men on the frontiers
K carefully at your map of Can
81 You will find that the Ottawa
river flows into the st. Lawrence near
Montreal. 1t comes, an almost straight
road, from near the headwaters OF
Lake Huron. AS early as 1884, the
Ojibways were using the Ottawa riv'
err as a highway to Montreal to trade
furs for knives, guns, cloth, beads
whisky and other things they wanted
Down the Ottawa they came, in
happy parties, their canoes laden with
the years catch. Back up the Ottawa
they woulc go, triumphantly return.
ing with the goods they had bought
with their furs. But there were. even
then, a type of man who would cor
responded with our pay roll bandits
of today.
Parties Of Iroquois would now and
then lie in wait and murder and loot
the Ojibways. They were robbers, out
for spoil. And every time a trading
party of Ojibways was waylaid and
murdered, the Ojibways would grow
angrier.
Protests were in. vain. Threats OF
war now and then caused the holdups
to- stop temporarily. Finally the Ojib'
ways declared war. They enlisted
nelSHUOFluS -IIlUcSs Algonquin DA0sA'
ers; the Pottawatomies, the Iilini.
They struck terribly and swift.
Whole villages of Iroquois were wiped
out. The Iroquois were driven out of
that entire triangle of land between
Lake Huron and Lakes Erie and On
tario. The Ojibways slew their ene-
mics to the last man, woman and child
where they found them.
For a hundred years after that
there was a place in Canada, not far
from the borders of Georgian bay,
which the Ojibways knew as ''the
Place of Iroquois Bones" A whole
Iroquois city was surrounded there.
The humiliation was complete. For
a century, the bones bleached un-
buried. The Ojibways believed that
the spirits of the Iroquois came back
to their bones at night to mourn. If
they ventured near, they said. they
could hear dismal wailing. So they
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