Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 0

MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY ORAL HISTORV INTERVIEW

NAME: Ernest C. Oberholtzer DATE: February [18 and] 19, 1964 INTERVIEWERS: Lucile M. Kane, Russell Fridley, Evan Hart Original Reel 6 (cassette tapes 11,12, and 13) Transcript: 77 pages, draft SUBJECTS DISCUSSED:

Frederick S. Winston of Minneapolis and Sewell Tyng, and their help in

conservation of the Quetico-Superior area wilderness; Ojibwe Indians: Frances Densmore's limited approach to collecting;

Naribojou stories, flood stories, and winter lodge stories; Oberholtzer called "Atisokan," i.e. story; the Widewiwin society; personal songs; dream vision sought at puberty; curing; grandparents instructing young with stories; games; the Windigo (cannibal);

Mrs. Notawey, Billy Magee's oldest sister, a very good storyteller; Oberholtzer s tape-recording Johnny Whitefish, cousin to Mrs. Notawey, arid the attempt to tape Mrs. Notawey;

The naming of Billy Magee, Tay-rah-pah-sway-we-tong, by his mother at his birth. Name means "far-distant -echo";

Billy Magee and trips in 1909 and 1910 through Quetico-Superior Provincial Forest Reserve;

Moose; Origin of Superior National Forest, now (1968) Quetico Park: 1909 offer by the publicity agent of the Canadian Northern Railroad to buy Oberholtzer's notes about canoe routes in the Rainy Lake watershed area; Oberholtzer's stay in England during the European trip with Harry

French in 1910 (French's name is not mentioned in the recording);

Trip to the barrenlands and Hudson Bay in 1912; and exploration of Nueltin Lake and return to the lake many years later.

NOTE TO USERS:

This transcript incorporates some of Oberholtzer's editorial annotations, transcribed from a second copy of this draft. They were added when they amended or enhanced the initial meaning of a passage. This copy also includes some annotations (mainly corrections to Indian names or concepts) done by an unknown person, probably whoever initially reviewed the transcripts.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 1

MISS KANE: I have one more thing to say to you. Can you spend the

afternoon?

Mr. Oberholtzer : Yes.

Miss K.: I want Evan Hart to come out. Remember you met him at lunch the

other time when you were here? And I would like you two to talk about your

Indian research. He is so schooled in that that I felt he could ask you more

intelligent questions.

Mr. O.: That's all right. He may ask me a lot of questions I can't answer, you

see.

Miss K.: It doesn't matter. Just explore your feeling about it, your research

procedures, and all this. I was very anxious to have him do that, because I felt

with his questions...

Mr. O .: He's a specialist in that?

Miss K.: Yes, he is. Let's go back to Fred now. Was Fred a Minneapolis boy?

Was he born here?

Mr. O.: Yes, oh yes. It's natural that we should discuss Fred Winston above all

today, because of the parting of all of his friends with him yesterday at the

funeral, and, of course, because of his very long association with these public

movements. And in such a quiet, obscure fashion. He liked to work without

recognition, and that same idea was carried out at the funeral yesterday,

where there was no suggestion of eulogy. Yesterday the whole emphasis was

on the relationship of life and death, and the significance of what life gives us

and what we can give back. That was brought out beautifully in this comment

by his old friend, Dr. Bragg, formerly the Unitarian Minister here in

Minneapolis, who's now in the same capacity in Kansas City, Missouri.

When I came into the program of conservation here, I've already told

how I'd been invited to come down here and talk to a group of young

professional men on the subject of this proposal of Mr. Backus about the

border lakes, and the threat that that meant to the public interests in the way

of recreation and enjoyment of the border region. Mr. Hubachek was the one

who had written me the letter and invited

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 2

me to come down, and proposed even that if I came that all my expenses

would be oaken care of.

I think I said how, at the time, I was doubtful as to the origin of this

letter, and some people, up north, advised me that possibly this letter had

come directly from our opponents, that it was a technique that sometimes they

had of disarranging any kind of organized effort on the other side. And

especially a letter coming from a man like Hubachek, a very unusual name.

The letter was very well done, indeed, and I read it carefully a number of

times before I made up my own mind that it was wise to go ahead and

respond in kind. But I found when I came down in response to that invitation

that this was a group of very fine, public spirited young men -- lawyers,

architects, businessmen; and it included men like Jeff Jones of the

Minneapolis Journal , and men who were known for their work in conservation

with the Izaak Walton League and other organizations. There were

representatives of the American Legion, too, who were interested in this same

subject. And a very delightful fine group of young people.

And among those was one named Fred Winston. I don't think I ever

knew any of these men before that time, because I hadn't lived here in

Minneapolis. I had been here and had met certain other groups -- very

different -- but there wasn't any one of those people whom I'd known before.

So I was asked to tell what I knew of the situation there, of the proposals that

Mr. Backus had made, and what, if any, efforts we had made to oppose him.

Well, I think I told that we had a little organization already up there,

largely based on Fort Frances, because Fort Frances was much freer to

oppose Mr. Backus' project than International Falls, since at that time Mr.

Backus bad very little in the way of industry in the Fort. It was all over in

International Falls, and there was a rival company, a big lumber company

named Shevlin-Clarke. It was - very well known oiler in the Fort and provided

whatever industry they had. The

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 3

two companies weren't friendly, but the idea of swapping these great

recreational opportunities on the Canadian side and of raising Rainy Lake

after the floods they'd already had and the destruction there had been as a

result -- raising it still further, at least another five feet as proposed -- had

aroused real opposition on the Canadian side, vocal opposition.

So I was invited to come there, and there had been set up a small

organization over there of Rainy Lake citizens -- both public officials and

private citizens, to study the project and take measures if possible to prevent

its completion. And this had all happened before Mr. Hubachek had invited

me down. In addition, a lawyer friend of mine (that was Mr. Tyng).

Miss K: Sewell Tyng?

Mr. O : Yes. He was from New York and was a junior member of one of the

largest law firms there -- the law firm of Rathbone, Larkin and Perry. He had

offered his assistance to prepare a legal brief so that we would have a better

standing when we wrote to the International Joint Commission. Up to that time

we hadn't been able to get very much attention when we wrote. We got very

little information, the very briefest kind of replies, because apparently it was

felt that there wasn't going to be very much to this, except to approve the

project, you see.

So the first condition that Mr. Tyng had made, in order to prepare this

brief, was that we succeed somehow in raising six hundred dollars to buy the

transcript of the hearing, this lengthy hearing that had taken two days, you

see, and involved testimony of many people, but above all Mr. Backus'

testimony. I was to prepare all the physical facts about the country and the

places mentioned. Mr. Tyng would do the legal work and would file this brief

with the International Joint Commission in the name of his firm. And that had

been done. We had succeeded in raising that six hundred dollars. It was my

job to raise that six hundred dollars, and I raised that sum among some of our

people who already had summer homes and came for their vacations. One

hundred dollars came from the Canadian Northern Railway, who

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 4

felt that this would damage their tracks. It was going to cost them a lot of

money, and there would be a lot more danger of flood.

And so we had good sponsors for the purchase of the transcript and

the brief, you see. That had been done before I came down, and that was one

of the things I told this unorganized group of men, headed by Mr. Hubachek.

Well, among those young men was Mr. Frederick Winston. Frederick S.

Winston was a man of very high ideals who had given himself already, all of

his life, from the time he finished college, to public service. He had performed

as legal aid attorney, and very successfully, and in a number of similar

capacities, from the time he left college. That alone would he a perfectly

wonderful story, and I think I could tell some of the things that happened. He

was one of twins, identical twins, you see. And these twins had a mischievous

side to them. They liked to play pranks on people, and it was rather easy

because no one knew them apart. That was one theory.

And the second thing was that they never missed a chance to make a

point where they thought perhaps officials were too quick to jump to

conclusions. One of these was recalled yesterday when we were talking about

it after the funeral. I said I don't know whether I recalled this properly, but I told

Mr. Bragg and the others there about it. And Fred Winston's brother

corroborated the story. Of course I didn't know the exact language of the

thing, but I don't think I should perhaps tell that ...

Miss K.: I think you should.

Mr. O.: Do you?

Miss K.: I think you should, yes.

Mr. O.: Well –

Miss K.: You told us the story off tape up at the island, and I'd like to get into

Mr. Winston's story here.

Mr. O.: The one about the police station. Yes, I thought that was very good,

and, of course, they got a lot of fun out of it. It seems that among Fred

Winston's

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 5

duties as the attorney for these people who couldn't afford legal aid, was

making depositions, and reporting them to the police. One day he had been at

the police station and had given an account, evidently, that he'd got from the

man who was going to be tried, you see, and what he said as to what he'd

done. I suppose that was it. But at any rate it was something they have to

keep in their records.

The next day his brother Don arrived from out West, and he wanted to

see Fred. So he went down to wherever his offices were -- in the Court

House, I suppose -and understood that Fred was in the police department,

and went in there. They said, "Good morning, Fred." And he said, "Good

morning." There was a little light conversation, and then they said, "Well,

we've been going through your papers here yesterday, and we'd like to make

sure of some of these points here. Would you tell us such and such a thing?"

So they read this, and Don, who hadn't heard it at all, but knew, of course,

that Fred had to appear and this was one of his duties, listened, and said,

"Why, no, I never said that." "Oh, yes, Fred, we were both sitting here. You

surely said that." "No, I didn't say that. I'm convinced I never said that." "Why

we can't understand that, Fred. How would that be possible for you to have

forgotten? Surely you didn't forget this. In fact we asked you -- we had to have

it repeated." "No, not me." Don said. "Well, Fred, we know what a prankster

you are. You're one of the best. We'll give you credit for that now. But we

didn't expect you to come into our office and carry it this far. And this is a very

serious matter now, you know. There's a lot dependent on what you said here.

For the sake of this man you're defending, too, we want to get this absolutely

correct, and now this is the time. This is the last moment we're going to have."

"Well, that's surely too bad," Don says, "because I'm sure that my memory is

as good as anybody's. It may not be top-class, but I wouldn't forget something

I said yesterday." And so then the police began to get angry, and said, "Now,

Fred, that's all right, but I think you're carrying that too far. Let's get down to

business now. We want this all cleared up." "Well, you're going to have my

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 6

complete assistance, that's sure, as far as I can go. But I don't know anything

about this case." "What? You don't knew about this case?" "No, of course, I

don't know anything about this case."

"FRED!" Now they began to get angry. "This is just too much now. We

can't fool around here this way." Then the door opened, and in came Fred. So

he heard all of this. They had a good laugh, of course. But Fred said, "Don't

let's forget it either. I guess many things have happened in history through

mistaken identity, and look how easy this would have been. Now here you've

got my twin brother and you're ready to go to battle on something that he said

yesterday. And he never said it. He wasn't even here. He was on the train

coming here." And so he took the occasion to make his point very strong, and

it was something on which he had a lot of feeling as a result of his

experiences with these cases. A lot of times, there were extremely doubtful

points that evidently were subject to exactly that kind of a mistake. So he

didn't lose any opportunity there to emphasize the care that's needed in

testimony of that sort. Of course, it most have been very amusing at the time.

They both shared in it, and this was the kind of joke they just loved. They both

always have been just like that. They've both had that trait. Sometimes it's

almost like a youngster, the way both of them have indulged in youngsters'

tricks. They'd go and buy something -- Fred was forever going to one of these

shops that deal in cigars that go off when you light them. He was always

looking for something new. And Fred always used to have a pocket full of

cigars, anyway, that he'd pass around. But that kind of thing... Of course some

of them were a little more subtle, don't you see. But they didn't have to be too

subtle to suit Fred. The main point was to get a rise out of the person tie was

operating on at the time.

Well, I met Fred Winston then at this assembly of young men, a very

agreeable and impressive lot of young fellows. They were all well-trained,

college graduates, and had good minds. So I felt then that I had made no

mistake in answering

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 7

this letter. Moreover, they were so enthusiastic about the additional

information they got that they immediately asked me to go further, among

other things to prepare carefully an analysis of the whole testimony at this

hearing which had been held in November, 1927, at International Falls,

pinpointing as far as possible the project that Mr. Backus had revealed at that

time, and refer point by point to his statements which appeared in the

transcript. And I did that. It was quite a task. I prepared about a five thousand

word analysis of Mr. Backus' testimony at that first hearing. We called it

"Conservation or Confiscation." I think that's what I called it. Every single

statement showed the page of the transcript where that had been said by Mr.

Backus, you see. This was all based on Mr. Backus's own testimony, not on

anybody else's testimony. So when I came down the next time I had this

already prepared and typed. That was read at the next meeting of this group.

By that time they were jokingly calling themselves "the Ku Klux Klan,"

because they met at night. They all had to keep undercover, because they

were all young men starting out in their careers, who were subject to damage,

one way or another. They were very cautious indeed that they shouldn't be

revealed at that time, at least until they were organized. And so they jokingly

called themselves the Ku Klux Klan. I think I told all of that.

Miss K," Yes, we have this part, but you never gave us the emphasis on Fred

Winston.

Mr. O.: I retold this because it was my initial meeting With Fred Winston. And

then I found that more and more when I came down here Fred Winston was

available as my host. He was very eager to make it agreeable for me, aside

from meeting the requirements for these meetings. If I had to have some

transportation, he would provide it and he'd be very likely to invite me to a

meal. Fred was always extremely generous.

Mr. F .: Sorry to interrupt your reminiscences.

Mr. O : Well, I think it's time to be interrupted.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 8

Miss K.: I think it's time for us to eat.

Mr. F .: Are you hungry?

[INTERRUPTION]

Mr. O.: There are others besides Ojibways. But she has about three volumes

on the Ojibways. (Referring to Frances Densmore of Red Wing)

Mr. Hart: I think two.

Mr. O.: Yes, I knew her. We had her up at the island. [The reference is to

Frances Densmore.]

Mr. H.: Well, wonderful.

Mr. O.: We invited her up there, after I'd been so busy for a long time and had

been out a lot among those Indians in those early days, you see. I used to go

to the dances and the pow-wows, and I was writing down the legends and that

kind of thing. Then I got into an enterprise with Mr. Hapgood up there, and I

was completely tied up, and I couldn't do any of that. The material was so rich

and so rare. These Indians were all pagans, you see, every one of them then.

Most of these places where Miss Densmore had been were getting religion,

and she was pretty restricted. So then we wrote her. I didn't know her at all,

but I was acquainted with these books. My mother wrote her and invited her to

come up and be our guest and talk this over. She spent about a month with

us, and did you ever meet her?

Mr. H.: No, I didn't. A friend of mine was acquainted with her. Ed LaPlante

from Milwaukee, a French Chippewa.

Mr. O.: I wonder if I haven't met him. I think I've met him.

Mr. H.: I believe he has called on you.

Mr. O.: Didn't he used to be at Port Arthur?

Mr. H.: Not Port Arthur. He was born at Grand Portage.

Mr. O .: Yes, that's the fellow.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 9

Mr. H.; What I'd particularly like to have you talk about is the Nanibojou, the

demigod of the Ojibway, particularly the deluge tradition. I would be very

happy if you could tell me the deluge story as you heard it.

Mr. O.: I haven't heard the deluge story. Practically all of these stories they

told me were exploits of Nanibojou, you see, much the same as you hear in

Longfellow, only slightly different names. Mr. H.: Didn't they ever talk to you

about the flood where Nanibojou climbed the high tree and saved...

Mr. O.: The beaver.

Mr. H.: Could you tell me the version that you heard about that. The word

"beaver" right away struck me, because ----

Mr. O.: Well, there was this flood, the same as we had, you see. Maybe they

were in the same one that we were in. And as I recall this thing, a long time

ago -that there wasn't an awful lot about it. The beaver were more or less the

salvation of the whole thing by restoring land. Is that what you mean?

Mr. H.: Yes. I don't want to occupy a lot of space on the tape to tell you about

this but the thing that strikes me is the variation in some of these myths. You

mentioned beaver as being the animal that finally dove around and brought up

the earth with which Nanibojou recreated the earth for the Indian. I found,

particularly in the Big Sandy Lake region and other places over toward White

Earth and Red Lake, that their animal was the muskrat, and some of the

Sandy Lake Indians even had a superstition about not eating muskrat

because he was revered as being the animal that made it possible for ....

Mr. O.: Well, I never heard that, but that would be easily possible. The time I

was getting these stories, I wrote to Harvard and to Columbia, and to -- let's

see, the man there who was the head of the Columbia, who was the great

follower of all these anthropologists. I'll think of his name in a minute. He's in

the correspondence. I don't know how he may have been in actual life, but he

was very

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 10

forbidding, and he didn't encourage me in any way to go ahead without

spending about three years with him studying phonetics. He was the dean of

all those men at that time.

But Goddard at Harvard, he was the man there when I first went north,

and he was very encouraging. I was trying to find out whether there was any

possibility that some institution would enable me to go north, you see. They

wouldn't have had to pay me very much, but I wanted to be able to live there.

My handicap was that I had no official training, and they didn't think I could do

it. I had one thing that the rest of them didn't have, and that was very rich

source material, I thought, very rich.

But then there was another man who was working with the

government. Let's see whether I remember what his name was. He was

supposed to be more or less an authority on the Algonquin languages, and

the Sacs and Foxes down in Iowa were Algonquins, you see. But of course

their language wasn't just like the Ojibway. He'd been working entirely among

them, and he met my mother down there and asked her a good many

questions, and then wrote me a letter. lie said that he would like to see some

of these texts that I had taken down in Ojibway. Then he wrote back and said

the only trouble was that this wasn't the pure Ojibway. But he'd never heard

any Ojibway. He had heard nothing but Sacs and Foxes, you see.

Mr. H.: That isn't very much like the Ojibway.

Mr. O .: I thought that was very unfortunate, because William Jones ----------

He was the man who had taken down the texts better than anybody else and

was trained at Harvard, a very wonderful fellow. He then went out to the

Philippines, because he got a larger salary, so lie could get married ------- His

interest was all in the Philippines at the time.

He left all these texts that he had collected among Indians just like

mine, but over at Fort William as Port Arthur, you see, and he had many of the

same stories. He l eft those, but never put the accents in, which, of course, are

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 11

important if you are going to pronounce it right. And even sometimes they are

important in the meaning, you know. He didn't do it, because he didn't need

to. He knew where they belonged. I didn't put the accents in my texts either

when they told me these things. It just meant that much extra marking. I knew

where they belonged in these things that I collected.

Mr. H.: I think it illustrates the difference in dialects in even the Ojibway, that

fact that this demigod Nanibojou is variously called Wanibijou and Nanibojou.

The Grand Portage Chippewa, and I think that would be true of those up

around Fort William, have quite a different dialect than the Chippewa at Big

Sandy Lake or over in Lac Court Oreilles, Wisconsin. Possibly didn't this

language variation trace back to the separation in their migration around Lake

Superior?

Mr. O.: Oh, yes, I think it does.

Mr. H.: Northern bands spoke a little differently from those who pushed

westward from the south shore of Lake Superior.

Mr. O.: And there'd be differences in the story, too, and that was one of the

things the government was interested in. I learned that though they had many

collections of these legends, they're anxious to have more, even i f they were

the same stories, to see how they'd vary in the telling. Those Indians up there

where I was -- I was surprised -- they were so familiar with those stories that

when you went back and made little corrections and reread them to the man

who gave them to you, then one of these other Indians came along, and you

would say, "How does this sound to you?" and you read it back to him. Pretty

soon, he's repeating it word for word.

Mr. H.: I've run into young fellows up around Sandy Lake that have committed

these stories as they've heard them, just by rote, and maybe they'll only know

one or two stories in the whole sequence. I wanted to ask you, Mr.

Oberholtzer, about the lodge stories, if you've noticed during your experiences

that usually these lodge- stories were told during the winter months, after the

first snowfall until

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 12

spring, in April.

Mr. O.: That's right.

Mr. H.: I read somewhere that this was because of the fact that the Chippewa

felt that the spirits were inactive, sleeping, during the winter, and that if they

told stories about Nanibojou and other demigods, that they wouldn't suffer

recrimination from the spirits.

Mr. O.: Yes, I think you're right on that. All the Ojibways I've seen up there

have the same feeling that you shouldn't tell those stories in the summer, only

in the winter. They haven't always given me the explanation why, but that is

one possible explanation. I never tried to get any of those legends, not the

Nanibojou legends anyway, these Atisokan. They call those Atisokan, you

see. That's what they call me, Atisokan.

Mr. H.: Can you translate that?

Mr. O.: Story. But it's just that particular kind of story.

Mr. H.: Atisokan.

Mr. O.: It's really Atisokan -- A-t-i-s-o-k-a-n -- but they always sort of elided

that "i" and said Atsokan. That's one kind of story that's not a tepatchimowin.

A tepatchimowin would be something you'd tell. It's not just a legend, but it's

based on an experience that's happened -- it may be in your time -- that

people have talked about. "Tepatchimo" is to speak about it, and "win" is a

noun. But these Atisokan go way back. These are old, old legends,

particularly the legends of Nanibojou.

Mr. H.: There's something else f wanted to get your reaction to. The

Nanibojou stories apparently are made up from time to time currently. I think

even during the WPA days a story came out about Nanibojou. I heard this

from John Morrison, who just died this winter. He was familiar with the area

around Cass Lake and Leech and Bemidji. They had quite a funny story about

Nanibojou showing up at one of these WPA camps and standing around and

shivering. He had bad clothing, and he

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 13

said, well, he wasn't as lucky as they were because they were working for the

WFA.

Mr. O.: Well, I never heard any of that. Of course I was collecting out of the

WPA country. I was in Canada, you see, just across the border.

Mr. H.: They even had Paul Bunyan worked into Nanibojou.

Mr. O .: Oh, I never ran into any of that.

Mr. H.: But these are all recent.

Mr. O.: It is degenerating. No, in the first place you don't hear any of that over

on the Canadian side, and wherever I got any of this at that time, they were.

Well, one of my best story tellers was a half-breed, a Catholic. He did it under

great care so the Priest wouldn't know. The priest wasn't pleased when he

found out I was getting these stories. But these were pagan stories that I got.

They were pagan stories that his old pagan -- originally pagan -- mother had

told. Of course his pagan mother had gone into the church because his father

was a French Canadian and all those Indian women who married those early

white workers became Catholic. But they weren't very good Catholics -- that

kind. I mean, they did what they had to do, but they didn't really believe very

much in that. They weren't thoroughly converted. So they didn't change the

stories. My main informant up there was this old fellow -- a very remarkable

old fellow who lived to be right up around one hundred. There was every

evidence that he had. He said that was true, and the things that he

remembered -- when the soldiers came down to put down the rebellion there,

you see -- indicated that he was just around that time. And very clear-minded.

Well, I have manuscript books and books of those things, just written down in

pencil, and I was told that they had a value because the experts liked to

compare those with other versions of the same thing. You see, they learn

something about ----

Mr. H.: Yes, innovations that have crept into the story. Well, Miss Densmore

found in her recordings of O jibway music that they varied from reservation to

reservation. I did have correspondence with her, and a great dream of mine is

that I could record in the same areas where she collected her songs to find

how

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 14

many of the old songs had survived, how many variations had crept into them,

and what new songs had been introduced since her time.

Mr. O.: She was a very delightful woman, but she had certain hindrances to

getting what she really wanted. I was surprised when she got up there,

because here was this rich country where they were all pagans, and she'd

been going around where most of them were giving up paganism. And you

were lucky if you found a pagan who could tell these things right. I offered to

take her up there and introduce her and get her started, and she said, "Why, I

couldn't do that at all. That would never do.” And I said, "Why not?" "Why, I

would never know what they might say," she said. And she said, "I go," (She

was very ladylike you know) "I go to the schools on these reservations, and

they bring in an interpreter, and then I take that down in that way, and I'm very

careful then." The teachers warned them too. "And," she says, "I couldn't go

up there alone, even if you took me up and left me there." "Well," I said, "there

are some teachers up there at some of those places." They were just

beginning to have schools. But, oh, no, she couldn't risk that at all. The thing

that I was most impressed about there was that these were Indians that hadn't

changed any, you see. They were all pagans. They danced the same. They

had the same mité (meetay-pronunciation) ceremonies, all the time, and they

had their medicine men, and the tchisiki-winini. [mité – mi-tay or midày -- this

is the sound of the word]

Mr. H.: Jasikewinini?

Mr. O.: Yes.

Mr. H.: I wondered, what would be your interpretation of that term "jasikey,"

-something like "low muttering," or "ground muttering"?

Mr. O.: Well, of course, they were magicians, but tchisiki-winini is a being -a

magical being. Of course, these men are in close communion with these

beings -these tchisiki-winini beings -- when they carry on their medicine

treatment. Now, as to how you would translate that beyond the fact that it

does mean these mythical

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 15

creatures that you talk to -- spirits ----- have you ever been present at one of

those?

Mr. H.: A friend of mine has been, Tony Wise, in Wisconsin. And I've talked to

many Indians who have witnessed this, older Indians. Ed LaPlante's aunt, for

instance, as a girl. There was quite a Mitewan organization there at Grand

Portage, and then this shaking tent business, which wasn't actually part of the

Mitewan society, was it?

Mr. O.: No.

Mr. H.: These guys operated independently.

Mr. O.: Yes, that's right, they're different.

Mr. H.: But they were more or less oracles. If you had problems and had a

person sick and wanted to know if they were going to get well or how your

friends on a trip were faring, you would go and ask this man. He would

converse with the spirits and reveal these things, and in many instances --

possibly only the times they were correct -- were remembered. But Tony Wise

attended some there, Lac Court Oreilles, and he, after having seen it in

person and heard, began to wonder if there wasn't something of extrasensory

perception in some of these old fellows that produced these forecasts.

Mr. O.: Well, personally, I never shut my mind to ideas of that sort I never

have had the slightest feeling of ridicule toward any of it, no matter how

ridiculous it may seem -- never. There is always a good basis for it. That's one

thing, I think. These men are sincere. Sometimes, the tchisiki-winini aren't,

because they get paid. They perform for money. The mite is the highest type

in character of those medicine men. They're more like a Masonic Order or

something of that sort. You've got to go through a long training. You've got to

go through a long training for each. But they are not fakers. Sometimes the

tchisiki-winini are fakers to this extent -- that they want to scare the patient so

that he'll pay money, or maybe win the favor of the patient so he'll pay money.

I know some of them like that.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 16

They're simply importers. But they're not all that way.

Mr. H.: No.

Mr. O.: Oh, no. Some are real doctors, and they're like our psychiatrists in a

way. They've had elaborate training. And I'm convinced that they feel they are

dealing with the spirits -- supernatural creatures. There's one up at the Seine

River named Charlie Friday and I think he's that way. He built a chimney for

my house. I went away, and it was bigger than I thought -- it was quite big. I

cams back, and I said, "Now, Charlie, that'd be big enough for the U. S. Steel

Corporation." And he smiled. He saw whatever joke there was in that. And

then I said to him, just for fun, "Charlie, you know, I don't know. I don't believe

I'm going to live in that house. I believe I'll live in the chimney." Smiling. And

he looked at me, and he said, "I could." At first I kind of expressed

astonishment, and he repeated "I could." Then I knew what he meant. He

believes that his spir it could go and be in any of those places, and that he

knows how to put it there, you see, at the right time. He's had that kind of

training. He could go and dwell in there. I don't know what he does with his

body meantime, but ---

Mr. H.: I wanted to ask you about that, now that it's come up -- this idea of

duality of spirits among the Ojibway. In the olden times, I believe, they thought

they had two spirits -- one that immediately left the body (the fleshy spirit

when they died) and the spirit of the mind which could go and return and

come back to the grave. It was explained by one old Indian that he knew there

were two spirits, because when he went to sleep at night and dreamed, this

one spirit could travel all over the world to those places that he had been and

return to him, but at the same time his other spirit had stayed with the body;

otherwise he would have been dead.

Mr. O.: You've got something there. There's no question that's true. They had

that feeling, you see. And they had pretty profound intuitions about things. A

lot of things that we might be right on the edge of, psychologically. I don't

know.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 17

But I think William James had a better approach than most scientists,

because he never turned down anything. He was ready to investigate it. I'd

see and hear all these things among these Indians, and I think often that they

have a wisdom that we don't have. If we ever had it, we've forgotten it. We're

reared entirely on this idea that nothing is true unless you can prove it right

there -- two and two are four, and that type of thing, you see. And we shut out

minds to a lot of spiritual things and dismiss them. But the Indians arc very

alert and sensitive to all those things, and I think we may find in time -- maybe

this is just a pipe dream -- that some of these very remarkable things that they

seem to know and couldn't be explained otherwise -- like predictions when the

white men were coming or when they were coming back or when they were

going to attack -- that they might have had some sensitiveness that had not

been thrown away, almost like a telephone system. And a lot of us might have

that. Maybe all of us had it -- if we hadn't grown up to the idea that that was

impossible, you see, and absurd. But I hear Indians speak of the same sort of

thing you speak of, and this dream business, you see. Dreams are a great

thing with them.

Mr. H.: Have you heard many hunting stories?

Mr. O.: No.

Mr. H.: Or hunting songs? I know that this is a difficult thing to collect because

of the religious nature. They're personal songs. I heard them record one only

because this man's brother had died, and it was his brother's song that he

sang. But if his brother had been alive, I wouldn't have been able to collect it.

But in hunting, going back to these dreams, apparently the young Chippewa --

both boys and girls -- in puberty would fast, darkened their faces. I think the

boys blackened the whole face, and the girls maybe half- Have you ever seen

any of that?

Mr. O.: Yes. I've seen them where their faces were darkened, and where they

went off and-stayed, sometimes quite a ways. Sometimes they wouldn't be

very far away.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 18

They would often go up in a tree and stay there, you see. Then they're not

supposed to eat or drink until they have a dream that's a guide for their lives.

And often they pick their own personal god from what they have seen in a

dream.

Mr. H.: Yes.

Mr. O.: Yes, they interpret what they've heard, you see, and seen. Of course, I

guess everybody is more likely to have those vivid dreams if they starve

enough.

Mr. H.: Yes, it's sort of like hallucinations.

Mr. O.: Yes, there's a physical basis for it, you see. A lot of those things they

know, but they kind of ignore the physical basis, and they feel that you have

released a spirit there by not clogging it with a lot of food. Oh, I think those

things are tremendously interesting. I think we're just on the edge of any

understanding of those primitive thoughts and impulses. And some of these

people I see performing -- tchisiki-winini men, you see -- they are very

remarkable – the training they've had, you know. And they keep those

voices-- of course, the voices must come out of them.

Mr. H.: Maybe it's a sort of ventriloquism.

Mr. O.: Yes. Oh, I don't see what else it could be.

Mr. H.: Observers, apparently, are thoroughly convinced that these are ----

Mr. O.: Oh, yes. From the earliest times people who saw that felt the same. It

seems inconceivable when you listen to them, but they're so well trained, and

I think that they feel that they have been able to call into consultation those

spirits.

Mr. H.: Have you ever witnessed these?

Mr. O.: Oh, yes.

Mr. H.: Has the voice of the turtle ever entered into this.

Mr. O.: Yes.

Mr. H.: I was struck by that when I first learned of that, because in the Bible,

you know, there is a phrase that goes, "The voice of the turtle is heard in the

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 19

land." And of course we usually think of a turtle as not being vocal at all. But

the turtle apparently plays quite an important role in this communication of the

spirits. [Hart misunderstand. Biblical “turtle” is the turtledove.]

Mr. O.: Yes, because they appear on the paintings still on the rocks, you

know. Oh, all over in that country you'll find turtles, very, very, often. They're

connected with the supernatural. There are several tur tle rivers up there, and

in all cases, at some place on those rivers you'll find paintings of those turtles.

And they're nearly always upright. Of course, that's the easiest way to picture

a turtle anyway. And they have certain favorite voices. I'm trying to think of

some one of these that appears when a tchisiki-winini is talking to them. lie

suddenly comes here and he has his say about things, and there'll be quite an

argument at times.

One of these that I remember very well was very impressive. There

were some white people visiting me, and we'd been up Seine River and were

approaching this Indian village called the "Wild Potato Indian Reservation,"

about fifty miles from where I lived. These people had been out on a trip.

There were a couple of women, a man and a boy. When we were camping

near this reservation that night, it got dark too early for us to go over there,

and so we camped and we were going to go over in the morning. But I could

hear off afar that there was something going on over there -- one of these

tchisiki-winini -- and I told these people about it, but they'd never seen it. And I

said, "Well, do you suppose we could go over there?" It was a nice night. So

after supper we very quietly went over, and there was a hillside about like this

[shows slope of hill with gesture] and we were over on this side. And we came

over here, and when we got to this point [gestures], we could look right down

on this slope, and there was grass down there, and it was extremely dark. But

we could see there was one of these tall tchisiki-winini tents, you see, and

there were people sitting around on the ground in a circle, and they were

mostly like this (bent over), as if they were in church. And you would hear this

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 20

tchisiki-winini inside of there -- this one man -- he was talking in his own voice

-- and then you could hear some of these responses, and the Indians sitting

around here would say: ai-uck, ai-uck, ai-uck, or something like that you see,

like in church. It was very quiet and nice. But then you heard a good deal of

commotion, and there was something lying in a pack. It looked like a pack.

Well, I found out later that it was this old woman who was sick, and she was

unconscious and wrapped up in a rabbit-skin blanket -- not supposed to know

anything about this, lying over here. She was supposed to be close to death.

And there was an argument, because this medicine man was saying to

her that she must live, that they wanted her, and that they didn't want her to

die. They all needed her. And then there would be these responses. And then

you heard this feeble old voice say, "Oh, no, I am too tired. I can't. I've got to

go away." Well, then you hear Quakadus -- that's the one I'm trying to think of.

Quakadus is one that often comes in, with that funny name. I don't know what

it means, but Quakadus took a part in this. And he said, "Oh, no, it's too soon

for you to go. Your people all need you very much, and you are very dear to

them, and they need you. They don't know how to put their nets in right, or

they don't know so-and-so." And Ai-Uæk, Ai-Uæk, from the auditors outside.

So this argument was started. Sometimes there’d be two or three of the

voices inside you know. My people were just thrilled beyond words. I had told

them, "Now, don't you make a sound." The Indians never heard us. We

withdrew and we got away and they had a chance to see this in this twilight,

you see. Well, that was nice, and the next spring when I went up there, to my

surprise, the old sick patient was going about as usual. She was old, but she'd

recovered.

Mr. H.: I was going to ask you something else about lodge stories. Many times

the young were instructed in their tribal history by the grandmothers.

Mr. O.: That's right.

Mr. H.: Is this generally prevalent through your area there?

Mr. O.: Yes, grandparents were the ones that did most of that sort of thing.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 21

Grandmother, or grandfather sometimes, but grandmother, particularly. And

they'd get the children early enough, and the children would still be devoted to

the grandmother. Oh, yes.

Mr. H.: Well, I wondered. Even in this day among Chippewa friends that we

have up around Big Sandy it seems the custom of the young married couples

with small children to bring the children up for the summer and leave them

with the grandparents for instruction. And I wondered if there might be some

legendary tie-up with Nanibojou, who was supposed to have been fathered by

the west wind with a human mother. She died of childbirth and Nanibojou was

raised by his grandmother. I wonder if maybe some of this myth about the

grandmother raising Nanibojou may account for this telling of the tales by the

older people.

Mr. O.: That hasn't come to my attention up there. I've always thought of it as

being simply due to the venerable nature of the old person and the intimate

relationship that they have to the little children for a long time there, you see.

And they certainly took very great pleasure in telling these stories. They could

tell them generation after generation apparently. Of course, the children had

nothing to guide them except hear ing that. They had nothing printed, you see,

but they had these exceptionally good memories as a result.

Mr. H.: Well, here as an example of innovation, or the changing of an old

story, is demonstrated in this story of the gift of the [inaudible] to the people by

Naribojou In an old account he opened up his medicine bag with all these little

game counters, and among the things in his bag are a gunflint and a

musketball. Well, this certainly tics in with the fur trade. I imagine, though, that

the story has roots much fetcher back than that.

Mr. O.: Oh, yes.

Mr. H.: As this story was told and retold, they started to introduce newer items

in the medicine bag.

Mr. O.: Well, I think that maybe you came into contact with more of that here,

or wherever you go, than I did up there, you see, because they were still

pagan. They

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 22

had, of course, relationships with white people, but not very intimate

relationships right in their reserves. They traded with them, but some of those

variations I haven't heard. I haven't heard about their finding anything in there.

Mr. H.: Do they play the bowl game up in your area?

Mr. O : Yes, many time.

Mr. H.: Moccasin game, they play?

Mr. O.: Oh, yes the moccasin game, they play under the blankets, you know.

They always want to hit hard you know. Yes, and pagasonik I see that lots of

times, and those little figures that they shake in the bowl more or less like

dice, you know. You've got to be pretty good, got to have a pretty good eye,

don't you, to tell which ones those are, but they know instantly.

Mr. H.: Which side up?

Mr. O.: Yes, in the older games, they have pagasonik to represent men...

Mr. H.: Represented men, and I think the sea serpent and the land serpent

and little ducks or loons, and then some little discs. This also was introduced

after the trade, although they could have been made from float copper

nuggets, little flat brass -- almost like a coin.

Mr. O.: Well, it does seem that they were always adaptable that way and

always seeking novelties. I know that from my observations near Ranier, and I

think that was always true of Indians. There isn't any question in my mind that

they had traders who were privileged characters between the tribes, and they

were privileged because they were supposed to have connections as

medicine men. They could do you harm or do you good. How that was known,

I don't know, but I'm sure that they did travel, some of them, long distances.

For instance, an Ojibway might have gone clear down to the Navahos. I don't

know of such an instance, but I know that they did travel into distant, hostile

tribes, and that they had some way -- I've never been able to find Out;

nobody's ever told me this; but I've asked how they knew how to protect

themselves -- that they were medicine men, you see. But they served

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 23

a useful purpose for the people from whom they purchased or acquired

medicine -new kinds of medicine, as they called them. It wasn't medicine to

take internally, you see, but it might be a rabbit tail, or it might be some

special part of an animal. But they'd go down and they would have things that

were known to cure diseases from up there that you couldn't get down where

they went, you see, and somehow they were able, although they couldn't

speak the language, to pass. They could trade and then come back again. I've

never been able to find out how that is, but I'm quite sure it was true.

Mr. H.: I think there was quite extensive continental trade between the tribes,

because otherwise how could you explain these conchshell gorgets and

ocean shells and things showing up.

Mr. O.: Yes, well, it was that kind of thing, and it's in spite of the fact that it

was so frightfully dangerous, you see. But apparently they didn't steal these,

you know. Apparently they had some way of communicating, even though

they hadn't the same language, so that it was understood that they were

benefactors, and that they had something to give in return for something that

would be bestowed upon them, to bring health or luck, or something else, you

see.

Mr. H.: You've probably heard many stories. I'm harping on Nanibojou

because I'm so interested in that series of stories -- their explanation for things

like the red willow. You've probably heard it. Could you tell me what version

you heard of that.

Mr. O.: Yes, well, let's see -- that was something about blood, wasn't it. Let me

see what that was. Those were the early stories I got from this old fellow who

was half Catholic, you know, and the priest didn't like it when he found out that

they were telling them to me. But he was a wonderful old man. He wasn't

troubled about that, and he was so thoroughly a Catholic that he wasn't afraid

that he was going to hurt himself. No, I've forgotten now, exactly how that was

that all that stuff got bloody. What was your version of the story?

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 24

Mr. H.: Well, Nanibojou had been running through the woods, and the brush

started to cut the calves of his legs -- rose bushes and things, and the blood

stained the bark red, and, of course, this becomes the red willow that's used

in the Kinnikinnic.

Mr. O.: No, I don't remember that exactly. But they do have explanations for

all things like the red willow -- why it would be different, you see, just any

amount of small obscure things like that, which you wouldn't even get in your

ordinary stories. But they've got an explanation for it among themselves.

Mr. H.: And if you're walking with a Chippewa through the woods, and if you

see something unusual, like a rockslide down the hillside, he'll make some

reference to Nanibojou, explaining that he slid downhill there, or...

Mr. O.: Well, I haven't had them do that, but there is a great mass of those

stories, you know.

Mr. H.: Well, too, you've undoubtedly observed that Nanibojou was a dual sort

of personality. He did much good for his people, and at the same time was a

trickster...

Mr. O.: And a simpleton, too.

Mr. H.: ...in that there are almost two categories of the stories that they pass.

Some of them are sort of ribald or risqué, in our attitudes toward them.

Mr. O.: Oh, I should say so. That's what Miss Densmore was afraid of, you

see. She was afraid they were going to tell one of those stories, Atisokanan.

Mr. H.: Well, the story about Nanibojou.

Mr. O.: and the wild rice, when he couldn't find any wild rice and talked to a

duck. He said, "Oh, get some wild rice." Do you remember that story?

Mr. H.: No, I don't.

Mr. O.: Well, that is hardly a parlor story.

Mr. H.: Well, it would be wonderful to hear some of those. The tripe de roche

one isn't quite so risqué. It's that Nanibojou was hungry and cold, and he had

sat down, sort of, over his fire to warm himself and burned himself on the rear,

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 25

and then he slid down the rocks into the lake to cool off, and this flesh that

tore off was the origin of tripe de roche (moss on the rocks).

Mr. O.: Yes, I've heard that story quite a number of times. Have you heard the

one where he got very tired and sleepy. There were enemies around, and he

was afraid to go to sleep. But he just had to rest and take a nap, and so he

spoke to his backside, and he said, "Now, here, I want you to watch. Don't you

let any of those Yankees come around here." He didn't call them Yankees but

Sioux or whatever they were. And so he fell asleep, and all of a sudden he

waked up when some of these fellows came creeping up on him. So then he

took it out on his backside. He just beat it like everything, to punish it. Did you

ever hear that?

Mr. H.: No.

Mr. O.: Well, that's the kind of fool things that Nanibojou did sometimes, you

see. And like the time he wanted to catch the goose and swam under the

surface and caught him by the feet, and be was carried up into the sky and he

didn't want to let go, and he got up higher and higher and higher, but they

were still going up, and so lie had to let go. Then he was dropped right into

the lake, you see, smashed down. Of course, it didn't kill him. He always

seemed to survive. Did you ever hear that version?

Mr. H.: No.

Mr. O.: Well, there are lots of those. I don't know how many of those things

there are, how long they might have gone on. But I was going over one whole

winter to that fellow, Pierrish Jourdain. That was fifty years ago, maybe a little

longer. And I never repeat them or anything, and I've never read them, except

the next time I went over I always would read the versions. I'd take them

home and study them.

Mr. H.: You have these in manuscript form?

Mr. O.: Yes, Oh, I don't know how many.

Mr. H.: What orthography do you use, your own, or...?

Mr. O.: No, I use my own, but I use the symbols that they used in the

government

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 26

books for the pronunciation of these things, you see. Let's see, what do they

call those for their phonetic system. They've got a regular phonetic system

and you can apply that to almost any language. Well, I tried to write it out

phonetically like that. Then I found some things that hadn't been mentioned in

anything I saw. There are kind of strange things that are not generally

indicated by a letter. There's an "echo" for instance. You say, oo or aa. It's

generally put down as just an "A", but there's kind of an echo to it. And if you

listen carefully, you find a lot of that, which is often overlooked.

Mr. H.: They seem to swallow some of the parts of the words. They don't

seem to really enunciate them, but they're meant, like in reference to

[inaudible], often it comes out [inaudible].

Mr. O. : Well, I think that's true, but we do the same thing. That's why it seems

that way, you see. They can elide and omit a whole lot of stuff. We do it all the

time. A Frenchman trying to learn our language, or a German, would be

terrifically puzzled, because they've been shown this word, and they don't

recognize it. The Indian does the same thing. And they don't know it. And you

express surprise: "Why I didn't understand that. What did you say?" Then he'd

repeat it. "You must be awful stupid. You don't get that." And then finally you

find out if you get them to do it slowly enough that it's all in there you see. I

think that's why we have those results, and I think they find it just the same

with us quite a lot of times, no matter how careful we are. We still haven't

convinced them how to pronounce something.

Mr. H.: Were there many what we call "ghost" stories told up in that area, like

Windigo experiences.

Mr. O.: Windigo stories -- oh, yes, lot of Windigo stories.

Mr. H.: Do you remember any about a Windigo?

Mr. O.: Yes, my old Indian I met first, the one who went to Hudson Bay with

me --a marvelous man. Oh, I just thought the world of that fellow. It wasn't that

he

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 27

was so noble. He could drink like everything if he had a chance, and he could

joke about peoples' foibles. But there was nothing mean about him, and he

was a hard worker. And he was scrupulously honest. Oh, my, I never saw a

man who leaned back so far to be sure that he'd never misinform you, do you

see.

He seemed to think that when I asked him something, it was going to

be official forever. I don't know how he got that idea. But he generally wouldn't

tell you for a long time. He'd let it mull around in his mind maybe for three

months. When we went on that canoe trip, there were a lot of things I asked

him, the first month or so, and we were gone six months. And it wasn't until

we got around on Lake Winnipeg at the beginning of winter and were held up

four and five days at a time with huge storms that he began telling me these

things. He had been thinking them all over to be sure that they were exactly

right. Well, he told me this one time. I guess it was the first time he was telling

me about Windigos you see. We were up at Quetico, and there's one lake

there name Windigo Lake. That's a supernatural creature -- a cannibal. A

Windigo does eat human flesh, and of course, we've had Windigos always

among white people. There's hardly been any big expedition, when they got in

trouble, where someone didn't sooner or later turn Windigo. Yes, it was

amazing. Even on this Nobile Expedition that Mussolini sent up just out of

vainglory for his country. He sent them up by balloon to the North Pole, and

they came down up there north of Russia. The only man who was any good in

the whole party was a fellow named Malmgren, who was a Norwegian

scientist. The rest of these fellows were army officers who had been sent up

there just to win glory for Mussolini. And they came down, and they didn't

know anything about it. They came down there in the Arctic Islands north of

Siberia somewhere, and they couldn't be found, and poor Amundsen, who

was a marvelous man -a wonderful fellow. I knew him, saw him before he

went to the South Pole, saw him again when he came back to Davenport

where he had friends, and they'd always invite me there. And Amundsen,

because he was getting old, had thought his day was done.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 28

He did this terribly tragic thing. How he could have done that for these

worthless Italians. He takes off in a plane out into the night up there, hoping

he could do something and was never heard of again, you know. And here

were these worthless fellows. At least that's the way it seemed to me from

everything I could find.

And they were finally discovered by the Russians up there you know,

and of course the story was somewhat discounted because the Russians

found them, and it couldn't be believed that the Russians would tell the truth of

what they found. They were on this island, and they were starving. They were

pretty hard up. The man in charge had lost a lot of flesh, and his main officers.

But they found some of the remains of this other man I mentioned, the

scientist, and there was no question before they were through that some of

these Italians had shared in devouring Malmgren. It was said that he was far

gone at the time, and while it might not have improved the flavor, it made it a

little bit easier to dispose of him. Oh, there was no question.

Well, word came out that this had happened. I don't know whether

Nobile had any part in the eating of Malmgren, whether they shared equally,

or whether these fellows did it on their own. But at least there wasn't discipline

enough to prevent it. So when this came out, it was never denied, but

Mussolini promised that he would make an investigation. And all that I ever

could find that was published about it was that. He didn't give any of the

results, but he demoted the officers of the expedition. Well, it would seem as if

this had happened and that they didn't want to admit it at all. They could be

demoted, of course, for not having kept a strong enough hand on the other

fellows. But I don't think there's any question among the people who know

most about it that somebody in that Nobile expedition did eat the scientist,

whether he was already dead or going to die. But they got some good out of

it. So I mentioned that first, because there are lost of records, you know, of

cannibalism among white people. It isn't anything confined to Indians by any

means.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 29

Mr. H.: Do you think these stories about the Windigos were derived possibly

from this fact that once in a while people would resort to cannibalism in hard

times -eat their children or old people?

Mr. O.: Oh, yes -- there are lots of records of that. I was getting around to that.

The government has a record, I'm told -- I've seen that. But there's a place

called Hungry Hall down here at the mouth of the Rainy River, quite close to

us, where an Indian man ate his child within this century. This is the story Billy

told that was so very interesting, and he'd thought this over for a long, long

time, too, before he told me. He say, "I don't know if this true. Oldest Injun say

so." He say, "Pretty bad -- they come down here long way -- frozen island in

the Arctic. They come down winter -- very big people," he say. "They eat um --

eat um Injun. Maybe not eat um white man, I don't know -- eat um Injun. But I

don't know, lots of time he not real Windigo -- sometimes just starving Injun."

He say, "Lot time, he got crazy. He go crazy. Injun say: Windigo he eat um --

he just starving Injun." Well, of course, that's true, too. And then he tells this

instance that he knew. At least he said he witnessed this. There was one old

woman in the eighties, and some of those old people would still go out and

trap all by themselves in the winter -- a terrible life -- lonesome, cold, privation.

But they knew how to live. They knew how to dress. They got rabbit-skin

blankets, and they fished. They collected fish before the lake froze, and they

would get as much food on hand as possible, and then they'd go out and tend

to these nets. And she had gone all alone. They all left. They have a party in

the autumn. That's the farewell party, and then they scatter to all these places.

And then in the spring they come together at one place, particularly on Seine

River. And they come down to Red Gut Indian Village and then they'd have

their spring festivals. They'd tell all the things that had happened. And they'd

play Pagasan, this game with the little figures and they played cards. Of

course they learned to play cards too.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 30

Mr. H: They must have learned that from the French voyageurs.

Mr. O.: Oh, yes. And then they have these games where they'd hit things and

all that kind of thing, the blanket game. And so they were out there, and

gradually one after another came. But some of them had terrible stories. They

lost babies, or they lost little children in a certain area out there. And Windigos

-- oh, this terrible thing about the Windigos. Well, some of them were a little bit

suspicious about these Windigos being the true Windigos that came down out

of the north, you see. But they never saw them, and it happened at night.

Somebody would get into the wigwam, maybe get hold of one of these

children and get it out, strangle it, take the clothes and eat part of it. Eat them

raw, in a lot of cases. They'd find these pieces around. So here they all came

down, and finally there was just one person left, and that was an old woman

over eighty years old who had been trapping, alone they were suspicious

about her. She didn't come down, though she'd been up in that area. And

finally they saw her canoe coming down. Billy said he was right there on the

shore. He was about seventeen or eighteen years old. He saw her coming

down, paddling her birchbark canoe. And her son-in-law went down to meet

her. And when he looked in the canoe, he saw it was full of clothes -- clothes

of these victims -- all kinds of clothes that they recognized. And so when she

came up to the shore (she wasn't hiding anything) she put her paddle out so

as to help herself get out, you see, and she stood up there, and her son-in-law

shot her right dead on the spot. That's the story Billy told me.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 31

I'm sure he'd had that experience, because he was scrupulous. But he said

that Windigos weren't all supernatural, you see.

Well, most of those who caused the stories (I don't know about the

supernatural ones) were real people who killed. And, you see, when people

like Samuel Hearne who went in up there in Hudson Bay and up to the mouth

of the Copper Mine River... He traveled for two years with about two hundred

Indians, you see, and he's got pages about the situation up there. It's

well-known, even among the Eskimos. There are some cases where they

sacrificed themselves purposely. They said, "I'm not any good anymore. I

can't do this. All these children. Are we going to let them starve?" Some old

woman may say, "You can have me."

Mr. H.: This has been reported just recently. The Canadians are doing quite a

little resettlement work with the Eskimos up around Huds on's Bay, in the

Johns River area, and one of the older men who was interviewed told about

how he had survived. They had started to move. The hunting was very poor

along the east coast of Hudson's Bay, and he and his father and mother and a

grandfather and grandmother all started overland to the Johns River area

east. They had had nothing to eat, and gradually one after another would die,

and finally there was just himself and his old grandmother, and she said,

"Now, you kill me and eat me. This is the only way we can perpetuate our

family." And so she suggested a way that he do it that would not be too

offensive to him. She put a rope around her throat and poked it through the

igloo. He was to go outside and pull on the rope until he couldn't feel her

moving. And he butchered her up and started

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 32

off with her in the pack, and it was the only way that he survived that winter.

Mr. O.: Well, I hadn't heard that, but that's very interesting.

Mr. H.: This was reported on the Canadian Broadcasting T.V. program.

Mr. O.: I hadn't heard that, but I'm sure that kind of thing happens.

Mr. H.: It just chills your bones to think that it's happened so recently.

Mr. O.: Oh, yes, I'm sure that there is nothing impossible about that. They've

done it again and again. It's well known.

Mr. H.: But now I wonder if that maybe gave rise to this mythology about the

Windigos as sort of an excuse to cover up this thing that happened

occasionally?

Mr. O.: Well, I don't know. I never thought of it as an excuse. I think that the

actual murdering and eating, of course, gave rise to it. But whether they were

trying to excuse themselves... Now in the one story I told, those Indians

regarding her as a kind of an old witch who had to be destroyed, you see.

They had no approval of that sort of thing, that's sure. Those Indians Hearne

tells about knew all about it and approved it. And the Eskimos who live under

such desperate conditions at times, where the old people have reached an

age where they no longer can go out at sixty or seventy below in the big winds

and keep going and going and going, hoping they're going to see some living

thing... So then they just sacrifice themselves. I don't think the rest of the

Eskimo family nowadays often eat their own relatives, but I'm sure in Hearne's

time the Indians ate other Indians, and it didn't seem as if they had to just

surprise

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 33

them. I think probably a lot of the old people there were sacrificed in that way,

because they couldn't last much longer anyway.

I haven't read accounts in anything I've seen where you had to be

careful that you were going to be eaten or that they'd surprise you, shoot you

like a deer, or something like that. But that must have happened, too, among

those people, because it happened on a lot of these explorations - Franklin's

party, I guess -- and a whole lot of the other people who turned cannibal.

Mr. H.: To change the topic of conversation a little, have you ever had

occasion to hear any of their oral history -- how they happened to come into

this area, or their migration, or any references to having come from the east.

Mr. O.: Oh, yes, I've heard quite a lot of that. I don't think there is any question

but what that's true. For instance, up where I am it is true that they'd been

there earlier, before white men came. And it was a land of plenty. It had wild

animals and fish and all the things that they knew, and they had mastered the

economy in the region. Well, then, there seems to have been pressure from

these western tribes coming in here, like the Sioux, you see, who had an

entirely different economy. They were on the plains. They didn't know very

much about that kind of canoeing or hunting or anything else, but they began

invading there and making it dangerous for the Ojibways. The impression I got

was that the Ojibways were glad to be driven out then by these other people.

And maybe some others than Sioux -- not necessarily Sioux, you see. But by

the time the white men arrived,

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 34

the Ojibways and the Algonquins were all pretty well over -- at least on the St.

Lawrence River, or as far as the coast, where they didn't come in contact with

the Iroquois, down in New York.

And that's where they were when the white people began coming.

Then when the white people began coming and they had their arms and there

was additional security, and the white people wanted to come in and seek

gold and all kinds of things, they had these Ojibways as guides. They were

gradually moving back in and reconquering their land, and there was battle

after battle, of course, up there in my country between these Ojibways and the

Sioux. The Ojibways were regaining ground, but it was largely with the weight

and the help of the white people behind them. They had guns, for instance,

you see. They could get guns before the Sioux got guns, and gunpowder and

all those things, and that was a big help to them. But you see the Sioux and

the Ojibways were still fighting up there in historical times -- not too long ago.

Mr. H.: Do they consider themselves Bois Fort up there in your area? Strong

woods?

Mr. O.: Yes, they're woods Indians, of course. They don't call themselves Bois

Fort Indians up there. They always called themselves Ojibway, the real

people, and those who live farther north they call swampies. They're

practically the same, but they're swampy cress. It's a little different, you see.

That's a local name, that Bois Fort. Of course, that's French, you see, and it's

a name that the Frenchmen gave them when they began coming in there. But

I think those are all the same kind of Ojibways.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 35

Mr. H.: The term Anishinabe, or [pronounces it differently ] -- does that more

or less signify spontaneous or original name?

Mr. O.: It means the real...

Mr. H.: The first man, or something...

Mr. O.: Well, I don't know as it means the first man. It means the first man. It

means the real people, the-Anishinabe that's a nice name, too, isn't it? I think

that's a nice name, Anishinabe -- musical.

Mr. H.: Yes, well, their maple sugar Anishinabe sisebaqua. It's a beautiful

language to hear.

Mr. O.: That's what I think. And it hurts me to think of the scorn with which

that's treated, even by some geographers. When you have these beautiful

names that are clinging to these places up north, and then they give them

some perfectly commonplace name... I think that's awful. And maybe because

there's some man in the legislature over there in Canada temporarily, not

worth five cents, and they name it for him, some temporary minister of lands

or forests, something like a fellow named Finlayson. They use a name like

Finlayson when you have a wonderful name, say, like Kabetogama or

Anishinabe, or any of those old beautiful Indian names, you know -- soft and

lovely -- and they have a significance that goes way back.

MR. H.: You know, talking about the beauty of the language and many of their

customs...I know that you pronounce it Meté [Meetay]. In Wisconsin it's midé.

But this use of tobacco as a gift to propitiate the gods -- this was a

custom that goes way, way back, where they'd leave little gifts at Indian

paintings or strange tree shapes or in

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 36

caves. Have you ever seen this done at all, where they make a little offering

before they start on a canoe trip? These canoe trips that I have been on... I've

just been thrilled by the fact that many of these older men would crumple a

cigarette and drop it in the lake, or sing this little sort of farewell song that they

sing for a safe journey. And if they conclude the journey safely, there is

another little song that they sing. It must be also a thanksgiving song.

Mr. O.: Well, I haven't seen that done, but I can well believe it.

Mr. H.: I saw this done just in 1962.

Mr. O .: You did? Is that so?

Mr. H.: This bunch over in Lac Court Oreilles are pagan Indians. They are the

only ones Tony Wise will work with, because he said the ones who have

accepted Christianity are the worst of the lot.

Mr. O.: Yes. Where is this place you say?

Mr. H.: Hayward, Wisconsin. You should go over there if you haven't had an

opportunity. I hope we can get you over there to meet Tony. He has about fifty

of these Indian families he has been rehabilitating, and providing employment

for.

Mr. O.: I'd like to go. Government man?

Mr. H.: Oh, no, he is just much interested in the welfare of Indians.

Mr. O.: And they're pagan?

Mr. H.: Yes.

Mr. O.: That's very unusual.

Mr. H.: They maintain their faith in the religious ceremonies.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 37

Mr. O.: I think that's very nice. But these differences that you speak of in the

Meté. The "d 's" and 'It's", are interchangeable.

Mr. H.: The d's and p's.

Mr. O.: Yes, they are interchangeable.

Mr. H.: The g's and k's, I guess.

Mr. O.: Yes, those three things I guess are about all of them.

They're interchangeable at all times. But one group will be more

Inclined to use the one rather than the other, you see. Up there –a t will nearly

always replace a d.

Mr. H.: Well, even in the greeting, which apparently they adopted from the

French and modified: Bon jour -- bon jou -- bojo – in Wisconsin, it more than

ever comes out bojo, but here it's bejou.

Mr. O.: Well, the nearer they are to the French the more likely they are to say

something more like Bon Jour. But that is interesting, how they have just

adapted that. Most of them don't know. They think it's an old Ojibway word,

you see.

Mr. H.: I think so.

Mr. O.: Oh, sure.

Mr. H.: It's strange that they had no native term for greetings.

Mr. O.: Well, yes, they did have. They did have some things.

Mr. H.: Or else they just adopted this and lost the other.

Mr. O.: Yes, and I'm trying to think now what they had, and for going too. For,

farewell -- Matchon, they say: Well you're leaving. It's more like saying happy

voyage, or something like that.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 38

We're just kind of on the edge of getting a whole lot of this, but probably much

of it we'll never get now, because these people are going away so fast, you

see,

Mr. H.: Well, that is true. The younger people are not learning these stories or

the songs...

Mr. O.: Oh, no. They're taught in school almost to scorn them, you know. I say

to every one of them, when I get hold of one of these kids, and their fathers,

"Oh, don't give up your language, whatever you do. Hold on." They never

show very much enthusiasm when they've reached that point, you see. Of

course the real old ones, oh, my, they don't want to speak any English at all.

They're holding on to it. They just treasure that.

But, when that's the way you can live and get money to live, it's easy to

give up the other. Then when the girls go to the movies and they see all these

modern things, you know, they are just aghast when they see those things. It's

so far from where they were at this end to where we are now, supposedly, you

see. It's such a gap. They're not shocked by it, but they just think: Oh, what

we've been losing. Just think what we could be doing. I feel sorry for them,

because it's all illusion. What we've got to offer them is mostly just poison,

what they see in these movies -terrible. Of course, they want entertainment.

They are a people full of the love of hospitality and gaiety. They're never great

people to laugh the hear way we do. I don't know whether you ever heard

them go ha, ha, ha.

Mr. H.: No. They're more reserved in their actions, but they're fun loving

people. They enjoy good jokes, but they're never boisterous.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 39

Mr. O.: But they have a fine sense of humor. They're making fun all the time.

You may have a group of men, and they may be just joshing and joking for

hours, but you never hear them go in the same fashion that you hear some of

these white men who bombard your ears with their ha-has' you see.

Mr. H.: One thing I noticed. They certainly took advantage of me and enjoyed

it on one of these canoe trips. I was trying to learn some new Chippewa

words, so this John Barber said, "Well, here's a good expression." He said,

"Ki-widji -Sokaswa-na?" I said, "What does that mean?" He said, "Will you

smoke with me?" So, I said, "Ki -Widji-Sokaswa-na?" And he says, "Sure," and

so I had to get my cigarettes out. And they laughed about that, you know. So

that was a real word to learn.

Mr. O. Oh, yes, they get a lot of fun out of that. They s ay Sokaswa up there,

you see.

Mr. H.: "Sokaswa." That's more or less just to use tobacco, or a pipe.

Mr. O.: Yes, Sokaswa, smoke. And, Asséma is tobacco. Well, they like

festivity. And of course nowadays they get less and less of that. They don't

have the opportunities for it, and so they miss that terribly. That's one reason

they drink so terribly. When they drink, they drink -- not with the idea of any

pride in keeping sober. They think: "Why do I drink? Of course I'm paying

money to get drunk so I can have a nice time," don't you see. And the quicker

they can get drunk, the better. The main thing is to let yourself go, not do the

fool

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 40

things that white men do and go around boasting how much they can stand,

you see. They fall all over, and they still s ay, "Oh, I can take my whiskey. I can

do so and so." You never see an Indian do that. He's so glad when he can

escape this everyday world, you see, and have this wonderful time the way he

used to have, laugh... They don't laugh this loud way, but they're laughing and

joking. And they get drowsy and all that kind of thing, so it's all worthwhile.

Mr. H.: in the old days I think the children looked forward -probably were

promised -- the opportunity of hearing some of these lodge stories if they

behaved themselves during the day. This was part of their entertainment and

amusement during the long winter nights.

Mr. O : That's right.

Mr. H.: And I think possibly you agree with me whole-heartedly that the old

Indians were pretty well behaved people. They had pretty good moral

discipline, the youngsters were brought up pretty well, and this bad Indian

thing has just crept in since their contact with...

Mr. O.: Well, the bad part of it was liquor. The Hudson Bay Company and then

gradually all the other traders rewarded Indians -- good trappers -- with liquor.

And they held this up to them as the greatest reward you could give them.

And so they gave this false value to the Indians. I think they really grafted it

right onto them by the way they behaved, you see. The Company said:

"You've been the best trapper this year. Here's a pint of Jamaica Rum." And it

was terrifically strong stuff. Well, then they could take that and put

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 41

a lot of water in it, and it would still be very strong, and then with their

tendency to have a nice time right away, the easiest way, they'd get drunk.

And then they used to cut up, and often there would be murders in those old

days back in the Hudson Hay Company. Hut I think morally they were way

better people than they are mostly now. After the white people came in -- oh,

some of the things I have heard when the miners were up in our country --

frightful. They should have been shot right and left, those white men. In any

civilized community they would have been, but the Indian couldn't do very

much, you see. And I don't think mast of these primitive people were so bad,

even the Eskimos. When you realize all of it and you get rid of just our plain

religious ideas, -- some of the things we got from just religion that are

far-removed from the fac ts of life -- I think there's a lot of decency among the

Indians.

I have been told by some of these fellows -- one man who was raised

out here --. He was part French, but he was raised out near Winnipeg among

those Métes that lived out there, you see. My, they must have been a very

moral lot as they grew up, these young fellows. And how strong they were.

The emphasis was all placed on fitness and strength. And that helped keep

them straight, too. No, I think if you get down to the question of morals, the

white man can hardly be excelled for bad morals.

Mr. H.: I understand you have a tape recorder. Wouldn't it be a fine thing if

you could get some of these older Indians in your area just to come in and

record stories.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 42

Mr. O: Well, that’s what I’d love to do, and that’s what I was doing – I didn’t

have a recorder way back, but I was recording them by hand, which was

pretty hard. I would love to do that, but I have been situated all through these

later years, when I could get a hold of a recorder – except once or twice –

where I couldn’t do one single thing. I finally borrowed a recorder about the

time that I said to Mr. Kelly, “Well, now, I can’t go ahead with any more of

this.” I saw all my Indians were disappearing. I had these old Indians that

would have jumped off a cliff if I had asked them to. They’d tell me almost

anything, in spite of the prohibition against these things, you see. They don’t

like a lot of publicity, and they’ve got respect for themselves and dignity. They

think that this thing that all the Americans admire so – They wouldn’t put it into

words, but all this terrific notoriety that everybody seems to want, oh, they

don’t like that at all, you know. If they think you are giving them that by taking

it down, you wouldn’t get very far. But, the thing is now when you’ve got the

recorders and it’s easier to get near electricity, and I guess a lot of those

recorders don’t even need to have electricity.

Mr. H.: Some of them are portable.

Mr. O.: Yes, it’s pretty hard to go out way off where they live and find juice

enough. But now the old people who could tell you these things are nearly all

dead, you see.

Mr. H.: That’s the sad part.

Mr. O.: That’s the thing that’s heart breaking.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 43

Mr. H.: I've gotten a contact up there in the Sandy Lake area -- old Frank

Misquadis, who knows this whole series of Nanibojou stories. His son works

here in Minneapolis, and he's finally bought himself a tape recorder. I think I'd

almost be willing to pay for the tapes out of my own pocket, if he could just get

started. It's such a long project. It's a story every night all winter.

Mr. O.: That's right

Mr. H.: Starting in November until late April.

Mr. O.: Well, did you tell his son that and see if...

Mr. H.: Well, his son is a very able translator, and if his father would just get

this on tape, George could take it and then listen to it and translate it.

Mr. O.: If he were paid something, do you think he would go ahead and try to

get that.

Mr. H.: Well, he's very much interested in that. He and I were over here at the

building one night trying to transcribe some of these pow-wow recordings that

I've made up north, and the only way we could transcribe was by microphone

from my recorder speaker to his microphone. And, of course, that isn't as

faithful as if you can phone jack it directly from one set to another. But now I

think he's bought a different tape recorder, and I would hope that he'll go

ahead. I've tried to urge him to do this.

Mr. O : Oh, yes. of course, I'd like nothing better than to just devote a large

part of whatever strength and energy I might have to going around all through

the Ojibway country and trying to find some relics of the things that I knew and

record them.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 44

Mr. H.: If you could get even stories recorded of the stories that you have in

manuscript to compare, this would be a wonderful thing.

Mr. O.: Well, it might be some good. The thing was they were buried out of

sight. I didn't even know where they were, because they'd been 107 there

since 19 [10?]... The last I took of those must have been around 1910, and

everything was piled up on top of them. But I found, I think, most of these old

manuscript books. They're written in pencil, you see. They may be hard to

read, too. They're about this thick, and maybe four copybooks. I don't know

how many stories there are in there. But I was trying my very best to get these

old people whom I knew best up here. There was one old woman who lived to

be ninety-seven years old, authentically. I'm sure that I knew within a few

months of how old she was, because I knew how old she was by what she

told me and what others said about her at the time that the soldiers came in to

put down the Louis Riel rebellion at Red River. She died at the age of

ninety-seven. I'd known her for many years. She was one o f the greatest

women I ever knew in all my life. Marvelous person. If you could have the

whole story of her life, she was simply wonderful. She was as talented as

Sarah Bernhardt. When she'd tell you a story -- she had long arms something

like Sarah Bernhardt, and I'd heard Sarah Bernhardt many times –

Mr. H.: What was her name?

Mr. O.: Her name was -- we called her Mrs. Notawey or [Notawe] or

[Nodaway]. Her husband had been named Notawey. But she was the

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 45

oldest sister of this Indian who went to Hudson Bay with me. And they were

this marvelous old family. And when she'd tell you a story, she would see this

vividly -- all these things she was talking about, you see. And she would make

little wigwams and little canoes as she was talking, and you could see them

coming right there. You'd see them, it was so vivid.

And her voice would change. It would go way down for some of these

men, and it would go up for the woman. A wonderful quality, a rich voice. So

when she was about ninety-six I thought I saw a chance to borrow a recorder

from the relief crowd up at International Falls. I found they had one. They had

to make recordings to permit relief to certain people. They had to have their

stories, you see. And so they let me take this, but it had to have a motor to

operate it. And I found out that at this little village of Mine Centre -- the

Canadian side, forty miles from where I lived. You could go up there on the

train. And a mile and a half from the village this old lady was living with her

cousin named Johnny Whitefish, who was ten years younger. They could

remember, and so could my old Indian, her brother, -- who had already died,

you see -- when Johnny was born. And they always thought Johnny -- oh, he

was more fun. He always had his lips curled up and he had a funny story to

tell. But he never did any work. He would never work. He always had heart

trouble when there was work. And he'd let old Billy take care of him as long as

he lived, and then when he couldn't get in there and the old lady's husband

died, why she took him in and took care of him. Her baby cousin, she called

him.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 46

Well, when she died at ninety-seven, he was eighty-seven, but he was

still her baby cousin, and he was still the same kind of a person. But anyway,

the two of them were living up there at this place, and I went out. It was

frightfully cold weather. And about a half a mile from where they lived there

was a summer cabin, and I got the use of that. It went down to fifty-four below

zero while I was there, and I was all alone. I got hauled over there to this

place on a truck with this recorder and a motor to operate it which I borrowed

up at mine Centre. The recorder was an old thing, and I didn't know very

much about it. But I had a teepee tent -- and I dug down three feet through

snow -- oh, I went to great trouble. I figured I has about a week before I had to

go to Chicago for a meeting. I dug down to the ground where it was level, in

the snow, a big enough place -- and this tent was about fifteen feet in

diameter, a great big nice tent, you see, and it had a place for a stove. I had

taken a stove, an airtight heater. I got boughs, and I did the way the Indians

did -- put all these boughs down on the ground, set up the stove, cut some

wood, got a nice fire, and I invited, first of all, Johnny to come down.

I wanted both of them to come, but the old lady was very, very old, and

they said if I tried to take her down there, she might die on the way. So I got

all set up for Johnny, cooked meals and had it nice and comfortable in there

and warm, with this nice stove, and fragrant boughs on the ground, but he

didn't come down. Well, I couldn't understand that, and it was only about a

quarter of a mile away.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 47

When he hadn't come by noon, I went up there. And I said, "Why, Johnny, you

said you were coming down. You were going to tell me the story of my trip to

Hudson Bay the way Billy told it to you." This was Billy Magee, his cousin,

who had died. I was anxious to get his version and his point of view on our

trip, you see, and I thought I'd get a lot of rich morsels out of that because

they loved to make fun of you, for one thing, and the second thing was that

he'd see things that I wouldn't see, and I'd wanted to see what impressed him

and see how it different from mine.

But Johnny didn't come down, and he didn't come down the next day,

and I thought that was very strange, because he'd always do anything I

wanted. So I went up there the second night -- and oh, I was awfully

discouraged about it. I'd gone to all this work and my time was short. The old

lady, as I said, couldn't come down there. It'd be too dangerous, even if I

hauled her on the toboggan. But then at last in an anguished voice, he said to

me, no, he hadn't been able to come. They tell him "White man," he say,

"pretty bad, Johnny. You do down there, you maybe sure die. You know that

men, he send your picture all over the country. He take your picture all over

the country. He make lots of money -- you die." That's what he said. It was

some of these lumberjacks, who had told him, these lum bermen we were

having trouble with at the time. They had come in there to the little hotel in this

place, and they didn't like it that we had those friends among the Indians, you

see. They had a lot of other people prejudiced against us on account of our

work, and so they told this, and poor Johnny had swallowed it. There was the

old lady

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 48

sitting, and she heard all this. I said, "Johnny, did you ever know me in all this

time to do anything that hurt you? Did you ever know me to do anything that I

didn't get your perfect consent to first?" No, he never did. "Now," I said, "I'm

not getting one single cent for any of this. All I want to do is -- Johnny I don't

like to see you go away forever. I never see you again, and I like to hear your

voice sometimes. Jus t like your picture, I like to have that. You used to be

afraid if I had a picture, I took you away. Now you think if I have your voice I'm

taking you away. I'm not taking you away. It's just like having these pictures.

I'd like to keep you. I would like to have this." Pretty soon, he was pretty near

crying, and the old lady says, "Johnny, you go. You go. Atsokan he want. You

go." so he says, "All right." The next day he came down, and he came down

two days, and he said then that he told me everything he possibly could that

he remembered that Hilly had told him about the trip, you see. And he told me

some things that I had forgotten and didn't believe at first. It took me quite a

while before I was convinced that I had done what he'd said.

Well, then, it was getting time to go. I didn't like to go without this old

lady -- just to get her voice, and her younger sister, who was a very

remarkable old lady, but was in very bad shape. So my last day I moved

everything up here to their wigwams. And they had little children around there

from some other Indians who were living there, and dogs barking, and I had to

put these wires down in the snow and under the wigwam and fix up a place in

the old lady's wigwam. And she had an old broken air-tight heater in the

center

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 49

instead of just the normal campfire, and they'd done that to please me,

because I didn't like this idea of it being too cold. So they'd taken this terrible

looking old stove without any top.

So I got it all set up, and the children yelling outside, playing, and the

dogs barking and fighting, and I said to her, "Now, I'd like to get you to tell me

something. You don't need to talk very long." She was lying down. It was

pretty hard for her to sit up, poor, old frail thing. You could see every bone in

her hands. But this wonderful face -- the expression -- oh, my. So, just when I

got the machine started and was going to talk, here comes a wagon from

Mine Centre with a message that had just come in that they wanted me to

take the train that afternoon and go to Chicago for a meeting. So I said, "Well,

just wait a little while. Let me try to get this down, and then you can take my

equipment over there." And then I had taken the microphone off -- just a

moment you see. And so we got the old lady sitting up, and she said, "what

would you like me to tell you?" I said, "Tell me how it happened that Billy

Magee was called Tay-tahpah-sway-we-tong." That was her brother. So she

sat up as long as she could, and then in this beautiful, wonderful voice she

told how her mother was holding Billy in her arms and all of a sudden there

was a flash, and a vision came, and a voice told her about this name, which

means far-distant echo. And then\I looked down, and the microphone wasn't

attached. And she was lying down, and this rich, beautiful voice -- oh, this

marvelous voice. And I said, "Oh, my gracious." And they were waiting outside

for me. And I said, "Oh, I want you to tell me that again." but, she couldn't do it

again. She had used

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 50

every bit of strength she had. It was the last opportunity I had to record the

voice of that old mind, you see.

Mr. H.: Well, I certainly enjoyed your conversation, Mr. Oberholtzer.

Mr. O.: Well, I thank you -- you brought out a great many…

[Interruption]

Mr. H.: Miss Kane said she had completed the recording of your story of the

black sturgeon. That was an oral legend, but did that have anything to do with

Nanibojou?

Mr. O.: No. That's the other kind. There are two or three different kinds of

stories, you see. That's what they might call a tepatchimowin tepatchimo,

meaning to tell a story. Tepatchimowin is a noun, you see. Tepatchimo is to

tell it. And those are often place stories, concerning a legend of a particular

place, and that is a very apt one, because that is now the site of this huge iron

mine at Atikokan. I was called in there about ten years ago to talk to the

people at Atikokan one night. They had a wonderful rousing meal, and there

they were all so enthusiastic about the prospects, but not one of them had

heard one squeak about this story, you see. That is the lake that they drained

completely for iron, you see. They've had trouble moving the overburden.

They let it run out down into Rainy Lake. Oh, it was a terrible time. The silt

just ruined Rainy Lake for a while.

Mr. H.: Red water, I suppose.

Mr. O.: Well, it wasn't red. It just was the murkiest looking stuff you ever saw

in all your life. Oh, it was disgusting. I can't tell you exactly what it looked like.

I couldn't believe my eyes. It just suddenly appeared there while I was away. I

took some people

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 51

out to my island and climbed up on top of my roof where I had a look-out, to

give them the view, and looked down -- I couldn't believe my eyes. It was like

the muddiest Missouri I've ever seen in my life. It all started just in a few

weeks, you see. Oh, horrible stuff. Silt. And it takes a long, long time for that

to get deposited. They got a five million loan from the Reconstruction Finance

Corporation during the war, even though it was going to be spent on the

Canadian side. But iron seemed so important that they got the loan, and they

spent it in building huge settling basins. That's the way all the mining is done

now. Each time they start in a new place they have to have new settling

basins.

Mr. H.: Mr. Oberholtzer, did you ever tell Miss Kane for taping the story of

your early expedition to Hudson's Bay with this young Indian.

Mr. O : No.

Mr. H.: I wonder if you could just summarize it.

Mr. O.: I could summarize it -- yes. I don't think I did.

Mr. H.: YOU spoke to us about it at lunch when I met you, and it's an

interesting story.

Mr. O.: I don't know if I ever -- it's quite a long story. I said, at the time I didn't

want that used in any way, you see, not while I was living, because I was

hoping I could make a record of that myself. All my life I've hoped, but I've

been very busy, and then I never think back. I wish I did, you know, but it just

isn't my habit. I'm always planning a thousand miles ahead, and it's only now

when I realize that I can't possibly have another thousand that I think, well,

I must do that, in justice to the old Indian. And that was a study,

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 52

not alone of a rare piece of wild country that was absolutely unknown. There

was no question about that, because the greatest authorities there were on

the subject agree, and they sent me there. They said: If you want to go to a

place where it's really going to be valuable to get information, this is the place

to go. And that's where I went. My mother gave me a dollar-and-a-half watch

and a dollar-and-a-half compass with which to make a map. And we had no

instruments other than that. I wouldn't have known how to use better

instruments and they'd have been too expensive and heavy to carry. These

other fellows who go in there for the government always have Indians to do all

their work, you see, and they just make their observations and notations, but I

had to do everything that we were going to do with the aid of this old Indian.

He was a man I already knew well from my experiences at Rainy Lake. He'd

traveled about two or three months at least with me altogether in the two

previous years.

Mr. H.: You mentioned his name yesterday.

Mr. O.: Billy Magee was his English name, his store name up there. But his

Indian name was Tay-táh-pah-swáy-we-tong, and that you are not supposed

to say to them. You ask someone else if you want to know his dream name,

and he doesn't like to have you mention it either. I never mentioned it to him.

Mr. H.: I understand this, but I wonder if you might explain this for anyone who

might listen to this in the future. Why is this, that you don't mention the name

or ask an Indian his name.

Mr. O.: It's not courteous because it's a spiritual thing, you see,

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 53

and it's been given to you in confidence, and it's given to you, generally,

through a dream, maybe by your mother or maybe by some relative at the

time soon after you were born, you see, and it's transmitted by the spirits.

Those things are sacred, and it's bad business to reveal that yourself. It's all

right for somebody else, but for you to ask the one who bears the name and is

supposed to treat it with sanctity, you see. It's not a very nice thing to do. So I

tried always to avoid any reference to that name with him.

Mr. H.: They have nicknames though.

Mr. O.: Oh, yes. Sometimes they have a lot of names. Some of these

nicknames are just given more or less as jokes, because of something they've

done -- perfectly ridiculous names, you see. Maybe it's the first shot he has

taken, and he thinks he has hit an animal and then he finds he has missed the

animal, then he may be the "Jake that missed his deer," or something like

that, you see, and it'll hang to him all his life.

He may have a whole lot of names, and he'll have names that his

playfellows call him. They don't call him Billy, or Johnny -that is, they never

used to. They do now, of course, and they're losing all that Ojibway. Oh, it's

just too bad. I protest to them all the time, and say whatever you do don't let

that go. But there are many of those youngsters up there now, especially if

they go in town to school, who will have trouble, and you couldn't go to them

and ask them some of these things that the old people said.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 54

They almost had a different language. Even their language has changed, you

see. But we're the same. we have an archaic language, and when we go back

just a little way in our literature, we soon run into it, you see. And we also

have all these provincial forms of a particular language. That's why maybe

those down in Wisconsin speak a little different than those up at Rainy Lake,

you see, because they have so little contact. Well, in Yorkshire, and all those

different provinces of England, they have a lot more contact than the Indians

ever had between the different parts.

Mr. H.: But even there they maintain quite distinct dialect differences.

Mr. O.: Yes, so there's nothing surprising about that. Well, now you asked

about the trip. This Indian had had about two months with me altogether in

1909 and 1910. He had gone through Quetico Provincial Forest Reserve, as it

was called then. It wasn't called "park" in those days. The significance of park

is very different over there than it is over on this side. It was Quetico

Provincial Forest Reserve, and it was supposed never be cut when it was set

aside. There were one million acres and it was the finest part of the entire

area, a perfectly wonderful region. Oh, marvelous. And I went through and

through that for six weeks with this man, and I told him, "Now, Billy, I want to

see everything. I don't care how hard it is." And we went in places where I

never could have found my way through, but he said he could feel the trail

under his feet, where it had been and grown up, you see.

Mr. H.: These were old voyageur trails?

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 55

Mr. O : No, they were Indian, not voyageur, because the voyageur…

Mr. H.: This was off....

Mr. O.: This was off the canoe trail. When I got through with it after six weeks,

I wrote the first article ever written about the Quetico Provincial Forest

Reserve. Later, after it got burned -(there was some burning in there) and

they authorized logging, then they called it a park -- just the opposite of what

we'd do you see. Of course there was a great question about the burning.

Very rich timber, the finest, most wonderful timber ever seen in the north there

-- tremendous pine you know -very, very old and solid and fine. Then these

little fires just gave an excuse for logging, because they could say, well, didn't

you want to salvage this stuff? On yes, the government would say, we want to

salvage that. Well, you don't expect us to go in there, do you, and put in all

this money? We've got to build dams and we've got to build cabins, logging

places, and we can't do that unless we've got a whole -- let's see what we

used to call them. There was a special name for those -- not a berth, but

something like that. Timber limit and so it was supposed to be an economical

project. Well, there might be twenty or thirty acres, or possibly at most one

hundred acres burned in here and perhaps a ground fire that didn’t kill the

trees, but the res t would be virgin pine. Of course it would be rich picking. But

once they started and got in there, they'd say well now, here we've got all this

investment. Suppose we pulled out. It's a big loss to us. And suppose you get

a little more fire here. Do you think you're going to get somebody else to come

in and do this all over again. So they usually stayed in until it was pretty well

cleared up. Well, it was a very reputable

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 56

company, one of the very best, that did that. But it was done in the old way.

They put in dams everywhere for the drives and they flooded the shorelines

and great damage was done. But that is the part now that is being protected

best, and they are keeping planes out of there -- that particular million acres --

just like our roadless area on our side, you see.

So I'd had that, and then I had a little over two weeks in 1910 with him

in what was the most wonderful habitat for moose in the entire area and

maybe (I don't know) in the entire world. It was so marvelous. I saw forty-four

moose in one day. And close. And the amazing thing was that the Indians

lived on moose up there then. There were lots more Indians. But they didn't

slaughter for nothing. They only killed for what they needed. But there were

white men already going in -- not as far as I went -- for antlers. There was a

lot of that. And they'd sell these to organizations outside, especially on our

side, and get big prices, and just slaughter right and left for a long time. But

some people in Fort Frances had conceived the idea of having some of the

finest of that protected. They went to work and saw their government over

there and got in touch with authorities on our side -- our game commissioner

-- and the game commissioner got in touch with Teddy Roosevelt, and Teddy

agreed that if the province set aside a tract (and there was no official word

passed between the governments -but it was agreed unofficially) Teddy would

match it on our side. And that was the origin within a few weeks of each other

of Superior National Forest and what is now Quetico Park, you see. The

Indian had spent most of his youth there. He knew the area very thoroughly.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 57

Then the following year he went with me to this moose country which was

west of there, but still in the watershed. There were more moose there, but

there were moose over the whole watershed. You couldn't go out a day

without seeing moose anywhere, but you could go weeks and not see a

human being. But moose you were absolutely sure to see. Deer weren't in

there yet. The deer followed the logging. When there was more logging, then

the deer came in. They liked to

browse on the smaller stuff especially the branches of deciduous trees.

But this particular place my old Indian knew very well. He went up in

there for his trapping. That had more wild rice than any other place, and

there's no question whatever that wild rice is by all odds the most nutritious

food that moose and all those wild creatures can get. It isn't the rice itself. It's

the vine, the plant growing in the water, and it usually grows bes t in from rive

to six feet of water, with a mud bottom. I think maybe the feeding that they do

helps to distribute the seed, you see, and they trample it down. It isn't lost; it

isn't washed away.

Mr. H.: It isn't an annual plant that has to be seeded each year?

Mr. O.: No, once it's in there…

Mr. H.: I mean, each year it comes up from seed -- the whole plant.

Mr. O.: Yes, it reseeds -- yes, that's true. And these animals will stand in there

all day long in that hot summer weather, partly to get rid of flies. They can be

in right up to their necks, and then they put their heads under and they get a

little relief that way, you see. And of course these flies are worse after the

bulls, because their

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 58

antlers are forming during ,the summer, and they're just full of blood, you see,

and the files can get at the blood very easily. These things will just be one

mass of flies. The velvet will be one mass of flies. The poor moose will put his

head down, and he'll keep it under as long as he and chew, and then he'll

raise his head, and you'll see these long shoots hanging out of his mouth

Well, that's what we saw up there. Within a ten-mile area, or a ten-mile strip,

that we sort of patrolled for pictures, we saw forty-four moose in one day. And

very close. You'd be amazed.

Well, up to that time, all the pictures that I'd ever seen of moose and a

good many of these other wild animals were taken by flashlight. There was

one man, a Congressman named Shiras, of Pennsylvania, who had perfected

cameras and flashlights and all sorts of things and had taken more pictures

than anybody else of wild life, and became quite famous for it. These were

practically all published in the National Geographic , but they were all flashlight

pictures --night pictures. And he set his cameras so that the animals would

take their own pictures. And they were very fine. But daylight pictures hardly

existed, because they didn't think they could get near enough to these

animals, you see. Of course there were no colored cameras then, back then,

back in 1910. That was 1910, my second summer 1909 was the first summer

I had in that area. So we started out, and I had a Graphlex camera, and I had

a developing machine right along with me, so that every day I developed the

pictures I took that day. I didn't print them. All I wanted was the negative, you

see. But I'd string them up on lines above the canoe as we

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 59

were traveling along there and they'd be drying. And I had the most wonderful

luck you ever saw in your life -- so many and so near. You wouldn't think it

was possible, but again and again and again, we were twenty-five feet of a

moose, and they didn't seem very much bothered about us.

But we followed a very careful strategy. When the moose first saw us,

we froze. We just sat absolutely still. We didn't move. Well, they were feeding

and they didn't like to be interrupted, and maybe they'd put their heads down

at last, about to go under. Then they'd look up quick, to take one more look.

Then they'd put their heads under and maybe keep their ears up -- listen for

any movement. Well, we'd still stay frozen until they did that two or three

times, and then they'd be reassured. Then they'd maybe walk a little nearer.

You'd be surprised some of them walked toward us. I got sixteen or

seventeen pictures of one little one in every sort of pose. He was getting his

first antlers, just little buds then. He walked right over to us to the point where

the Indian backed off for fear he might rear up and upset us. We don't know

why he did it, but he just seemed to be friendly. And we took the cows with

twin calves -- all kinds of photos. We came out with a rich harvest of pictures

in two weeks, and we came back to the little village where Billy traded. I was

very pleased, and I paid him off that night and paid him extra and shook his

hand, and said, now, I want to do that same thing, Billy, with bear. The

bear season was just about to come -- as soon as the blueberries ripened,

you see. But this was at the end of May, and we went up there in

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 60

early June, and there weren't any blueberries yet -- not ripe. But

I wanted to get ready and go to this place where the most bear were.

And he knew such a place -- pretty close to where the moose were. But you

have to go up on the rocky ridges where the berries grew and walk around

among the trees up there, you see. And he had said: "Me no want see bear."

He was afraid of bear, you see, but at the same time he didn't say he wouldn't

go. We intended to go up there together. I didn't think he was going to refuse

me, but I didn't think he was very enthusiastic about going among the bear,

because if they get scared and they have a young one, there's a little danger

all right. If the little one squeals, the bear jumps right away, you see, and isn't

careful to see what's there. So you can have an accident.

Well, we never got to do it, because that night, staying at the village

Hotel, where there were all lumberjacks just out from their jobs for a week --.

They came up there waiting for a train and meantime got entirely drunk at the

company's hotel. By Monday morning they hadn't a cent to go to town, so

they'd have to go back and work had another week, you see. It was wonderful

for the company. But I had paid Billy on arrival in the evening and he, in the

morning, came staggering toward me. "Oh, Atsokan, ho, ho, ho," and so on.

And I was young and couldn't waste a day or an hour, you see, and I was

terribly disappointed. I said, "Now, look here Billy, I've got to get on this train

and go to town and get another man. I can't wait for you. You won't be fit to go

with me for two weeks, and you know it. Why did you do such a thing?"

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 61

The train came along, and I jumped on and went down to Fort Frances 40

miles away And rely it changed my whole life in lots of ways, because when I

got there there was a telegram from my best friend in Davenport, Iowa, and a

classmate at Harvard, who had just graduated from Harvard Law School with

high honors. His father was a very well-to-do man, and we'd known each

other from boyhood. We were very intimate friends. His father, as a reward,

had given him a three-months trip to Europe with one friend, and he wired me

that he had all the arrangements made. He didn't seem to realize that he

might not have reached me, you see. He just happened to do so. The steamer

was to leave early in July, which was just less than a week off. And he wanted

assurances that I'd go. There's no reason why you should hear all of this,

except that I get around to Billy going up with me. I hesitated, of course. In the

first place, I was all s et to do these other things. It was my whole life. Oh, I

was just so enthusiastic about it. The second thing, though we knew each

other so well, and I knew his father was perfectly able to do this, it was a big

thing to accept from anybody, you see.

On the other hand, I knew that he wouldn't go without me. He was a

fellow who was very timid about making arrangements and all, and I was

supposed to be bold. Nobody seemed to doubt that I could get along. I don't

know why, but I thought I was quite bashful. But anyway, I said I'd go, as long

as I'd missed Billy there on this other thing. So I went over to Europe with

Harry French. We were gone three months. Meantime the publicity agent of

the Canadian Northern Railway, who had bought my notes that I'd taken the

first year I traveled and a little pamphlet that I'd prepared on the canoe routes

of the whole area, wrote me and sent me all kinds of introductions -- he was

an Englishman -- to magazines and so on. He thought there would be a

market for my material in Europe, where he was well known… I didn't have to

say anything about

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 62

the railroad, but anything about the game and the hunting and the fishing was

helpful to them, you see. But I never used one of his introductions. He urged

me to stay there all winter. And I finally did, with the consent of Davenport, my

friend.

Mr. H.: In England?

Mr. O.: Yes. I stayed there all winter.

Mr. H.: What part of England?

Mr. O.: I was right in London. And I did whatever I could to earn some money.

I went to a lecture agency, but they had those all filled. But they were very

nice people, and they said, "No, Mr. Oberholtzer, there will be vacancies, and

you hold yourself ready, and whenever there is a vacancy, we'll call on you.

And if you're here another year and you come early enough, we'll get you

engagements." I also sold small articles to papers like The Field. The Field is

a great, very wonderful publication. I think they get it out weekly, but it's very

high class and scientific and beautifully done. Then I was asked in the course

of the winter to come to the London Zoological Society and speak there and

show them the slides that I had made of these moose. They also asked me if I

could supply them with enlargements of these moose pictures that they had

seen. So I bought an old enlarging machine, second-hand, and made these

on the walls of my rooms. They must have been at least sixteen by twenty

and I made about fifty of them. I was asked to speak, and before I could

speak, I got quite ill. At the same time I got an invitat ion to come to Hanover,

Germany, as American Vice Consul. Wasn't that funny – all that happening?

I didn't want to go to the consulate, but I needed money like everything,

and especially when it came to paying doctor bills. I wrote the Consul, no, I

can't come, because I want to go up into the barrenlands, so I couldn't remain

longer than six months. But I'd like to earn some money. And he wrote back:

"That's perfectly all right. You don't need to commit yourself to stay any longer

than you want to, but 1-know if you come, you'll never want to leave. So then I

went, with the

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 63

understanding that I'd be there six months. He just didn't know me if he

thought I was going to be there forever, you see. It was eight months before I

got relieved. But meantime in England that winter I had done a great deal of

study in the British Museum Library. All winter I was going there, and I had a

stall, and I could get every kind of book. And I had everything there that you

could find about moose, and you'd be surprised at the stuff that was in there

that was just nonsense. I sent them a paper as long as I couldn't talk. It was

called "The Habits of Moose." In there I quoted a lot of these people, you see,

and I showed pictures, and the conclusions I'd arrived at studying moose a

whole summer and the two weeks that I was making all those photos.

Since I couldn't keep my speaking engagement, they had somebody

else read my paper, and then they published it in the proceedings. Well, of

course, that was quite a boost for me, because they were tops in that sort of

thing all over. And they sent me a lot of reprints, all of which seem now to

have been distributed. I've been looking for one of them, and I've been hoping

that maybe Miss Kane would find one of them in my papers. Of course, I

could get somebody to go there and type or photostat them over there.

Well, now, I'm not getting very fast to what you asked me about. As

soon as I saw that I could get back in the spring -it was just the time the

Titanic struck the iceberg and went down -but I came across, and I wrote a

letter to the trader at this little town where I parted with Billy last.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 64

Mr. H.: What town was that, do you remember?

Mr. O.: Mine Centre

Mr. H.: Mine Centre?

Mr. O.: Mine Centre, Ontario. There was a trader at Mine Centre. He didn't run

the hotel. The hotel was run by the lumber company. And so they had a

wonderful thing going there. But the trader bought furs from Billy, and had

known him for many, many years. His name was Louis Hamill. He was of

French extraction, quite gallant, and had all the nice French manners and

everything. But in other ways he was pliable enough so that he took

advantage of all the other foibles of the region, and he made quite a lot of

money out of it, too.

So I wrote him from England and asked him to have a talk with Billy

Magee and to say that I wanted to go an entire summer north into the

barrenlands; that I didn't want to feel that I had to get back at any set time, but

that I would be gone at least all summer and would hope I could get back

before winter; that we would be going into the wildest country I could hear

about in Canada; and that it would be the hardest thing Billy had ever done in

all his life, which was saying a lot. He had worked for the Hudson Bay

Company, and he'd carried heavy packs; he'd done everything. It would be by

far the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life, but that I wanted him to go with

me, and that if he couldn't go, then I wasn't going to go. And I wanted his

answer.

So in due time -- that was before I left overseas -- I got his reply. of

course, he didn't write, but Louis Hamill wrote me and said he'd explained this

all to Billy and that Billy had said,

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 65

yes, he'd go. "Guess ready go end earth," he said. He was ready to go to the

end of the earth. That was wonderful. I mean that was one of the things

about some of these Indians that I knew, you see. They were

wonderfully loyal -- marvelous that way. And he really exhibited that spirit all

the way through, and it's one of the things that I would like to br ing out, if I do

write this as I'd like to. It wouldn't be just an exploration of a wild piece of land,

but it's an exploration of a real Indian. I think most of this stuff that you read

about Indians is just feathers and dust, you see, and you never know the

Indians when you get through. If you really knew one Indian and knew

anything about his mind -- Well, I don't think I succeeded in penetrating his

mind too far, but I maybe did get some picture of an Indian. They're very few

things I've read that give you a picture of an individual Indian. I think you get a

lot out of Samuel Hearne and Matonnabe. That's one of the finest, I think.

You know something about Indians when you read that.

But that was my double interest. And here Billy agreed. As soon as I

could in the spring I went up there to meet him. My mother came as far as St.

Paul on the train, and that's the last thing she ever would have wanted me to

do. She was all alone, but she never did anything except cooperate when she

thought that's the thing I was set on, you see. So she gave me this dollar and

a half watch and this dollar and a half compass, with which I made a map four

hundred miles long, absolutely new country. No map ever had been made in

there. And it was all on a scale three miles to an inch. When I got up last

summer for the first time again, briefly, to one end of this huge lake

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 66

that we were on -- one hundred twenty miles long –

Mr. H.: What was the name of the lake?

Mr. O.: Nueltin, but it's pronounced as if it had another "t" in i t -- and it means

Sleeping Island. It's an island that looks like a figure sleeping.

Mr. H.: Is this Chippewa or...

Mr. O.: No, it's Chippewayan. Up there they call it Chippewayan. it's a totally

different language, you see. It's Athabascan.

Mr. H.: It isn't related linguistically at all.

Mr. O.: Oh, no. Hut I'd been hoping for years to get back in there by modern

means and then to go by canoe. I wanted to go back to that lake. I knew I

never could take a trip like that again. I wouldn't have time, and there wouldn't

be the same purpose in doing it either. And of course, my age. Hut I did finally

get up in there. The cost was prohibitive it I were to do exactly what I wanted

to do. I mean if I could have chartered planes to take me in and out it would

have been much finer, but it would have been frightfully expensive.

I finally discovered that they had just granted a permit to commercial

fisherman (of course, I was sorry to hear that) at the south end of that, and

you could fly up from a new terminus of the Hudson Say Railway, called Lynn

lake, about two hundred and fifty miles, in one of these planes that took out

fish, and at a very much lower rate than charter planes. They wouldn't take

anything larger than a seventeen-loot canoe at the most. They didn' t want to

take it that large. That would make it impossible to travel around the

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 67

whole lake by canoe the way I wanted -- to carry your load, you see, in those

big waves, too. You had to allow for that.

And so here I'd got that far and late in the season when things weren't

propitious, but I was afraid that I'd never get another chance. I wasn't well. I

had a lot of trouble last fall, and I'd just had a bad report in that respect from

the doctor, who said that I'd had (I never heard of my having anything like

that) high blood clotting, don't you see, and he wanted to give me Demerol.

You know what that is? Well, if you take it, you've got to take it all the rest of

your life, and you've got to be right there to report so you don't bleed to death.

But anyway, just to know that such a thing was pending, was very bad,

and when it got me, it was just like hitting me in the head. I already had three

main projects I wanted to carry out last summer. The Wilderness Society, of

which I was one of the founders, had its annual meeting in Alaska. I was

supposed to be there -- one of fifteen. I couldn't go. I had no idea of going,

partly on account of the expense. But then the president had written me and

said: "I'm driving up with my wife, and we want you to drive along. You must

go."

And I had sort of provisionally said I'd go if I was fit enough. Then I had

to decide which I was going to do. Was I going to ignore the doctor or was I

going to accept this. And I said, "Well, it will do me more good to go there than

it wil l to take Demerol." Well I had a pretty uncomfortable summer, I'll tell you.

I don't know whether it was due to that condition or not. But I was trying to find

a method so I could get that count down and the doctor

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 68

told me that you can't do that by any dieting. I lost sixteen pounds in ten days,

and I have never been less than 146 for many, many years. But I was getting

down close to 129 pounds. But I went, and I finally went on this little

expedition the best I could, with nothing but a little worthless canoe that I

could only use right close to my camp, you see. I couldn't take a big load of

anything. But I went anyway, and I took Bob Hilke with me -- a white man who

had been out with me -- young, but very good judgment.

And I thought, well I must go. I may never get another chance, and

we'll see what we can do. So we were carried in by plane to this fishing camp,

twenty miles up the lake, and landed there at the fishing camp with all our

equipment and this little bit of a canoe, you see. The fisherman would just

wonder: There were just two white men and a boy, and a dozen Indians who

raised the nets. They all went out and worked at that. And they had us, that

very first night, to dinner -- white fish; and they said, take all the fish you want.

Help yourself. Have all you want. Tons and tons of fish.

And here we were. I had a fall, a very severe fall. It's a wonder I didn't

break my leg. It was just purple from the hip down to the ankle for a couple of

weeks. But after some days I got so I was hobbling around on it, but we

couldn't get away because we didn't have a canoe or anything. We took what

pictures we could around there -- little ones. And then one day the owner of

the camp came to me -oh, they were awfully anxious to help me. They were

generous, nice fellows, and they were all calling me "Ober" by that time. He

says:

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 69

"Ober, I tell you, we got an extra steel boat." They were about twenty-two feet

long, I guess, and about five feet deep. They raised the nets with those. "And

we have a motor, fifteen horse. If you want to use Chat, and you think you can

go up this lake here. There are reefs, you know, and if you want to take a

chance on those reefs ... we got extra oil, and I can mix you whatever gas you

want and start you off."

"Oh," I said, "just what we want: I should say so:" So they cleaned one

of these boats, and we finished cleaning it. It had big wide wooden seats

across, and we put this little canoe in there and put all our stuff underneath it,

covered it all well, because there were a lot of waves, you know. Bob knew all

about motors. I didn't like motors at all, but he knew how to handle those. He

sat up high with a big suit on for rain, and I sat under a tarp in the front chair,

you see. And I had my map that I had made fifty-one years before. And you'd

be surprised. He had an airplane map that the government had just made

lately since they'd got –

Mr. H.: Regular air photography.

Mr. O.: Yes -- for war purposes mainly, you see. Of course, that's a whole

scramble of little things. You can't tell. That was ten miles to the inch and mine

was three. And mine would show if there was current at a certain place or if

there were any special features. And you could see those things. The first day

we went nearly seventy miles up that lake. It was one hundred twenty miles

long. And the

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 70

last twenty miles you could see this great eminence that I had climbed with

the Indian.

Mr. H.: That was where you left the note in the can.

Mr. O.: Yes, that's it, but I won't tell you all about that. But we went to that

place and we found the can. We went to the top and I recognized everything

all the way along there. I had a little time climbing up there. It is not a steep

climb at all, but in my condition it was hard walking. But I went up there, and

my friend found the can. I had to stay behind. I was examining one place, and

I said, you go up there. It's a little higher in there, you see. And as I turned

around to go up there, I saw him going like this [waving', and he had this can.

And as I got close I could tell. There was no other can like it -- about as big in

diameter as a baking powder tin, but about this long, and I remembered the

name of the company, the product, and where they made it, because I'd had

hard work to get this. It was a new product o£ dry milk, and it was yellow, rich

in creams. And, my, if you could have a tablespoon of that when you were

tired, it was the most wonderful thing. But we couldn't use it that way, because

we wanted it for our tea and to mix milk, you see. And I mixed milk every day

out ox that. But this was one of about four tins I'd brought.

And it was empty when Billy and I got up there. We went up there to

look at the landscape, because it was a wonderful lookout, and we didn't want

to go any farther than we had to go into the bays, you see. Some of these

bays were as big as Rainy Lake -- oh, tremendous

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 71

things. You couldn't tell how big they were, of course until you got in there.

So Billy and I climbed up there, and both of us looked carefully, all

around to the northeast. We were following the east shore of this lake,

because the lake would drain out into Hudson Bay, which was east, and it

seemed most logical that it would come out somewhere on the east side, you

see. But we'd gone in every indentation all the way up to that point, unless

we could see down in there and see that it was absolutely land-locked. So we

climbed up there, and after much study we agreed that it was very unlikely

that there could be an outlet anywhere down in there. All you could see were

these great high ridges, you see. And so then I said, "Well, I'll tell you now,

Billy. We're up this high. It's way the highest point we've seen. In time some

white man will come in here, and when he does, he will climb this place,"

because it was so striking, and a different kind of an eminence than I'd ever

seen before. You couldn't call it a mountain; you couldn't call it a hill. I would

think that the base of it was at least twenty miles, and then it all went up like

this and it got up that way, and it was rather flat on the top, you see. It was all

glacial debris. There were boulders there, conglomerate rocks -- no rock like

granite. It was all conglomeration, but great big chunks -- tremendous. Bigger

than the top of that table, a lot of- them, lying around up there, but not hard to

climb. We came up this place at evening. It wasn't dark yet. We got into a bay

right at the foot of it, and it was a great esker that came

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 72

down there, sand and rock, you see, and this great big bay, and then the

waves cut through a place and left a little island out here -part of it, you see.

And we managed to camp there that night and got our supper. The next

morning it was blowing quite a bit, which helped, on account of the insects

which were terrible.

And so when Bob and I climbed that, I had stopped first to look very

carefully at the rim, which was what you could see, and I said in my notes, the

highest point. I knew, too, that I just didn't want to miss anything. But I knew I

was going right. When I turned, I said to Bob, "Well, you go ahead and maybe

you'll find the can." But I was only joking, you see. And when I turned around,

I saw him standing up there about two hundred feet away waving something,

and I got up closer and I could see exactly the shape, you see. There was no

question in my mind. It was all battered. There were no tins up there of any

sort, you see, or of this shape. And so I took it out of his hand, and I did like

this, and I could hear something moving.

And he said to me, "Ober, I didn't open it," which was very nice of him.

"I wanted you to do that, but," he says, "it isn't your note." He said, "You see in

the bottom, it's got little holes in it -little rust holes." But it was amazing that it

could have lasted.

Mr. H.: Good tin?

Mr. O.: Oh, yes -- much finer -- whatever this material was -- way ahead of

these tin cans that they have now, you know, that'll rust out in one year. It

wasn't rusty on the outside. It was tarnished,

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 73

and it was very much battered but not way in.

Mr. H.: The wind had blown it. .

Mr. O .: Oh, it had blown it around, but I don't know how long. And the amazing

thing was that it hadn't blown it clear of - where you'd never see it, because

there were cyclonic winds up there in the winter, you know. I opened it then --

a friction top tin -- you press it down and open it that way. It still fitted on there.

I didn't have any trouble getting it off, but it was on securely. I opened that and

looked in. Well, as he said, there were little pieces of rust, pieces of the metal

off the bottom were in there, but very small. So I said, where did you find that?

Well, he showed me one of these boulders. One side was maybe sir, feet

high, and one side was about like this, the side toward us. He went over and

showed me. And this thing had blown in here against this. There was a little

vegetation everywhere up in there, about an inch high, most of it -some of it

little vine. And then there were things like real low cranberry bushes, you see,

and they had berries on, but they weren't ripe. That had grown right up

against this, you see, and it was lodged in there. Now it must have blown

around for some time first, but luckily it blew in there.

I then turned around, and about fifteen rest away I saw the boulder

where I left my note, and it had on the top all the pieces out of which I built

this cairn -- five pieces about like this, and three little ones. And I walked over

there. They were all right on

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 74

top. And this flat boulder was almost as flat as that table, a little higher,

maybe about five feet high and pretty straight sides -- a great big chunk, you

see. And we took a picture of it, and I said, "Bob, this is where I put it. I don't

know what they did with the note. They took this cairn apart, of course." We

know this had happened. The only way I knew that was that long afterward,

after the railroad went in to Churchill, a fellow from Massachusetts named

Downes went up there in the summer. I didn't know him, but he was a man

that used to do that -- make trips like that to study Indians, too. He taught

school near Harvard there in the winter, at Belmont, Massachusetts. I didn't

know him, but when he got to Fort -- the last Hudson Day fort on the way up,

called Dubrosche, where there was a very wonderful priest, he said, "Now, if I

get up there this summer --, He engaged a man at that place to go on up with

him. They had a little motor, too, to go on up to Nueltin Lake, and the priest

told him how to pronounce it and how they spelled it. "I'll be the first white man

that's been there since Samuel Hearne crossed with two hundred Indians

midwinter in 1769." And the priest said, "Oh, no, you won't be. I'm sorry. There

was a young fellow up here a long time ago, a white man, and he went up

there with an Indian. I forget just what year that was, but there was no railroad

up at Churchill. But," he says, "I know he got through. I heard that he got back

home. Some years ago after the railroad was built three white men flew in

there to prospect and when they did they climbed the highest hill there was up

in there, and on the top they found a cairn built, and inside a tin can, and

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 75

they opened that and there was a note telling when this fellow was and

naming it." I had named it Hawkes' summit, for this good friend of mine, Arthur

Hawkes from England. He was the fellow who sent me all those introductions

over there.

So that man eras tremendously interested. Of course he was

disappointed, but he went up there, and he had a plane. He'd arranged for a

plane to meet him there so that he could get back in time to teach school. So

then he flew back into Churchill and took the train on down and went back to

Massachusetts. Hut he had this in his mind, and he had in mind he wanted to

write a book, too.

Mr. H.: This would have had to be way north of the Nelson River then?

Mr. O.: Oh, yes, and west, almost straight north of Winnipeg.

Mr. H.: It must have been on Hearne's route when he ---

Mr. O.: Yes, it was almost straight north of Winnipeg. So the man from

Massachusetts found an outpost up there that the Hudson Bay Company had

established long after I was there and some people named Schweder were in

charge. A man and he had a young son there. And they stayed with those

fellows Schweder, that was it. And this man, this fellow who thought he was

going to be the first while man there you see; and he was very deserving a

fine, high type of fellow. He went there, and then he stayed around until his

plane came, and he observed the whole country.

Then he went home, and he inquired everywhere to try to get some

idea of who this man was, you see, who had been there. He was in the habit

of buying books on wilderness and exploration. It was getting near Christmas,

and he went in a bookshop, and he saw a

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 76

book, A New Life of Daniel Boone, by a man named John Bakeless, who lives

near New York and who knew me very well and had been up at my place

many times, taking canoe trips that we had planned for him, and who had

written many, many books. He is constantly writing books. He'd written this life

of Boone. The best ever cone, a fine new study. He was a very thorough

scholar. He'd written this, and sent me a copy of it at Christmas. And to my

astonishment, when I had opened it to the title page, I saw that it said: "To

Ernest C. Oberholtzer, a modern master of the wilderness." Well, I was

tremendous ly complimented, and I knew it wasn't -- but just the same you

could appreciate the compliment.

And when I saw it I thought to myself -- why, did he really go to the

trouble of having each one of these books inscribed with the name of the

friend he's giving it to this Christmas. Then I just began to tumble. Why, he's

actually dedicated that book to me, you see. I didn't know he was going to do

it.

But, anyway, this man who'd been up in the barrenlands found in that

bookshop and he thought, why that sounds like that fellow the priest told me

about. So he wrote to the publishers, and asked, could you give me John

Bakeless's address, which they were glad to do. And he wrote John Bakeless

and said, "Did your Friend Oberholtzer ever go up into the barrenlands?"

"Well, I should say he did," Bakeless said.

So then he wrote me one of the finest letters I've ever received in my

life. It was so good that he didn't get an answer for three months. I was too

busy. I couldn't sit down and go into that,

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 77

and that just shook me in a way, because, while I never thought of this thing,

whenever I did it was just like a landslide, you see.

We had quite a correspondence and the next summer Mr. Downes

came up tome, and he was writing a book, called “Sleeping Island.” He went

over my records, and he was surprised how many places he recognizes from

my description. And he said to me: "Oberholtzer, the only thing I don't

understand is how you ever covered all that area in one summer."

Mr. H.: Well, I certainly hope you do find time to write down your account of

this early first trip up into the wilderness.

Mr. O.: If I don't do anything else I would like to do that, you see. Of course, I

haven't had that urge that so many people have for publicity, you see, or to be

a writer. And I have to have leisure. I never had leisure at any time during my

life. I was eager to experience -- always experience more, you see. I'd think,

well, by and by I'll do that, don't you see. But now I realize that I haven't very

much time. I would like to at least do that, you see. A lot of people have been

kind of chiseling away at me until at last they are beginning to get me kind of

waked up to the idea.

Mr. H.: I think we're just about running to the end of this tape, and it's almost

time for you to start for Minneapolis.

Mr. O.: All right, we'll stop. I'm sorry to be so wordy about this thing, because I

didn't answer your question direct.

Mr. H.: I think it's very interesting, because it gives a tremendous background

to this.

Mr. O.: You've got that. I don't know anybody else that has that story.

Acc. #9599 (Feb. 19, 1964) 78

Mr. H.: But I enjoyed your story at lunch so much that lime that I met you that I

was glad to have your comments on this.