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The creator made the first Anishinaabe. The creator first made a woman. He took a rib from her, and then made a man. This is why women have one less rib than a man.
The Anishinaabe people led by the clans, came from the east coast of the great saltwater ocean in their last migration. Remains found today in Cook County at South Foul Lake go back to eight or nine thousand years ago. Way back then, after the last ice age, oral traditions tell of the creation of the new world in which, out of the water, six clans emerged. Of these clans, the chieftainship clan came down to the water from a star; that was ‘Ahjijak,” the crane. The top Anishinaabe chiefs came from that clan. The Loon Clan, with the necklace around its’ neck, was the most prominent.
Two of the fish clans grouped, and later became the largest clan. Water Caribou of Grand Portage came from that clan. His ancestors signed the 1854 Treaty with the federal government with a drawing of this bullhead fish.
The Bear Clan, the police of the village, also came forth. Even today, one can see men walking with sticks at the pow-wows held by the Winnebago tribe of Wisconsin. These men are from the Bear Clan, and they are guarding the powwow. These are the Bear Clan.
Not long after arriving in the north country the Moose and the Marten Clans merged and formed a group.
William Warren, whose father’s family came from England, married the Crane Clan chief ’s daughter at the fur trading post at Madeline Island, near Bayfield, Wisconsin. He wrote one of the best books of the history of the Ojibwe people. He moved to Minnesota when it formally became a state, and he served on the state’s first legislature. Before then, the only fur trading posts in the upper Midwest were from Michimilliminac, Grand Portage, and Prairie Duchein. After Fond du Lac, which in French means “end of the lake,” was built on the west side of present day Duluth.
At the same Rendezvous Days in Grand Portage, over two thousand people attended, making it at that time one of the most populated places in the country.
After the first five clans came out of the water, the sixth one emerged with a cloth-like bandana over its eyes.
Much later, this sixth clan arrived amongst the Anishinaabe. The creator took the covering from their eyes, and many people died. Seeing this, the creator put him back in the water. He looks like a mermaid but carried a spear to kill fish and eat.
These original clans and later clans were led across north and south America. Some of the Delaware tribe still have scrolls telling of their lost journey coming back across the Bearing Straight, then all the way to the east coast of today’s America. I saw the book of their scrolls and traveled to the east coast when I was young.
The oldest people in America, “The Hopi,” talk of being led from an underground world to the lands they live on today. The Hopi have a similar language as the Tibetans and are unwarlike.
Our Ojibwe clans were only known by clan names and not by tribal names. They were led by a sacred otter, Asheter, the gliding trail marks, which are still on our border lakes at Otter Track Lake. Before, at the east end of Lake Superior, our people stopped and lived a long time at Sault Saint Marie, which is what that area is called today. Those that went north stopped and lived in Thunder Bay, where there was the Thunder Cape Mountain, the rock sea lion, and the sleeping giant Na Ne bozho.
There are many stories of Nanabozho in his third and final time on earth after being thrown down by the creator. When he was done with life, his powerful grandmother was secretly buried in Cook County, Minnesota.
After a book was written in the early 1900s, the elders talked about many of the stories of our history that came from our area. For example, after leaving Thunder Bay, some clans came down the Pigeon River for a long time to the present-day Grand Portage Indian Reservation, which was called the Pigeon River Indian Reservation. Shirts were sold with that name on them.
When they first arrived at Pigeon River during a specific time of the year, they hunted pigeons. Thousands of wonderful pigeons were there; many were smoked and put in birch bark containers or buried deep in the ground and cooked on hot coals. This small group of people settled in Grand Portage Bay. Called” Kitchi Onagaming,” the group at Grand Portage was here long before the French Voyageurs arrived. They hunted and fished and gathered wild rice in many areas. At “Ki chi Bi Tobi gom,” the grand twin bays (Grand Marais), and in the extensive marshes, they camped, and by the seasons, they hunted or depended on catching fish to eat.
Next week, part two: The oral history of Saganaga and Northern Light Lakes
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