In the early 1900s, an Anishinaabe man became ill with a strange sickness. In the 1970s, a man who then was in his 80s told me how they had taken him to “chi bi to bii gam” which means grand twin bays, called Grand Marais.
The man who told me this story was “O jee g eynce” meaning Little Fisher. He lived in the Indian village at Gunflint Lake near the narrows. His English name was Charlie Cook.
Charlie Cook was a young man when they took this man with a strange illness to the “pagan village” which was in a wooded area on the hills, west of the present day courthouse. Both white people and native people called it the pagan village.
Liza Flatt who lived till her 90s told me many stories of that small native village. Liza’s father was Chief Mike Flatt of Grand Portage. Charlie Cook of the Gunflint Lake narrows married her sister, Lucy Flatt.
Living in that traditional village were powerful medicine men and their wives and children. John Azhaweynce was the healer they brought the sick man to see. Other well known medicine men who lived there were Nizhotey (meaning twin thunderbirds) and Shingebiss (the hell diver duck). They all belonged to and performed the “Mitewiiwin” called the Grand Medicine Society.
John Azhaweynce with his powers, shaking his little drum and singing, looked into the sick man’s body and saw a strange sickness. It was shaped in his body like a spider web and was called “A sub i key shi win.” The old man sucked some of it out with his bones and then told the people he had to travel to a powerful area and look for a new medicine.
A few days later he returned. With the tobacco and offerings the sick man’s family had given, Azhaweynce shook his little drum rattle and again sucked out the illness. He could not get it all out. It is today called cancer.
Then, out of a piece of cloth, he took a strange rock. He placed it on the man’s body and sang over it. The rock spiritually lighted up and killed the cancer in him. The sick man lived on to a long life.
The story of the strange rock was told all over. The white people began to hear about it and later a doctor came to Grand Marais. John Azhaweynce had a number of daughters. They gave the powerful rock to the doctor.
Today that rock is called cobalt and has been used for cancer treatments many many times. Cook County is full of mystery.
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