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Cook County Board Chair David Mills presented Grand Portage Tribal Chair Robert (Bobby) Deschampe a plaque commemorating the handing off of County Road 89 to the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The road travels through Mineral Center and ends at Pigeon River where the Outlaw Bridge once connected Canada and the U.S.
During a special meeting, Cook County Commissioners formally handed off County Road 89 to Old Highway 61 to the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa on Wednesday, December 15. The exchange was made at 9:45 a.m. in the RTC building in Grand Portage between Cook County Commissioner Board Chair David Mills and Grand Portage Reservation Tribal Council (RTC) Chair Robert (Bobby) Deschampe.
Also in attendance were RTC board members John Morrin, Marie Spry, and the RTC Secretary/Treasurer, April McCormick. Cook County Commissioners at the ceremony included Robert Svaleson (and his wife Kristie), Stacey Hawkins, Ann Sullivan Ginny Storlie, County Administrator James Joerke and County Highway Engineer Robbie Hass.
Chairman Deschampe said the county and Grand Portage “work well together.” and added, “I appreciate the work everybody does.”
Mills responded, “I appreciate the opportunity to work with Grand Portage.” Ann Sullivan added she hoped the county and Grand Portage working relationship could be a model for other counties, the state, and the nation.
RTC board member John Morrin presented a bit of history to the commissioners, going over aspects of the 1854 treaty and the Dawes Act of 1887, which took away about 90 million acres from Native Americans with that land sold to non-natives in an attempt to mainstream the Indians by doing away with their culture and social traditions.
Next, John talked about the Nelson Act, which Congress approved on January 1, 1889. That act sought to relocate all of the Anishinaabe people in Minnesota to the White Earth Indian Reservation. It also encouraged making allotment of land to individual native families so they could learn to farm. The lands not sold would be opened to European settlers.
The government said Morrin offered 80-acre allotments to Ojibwe. “Our people didn’t know what that meant. You couldn’t own mother earth. You were stewards of mother earth.” John said.
The governments plan to move natives living in Grand Portage to White Earth failed, said Morrin, “because our ancestors had been here for thousands of years and weren’t going to move.”
White settlers moved onto the reservation through the 1860 Homestead Act. They paid “a sum of a dollar or other valuable considerations” for their property. John said he believes these settlers were supposed to be models for the natives to help them assimilate into the white culture.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Grand Portage paid more than $15 million to buy back land on their reservation. Today, said April McCormick, “I’m proud to say 97 percent of our land base is back.” Bobby added “As native people, we are supposed to look seven generations ahead of us,” and that is why the band is fighting any attempts to take land protected under the 1854 treaty, “away from us.”
History is important, said Morrin, because it explains how conflicts arose between us. “We are a human family, and racism has taken that apart. Our DNA is the same. We are all the same.”
When asked if the band has any plans for the road, Deschampe said no, but Grand Portage would maintain it. He noted that there was a sawmill, sugar shack, and three schools plus homes and other businesses along the road at one time. Today it is a quiet road with some activity, but it has quite a history.
Some history
The road dead-ends at Pigeon River, but at one time, there was a timber frame bridge across the river known as the “Outlaw” Bridge,” which operated for 17 years.
When the governments on either side of the Pigeon Rive were too slow to build a bridge to connect the countries, the rotary clubs in what is now called Thunder Bay and Duluth decided to move forward and have a bridge built.
The outlaw bridge was paid for by the Rotary Club of Duluth and the Fort William Port Arthur Rotary and officially dedicated in 1916 at the Cook County Courthouse. It costs $5,500 to construct. While considerable legitimate freight and people were crossing the bridge— each side set up enforcement tents on either side of the bridge— during prohibition in the 1920s, the bridge was used to smuggle alcohol and other unlawful goods across to the U.S. For example, a large rock on the U.S. side was known as the “Crying Rock” because agents busted bottles of confiscated booze on it.
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