The Battle at the Pigeon River

This is Jo Hunter and Alex Bushman on the Grand Portage Reservation in 1945. You can see the star on Alex Bushman’s drum.

Long ago in the late 1300’s, the Ojibwe people left “Ba wi ting,” which means the rapids, at present day Sault St. Marie on the eastern edge of Lake Superior. Most followed the south shore and stayed for about two hundred years at the large island in “Shag ah wami kang Bay,” today called Madeline Island.

The Sioux and other tribes, all on their last migration, were ahead of the Ojibwe. Fighting lasted a very long time. The Ojibwe felt that this was a safe place. Finally, they moved west and drove the Sioux out of the end of Kitchi Kami. This was done when Sieur du Lhut, the Frenchman Daniel Greysolon, arrived in the late 17th Century. (Greysolon lived from 1639-1710).

Wild rice and sturgeon were abundant there, and the huge hills filled with berries. The bay was kept in by two huge beaver dams, today’s Park Point and Wisconsin Point. This area was called “Me Sa bey kahng,” the place of the giants. “Mesabi” today is geographically used in many locations in northern Minnesota.

Thousands of years ago, there were giant animals and beings.

Another large group of Ojibwe left from the east end of Kitchi Kami and went north to the mountain area of the Thunder Bay, home of the sleeping giant of Nanabozho. The Moose, Caribou, Sucker, and other clans went north. The Crane and Bear clan (with other clans) went south to the Pigeon River and Grand Portage Bay. This Ojibwe group was always small in number because of the fierce winter. They had defeated the Sioux on an island at Thunder Bay, and then twenty miles north, drove the Sioux out of Chief Black Dog’s village. They took over the Pigeon River and the Grand Portage area. Today, there are items found in Cook County that are eight to nine thousand years old.

As a young man, I had not been given an Indian name in a ceremony. I asked John Flatt, son of Chief Mike Flatt for assistance. He took me to a World War I veteran, a Grand Portage Elder, named Alec Bushman. His real last name, “Ba gwadj animi,” means the little wild man spirit of the forest. I gave him tobacco and in our Ojibwe language, John Flatt told him that I was asking for an Indian name. Shortly later, he instructed us that he had dreamed of this name.

At John Flatt’s sister Liza’s house, a bowl of natural food and gifts were placed on the floor. As a child, Alec Bushman had lived in the “little pigeon bay” and had fasted without food or water for many days. Later, he lived all over the Grand Portage Reservation and had built many log homes. Pictures were taken of him with a small drum that had a green star on it. Alec told of his dream and named me “of the sun arising in early morning over a cloud on the thunder mountain.”

Later Alec Bushman shared with many Elders, the story he was told of the battle at the Pigeon River. At one time, seasonally thousands of pigeons lived at the river. That is why this river is called “Mee Mee Zeebing,” the Pigeon River. Many Ojibwe came to the river to hunt these pigeons, smoke them, and put them in birch bark baskets, or bury them to eat later. The Ojibwe kept a village along the river and one morning, an old man woke up and heard a bird sound out, “Abwah ajeemar, jeeg abeek, jeeg abeek,” meaning Sioux canoe near the shore. The old man woke up the people and with their weapons, they hid along the shore.

When the Sioux canoes were close, with war hoops the Ojibwe warriors attacked and killed all of the Sioux except for two canoes who had escaped. Later that day, the escaping Sioux stopped on a small island at present day Paradise Beach, 15 miles east of Grand Marais. Women picking berries there hid in the bush and watched them stop at the island to go to the bathroom. Laughingly, Elders would later call that island “the place where the Sioux stopped to go to the bathroom.” Liza Flatt had her son, Mark Naganub, take us on his boat all along the shore from Grand Portage to the Pigeon River. She showed us where a cave was that long ago people used to hide from the Sioux.

Liza told many stories and lived to be in her nineties. Later, I will tell of the big battle at Gunflint Lake, and at Massacre Island on Saganaga Lake. This is all for today.

Migwitch. Thank you.

William Blackwell, Grand Portage Elder