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Editor’s note: This is an oral history of Chief Blackstone. There were few written records to assemble this story, but this famous Ojibwa chief ’s life had many retellings.
The victor writes the history, and Chief Blackstone’s record has been largely kept hidden from the public. Why?
The government simply does not want you to know what really happens.
Chief Blackstone was the son of an English officer and an Ojibwe Chief ’s daughter who lived in a remote area on the Canadian side north of Saganaga Lake, which is today the end of the Gunflint Trail.
Chief Blackstone would later become the leader and chief of an area deep in the forest. In the last half of the 1800s, the fur trade ended, and pine, timber, and mining were the top enterprises. Grand Marais only had about two hundred white people living there at the time. Atikokan, Ontario, to the north and another seventy miles was also small.
No picture was ever taken of Chief Blackstone, but a white man sketched a drawing of this elusive, arrogant chief. He had some hair below his cheekbones which native people determined meant that he had some white descendent.
In the 1860’s, the Canadian government sent an ambassador to set up long meeting lodges to wager with the chiefs. Blackstone screamed out to the chiefs not to sign the treaty; however, in 1873, a treaty encompassing a large area of over twenty bands was signed. Blackstone’s reservation was called Sturgeon Lake, and about 60 tribal members lived there. About 450,000 acres (American acres) were sketched, surveyed, and established by the Canadian government as their reservation. Later, the reservation was cut down to 5,700 acres in Canada near the vast pine forest. The Indian agent, in written reports, stated that these Indians had not built large homes. Instead, the home had no floors, and the natives seasonally roamed the lakes and forests.
When miners and loggers came into Blackstone’s tribal area, he was furious. To no avail, Chief Blackstone journeyed long distances to meet with other tribes and found that the same “manifest destiny” had happened to them as well.
Years before to the south in Minnesota, Indians were put on reservations and treated terribly. The Sioux had attacked settlers and officers and had stolen two cannons.
They brought them through Blue Earth, Minnesota, and nearby hid the cannons, where to this day, the cannons have never been found.
Chief Little Crow of the Sioux sent messages to Chief “Hole in the Sky”, the controversial leader of the Ojibwe who lived at what is today called Brainerd, Minnesota. Although Minnesota had a small white population, most of its soldiers were involved in the civil war.
Food was scarce and government rations were given to people that needed them. When the rations did not come to the Sioux, and the Indian agent reportedly told them to “eat grass,” the starving Indians reacted with a vengeance. Many books tell of this conversation, and this agent was found dead with grass stuffed in his mouth.
The Ojibwe to the north refused to join the Sioux uprising. There were few white people to the north, and the Ojibwe hated and had fought the Sioux for hundreds of years. Nine hundred white settlers were killed in this uprising. War is terrible on all sides. My great-grandfather escaped with a few of his family, but most were killed on a farm near New Ulm. Later he married Jane Elliot Meymqushkowqush and moved to Grand Portage, and then to Chippewa City and finally Grand Marais, where he and his wife had ten children. His son went on to become secretary-treasurer of the Grand Portage Reservation. I was elected to the Grand Portage Tribal Council in 1978.
After the war in southern Minnesota, Chief Wabash of the Sioux was put in jail and imprisoned. Thirty-nine Sioux were hung to death in Mankato. Chief Little Crow and his son escaped to Canada. Later, after the great battle of the Little Big Horn “Sitting Bull,” a Sioux chief also escaped to Canada, where he and other chiefs had many meetings with Louis Riel, the French mixed-race Cree. Many Cree bands to the west were deeply involved in the battles with the Canadian military. Who else was at those meetings? Chief Blackstone.
When returning to the United States, Sitting Bull, like Crazy Horse, was killed. When Little Crow and his son returned to Minnesota, the military was on the lookout for him. Many of his people had escaped to the Dakotas. All of the Sioux and Winnibaygo tribes living in Minnesota were sent to Montana. Government records show that the government wanted to put them on Isle Royale. As stated, Little Crow came back to Minnesota and was shot and killed by a farmer. That farmer was the great-grandfather of Harry Lamson, who moved to Grand Marais and married Doctor Smith’s (our only doctor in the county) daughter. A nurse, Rosemary Lamson became director of health programs in Cook County. Harry said the gun his great-grandfather used to kill Little Crow had been taken to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C.
When gold was found in the Black Hills, miners and settlers invaded Sioux land. General Custer and troops were sent to drive away the Sioux and other tribes. The relatives of Blackstone at Lac La Croix Reservation tell how Blackstone was involved. Along with the Sioux and Louis Reil’s Cree, he and his warriors attacked and stole from trains. Blackstone had a rich goldmine near Atikokan (which means ‘bone of Caribou’) in Canada. Blackstone traveled to Silver Mountain near the great wild rice lake, called Whitefish Lake, on the Canadian side. Grand Portage Indians riced it till 1957. Melvin Gagnon, whose Grandmother Mrs. Spruce married a French man, operated the store on Pete’s Island in Grand Portage. High on a hill near the Pigeon River, Melvin was shown the trail to Whitefish Lake. The path swerves to the right, where it heads to Silver Mountain. Grand Portage elders told me stories of the Thunderbirds atop the mountain.
Blackstone, in the 1800s, had traveled to the Ojibwe village at Dog Lake, north of the present-day Thunder Bay. When the Sioux lived at Dog Lake, Chief Blackstone was there. White people in the 1930s destroyed an effigy of a dog that was carved into the hill.
In the 1880’s miners in their writings called Blackstone a terrible heathen. Blackstone spoke very well and explained how the treaties had been broken. Blackstone was so elusive he could not be found anywhere. East of Thunder Bay, the largest silver mine in Canada located on Silver Island, sunk into the ground. Blackstone had been there. In past writings, the settlers talked of Nanabozho’s wrath of Silver Island. The Sleeping Giant of Thunder Bay resembles a person lying down, looking up in the sky. The ancient stories tell that Nanabozho tried to travel to the Great Spirit’s home in the sky, but he was thrown back to earth. It is said that this was his final and last life on earth.
Louis Riel was hung to death in 1885. In the early 1880s, Blackstone could not be found. He had gone to England where his relatives— the English hierarchy Blackstone family lived.
In England, it is said that Chief Blackstone presented the Queen of England with the largest gold nugget she had ever been given. When his stay in England ended, Chief Blackstone returned to his home. Little is shown or known about where he was buried upon his death in 1885. Shirley Peruniak researched the life of Chief Blackstone. Shirley worked at the Quetico National Park. I was mysteriously in their office in the 1980s. Much more information is known and told about Chief Blackstone’s son “Bahk in dey gizhik” or ‘hole made in the sky.’ Blackstone ll had lived through a harsh winter and had numerous wives.
Shaubigezhigok, which means crumbling thunder of the sky,” lived to be 116 years old. She was blind and was the daughter of Chief Blackstone l. Milt Powell, a Grand Marais Korean veteran, visited her before she died. Relations of Blackstone in Cook County include the Powell’s, Caribous, and the Parent family. The trap lines and trails on land and water all lead to ‘Kanipi”, Blackstone’s reservation destroyed by the Canadian government. Many of the relations to the north talk for hours about Chief Blackstone. Still, today, when I look to older people and converse with them, we all shout, “Where is Chief Blackstone’s Gold?”
Yes, we shine on with the stories of our rich history.
Wiliam (Billy) Blackwell, Grand Portage elder.
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