November brings echoes of the Sandy Lake Tragedy
November is the time of year when many Native Americans recall the Sandy Lake Tragedy of 1850, in which hundreds of Ojibwe Indians from Michigan died in a courageous stand against being removed to reservations west of the Mississippi. The ordeal is also known as the Wisconsin Death March and the Chippewa Trail of Tears. It might also be called the Last Stand of the Ojibwe. This fall, I stopped at Big Sandy Lake in northern Minnesota to reflect on the Ojibwe’s sacrifice while on a book tour in support of my novel, Windigo Moon, set 400 years ago among the tribe. There by the lakeshore, amid the fluttering golds and reds of aspen and maples in their fall glory, stands a memorial to the tragedy, which is unknown to most Americans, even those of us who live in the upper Midwest. I had made my way here during the same chilly season that the Ojibwe arrived, 167 years ago. By 1850, the Ojibwe, also known as the Chippewa, had forgotten the traditional skills of survival and were dependent on trade goods such as muskets, iron pots and manufactured clothing. Initially, they traded beaver pelts and other furs for these items, but after these species were all but exterminated, they had nothing left to trade but their land. In a series of one-sided treaties, the tribes of the Midwest ceded millions of acres in exchange for annual allotments of food, cash and trade goods. In 1850 the administration of President Zachary Taylor hatched an unlawful plan to break various treaties in order to remove the Ojibwe of the Upper Great Lakes to reservations west of the Mississippi. The goal was to seize Indian territory which was rich in timber, ore and farmland.
SNOW & COLD The Bureau of Indian Affairs moved the annual allotment of cash and supplies from LaPointe, Wisconsin at the west end of Lake Superior to a remote location 150 miles further west at Big Sandy Lake, Minnesota. Government officials schemed to trap the Ojibwe in Minnesota for the winter, wearing down their resistance to being removed west of the Mississippi. A number of Michigan bands flatly refused to make the trip, yet eventually, more than 5,000 Ojibwe men, women and children traveled for hundreds of miles across Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula to Big Sandy Lake in October of 1850. There, lightly dressed, bringing little food and ill-prepared for winter, they learned that their annuities and food supplies had not arrived. The allotments had not been appropriated in time by Congress. Minnesota’s territorial governor and a BIA agent knew there were no supplies coming, but purposely didn’t warn the people. The Ojibwe settled in to wait for their allotments as their situation grew more desperate. They had planned to return to their homes before winter set in, but found themselves caught in winter’s trap. Many had only their upturned canoes for shelter against the snow and freezing cold. Supplies of rotten pork and moldy flour arrived in early December, sickening many in the grip of starvation. Some 150 died of exposure, measles, dysentery and hunger in the encampment, but worse was yet to come. Deep in the winter, weakened by disease and starvation, the survivors set out for home, traveling through heavy snows and freezing temperatures. In all, some 400 people died on a death march which is little-known outside of the native peoples of northern Minnesota.
THE IRON HEEL This was not the end of the story, however. In 1852, a tribal leader named Chief Buffalo set out from the Apostle Islands on a 10-week mission to Washington, D.C., hoping to head-off an uprising and secure the Ojibwe homeland. Chief Buffalo was 93 at the time, yet he and his delegation paddled hundreds of miles in birch bark canoes along the shore of Lake Superior before obtaining passage on a steamship and then a train to Washington. Along the way they collected signatures of support from thousands of miners, lumberjacks and farmers, who were themselves under the iron heel of 19th century capitalism. They arrived in New York with only a dime left in the pocket of their white friend and advocate, Benjamin Armstrong. Chief Buffalo and his delegation were turned away by bureaucrats in Washington, yet in a lucky break they met an official who gained them an audience with President Millard Fillmore. Touched by their story, Fillmore deliberated for a few days, and then revoked the order to move the Ojibwe west of the Mississippi. These days, when I walk the streets of my hometown of Traverse City, Michigan, I often consider that I walk in the footsteps of Native peoples who have lived in the Upper Great Lakes for 9,000-11,000 years, and still do. In 1850 the Ojibwe, also known as the Anishinaabek, sacrificed hundreds of lives to remain in their homeland. At the very least, we owe them remembrance and respect.
