“Watching the River Run”
The Crawfish River
Part One
The Crawfish River:
Interactions
The Crawfish River at Danville
The
River
Was
There
The Western Great Lakes Region
• Location of
Indigenous
Peoples in
the early
1600s.
• Rivers,
lakes,
forests, &
prairies
created the
landscape.
Smithyman, Kathrya and Bobbie Kalman. Nations of the Western Great Lakes. Crabtree Publishing.
“There’s
many a
river
that
waters
our
land…”
Rivers and Villages
• Rivers and lakes
created settlement
patterns for villages.
• The rivers were
important for
transportation,
trading, fishing,
gathering wild rice &
hunting.
.
“In Elba township
in Dodge County there is a
150-year-old resting place
named Okeeg Cemetery.
According to local tradition
the unusual name of
‘Okeeg’ was the Indian
name of the nearby
Crawfish River. This tale is
supported by an old 1840
government-issued map
that labels the Columbia
and Dodge Co parts of the
river as Okeeg until it
reaches the end of Mud
Lake Marsh where it’s
referred to as the West
Branch of the Rock River.”
OKEEG RIVER at
Astico Park, Dodge
County
“Some have claimed that
the word Okeeg means
"peaceful" and thus was an
appropriate name for the nearby
cemetery. According to this
theory, it was only later, when the
west branch of the Rock River
was renamed the Crawfish, that
that name was accepted for the
entire river. A second
interpretation has suggested that
the word Okeeg, translated into
English, means Crawfish and this
explains the name of the river.”
--Hoard Historical Museum, Ft. Atkinson, WI
Ho-Chunk
Homeland
Ho-Chunk Par fleche
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural
History. Repatriation Department.
“The land in Wisconsin is full of clues
about those who have lived on it…”
“Many Wisconsin Ho-Chunk people of today are the
descendants of those who refused to move to
reservations west of the Mississippi. Others are
descendants of those who left and returned.”
-- Patty Loew in Native People of Wisconsin, p. 60.
The Past Connects to the Future
Portrait taken in Black River
Falls about 1900 of Mr. & Mrs.
Joseph Monegar.
Yellow Thunder
Image ID: 27886
Collection Title: Native American Cartes-de-visite, ca. 1860ca. 1880
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=2788
6&qstring=
Image ID: 2313
Collection Name: Charles Van Schaick: Photographs and
Negatives, ca. 1880-ca. 1940
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=
2313&qstring=
Ho-Chunk Women &
Children, circa 1910
Image ID: 61524
Collection Name: Charles Van Schaick: Photographs and Negatives, ca. 1800ca. 1940
For larger image click on the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=61524&qstring=
Kinzie, Juliette M. Wau-Bun: The “Early Day” in the Northwest.
The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Wisconsin. Menasha, WI: George Banta Publishing Company, c1989,
Portage Connections
The Indian Agency House Today
The Surgeon’s Quarters
Kinzie, Juliette M. Wau-Bun: The “Early Day” in the Northwest.
George Banta Publishing Company
Portage Canal and Lock
Image ID: 42789
Collection Name: Place File
For larger image click the following
link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/
fullRecord.asp?id=42789&qstring=
Note Indian Agency House in
the Background
--Wisconsin Historical Society Photos
Image ID: 43002
Collection Name: Dr. Edward A. Bass: Negatives, Photographs, and Digital
Images, ca. 1885-1910
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=43002&qstring=
Crawfish River History
• River as seen from
the top of the dam,
July 2006.
• “Alfred Brayton
Connection”
• At this point of the
Crawfish River, he
built a dam and a
sawmill in 1846 to
start the Village of
Fall River.
Marking History
Historical Marker set in place
in 1996—the year of Fall
River’s Sesquicentennial.
River Perspectives
Mill Race
What clues remain?
Part Two
Traveling with the Chippewa
The Chippewa,
a Chippewa River steamboat, 1868
The Chippewa River
“Chippewa Family
Moving”
Image ID: 23762
Collection Name: Paul Vanderbilt
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp
?id=23762&qstring=
Together on the
Blue Highway
Gathering Wild Rice
“Knocking
Wild Rice”
Image ID: 5599
Collection Name: Indian Classified File
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=5599&qstring=
The Ojibwe Way: Then and Now…
Image ID: 24509
Collection Name: Classified File****
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=24509&q
string=
“Preservation of the place
where ‘Food Grows on
Water’ means a great deal
to the Ojibwe people.”
--Patty Loew, Native People in Wisconsin, p.
93.
Fishing
in
Every
Season
Satz, Ronald N. Chippewa Treaty Rights: The Reserved Rights of Wisconsin’s
Chippewa Indians in Historical Perspective. University of Wisconsin Press.
Satz, Ronald N. Chippewa Treaty Rights: The Reserved Rights of Wisconsin’s Chippewa
Indians in Historical Perspective. University of Wisconsin Press.
A Fishing
Tradition
“Ojibwe
Men
Fishing
from Boats,
1898”
Image ID: 6911
Collection Name: Indian Classified File
For larger image click the following link: http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=6911&qstring=
The Treaty at Prairie du Chien
Image ID: 3142
Collection Name: James Otto Lewis, 1799-1858: The aboriginal portfolio: A Collection of Portraits of the
Most Celebrated Chiefs of North American Indians, 1835-1836.
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=3142&qstring
Views from
Prairie du
Chien, 2006
Villa Louis
1825 Treaty Grounds Today
Mississippi
River
Governing the River Trade
Today, replica of
the Blockhouse at
Superior
Scene from Ft. Crawford. The
Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers
were vital to trade.
Image ID: 4512
Collection name: Cal N. Peters: Drawings, Paintings, and Dioramas, ca. 1950
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=4512&qstring=
Image ID: 38010
Collection Name: Place File
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=38010&qstring=
Chippewa Land Cessions.
1837-1854
Paths to Understanding
Image ID: 1871
Collection Name: Rare Books
For larger image click the following link:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/fullRecord.asp?id=1871&qstring=
Part Three
Rivers of Knowledge:
Working Together for Consensus
Beaver River First Nation Heritage and Culture Center.
Traveling together on
the ”Blue Highway”
Deep Currents Created
by the Indian Boarding Schools
Littlefield, Holly. Children of the
Indian Boarding School. Carolrhoda
Books
“I don’t want to stay
here…Come after me
please, papa, I am so
lonesome for home.
“Away from Home”
--from a letter by
Nora Cailis, who
attended a boarding
school in Oklahoma”
Time Line: Littlefield, Holly. Children of the Indian Boarding School.
Carolrhoda Books
Still standing: Student
Dormitory at the site of the
Lac du Flambeau Indian
Boarding School.
Pride in
Cultural
Knowledge
http://www.baylinartists.com/Ethos-res.htm
Honoring
the Ojibwe
Language
gookooko'oo
waagosh
mashkodebizhiki
Aaniin ezhi-bimaadiziyan, niijii?
How are you, my friend?
migizi
makwa
aamoo
miskwaadesi
Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission.
Working
Together to
Protect
Natural
Resources
Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission
“The treaties of 1837 and 1842 with
the Ojibwe people ceded to the
United States government
approximately the northern one-third
of Wisconsin…while the land was
ceded, all rights to use it were not.”
“The two treaties
guaranteed that the
Ojibwe people could hunt,
fish, gather, harvest rice
and tap maple trees on the
ceded lands.”
--Wisconsin Waterways, p. 87
Seeking to Understand:
Nick Hocking teaching
at Waswagoning.
Strawberry
Island &
Medicine
Rock
Copyright unknown. If the
reader knows who holds the
copyright, please contact Oscar
Chamberlain at the University of
Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
“And it goes on and on, watching the
river run,
Further and further from things that
we've done,
Leaving them one by one.
And we have just begun watching the
river run.
Listening, learning and yearning to
Run, river, run.”
-- Kenny Loggins, “watching the River Run”