|
Canku Ota |
|
(Many Paths) |
||
An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America |
||
January 25, 2003 - Issue 79 |
||
|
||
Dairy of Chippewa River Trip in 1868 Describes Abode of Jean Brunet, Picturesque Figure of the Early Days |
||
From: Eau Claire Telegram August
18, 1917 (From the Sunday Leader)
(In Four Installments) |
||
Note - The Leader
has obtained from C.H. Cooke of Mondovi, a pioneer farmer of the Chippewa
Valley, a diary of a canoe trip up the Chippewa River in the spring
of 1868 in company with Captain Shadrach A. Hall, principle of the old
Wesleyan Seminary, which stood on the site now occupied by the Eau Claire
High School, and George Sutherland, brother of A.J. Sutherland of this
city. The first part of the diary, here presented, narrates a visit
to the home of Jean Brunet, pioneer fur trader and probably the most
picturesque character among a hardy group of men who were the leaders
in this region when the white man first became an important element
in its population. The diary presents the only pen picture of Brunet
and his family known to exist. The Leader will publish extracts dealing
with such interesting bits of Chippewa Valley history as the feuds between
the pioneer lumbering interests. George Sutherland, who now resides
at Grand Island, Nebraska, is president emeritus of Grand Island College.
Captain Hall died several years ago.
|
||
Photo
1: A famous logjam on the Chippewa River is fifteen miles long,with
logs piled thirty feet high (1899). |
||
The day and the hour came at last when our daydreams of a canoe voyage up the Chippewa were to begin. There were three of us, Professor Hall, chief instructor of the Wesleyan Seminary, West Eau Claire, and two of his hopeful pupils, George Sutherland, always at he head of his class, and the writer hereof, more often near the foot of his class. Being around 20, just the age, so the sages tell us, of expectancy and hope, George and I had long been impatient for the ending of our winter term, which closed April 18, 1868. It had been agreed that we should start immediately on the close of the school term. Fore more than a month George and I had planned and counseled about the coming trip. We had divided the time between our daily lessons and stories of adventures among the Indians and a lot of things possible and impossible that boys naturally might imagine in the dark, unexplored forests of the upper Chippewa. Captain Hall (he had been a Captain in the Civil War) at first declined to accompany us. He finally yielded and on this morning, April 20, we set out by livery for Jim Falls, where we were to buy a bark canoe of the Indians for our journey. We pitched our tent near the river a half a mile above the Falls, near a camp of Indians. It was soon learned that we were in the market for a canoe and several Indians and half-breeds came at once and invited us to look at their canoes. Their prices ranged from five dollars to fifteen dollars. We purchased one finally at eight dollars. The sky looked so threatening we pitched our tent under the sheltering boughs of a monarch pine. We were told by the Indians that the chief of their tribe had camped there and the very poles about which we spread our tent had been placed there by his squaws. This fact furnished George with a text, which he dwelt upon for some time after we had rolled up in our blankets under our miserable tent that barely covered us. George by instinct and education had decided leaning to matters of history related to the races. Buy
Indian Canoe The dark, winding, silent river was slowly rising from recently melted snow, and the thousands of logs in endless procession went streaming by. Busy
Dodging Logs During the day we passed a driving crew who hailed us for news about Beef Slough matters. We paddled up to a big log to hand a burly fellow an Eau Claire paper. He thanked us and warned us that we had taken a bad time for such a trip and being 'tenderfeet" we had better watch out. A number of them called to know if we had any whiskey and to show their scorn of danger performed a lot of antics on the whirling logs. The snaky river, winding in and out of the great silent forest, with branches drooping into the water, and the never ending stream of logs coming from nowhere and silently pursuing their way like things of life, made a picture strange and phantom like. We were getting pretty tired about noon and observing a smoke in a little bay free from logs, we paddled in and made a landing for our lunch and an hours rest. Our suspicions that the place had been occupied by Indians proved correct. Burning brands showed that they had but recently vacated the place, and some hoops for stretching skins, also bones of animals were in evidence. We were rather sorry that the occupants, the Ojibways, as George persists in calling the Chippewas, had not been there. We had, in preparing the trip, purchased a medley of notions supposed to be in demand among the Indians, with which to trade for furs and maple sugar or any odd bric-a-brac of Indian make. We had a lot of fancy calicoes, beads by the thousands and several dozen steel traps, purchased solely and in cold blood for barter and trade with the untutored children of the forest. And particularly our mouths just fairly watered for some maple sugar, which we heard was in abundance on the upper Chippewa. After
a frugal lunch of bologna sausage and crackers, Captain Hall ordered
all aboard and we slowly pushed on. Log
Drivers Abusive The last man on the afternoon drive had told us that we could make Brunet Falls by night, that it was only a few miles, and shortly after we could hear the far away fall of tumbling water. It was a glad sound, as we fancied it was to begin in some way the romance of our canoe trip. There was a wailing in the pine tops of a coming storm, when at dusk we pulled our leaky canoe up on the bank in sight of Brunet's great log house, and prepared for the night's encampment. Brunet's
Cabin We began to take an interest in the big roomy cabin of father Brunet. A great column of blue smoke pouring from the roof and our own imaginations, combined with our dreary situation, decided us to cultivate an acquaintance with the old pioneer of the Chippewa. We might find it convenient to secure quarters for the night. So while George busied himself mending holes in the canoe, and as hunter, I started out in quest of game, the professor sallied forth on the more delicate task of treating with old 'Bruney," as the lumberjacks called him, and his half-breed daughters for a place to sleep for the night. About noon I found myself some two miles down river, wet to the skin from melting and falling snow, two squirrels and a partridge in my belt. Here I met two Indians, who in answer to my inquiries told me that a half-breed on the other side of the river had some maple sugar for sale and that he lived with an Indian woman for a housekeeper in an old logging camp. An
Indian Promise When I reached camp I found George preparing dinner of coffee, potatoes baked in ashes and rabbit steak. The professor had returned from his mission to the Frenchman's cabin and they were drying his trousers by the fire having got a bit of a dunking in crossing a slough on some logs. Welcomed
by Brunet Here, as they well knew, awaited the great warm room heated by two big stoves, a box of tobacco and pipes for each comer, grates to dry their socks and wet packs and for the inner man, steaming plates of the best woods fare, served by Mrs. Brunet and her three rather pretty, dark skinned daughters. We handed over our partridge and squirrels to our host, after dressing them, and they were given to us for breakfast. After supper we pulled our chairs together (and it so happened we were the only strangers there) and engaged this delightful old gentleman in the story of his life. In the meantime the women had cleared the table and after some preparation for the morning meal quietly withdrew, rather to our disappointment, to an adjoining room or cabin, their own exclusive apartment, as it appeared. Everything seemed to chime in with the strange, wild life of the old Frenchman and his story. The great rude camp with its puncheon floor. Its walls frescoed with deer horns and guns and skins of the chase, the odor of bygone smokers, lumbermen and hunters permeating the air, the darkening wall of the surrounding forest, all carried us back in pleasing fancy to our own half Indian life in Wisconsin, where our playthings were Indian bows and playfellows were Indian boys. Loved
Squaw and Children He said much about the policy of the government as being unjust o the Indian race. He spoke with much feeling, as though he too shared in the sense of injustice, which the Ojibways, as he called the Chippewas, had suffered. It was nearly twelve o'clock when the old gentleman, after going to his wife's apartment as if to get advice about disposing us for the night, came back and pointing to the beds where we were to sleep bade us good night. There were curtains about our beds, the dining room, living room and sleeping room being the same. Moving about in moccasin feet to get the breakfast we did not hear our stealthy housekeepers until the old gentleman awakened us and told us it was six o'clock. When I said "Good Morning" to the dusky maiden who handed me my coffee, she faintly smiled but said nothing. The breakfast was good. The professor was the loudest of all in praise of the fried potato, which he declared the best he ever ate.
Followed Indian Pipe Custom The old man's daughters, brownies of the pine forest, as the professor styled them, exchanged amused smiles at their father's apparent annoyance at our continued refusal to smoke. We sat with the old man and listened to something of the story of his life, while he smoked his morning pipe. The professor had gone up to look at the Falls, as he was somewhat insistent that we renew our journey as soon as possible. The snow was nearly gone and, although the rush of logs continued, we agreed that we would attempt the portage of the falls after dinner. To
Wisconsin in 1820 An
Indian Peace Meeting He had much to say of the fine ponies and the feathers tied to their manes and tails, how the faces of the Sioux and their thighs and arms were streaked with red and black paint. The Chippewas had stacked their arms in a bunch of pines near the river as proof of their good faith, while the Sioux party in the like manner had tied their guns to their ponies backs. The talk about the terms of peace continued all afternoon and until the fires were lighted at night. Then the peace pipes were filled by a lot of the Indian boys, lighted and passed around. Each smoker after a whiff or two passed the pipe to his next neighbor and then followed a feast of stewed venison and rabbits, prepared by the squaws. About ten o'clock that night the Sioux at a signal from their chief gathered themselves up from the ground where many of them were sprawled about as if asleep, with their ponies tethered to them with grass ropes, mounted their ponies and rode to their camp near Jim Falls. The next morning they came back and after another powwow, lasting until near noon, they gathered in a circle and buried some knives and some hatchets in token of peace and friendship between the Chippewas and Sioux tribes. Then came another feast and more smoking of the pipe of peace, then after shaking hands all around they mounted their ponies and rode away toward their encampment on the west bank of the Mississippi River. There was a vast encampment of Sioux there at this time awaiting the result of this conference. Mississippi
Boundary Conflicts between these tribes as a result often ensued. Hence the Chippewas, less prone to war and weaker in resources, made no resistance to the coming of the whites, as their presence secured them from the incursions of the war-like Sioux. We had on our bed a buffalo robe which Brunet said he had bought off the Sioux some twenty years before, during one of their periodic trips to Wabasha prairie, which was one of their favorite camping places on the west side of the Mississippi at the mouth of the Chippewa River. He had so much praise to give the Sioux. He said they were very smart at horseback riding. Dwelling as they did on the prairies of the west, much of their lives were spent on the backs of their tough little ponies. They guided their ponies with ropes of grass tied about their necks. The Chippewa Indians, he said, were less used to horses and the Sioux for this reason whenever they had a council always tried to show their better skill in horsemanship. We almost hated to part with this curiously interesting old Frenchman and his half-breed daughters, so kind they had been, and I am sure that inwardly each of us, anyway George and I, resolved that we somehow would come again. |
|
||
|
||
Canku Ota is a free Newsletter celebrating Native America, its traditions and accomplishments . We do not provide subscriber or visitor names to anyone. Some articles presented in Canku Ota may contain copyright material. We have received appropriate permissions for republishing any articles. Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monetary gain to those who have expressed an interest. This is in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107. | ||
Canku Ota is a copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 of Vicki Lockard and Paul Barry. |
||
The "Canku Ota - A Newsletter Celebrating Native America" web site and its design is the |
||
Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 of Paul C. Barry. |
||
All Rights Reserved. |