ffite (ftiipraj Jrnli
VOL. 1.
CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE OJIBWA,
J, A. Gilfii.lan,
The Ojibwa—or as they are common
ly called, the Chippewa—lived mostly
in northern Minnesota. But they are
■also found in Wisconsin and Michigan
■and in Canada, where they are scat
tered northward from Lake Ontario as
far as Hudson’s Bay, and westward to
the Saskatchewan River. Their lan
■guage was formerly spoken over a very
large portion of the United States and
Canada, from Nova Scotia southward
ito where the Hampton School
mow standsand westward to the Rocky
Apropos of their language
lit is worth while to note, by the way,
ithe one characteristic of the Ojibwa
is the cileanness of his speech. In
twenty-five years of living with them
the writer has rarely heard an Indian
take the name of God in vain. They
never swear except in English and then
in imitation of some white man. In
dive minutes one would hear more bad
language and more obscene talk among
the class of whites by whom they are
tsurj-ounded than would be heard among
the Ojibwa in five years.
The Ojibwa, although mostly pa
gan, are generally more honest than
their white neighbors, although the
latter have been blessed for nineteen
hundred years with the light of Chris
tianity. The writer has inquired of
lumbermen, frontier settlers, and oth
ers who come in contact with these In
dians along the frontier from Bemidji
to Snake River —a distance of two
hundred and fifty miles—and the testi
mony has always been uniform that
among the Ojibwa one may leave valu
ables lying about without fear of their
being taken. In an experience cover
ing twenty-five years among them the
writer knows no single instance of any
one being robbed or forcibly “held up”.
A man could travel among them by
“Edxica.tion, Civilization a.nd Citizenship.”
WHITE EARTH, MINN., SEPTEMBER, 1902.
day or by night, even though it were
known that he had large sums of money
or other valuables, and be absolutely
safe. It would never enter into an
Ojibwa's head to rob him. When the
old traders were accustomed to travel
long distances to make annuity pay
ments, they would, while at the even
ing encampment, sometimes give a bag
of gold to be examined as a curiosity.
That gold would be studied piece by
piece and passed from one to another
till all had seen it, when,perhaps after
some days, it would be returned to the
owner with never a piece missing.
The old Indians had their “preach
ing” or formal instructions, which
were given by the elders to the young
people, and among their precepts were
such moral injunctions as “Do not
steal” and “Do no evil to your fellow
being”. The writer lived on an Indian
reservation long before there were any
Indian police and when there was no
law but the will of the agent, which
was practically unknown. With his
family he once left his house by the
roadside unoccupied for three months,
and filled with things the Indians very
much wanted. Yet on coming back at
the end of that time it was found quite
undislurbed. The lumbermen and
frontier settlers say that if an Ojibwa
be very hungry and find food he will
help himself to enough to satisfy his
hunger once, but will take no more.
And who of us would not do the same
in like circumstances?
There is much misjudgement in the
accusation of laziness constantly char
ged against the Indian. It has been
frequently observed that the Ojibwa,
both men and women, are used to pe
riods of violent and severe exertion, but
these are invariably followed by pro
longed periods of rest. When a man
is in pursuit of a deer or some other
animal, the exertion is extreme. When
a woman is making sugar in April she
is at work all the time, carrying sap
in buckets, chopping wood for the fire,
tapping the trees, stirring the sugar
and doing many other laborious things.
MINNESOTA HISTORICAL
SOCIETY
She is often wet to her knees walking
amidst the melting snows, and she
sleeps in wet clothing, never changing
anything when she lies down for her
short naps. For weeks together she
sleeps very little, and exerts herself
violently. But neither the men nor the
women can stand the monotonous repe
tition of the same acts continously, as
for instance, in any manufacturing in
dustry. The old life was a life of
constant chang-e made up of violent ex
ertion and prolonged repose. But to
require these people to do the same
acts day after day is like keeping a
a team of horses always at a steady
trot on a perfectly level road. They
cannot stand it. For this reason an
Ojibwa girl soon tires of cooking, or
washing dishes, or performing any
other mechanical act day after day.
White women who have had Ojibwa
girls to help them with the housework
have probably never found one who
could do three full days’ work in a
week. Occasionally one may be found
who can work for two days but gener
ally one day’s work in a week is as
much as is to be expected. We must
make allowance for the influence of the
old life and for heredity in estimating
what to expect of the Indian young
man or woman in the way of work.
The intellectual quality of the Ojibwa
is very good. In the book of nature
spread out before him he is deeply
learned —far more so than our own
race. And his mind has been exer
cised in a most beautiful but difficult
inflected language, far more highly
inflected, more finely worked out, and
with more subtile distinctions of mean
ing than is found even in the classic
tongues. It is no wonder, therefore,
that an Oxford graduate once said in
the writer’s presence, speaking of the
Ojibwa, with whom he often sat at
table. “Those men seem to me like
highly educated men; the lines of their
faces reveal their intelligence.”
The Ojibwa are progressing rapidly
ConUrxvied on last pa.ge.
ORICAL
NO. 7.