Tim Roufs |
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When Everybody Called
Me Gabe-bines,
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"This project has been financed in part with funds provided by the State of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society." "This publication was made possible in part by the people of Minnesota through a grant funded by an appropriation to the Minnesota Historical Society from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. Any views, findings, opinions, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the State of Minnesota, the Minnesota Historical Society, or the Minnesota Historic Resources Advisory Committee." |
 Woman seated in front of wiigwaam, Chippewa camp, ca. 1870. Creator: Charles Alfred Zimmerman Photograph Collection, ca. 1870 Collections Online Minnesota Historical Society Location No. E97.31 r91 Negative No. 1561 |
We had everything, so we were in peace.
We moved about three, four, times a year. We had winter and summer, and
spring and autumn. There were four seasons that we'd go by. We
had that season that was for picking berries(1)
and then the autumn would come. We had summer, and in the winter we had
winter. We would move when it's time to "harbor-nate" for the winter.
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There were a lot of camping grounds along the river, and in the winter we moved to one a little further back in the woods where there's wood. In the winter we camp where there is plenty of wood to burn, to heat our children. We lived in the woods by a lake where we could get fish, by a lake where there's plenty of wood, by a lake where there's game. We always put our camp for the winter where we can get to fish. We go where we can set net through the ice -- under the ice. We set net all winter around here. We run a net -- ah-s^b -- under the ice. We put our camp for the winter where we can get water -- where we can get water for the camp -- or else where there's plenty of wood. We would move to where we can get wood, where we can get water, where we can get fish, where we can get meat, game. We picked out a place where there's plenty of deer. In our area there would always be enough for the group. 'Course there was a lot of game them days. There was game. When we left ricing camp in the spring(2) we moved back to the place where we wanted to "harbour-nate" for the summer. We moved back to the place where we had a gii-tI-gan . . . a garden.(3) Some of us had garden spots. Some of us didn't. We did. We went back and took care of our garden. Gii-tI-gan is where we planted. When you plant, you're reseeding. You're seeding! We had potatoes -- very nice tasting ones. When we harvested our potatoes
we put them in the ground for storage -- just like with a root cellar. At the bottom
of the pit that we dug to put them in we had birch bark or canvas. Birch bark is the best -- it absorbs
the moisture. We had hay in there also. The hay goes against the wall
of the dug-out. And there was a little air hole coming to the top, so
the potatoes can breathe. The animals didn't eat all the potatoes because
they didn't know the potatoes were there. They were covered. Even with
the air hole they couldn't smell them, because there was too much air
and moisture coming out, and later on there was frost. The animals wouldn't dig
in there. They had plenty of other stuff to eat. We only took so much
to last to Christmas. After Christmas we went back and dug some more of
our potatoes.
Everybody was working all the time. The womenfolks and the men always had something to do. The men-folks were trapping and hunting in the fall, and the women were tanning hides and taking care of the sewing. They were sewing moccasins, sewing clothing and everything. Where we could work, our work was with hides. Where we could work, they did beadwork and hide tanning and everything. I do remember.
In the olden days the women were busy preparing for the house -- the wiigwaam, or tipi -- and they were exercised. For exercising they always went out and got dry wood -- dry twigs, and dry sticks -- for kindling. They knew winter was coming and they always piled a bunch of wood -- that's kindling wood -- next to the door of the wiigwaam. For the winter we picked out the spot where there's a lot of wood around. Then all we had to do is knock down a tree. Sometimes they cut it up. If we had kindling wood along with the birch for body wood -- like we do now -- we never had problems. We never had hardship. There was always a big chunk of wood lying around, and we'd pick up all the chunks, and use them for our fires. Whether or not that was rotten wood, we'd burn it anyhow. But we used dry wood -- mostly -- in the wiigwaam, because it doesn't smoke so much. Dry wood will burn up and make coals quicker, and without smoke. Of course there's some percentage of dry wood that will smoke, but green wood will "smalder." We generally put a few green pieces in the fire for night wood, but otherwise we used dry wood -- most generally. Dry wood gives quick heat and better coals, but it all depends on what hardwood you burn. After a while we'd burn up most of the wood -- the best wood -- along the rivers. For campfires we had to get back in the woods for more dry wood. The women used to like to go out and get wood. Women folks got out by themselves for that. It was fun to get wood. Some other wiigwaam would join. They'd go out together, breaking twigs and everything. I've seen them do that. If there were four, five women, they'd go out together to get wood for exercise. They liked that. They'd collect wood and pack it in. They had straps to carry the wood. I think those straps were about
twelve feet long. In the center of those straps there was a wider piece of deer hide -- made out of a neck of a deer, rawhide -- sometimes with fur on. And they'd make a loop in there,
on the end. That was a head-band. That's a pack strap. They'd lay those
straps down, then lay those little sticks across there, three, four feet
long. With the rawhides they would make a bundle. And when they make
a bundle, these women help one another lift that
bundle. They put this band around their head. They could pack quite a
load. "Pack strap," we call it -- Indian pack strap for a heavy load -- ah-mI-kwaab.
And if they didn't put it on their head, they put it on their shoulder.
They made it short enough to go on the shoulder. Some of them liked it
on the shoulder -- the men-folks especially. But the women generally put
it on their head. They were protecting their breasts, see? They carried
it on their head. That was what happened with the pack straps.
They'd pack in limbs -- dry limbs -- for kindling. Then the men folks hauled in pretty good size logs. They'd shoulder it in pole lengths. That's what we call "body wood"; that's bigger pole-wood. They made a pretty good pile of body wood -- may-zah-tIg. Sometimes, instead of packing or shouldering the bigger sticks for the fire, they tied them together and dragged them in tied. When they tied it in chain lengths, one pole followed after another. Sometimes we'd cut the pole lengths up by axe, but mostly we didn't. We generally would not split body wood. We called unsplit body-wood mI-záa-tIg-o-s^d. That means not-splitted log, or wood. A-mi-záa-tIg -- that's not-splitted wood. We'd put the body wood right in the fire, and that would burn all night. They were shoved in the fire by hand. And the back end of those long logs stuck out through the wiigwaam door! At both ends of a big wiigwaam there's a doorway, and there's fire
down the middle. That's on a big family wiigwaam -- a long one. Some
of them were thirty feet long and could hold lots of people. I remember.
Some of them were small. Some of them were round. It all depends on who's
going to live there -- and how many. On the long wiigwaam they made
two doorways. On one side was one family -- or maybe even two families.
In these wiigwaams we had fireplaces all clean across that thirty
feet. We had fireplaces down the middle the full length of the house.
A thirty-foot wiigwaam would have one big fire right across the middle.
That's the only way to dry up and ventilate the soil. There was space
on the ends to get from one side to the other. In the summer -- when they
were cooking inside -- they would use two fires, or three fires. In the winter
there was one fire, but they had sections of their own.
They generally put a green timber between sections to keep the fire in one section when somebody is getting up early. These fireplaces were curved or blocked up with green wood so the fire didn't catch the dry wood or hay. Pople was good for that, and the sections were built up like you would curve or build a cement firebox. This timber was built up so that it would not let the ashes out, or so that it would not let the spark into the bed area or the living part of the wiigwaam. The green wood was put so that it was all curled up around the fireplace. The draft drawed all that smoke into the air of the ceiling of the wiigwaam. We always left an airspace on the top of the tipi or wiigwaam. That's to draw the smoke out of the wiigwaam, or out of the tipi. It was something to wonder about. I looked at it. It was very very clean, comfortable, warm. By building and keeping fire in the wiigwaam -- or tipi -- the ashes and coals always heated the ground. And when that ground was heated once -- heated thoroughly thorough, to maybe a foot and a half or two feet down -- then the heat dries the moisture of the ground. The floor's vented by cedar boughs and that moisture from the ground came out. It's a nice dried place. To insulate the people from the ground we use wild hay, we use cedar boughs, and we used balsam boughs. The hay lays right on top of the ground -- and the hay has enough moisture to make it safe. With that row of green logs curving the fire, it was generally safe to use that hay for bedding. A spark will get on there once in a while, but somebody's always awake and watches for that. The hay was about two inches deep. On top of the hay we had balsam and cedar boughs. First we put balsam boughs and then we put cedar boughs. You put on all you can. It would be about four or five inches thick -- when it settled down. On top of that we put woven cedar mats. Then our bedding went on top of that. Those cedar and balsam boughs purify the
air inside the wiigwaam and that's a very good smell in
there. Balsam and cedar was used to purify the air. It also lowered the
moisture. How clean places were! There were mats on top of the cedar boughs
next to the fireplaces. Those cedar boughs, hay, and balsam boughs vented
the bottom of the wiigwaam. With those boughs on the floor the moisture
from the ground can come through without dampening the bedding. With the
heat underneath, the moisture from the ground comes through the boughs
and goes out into the ceiling of the wiigwaam. And with the moisture
going out into the ceiling of the wiigwaam it makes a good bedding.
It dries in there. It's vented in there. That's nice in there. It's comfortable.
The way it's made, I would think it would purify the air.
And then, when we close up at bedtime, that fire goes down. All that day the fire has hot coals. All that day it warmed that ground, as low as two feet in the ground. And that heat of the ground keeps us warm at night. We never got cold. The wiigwaam is vented, and has low moisture. And with the heat of the ground and the bedding and everything, we slept warm. Whoever of each division that gets up earlier -- before daylight -- builds a fire. There's no squabble against that. They were building fire for you and they were building fire for themselves. If the other parties didn't want to get up too early, the early one up didn't bother to start more than one fire. There's another green log between sections of the fireplace that they draw across when they're only using one section. When the other party gets up later, he builds a fire in his own partition of the fireplace. When that group was living together as a family deal, well, they watched out for one another. The first one up watches that fire. The old man's generally the one up. They don't want any spark. Sparks sometimes will jump, so he watches that fire carefully. When a spark jumps they know it right now. They have a paddle, a little paddle, to shove the dead grass -- dead vegetation -- back into the ashes. That's a great life, boy! I've seen that. Wherever we camped in the winter, we camped by wiigwaam groups.
When we camped out, our group always got together. These camps were relative-ly --
neighbor-ly.(4) It was just like a little
city on their own. We camped in tipis or wiigwaams, whatever style
we wanted to build. It's up to each group what style they wanted to build,
but most generally they were wiigwaams.(5)
Our group would put up a wiigwaam -- an Indian round, long, wiigwaam.
Those wiigwaams were fixed up good for the winter. We won't build a wiigwaam unless the winter is coming. Then we build a wiigwaam for the winter. In the summer we used poles to build shelters. In the summer we used a wiigwaam shelter only as something to shed rain.(6)
A wiigwaam is Ojibwa. We call it a home of Ojibwa. It's round, bent on top, and it's made of bark. And they were well-made -- lots of them were well-made. For most of the year the wiigwaam didn't have the roofing, but we had most of these frames ready. The Indian word -- the Ojibwa word -- for a camp is waa-gI-no-gáan. Waa-gI-no-gáan is that round roof. That's Ojibwa camp. And I would say, "I'm going to take this deer back to the waa-gI-no-gáhn." A Sioux camp is a tipi. A tipi is Sioux. Du-wii-kí-ay-I-na -- that's a Sioux talking. A tipi can be made of bark too, but most generally it's made with hides. A wiigwaam is most generally made of birch bark, sewed on to poles. The trimming is sewed with two clamps of cedar. We tie it together with strings of basswood. We made good rope from basswood. That was one of the best in our line of bark. The wiigwaams were tied down. Everything was tied down -- with poles joining together, and the tops joining one another -- in a form of a home or shelter. These wiigwaams are fixed up; they're prepared for winter.
I'm telling you about wiigwaams. We had small wiigwaams for small families, and we had big long wiigwaams for the bigger family. It all depends on how many out of that family is going to live in the same quarters. The big wiigwaams were something to see. In later years, when I got to be twenty, I never saw them much. But way back I saw them. And there were small round wiigwaams for a couple; that's the kind they had if there was a new couple. They had it fixed up nice -- inside and outside. I've seen families all lined up sitting in the wiigwaam by the
fire, cooking their meals. In 1908 John Lyons' folks -- his old man -- had
a lot of his relations living in their place. It was something to see. Old man Lyons had
one corner -- one side -- of the wiigwaam. The mother and father would
be on one side, the older class would be along the opposite side, and
the young people would be on the other two sides -- on the sides between them.
They could talk all they wanted to that way. The daughters, sons, and
in-laws would each live on their side of the house. It was just plain law to do it that way.(7)
You should see that. In that long wiigwaam I counted fifteen or twenty at one time -- counting both sides. Usually there were ten or fifteen -- in some of them -- including kids and all. But they had long wiigwaams -- with a doorway on each end. Their wiigwaams sometimes were twenty to thirty or forty feet long. I've seen them. They were built just like a motel. I'm telling you, they were wiigwaams.
In these wiigwaams there's a group -- maybe a father, mother, and those who are there through the marriages of the younger people. In a wiigwaam some of them are related and some are married into the group. They could be anything, but normally they all hang together through intermarriages. Some of them have two, three children. There will be two elders -- the older class, there was always the old couple -- and two, three, children and their children, and then some from the in-laws' side. Sometimes they have their son-in-law -- or maybe they have their daughter-in-law -- and three, four children in the family in the wiigwaam. You take one family and you have two or three adults and four or five kids. That's one wiigwaam. That's In-dáa-wáad -- the wiigwaam wherever your home is. They're neighbor-ly, so there may also be a sister or cousin or anything in that group. That's In-daa-wáad -- all together. Strangers come there too, but the strangers are generally there to get married to a relative. If a stranger's a good man or a good women, they married -- but strangers have to show a proof of a good way of life in order to marry. The older class are the leaders. And the older woman's the boss of the wiigwaam. The bosses of the wiigwaams are the leaders. Whether or not the wiigwaam had one boss or more bosses all depends on how long the wiigwaam is. There has to be a sister-relation if there's more than one boss.(8) These bosses are supposed to watch the children, so they won't crawl into the fire. But we work together. That's the way we do it. We got along together. The younger people also help the old age along. They respect their father and mother, and they stay with them as much as they can. They help the old people along, and the old people help them along. The old people are very good advisory. They're good advisory, and they give lectures at the campfire inside the wiigwaam.(9) In these lectures they're talking to the younger class, telling the young folks about the way life was, and the way it's going to be. A lot of prediction was made by the older class.(10) I listened to the lectures when I was young, and later on in life I realized that what they predicted was a fact. I often wonder how they know this was going to happen. They seem to know what's going to happen ahead. They were good at predictions. I was also there. I was raised in a wiigwaam right amongst them. I lived in a wiigwaam with my mother and sister on the west end of Leech Lake -- by Sugar Point and Five-Mile Point, right between there, by Ni-jo-gáa-b'o's.(11) In those days there were nothing but wiigwaams there. I also lived in a wiigwaam group -- In-daa-wáad -- with my aunt. I lived with Bellengers -- Boy River Indians. We were mostly at Boy River, but Round Lake was a great camping-out place too. I have some relation there yet -- my aunts. They're my dad's sisters. My aunts are my original relatives. The wiigwaam I was in had one division. Of course, this was kind of temporary. This was set up for harvesting wild rice and for picking blueberries. They had a group and -- you might as well say -- they'd say, "We'll all of us get together and we'll make one big long wiigwaam. And then we'll all live in there." In most wiigwaams one part's the kitchen; the other part's the sleeping room. On the ground in the middle they have a cooking place. They have a division where they cook. Each family can cook in its own section -- if they want. And in the middle -- in the middle of the roof -- they have an opening to draw the smoke out. You can get up anytime you want to. You eat any time you want to. I've seen that. I was in them. One party will eat earlier, and then what that party left will be shared with the rest. Some of them don't have much, but always the older class is conserve-ative and saves everything. The younger class was always standing behind the older class, and they shared with them. And they felt for one another. If they have a dish and if there's ever any leftover soup, or rice, or anything, it's never wasted. Anything that's leftover is never wasted. If there's something left over, they hand it to the next family. And if he's got enough, why he'll hand it across to the next family that needs it. So that's the way we all work together. I've seen that. Inside there -- inside the wiigwaam -- it's just like a varnished wall, some of the walls. That's because the bark they use is cured right away -- right after they peel it off the tree. They don't leave it lay around in moisture. It dries right away, and then they take care of it to use it for the shelters and wiigwaams. We have all the blankets rolled up in there. In the daytime we would
roll up our bedding and put it on top of the cedar bark. At night we'd
roll it out again. We have our bedding, we have our hay, and we have our cedar boughs that we lay on. We had feather ticks too. Around
1912, 1914, we started to make feather ticks. They make a big bag -- just
like a pillow -- and they shove in feathers. And then they close it up.
If they get some more ducks they'll shove in more feathers, until it's
plumb full.(12) To clean the feathers they
would lay them outside and spray them with a strong bark solution. Before we had feather ticks we used fur or woven rugs. In those days we made blankets out of bear hides
or anything -- including horsehide and moosehide.
In the winter everything was dried up. In the winter we used a lot of blankets and rabbit-hide quilts. Boy we used to keep good and warm with those. The women make the blankets and quilts. They make blankets out of rabbit hide too. Rabbit-hide blankets provide great insulation. It's wonderful, warm, insulated. Rabbit hide is treated and dried, and then they cut them into square pieces and sew them together to make wonderful insulational blankets. You take one of those rabbit blankets . . . it's the warmest thing there is. That's because it's pure insulation.
We had animal skins -- like the bear hides -- on top of those bark mats on the branches. Everything that we had was made from the nature of wild life. The bear hide was used for blankets. The wild life of the feathers off of birds was made into pillows, cushions, and different things. We had everything to work with. It was comfortable. These wiigwaams are comfortable, clean.
About 1909 we started to use burlap bags filled with hay for a mattress. About that same time -- for a while -- we also ground up rabbit fur to make mattresses. We used to go to the lumber camps -- after the logging camp was over -- and pick up those feed sacks. We'd dunk them in the water and hang them out. Then we'd rip them open and make mattresses out of them. Why it only takes about four or five sacks to make a mattress. We did that for years.
We know how to use birch, and cedar, and ash bark to make our wiigwaams. The older class went out and got the roofing and other bark used in the wiigwaam. We usually take bark off the trees in May -- although it can be earlier or later depending on the bark you're after, and the weather. The roofing was generally cedar bark or birch bark. There's two kinds that we use. They roll the cedar bark up, and dry it. Same way with the birch bark. And then when you're ready for it, you open it up and lay blocks of wood on top so it becomes usable for a wiigwaam. Put a stick on it in a sunshine, and it'll flatten right out. Sometimes timber was -- maybe -- a foot and a half across. Sometimes it
was as small as eight inches, but even the smaller trees still made a
big sheet. They all made a big sheet, and all would be four to six feet
in length. They sewed the birch bark with basswood bark -- wíi-gob.
You know you can't break that wíi-gob. Take that wíi-gob
and soak it in water when you're going to use it. When we want to use
basswood threading we put it in lukewarm water. It'll thicken, and then you can work it. You can tie anything on with that. We would even tie the roof on with wíi-gob. We used that to stitch the four-foot sheets and the three-foot sheets together. They spliced whatever size birch bark
sheets they had with basswood. Then on the end they put cedar bark that
was four feet, in length. Then they would sew these sheets onto the
poles of the wiigwaam. They made a very nice neat work of it.
When you're putting that birch bark on -- to keep it limber while you're putting it on, after you have it sewed together with the basswood -- you hold it by a fire to keep it a little bit limber. You do this before you put it on the building -- on the wiigwaam. This birch is flexible when it's dried with the heat. We don't soak birch bark; we soak the basswood threading.
They always
left an airspace on the top of the wiigwaam. That airspace -- that hole in the top of the wiigwaam -- was about
a foot and a half round. That's to draw the smoke out. You didn't worry
about snow and rain and stuff coming down there because they always had
something over it, hooked to You can't cut the ash bark around the tree straight because the bark will bust. You cut it like a zigzag pattern so it's flexible. You cut the ash zigzag so you could peel it off. The saw blade that's cutting is flexible -- flexible. You cut through an ash tree in diamond shapes, so that when it peels off the tree it lays flat. You just can't cut around like you do with birch; you have to kind of make the cut up and down, so that it peels off flat. You have to do that because the ash bark is thicker. Otherwise -- if you cut it straight -- there's a bind on that and it'll bust open. Birch is a little bit thinner, with more sap. You don't have to cut the birch zigzag because you don't cut deep enough on the birch. You just take the top bark of the birch. At the right season the birch bark strips, but the ash doesn't. Those ash bark pieces are about a foot, or a foot-and-a-half, two feet wide, when they come off. That's from a little one -- with a six- or eight-inch trunk. A big one will come from further down on the bottom of the tree. Those ash bark squares are something to see. We put them on as a big shingle on the bottom of the wiigwaam. The greatest, toughest wood is ash -- black ash, aa-gii-máa-tI'g.
That black ash is also good for making the shell of the wiigwaam. To make the
shell we used small ash poles, bent over on the top. The bottom footings are first stuck in the ground, so the wind doesn't blow them over. The poles then bend over and meet on top, and
we tie them together.
They built it well-braced, well-tied. We tied them with basswood -- that wíi-goob. We tied everything with basswood. Just like you put weights on hay, we put weights on the wiigwaam -- to hold the roofing down. So you lay poles across. It's like weight-ing hay down -- like putting old weights on hay. You put weights on it to keep it from blowing off. Then they tied the corner of the roofing onto the bottom stake, criss-cross. If a house has a peaked roof we hold the bark down with poles and wíi-gob. We'd take a small pole -- six feet or so -- and just flop them over. They straddle, and they pull together. I've seen this at Mud Lake. Boy, that's something now.
But most of the time we pretty-much just minded our own business in there, and we got along well in those wiigwaams. If someone wanted to be with their sweetheart, they could always go outside . . . in the brush . . . if they wanted
to. . . . But that wasn't necessary, especially if it was really cold out. You generally didn't look around all that much in there anyway. . . . And besides . . . you might
be busy yourself!!!. . . .
Footnotes 1. Cf., Ch. 10, "Blueberry Time." 2. Cf., Ch. 13, "Manoominike-Giizis, 'Wild Ricing Moon.'" 3. Cf. Ch. 8, "Old Gardens and New Bark," Ch. 12, "Inbetween Time," and Ch. 16, "River Life and Fishing." 4. They were generally composed of relatives and in-laws, and were very friendly groups. They traditionally tended to be patrilocal. 5. They could be wiigwaams, round or oval lower-roofed bark houses more typical of the Chippewa, or tipis, tall conical houses customarily covered with hides and more closely associated with Plains Indian groups. 6. In the summer they slept outside, especially when the bugs were bad, when they slept outside around smudge pots to keep the bugs at bay. 7. It was the accepted standard tradition or custom to do it that way. 8. If more than one woman shared a husband, i.e., if a man had more than one wife, then the wives were usually sisters. If there was more than one senior woman in a wiigwaam then they would generally be sisters. But since it was fairly common for two sisters to marry two brothers -- or close relations, culturally defined -- the "boss" women would usually also be married to brothers. Cf., Ch. 24, "Courtship, Marriage, and Living in with the In-Laws." 9. Cf., Ch. 11, "Campfire Talks." 10. Cf., Ch. 41, "Talking with the Old Folks: Recollections and Predictions." 11. See Ch. 1, "Early Life at Leech Lake." 12. Completely, entirely full. |
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