The Ojibwas or Ojibway Indians of Lake Huron

  • Daimeka, mythical leader of the Ojibwas and chief of the island of Michilimackinac (story in Chapter XVII)
  • Netawis – John à Cleeve
  • Menehwehna (chief) & Meshu-kwa (wife)
  • Azoka, daughter of above, lover of Netawis, eventually wife of Ononwe
  • Muskingon (d. Chapter IX) & See-kwa (wife & dau. of Menehwehna)
  • Ononwe, lover of and eventually husband of Azoka
  • Beau-man, lover of Momondago-kwa (story 3)

Indian Council with the British at Fort Niagara

This took place in August 1759. It involved Wyandots, Attiwandaronks of Lake Erie, Nettaways and Tobacco Indians of Nottawasago Bay, Ottawas and Pottawatamies of far west (see Chapter XX). These are all Algonquins. After the conclusion of the novel they rose under Pontiac in the hope of defeating the American colonists and the British. See The Conspiracy of Pontiac by Francis Parkman (1874).

The Iroquois Confederacy

The background of Q’s understanding appears to have come mostly from Francis Parkman’s The Conspiracy of Pontiac, vol. I (1874).

The Iroquois or Hodenosounee, otherwise known as the Five Nations and then the Six Nations, were a confederacy which spoke the same language and occupied the forests of what is now New York State and Pennsylvania but whose influence spread much wider. They were under pressure from European colonists of the east coast, so expanded westwards, forcing the Wyandots, who also spoke an Iroquois dialect, to migrate to the western shores of Lake Erie, and the Ottawas to migrate from the Ottawa River to the eastern shores of Lake Michigan. Only the Ojibwas of Lake Huron possessed the martial vigour to oppose them.

The Iroquois were first invaded by De Nonville in 1687 and by Frontenac in 1687. This instituted their hostility to the French. With the French victory at Fort Carillon in July 1758, Jo Lagasse of Boisveyrac looks for the final extermination of the Confederacy (Chapter X), believing that the sub-tribes, the Onnontagues and the Angniers, had suffered in the British defeat. The Iroquois were allied with the British through the influence of Sir William Johnson, as far as they were allied to anyone. In fact, Johnson’s Indians had taken no part in the battle for Fort Carillon (Chapter III). However, as Menehwehna states, war was their normal state (Chapter VIII), and they behaved with the utmost cruelty.

Q captures the cruelty of the Iroquois and the fear which resulted in Chapters VI to IX of the novel. When Sergeant Barboux incautiously decides to cross the Adirondacks, he is strenuously opposed by the two Ojibway Indians. Ignoring their wise counsel results in the dispersal of the party and the deaths of Muskingon and Barboux himself (VIII), along with sounds of the death of M. Armand (Chapters VII and VIII).

To the west of the Iroquois, being driven ever further westwards, was a tribe which spoke a dialect of the same language but lacked the same martial spirit, the Wyandots. Raoul de Tilly married a Wyandot from Lake Huron, with the daughter being reared at Boisveyrac. Diane des Noel-Tilly was her great grand-daughter (Chapter XV). The Tobacco Indians were a sub-tribe and similarly allied to the French.

When the British attacked Fort Amity in August 1760, the Iroquois were involved. Q based the fall of Fort Amitié to the British in Chapter XXIII on Parkman’s account of the fall of Fort Levis (1884, pp. 369-70), although with additional details. Parkman explains that Pouchot wanted to fight a delaying action so refused to surrender. The fort was invested with a British and Indian force, with the Indians being under William Johnson. When the fort surrendered ‘three fourths’ of the Indians left in a ‘rage’ because they were not permitted to ‘kill the prisoners’. One of the British regiments involved was the 46th.

In the novel a detachment of the 46th Regiment, of which John à Cleeve had been a member, and the Indian guides from William Johnson’s Iroquois circled the fort so as to attack from the rear. After a bombardment the fort appeared to surrender. Of the Indians ‘three-fourths’ went home as they were not given leave to kill the captives, but the Iroquois at the rear climbed the wall and attacked the Flagstaff Tower, where Diane was saved through the efforts of John à Cleeve dressed as an Indian (Chapter XXIII).

The Algonquin Indians of Nova Scotia

The Etechemin (or Etechemin) Indians worked the river (Chapter XI) and guarded the Seigniory of Boisveyrac from attack by the Iroquois (Chapter X). Their ancestral lands lay in the Etechemin valley in Nova Scotia, the French colonial and Roman Catholic province of Arcadia. By the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 the peninsula, with the exception of Louisbourg on Cape Breton, was transferred to Britain. Most Indians left the area or were expelled in 1755. The Ursulines at Quebec, who were educating Diane in 1755, took pity on them, but the financiers and government officials, whose corruption the novel describes (Chapter XXI), plundered them (Parkman, 1884, Chapter VIII).

The Seigneur of Boisveyrac, who also suffered at the same hands, appears to have succoured them, with the result that they protected the Seigniory from the Iroquois who favoured the British. Harvest, when the harvesters were in distant fields, was a vulnerable time (Chapter X). The Chateau was built for defence.

The Etechemins were Algonquins and related to the tribes of the Great Lakes but not to the tribes of the Iroquois.

The Algonquin Indians of the Great Lakes

To the west of the Iroquois lay the territory of the Algonquin tribes. As the Iroquois were allied to the British so the Algonquins were allied to the French or further west to the Spanish. Of these only the Ojibwas were equal in valour to the Iroquois. The Ojibwas were little influenced by French culture or Roman Catholicism, although there were French forts and Catholic missions adjacent to their territory. The novel names a number of these Algonquin tribes, each with its home territory and characteristics. The Wyandots had found a home around the western end of Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair, having come under pressure further east from the Iroquois. The Ojibwas occupied the western shores of Lake Huron and the eastern shores of Lake Superior. To the west of the Ojibwas were the Ottawas, who occupied the north-eastern shores of Lake Michigan, and who had been driven there from their lands on the Ottawa River by the Iroquois. To the south of the Ottawas lay the Pottawattamies.

The French established a number of forts in the area of the Great Lakes and missionary centres became associated with them:
1. Fort Frontenac between Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River (Chapters XVI and XVII)
2. Fort Niagara between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie (Chapters XIX and XX)
3. Fort Detroit or Fort Rouille on Lake St. Clair, between the larger lakes of Erie and Huron, associated with the Wyandots (Chapters XIX and XX)
4. Fort Michillimackinac between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, overseeing the Ojibwas and the Ottawas (Chapter XIX)
5. Fort Marie on the outlet of Lake Superior, the most distant (Chapter XIX)

These forts were as much for trading and missionary activity as for military activity. In the novel Dominique Guyon appears to have had trading contacts as far west as Fort Michillimackinac or Michilimackinac or Fort Mackinac.

In 1749 Fr. Picquet, a Sulpitian, the Jesuit Fr. Launoy of the novel, established a mission at La Presentation or La Gallette on the mouth of the Oswegatchie River, aiming at the conversion of the Iroquois. In 1751 he moved westwards. Before this the Jesuits, possibly Spanish, had in 1631 established missions at Fort Michillimackinac and Fort St. Marie. The centre of Ojibwas power lay on the island of Michillimackinac or Mackinaw, while the centre of Ottawa power lay at L’Arbre Croche, to the west of the fort and on Lake Michigan. The Ottawas had come under Catholic influence but the Ojibwas had not (Parkman, 1884, pp. 64-74). The legendary Ojibwas chief Daimeka of Menehwehna’s story, who defeated the Pottawatamies, ruled the island of Michilimackinac (Chapter XVII). It is to the island that Menehwehna takes John à Cleeve (Chapter XIX). The Ojibwas retained their paganism and Diane is correct in calling Menehwehna a ‘heathen’ (Chapter XIV).

The Ottawas, with whom the Ojibwas and the Pottawatamies were allied, had come under the influence of the Jesuit missionaries (Parkman, 1884, pp. 64-74). As the novel correctly relates, their centre lay at L’Arbre Croche (Chapter XIX).

According to Parkman (1874, p.328), at the time the novel was set the chief of the Ojibwas was Minavavana of Thunder Bay, a location on Lake Huron to the south-east of Michillimackinac. The sub-chiefs were Wawatum, Wenniway and Musinigon. Q appears to have adapted the last two into Menehwehna and Muskingon. The character of the Ojibwas Indians was almost certainly based on Parkman’s ‘The Indian Character’ fromFrancis Parkman’s The Conspiracy of Pontiac, vol. I (1874, pp. 41-5). Later Parkman mentions two of the Indians of Michillimackinac, a six foot chief who had fought against the British yet led one to safety, and his dead brother Musinigon. The account which followed could easily have applied to Menehwehna (Chapter XVII).

John à Cleeve’s life with the Ojibwas Indians is described in Chapters XVII to XXI of the novel. Chapter XVII details the journey of John à Cleeve and Menehwehna from Fort Amitié to the ruins of Fort Frontenac, avoiding the Iroquois held southern shore of Lake Ontario, and then on to Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron (Chapter XIX). Chapter XIX of the novel describes winter and summer hunting grounds of the Ojibway Indians. This section appears to owe something to ‘Indians at their Hunting-grounds’ from Parkman’s The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1874, pp. 111-2).

The winter hunting grounds of Menehwehna’s Ojibways tribe lay on the north-east shore of Lake Michigan, where the territory of the Ottawas merges south into that of the Pottawattamies. Menehwehna received permission from the chief of the Ottawas to hunt La Grand Traverse and on returning called at the chief’s residence at L’Arbre Croche on Little Traverse Bay. The chief can have been none other than Pontiac, the central figure of Parkman’s The Conspiracy of Pontiac. The Ojibwas then proceeded north past Sault Sainte-Marie on Boutchitovey Bay, so as to access the waters of Lake Superior. This was the territory of the northern Ojibwas. John à Cleeve then travels west to the Isles au Castors, presumably Beavour Island and associated Isles in Lake Michigan.

Chapter XX of the novel describes a meeting of the victorious British and the French-supporting Algonquins at Fort Niagara (Toronto) in 1760. The Algonquins were aware of the westwards advance of the British and the consequences for themselves. The novel accurately conveys the anxiety of the Indians at this time as the Algonquins had taken part in a number of massacres, including at Fort William Henry in 1757 (Chapter I and XX). The novel suggests that the Ojibwas were not involved at Fort William Henry, but this is inaccurate (Chapter XX). Most of the Algonquin tribes were involved, as was Charles Langlade, a French trader who lived with an Ojibwas wife at Michillimackinac and led war-parties (Parkman, 1884, pp. 485-6). Langlade was one example out of many who, like John à Cleeve, lived in Indian territory and was indistinguishable from them. It is possible, as the novel states, that Ojibwas like Menehwehna and Muskingon were present at the battle of Fort Carillon. Parkman makes no mention of a Council at Fort Niagara and it is possible that this comes from another source.

Q concludes Chapter XXVI of the novel, dated to September 1760, with the idea that John à Cleeve wished to join the British administration of Canada to foster harmony between the British, the French and the Indians. This is reinforced by the last paragraph of the novel. What actually happened was somewhat different, at least in regards to the Algonquins.

At the surrender of Montreal in September 1760, Q notes the presence of Major Robert Rogers, leader of the much respected Rogers’ Rangers (Chapter XXVI). If John à Cleeve was sent west to effect the surrender of the French forts and the pacification of the Algonquin tribes it is with Rogers that he went. Rogers was ordered by Sir Jeffrey Amherst to proceed through the lakes with a detachment of his Rangers, leaving Montreal on 13 September and arriving at Fort Niagara on 1 October. On 7 November there was a meeting with the Algonquins, headed by Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, somewhere on Lake Erie. From there Rogers proceeded westwards to Fort Detroit and on to Michillimackinac and St. Marie. The Council described in the novel appears to be based on the 7 November meeting, although this did not take place at Fort Niagara. It produced a deceptive peace.

The conclusion of Fort Amity gives the impression that following the British victory there was relative amity in Canada, except for the incursion from the south-west of the American colonists, with John and Diane à Cleeve visiting the Ojibway Indians at Michillimackinac. This was far from the case. By 1762 the Algonquin tribes and the Iroquois Senecas – the remaining Iroquois retaining their allegiance to William Johnson – looked to Pontiac to free them from British control. Major Rogers and General Gage, both mentioned in the novel, regarded Pontiac highly but Amherst treated Indians with contempt. The Ojibwas, being the most martial, were at the centre of the unrest. Menehwehna must have been of their number. A speech by Minavavana of Thunder Bay, printed by Parkman (1974, pp. 328-30), reminds one much of Menehwehna. In the spring of 1763 the Algonquins rose along the borders of European America in a war conducted with the utmost savagery. It was the last occasion when the Indians thought themselves capable of expelling the colonists from North America, but they failed and their fate was sealed. This was not the message which the novel wanted to convey.