♪ [bird calling] - Lac Courte Oreilles
has a rich history. It's part of
a larger scheme of things of the fur trade
and the need for hunting deer. This past year,
I did a genealogy search off of some records
that we've got and looked at four families. And I traced them
back to Esbaanh. We have people here today that are related to one another
in many different ways. And it's exciting for me
to be able to tell the young
high school age students how they're related
to one another through Esbaanh's father
and mother. I oftentimes tell them the story of Esbaanh
and his 15-year-old wife. How they founded this place Odaawaa-Zaaga'iganiing. The bravery and the courage that they displayed
in doing that. Staying here against
the dangers of the Dakota and the harshness of the winter and the terrible mosquitoes. ♪ - Lac Courte Oreilles History was funded in part by: Irene Daniell Kress, Francis A. and Georgia F. Ariens
Fund of the Community Foundation
for the Fox Valley Region, Evjue Foundation, Ron and Patty Anderson, Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin
Wisconsin Idea Endowment, Timothy William Trout
Education Fund, National Endowment
for the Humanities, and Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television. [bone whistle] - I'm Rick St. Germaine. This is the Lac Courte Oreilles
reservation, also known as
Odaawaa-Zaaga'iganiing the place that has two names. The first name was labeled
Lac Courte Oreilles, "The Lake of Short Ears" by Radisson, who in 1659 was on his way
to the Mississippi River from Madeline Island and he had some guides who told him at Madeline that there was a group of Ottawa
Huron Indians living down here by a large lake. They were in flight
away from Michigan where the Iroquois
were chasing them. They wanted to get so far west that they wouldn't
be bothered any more. So they journeyed into the Mississippi River
and then up the Mississippi to the Chippewa River and eventually made it up here. Historians are always trying
to figure out why they settled there, why this band of Ottawa Indians
stopped here. And it's pretty clear that this whole
northern section of Wisconsin back in the 1600s was heavily covered
with coniferous forest. The one thing we know
about pine forest is that very little grows underneath
that kind of vegetation. In fact, the deer stay out
of pine forests because there is
so little browse underneath. So why would the Ottawa Indians
stop here? There were burn areas. There were forest fires that had ravaged sections
of northern Wisconsin. And they would burn
about 100,000 acres. And there was such a burn area
from Rice Lake all the way up to the village
of what is today Reserve. The re-growth in that burn area
was pretty much maple forest. It was a pocket. So when the Ottawa Indians
got up here they found the burn area
and they also noticed the browse, the maple trees,
the popple trees. And they noticed a lot of deer. There was also beaver
flourishing in the waterway that connects this reservation to the Rice Lake Area. So you had a natural
island habitat for deer. And in this case, the village the Ottawa settled on the north end
of this burn area. They wanted to stay
on the north end because the Dakota were living down on the south end
of that burn area and they wanted to stay
as far away from the Dakota as they possibly could. So when Radisson got here
in 1659, he found the village. The Ottawa Indians used to
clip their ears on the bottom. They'd clip pieces of their ear. And he might have looked
at these Indians and said, "Wow, their ears are shorter
than the other Algonquians we've encountered." And that's why he named the lake
"Lake of the Little Ears," "Lake of the Short Ears," "Lac Courte Oreilles"
after the Ottawa. Radisson came here
in the late fall and he got trapped here
by a huge snow storm. In fact,
it was a series of snowstorms. There was widespread
famine that winter. My great-aunt told me
that they ate their moccasins, they ate their boots. They were boiling boots, then they ran out of firewood
to even cook, so they were eating the bark
off of the iron wood used in the wigwams. And then they began to
gnaw away at their own clothing. That's how desperate they were. People were dying
in the village. And by the time spring
allowed them to get outside, there was widespread famine. Death everywhere. And Radisson finally escaped
and went downstream into the Chippewa River
and eventually Mississippi. But what remained behind was this decimated village
of Ottawa Indians and they left. They had had enough. So this place was named
Lac Courte Oreilles first. Then, something happened
in 1722. The Bear Clan
led a hunting voyage down to Lac Courte Oreilles. And they always camped over
where the Ottawa village was. And on this occasion, as they were coming in
in the late fall to hunt deer, they found the body
of an Ottawa Indian propped up against a small tree. The message was that there might have been
several Ottawa Indians that journeyed over
from the Sault Ste Marie area. It could have been
some grandsons of somebody who lived here 60
years earlier. One of them died, so they
propped him up on this tree. The ground was frozen,
so they couldn't bury him. And then the brothers
or the cousins of the hunter put tobacco on his lap and off they went back
to Sault Ste Marie. Now the Bear Clan hunters
from Madeline Island, this was a very
special signal to them. There had been a dream
by one of the old hunters, and finding of the Ottawa Indian
was a message that this was a very special
place for them. They named this site Odaawaa-Zaaga'iganiing. This is the place where
they found the frozen Ottawa. After that, the journeys back
and forth from Madeline Island took place every fall. After 1736, those journeys got
very difficult because as they came down
in the late 1730s they were bumping into
hunting parties of Dakota. And generally the two groups
would just have a standoff. They'd stare at each other. And it was just a sign that, "What are you doing down here
in our territory?" and, "You get back up
where you belong on Lake Superior." But now the fur trade
was back in place. There was a moratorium that had been placed
by the king of France. It seemed that there
was a market flood. There were two million pelts
coming into Europe from the Great Lakes. And so, after the lifting
of the moratorium, the Ojibwe felt that they really
had to establish some sites inland to get at the harvest
for more beaver pelts. The demand was so great to renew
that trade that they decided that at some point they had
to establish a village here. Another Bear Clan hunting party journeyed down here in October, led by Esbaanh's father. Esbaanh was a boy
of about 16 years of age, and he had been on several
of these journeys down here. He knew the site. He saw the beaver dams located on all along
the streams and the rivers. Esbaanh brought
his brand new bride. He had just gotten
married that summer. And my aunts used to
know her name. They used to tell me
her name in Ojibwe, and it was one of
those long, long names. And she was pregnant. She was only about
six months along. And so they figured
they were just coming down to check something out, and then they
were going to head back. But they ended up
staying into November. And she went into labor. And her baby survived
for a couple days and then it died. And then
Esbaanh told his father, "We're not going to leave. "We decided that
we're going to stay here by the baby." And the father
argued with his son. He said, "You won't survive. Come now.
Pack up your goods. We got to get going." And the son shook his head
to his father and said, "No, we're going to stay." His father told his sons
to look at the little brother. "This will be the last time
you'll see him." And with that,
they all turned around and went to their canoes and off they went
to Madeline. So the father came back
the following year. He expected to see no one
there at the encampment. And to their astonishment, there was Esbaanh
and his wife. And they had more
wigwams set up. He said, "We could live here.
We could stay here. We could make a living here." Well, you can imagine
the other hunters were still a little worried
about the Dakota to the south of them
down at Rice Lake. But the brothers said,
"We're going to stay. We're going to stay." And so the brothers stayed and
a couple cousins also stayed. And so the winter of '43-'44, that's where
the foothold took place. More families stayed, and pretty soon there was
a village of 20 families. And they had some encounters. There were many battles between the Lac Courte Orielle people
and the Dakotas to the south. Those battles were historic. We had an old man here: a World War II veteran who used to tell me
stories of his grandfather who said that he was raised
by his grandfather. And his grandfather
told many accounts of his grandfather
as a young boy where they were attacked
by Dakotas. And he said
he could hear some yelling. And his father grabbed him, lifted him up under his arm, lifted up his sister, and took off running
out of their wigwam. And they ran through the forest, and he said his father was very fleet of foot, and was jumping over logs and eventually-- He was running very fast and the brush
was hitting them. And eventually, his father
jumped down into some logs, a pile of old dead trees
that had fallen down. Jumped down in there
and then put his hand over the mouths
of the two children. And covered up their mouth and whispered to them
to be quiet. And everything was still. And then, his grandfather's
grandfather said he could see men
jumping over the logs and those were Dakotas. Listening to Sam
tell these stories, it was almost as if
Sam was the child, [chuckles] was his grandfather's
grandfather telling the stories. And when my grandmother
and aunts were telling me similar stories,
I would get lost thinking that my great aunt was actually
telling me about herself, when in reality, she was telling
me about her great grandmother or her great-great grandfather or something like that. And as I got older, I sort of unraveled
some of that. [chuckles] Lots of rich stories. In 1776, John Renville, Frenchman, traveled over
to the Minnesota River, and he married
a Dakota woman. They had a son,
Joseph Renville, who was raised a Dakota over at Kaposia. Kaposia was a huge
Dakota village. If you want to call it
a village. It was mostly like
a chain of villages along the Mississippi River, right where St. Paul is. In the 1780s,
John Renville decided to send his son to Montreal
to get an education. He was just heartbroken. He was a Dakota boy
who got sent up to Montreal where there was
just hundreds of Ojibwes, his enemy. He was introduced to a boy by the name
of John Baptiste Corbine, who was his first cousin. And John Baptiste Corbine
was 100% French, a French boy. And Renville was
a couple years older than him. And so Renville told Corbine,
his cousin, about the life
of Dakota children, the life of an Indian. And he got Corbine interested. So Corbine decided
at a very early age that he was going to journey
over to Kaposia, and he was going to trade
with the Dakota Indians. Renville instilled one thing
in Corbine's head: that the worst people on Earth were Ojibwes. "Don't ever trust an Ojibwe. "I've watched Ojibwe
slaughter my relatives. "They are the worst people
on Earth. "You can't trust them. "They're conniving.
They're sneaky. "They're blood-thirsty. "Just stay away from them. They're the worst people
on Earth." So when Corbine
was 21 years old, he set out
with his cousin Renville, and they left Montreal and they went over
to Madeline Island to La Pointe. And everywhere he looked
there was Ojibwe people. And so, Renville said,
"We got to get out of here." And sure enough,
one morning Corbine woke up and he looked around and Renville was gone. And Corbine was just-- I mean the hairs on his neck
would stand up along his back every time he saw an Ojibwe. And he just held on to all
the French people he could find, you know? And they were
mostly mixed blood, but he held on to them. And finally
this Michel Cadotte took a liking to Corbine. And he says, "Why are you
so afraid of the Ojibwe? "They're nice.
They're great people. My mother's Ojibwe.
You like her." And he says, "Well,
to tell you the truth, "I'm a little worried
about your mother. "She keeps looking at my leg, and she might end up eating me
one of these days." And he says, "Where do you
get these outrageous ideas?" And he says,
"I've heard about stories." He said, "So don't ask me." So anyway,
what Michel Cadotte did was he took Corbine down here, down to the other end
of Lac Courte Oreilles Lake. And he introduced him
to the area, and he said to Corbine, "I'm going to
set you up here. We're going to build
a trading post." And Corbine says, "The only way
I'm going to stay here is if you build me a stockade." He says, "I'll do
some trading for you. I can see there's a lot of furs
coming in here." So Cadotte had a stockade built,
and he had some cabins built. So Corbine stayed inside
of the stockade. It was so crazy because
those Indians could have, at any time,
if they wanted to, they could have
crawled over that stockade, you know, and killed him,
but they could care less. You know?
"Who is this crazy Frenchman?" So Corbine eventually
looked around him and he said, "Gee, I haven't seen
any of these Ojibwes kill anybody, or cut them up
and eat them, or burn them
over a fire. You know, actually some of them
are pretty decent. Wabiziiwisid,
the head man over here, he's a nice guy. I like him. Not only that, but he's got two daughters...
two young daughters." One of the things
Michel Cadotte told him was, "You've got to marry
one of the Chief's daughters." Corbine fell in love with Wabiziiwisid's youngest
daughter, Gaakabishikwe. And he asked Wabiziiwisid,
"Can I marry your daughter?" I think she likes me." And Wabiziiwisid said, "She's too young.
No. "She's my youngest daughter. You can marry Chewabaakasie." And he said, "I haven't
even looked at Chewabaakasie. She doesn't care about me." He said, "She's older. "She knows more
about these things. She'd make a better wife
for you." So, reluctantly, John Baptiste Corbine
married Chewabaakasie, the older daughter. There's an incredible amount
of stories of their marriage. They had four children and that's where
my line comes through. I'm a descendent
of the Corbines, through my mother here. And my grandmother and her
sisters were the storytellers. Thank God I grew up here
before TV. Because the stories
were so colorful and they really did share details of those stories. The stories
were just incredible. About the Midewiwin ceremonies, the bear feasts, the medicine people, and the drum people-- The powers
of some of these people and how they could either
make themselves disappear, or turn themselves
into an animal. And I thought, "These are things
that really happened." And they did.
They really did happen. All of that part of life
recycles and so, I'm trying to tell the
grandchildren these stories. And my own-- I've got a couple boys
that are in college right now. And I'm trying to keep them
connected to that history
as much as I can. So there's a lot of stuff
that's got to-- that they've got to learn yet. ♪ - To learn more about the sovereign Indian Nations
in Wisconsin, visit
WisconsinFirstNations.org. To purchase a DVD of this and
other Tribal Histories programs, visit WPT.org
or call 800-422-9707. - Lac Courte Oreilles History was funded in part by: Irene Daniell Kress, Francis A. and Georgia F. Ariens
Fund of the Community Foundation
for the Fox Valley Region, Evjue Foundation, Ron and Patty Anderson, Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin
Wisconsin Idea Endowment, Timothy William Trout
Education Fund, National Endowment
for the Humanities, and Friends of
Wisconsin Public Television.
