More On Flatmouth

by Scott Hall

Our Headwaters guide, Molly MacGregor, has sent along more information about the powerful and influential Anishinaabe leader, Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay, also known as Flatmouth to the French and English explorers between 1805 and 1860. This information comes from various sources.

Molly: The translation I have of his name – Without Fear – comes to me from Mike Swan, who is the Natural Resources Director at White Earth. The name is spelled many ways, and I am no expert.

Flatmouth is one of two Indians with busts in the US senate (the other is of Besheekee or Buffalo). I’ve attached a photo from the US Senate website of the bust.



In looking for this photo, I found the following – which is interesting. I was aware of the relocation. It is a pretty huge event in American-Ojibwe relations.

"A powerful Ojibwa, or Chippewa, chief in the Leech Lake area of present-day Minnesota, Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay, or Flat Mouth, visited the nation's capital in 1855 as a member of the Indian delegation from the Midwest. The tribal leaders were brought to Washington to negotiate land treaties. Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay spoke on behalf of his people in negotiating the cession of more than ten million acres in north-central Minnesota—a land package that included the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The Native Americans received more than one million dollars in funds and services, but aspects of this cession and others in the region continued to figure in government discussions with Native Americans for the next hundred years.

Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay (other English spellings are also known) means "bird with the green bill" in the Ojibwa language. "Flat Mouth" did not derive from this native name but was instead an English translation of the nickname "Gueule Platte," applied by early French traders. In 1911 Smithsonian Institution ethnologist James Moody characterized the great leader as "probably the most prominent Ojibwa chief of the upper Mississippi region from at least 1806, when he held council with Lieutenant [Zebulon] Pike...probably to his death, which seems to have occurred about 1860."

The quote below indicates how angry and betrayed many Anishinaabe felt in their dealings with the Federal government well before Minnesota statehood.

“Tell him I blame him for the children we have lost, for the sickness we have suffered, and for the hunger we have endured. The fault rests on his shoulders.” —Flat Mouth, Leech Lake Ojibwe speaking of Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey

Molly MacGregor was the Director of the Mississippi Headwaters Board for 12 years.
She's the author of "The Mississppi Headwaters Guidebook",
and will be our guide as we go down the River.

June 2: Dams and Damages

by Molly MacGregor

Cass and Winnie lie in a plain of sand, created when glaciers dropped ice blocks, and then melted around the blocks. The shape is uniform and the lakes are shallow. It’s a wide open space, paralleling the big wide sky.

People have lived around the lakes for thousands of years. The lakes provided a living, and the living sustained a culture. The parts of the living – land for homes, gardens and cemeteries, wild rice, fish, fowl, animals – can be priced, but today’s lesson is that the value of place in culture can’t be priced like a commodity.

Since the Civil War the American government had been working to gather Native Americans in a single location. In Minnesota, the Ojbiwe had been moved closer and closer to the headwaters lakes. Many advocated a single large reservation, but the Ojibwe resisted, recognizing that doing so would disrupt their lifestyle and their culture. “Every year what supports us grows on this place. If this dam is built we will all be scattered, we will have nothing to live on,” said Sturgeon Man at a council at Leech Lake on the matter.

The headwaters lakes had been awarded to the Ojibwe through treaties in 1855 and 1863; in order to build the dams, the U.S. Government had to find a way to take the land back. The Ojibwe understood their rights under the treaties and objected – consistently and through a long, hard campaign.

The Mississippi often ran dry in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The lumberman at St. Anthony wanted a steady flow for their mills. In order to take back the land from the Ojibwe, the Congress had to find a public purpose for building dams. Navigation below Minneapolis was the chosen public purpose. Construction of the Winnie dam was approved in 1880, but the U.S. Attorney General ruled it could not proceed, since doing so would have dispossessed the Ojibwe unfairly. The remedy was to compensate the Ojibwe, but the 1881 Congress limited the award to 10 percent of the cost of the dam. A commission was appointed to make a formal recommendation, and they recommended even less - $15,000 – be awarded as compensated.

The Ojibwe, led by the Pillagers at Leech Lake, were furious. They refused to accept the offer, having already determined that any award would have to be at least $250,000. The anger was so intense that the Minnesota politicians and churchmen asked the U.S. Government to hold a commission with the Ojibwe.

“The Chippewas hold their present lands under the guarantee of the Government. They are poor, have always been our friends..A visit to Washington of the chiefs…will settle this whole question…Highly as I do esteem some of the gentlemen who were connected with the commission last fall, I believe they failed to place before you the Indian side of the question, and the Indians did not accept their offers,” Bishop Benjamin Whipple wrote to the head of the Indian Claims Commission.

White Cloud was a leader from White Earth who had first counseled patience, but demanded action as construction of the dams proceeded without addressing the Indian claims, “In Washington is an understanding, a strong one…that a white man should take nothing from those reservations…We could not and did not give assent to the damming of the river.”

The Pillagers insisted that the representatives of the claims commission swear, with hands upheld, to resolve the matter, and placed on honor guard on them to keep them attentive to the business at hand. But, the settlement of the claims dragged on, and the dams were built and operations began. In this angry climate, the government then added the condition of removal of the Indians from the headwaters lakes to the settlement of the claim for compensation.

Within 10 years, there was an uprising at Leech Lake: the Battle of Sugar Point. The historical record tends to trivialize the cause of the battle, focusing on the steamboat of soldiers putting across Leech Lake. But, taken in context of the relationships with the Ojibwe and the American government, the deep lines of resentment that boiled over in October 1898, were hardened as the dams were built at Winnie and Leech. And, the irony is that the dams probably don’t serve their stated purpose. About two-thirds of the water entering the river from the headwaters lakes evaporates before it hits the Twin Cities.

Read more about "Dams and Damages" and the "Rhetoric of Reservoirs"...

Molly MacGregor was the Director of the Mississippi Headwaters Board for 12 years.
She's the author of "The Mississppi Headwaters Guidebook",
and will be our guide as we go down the River.

May 31: Brower and Walker

by Molly MacGregor

In the 1890s, the imagination of America, fueled by growth and prosperity, turned to protection of its forests and waters. New York state set aside the Adirondacks to provide drinking water for New York City. The mountains of Yosemite became the first national park, to the frustration of the Native Americans living there, who saw the hands off policy as a breach in our human responsibility to the environment.

It was Jacob Brower (left) who fought for protection of the Mississippi Headwaters, both to preserve a pure source for drinking water for downstream cities and to retain the forests and lakes. His nemesis was Thomas Walker (right), the businessman who logged his way across the Midwest, leaving his mark in northern Minnesota, through place names and endowments, and ending his logging career in the forests of northern California.

The two men had similar biographies: immigrating to the new territory of Minnesota for opportunity. Brower fought in the civil war in the state’s brigade. Walker counted trees in the forests until he was able to buy the lumber company. Walker’s vision was to harvest and move on; Brower was to first protect the native trees and waters.

Brower’s plan for a park around the headwaters of the Mississippi River was popular, and even the lumberman agreed, provided they could harvest before the park was named. Brower was fierce about protecting the park before the forests were harvested; as the legislature convened to vote, Brower stood outside the chamber, pleading his case to each individual legislator. Itasca State Park became the nation’s first park, but it was a park in name only, protecting harvested lands, not standing forests.

Today, research scientists at the University of Minnesota say that the harvests of 100 years ago have left a scar that can be read in the streams and rivers of the state. We don’t know what we’ve lost. But we do know that Jacob Brower fought to keep it for us.

Molly MacGregor was the Director of the Mississippi Headwaters Board for 12 years. She's the author of "The Mississppi Headwaters Guidebook", and will be our guide as we go down the River.

May 30: Headwaters and Discovery

by Molly MacGregor

The Mississippi Headwaters is formed by the Itasca moraine, a great hump of earth that squeezes groundwater out and pushes surface waters to its north to the Mississippi; to the southeast, the Crow Wing; southwest to the Ottertail, west to the Buffalo, and north to the Clearwater. These waters gather and flow through the Red River of the North to Hudson’s Bay, and through the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The Itasca moraine is the ecological and geological heart of the North American continent.

The Mississippi was a cross roads for the first people. Plains to the west were a butcher shop of protein – elk, buffalo, and deer. To the east were the lakes with wild rice, berries, and fish. At the tiny creeks feeding Lake Itasca and the Mississippi River, there are remains from ancient hunting parties, buffalo bones, discarded stone tools and campfires. Europeans used the route for fur trade, because it connected Lake Superior to the Red River and Hudson’s Bay. The river linked people and therefore made a community.

Henry Schoolcraft was the young American who capitalized on the experience of his Anishinaabe relatives and friends to make himself the discoverer of the Mississippi Headwaters. He clearly wanted the distinction of being known as the river’s discoverer, but he clearly credits Ozawindib, a relative through marriage, who guided him up the river. HSchoolcraft clearly wanted to make himself a reputation as the discoverer of the Mississippi Headwaters. Yet, he acknowledged that it was his Native American relatives who made it possible. is voyage of discovery was built on a foundation of companionship.

You can’t step in the same place in a river, because the river changes and so do you, wrote Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher of change. You can say the same about the history of a place: how we know is colored by who we are. We can set aside the history of the place and remember that discovery is built on the shared power of imagination, and acknowledge that the search for the river’s headwaters was an act of community

Molly MacGregor was the Director of the Mississippi Headwaters Board for 12 years. She's the author of "The Mississppi Headwaters Guidebook",
and will be our guide as we go down the River.