Ojibwa Museum

After our tour of the Icebreaker Mackinaw, Brad and I crossed the "Mighty Mack" — longest suspension bridge in the Western Hemisphere — and drove to the Ojibwa Museum in St. Ignace.  This was another place I'd heard about from time to time, but never visited.  In fact, I don't think I'd ever stopped in St. Ignace for anything but gasoline.

The museum is housed in a former Catholic church building which went to wrack and ruin, but was saved by historically minded St. Ignace leaders.  It now houses a small museum devoted to the Ojibwa tribe.  Beside it is the grave of Pere Marquette, the famous French Jesuit priest and explorer.

The Ojibwa Museum is located on St. Ignace's main drag.

It's a small place, nicely landscaped, near the docks where
ferries carry tourists to and from Mackinac Island.

The name Ojibwa was what the early French traders called these Native Americans.  Later English traders preferred the name Chippewa.  However, the people call themselves Anishinabe, which means "First People."  Ojibwa is now the most common term of reference used by Anglos.

In the 1500s the Ojibwa lived near the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.  About 1660 they migrated westward to the Great Lakes, and divided into three groups: the Potawatomi, Ottawa, and Ojibwa.  The Ojibwa settled along the eastern shore of Lake Superior.  Their first contact with Europeans occurred about 1660, as French Jesuits explored the area, soon followed by French fur traders.  The fur trade, and later competition for other Great Lakes natural resources, e.g., lumber and iron ore, gave the Native Americans access to firearms and resulted in intertribal conflict.

By the mid-19th century the Ojibwa had greatly expanded their geographical boundaries, dominating Michigan and Ontario, and even moving into the Great Plains.  While their relationship with European peoples (first the French, then the British, and finally the Americans) was not continuously hostile, neither was it a relationship between equals.

"To the missionaries the Ojibwa were heathens to be converted to Christianity.  To the fur traders they were commodities who could be purchased and indentured to company stores through watered-down alcohol and cheaply made goods.  To the settlers they were wastrels who did not force the land to release its bounty.  To ethnologists the Ojibwa were objects of study.  To the government they were impressionable and recalcitrant wards.  While there are many people who now value the Ojibwa culture, there are still others who regard the Ojibwa with disinterest or disdain, indicating that long-held stereotypes persist." (From the website www.everyculture.com)

Maintaining Ojibwa culture has been difficult, given the
pervasive influence of White America.

In the 17th-19th centuries, if you wanted to get around on
the Great Lakes, you did so mainly by canoe.  Canoeing across
several hundred miles of Great Lakes was hard work!

A symbol of European movement into the Great Lakes,
this 300-year-old wine bottle was probably used by
Jesuit priests for their communion wine.

Our visit to the museum did not allow us to fully appreciate what it seeks to preserve and interpret.  A Midland, Michigan, videographer was on hand to film local storytellers talking about early St. Ignace and the Native American peoples.  Several weeks ago this same person filmed an Alpena folk singer at Presque Isle's 1905 Keeper's House Museum.  Brad and I felt we were sort of in the way, and before long we retreated outside.  I'll come back another time.

The grave of Fr. Jacques Marquette S.J. stands beside
the Ojibwa Museum.

The inscription on his marker is greatly eroded,
but this translation is provided nearby.

Outside is the gravesite of the French missionary and explorer Jacques Marquette, commonly known as Pere Marquette.  He founded Michigan's first European settlement at Sault Ste. Marie, and later founded St. Ignace.  Marquette and Louis Jolliet are principally known as the first Europeans to explore the northern course of the Mississippi River.

After working in France for several years, the Jesuits assigned Marquette to New France (North America) where he set about converting the native peoples to Christianity.  Marquette's mission station at St. Ignace — named for St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order — replaced an earlier mission on Mackinac Island.  While setting up yet another mission at LaPointe, Wisconsin, members of the Illinois tribe told him about a great river which was used for trade.  On June 17, 1673, Marquette and Jolliet entered the Mississippi near present-day Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.  They traveled south to within 435 miles of the Gulf of Mexico, but turned back in order to avoid encountering Spanish explorers and colonists.

By late 1674 Marquette and his party were at the southern end of Lake Michigan, and wintered in the spot which would eventually become the City of Chicago.  In the spring of 1675 Pere Marquette was heading north toward St. Ignace when he died of dysentery contracted during the Mississippi adventure.  He was only 37 years old.

Marquette was buried at Ludington, on Michigan's west shore, by two French companions.  Two years later his remains were moved to St. Ignace and reinterred.

This longhouse on the Museum's grounds is badly weathered
and is now being replaced.  The longhouse was a communal
dwelling common among Native Americans.

The task of building a longhouse will be a work
of many Anishinabe hands.

The new longhouse is starting to take shape.

I had hoped Brad and I might take a "Bridge Boat" cruise for a view of the Mackinac Bridge from underneath.  However, that would have left us on Mackinac Island for several hours, and ferry tickets are pricey.  We'll save that adventure for another time. •••