The Ojibway
    In the year 1610 A.D., these natural wonders had yet to be seen by European eyes. To the east, Samuel de Champlain had reached Lake Huron; to the north, Henry Hudson had landed on the shore of Hudson's Bay; but Étienne Brulé, who is officially considered to be the first European to see Lake Superior, had gone no further than the great lake's south east shore by 1622.  The area was sparsely inhabited by small bands of Cree, Sioux and Ojibway, and the plentiful wildlife of the boreal forest.
     According to oral tradition he Ojibway, an Algonkian people, had begun moving west in the late 1500s, to escape the Iroquois. As they moved they split into two groups, following the north and south shores of the great lake.  The northern group reached the bay on the north west shore, and settled in the area, camping in seasonal sites on lakes and rivers where they found the staples to sustain life.  They hunted moose, caribou, beaver, and smaller game and birds, using snares and bows and arrows.  They fished in lakes and rivers thick with diverse species.  They gathered maple syrup, berries and wild rice.  Animal hides and birchbark were used to make clothing, shelter, canoes and baskets.  They made tools were out of stone. (Dawson, 1983)
    The boreal forest surrounding their waterside encampments was dominated by coniferous trees: black and white spruce, jackpine, tamarack and balsam fir, along with two deciduous species: white birch and aspen.  On the south slope of the mountain, sugar maples grew at their extreme northern range.  White and Norway pine thrived in numerous stands south of the Kaministiquia and in small patches to the north and east.
    From time to time fire started by lightning and fuelled by dead trees and branches and the resins, oils, gums and waxes that they contain, would ignite an area of mature forest.  (Addison, 1994) Gradually a new, reinvigorated forest would regenerate from the ashes of the old, nurturing birds native to the boreal forest such as white-winged crossbills, boreal owls and northern three-toed woodpeckers.

Ojibway-Sioux Conflict
    The Ojibway people had no common political system.  They followed traditions developed for living with the natural world.  Certain individuals were shamans or medicine men who tried to control the good and evil spirits around them.  Everyone had the opportunity to form a relationship with a manitou or guardian spirit, usually contacted in dreams. (Dawson, 1983)
    Just as the they had been displaced by the Iroquois, so the Ojibway put pressure on the Cree to the north and the Sioux to the west.  In 1659, Radisson and Groseillers found that the Ojibway avoided the area that is now Minnesota because it was the land of the Sioux.  Early French explorers found evidence of the Sioux in the area they named Dog Lake, after the dog images the Sioux revered, which they found in the area.  Further west, the Sioux built a more practical creation: a portage to travel around the falls on the Pigeon river, known to them as Nantakouagane.  They also hunted buffalo, whose primitive range was north of a line beginning at the western extremity of Lake Superior, north west to the south shore of Lake of the Woods.Yet by 1730 the Ojibway were living at Rainy Lake, and had advanced into Minnesota.
    A major battle is said to have taken place at Crooked Rapids on the Kaministiquia about the year 1620.  The legend of Greenmantle, the Ojibway woman who tricked the Sioux warriors by leading their canoes over the falls at Kakabeka, also dates from this time. Even before any Europeans actually reached the north west, these native people had come into possession of metal knives and axes through trade with the French and native intermediaries to the east.  This trade was a major factor in giving the Ojibway the upper hand in their conflict with the Sioux, and after 1620 the Ojibway pushed the Sioux to the west of the Thunder Bay area and held them there.
    In 1678 Du Lhut was sent to end the Ojibway-Sioux war which was interfering with trade, but hostilities continued for many years.  In 1736 a group of La Verendrye's adventurers were attacked by Sioux on an island in Lake of the Woods.  The next year the killing of an Ojibway family by Sioux near Lake Superior provoked massive retaliation.  A three day battle took place at what is now Big Falls, north east of Red Lake in Minnesota.  The year 1757 marks the last full scale Ojibway-Sioux war in Northwestern Ontario, and by about 1770 the Ojibway conquest was complete.  The history of Ojibway-Cree conflict is less dramatic, but by the end of the eighteenth century the Cree had been gradually displaced from their sites in the Lake Nipigon area.

A Historical Mystery
    The identity of the first Europeans to visit the north west shore of the great lake is uncertain.  Pierre-Esprit de Radisson and Médart Chouart, Sieur des Grosielliers may have reached the mouth of the Kaministiquia River in the winter of 1622, but the exact route these explorers and fur traders followed is not clear.  They had no maps, and their descriptions of their travels and the ice-clogged bay they visited are vague.  Until recently a cairn in Gore Park in front of St. Andrew's church in Thunder Bay, proclaimed this version of history.
    It is known that Radisson landed on Isle Royale in 1661, naming it in honour of a royal wedding taking place in Paris.  The first verified European visitor to the mouth of the Kaministiquia was Daniel Greysolon Du Lhut, who built the trading post of Caministigoyan there in 1678.  According to legend it was about this time, with the arrival of the first whites, that Nanabijou displeased Kitche Manitou and began his endless sleep.

Toward the Western Sea
    Slowly but steadily the Europeans moved west, driven by two pioneering desires: wealth and adventure.  The former was achieved by trading for furs; the latter, by searching for the Western Sea - the route to China and Japan. To early adventurers, trading was the means to support the quest for this sea, which they were always certain lay just beyond the setting sun, as they canoed and portaged further and further west.  By 1688 Jacques de Noyons had found the centuries old canoe and portage route used by the Sioux and later the Ojibway: up the Kaministiquia, portaging around the steep falls and across the height of land to the Savanne River, Rainy River, Lake of the Woods, and on to the west.

                                                                                           - copyright B.C.J. Yurkoski, January 2001

Keeping Ontario's Natural Wilderness

Forgotten but not Gone: the Great Trees of Thunder Bay
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Addison, Bill.  "Born to Burn". Seasons, Summer 1994.

Bertrand, J.P.  Timber Wolves: Greed and Corruption in Northwestern Ontario's Timber Industry: 1875-1960.  Thunder Bay Museum Society, 1997.

Dawson, K.C.A.  A Prehistory of Northern Ontario.  The Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society.  1983

La Verendrye: Journals and Letters.

Mauro, Joseph.  Thunder Bay: a History.  Lehto Printers, 1981.

Wightman, W. Robert and Nancy M.  The Land Between: Northwestern Ontario Resource Development, 1800 to the 1900s.  University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Wilkins, Charles.  Breakfast at the Hoito and other Adventures in the Boreal Heartland.  Natural Heritage/Natural History Inc., 1997.