The following is the third installment of book excerpts the LCO News will feature from local author, John Dettloff. The excerpts will be from his new book.
Detloff has lived on the Chippewa Flowage, near New Post, for over 50 years. His family has had a small resort just east of New Post for 56 seasons and for 40 years he has been writing historical articles about the flowage, tribal history (especially Old Post), old guides, old resorts, and fishing.
His new book called Whispers of the Past, A History of the Chippewa Flowage, released on November 1st, gives a comprehensive history of the flowage going back to the fur trade era.
According to Detloff, the book profiles in great detail the people of the "Chippewa Basin" (the area that became flooded by the flowage) and talks about the 300 plus people who were affected by and displaced by the flowage. There were probably 250 plus tribal members and nearly 100 non-tribal members that were affected.
From the Book:
To an Ojibwe warrior, avenging a fallen “brother” by killing his enemy was a way of ending one’s period of mourning. So once spring arrived and sugar bush was over, the season for war would invariably resume with old rivalries being reignited with a vengeance.
The last significant battle to occur in the upper Chippewa region between the Ojibwe and the Dakotas occurred around 1790 and was known as the Battle of the Horsefly. Ojibwe storytellers have long passed on tales about the intended attack on the village of Pahquahwong by the Mdewakanton, a sub-tribe of the Eastern Dakota (Santee Sioux). Ojibwe historian Paul Demain learned about the battle from his elders and has graciously allowed this author to retell portions of his story about the event.
The rivers were considered “roads of war,” especially the Chippewa River. “Every bend in the river is a battle site,” the mid-1800s explorer Henry Schoolcraft had once written.
There was an old man, a leader, a medicine man if you will, who resided at the Pahquahwong village, just below the confluence of the Chief River and the West Fork of the Chippewa River. Because of its access to rich wild rice beds, Pahquahwong was said to have been the target of attacks before. It was late in the summer, during ricing time, and early one evening the old man was watching the end of the day and smoking his pipe, when two horseflies landed on his pipe and told him that the Mdewakanton were in the area. The Ojibwe were not horse people, but the Mdewakanton were. This alerted the wise old man.
The old man proceeded to call the warriors of the village together and sent some of them down river to check the lower Chippewa and the East Fork, some upriver to check the Chief Rivers, and the rest also upriver to check on the West Fork. Those that had checked the East Fork, lower Chippewa, and Chief Rivers came back with no reports of enemy sightings. However, a runner returned from the group that had gone up the West Fork to warn the Pahquahwong community that the Mdewakanton were encamped on the Teal River – about a mile above its confluence with the West Fork of the Chippewa River – and they were building canoes and preparing to come down river to attack. The rest of the scouting party remained to prepare an ambush for the intruders about a mile downstream on the West Fork from where the Teal entered the river.
With the enemy force only ten miles upriver from Pahquahwong, the threat was imminent, and the crisis called for immediate action. The political structure of the Ojibwe was such that there were Peace Chiefs and there were War Chiefs. With the War Chiefs taking over, they planned and executed both defensive and offensive aspects of the battle. First, to protect them from the impending battle, all of the women, children, and elders were gathered and hidden in a gully in the nearby woods. They were then covered with brush, making sure to remove any signs of their movement into that gully. As custom, the older men remained in the village to watch over and protect the women and children.
Approximately four hundred Ojibwe warriors dug foxholes in which to conceal themselves alongside the river and waited for the Mdewakanton invaders to paddle by in their canoes. The Ojibwe had few muskets, and the majority of their weapons were bows and arrows and war clubs.
The Ojibwe warriors then prepared themselves, putting their hair up into scalp locks to show their enemies they were ready to die. Each warrior braided his hair on top of the crown of his head and wrapped the braid with a strong strand of bark or red flannel so that his braid would stand erect on his head about six to eight inches high. The hair above his braid was allowed to fall over, giving it a parasol appearance. A true warrior thought as much about the conspicuousness of his scalp lock as he did about his weapons.
Once the force of seven hundred Mdewakanton warriors appeared around the corner in their two hundred canoes, the defenders of Pahquahwong were poised to make their move. When their foes got into killing range, the Ojibwe opened fire with their muskets and immediately followed by shooting a barrage of arrows at the invaders. The battle then moved from the river bank into the river, where war clubs and scalping knives caused the river to run red with blood.
Although they succeeded in valiantly defending Pahquahwong, many Ojibwe were killed in the battle; however, many more Mdewakanton had fallen. Legend states that all but one Mdewakanton warrior was killed. The dead were buried near the battle site along the west bank of the river in two close but separate burial sites…. one for the Mdewakanton and one for the Ojibwe. Years later, the settler who was living on the land respectfully planted tress over the site, so that no one would ever farm over the warriors’ graves.
Legend further states, that the people of Pahquahwong dressed the sole Mdewakanton survivor of the battle in the best of clothing, sent him off in his canoe – which was filled with rice, meat, and the best of what they had – and told him to go home with his gifts and never attack this area again. The Dakota never sent another war party into the Chippewa Basin again.
(To order a copy of John Dettloff's new book, send a check or money order for $29.95, plus $5 shipping and 5 1/2% sales tax, made out to Trails End Publishing and send it to: Trails End Publishing, 7431 N Flowage Rd., Couderay, Wi 54828.)