Saulteaux

To the south and west of the Northern Ojibwa are Ojibwa who speak what linguists have described as the Saulteaux dialect. The name Saulteaux was applied by Europeans as a political identification to denote related peoples whom French Jesuits in the 1640s described as “Saulteurs.” The term Saulteaux appears in historical records often interchangeably with Ojibwa. The people who speak Saulteaux generally do not refer to themselves as such, preferring the names Ojibway or Anishinabe.

The Saulteaux are located on the southern rim of the Subarctic and display cultural features more representative of the Southwestern Ojibwa than their northern neighbours, the Northern Ojibwa. They reside in the southern part of northwestern Ontario and northeastern Manitoba, from the boundary waters in the Rainy River and Lake of the Woods drainage areas west to the Red River valley and the height of land separating Lake Winnipeg from the Lake Superior drainage systems, and then on to Poplar River and across the prairies. In Manitoba, Saulteaux communities include Little Black River, Hole River, Brokenhead, Roseau River, Berens River, Fort Alexander, Peguis, Little Grand Rapids, Pauingassi, Sandy Bay, Jackhead, Fairford, Lake Saint Martin, and Poplar River; they also live with Cree speakers in God’s Lake, Island Lake, and Bloodvein. In Saskatchewan, Saulteaux reside at Fishing Lake and Nut Lake, among other places. In Ontario, the Saulteaux communities include Pikangikum, Islington, Grassy Narrows, Eagle Lake, Lac des Mille Lacs, Iskutewisakaygun (Shoal Lake 39), Shoal Lake, Ochiichagwe’babigo’ining (Dalles), Wabasemoong, Washagamis, Whitefish Bay, Couchiching, Lac La Croix, Naicatchewenin, Nicickousemenecaning, Rainy River, Onegaming, Seine River, Stanjikoming, Rat Portage, Whitefish Bay, Eagle Lake, Wabigoon, Wabauskang, Big Island, Big Grassy, and Lac Seul (mixed with Northern Ojibwa).

In contrast to the Northern Ojibwa, the Saulteaux are aligned historically and culturally less with Subartic Algonquians than with the Southwestern Ojibwa. In the past, the Saulteaux had access to reliable sturgeon fisheries, wild rice, large and small game, and plants, and they developed the technology to store surplus food. Kinship ties bound Saulteaux communities into a tribal organization and marriage was arranged through a totemic clan system, in which persons having the same fish or animal totem (dodem) were considered related.

The animal species important to the Saulteaux were barren-ground and woodland caribou, moose, bear, fish, beaver, porcupine, hare, and waterfowl. The important fish were sturgeon, whitefish, and lake trout. Although vegetal foods were limited among the Northern Ojibwa to berries and lichens, they were more varied and abundant along the Rainy River/Lake of the Woods corridor, where wild rice and maple products were extensively harvested. Other plants were valued for medicines and for the manufacture of material items.

In the eighteenth century, large bands of peoples described as Saulteaux exercised control over their territory by establishing and enforcing a toll system. One such group known to the French as the Monsoni (Monsounic), or Moose people, had increased their military strength through political alliances with the Cree and Assiniboine and were able to establish extensive trade connections in the Rainy River-Lake Winnipeg region with the agricultural Mandan Hidatsa. Important Saulteaux centres emerged near important fishing sites which became the source of large gatherings for religious ceremonies. So important was fish to the Saulteaux that they developed sophisticated fishing technology, which included hooks, spears, jack lights, weirs, scoop nets, ice chisels, various barbs, and specialized fishing medicines and ceremonials.

Protracted warfare with the Dakota in Minnesota contributed to dispersals and realignments of the Saulteaux, some permanent, some seasonal, which attracted migrations of families of Ottawa and Lake Superior Ojibwa who established kinship ties with the resident Saulteaux. Saulteaux from the Rainy River and Lake Superior regions represented by the Bear and Catfish totems expanded south into Minnesota over former Dakota lands while some Saulteaux and Cree moved to the northern plains in search of bison and furs. Although smallpox was reported for many areas in 1780– 81, later followed by measles in 1820–21, the degree to which the Saulteaux were effected was uneven and depended upon the availability of food supplies in a given area, the seasonal concentration and location of the groups during the outbreak, the resistance that may have been provided by mixed-blood populations, and how efficiently groups communicated information about the epidemic and were able to retreat from potentially affected areas.

During this period of expansion and changing political alliances, military chiefs became important leaders among the Saulteaux, although local matters were the responsibility of hereditary village chiefs. Although widespread movements of Saulteaux contributed to variations in cultural and socio-economic practices, fishing and wild-rice harvesting were key elements of the Saulteaux economy and community. Both sexes contributed economically and shared responsibility for decision making. By this time, the Saulteaux had also begun to expand the commercial aspects of their economy to meet growing demands by fur traders. Saulteaux provided traders not only with furs but also wild rice, castoreum, sturgeon, big game, agricultural produce, and an extremely lucrative commodity which outlasted beaver-felt hats – isinglass, the swimming bladder of sturgeon, which was used to make paints, glues, and gelatin. Women traded wattap, (split roots from tamarack, jack pine, and spruce, used to repair canoes), wild rice, and maple sugar. The Saulteaux exercised considerable control over the fur trade by boycotting the sale of wild rice unless their demands for European goods were met.

An important focus for the Saulteaux was health and healing, likely a result of illness and epidemics, which was aided with an extensive pharmacopoeia and sacred songs, traditionally inscribed on birch bark. The Saulteaux elaborated the Great Lakes medicine society called the Midewiwin, or Grand Medicine Society, to meet their expanding cultural and political needs and in response to the influx of new trade wealth. The origin of this secret society has been traced archaeologically through birch-bark song scrolls to 1560 C.E. in the Rainy River region. This spiritual heartland also contains elaborate burial mounds attributed to the pre-contact Hopewell Culture, as well as the largest concentration of pictographs and birch-bark scrolls depicting rites associated with Midewiwin healing. The Midewiwin was practised as far north as Sandy Lake, was common in the Lake Winnipeg area, and entered some Cree communities.

The Midewiwin became an important focus for political power in the 1840s among the Saulteaux and was instrumental in their rejection of Christian missionaries. Although Saulteaux chiefs were interested in the educational opportunities offered by whites, they refused to accept schools run by missionaries. After the Midewiwin was banned in the late 1880s by the federal government, it was forced underground in the Rainy River areas but continued to be practised until the 1920s in the upper Berens River (today, it continues in a modern form in many communities). Some Saulteaux sought Christian sources of spirituality, which resulted in a blending of religious forms. The religious orientation for many Saulteaux today is a mixture of traditional and Christian, overseen by elders, both male and female. Some communities like Pikangekum have been inundated with an unprecedented number and variety of southern U.S. fundamentalist denominations, a development that has disrupted community ties and has been linked to an unparalleled number of youth suicides.

Saulteaux political organization varied depending on group size, the nature of the regional economy, and the degree of colonial interference. Many Saulteaux were led by hereditary chiefs who, with their councils, objected to and obstructed the fur traders’ practice of arbitrarily conferring leadership on the basis of trapping skills. In ecologically richer areas such as the Boundary Waters of the Rainy River corridor of northwestern Ontario, political organization developed in the mid-eighteenth century into a complex system headed by a hereditary grand chief who represented collective concerns to external governments and commercial interests. Fur traders and missionaries were unable to penetrate or influence this system, especially among the Rainy River Saulteaux, who had developed non-hierarchical stratified layers of governance encompassing the roles of war chief, village chief, talking chief, pipe chief, and messengers – an arrangement that diffused political power while maintaining egalitarian principles. Chiefs who were also members of the Midewiwin represented Saulteaux political organization in the Boundary Waters and Lake of the Woods until the late 1880s and were prominent in treaty negotiations. Status was reflected in specific ranks and by kinship terminology.

The amalgamation of the HBC and the NWC in 1821 did not radically alter the competitive fur trade of the Rainy River/Lake of the Woods region, since the Saulteaux continued to have access to American fur traders and other free traders. Major land cessions by treaty began among the Saulteaux in Manitoba in 1871 (Treaty 1), in northwestern Ontario in 1873 (Treaty 3), and Lake Winnipeg in 1875 (Treaty 5). Although the Saulteaux entered into Treaty 3, they did not know at the time that the northern and western boundaries of Ontario had not been formally established. Escalating conflicts between the federal and provincial governments over Ontario’s boundaries and resources developed during the 1880s, when Treaty 3 reserve lands and resources became a central component of the litigation in the St. Catherine’s Milling case (1888). In this instance, a dispute over timber licensing between Canada and Ontario in the territory occupied by the Saulteaux led to a court case involving the division of legislative powers and the extent of aboriginal title. Ontario’s challenge to the federal government’s position that it was authorized to administer lands ceded by treaty succeeded in all the Canadian courts and then reached the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London. The Privy Council ruled that aboriginal title existed before the signing of treaties – in the sense that natives had the right to use land that was in fact owned by others – but that, once treaties were signed, this title could be abrogated unilaterally by the crown (and hence by any legislative body of which was the crown was a part). On this ground, the federal government’s appeal was dismissed.

The limited recognition of aboriginal title in the St. Catherine’s Milling case was later to form the basis of native claims to lands in areas not covered by treaties. For the Saulteaux in 1888, however, the results were not as positive. Throughout the protracted legal proceedings they were never advised, consulted, or represented, and, afterwards, Ontario refused to confirm the reserves negotiated by the Saulteaux without first acquiring valuable resources and lands and permitting economic projects which undermined the natives’ traditional lifestyle. Some Saulteaux located at Sturgeon Lake (now Quetico Park) were forced at gun point to leave their reserve in the middle of winter. Since Saulteaux lands and fishing areas were adjacent to non-Indian settlement and commercial activities, their remaining lands were subjected to flooding through the construction of dams which destroyed lands, homes, and resources and degraded fishing. At the same time, Indian Act restrictions prevented agricultural development by prohibiting the removal of green timber despite treaty promises of farming assistance, while roads and hydro operations destroyed resources and cut communities in half. The loss of resources and access to ancestral lands forced many to depend on European food supplies, which has resulted in unprecedented alcoholism, tuberculosis, diabetes, and cancer. In addition, the dumping of methyl mercury from lumber operations, along with pesticides used to clear road and hydro rights-of-way, contaminated fish-spawning and game areas as well as religious sites and seriously affected Saulteaux health, resulting in many cases of Minamata disease.

With sedentary year-round residence on reserves and forced relocations of peoples, interpersonal conflicts – which had traditionally been defused by an individual’s joining other bands – exacerbated problems of social control. Witchcraft attacks and windigo scares, often sustained by alcoholism and drug abuse, afflicted many communities and resulted in high rates of suicide. The creation of reserves, often on marginalized lands without access to traditional resources of fish, game, or furs, combined with punitive provincial game laws, forced the Saulteaux into temporary low-wage labour and social assistance and into urban areas, often far away from their communities.

Residential schools were established by various religious orders to educate and indoctrinate the Saulteaux. Children were taken from homes and sent to often far-distant schools, where they were educated in English and forbidden to speak their native language. Returning children were often strangers in their own communities. In the midst of all of this, women played a key social role, taking in parentless children and caring for elders. Since then, women have organized politically around issues concerning discrimination under the Indian Act, family violence, economic development, employment equity, and the Charter of Rights.

Some communities have developed their economic base through service-sector enterprises and government services, as well as transportation, marina, and other commercial projects. Local band administrations on reserves have seen increased participation by women as men have been forced to seek off-reserve employment for long periods. With increasing reserve populations, some communities, supported by economic developments, have strengthened community ties, while others have become demoralized by increasing factionalism and social disruption.

Today, powwows – with their drumming, singing, praying, feasts, gift-giving, and speeches – sustain a corporate identity and link neighbouring native communities, while also educating non-Indians in matters concerning aboriginal culture and rights. Currently, the Saulteaux are represented politically by large organizations such as Grand Council Treaty #3, the Ontario Native Women’s Association, and numerous Friendship Centres, which together further their struggle for social and economic betterment and recognition of aboriginal rights.