In 1923, Stanley Newton published, “The Story of Sault Ste. Marie and Chippewa County.” This is part seven of a continuing series that tells the history of Sault Ste. Marie and area in its early years. – Laurie Davis
“In a short time, we learned that Mrs. Johnston, who was a Chief’s daughter, had spent the night with her friends and relatives at their camp, and that they heartily repented of their rashness. They were now desirous to see their father and apologize, and would be glad to sell him a piece of land for a fort.
“Accordingly a conference was had, the Chippewas apologized, and the treaty of the cession was made. We afterwards heard that the Chippewas on Lake Superior were greatly surprised to see us, after having been apprised by runners that we were all to be massacred at the Sault as we passed up.
“Here you see that we had no aid from anyone but Mrs. Johnston, and from her only as a diplomat, and that the real hero of the scene, after Governor Cass, of course, was the Indian Buck.” Whether Hole in the Day was there I do not know. I have no recollection of hearing anything from him till long after the event. So much for Buck.”
This eliminates Hole in the Day, barring of course, the possibility that he and Buck were one. We know that the Chippewas sometimes changed their names. Shingwakonce, for instance, signed his name as Lavoine on the above treaty.
Neither Trowbridge’s story nor that of George Johnston in his “Reminiscences” throws much light on the now debated location of the flag. Johnston says the Governor and his party formed their camp on the green near the shore, within gunshot of the Indian village. This would indicate a comparatively limited distance.
Location Remains in Doubt
The precise place of the Governor’s famous coup remains in dispute. But since local civic bodies desired to mark the spot as nearly as possible, it was deemed well by those interested to designate the little hill at the foot of Bingham Avenue as the ground where the British flag was lowered in 1820, to float no more over Sault Ste. Marie, or Michigan, or the northwestern states.
Sassaba the implacable, henceforth cherished a more bitter enmity than ever against all Americans. Two years after the above events he was drowned in the rapids.
The figure of the Indian wife and mother Mrs. Johnston, strong, self-reliant, and tactful, mediating successfully between the whites and her infuriated people in the absence of her husband, is one of the pleasant pictures of old Sault Ste. Marie. Governor Cass wrote his appreciation of her to John Johnston, and although the latter’s claims for war damages were disallowed, Mrs. Johnston and her children and grandchildren each received by the Treaty of Fond du Lac in 1826, one section of land. Part of this land was the high ground on the western shore of Sugar Island near Sault Ste. Marie. The island is so-called because of the great quantities of maple sugar produced there in times past. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Johnston turned her attention to maple sugar and syrup making, and she marketed several thousand pounds of maple sugar each year.
Detroit Cut Off From Civilization
Schoolcraft proceeded up Lake Superior after the affair at the Sault, no doubt taking with him pleasant thoughts of the handsome Jane Johnston. He went back east by another route, and soon after his return the steamer Walk-in-the-Water was wrecked in Lake Erie. A friend in Detroit wrote Schoolcraft: “This accident is one of the greatest misfortunes that ever befell Michigan. It deprives us of all certain and speedy communication with the civilized world.”
If Detroit was so remote from civilization, what must be said of the Sault of one hundred years ago?
Schoolcraft’s nomination to the post of Indian Agent at the Sault was confirmed by the United States Senate in 1822, and he came up on the new steamer “Superior,” the second steamboat on the Great Lakes. Colonel Brady came also, with a battalion of the Second Regiment U.S. Infantry from Sackett’s Harbor. The Colonel, who was made a General the day he landed at the Sault, took quarters with some of his officers and their wives in the old Nolin house, which was in ruinous repair but the best available. Schoolcraft found a welcome haven in the Johnston home, the finest in the Sault, and was delighted with his new home. “I have stumbled, as it were,” he says, “on the only family in North West America, who could, in Indian lore, have acted as my guide, philosopher, and friend.”
Schoolcraft Becomes Famous
Schoolcraft was young and ambitious, and he appears to have taken the Agency at the Sault only because nothing better was offered him. He desired a higher post in Government work. He found himself, however, in a wonderful field for investigation and research, and his writings on the Indians began and completed here and elsewhere, but founded on his experiences and researches in Sault Ste. Marie, have made him famous as an ethnologist and historian.
The first Agency building in the Sault belonged to John Johnston and had been used as his men’s quarters. Schoolcraft soon had a new building thirty-six feet square and about a hundred yards west of the first one. In the rear was a blacksmith shop, probably Johnston’s. The gate of the new fort was three hundred yards west of the new Agency.
Fixes on Correct Name
Since his official communications to and from the United States Government were likely to be frequent, one of the first things Schoolcraft did was to determine as nearly as might be the correct name of the village. His method of arrival at the form adopted by the Government at his suggestion, and used officially since is interesting: “Sault Ste. Marie and Lake Superior, are destined to hold an important rank in our future geography. When the French first came to these falls, they found the Chippewas, the falls signifying, descriptively, shallow water pitching over rocks or by a prepositional form of the term, at the place of shallow water, pitching over rocks. The terms cover more precisely the idea which we express by the word cascade. The French call a cascade a Leap or Sault; but Sault alone would not be distinctive, as they had already applied the term to some striking passes on the St Lawrence and other places. They therefore, in conformity with their general usage, added the name of a patron saint for the term by calling it Sault de Sainte Marie, i.e., Leap of St. Mary, to distinguish it from other Leaps, or Saults. Now the word Sainte, as here used, is feminine, it must in its abbreviated form, be written Ste. The preposition de (the) is usually dropped. Use has further now dropped the sound of the letter l from Sault. But as, in the reforms of the French dictionary, the ancient geographical names of places remain unaffected, the true phraseology is SAULT STE. MARIE.”
Indians Called Saulteurs
Thus did the U.S. Government Indian Agent Henry Schoolcraft choose and fix for good the corporate name we bear, a variation of which was originally bestowed upon us by the French Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette. In the records consulted in the compilation of this story, the name is spelled in thirty-four or thirty-five different ways, sometimes with two or three variations in the same document.
“Having named the falls a Sault,” continues Schoolcraft, the French went a step further, and called the Ojibwa Indians who lived at it Saulteurs, or People of the Sault. Hence this has ever remained the French name for Chippewas.”
Schoolcraft found the correct pronunciation of the word to be “so.” This is of course the French way of speaking the word, and there are many French here and but few other whites in Schoolcraft’s day. General usage, however, in the English tongue, and the American passion for brevity in nomenclature, have crystallized in the name “Soo,” and our purists cannot change this now. The accepted pronunciation of the full name is Soo St. Mary, the first word being emphasized, the second slurred just a little, and the third being accented on the first syllable.
Mr. J.W. Curran of the Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Daily Star has suggested that the inhabitants of the sister cities at the rapids follow the old usage and call themselves Saulteurs, pronounced So-ters. The idea is a happy one, and it has romantic and historic usage back of it. But romance and history have a small part in the lives of modern folks. We are creatures of habit, and probably shall continue to designate ourselves by the unlovely but easily remembered name “Sooites.”
All of which calls to mind a certain limerick:
Said a youngster of Sault Ste. Marie,
To spell I will never agree,
Till they learn to spell Sault
Without any u,
Or an a or an I or a t.
Schoolcraft’s fertile mind and poetic fancy conceived another name that is of interest to our Canadian friends. To quote: “In the term Gitchegomee, the name for Superior, we have a specimen of the Indian mode of making compounds. Gitche signifies something great. Gomee is a compound phrase denoting a large body of water, a sea. I have cast about to find a sonorous form in which it may come into popular use, but find nothing more eligible than I-go-mee or Igoma. A more practical word in the shape of a new compound may be made in Algoma, a term in which the first syllable of the generic name of this tribe of the Algonquin stock harmonizes very well with the Indian idea of goma (sea), giving us Sea of the Algonquins. The term may be objected to, as the result of a grammatical abbreviation, but if not adopted practically it may do as a poetical synonym for this great lake.”
The term was not objected to, but it has been taken by the people of Canada as the name of one of their most beautiful provinces.
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