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Chapter 3. Waabizheshi’s Vision of an Intercultural Community at Rice Lake, 1855– 1877
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65 CHAPTER 3 Waabizheshi’s Vision of an Intercultural Community at Rice Lake, 1855–1877 In 1855, Waabizheshi assumed leadership of the Rice Lake community from his father Nena’aangabi following the influential leader’s death on the battlefield. Waabizheshi inherited a thriving community, as well as an important political legacy, from his father, whom Richard Morse described in 1855 as “the favorite orator and chief” of the Lake Superior Ojibwe.1 Lacking the raw charisma of his father, the exotic appeal of his warrior sister, or the tragedy that surrounded his brother Joe White’s murder , Waabizheshi is overshadowed in the historical record. Nevertheless, his leadership was pivotal in the history of the community. Waabizheshi led the community for twenty-two years, and Ojibwe life at Rice Lake was vastly different by the end of those twenty-two years than it had been at the beginning . Beginning in the 1860s, timber companies leveled the region. Despite some initial benefits to Ojibwe life such as increased deer populations and employment in logging camps during the tough winter months, the dam building that accompanied clear-cutting destroyed rice beds throughout Ojibwe territory. In the midst of this ecological destruction, the strongest El Niño of the nineteenth century further reduced yields of wild rice and maple sugar in the 1870s. At the same time, white settlers moved into Rice Lake, quickly outnumbering the Ojibwe, while federal officials pressured the Ojibwe at Rice Lake to remove first to a reservation 50 miles northeast at Lac Courte Oreilles and later to the Bad River Reservation 120 miles to the north.2 Waabizheshi employed new strategies in response to these challenges. While Nena’aangabi’s leadership was marked by engagement with federal 66| Chapter Three officials and broad influence in Wisconsin Ojibwe political life, Waabizheshi virtually ignored federal officials and instead focused his efforts on building relationships with newly arrived white settlers in Rice Lake. Central to these exchanges was performance through speeches, gifting, and even dance. Performance was a central aspect of traditional Ojibwe political institutions that functioned as an important means of articulating policy. No evidence exists describing Waabizheshi himself formally articulating this as a strategy for remaining at Rice Lake. Instead these performances were a community effort. In 1858, Waabizheshi and other Lac Courte Oreilles leaders tried in vain to locate the reservation at Prairie Rice Lake. When federal officials refused and located the reservation at Lac Courte Oreilles, Waabizheshi virtually ceased to exert his influence among the Lac Courte Oreilles Band, let alone broader Ojibwe politics, and focused all of his efforts on building relationships with white settlers in order to avoid removal. Scholars typically have focused on conflict when discussing the arrival of white settlers in Native lands. However, Waabizheshi strove for something much different, aiming to accommodate white settlers in Rice Lake while retaining Ojibwe sovereignty. Given the drastic demographic and ecological transformations that took place in the 1860s and 1870s, Waabizheshi and the rest of the community were no doubt keenly aware that things were never going to be the same again. Instead of acquiescing to segregation on reservation lands or attempting to repel the settlers through violence, Waabizheshi and the rest of the community sought to collaborate with the newcomers to create a new community rooted in mutual respect and Ojibwe sovereignty. The practice of treaty rights was central to Ojibwe survival under these new conditions. Armed with rights guaranteed in the treaty of 1837 and reaffirmed in the treaty of 1854 to hunt, fish, and gather throughout the ceded territory, the Ojibwe of Rice Lake made their living in the new community at Rice Lake by blending treaty-sanctioned traditional labor with wage labor in logging camps. In the process, the Ojibwe sought to accommodate the new conditions while at the same time asserting their sovereignty by continuing to practice traditional labor throughout the ceded territory. This was a subversive alternative to federal policy, which demanded total assimilation. Waabizheshi’s vision is important for a better understanding not just of Native history, but of American history as well. The Chippewa River valley was rich in white pine and supplied a sizeable amount of the timber that built America. As important as the area was to American expansion and growth elsewhere, Waabizheshi provides an important example of how Native leaders posed alternatives to colonial, race-based hierarchy and exploitation that were nonviolent and rooted in tribal sovereignty. Nonviolent alternatives [3.137.192.3] Project MUSE (2024...