June 28, 1913 
FOREST AND STREAM 
811 
A Few Remnants of Aborigines 
Chippewas of Lake Superior 
T he group of Chippewa Indians and half- 
breeds in the picture is remarkable for 
several reasons. It contains the oldest and 
last of the lines of hereditary chiefs of the 
Chippewas, who died a few years ago, aged 103 
years; his half brother, another chief, who died 
at the age of 92; the halfbreed, Cadotte, who 
was a descendant of a prominent French official 
sent from France in 1736. He was a typical 
courcur du bois, a man of strange and remark¬ 
able characteristics, inheriting the bad traits of 
his Indian and French ancestors with few of 
the good ones, and regarded as an undesirable 
mixture of both. The others are of mixed blood 
and notable men in the “Soo” country, where 
they lived all their lives. The picture, which 
was made a short time ago, grew out of an 
incident which brought them all together as prin¬ 
cipals or witnesses in a suit brought by the 
United States Government to oust one Gurno 
from an island in the St. Mary’s River, which 
had been occupied by him from time immemor¬ 
ial and from quite an interesting story which 
has never been fully told in the press, although 
the litigation and some of the incidents were 
told at the time of its occurrence. 
The writer knew personally the subjects in 
the group and has been “shot” down the Soo 
rapids in the batteau of Baptiste Cadotte more 
than once with not, it must be admitted, any 
great sense of comfort or safety under the guid¬ 
ance of the reckless halfbreed, and with more 
or less thankfulness when the trip was over. 
When the treaty was negotiated between the 
Chippewas at Sault Ste. Marie and the United 
States, somewhere about 1850, whereby the In¬ 
dians gave up their tribal relations and became 
citizens of the United States, a certain island, 
known as “Chiefs Island,” was granted by the 
terms of the treaty to Chief Sha-wa-no and his 
heirs forever. The old chief had lived on this 
island for many years, and rumor had it that it 
had always been the home of the head chief of 
the Chippewa nation. It gradually became al¬ 
most completely joined to the mainland, owing 
to improvements made in the Sault Canal locks. 
Some twenty-five or thirty years ago, shortly 
before the death of the chief, a deed was exe¬ 
cuted by the old chief and his wife to one Geo. 
W. Brown, or at least such was Brown’s claim. 
Brown at that time filled the offices of Regis¬ 
ter of Deeds, County Clerk, lawyer and general 
Poo-Bah at the Sault. The year after the alleged 
deed was given, the old chief died, having re¬ 
sided on the island until his death; and his son, 
the succeeding chief, and he who is shown in 
the group, continued to reside on the island. 
About 1891, at the time the Government de¬ 
cided to improve the locks, it was decided also 
that they must have this island. Brown stated 
to the representatives of the Government and 
produced deeds in proof of his statement “from 
the chief to his daughter, from the daughter to 
his wife, etc.,” and as all seemed perfectly 
regular and correct, the Government paid Brown 
By RALPH PENBROOK 
$5,000 and took title to the island in question. 
It afterward appeared that the consideration in 
the deed from the chief to Brown was $250. 
After the purchase by the Government the 
chief was notified to get off the island, which he 
refused to do. An ejectment suit against the 
heirs of Chief Sho-wa-no was begun in the 
United States Court at Marquette. The case for 
the defendant Indians was undertaken by Harry 
Chipman, of Detroit, who, we believe, is a grand¬ 
son of the old chief. In this trial the Govern¬ 
ment won their case. On the last day before 
the expiration of the time allowed for a motion 
for a new trial, under the statute, the costs 
were paid by a commercial agent of the United 
States, then of Sault Ste. Marie. Wm. B. Cody, 
of Detroit, was then asked to take up the case 
and bring it to trial in 1897, F. M. Clergue, then 
at the head of the Lake Superior Power Co., of 
the Canadian Sault, having interested himself in 
behalf of the Indian claimants. The Government 
was defeated this time, the title of the Indians 
being undisturbed, it being shown that the deed 
from the old chief to Brown had not been exe¬ 
cuted. The persons in the group were in court 
as witnesses and named as follows: 
No. I, upper left hand corner, John Boucher, 
a half breed Frenchman about seventy-five years 
old, who has always lived at or about the Sault; 
has been a fishermen, guide and hunter. Boucher 
has always been in demand for woods hunting 
as well as a safe guide in shooting the rapids 
with his batteau. He was a fine type of the 
early coureur du bois and voyageur. 
No. 2, right hand upper corner, Louis Jean 
Baptiste Cadotte, a different kind of man alto¬ 
gether. He was grandson of Jean Baptiste 
Cadotte, who came from France to Quebec as 
factotum of M. Pierre le Gardeur, Sieur de 
Repentigny, who was buried in Montreal in 
1736. This family of Repentigny might be cited 
as an example of how prolific are the French 
when transplanted to the banks of the St. Law¬ 
rence. Pierre le Gardeur was the eldest son 
of the twenty-one children of Jean Baptiste le 
Gardeur de Repentigny and Marguerite Nicolet. 
The Cadottes were Bourgeois in their home 
country, but respected by their superiors. This 
Sault Cadotte, the subject of the picture, was 
rather a remarkable man, being considered a 
daring, reckless character two-thirds Indian, one- 
third French, a typical vagabond Indian. He was 
not sought for as the man to take one safely 
through the rapids. 
No. 3, lower left hand, in the row, is Louis 
Sha-wa-no, a Chippewa chief, and one of the 
litigants in the “island case.” An educated man 
who received a collegiate education at Brown 
University and was intended for the ministry. 
After graduation he became interpreter for the 
Canadian and U. S. Governments in the nego¬ 
tiations of the treaty between the Indian tribes 
in their respective territory. He read and wrote 
French and English and was familiar with a 
PIERRE CADOTTE AND GROUP OF CHIPPEWA INDIANS. 
