Ozhibii'igaadenong—The Place Where it was Written Down

October, 2014.

For years I had wondered about the crumbling stone buildings overlooking Keweenaw Bay along US-41 north of the town of Baraga, in a small village called Assinins. This is one of the most important sites in the history of Upper Michigan, the Holy Name of Jesus Indian Mission, established in 1843 by Father Frederic Baraga, a Catholic missionary. The original structure was destroyed in 1873 but the site was expanded up through the 1880s, growing to include a church, rectory, convent, and orphanage, though the church and rectory are now gone. All that remains are the cemetery, and the ruins of the convent and orphanage that you see here, but several functions of the Keweenaw Bay Tribal Center are now contained elsewhere on the grounds of the mission.

Baraga County Historical Museum, and the Keweenaw Digital Archives at Michigan Tech have some good historical photos of the mission's older buildings as they used to look. Kathryn Bishop Eckert, author of Buildings of Michigan, notes that these Lake Superior sandstone structures resembled the French Colonial type of dwelling traditionally built in old Quebec. She also wrote that Assinins was named after Chief Edward Assinins, the first Ojibwa to be baptized by Fr. Baraga, right before the latter was made the first bishop of Upper Michigan. I presume his name comes from the Ojibwe (Chippewa) word asiniins, which as far as I can translate, means "little stone."

Father Baraga himself was known as "The Snowshoe Priest," because of how frequent a winter traveler he was in this remote, inhospitable frontier land. According to the Diocese of Marquette, the Catholic missionaries first came to this area in the year 1660, with Fr. Renee Menard establishing a base at L'Anse at that time. When Father Baraga arrived, besides the mission he also opened the Assinins School here where he held classes, and helped build several log homes, according to the diocese webpage.

It was here on this particular site however that Father Baraga (a Slovenian) penned his seminal "Dictionary of Otchipwe Language Explained in English," as well as a treatise on Ojibwe grammar. This was the first attempt to put down onto paper the language of the indigenous people of Lake Superior, or to study it in any way at all by a European linguist.

His first Ojibwe dictionary was published in 1853, and still today remains just as valuable a document as it was back then. As a writer and armchair linguist, I find this to be perhaps the most compelling historical aspect of the site. Today the Ojibwa language is still one of the best-preserved of the old Native American tongues, and unlike most of the rest of them it is not considered a dying language because it is still so commonly spoken. I myself took two Ojibwe language classes at Central Michigan University.

According to an old quotation on pasty.com (da biggest & best website about da Yoopee), which was taken from an official (but now defunct) State of Michigan webpage, Bishop Baraga built the "Old St. Joseph Orphanage and School" here in 1860. Sometime after the Civil War, he deeded the land and all its buildings to Chief Assinins and the Keweenaw band of Ojibwe.

In 1929 another larger orphanage was constructed nearby, used until 1957. These buildings were then rededicated as the Sacred Heart Friary, and used as the novitiate of the Capuchin Fathers in the Midwest for about another decade. The 1929 building was still being used for church services by the Most Holy Name of Jesus parish, the state webpage said at the time, and also housed a priest and a Capuchin monk.

Even Hunt's Guide to Michigan's Upper Peninsula mentions the St. Joseph Orphanage, saying that "According to some tribal members," it was "more benign than the notorious Indian schools at Mount Pleasant and Harbor Springs," which were designed to strip children of their native customs through punishment, and separation from their parents. I explored the hated Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School in an older post.

An article I found in the Detroit Free Press from May 1941 said that 55 children of "pure or mixed Indian parentage" were then cared for here by the Sisters of St. Agnes, after being brought by Jesuit missionaries who found them "abandoned" in "remote parts of the peninsula." I didn't realize we still had Jesuit missionaries wandering the woods of the Yoopee as late as the 1940s, looking for lost little Indian children to save. Perhaps they were late in getting the memo that this wasn't New France anymore...!

At its peak this orphanage housed up to 950 children Hunt's Guide said, half of whom were white. It also goes on to say this building once housed various Keweenaw Bay tribal services, but one priest's attempt to replace the tribal chairman in the 1990s caused a rift in the community, and "tribal leaders let the roof go," so it eventually collapsed. There have subsequently been some members in the community who wish to revive these structures as a cultural center and museum. The Keweenaw Bay Indian Tribal Center, community center, and Tribal Council headquarters were located elsewhere on the old mission grounds.

There is a shrine on the spot of Baraga's original mission, and the old cemetery contains the remains of Chief Assinins himself, as well as the graves of many fur traders, pioneers, and other contemporaries of Bishop Baraga. Perhaps sometime I will return here to do a more thorough look around, when I am not in as much of a rush.


References:
Buildings of Michigan, by Kathryn Bishop Eckert, p. 502
Hunt's Guide to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, 2nd Ed., by Mary Hoffman Hunt & Don Hunt, p. 17
The Sandstone Architecture of the Lake Superior Region, by Kathryn Bishop Eckert, p. 241
http://www.baragacountyhistoricalmuseum.com/photohistory/assinins.html
http://dioceseofmarquette.org/bishopbaragaassociation/baragasites
http://www.pasty.com/discus/messages/8345/8419.html?MondayFebruary420131230pm
http://ojibwe.lib.umn.edu/main-entry/asin-na
A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe, by John D. Nichols and Earl Nyholm, p. 14
"Chippewa Waifs in the Upper Peninsula," Detroit Free Press, May 18, 1941, p. 8
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/turningpoints/search.asp?id=1649
http://www.mcgi.state.mi.us/hso/sites/2700.htm
http://digarch.lib.mtu.edu/showbib.aspx?bib_id=679801#

Yoopee 2013, Pt. 11: “The Way Home"

August 2013.

RETURN to part 10

On my way back home, I stopped at a spot in Baraga County near L’Anse that I had always wanted to check out, the old L'Anse Power Station and waterfalls:

In 1908 the village of L’Anse constructed a dam and small hydroelectric plant on the Falls River, at the site of what is now called “Powerhouse Falls.”

According to the HAER, this station was originally equipped with a Leffel horizontal turbine with a Woodward governor, and a 120W generator. The plant also had a steam-driven 50W DC generator.

As the population of L’Anse grew and electricity became more ubiquitous, a series of seven Fairbanks-Morse and Caterpillar diesel generators were installed from 1923 to 1949, ranging from 90KW to 398KW.

I went up around back of it for a different view.

There was a small window I could have gone through, but it was a long drop to the floor and I could tell that nothing of interest remained inside anyway:

This station functioned until 1966.

A couple footings, and a short, stacked stone wall of some kind on the opposite bank:

I cruised onward through Ishpeming.

Found this little gem downtown:

Another thing along my way home on US-2 that I’ve always meant to stop and check out was the Cut River Bridge.

The substructure was built in 1941, but the bridge’s completion did not come until 1946 due to a certain event that occurred between those two years, as one might well imagine.

I was almost certain that I could see the barely discernable silhouette of Garden Island, or other islands of the Beaver Archipelago that I had visited a few months ago, but it doesn’t really show in these photos.

I thought about climbing out there into the substructure of the bridge, but it didn't seem to offer any better view than what I already had from the deck.

Another splendid end to another epic adventure.

As always, thanks for reading.


References:
Upper Peninsula of Michigan Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, HAER (1978)
A Guide to Michigan’s Historic Keweenaw Copper District, by Lawrence Molloy

Huron Mtns Trip, Pt. 12: “Yodelin’ in da Canyon”

October, 2012.

Return to Part 11

Day 7.
We were awakened around dawn in Baraga by the chill, and the sounds of morning traffic on 41. The plan for the day was to hit a couple things in Iron Mountain, and start heading home along US-2. But we still were ahead of schedule by one day, so some extras were in order. Namely, something that neither of us had seen before. I proffered Menominee, since I had never yet had the chance or made the time to go down to that remote corner of the state. Usually by the time I get over to that side of the Yoopee, I’m in a hurry to get back home. Well this time, I was going to make an exception.

But first, a few other things had to be checked off, namely Canyon Falls, near Alberta. Little did I know, despite the lame-sounding name “Canyon Falls Roadside Park,” this was about to become one of my favorite beauty spots in all of Michigan. And to think of all the times I had simply bypassed it because it was next to a rest area and had a touristy name!

After a short hike we were standing next to the big falls. But it was not the falls that had my attention at all—it was the arresting beauty of the geology of the area.

The blue slate was marvelous, and the sheer cliffs topped by mature pine-cedar-hemlock forest just made it unimaginably Elysian.

Wide-eyed, I hiked further up the trail, amazed to see that this crazy scene kept going.

Then I remembered that this was actually a segment of the North Country Trail, and chances were that this kept going for miles, and I could hike all of it if I wanted to.

Navi seemed a little less into it than I was, most likely due to his shabby health and the cold early morning, but he had had his coffee this time, so too bad!

I scampered ahead eagerly, to see what marvels each new bend in the terrain would bring.

This is hands-down the most scenic river I now know of in the world. I don’t care what anyone says.

The canyon, not the falls, is what makes Canyon Falls sparkle. You expect to see places like this in glossy National Geographic spreads, from lands you’ll never get to go to, or hope to be able to pronounce.

Navi acts unimpressed:

This stubborn tree demonstrates the true meaning of Sisu:

Finally the tall cliffs subsided and the river took on a more standard appearance, but there were still several waterfalls to be found downriver.

Though I couldn’t get enough of this river, I knew I had to give it up at some point. Navi was lagging behind, and we were at least a mile or two from the car. I wiped the drool from my chin, and we walked back.

The Iron County Courthouse in Crystal Falls was our next stop as we made our way onto US-141. I had always wanted to see the inside, so we did.

I had once read that this place had ridiculous, almost medieval-style wrought iron chandeliers (celebrating Iron County’s ferrous riches, of course), but so far I wasn’t seeing anything like that.

The view I had come for:

The Iron County Courthouse commands an extremely stately position atop the hill of the town. Unfortunately we couldn’t get up in the clocktower.

Next we quickly ended up in Florence, Wisconsin, since that’s where US-2 takes you on the way to Iron Mountain. More county courthouse action:

I'm not sure if we were allowed to go in the old jail, but we did anyway.

In Iron Mountain we hit our third one, the Dickinson County Courthouse:

…and jail:

Or should I say gaol? Donjon? These windows are pretty medieval:

Then again it’s probably pretty tough trying to keep a riled-up iron miner or lumberjack caged.

CLICK for part 13