Wawatam

Wawatam (* around 1717 , † after 1764 ) was a chief of the Anishinabe . In 1763 he saved the life of the merchant Alexander Henry (the Elder, 1739-1824) during the uprising of Odawa chief Pontiac . Anishinabe (Chippewa), who conquered Fort Michilimackinac , joined this uprising . From the notes of Henry, who lived with his family for almost a year, we learn about his life from 1762 to 1764 as well as about his cultural environment.

Life

Alexander Henry worked as a trader in Fort Michilimackinac, which the British had only taken over from the retreating French in 1761. It was between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan . Wawatam adopted Henry in 1762, inspired by a dream. It is not clear whether he adopted him as a brother or as a son. The chief, about 45 at the time, came to him a year later and asked him to take him to Sault Ste. To accompany Marie .

Henry did not understand the urge to flee immediately and delayed the departure too long. When the Anishinabe under Madjeckewiss and Minweweh overpowered the British garrison on June 2, 1763, he was imprisoned.

Wawatam had known about the uprising because the other Indians had asked him to leave the settlement. He returned after a few days and came with gifts. He recalled the promise that nothing should happen to Henry, and so by means of great eloquence he managed to get the British into his care.

He let him live with his family for a year. The family went with him to Mackinac Island on June 9, 1763 . Then they moved on to St. Martin Island in northern Lake Michigan . They stayed there until August 20th. The two men then traveled to the Rivière aux Sables ( Big Sable River ) on the east bank of Lake Michigan and to the north of the Michigan Peninsula . There they hunted and set traps, and they met an Odawa who offered them a sack of corn.

They left again on December 21st. The women prepared the bundles, carrying even the heaviest ones. They marched about 30 km. When a 300-kilogram moose was successfully shot, the family stayed in one place for several days to cut and smoke it. They were in the Manistee and Muskegon Rivers area and moved to the Cadillac area of north central Michigan. Like most Indians in the region, they wintered in families, while larger groups did not come together again until after winter. In February they hunted elk , but also hunted beavers, whose burrows they broke open. The animals often injured the hands of the hunters who pulled them out of their burrows. When they discovered a bear weighing more than 250 kg on a tree in January, they felled it within two days and shot the animal. The bear's head was placed on a blanket that had not been used before, and Wawatam and Henry blew smoke from their pipes into the dead animal's nostrils. The fat was in great demand and was also traded in. It was filled into six porcupine skins. The dried meat was placed in this “oil” in order to preserve it. They could still eat from it in the summer of 1764.

The family left to return in early March. The seven family members transported around two tons of tools, traps, blankets and supplies in addition to the baby. On the way, they mainly fed on the sap of the sugar maple . To do this, the men gathered firewood and the women cooked the syrup. The fire burned from morning to evening because enormous amounts of juice had to be thickened. The syrup represented a considerable part of the food, but was also used to exchange for the coveted corn of the Odawa. They returned to the shores of Lake Michigan in early April.

At the end of April 1764 they returned to Michilimackinac. In early May they went fishing at Boutchitaouy Bay (St. Martin Bay), then Henry left Wawatam's family in mid-May and went back to Sault Ste Marie.

Henry's notes on these events, first published in 1809, provide early insights into the organization of society, material culture, and the seasonal migrations of the Anishinabe in the 18th century.

Wawatam's family consisted of himself and his wife, his eldest son and his wife and their baby, then the younger son and 13 year old daughter. The family consisted of four men and three women (the daughter was also considered an adult) and an infant, making a total of eight people.

Henry wore Chippewa's clothes. He himself writes: “My hair was cut and my head was shaved, with the exception of a point at the top that was the diameter of a crown (coin). My face was painted three or four colors; some parts of it red, some black. ”He also wore a shirt, a wampum around his neck and one around his chest. Elbows and wrists were adorned with silver ribbons. His legs were in scarlet leggings or leg warmers ( called mitasses ). There was also a scarlet coat, more like a kind of blanket. He wore feathers on his head.

Wawatam and Henry often went hunting, such as moose. With Wawatam's son, Henry hunted raccoons, which were chased by dogs into trees where they could be easily killed. In winter you only had to follow their tracks, which were easy to follow in the snow. The hunting operations usually lasted the whole day.

There are no sources whatsoever about Wawatam, apart from Henry's descriptions. HR Schoolcraft tried to find out more about him and his family, but only came across an oral tradition that Wawatam was blind and died when his hut at Ottawa Point (near Cross Village ) burned down.

literature

• George Irving Quimby: A year with a Chippewa family, 1763-1764. In: Ethnohistory IX (1962) 217-239.
• George Irving Quimby: Indian Culture and European Trade Goods. The Archeology of the Historic Period in the Western Great Lakes Region. University of Wisconsin Press, 1966.
• James Bain (Ed.): Alexander Henry. Travels and adventures in Canada and the Indian territories between the years 1760 and 1776. Boston 1901, reprinted in Edmonton 1969.
• Alexander Henry the Elder (1739-1824). In: Germaine Warkentin (Ed.): Canadian Exploration Literature , Dunburn Press, Toronto 2006, pp. 126-151.

Web links

• Wawatam . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).