In celebration of this America’s President’s Day, I would like to offer a story of a great chief and leader of the Anishinaabe, Shagobay, who met U.S. presidents, negotiated treaties, and kept peace. Shagobay was considered a Manidoo (a spirit), evidenced perhaps in part by his longevity. Born on the Knife River, he signed the Treaty of Prairie du Chien in 1825 when he would have been around 20 years old. He signed the 1837 treaty, was unjustly charged in “the Cornstalk War” (1857) and was active again during the Little Crow War of 1862. There’s a picture of Shagobay at a pow wow at Mille Lacs Lake in 1910 when he would have been around 97. Then in 1928, Bess Wilson, a reporter for the Kanabec County Times (October 11, 1928) interviewed Shagobay. The interviewer never asked how old he was. The article, was titled “Indian Outlaw — Unafraid and Unashamed.” At that time, he would have been 115 years old, an extraordinary age! But then, he was considered to have magical powers.

Remember who wrote history. It’s a challenge to put together the history of an Indigenous people when most of the documents were written by priests or the military. But the Anishinaabe have a strong oral history. Mille Lacs Tribal Historian, Don Wedll, worked through a complex puzzle of oral, military and other histories to find the truth about Shagobay. One of the ways this story was linked is through the Chief’s signature, not written in Roman orthography (or the writing you see in this newspaper), but in symbols. Shagobay‘s name was written with six circles on the back of a Mishibizhu, or a great horned serpent, a mythical being of the Anishinaabe.

The name Shagobay itself has Dakota origins. That’s to say that the Dakota word Shakopee references the number six, often given to the sixth son of a family. Shakopee, Minnesota, is the same name, after a Dakota Chief. There were many marriages between the Dakota and the Anishinaabe over the years, and Shagobay likely descended from one of those relations, as the Dakota also lived in the Knife River area long ago. Shagobay’s name would have come from an elder of the same name. In oral history, there is a very powerful man who also had great spiritual powers, and his name was Shagobay. He was renowned for the killing of giants and the protecting of his people.

After a deadly measles outbreak in the 1830s, Chief Shagobay moved with the Snake River Ojibwe Band to the south end of Mille Lacs Lake. By the 1850s, he became known as a War Chief and powerful medicine man. Oral history often clarifies written accounts. Mille Lac Band elder Sam Mitchell told Don Wedll about his neighbor Shagobay:

 “He said he (Shagobay) was a Manidoo and stated that Shagobay could change himself into a large snake and crawl up a tree. Then he started telling me about how one time down by Cambridge he got into a fight with some soldiers, by a corn field and killed one of the soldiers. The soldiers arrested him, took him to Stillwater, and put him into prison. He told them that their prison could not hold him.

“Later he changed himself into a red bird and flew out the window and across the St. Croix River. Once he was across the river, he changed himself back into a man and yelled at the soldiers. He ran along the bank of the river and the soldiers shot at him. He ran so fast that the blanket he had on stuck straight out behind him and the soldiers could not hit him. They did not try to catch him because he ran so fast,” Wedll recounts.

There are many different accounts of this story.

What is known is that Shagobay was a political and war leader, who possessed significant spiritual powers. He was considered to be a Manidoo because he could escape from unjust prisons and avoid conflicts. In an era of “fake news,” a story appeared that the Anishinaabe were causing “depradations.” (That kind of news back in the day usually covered something up.) It turns out that there were no “Indian depredations,” but sadly the story was repeated by even the esteemed Minnesota historian William Folwell.

In 1928, Shagobay was the sole survivor of what was known as the Cornstalk War, in which two troops of cavalry from Ft. Snelling, “conquered six Ojibwe warriors” (“won a war”) who had no intention of being warriors until the cavalry arrived. Allegedly some residents of the Chisago County informed Territorial Governor Sam Medary that a band of roving Indians were “stealing everything in sight and plundering as they left,” a newspaper would report. Scholarly research finds that the Indian people were not causing “depredations,” and that the military guys who came after them were new recruits and were drinking. The initial report also fails to point out that the Indian people were hunting in their treaty territory – the 1837. Yet the story of the non existent “Cornstalk War” remains.

In the 1928 interview, Shagobay acknowledges that he shot the soldier and only states he did not swim across the St. Croix River but got across on a floating bridge near Prescott. The courts never staged a trial for him, and the Territorial Supreme Court determined that there was no cause to prosecute any other individuals because they had done nothing wrong. That’s unusual in many ways at that time as there was a lot of racism against Native people. What’s clear is that this powerful man survived many such challenges and kept a peace, despite the warring interests and greed which surrounded him. He was indeed a great leader.

In the urge to get the Ojibwe people out of the Mille Lacs, Gull Lake, Rabbitt Lake, Sandy Lake, and Pokegama reservations, the government set up the 1867 White Earth reservation and tried to move Shagobay with others there. Shagobay, like many of what became “Mille Lacs nonremovables,” would not budge, remaining at Mille Lacs.” As often as the government sought to send the Ojibwe to White Earth, they would come back. Bess Wilson would report “one aged man walking the entire distance three times.” In desperation, the government was forced to establish a sub agency at Mille Lacs Lake. “They will never leave this lake,” said Harry Ayer, the agent who operated the Trading Post in Vineland.

The Shagobay Family continues to live on the Mille Lacs reservation to this day.

For more information and photos about Shagobay, the Anishinaabe Chief, visit the Giiwedinong Museum in downtown Park Rapids.