back then
SAUK HEAD & YELLOW DOG Dark history of two Marquette County place names recalled Story by Adam Berger
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H
omer Kidder (1874-1950) took a health break from studying at Harvard from 1893-1895. He came home to Marquette, summering at the Huron Mountain Club. His father, Alfred Kidder (1840-1923), a mining engineer who served as a wilderness guide for famous anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) in Marquette County, was deeply interested in Native history, and passed this passion to his sons. While home from Harvard, Homer Kidder collected oral histories from local Ojibwe elders. The stories he wrote down were eventually published in 1994 as Ojibwa Narratives, a book worth exploring for glimpses into local Native history. Three informants helped Homer Kidder. Charlotte Kawbawgam (circa 1836-1904) was the daughter of Ojibwe leader Mah-je-ge-zhik (died circa 1857), the man who guided mineral explorers to iron deposits near Teal Lake in Negaunee in 1845. Charlie Kawbawgam (circa 1815-1902) hosted early Marquette settlers such as Peter White (1830-1908) in their first years living on Iron Bay. Francis Nolan (circa 1820-1911), known by his jocular nickname Jacques LePique, French for Jack of Spades, was Mah-je-gezhik’s other son-in-law. He guided with Alfred Kidder when Lewis Henry Morgan came to the Upper Peninsula in the 1850s, and for George Shiras III (1859-1942), who became a famous wildlife photographer. One story Jacques LePique told Kidder described events that took
October 2021
Sketch by Mike McKinney place about a century earlier, around the 1780s. An Ojibwe man named Yellow Dog, his wife, their infant, and teen-aged son were paddling north across Iron Bay. Unbeknownst to them, a group of Sauk raiders who had come up from Lake Michigan via a trail near the Chocolay River were scanning the lake from the tall crag just south of Marquette commonly called the Rock Cut. There was thick fog on Lake Superior, so the Sauk could not see the Ojibwe family, but they heard the baby cry. The Ojibwe family paddled on and camped along a river near what is now Big Bay. The teen-aged son had an uneasy feeling that enemies were close, and thought he saw a canoe on the horizon, but his father told him it was probably just seagulls on a log. The young man, about 16 years old, went to look around, taking his father’s gun. As he walked along the lake shore, a Sauk canoe pulled up and raiders rushed him. He fired the gun, killing two Sauk attackers, then hid in the woods. While hiding, he heard Sauk warriors murder his family and saw flames as his family’s camp burned. The river became known as the river where Yellow Dog was killed, or the Yellow Dog River. From concealment, the Ojibwe teenager watched Sauk raiders load their fallen compatriots into canoes, blacken their faces to grieve, and slowly paddle back the way they had come, singing mourning chants. The Ojibwe young man was almost able to keep up by running along Lake Superior for about ten miles. He watched the Sauk
Marquette Monthly
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