Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay | |
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![]() Marble bust of Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay in the US Senate by Francis Vincenti | |
Ojibwa leader | |
Personal details | |
Children | Niganibines |
Known for | Negotiated cession of ten million acres, including the headwaters of the Mississippi |
Nickname | "Flat Mouth" (Gueule Platte) |
Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay (or Aish-Ke-Vo-Go-Zhe, from Eshkibagikoonzhe, "[bird] having a leaf-green bill" in Anishinaabe language; also known as "Flat Mouth" (Gueule Platte), a nickname given by French fur traders) was a powerful Ojibwe chief who traveled to Washington, D.C. in 1855, along with Beshekee and other Ojibwa leaders, to negotiate the cession of ten million acres (40,000 km2) including the headwaters of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota. [1]
"We are endlessly told to bury the war hatchet, and if we dig it up we are threatened with rods and ropes, or with being placed under the ground, we the Missinabes, the Eagles, the Bears [totems], free in our own forests... Thus the Americans plan to treat us as they treat their black people...I am not an animal. I am not like those in the East whom they call their children and whom they treat like three or six-year-olds, rod in their hand. They purchased their lands, and now they hold them prisoner and treat them as slaves."
— Eshkebugecoshe, head chief of the Pillager Band of Chippewa Indians, to French geographer Joseph Nicollet in the 1830s, speaking of his people's feelings that they were losing control of their lives [2]
Tell him I blame him for the children we have lost, for the sickness we have suffered, and for the hunger we have endured. The fault rests on his shoulders.
— Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe speaking of Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey [3]
The Ojibwe are an Anishinaabe people whose homeland covers much of the Great Lakes region and the northern plains, extending into the subarctic and throughout the northeastern woodlands. Ojibweg, being Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands and of the subarctic, are known by several names, including Ojibway or Chippewa. As a large ethnic group, several distinct nations also understand themselves to be Ojibwe as well, including the Saulteaux, Nipissings, and Oji-Cree.
Ojibwe, also known as Ojibwa, Ojibway, Otchipwe, Ojibwemowin, or Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of North America of the Algonquian language family. The language is characterized by a series of dialects that have local names and frequently local writing systems. There is no single dialect that is considered the most prestigious or most prominent, and no standard writing system that covers all dialects.
The Anishinaabe are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples present in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. They include the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Mississaugas, Nipissing and Algonquin peoples. The Anishinaabe speak Anishinaabemowin, or Anishinaabe languages that belong to the Algonquian language family.
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Peter Jones was an Ojibwe Methodist minister, translator, chief and author from Burlington Heights, Upper Canada. His Ojibwa name was Kahkewāquonāby, which means "[Sacred] Waving Feathers". In Mohawk, he was called Desagondensta, meaning "he stands people on their feet". In his youth his band of Mississaugas had been on the verge of destruction. As a preacher and a chieftain, as a role model and as a liaison to governments, his leadership helped his people survive contact with Europeans.
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Beshekee, also Pezeke and other variant spellings of Ojibwe Bizhiki, was a noted war chief from the Bear doodem of the Pillager Chippewa Band during the 19th century in North America.
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William Whipple Warren was a historian, interpreter, and legislator in the Minnesota Territory. The son of Lyman Marcus Warren, an American fur trader and Mary Cadotte, the Ojibwe-Metis daughter of fur trader Michel Cadotte, he was of Ojibwe and French descent. William lived in two cultures, because his father was white, he was not considered Ojibwe, but an Ojibwe "relative", because in the Ojibwe patrilineal culture, inheritance and property were passed through the paternal line. His mother was Ojibwe and he learned her culture from her family. He is the first historian of the Ojibwe people in the European tradition.
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