LaDuke: Shagobay, great chief of the Anishinaabe

In celebration of America’s Presidents’ Day on Monday, Feb. 17, 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” (1858) and was active again during the Little Crow War of 1862. There’s a picture of him at a pow-wow at Mille Lacs Lake in 1910 when he would have been around 97.

The Kanabec County Times interviewed Shagobay on Oct. 11, 1928. The interviewer never asked how old he was. The article, written by a female journalist, 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.

That name itself has Dakota origin. 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, perhaps the original Shagobay, who was renowned for the killing of giants and the protecting of his people.

He was considered to be a Manidoo because he could escape from unjust prisons and avoid conflicts. He declined the Dakota request to join in the resistance in 1862, saying the Dakota and Anishinaabe could not win a war because they did not have cannons. George Aubid, the former War Chief of the Southwestern Anishinaabe (a title he inherited from Shagobay), told this story to many of us over the years. The Anishinaabe of that time looked at the effects a war would have on their families and on the reservation.

After a deadly measles outbreak in the 1830s, 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 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 cornfield 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.

The brevity of this article doesn’t allow for the full story, and various written accounts differ. But the final story remains the same. Shagobay was unjustly held for what was called the “Cornstalk War.” 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 from the 1837 document.

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. 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. Shagobay, 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.

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