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Post by pukkonz on Sept 23, 2022 19:14:32 GMT -5
"Joseph "Kahisigiwid" Gourneau was a signer on this treaty and also the 1863 Old Crossing Treaty. The name as it is shown on this list of signatories us translated "Tree Cutter" while it is translated "Born on a Pile" elsewhere. He is most likely in the photo. His father was Joseph I, also known as Little Thunder, Aniimikance.
If I had to guess, Kah-isig-iwit is the one in the center with a long-stemmed pipe that was smoked at Old Crossing and handed down to my grandfather Pat Gourneau.
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Post by pukkonz on Jan 25, 2016 16:35:49 GMT -5
This is a photo of the altar boy Joseph Gourneau Jr. and his wife Eliza McCloud, Turtle Mountain reservation 1930s. Previous: No that would not be Joseph "Kahisigiwid" Gourneau, a.k.a. Soozay, who had no connection to 1845 or 1866 treaty doings and could not speak, read, or write English. His son Joseph Jr. the altar boy was the only one of 12 siblings who did become fluent, according to Pat Gourneau. Attachments:
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Post by pukkonz on Jan 24, 2016 17:48:16 GMT -5
National Museum of the American Indian has a photo of Kahishpa brother of Kahisigiwid a.k.a. Souza, Joseph Gourneau Sr. for whom I have never found a photo. This is in a group portrait of 1874 delegation to Washington, DC. Description: Studio portrait of the Chippewa delegation. Seated, left to right: unidentified (possibly John Waugh?); unidentified; Little Shell (Es-En-Ce); Something Blown Up By The Wind (Ka-Ees-Pa). Back row, left to right: unidentified; The Man Who Knows How To Hunt (Ke-Woe-Sais-We-Ro); Little Bull (Mis-To-Ya-Be). The men wear a combination of European-style and traditional dress. Little Shell wears a peace medal around his neck. www.nmai.si.edu/searchcollections/item.aspx?irn=322580®id=783&page=0also www.ndstudies.org/resources/IndianStudies/turtlemountain/leaders_traditional.htmlAttachments:
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Post by pukkonz on Jan 23, 2016 2:11:21 GMT -5
TUMBLING AROUND THESE PRAIRIES By Robert Cory, Minot Daily News 1956 I want to tell you the story of Joseph Gourneau of Belcourt, a Chippewa Indian who is 96 years old. His memory, still quite clear, goes back through all that has happened since all this region was Indian country. His biography, if fully written, would recount the history of the Indian people and all they have done, and all they have suffered, to make possible the life we North Dakotans have today. For him it has been a transition first from the life of a hunter and trapper to that of commercial hunter and freighter, and finally to small farmer. In his youth he was alter boy for a missionary priest whose parish was larger than a diocese was today. In his age, well cared for, he has lived to see one of his sons, Patrick, become a highly respected and trustworthy leader in North Dakota’s most populous Indian community. There is nothing to record to prove exactly when and where Joseph Gourneau was born. But circumstantial evidence indicates that he was born at Red Lake, Minnesota, and family knowledge corroborated by a birth certificate for a man (Joseph Trottier) born on the same day, fixes the year quite positively as 1860. Joseph’s father originally was a member of the Red Lake band of Chippewas—or Ojibways, as the family prefers to call them—and the family believes Joseph as present as a child in the camp at “The Old Crossing” of the Red Lake River (Fisher’s Landing) when his father marked his X, in lieu of a signature, on the Treaty of 1863. At the time of the treaty, the senior Gourneau must have regarded Pembina as his home, for he signed as a “Warrior of Pembina.” Through participation of Red Lake Chippewas in the Treaty of 1863, the Red Lake and the Turtle Mountain bands became estranged. It was not pleasing to the Turtle Mountain band that by this treaty, they lost title without their consent to lands claimed west of the Red River. Yet Sooza Gourneau was not blamed for what happened. A few years later he and his family were living at St. Joseph, in Dakota Territiry, near where Walhalla is and they became associated with the Turtle Mountain group. It was at St. Joseph that young Joseph became an altar boy for Father Genin. With the pioneer priest he traveled through the territory from St. Joseph to Pembina, from Pembina to Ft. Abercrombie, and from Abercrombie to Ft. Totten, as Father Genin conducted religious services in these settlements. But the altar boy journeyed not only on religious missions. He also accompanied and took part in buffalo hunts with the people of the St. Joseph community. One wonders of there is any other man yet alive in this part of the country who witnessed and took part in these hunting expeditions. The hunts took his people all across northern north Dakota from the Pembina River into what is now Montana, and as far west as Fort Benton on the Missouri and the Milk River along the Canadian border. His memory extends to an era when countless thousands of buffalo trampled the Souris valley on their annual migrations. Interestingly, young Joseph was in a party of Indian families who once wintered on the Souris at what was called “the wintering place,” near the moth of Wintering River. The place was south of Towner. In that party were the families of Sooza Gourneau (his father), of his uncle Kaishpa, and of others including Francois Demarais, Moise and Baptiste Baton (Decoteau), Frederick Langier, Tooday Langier, and perhaps others yet. The reason for wintering on the Souris was that fish and game were there, and it gave the party an early start—a headstart over the Pembina and St. Joseph’s people—on the season’s long trek into Montana. By that time the Indians’ natural meat supply was disappearing from the country, and it was a long ways to the western hunting grounds. With the coming of spring-like weather that year—it was 1876—Joseph’s father sent him on horseback to the Wakopa trading post in Manitoba to purchase a few needed items. He bought some tea, sugar, and tobacco, and a little whiskey for medicine. He left Wakopa early in the morning, skirted the Turtle Mountains, and when he reached their west end, he climbed a high hill and sat there on his horse enjoying the scenery. Off in the distance he spied three horsemen coming from the south, members of the wintering party who had come to meet him. He knows it was 1876 because later that year, when the party had joined the big encampment on the Milk river, news of Custer’s annihilation reached them. He remembers, too, that Sitting Bull made a one night camp across the river from the Chippewas, during the Sioux leader’s flight into Canada. His memory tells him that Sitting Bull that night asked permission to cross the river and have a parley with the Chippewas, but that the Chippewa leaders refused. Once as a boy Joseph was captured and taken prisoner by a party of Crows. He was in a group of five boys, all on horseback, enjoying a playful time while the Chippewas were on a hunting expedition in Montana. The boys saw what appeared to be a buffalo calf just over a hill. It disappeared, and they gave chase, only to discover that a party of Crows was spying on them. They tried to escape but the Crows caught them and took them to camp. The Chippewas formed a rescue party headed by Sooza Gourneau, his son, Leander, and his brother-in-law, Isaac Bergier. These leaders rode into the Crow camp, while their followers waited at a distance, and demanded the prisoners be returned. The Crows knew Sooza and respected him as a warrior. So the boys were freed immediately. When Joseph was sent to Wakopa, it was a trading post run by a Frenchman named Bernard B. LaRivierre and his son-in-law Clevice Guirin. Joseph had reason to remember LaRivierre, for in later years he became a trusted friend and employee of the old Frenchman. He did freighting for him, hauling valuable merchandise from Red river and Pembina river settlements to Wakopa. One of these trips he remembers particularly. It was in winter, a severe winter too, and he had been sent to Mountain City (Mountain, N.D.) by dog team to haul what flour he could get. For his labor he was allowed one 10-pound sack of flour for himself. The flour from that sack had to be rationed out among several families, including his own father’s family, who were then wintering at St. John. In the spring he made two more trips to Mountain with four-horse teams, to haul more flour for the hungry people of the Wakopa trading area. After the small Turtle Mountain reservation for the Chippewas was established in 1884, Joseph Gourneau made his home there. But before that, and for years afterwards, he made his living as best he could on the plains and in the Turtle Mountains. He hauled buffalo bones. He trapped fur-bearing animals. For a time, he was a commercial hunter supplying meat to the hotels of the territory, including the big hotel at Minnewaukan. As a freighter he hauled supplies to pioneer stores all across the northern border country, and knew the names of storekeepers all the way from Devils Lake to Fort Benton. In fact he was one of those freighters on the Mouse River trail, and on the trail between the Souris valley and Fort Buford, who hauled supplies through the valley where Minot stands, before there was a Minot. Joseph Gourneau married in 1893. After that, he settled down to become a family man and farmer on the Turtle Mountain reservation. He and his wife reared 11 children. His children say he was a good farmer, in the small way possible for him to operate under limitations of the land allowed him. One of his descendents writes: “His life perhaps is parallel to that of many of his people, the pattern most of them have lived by. They saw and participated in the development of a vast, new territory. “Their very mode of life hastened the day when the could no longer be tolerated in the face of a determined but selfish surge of civilization westward. With their main source of subsistence, which they helped to deplete, gone forever, the plum was ripe for picking. Picked it was, and father’s people were placed in two townships, two townships forgotten to a degree while civilization and progress marched on. “Thanks to a remorseful government, the day is dawning when an era of attempted (reconciliation?---)the full light comes…reasoning, and night ..cloak the fear of the…day.” THE LAST PART OF THIS ARTICLE IS ILLEGIBLE
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Post by pukkonz on Jan 23, 2016 0:54:59 GMT -5
That altar boy (white garb) pictured with Father Genin at the 1870 peace treaty is my great-grandpa "Keesh-ke-mun-ishiw" when he was 10 years old according to his son Patrick "Au-nish-e-nau-bay" Gourneau, tribal chairman and historian at Turtle Mountain. Glad to find this photo again and list of participants but probably nobody knew who the altar boy was or thought it noteworthy. He was baptized as Joseph Gourneau, born at Red Lake in 1857 or 1860 and told his story to the Minot, ND newspaper when he was near 100. Linda Slaughter, the wife of an Army officer stationed at Bismarck, Dakota Territory in Leaves From Northwest History wrote that, "Father Genin was idolized by the Indians and half-breeds of the northwest as no other man has ever been. Whenever he approached a Catholic camp in the hostile region with his missionary flag carried by an orphan Indian boy whom he had adopted, all the warriors in the camp would rush forth to meet him and falling upon one knee would fire volley after volley of salutes from their guns into the air." Actually the altar boy had signed on at St. Joe, the parish HQ and Chippewa-Metis settlement on Red River with the permission of his parents as the priest would accompany the entire community on their annual buffalo hunting expeditions far as Montana. Genin would hold a daily Mass as well as perform the sacraments of baptism, last rites, etc. since the entire enterprise took months before the Red River hunters could return to their villages. Otherwise the "Missionary Apostolic to the North West Territories" and altar boy/standard-bearer traveled on a regular circuit of hundreds of miles on their own, visually presenting themselves as a peaceful international mission symbolized by the white flag with a red cross and fact that a boy in a white outfit was waving it.
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