Living Our Language_ Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories - Anton Treuer [31]
[5] Oh, I probably only rode on him one time. We didn’t have anything for that saddle. So I just rode bareback then. Well, I was small at that time there, as I must have been almost five years old when [I] became a horse owner. That was my horse Puke as I called him. But no, you see, my mother didn’t think much of what that pony of mine was named. Maybe then my dad’s horses were there too when we sold them at that place. You see we weren’t at our house. My father would have to go off working for long periods of time so we left those horses behind. So my dad must have sold those horses there including my own pony. I don’t recall if I left him alone very much.
The Dam Indians
[1] I have been asked to speak about all the places I’m from, to discuss a little bit places such as Mille Lacs and where I was born here, towards The Dam, at Shakopee Lake as it is called. So my father told me it must have been there that I was born. Now my dad, on the other hand, was raised over there toward Lake Lena as it’s called. And it was there that he started going with my mother. I moved over there too [later on], over there towards Lake Lena as it’s called. But we weren’t right at Lake Lena there. They were at various different locations, each of those different family groups.
[2] You see that was my grandfather. Over there on the bank of the Tamarack River, on the other hand, that’s where my grandpa was. And that’s where his children were too. And that was my father’s father and my paternal aunt and one of my maternal uncles. My paternal uncle was there. I don’t remember them [all].
[3] And over there on the bank of the river, we lived over there at the blockage ourselves. The white people used to dam up the rivers where they managed the log shoots, and they made lakes where they floated the logs. That’s where the damming was, the dam. So that’s why it was called The Dam. Now then I was raised over there myself. We always lived over there.
[4] Over there at The Dam as it’s called, there was a fishing village, [and] they camped over there. That little village was named the so-called Markville. The white people called it Markville—Markville, Minnesota. That little village was located perhaps eight miles away. And on the other side of [the river] there somewhere there was a little store. The white people called that place Duxbury. But according to these Indians I remember from long ago, it was called Eko-biising [end of the water]. It is called so today.
[5] You see, over there at The Dam, that river is blocked up. And it was referred to as a lake, as over there at Duxbury that gigantic lake elongated there where that river was dammed up. That’s why it was called Long Lake. Thus I was raised over there towards Markville and Lake Lena and also over there by the village near Lake Lena on the other side of the river called Danbury. That’s where those Lake Lena villagers got their papers. So I was also raised over there. Near Lake Lena over there today there are still Indians all over there. So I was raised there myself and also along the Big River: the Big River, the St. Croix.
[6] It’s a long time since I started speaking English; [and] as these Indians started speaking English The Dam ceased to be called that in Indian. The whites certainly called it The Dam. That’s Gibaakwa’igan. That’s where we lived. And now when I want to teach some of them to speak Ojibwe they tell me things. They ask me, “How come you live way over there in the toolies over there where you live ‘at the dam,’” they say to me. Then I want to tell them about this. We jokingly thought about how we were always called “the damn Indians.” And that’s where we lived in the tules by ourselves.
Baa Baa Black Sheep
[1] Baa Baa black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Three bags