OBJECT HISTORY
156
the Anishinaabeg ruling council held that they
were unwelcome and declared that they should
be removed from the island.7 Pitwegijig confronted
Jennessaux on July 23, 1844, and told him
to stop construction or the local populace might
burn the church. The DIA declined to support the
Jesuits’ removal and, since the ruling council refused
to deal with du Ranquet, citing his youth,
Jesuit superior Pierre Chazelle came to meet with
the council on July 31, 1844, which perhaps not
coincidentally coincided with the feast day of St.
Ignatius.8 This meeting was to become known
as the Ojibwa-Jesuit Debate and was to prove
to be one of history’s most eloquent statements
against the Christian missionary
movement. Some
thirty local elders were represented
by Oshawana,9 an
eighty-three-year-old war
chief who lived nearby (fi g.
5). He had been a supporter
of Tecumseh during the War
of 1812 and was responsible
for the latter’s bones eventually
being interred on the
island. Pitwegijig also spoke
for the local populace, and
Chazelle, as the eldest Jesuit
present, spoke for Catholicism. Georges-Henri
Mongotas, who was fl uent in both English and
Ojibwa, served as interpreter. Oshawana set the
rules for the discussion, which were that only one
man could speak at a time and he was not to be
interrupted.10 Chazelle recorded the two-and-ahalf
hour-long debate in detail six months later in
a letter to a Jesuit friend.11
Oshawana made the fi rst statement, playing
on the Jesuits’ sense of providence.
You come, my brother, thinking you will teach
us Wisdom. But don’t believe that savages are
fools. They have the knowledge that they need.
The Great Spirit has not left them in ignorance:
He has given them great gifts; he has given them
wisdom. … My brother, we are not all alike, our
blood is not the same and our languages bear no
resemblance to each other. … Who created the
differences? The Great Spirit created them from
the beginning, he who does all things, according
to his will. You can well see, then, that we each
orator and debater, Bauzhi-geezhig-waeshikum
resisted this until his death in late 1841 or early
1842, but in 1833 conceded that the children
should be sent to school so they could “learn
to read, put words on paper, and count, so that
the white traders might not cheat them.”5 White
squatters in the Walpole region were another
source of political and cultural tension. These
individuals were evicted by the Department of
Indian Affairs (DIA) in the early 1840s but a
level of distrust had arisen that further fortifi ed
local resistance to religious conversion that was
led by Pitwegijig after Bauzhi-geezhig-waeshikum’s
passing.
The year 1839 was signifi
cant for the people of
Walpole Island. With the
fi rst contact that year with
Jesuit missionaries—who
were locally referred to as
Black Robes (fi g. 4)—it
marked the commencement
of missionary activity there
in earnest. Until then, conversion
efforts had consisted
largely of limited contact
with Ojibwa Methodist missionary
Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby),
who found no takers on the island.
In 1841, Anglican missionary Rev. James
Coleman arrived on Walpole Island but met with
ridicule. He was replaced by Rev. John Carey in
1843, who also met with little success but built
St. George’s church and a school with approval
of the DIA.6 The ineffectiveness of the Anglican’s
missionary efforts combined with the school that
Bauzhi-geezhig-waeshikum had agreed to a decade
before made for a tolerable situation.
On April 17, 1844, Jesuit missionaries Father
Dominique du Ranquet and Brother Joseph
Jennessaux arrived at the island and created a
far less comfortable situation. Sent by the DIA
ostensibly to minister to a handful of métis
Catholics there, they rapidly alienated the local
populace by cutting down a sacred oak grove
and building a church at the highest point on
the island, the “Highbanks,” which impinged
upon an ancient burial mound and a more recent
cemetery. The Anglicans held that the Jesuits
had denounced the Church of England, and
FIG. 4 (above):
“Blackrobes” bring the
Gospel to the New World.
Steel engraving.
Private collection.