OBJECT HISTORY
158
FIG. 7 (above):
Great spirit fi gure,
manidookaanaak.
Tahwah, Walpole Island
First Nation, Ontario,
Canada. Early 19th century
or before.
Wood, leather, feather, pigment.
H: 20.5 cm.
Once owned by the Tahwah
Chief Shaughonose by descent
from his great-grandfather
Chief Aligognoyenk. Given by
Shaughonose to a Mr. McClurg.
Royal Ontario Museum, inv.
HD6374B.
With thanks to Arni Brownstone, assistant curator for Plains
Indian Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Anishinaabeg: Art & Power
Through November 19, 2017
Royal Ontario Museum
www.rom.on.ca
NOTES
1. Variously rendered Pétrokijic, Petwegizhik, or Petrokeshig,
literally “Between Layers of the Sky.”
2. Richard L. Thomas, Mark D. Christensen, Ewa Szalinska,
and Magdalena Scarlat, “Formation of the St. Clair River
Delta in the Laurentian Great Lakes System,” Journal of
Great Lakes Research, 32 (4), 2006, pp. 738–748.
3. Reginald Horsman, “Alexander McKee,” Dictionary of
Canadian Biography, vol. IV (1771–1800), University of
Toronto and Laval University, 1979.
4. Variously Pazhekezhikquashkum, Pechegechequistqum,
Beyigishiqueshkam, literally “One Who Steps over the
Sky.”
5. Donald B. Smith, “Bauzhi-geezhig-waeshikum,”
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. VII (1836–1850),
University of Toronto and Laval University, 1985.
6. Sheldon Krasowski, “A Numiany (ThePrayer People) and
the Pagans of Walpole Island First Nation: Resistance to
the Anglican Church, 1845–1885,” masters thesis, Trent
University, 1998.
7. Mark McGowan, The Struggle to Build the Catholic
Church on the Canadian Frontier, McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2005, p. 190.
8. Denys Delâge, Helen Hornbeck Tanner, and Pierre
Chazelle, “The Ojibwa-Jesuit Debate at Walpole Island,
1844,” Ethnohistory, vol. 41, no. 2 (Spring 1994),
pp. 295–321.
9. Variously Shawnoo, Shawanaw, and Oshawahnoo,
literally “Gracious God.”
10. Delâge, et al., op. cit.
11. Lorenzo Cadieux (ed.), “Letter #13,” Lettres des
Nouvelles Missions du Canada, 1843–1852, part 2,
Montreal/Paris: Editions Bellarmin/Maisonneuve et
Larose, 1973. The full text of Chazelle’s letter in English is
included in Delâge, et al., op. cit., pp. 302–320.
12. Fr. Pierre Chazelle cited in Emma Anderson, The Death
and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2013, p. 123
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., p. 124.
15. Ibid.
16. In 1990, the Walpole Island Heritage Center opened on
this site (Delâge, et al, op. cit., p. 297.).
17. Delâge, et al., op. cit.
18. Cited by Arni Brownstone, “Wotherspoon Donation:
Reasons for Collecting,” Royal Ontario Museum internal
document, October 14, 2016.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid. Brownstone cites Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby),
History of the Ojebway Indians: With Especial Reference
to their Conversion to Christianity, London: A. W.
Bennett, 1861, pp. 87, 94, and 95.
21. Cited in Krasowski, op. cit., p. 187.
and at some point after the fi gure was acquired
by Gordon “Swatty” Wotherspoon, chairman
of the board of the Royal Ontario Museum. In
1987, he brought it to the museum for some
minor conservation work, which was performed
there by Julia Fenn. Wotherspoon died
in late 1988 before retrieving the fi gure, and it
sat for nearly thirty years as an unaccessioned
object with the museum’s anthropology department.
Last year, Wotherspoon’s son, Richard H.
Wotherspoon, agreed to donate the fi gure to the
Royal Ontario Museum. It became one of four
Anishinaabeg deity fi gures held by that institution
(fi gs. 7–9).19
Much of what is known about these fi gures
was recorded by Peter Jones, the Methodist missionary
who had interacted with Bauzhi-geezhig
waeshikum in the 1830s. He noted that a
medicine man would display such a fi gure on ritual
occasions, such as a feast or when petitioning
a deity. He collected two examples, which
he referred to as pabookowaih and nahneetis.20
Pitwegijig’s manidookaanaak is fortunate to
have survived. Not all the objects that passed
through Jamieson’s hands were so fortunate. In
his annual report dated December 31, 1869, to
his missionary leaders, the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel, he states the following:
I baptized Chaumer, a leading man among the
Pottowatomi. He had long withstood the truth
and seemed wedded to the superstitions of his ancestors.
… When baptized he brought me his old
pagan drum, his idols, and his medicine pouch to
be disposed of as I thought proper, saying that he
willingly parted with them all, he was done with
them forever, and henceforth he would cast in his
lot with the praying ones “Uhnumeanjy” as Indians
call Christians.
When pagans embrace Christianity they always
bring to the missionary the articles which
they used to hold in veneration and this is looked
upon as evidence of their sincerity for they regard
these things reverently and cling to them to the
last, these loved things of their old superstitions.
In the early days we always burnt them publicly
in the presence of Indians, but Chaumie’s I put in
a bag with a few stones and sank it in the bed of
River St. Clair.21