Superior Tapestry

Weaving the Threads of Upper Michigan History

Deborah K. Frontiera

• Publisher: Modern History Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781615995905
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Like any tapestry, the threads of history cross over and under each other in different points of view and places in time. Award-winning author Deborah K. Frontiera mixes natural science and geology into history where those aspects intersect with the lives of people or are the reason Michigan's Upper Peninsula developed the way it did. Enjoy this work's unique perspective, the point of view of trees, rocks, rivers and artifacts--among them a ship's bell, a lighthouse, a cross-cut saw, beads and rings given in trade, a bent propeller and many more. Students, adults and families will enjoy experiencing history in this unique way. "Deborah K. Frontiera takes U.P. history and turns it into a fun story, told by its least appreciated players. Here, we have the perspective of the St. Mary's River, the bell on the Edmund Fitzgerald, an early iron forge, a sauna, the Bishop Baraga statue and many, many more. Together, they make Superior Tapestry a diverse and refreshing alternative to more straightforward historical narratives, while educating us in entertaining ways and, once again, displaying the creativity of Yooper culture."
-- Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. in literature and award-winning author of Haunted Marquette and Kawbawgam: The Chief, The Legend, The Man "Frontiera has a knack for bringing inanimate objects to life and imbuing them with observational skills that let the reader see the world around the objects through their eyes. Human time is dwarfed when compared to the span of time experienced by some of the objects Frontiera describes. This book is such an interesting read; I'll be using it as my guide when exploring the nooks and crannies of the Upper Peninsula in Michigan."
-- Linda Martin-Rust, Ph.D. "What a fun way to learn about our Upper Peninsula history; a great book for all ages. Superior Tapestry will become one of your favorite UP books."
== Tony Bausano, president of Copper World Gift Shop, Calumet, Michigan Deborah Kay Olson Frontiera grew up in Lake Linden, Michigan. She taught in Houston public schools from 1985 until 2008 and then taught creative writing part-time for Houston's WITS (Writers In The Schools) program. From Modern History Press

Chapter 1 – Birch Bark Canoe

Fig. 1-1: Birch Bark (B.B.) Canoe

You will need to look up to see the Birch Bark (B.B.) Canoe in the Museum of Ojibwa Culture in Saint Ignace, Michigan. You’ll see many other fascinating artifacts there, too.

The great sturgeon slides swiftly and gracefully through the water. Ojibwa legends say that it inspired the shape of their canoes. Using a canoe is much faster than walking, so that’s how the Ojibwa liked to travel. Lakes and rivers were their highways because forest paths were hard to walk on and went up and down mountains.

To ensure they would last many years, canoes were carefully built and looked after.

One winter, the wind howled and blew the trees, day after day. The old birch tree had swayed and stood tall through many such blizzards, but she was old and weak now. A mighty gust struck her, and she fell flat between two trees in the forest behind her. She hoped she would turn into soil to feed new birch seedlings, even though she knew that would take many years. She had seen Ojibwa women carry baskets made of birch bark when they came to pick berries in summer, so she knew they might come to strip her bark. Birch Bark, or B. B. as she liked to call herself, knew that birch bark, was good for many things, including stopping fungus from spoiling food stored in such a basket.

When the snow melted, she was exposed and awoken by the cut of a stone axe. It hurt as it split B.B. down the length of her trunk, but the wedges prying B.B. away from the rest of the log seemed to free her to a new life.

The men walked heel to toe, counting. When they reached eighteen, they nodded. One said, “Good. We can make this new canoe from a single log.” One of them picked up the long curl of bark and carried her away.

B.B. managed to whisper, “Goodbye” to the rest of the tree as the man carried her across the meadow and into the forest on the other side. She wondered what a canoe was. Not long after, she found herself on the ground in the middle of an Ojibwa village. Since it was getting dark, the man who carried her entered his wigwam, which was what they called their houses.

A crow landed on B.B. She knew him because he had often landed on her branches in the forest. “What’s a canoe?” she asked him.

“People sit in it and travel over water,” Crow said. “This village is close to where the waters of two Great Lakes come together. You will see it in the morning.”

Then, he went on to explain that many Native Peoples often got together where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron joined up with narrow strips of water called “straits.” Mackinac Island, St. Ignace, and Mackinaw City were all there.

The Ojibwa from the Lake Superior area, the Ottawa from the Lake Michigan region and the Huron People shared many customs. Their languages were also similar, since all three were part of a greater group known as the Anishnaabe, or “first man.”

They lived from the land, hunting many types of animals. They used tree roots, bark and leaves for medicine, baskets and many other things. In the meadows and marshes, they gathered berries, wild rice and other plants for food, and caught fish in the lakes and rivers. Nothing was wasted, since nearly every part of the animals and plants provided something of use.

“I’ve watched these people for many years,” Crow said. “They are almost as smart as I am. They do some clever things, such as making the birch bark canoes like you will be.”

The next morning, two men lay B.B. in a long, narrow trench in the ground. They poured hot water over her to soften her so she could be formed into the shape they wanted. It felt lovely. She was no longer afraid and let herself relax and enjoy this bath. As she soaked, Crow told her that if the water had been cold, she would have had to soak from one full moon until the next.

Here is how they heated water: They made bags from the stomachs of animals they had hunted and filled these with water. They heated stones in a fire, then put the hot rocks and the water sacks in a pit until the water was hot enough.

B.B. watched as the people used other pieces of bark taken from the smaller branches of the birch tree to make many other things: baskets, cups, roof coverings (called “shingles”) for wigwams, fans, scrolls for ritual art, and pictorial maps.

B.B. and these objects sometimes smiled at each other from a distance. They never had a chance to speak, since they were all carried inside the lodges once they were complete and B.B. was always outside. Once B.B. was soft from soaking, men drove stakes into the ground in parallel lines to make the canoe the correct width and tied her top edges to these stakes with strips of basswood bark so she would dry in a gently curved shape. Stones anchored the bottom of the curve to the ground.

As B. B. waited to gain a new shape, she watched the men go into the woods again. Crow told her they went to gather other needed supplies, like white cedar, which they would soak and cut into strips for her ribs and rails. Other strips of bark from basswood trees would be used for tying and binding, and thin roots from white or black spruce made perfect twine for sewing.

“I know these trees from their odor, color and texture,” B.B. said to Crow.

“All the wood strips and bark have to be soaked like you to make them flexible enough for what they want to do,” Crow noted.

B.B. watched women go into the forest, too. The moon had changed from a thin crescent to well past full by the time the People gathered everything they needed. Crow told B.B. he had to leave to help his mate raise their hatchlings.

B.B. was fascinated to listen to a man explain to his son that a tree’s roots are the same under the ground as the branches above. So, he looked up, followed a branch and then dug for the root right under it. The father said that they wanted only the thinnest roots near the surface. When they returned from the forest with many roots, he showed his son how to strip the bark of the root away until only a twine-like string, called watap, remained. The moon waned, became new, and began to wax once more as the men soaked the roots and worked various timber parts of the canoe into place. The longest was the keel, which went from front to back and would be the backbone of the canoe. There was a handrail, cedar ribs stiffening it side to side, and cedar strips to put their feet and goods carried in the canoe on. They didn’t want anything to make a hole in the birch bark hull!

Now it was the women’s turn to work on B.B. canoe. They cut the ends to form a curve and began to sew the pieces together. B.B. felt the poke of the pointed bone awl as it made holes in the two parts to be joined, but it didn’t hurt. Then, the women wove the watap in and out through the holes. That tickled. They also sewed or tied the cedar keel, hand rail, and ribs into place with strips of thicker cedar or basswood bark. This took several days.

B. B. watched as the women brought lumps of raw balsam fir sap back to the camp. She had heard an older woman speak yesterday of scraping it from those trees and placing the sticky stuff into deerskin bags. They hung these bags high enough above the crackling fire to heat them but not so close that the bags were burned. The gum rose to the surface, leaving bits of dirt and bark in the bottom of the bag. They squeezed and stretched the gum until there was no water left and the gum looked like honey. Then, the women added tallow (fat) from the animals hunted by the men and heated the mixture in a bag again to blend it all. This they put into cold water and finally wrung all the water out of it again.

An old woman told her daughter, “This makes sure the resin doesn’t shrink or crack in cold water or melt in the hot sun, causing leaks.” Finally, the woman demonstrated how to splay the end of an ashwood stick into a brush to paint the resin onto all the seams and holes of B.B. so she would be completely watertight.

When will I be ready to go into the water? B.B. wondered.

It was early fall by the time B.B. was ready for use. Two men carried her into shallow water. Oh, how cold it was! Waves sloshed along B.B.’s sides as she slid around the sheltered bay on the northern shore of Lake Huron. Soon, the water no longer seemed so frigid. One man pointed to an island, now called Mackinac Island, asking if they should go there, but the other shook his head, and they paddled back to shore.

Her first voyages that fall were short, with women paddling her into marshes, where they gathered wild rice. B.B. enjoyed listening to the women chat with each other as they cut stalks of wild rice right at the water’s surface and piled bundles of it into B.B.’s curved bottom. Their talk, like that of women everywhere through the ages, involved which young man liked which young woman, whether or not they had gathered and dried enough berries, and now wild rice, to feed their clan through a long, cold winter, and whether the men had caught enough fish (which the women had worked hard to dry or smoke) and hunted enough meat to last the same amount of time.

It seemed to B.B. that all of the warm months had been spent preparing for the cold ones. She understood this. Did not the tree she had come from do the same thing? All the trees soaked up summer sun, warm air and rain to produce extra sweet sap, sent down for storage in their roots. In the spring, that sap would rise to feed the tree until new leaves grew from buds to make more food for the tree.

Once the rice harvest was over, snowflakes began to fall, and the first sheen of ice formed on the lake. B.B. was taken on to shore and turned over to protect her from the many blizzards of winter that would soon come. She slept all winter, just as she had when she was a tree.

One day, B.B. felt rain pouring over her, melting all the snow around. Her friend Crow returned. “No more fishing through holes in the ice for the men. It has broken up.”

New leaves formed a green veil on the trees when the men began to take her out onto Lake Huron to fish. When the leaves were nearly fully green, and white flowers with yellow centers bloomed around the camp, two men strange to the clan and to B.B. arrived with some of their southern Huron cousins. The strange men had grizzled hair on their faces and wore clothes not made from the skins of animals. Two Huron paddled the canoe with these strange men in it. They also brought things the People had never seen before.

B.B. could not hear the discussions between the Huron cousins and the leaders of her clan, but the canoe they came in was beached right next to her. “I’ve come from a place to the south and east of here,” this canoe told her. “There are many people there dressed like these two. The Huron people have been trading with them for quite a while, to the benefit of both. Now, these men want to trade with your group and others even farther away.”

“What does ‘trade’ mean?”

“Your group would give these men the furs of animals they hunt in the woods and streams, especially beaver. It seems these people really like the fur of beavers and it is sent even farther away than I have ever been. I see their huge ships on a great river far from here. These ships are many times our size and have long poles sticking up with huge white cloths. The wind blows them where they want to go. Then, these men give your group things like those I carried here for your people to see.”

The other canoe called that far-away place the St. Lawrence River. She told B.B. that she had heard that the first contact between Europeans, specifically the French-Canadians and Jesuit missionaries, and Native Peoples in the upper Great Lakes was somewhere around a year they called 1640, perhaps a generation ago.

“What are all these things you brought?” B. B. asked.

The other canoe was glad to show off her knowledge. “The metal kettles with the handles can be hung over a fire to cook food and to heat water. There are axes and knives made of iron. Your people will find them far better than their stone tools—at least the People where I come from think so. There are also beads and trinkets that the women will like.”

“But I don’t see enough goods for very many people here.”

“No, not on this trip. I heard the men say that they hope to show them to all the clans of people along these lakes. They hope to invite them to come to the opposite shore next spring, with many furs for your people to trade for all the things they want. They are hoping a couple of men from your village will go with them and introduce them to other clans.”

“What a wonderful adventure! I hope I am chosen to go with you.”

When the elders of the clan, the Huron Cousins, and the two strange men came out of the meeting lodge, everyone was smiling. The women admired the kettles, commenting on how much easier heating water and cooking would be with these. The women also admired the beads and trinkets. The men picked up the knives and axes and exclaimed about how sharp they were. The strange men invited them to try them out and talked about how many furs they should give to receive a kettle, knife or axe.

The clan chief pointed out two good men to paddle with the others and then pointed to B.B. “This is our newest and best canoe. Take it.”

B.B.’s heart nearly burst in excitement.

Early the following morning, they left the village and paddled eastward to a narrow channel between the mainland and a large island, arriving in late afternoon. They could have gone farther before dark, but there were Ojibwa villages both on the mainland and the island, inhabited by people the traders wanted to talk to.

These clans also smiled and approved of the trade goods—even speaking to each other of the greater effort they would put forth in hunting beaver between then and the following spring. The clans ...