I'd like to introduce you to an extraordinary life, that of the
pleasant- looking young woman in the portrait above.
On the one hand,
I could tell you that much of her life was quite commonplace, at least
for someone born in 1800 as she was, but in other respects, her time on
earth was so unusual that one would be hard-pressed to name an equal.
But first, in order to tell you who she is, it is of necessity that I tell you
about her family.
Her father, John Johnston, was born into a rather well-to-do
Scotch-Irish family in the north of Ireland in 1762. One of his
cousins was a Catholic bishop, another a member of Parliament who
eventually became Attorney General of Ireland.
John sought his fortune by other means. Clearly robust and
independent, he traveled in 1790 to Canada and the United States
then, by canoe to Mackinac Island in what is now Michigan to become a
fur trader.
There he met her mother, a young woman of the Ojibwa tribe whose name
was Ozhaguscodaywayquay, which means
“woman of the green prairie”
and whose father, Waubojeeg, was an extremely
notable chieftain of the Ojibwa in the area to the north of, and including
what we now call the Great Lakes. It would not be an exaggeration
to say that she was an Indian princess.
It is impossible to know what the resulting romance was like now, 220
years later, but we do know some rather juicy details. Take for
example, this tale of devotion: John Johnston met Waubojeeg early on and
found him to be very well-connected in the Indian and mixed-race or métis cultures of the northern woods. Waubojeeg was to prove a
very valuable business ally, and with his help Johnston was able to set
up a considerable trade network in the region.
It was quite common then for traders and trappers to marry Ojibwa
women. This was referred to, by the white men, as marrying in "the custom of the
country", which apparently didn't necessarily have the
same weight in their minds as marriage usually entails, and many
of these women, and their children, were simply abandoned as situations
changed and it became
convenient.
One of these women, in fact, was Waubojeeg's own sister, so when
Johnston asked Waubojeeg to marry his daughter, the chieftain told him
simply
to go back to Montreal (a journey of about 800 miles by canoe).
Waubojeeg did, however, hold out some hope. He added that if
Johnston came back to Sault Ste. Marie, the following spring, then he would
permit the marriage.
To his surprise, Johnston did indeed return the following spring.
Whether John's enthusiasm came from wishing to seal himself to his
benefactor, Waubojeeg, or whether he was simply smitten by the Indian
maiden, it appears that no one bothered to first seek the acquiescence of
Ozhaguscodaywayquay, because she was repulsed by the idea of the marriage
her father had arranged for her, and after the marriage, she ran away to
live with her grandparents.
Her father, apparently of the mind that a
deal was a deal, found her and beat her with a stick and told her he
would cut her ears off if she did not return, then took her back to
Johnston.
Interestingly enough, what followed proved to be a fairly happy and
affectionate union. Johnston gave his new wife the English name of
Susan, and she eventually bore him eight children including our heroine
of the portrait, Bamewawagezhikaquay whose Ojibwa name means, Woman of
the Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky.
She was, of course, also given an English
name: Jane Johnston.
Jane Johnson's life may be a little difficult for us to imagine in 21st
century America, especially given what we have come to imagine about what
life in the north woods of 1800 could have been.
In those days, there were settlements of French and British Europeans,
mostly lured there by the lucrative fur business, then there were the
Indians, Ojibwa and other Chippewa for the most part, but most notable
there was also a considerable community of mixed Euro-Indian households
like the Johnstons
and their mixed-race, or métis, offspring.
