# 8: Lake Superior: Gitche Gumee

Bev Dyck approached me after our departure ceremony in Winnipeg where we had listened to some lines of The Song of Hiawatha.  "The only bit of that poem that I still remember from school days is ... let me think ... By the shoressss?"  I had to help her out: By the shores of Gitchi Gumee / By the shining Big-Sea-Water;


The drive along the north shore of Gitche Gumee - Lake Superior - is said to be one of the prettiest in the world.  We got one glimpse between two islands where the calm water and the pale blue sky were exactly the same color.  You couldn't see any horizon.  Slightly different than the day that Gordon Lightfoot sang about in The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald: The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down / Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee. / The lake it is said, never gives up her dead / When the skies of November turn gloomy.

The Chippewa - otherwise known as Ojibway or as they call themselves, Anishinaabeg - are truly the people of that lake.  We talked to them and passed through their First Nations from Thunder Bay right around the lake and to Sault Ste. Marie on the far side.  It was from Sault Ste. Marie that Chief Peguis left with a group of his people to make the move to near the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.  They arrived just in time to get settled and receive the Selkirk Settlers when they showed up in 1820.  We began to realize the proportions of Peguis' journey and the courage they must have had when, last week, we took the long drive from Winnipeg to 'The Sault'.  Peguis' band was called the Saulteaux because of their origins.  It sounds different but looks the same on paper as 'Sault Ste. Marie'.

Every year on Manitoulin Island, a little ways past Sault Ste. Marie, they have an annual contest for fluency in Anishinaabemowin or Ojibway.  How about we participate from afar and learn a few words?

Gitche Manitou: Great Spirit (from whom we get the names, Manitoba and Manitoulin)

Gitche Iau: Great I Am (are you picking up a pattern here?)

Gitche Gumee: Great Sea.

You guys are superior!  (Did anybody answer with 'Miigwech'?)


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