In 1820, more than 400 languages were spoken by native peoples in North America.
Today, 90 percent of them have vanished or are endangered. Against amazing odds, most tribes in Wisconsin successfully preserved their own languages.
The history of one of them, Ojibwe (also called Chippewa), can be analyzed partly because a Wisconsin priest rode at the back of a sleigh rather than the front.
The Rev. Frederic Baraga (1797-1868) went to La Pointe on Lake Superior in the summer of 1835. For the next three decades, he criss-crossed the region by canoe and on snowshoes, ministering to the Ojibwe and Ottawa. He learned their languages and in his spare time compiled a 600-page dictionary of Ojibwe.
In March 1852, he left his mission to have the dictionary printed in the East, hitching a ride with some traders on a horse-drawn sleigh.
"In driving across Green Bay," one of them recalled, "the horses broke through the ice. ... The crack was about 20 feet wide." Baraga was at the back of the sleigh and able to leap to safety, but his belongings went under. Although it was a frigid day, his companions were pulled out and safely made their way to shore.
His manuscript was put out to dry when they reached town, and the book was safely printed in Cincinnati the following year.
It remains a fundamental resource for Ojibwe study today.
-- Wisconsin Historical Society
www.wisconsinhistory.org
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