My g-grandfather and grandfather ran a 100 mile trapline. They took it over after Wild Bill Pemble and Tame Tom Parent moved west. They had waganogans or shacks about every 10 miles, each on a lake. The trapline made a large oval - so at the end of ten days - you ended up back at the homestead. Each shack had a birchbark or dugout canoe, depending on what the waters were like. The furthest north shack was on Ottertail Lake on the Canadian border. One of them would start out to the east and the other to the west - meeting at Ottertail after five days.
Grandfather wasn't too particular about borders, being part Ojibwe, and got chased by the Quetico rangers (he referred to them as "Mounties) a number of times while trapping in Canada. Ojibwe were not, at that time, considered to have duel citizenship - as they are today. He was a fast snowshoeman in his youth, and they never caught him, though they did exchange shots at a distance, at least once (no one was hurt). I heard this from his cousin, Joe Soulier, who was with him. Grandfather never denied it. All he would say was, "The Mounties don't always get their man."
I was doing a search on the web and found the following:
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"... interviewed Bob Wells, a Quetico park ranger from 1927 to 1940. He worked mainly out of Basswood Lake at a time when all park rangers were male and worked in pairs. Six pairs of rangers patrolled the park by canoe in summer and by snowshoe in the winter. It was a time when canoeists were few, but logging was proceeding at a rapid rate and poaching was common.
That first interview, like the hundreds that followed, is loaded with fascinating stories. Bob Wells reminisced on a wide variety of topics, including some of the people he met while patrolling the park. He noted that John Sansted and Bill Wenstrom were guiding people into Quetico out of Ely before he started working in the park in 1927. He called John Linklater, the legendary Minnesota conservation officer whose mother was from Lac La Croix, the greatest woodsman that probably ever hit this country.
When discussing how they showshoed from cabin to cabin during the winter months while patrolling for poachers, he said that two of the rangers sometimes used skis rather than snowshoes."
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This is something I remember grandfather talking about. Skis are faster than snowshoes, and he thought it downright unsporting of them to use skiis. Skiis do not work well in deep forest, however, and grandfather would just take to the woods. Fredrickson, Henrickson, and Linkletter are names of rangers I remember grandfather complaining about. Eckbeck, he liked, as he never bothered them about shooting moose (as he knew they needed the meat).
My great aunt told me one of the Canadian Rangers crossed the border to the Ottertail cabin, one time, intent on arresting grandfather. Grandfather got the drop on him, told him to drop his guns, which he did, then followed him back to the border where he returned the guns - minus bullets. My grandfather denied this ever happened, however. By the time I knew him, he was very law-abiding, and possibly he thought it would set a bad example. Or maybe it never happened. My great aunt was kind of wild and crazy.
This site shows some of the early fire rangers, and a distant relation of ours, one of the Ottertails.
http://www.queticofoundation.org/gallery.html
This site shows one of the later rangers:
http://www.sagonto.com/sagweb/tribute2.htm
Some Quetico and BWCA photos:
http://home.eol.ca/~adrew/canoeing/quetphotos.htm
http://www.jon-nelson.com/pictures/cat.asp?iCat=51
http://www.jon-nelson.com/pictures/cat.asp?iCat=49
Here is an arial photo of Tanner Lake - near where John Tanner was shot on the Maligne chain (check out "The Falcon," biography of John Tanner)
http://www.jon-nelson.com/pictures/cat.asp?iCat=41
Just a little stroll down memory lane.
PG
Grandfather wasn't too particular about borders, being part Ojibwe, and got chased by the Quetico rangers (he referred to them as "Mounties) a number of times while trapping in Canada. Ojibwe were not, at that time, considered to have duel citizenship - as they are today. He was a fast snowshoeman in his youth, and they never caught him, though they did exchange shots at a distance, at least once (no one was hurt). I heard this from his cousin, Joe Soulier, who was with him. Grandfather never denied it. All he would say was, "The Mounties don't always get their man."
I was doing a search on the web and found the following:
*******************
"... interviewed Bob Wells, a Quetico park ranger from 1927 to 1940. He worked mainly out of Basswood Lake at a time when all park rangers were male and worked in pairs. Six pairs of rangers patrolled the park by canoe in summer and by snowshoe in the winter. It was a time when canoeists were few, but logging was proceeding at a rapid rate and poaching was common.
That first interview, like the hundreds that followed, is loaded with fascinating stories. Bob Wells reminisced on a wide variety of topics, including some of the people he met while patrolling the park. He noted that John Sansted and Bill Wenstrom were guiding people into Quetico out of Ely before he started working in the park in 1927. He called John Linklater, the legendary Minnesota conservation officer whose mother was from Lac La Croix, the greatest woodsman that probably ever hit this country.
When discussing how they showshoed from cabin to cabin during the winter months while patrolling for poachers, he said that two of the rangers sometimes used skis rather than snowshoes."
*********************
This is something I remember grandfather talking about. Skis are faster than snowshoes, and he thought it downright unsporting of them to use skiis. Skiis do not work well in deep forest, however, and grandfather would just take to the woods. Fredrickson, Henrickson, and Linkletter are names of rangers I remember grandfather complaining about. Eckbeck, he liked, as he never bothered them about shooting moose (as he knew they needed the meat).
My great aunt told me one of the Canadian Rangers crossed the border to the Ottertail cabin, one time, intent on arresting grandfather. Grandfather got the drop on him, told him to drop his guns, which he did, then followed him back to the border where he returned the guns - minus bullets. My grandfather denied this ever happened, however. By the time I knew him, he was very law-abiding, and possibly he thought it would set a bad example. Or maybe it never happened. My great aunt was kind of wild and crazy.
This site shows some of the early fire rangers, and a distant relation of ours, one of the Ottertails.
http://www.queticofoundation.org/gallery.html
This site shows one of the later rangers:
http://www.sagonto.com/sagweb/tribute2.htm
Some Quetico and BWCA photos:
http://home.eol.ca/~adrew/canoeing/quetphotos.htm
http://www.jon-nelson.com/pictures/cat.asp?iCat=51
http://www.jon-nelson.com/pictures/cat.asp?iCat=49
Here is an arial photo of Tanner Lake - near where John Tanner was shot on the Maligne chain (check out "The Falcon," biography of John Tanner)
http://www.jon-nelson.com/pictures/cat.asp?iCat=41
Just a little stroll down memory lane.
PG
