from Duluth to Thunder Bay forms the beginning of a very large wilderness area that’s commonly referred to as the Boundary Waters, from which hundreds of tributaries empty into Lake Superior, some from as far away as James Bay in Ontario to Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba. One of the larger tributaries is the Rainy River, which flows from the southeastern tip of Lake of the Woods, which is located in north-central Minnesota, and Canada. This Rainy River also serves as a natural border between Canada and the United States, cutting its way southeast for more than two hundred miles before it finally reaches Lake Superior, some fifty miles southwest of Thunder Bay. From the southeastern tip of the Lake of the Woods this intercontinental border cuts across this lake to its mid-western shoreline, splitting the lake between these two countries. Between the Rainy River and Lake Superior’s northern shoreline is a beautiful wilderness area that is shaped like the head of an arrow called the Arrowhead Country.
Although several mining companies had previously found vast deposits of high grade iron ore throughout much of northern Minnesota, this large Minnesota Iron Range soon became seriously depleted and depressed because of the world’s huge demand for high quality iron ore. And although vast reserves of taconite, a flint-like rock containing thirty to fifty percent low-grade iron ore had been discovered in the Arrowhead Country back in 1870, it was initially considered worthless because extracting pure iron from the granite was found to be far too difficult and costly. Then in the 1940s, the process of extracting and upgrading taconite by “pelletizing” the iron into briquette-like pellets was discovered, causing the Reserve Mining Company to build a taconite processing plant at Silver Bay, on Lake Superior. As a result, by the late 1950s, they were producing and shipping up to 10 million tons of pellets a year, while irresponsibly disposing of the remaining powdered rock called tailings into Lake Superior.
The Ojibwe Annishinaabe or the Chippewa Indians, which is a white man’s term, own reservations in both the United State’s Arrowhead Country and the Canadian Boundary waters. Ojibwe means to heat or to pucker-up, which was derived from a description of the puckered seams on the Ojibwe moccasins. In the United States, the Ojibwe Indians call these boundary waters the Noopiming Boundary Waters while Canadians refer to this lake filled area as the Quetico Boundary Waters. For many years the Indian tribes had previously mined and processed this low grade iron ore to make their knives and hatchets, but with this new processing plant they soon found employment processing taconite at Silver Bay. They’d also made hatchets from copper, which was very plentiful in this area. Copper was obtained from a mineral called Malaxite, which the Indian’s heated to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit by forcing air into the flame and then pouring the melted copper into hatchet or knife molds. In doing this, they were totally unaware of the inevitable arsenic poisoning that occurred, and in doing this, many tribe members became ill from this arsenic poison. In processing iron ore, they also became ill from the dangerous taconite dust like particles that inevitably found their way into their lungs, often causing cancer.
Although the Indians in this area were mostly Ojibwe, there were several other tribes such as the Algonquin, the Ottawa, and the Cree Indians who were all friendly and spoke the same Alogonquian language. The Blackfeet Indians of Montana and Manitoba also spoke Alogonquian, but they were located farther to the west. The Dakota Tribes, commonly referred to as the nomadic Sioux, were scattered throughout this entire general area as well as the Upper Mississippi Valley, North and South Dakota and Ontario. They only spoke the Siouan language, and to make things worse, these Sioux were fierce warriors and a constant threat to the Ojibwe Annishinaabe. Sometimes these nomadic Sioux war parties could be found as far north as the Sioux Narrows on Lake of the Woods and they always presented a problem to the other tribes. Historically, there had been many skirmishes between the Sioux and these many other tribes that were often lumped together as the Ojibwe Annishinaabe. And although iron and copper were important natural resources to all these tribes, gold was seldom if ever found in this area, and therefore had never become an issue to fight over; however, this novel does focus on an unusual source of gold and how its location was secretly protected by three young men, one of which had accidentally claimed the first shiny gold nugget near the eastern shore of The Lake of the Woods.
* * * * *
This is a big mistake, Bill Warner thought as he motored out from Nestor Falls into the open water of Lake of the Woods. At this speed, It will take us all day to get to Split Rock, he was thinking to himself as he repeatedly tried to get the boat to rise above the water line, and move at a normal speed. Finally he shouted over the straining motor, “This isn’t going to work!” With the water pushing against the bow of his seventeen foot tri hull it looked more like a barge than a sleek inboard, and after several more fruitless attempts, Bill cursed in frustration. “We’re way too heavy!”
Although the hull of his boat was some thirty inches deep, the heavier waves were hitting within only a few inches of the top edge of the boat, and as he glared back at the large rolled up tent, several boxes of food, three or four tanks of water and gas, a metal cook stove, and a variety of gold mining equipment he whispered so the others could hear. If we get into some rough water, we’ll really have our hands full with all this gear weighing us down. And three two hundred pound passengers aren’t exactly helping us any.
Finally he just sat back letting the motor idle, while trying to figure out what to do next. Biting at the corner of his mouth he scowled at Dave and Ed before taking off his hat and scratching his head. “I should have known better,” he snarled just as the wind valiantly slapped a huge wave over the side of the boat, forcing him to drop his hat on the floor and grab hold of the windshield with both hands.
Yes, Bill Warner had agreed with his two close friends to take the summer off from college so they could hunt gold, and his jaw tightened and his blue eyes became even more intense as another gust of wind swirled his blond sun-bleached hair in every direction. Turning to face both Dave and Ed, his right hand automatically grabbed for the back of his chair for support while the other rubbed the short stubble of a beard on his tan face. Still kind of biting on the inside of his cheek he stood silent, trying to decide if they should turn back or not.
Dave Olson’s round face seemed frozen in a grin as he chuckled out loud. “What the hell - maybe we ought to pull Nelson behind the boat,” he laughed, trying to ease the tension.
With that, Ed Nelson shook his head. “Oh sure - you’re twice as big as I am, and you’d float a hell of a lot better, you smart ass.”
Dave was as wide as he was tall, but all muscle, and he responded with a huge laugh. “All right, let’s not get into a fight before we even get started.
During the last few summers Dave had worked for a U.S. Canadian mining firm that required he survive alone in the north woods in search of copper. His face was usually very tan but permanently scared from his childhood pox marks, and with his crew cut it gave him the undeserved appearance of a Chicago bouncer in an all night bar on Clark Street.
Ed Nelson was taller than Dave and almost frail by comparison, and to make things worse he wore heavy horned rimmed glasses and his long straight brown hair was swirling in every direction, making him look like a wimp while he struggled to put his baseball hat on backwards so the next gust of wind wouldn’t whisk it into the lake again.
“Look, we’ve only got a couple of options.” Bill growled. “We can go back and unload half of this stuff, and make two trips, or we can rent a second boat to help us get there in a reasonable length of time. And since we can’t afford to rent a second boat for the entire summer, we should probably make a couple of trips, don’t you think?”
“Wait a minute,” Dave shouted over the wind, raising one arm high in the air to get their attention.
Dave was always quick with a solution to almost any dilemma, because of his north woods experience, where he’d often made quick decisions without any warning.
“Aren’t
