Everlasting Sky
May 14th is Kakaygeesick Day in Warroad, Minnesota
Everyone knew his name: Kakaygeesick.
Everlasting Sky appears after his Ojibway name on his 1905 allotment papers. His name signified when he was born.
On Lake of the Woods, when the geese return from the south and the lake ice recedes to the north, it’s the season of an everlasting sky. When the sun gathers strength and lifts the dew from a May morning, the heavens above seem like a pool of infinite blue.
No one can be certain of the exact date and time of his birth. Kakaygeesick didn’t use the Gregorian calendar. It was 1964 when the City of Warroad designated his “official” birthday to be May 14th and declared it Kakaygeesick Day.
He grew up on Lake of the Woods in the Ojibway village of Kah-bay-kah-nong, which became Warroad. According to best estimates, Kakaygeesick was born in 1844 and lived to the age of 124.
His mother was May-Muska-Washie (1829-1911) and his father, born in 1795, was Chief Ay Ash Wash who died Dec. 12, 1899.
Kakaygeesick had three brothers — Naymaypoke, Animikeese, and Kakaykeese — and three sisters.
He grew up knowing the lake and the land like the back of his hand. Harvesting wild rice, berries, and medicinal plants, trapping, hunting, and fishing, he traveled by canoe.
Kakaygeesick married Wahsaygeshig (b. 1850) and they had a son, John, born in 1880. A daughter, Rose, was born in 1889. His wife, Wahsaygeshig, died in July 1891 at the age of 41 of unknown causes.
He married again on the 8th of January, 1894, to Anna Taydahgwaushek from Thief River Falls. Their daughter, Mary, was born before the end of the year 1894.
Until 1905, Kakaygeesick lived with his family near his trap lines on the northern banks of the Warroad River before it empties into Lake of the Woods. Commercial fisheries moved in, forcing them to relocate south of the river onto his land allotment.
Other Indians who had been displaced or dispossessed during the influx of white settlers into the Warroad area also congregated on his land allotment south of the river along the shores of the lake where Seven Clans Casino is today.
In November of 1907, Kakaygeesick’s 18-year-old daughter, Rose died of tuberculosis, in one of the first widespread outbreaks of the disease in northern Minnesota. Then his second wife, Anna, died. In a grief-stricken state, Kakaygeeick was forcibly taken to Fergus Falls State Hospital in March 1909, according to court and medical records in the archives at the Minnesota HIstory Center. Six weeks later, the hospital released Kakaygeesick with nothing more than a sandwich in a paper sack. The Warroad Pioneer reported he walked the 220 miles back to Warroad. And there he lived another sixty years.
White settlers had called him a “medicine man.” He was actually a spiritual healer. Kakaygeesick was a Grand Midewin in the Way of the Heart, or “Medicine Society,” of the Ojibway.
He is buried next to his brothers — Naymaypoke and Animikeese — and his niece, Laughing Mary. Located near Lake Street and Riverdale Drive, their gravesites are on privately-owned residential property and marked by spirit houses on what had once been part of Naymaypoke’s allotment.
His death was reported in the Minneapolis Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The entire community turned out for a Christian funeral service in the Warroad High School auditorium. When the hearse from Helgeson’s funeral home arrived at school with the casket, two elder members of the Midewin Society, Daniel Rain Cloud and Tom Thunder, intervened to first conduct a private traditional ceremony with family to give him a good sendoff to Giizhigong, the land of everlasting happiness.
Kakaygeesick lived through the Civil War, the U.S.-Dakota War, WWI and II, Korea and Vietnam. When he died on December 6, 1968, he still had his land, his language and his legacy.
He died wealthy. And his legacy is rich and enduring. The respect and admiration you have for this man who is still alive in so many ways is beautiful, celebratory, and well earned. I've always "felt" his heart AND yours when reading these posts. And you've told his story without resorting to over-idealization, pity, or drama. (Great pics by the way!).
That beginning. I loved how you started off with a short but powerful sentence. What an interesting man with a life so full, yet in many ways tragic.