Review: 'Making the Carry,' by Timothy Cochrane

Timothy Cochrane's "Making the Carry: The Lives of John and Tchi-Ki-Wis Linklater" embeds its two central figures so deeply within their historical context that the book is as much a history of a region as a dual biography. John was a Métis of Anishinaabeg, Cree and Scots ancestry, and his wife, Tchi-Ki-Wis, a member of the Lac La Croix First Nation. Both lived and worked in the border country of Ontario, Manitoba and Minnesota during the transformative period from the 1870s into the 1930s.

Those decades saw the introduction of logging and mining on an industrial scale; extensive white settlement and the dispossession of Native peoples by both the United States and Canada of lands traditionally held by them or occupied through grants from the Hudson Bay Company; the creation of a byzantine system of racial classification; the eviction of people from newly decreed conservation areas; the establishment of reservations (U.S.) and reserves (Canada); and the growth of sport fishing, hunting and tourism.

John and Tchi-Ki-Wis were versatile, independent people, deeply versed in Indigenous ways and lore, who managed, in their own fashion, to elude the coils of racist policies — though not a massive dose of white condescension. John came down from Canada to Minnesota as a young man, making a home with his wife on Basswood Lake. Still, both traveled extensively, seasonally for traditional pursuits and jobs.

John worked as a trapper, wolf-bounty hunter, fur dealer, logger, dog musher, waterman, fisherman. He also became a renowned and much sought-after fishing and hunting guide, gifted photographer and game warden with a prodigious knowledge of the region's ecology.

For her part, Tchi-Ki-Wis was famous for her peerless knowledge of the region's plants, their medicinal properties and use in dyeing, weaving and other traditional tasks. Above all she was an inspired craftswoman, celebrated for her skill in beadwork and the virtually lost art of weaving complicated, multihued cedar-bark mats. She was a master at designing and sewing parkas and moccasins, and fashioning traditional artifacts including model canoes, moose calls and beadwork for tourists.

In tracing the lives of the couple, Cochrane, an assiduous researcher, has amplified what is positively known about them with informed speculation, which itself deepens the picture of the way of life in the region. His investigations, for instance, strongly suggest that both John's grandmother and one of his and Tchi-Ki-Wis' daughters were murdered. Though he cannot prove it, the fact that the causes of the two deaths have not been recorded tells its own story — that the fate of individual Indians was simply not important or interesting.

Cochrane's rich depiction of the north country and the material conditions of this couple's life is greatly enhanced by dozens of illuminating photographs. They show the trappings of hunting, fishing and camping expeditions — so much canvas! — dog sledding, logging camps, lumber yards, fisheries, people engaged in various pursuits, and, most touching, a wonderful shot of Tchi-Ki-Wis with her pet raven.

A Minnesota native, Katherine A. Powers also reviews for the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

Making the Carry: The Lives of John and Tchi-Ki-Wis Linklater

By: Timothy Cochrane.

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 296 pages, $24.95.