 | | This 1881 orphanage complex, now in ruins, once housed 900 orphans and other children whose parents could not support them. Only about half were Indians. | Assinins was the last mission Father Frederic Baraga, the "snowshoe priest" from Slovenia, established before becoming bishop of the Upper Peninsula. He came here in 1843 and used the mission he built as a base for missionary work elsewhere on the Keweenaw Peninsula, often reached by snowshoeing.
Father Baraga came to the area at the request of Chief Assinins, who was the first to be baptized here. The little school here was built under Father Baraga's direction; the nails used seem to be the ones he arranged to get from Europe. The partly rebuilt school was one element of what The school was the first element of what became an extensive mission center. Its biggest building was an orphanage, more benign and not so destructive to Indian children's sense of themselves and their culture as some, to hear local people talk about it. Many orphanage children were non-Indians, too. If one parent died, the other might have to leave the children at an orphanage for extended periods of time while the parent worked elsewhere.
Today Assinins consists of some homes and the cemetery along the high road that parallels U.S. 41, the mission school, the Most Holy Name of Jesus Church, and a former convent that serves as its parish hall. Mass is at 6 p.m. Saturday and 11:30 a.m. Sunday. A crucifix and white statues of Father Baraga and an Ojibwa man and girl can be seen from the highway.
 ...continued below...
| | Highway 41 North | | A 1910's postcard of children playing near the mission. | The large sandstone orphanage building, erected in 1881, is now a ruin. It was Assinins' principal landmark. During lumbering and mining days most of the orphanage's children were children of European immigrants whose parents could not support them during hard times, or because of one parent's death.
By 1920 or so it housed mainly Indian children. The mother of one man in the parish lived there and liked it a lot. It was warm, and children could have all they wanted to eat. It's believed that this orphanage was much more benign than notorious Indian schools like the ones at Harbor Springs and Mount Pleasant, which aimed to strip young people of their native culture and remove them from family influences deemed injurious.
Today a clear path leads through the woods behind the school to the cemetery about a quarter-mile away. Here are hundreds and hundreds of burials without headstones, some orphans, many nuns, and others. One Holy Name parishioner on disability is using church and courthouse records and obituaries to discover and document the burials — an enormous task.
In recent times the impressive stone building was the property of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and housed various tribal services. That was before the Fight for Justice, an unsuccessful reform movement aimed at replacing tribal chairman Fred Dakota. Its leaders were given sanctuary in the church by its priest, a Native American himself. The fight divided the parish and the tribe. Tribal leaders let the roof of the historic building go.
Some Indian sensibilities detest things like the statue of the white father flanked by adoring kneeling natives, while others want to pay homage to the memory of the man who did much to keep the Keweenaw Bay Ojibwa community together in their natural environment. The greatest accomplishment local native people feel Father Baraga did for them was to prevent their removal and relocation from their homeland to reservations out west, says the pamphlet of the Assinins Baraga Center. He did this by establishing self-government and purchasing deeded land in their own names. (—April, 2008 and March, 2005)
Assinins is 2 1/2 miles north of Baraga off U.S. 41. It's the first place north of Baraga where Keweenaw Bay is in view. Turn west (up) here to find the church, school, and hall.
Back to Keweenaw Peninsula
|
