Book review: The Assassination of Hole in the Day
Reviewed by Karl Hele
Anton Treuer’s The Assassination of Hole in the Day is a marvelously researched and written examination of the rise to leadership of Chiefs Hole in the Day Sr. and Jr. among the Mississippi Ojibwe of Minnesota. The work is a combination of archival documents and oral histories of the two men and the events surrounding their lives, as well as the assassination of Hole in the Day, Jr.
Treuer successfully incorporated oral histories into the book. As a resident of the Leech Lake region and fluent speaker of the Anishinaabemowin, Treuer brings a unique perspective to the history. His cultural connections and linguistic fluency allowed him to access histories in their original form and from an Ojibwe perspective. Nevertheless, the work remains his accounting of the events.
The work begins by exploring the changing world, culture, politics, and lifeways of the Ojibwe in the 1700s and early 1800s. This is an important backdrop to explain how Hole in the Day, Sr., a man without a clan, claimed leadership and became a powerful regional chief. Similarly, this explains how his son, Hole in the Day, Jr., was able to assume leadership by heredity as well as through generating political and economic ties with outsiders – Dakota chiefs, American officials, politicians, and traders. Treuer followed the son’s efforts after his father’s accidental death to create and maintain some form of Ojibwe sovereignty in Minnesota while seemingly ensuring personal land and wealth acquisitions. It is the complexity of seemingly supporting and betraying his people that make Hole in the Day so very interesting and dynamic. Moreover, it speaks to Treuer’s research and analysis of the records to illustrate the complexities of the circumstances facing the Ojibwe in the nineteenth century as the United States gobbled Indian lands voraciously with the assistance of greedy-minded settlers and businessmen. In the end, while undertaken by Ojibwe men, Hole in the Day’s assassination was done at the behest of white and mixed-blood traders seeking to preserve or increase their power over the Ojibwe. It is these individuals, the profiteers and business interests, where Treuer places the blame not only for the assassination but also for the dispossession and impoverishment of the Minnesota Ojibwe. While he lived, Hole in the Day was able to dictate treaty terms to the US and the Ojibwe, limit or prevent trader and speculator attempts to impoverish his people, and reshape Ojibwe politics.
Appendices are included that provide the names of the assassins, principle figures, as well as a chronology of events and some notes on the Ojibwe language. A key feature of the work is the plentiful and detailed maps that allow the reader to place communities and reservations on the landscape. Additionally, multiple images of Hole in the Day and other figures within the narrative provide faces for the names, thereby allowing for a more personable connection to the past.
Overall, Treuer’s The Assassination of Hole in the Day is an excellent read. It should be read alongside other biographies of key Anishinaabeg leaders such as The Legacy of Shingwaukonse, Balancing of Two Worlds, William W. Warren, Blackbird’s Song, and Mississauga Portraits. It shares a common theme of exploring how our leadership sought to ensure that the Ojibwe would retain sovereignty and culture as the world changed. This is not to imply that in reading one you have read them all – The Assassination of Hole in the Day is a must-read to understand a complex individual facing choices in Minnesota as American corruption and Imperialism bore down on his people. It is a story of his actions, solutions, endeavours, successes, and failures within a limited set of options that is impressive. Moreover, it ably illustrates that leaders such as Hole in the Day were not powerless in the face of colonialism.
Anton Treuer, The Assassination of Hole in the Day. Minnesota: Borealis Books, 2010. ISBN: 9780873518437