Part of The Guilbault Line
At the Lake of Two Mountains
Research and stories from the Oka Mission community — Algonquin, Nipissing, Saulteaux, Ottawa, and Tête de Boule — at the confluence where the Ottawa River meets the lake.
Featured Essay
A Name Written in Cedar and Sky
The Kijik Naming Tradition at Oka Mission, 1786–1913
On 27 May 1786, a priest wrote down two names on the same register page and did not remark on what they shared. Over the next century and more, more than fifty-five individuals across five nations would carry the kijik root — cedar, sky, day, medicine — through the Oka Mission registers. This piece traces where the name came from, who carried it, and how a single act of godparenthood preserved it for generations.
Read the Essay →"This is how a naming tradition survives. Not through inheritance alone, but through intention."
— A Name Written in Cedar and Sky
Blog Posts
8 PostsNarrative Essay
The Woman at the Edge of the Record
Finding Geneviève Abitakijikokwe at Oka Mission
Her name was written eight different ways, under two naming systems, across thirty-eight years of Oka Mission registers. Identifying her required going beyond the published indexes to the original manuscript — where a published transcription contradicted its own photograph.
Read More →Narrative Essay
Two Mothers at Oka
A name at the bottom of a burial record — and the Ottawa woman it belonged to
On April 4, 1801, a woman the priest recorded as "catherine messenepik8e" witnessed the burial of a two-year-old boy. She was not identified as a relative. Tracing her Algonquian name through four spellings revealed an Ottawa woman who had buried her own daughter in the same cemetery two years earlier.
Read More →Historical Context
Dans le Bois
Death in the Hunting Grounds and the Spring Return to Oka Mission
Every autumn, Algonquin and Ojibwe families dispersed from the mission into the Ottawa Valley watershed for the winter hunt. When someone died in the frozen forest, families held their dead until the ice broke — then made the long canoe journey home. Three parish records, 1792–1795, document this practice. One carries the Abitakijikokwe name.
Read More →Historical Context
Mapped by Their Own Hands
Indigenous Cartography and the World Marie Josephte Left Behind
Around 1728, a Cree guide named Ochagach drew a map on birch bark showing the water route from Lake Superior to the far interior. His knowledge shaped every French, British, and American map that followed. The Ochagach map, the Buache engraving of 1754, and the Carver manuscript are windows into the Saulteaux world — the world Father Leclercq named in 1801 when he recorded Marie Josephte's baptism.
Read More →Research Methodology
Finding Marie Josephte
How One Ojibwe Woman Emerged from Two Centuries of Silence
For 200 years she was listed only as "Sauvagesse." Using FamilySearch Full Text Search and systematic research across five Quebec parishes, her Anishinaabe name emerged from her January 1801 baptism at Oka.
Read More →Name Analysis
Abitakijikokwe: The Woman Behind the Name
What "Mid-Sky Woman" Tells Us About Who She Was
At her baptism in January 1801, Father Leclercq recorded both her Anishinaabe name and her nation. Abitakijik, the sky at its midpoint — the sun at midday — and -okwe, woman: what the name means, and what it reveals about the woman who carried it.
Read More →Personal Reflection
Ojibwe Baskets, Beads, and Art
A Genealogist's Discovery
When I discovered my Ojibwe 4th-great-grandmother, I wasn't prepared for how profoundly that discovery would change the way I understood my family's history — or what it sent me looking for next.
Read More →Historical Context
Marriage à la façon du pays
The Unions That Built a Nation
Understanding the "country marriages" between French fur traders and Indigenous women — unions that created kinship networks across thousands of miles of territory and produced the Métis people.
Read More →Blog Companion - Coming Soon
The Erasure at Rigaud
When a Name Disappears from the Record
In 1801 Father Leclercq wrote her Anishinaabe name. In 1813, when she was buried at Sainte-Madeleine-de-Rigaud, she had become simply "Marie Josette Sauvagesse de nation." The same woman. Two very different acts of record-keeping.
Coming Soon →Case Studies
From the Original RegistersCase Study · Episode 3
The Abitakijikokwe Discovery
Uncovering an Ojibwe Ancestor in Quebec Parish Records
For two hundred years she was nameless in the family record — listed only as "Sauvagesse." Systematic research across five Quebec parishes led to her baptism at Oka in January 1801, where the priest wrote down her own Anishinaabe name and her nation: Marie Josephte Abitakijikok8e, de la nation Sauteuse sur le lac supérieur.
Read Full Case Study →Case Study · Research Methodology
The War Chief's Wife
Documenting Geneviève Abitakijikokwe Across Two Name Systems at Oka Mission, 1786–1824
She appears in eleven primary records under eight spellings and two naming systems, written by three priests across thirty-eight years. Identifying Geneviève Abitakijikokwe — wife of the Algonquin war chief Kitchiwabisi — meant tracing one woman through both systems, examining a published transcription that contradicted its own manuscript photograph, and returning to the original register to resolve it.
Read Full Case Study →Case Study · Name Identification
The Woman at the Grave
Identifying Catherine Messinabikwe Across Four Colonial Spellings
When two-year-old François Guilbault was buried at the Oka mission in 1801, a woman the priest wrote as "catherine messenepik8e" stood witness. No index had identified her. Traced through five records and four spellings — from madore to Messinebik8e, Missinebik8e and messenepik8e — she is an Ottawa woman, Catherine Messinabikwe, and her presence connects two Indigenous families sharing grief at the same small mission.
Read Full Case Study →Case Study · The Limits of the Record
Born in the Pays d'en Haut
Joseph Claude Guilbault, son of Gabriel and Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe
Baptized at sixteen months, legitimized at Oka at four, and buried at Oka in January 1833 as Voyageur, "recently settled at this mission." The French priest barely knew him. The Algonkin Grand Chief Pierre Louis Constant Pinesi stood at his grave, with a second Algonkin man beside him. What the records establish about him, and what they cannot yet carry.
Read Full Case Study →Three Churches, One Story
Connected SeriesWhere the Story Begins
Saint-Paul-de-Lavaltrie
Today Saint-Paul, near Joliette · Lanaudière
"Where the Story Begins"
October 1798: A voyageur brought three children from the pays d'en haut for baptism. Their mother was identified as "Josephte Sauvagesse de la nation des Sauteux" — the first documented reference to her Indigenous identity.
Sacred Places Profile →Where Her Name Was Preserved
L'Annonciation d'Oka
Lake of Two Mountains
"Where Her Name Was Preserved"
January 1801: at her baptism, Father Leclercq recorded her Anishinaabe name and her nation — "Marie Josephte Abitakijikok8e de la nation Sauteuse sur le lac supérieur."
Sacred Places Profile →Where Her Name Was Lost
Sainte-Madeleine-de-Rigaud
Vaudreuil-Soulanges
"Where Her Name Was Lost"
June 1813: When she was buried, she had become simply "Marie Josette Sauvagesse de nation" — her Ojibwe name erased. The same woman, the same Church, two very different acts of record-keeping.
Sacred Places Profile →Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series
The Guilbault Line
Voyageurs of the Pays d'en Haut — the documentary biography series