Assassination of Hole in the Day

• By: Anton Treuer
• Format: 304 pp., 6 x 9, 30 b&w; photographs
• Publisher: MHS Press (October 2010)
• Usually ships in: 1 to 3 business days

Explores the murder of the controversial Ojibwe chief who led his people through the first difficult years of dispossession by white invaders—and created a new kind of leadership for the Ojibwe.

“The Assassination of Hole in the Day is a masterful history, and more. Anton Treuer illuminates the character of a controversial and charismatic Ojibwe leader from within Ojibwe culture, and tells a powerful story of loss that reverberates in the present.” Louise Erdrich

• Anton Treuer's Website

• Dr. Treuer on Lakeland Public Television's Common Ground

• Star Tribune Review

• Anton Treuer on Almanac

• Anton Treuer on Twin Cities Public Television's Almanac talking about Ojibwe in Minnesota

• Anton Treuer on Minnesota Public Radio discussing Language Preservation

• Anton Treuer and his brother David Treuer on NPR's Fresh Air discussing Ojibwe Language Preservation

On June 27, 1868, Hole in the Day (Bagone-giizhig) the Younger left Crow Wing, Minnesota, for Washington, DC, to fight the planned removal of the Mississippi Ojibwe to a reservation at White Earth. Several miles from his home, the self-styled leader of all the Ojibwe was stopped by at least twelve Ojibwe men and fatally shot.

Hole in the Day’s death was national news, and rumors of its cause were many: personal jealousy, retribution for his claiming to be head chief of the Ojibwe, retaliation for the attacks he fomented in 1862, or reprisal for his attempts to keep mixed-blood Ojibwe off the White Earth Reservation. Still later, investigators found evidence of a more disturbing plot involving some of his closest colleagues: the business elite at Crow Wing.

While most historians concentrate on the Ojibwe relationship with whites to explain this story, Anton Treuer focuses on interactions with other tribes, the role of Ojibwe culture and tradition, and interviews with more than fifty elders to further explain the events leading up to the death of Hole in the Day. The Assassination of Hole in the Day is not only the biography of a powerful leader but an extraordinarily insightful analysis of a pivotal time in the history of the Ojibwe people.

“ An essential study of nineteenth-century Ojibwe leadership and an important contribution to the field of American Indian Studies by an author of extraordinary knowledge and talent. Treuer’s work is infused with a powerful command over Ojibwe culture and linguistics.”
—Ned Blackhawk, author of Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West

Anton Treuer, professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, is the author of Ojibwe in Minnesota and several books on the Ojibwe language. He is also the editor of Oshkaabewis Native Journal, the only academic journal of the Ojibwe language.