from the St. Mary's Mission baptismal records, 1901:
photocopy
of baptismal record from St. Mary's Mission, Redlake
Wub-e-ke-niew writes
in We Have The Right To Exist:
Bah-se-nos
lived in his birchbark longhouse his whole life. When
he died the U.S. Government burned his longhouse. Bah-se-nos
died in the 1901 smallpox
epidemic at Red Lake (the Europeans developed a vaccine for smallpox in
1792,
and were immunizing many of their own people).
The Catholic Priest, Father Thomas, claimed to have "baptized
the
old Pagan"[i]
as he lay
dying in his longhouse, which is false.
Bah-se-nos was buried in the Bear Dodem family graveyard by my
grandfather's
house in Be-kwa-kwan
[i].Furth,
Op. cit. Father Thomas' statement
that he baptized
"Bassinas" and gave him Communion and Extreme Unction is untrue, and
probably was made because of the pressure, by his boss, about my
great-grandfather.
[Editor's note: the following
notation about Bah-se-nos was included in the Red Lake genealogical
database: "Baptismal Register, St.
Mary's Catholic Mission, Redlake [photostat.]: listed as Joseph
Bassinass;
Natus: "80 ann.;" Dies Baptismi: 20 Jun 901; sacraments: Thomas
Borgerding OSB; notation: "Privatum. Non adfinit patrinus propter
morbum contagiosum
smallpox." [Oral History,
Wub-e-ke-iew,
1989:
he was neither knowing nor willing participant to baptism--he was
already
dead.]"