Sermon, June 22 2025, Enmegahbowh celebration observed

Sermon, Celebration of Enmegahbowh

“I was once as you are, but when the Great Spirit gave me little light, I followed it and more came and it made me all that I am.”

Enmegahbowh was known as a bridge-builder and peacemaker. He was a mediator between the government and the Ojibwe in 1862, he helped negotiate peace between the Dakota and the Ojibwe in 1869. He was well known for giving away his own belongings.

Enmegahbowh was a humble individual, he often felt he was not smart enough to do the work that was set before him. Early in his time of education and learning he was quoted as saying, “If they cannot do this work, how can I?” However, after five years of preparation, at the age of 36, he was ordained to the Diaconate and his profound and impactful ministry began in earnest.

Listen again to the Collect from Enmegahbowh’s lection: “Almighty God, you led your pilgrim people of old with fire and cloud; grant that the ministers of your church, following the example of blessed Enmegahbowh, may stand before your holy people, leading them with fiery zeal and gentle humility. This we ask through Jesus, the Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”

There are strong parallels between the lives of Moses and Enmegahbowh. Moses left a life of luxury in the court of Pharaoh to follow this Hebrew God he did not know. It led him to wander in the wilderness with a group of grumbling, angry, often faithless people, and to die before entering the Promised Land.

Enmegahbow, left a life as a leader of the Ojibwe and an important elder to follow a God whom he did know, as Kitchi Manitou, to lead a people, the Gull Lake Ojibwe whom he did not know, across swamps, mosquito plagued and dank, through snow and bitter cold. He lost two of his children in the process of bringing peace to the Ojibwe and the Dakota and the white settlers.

Enmegahbow, who was called in Ojibwe “the one who stands before his people praying” was not only the leader of his pilgrim people, like Moses, but he was also Aaron, the brother of Moses who was the one who could inspire with his eloquence. It was said, by Minnesota’s first bishop, Bishop Whipple, “Enmegahbow was the most faithful of men, in a time of faithlessness.”

Basil Johnston, an Ojibwe scholar and former curator of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, speaks of who The Holy One was revealed to be to the Ojibwe. Kitchi Manitou means “the Great Mystery of the supernatural order”, it also means, “one beyond human grasp, beyond words, neither male or female, not of flesh, but in the world”, because what little is known of Kitchi Manitou, the creator of all things, is known through the vision of creation.

We see Kitchi Manitou’s footprints in Mother Earth and in all the created beings which live upon her. Kitchi Manitou had a vision and the vision was of the world to be created. And when that job was done, Kitchi Manitou charged the Anishinabe, the human beings, to emulate the work that had been done in creation. Kitchi Manitou gave free will to the people, and the only desire which Kitchi Manitou had was that human beings would show their thanksgiving by using their gifts and energies and skills to share their worldly goods, knowledge, experience and abilities with those in need and their neighbors, both human and non-human.

All things, it was to be understood should be respected. If you took the life of a deer, a fish, a grouse or a rabbit to eat, you did so respectfully and prayed for its spirit’s journey back to Kitchi Manitou who had created it. The whole of creation was a living, breathing web of life, inter-related and loved by the one who created it.

Johnston’s eloquence, like Enmegahbow’s, can be heard. “With their senses, nay their entire beings, awake and alive to the world, men and women discovered the presence of Kitchi Manitou, in the creation and all its beings.” This was the first “seminary,” for the preparation of Enmegahbowh, the teachings of the Grand Medicine Society. The Ojibwe had their own, valid, powerful Old Testament and covenant with Kitchi Manitou, whom we call God.

Bishop Whipple candidly admits that without “this most faithful of men,” the mission of creating the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota would have failed. In a very real way, Enmegahbow is the “father” of the Diocese of Minnesota, throughout the Diocese he is known as our Patron Saint.


For 22 years Enmegahbow labored as interpreter and leader in what is now northern Minnesota. After his training, and attempts in calling James Lloyd Breck and other Episcopal priests to serve the Ojibwe, and successfully establishing St. Columba’s Mission at Gull Lake near what is now Brainerd, the white missionaries fled the threats of death from warring groups of Dakota and Ojibwe, who were deeply angered by the betrayal of the U.S. government who by treaty owed health, education, food and land to them, which were never delivered.

Steve Schaitberger and Verne Pickering wrote a biography of Enmegahbowh and share the following story:

"There was warfare between the Dakota in Minnesota and the United States federal government in the late summer of 1862. The Ojibwe in Northern Minnesota watched with fear and trembling at the brutality of the warfare; the trials, execution, and incarceration of Dakota men, women, and children; and their exile beyond the borders of Minnesota.

Among the Northern Ojibwe, there was political ambivalence over the incursion of the federal government and its disregard of treaty rights. As an interpreter among the many treaty languages as well as a mission priest of the Episcopal Church, Enmegahbowh moved dangerously through the brutal conflict.

It became known in August that warriors from Hole in the Day’s community had seized and taken prisoner several white settlers. Enmegahbowh and his wife, Charlotte, felt threatened also. They fled with their children to a white settlement. They were stopped by Ojibwe warriors and started back home. At their return they heard war drums beating. Warriors were preparing to attack the federal Indian agency on the Crow Wing River.

Enmegahbowh, Charlotte, and their children fled again for safety to Fort Ripley by canoe, a 25 mile journey on the Gull River. In the shallow waters the parents had to wade in the cold river water to shelter the children. They arrived at the Fort with the warning of attack but their children, Alfred and Henry, became increasingly ill with time and subsequently died in November.

In retaliation for a perceived betrayal the warriors destroyed everything at St. Columba’s, the gardens, oxen, and livestock. When the Ojibwe removal to reservations took place Enmegahbowh and his family were forced by the federal military to leave the mission. They were separated from the white mission residents and would begin a new St. Columba’s on the White Earth Reservation.

As the military arrived for their removal Charlotte went weeping to the graves of their children. At the White Earth Reservation tuberculosis eventually took the life of Charlotte. At the end of his life Enmegahbowh was cared for by a teenage grandson who also died of tuberculosis.

In 1903 this stunning priest of Northern Minnesota (then the Diocese of Duluth) died alone and grieving. His legacy in the mission of Episcopalians during the violent indigenous dislocation within Minnesota is of one who stood before all people in Minnesota’s racial and ethnic diversity proclaiming the Christian gospel."

He was a man of peace and finally, in 1869, secured a lasting peace between the Dakota and Ojibwe after nearly 150 years of constant battles. Enmegahbow’s life, like the humble and powerful servanthood of Christ, makes him, by any standard, a servant of the people, who was doing what both his Christian and Grand Medicine training dictated - humbly serving the people he stood with, even though it cost him dearly, even the death of several of his children and a life of hardship.

Enmegahbowh is the icon of our diocese. Just as Jesus had done, Enmegahbow preached blessings and love to all the people he could, as today’s Gospel says. Whenever we, as a diocese, have given our best efforts to reach out to those not experiencing the power of Christian community, we have thrived.

During Whipple’s time we did that by serving both Native peoples and the white settlers. We established churches in every one of Minnesota’s 87 counties. We served, defended and ministered alongside native people in a time when the State of Minnesota was hanging Native people for defending their rights and land after the Dakota War of 1862.

Enmegahbowh is an example to all who continue to be engaged in proclaiming the way of love rooted in Minnesota’s ethnic and cultural diversity. The legal name of the Episcopal Church in the United States is “The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society” the DFMS. No one lived that out with more courage, more energy, more eloquence and more determined faithfulness than Enmegahbowh.

Enmegahbow nurtured, educated and helped to call the first apostles in our diocese, Whipple, Breck, Gilfillan, Mazakute, the first Dakota Priest, and through him, we also are all being called to be apostles, missionaries. Remember that small vision of light, it’s not just a light at the end of the tunnel, it's a light given by the Great Spirit, and it will make you into all you are made to be.