This is an article my sister found about our Great Great Great Grandfather, John Boucher. It was originally published in The Outing Magazine, Volume XLVI, 1905. No author or photographer were credited.

JOHN BOUCHER—RAPIDS’ PILOT

WITHOUT John Boucher, Sault Ste. Marie has lost half its charm. Few characters anywhere were as widely known or as universally respected, and his friends were scattered from the rising to the setting sun.

Boucher was known to the tourists as the most famous of rapids pilots. ‘Twas he who first introduced, more than fifty years ago, the ride of danger as a source of amusement. For many years “Shooting the rapids” in the Indian canoes has been a sport no tourist has missed. Every steamer stops in the locks long enough to allow for it.

With the years, as the crowds increased, many Indians were required to accommodate them. A dozen or more canoes were filled and re-filled and no time lost. But it was each tourist’s ambition to shoot the rapids with John Boucher himself. There was a sort of distinction in this. Had his special canoe been a hundred times its size it would not have been large enough.

With an Indian in the stern he poled his light bark to the head of the falls. All in a second the paddles were lifted. The angry current caught it, wheeled it about, took it like lightning down the mad rushing river that leaped and shrieked in its wild death dance, struggling to dash the canoe against the ragged rocks hiding in the fleecy foam.

Many lives have been lost in the rapids—in fact, it is said a white man cannot run the rapids—but never a life was lost with John Boucher as guide.

He loved this danger. Standing In the bow, his hair floating in the wind, his face wet with spray, he fixed his keen eye on the shifting trail through the foam.

From the head of the falls to their foot is three-quarters of a mile. In three minutes he was conqueror in the battle of rock and wave. His whoop and laugh said “All is well” to those huddled under the rubber apron as the seething current shot the canoe from the deafening thunder into the most peaceful calm.

It is a ride of death, but who feared death with John Boucher as guide! Long before he died he would have turned his paddle over to a younger Indian, but the tourists would not have it. His name and fame had reached them long before they ever came to the Sault—every souvenir of the place bore his likeness, every canoe on the river had his name on its bow. He was the most prominent figure by far in all the country round—and so until he died in his bed his boat was full from sunrise to sunset all the summer long, a lifetime through.

People, themselves grown old, returning in after years to Sault Ste. Marie, found John Boucher young and laughing as they had left him long ago.

He was of medium height, with powerful shoulders and muscles of iron. He stooped slightly as he walked. His step was quick and light, caught from the trail. He wore the dress of the white man, and for many years had worn a broad band of mourning around his slouch hat.

He had masses of blue-black hair tumbling over his forehead, skin of polished bronze and under his heavy brows great red-brown eyes smouldered like coals in classic features.

When he spoke his fine countenance lighted up, his whole being swelled with emotion—swaying with many a graceful gesture—clothing his story in all the flowery terms of the wilderness.

John Boucher, like the Chief of the Senecas, might have fitly proclaimed, “I am an orator,” for he was an orator born. He loved to tell of the early days of Bow-e-ting, now the world-famed Sault, when it was only an Indian fishing village; where the plumed and painted warriors danced by the camp-fires’ glow and smoked their pipes at the Chief’s lodge, which stood on the spot where the great power-house of the tribes now stands.

He wove many a tale of the days of the fur companies when the bateaux of the French had command of the river, and he sang many a song he had learned from the voyageur. It was so interesting to listen to him tell of the days before the locks were built, when it took a month to drag a vessel one mile over the land, and when flour was fifty dollars a barrel at the Sault!

“I remember,” he would often say, “the first time I ever tasted white bread. I was only a child. The officers’ children of Fort Brady came out one afternoon eating bread and butter. I grabbed it from them and ran and hid to eat it; afterward I used to hide behind the trees and wait for them; when I jumped out and scared them they would drop the bread and run away. How good it tasted to an Indian child,” smacking his lips at the recollection.

John Boucher was one of the early mail carriers who trailed the snow coaster of that region with sledge dogs and snow shoes, and carried money in gold. For twenty years he was U. S. mail carrier between Sault Ste. Marie and Saginaw. Until 1860 he had not even the Mackinaw Trail as guide. Often he carried thousands of dollars for the fur companies, and as travelers went from point to point with the mail carriers, and as these travelers were not always strictly honest, John had often to risk his life in defense of the mail.

During the time that Frederic Baraga was compiling his dictionary of the Chippewa language, John Boucher was his interpreter and helper. He was a great favorite of the celebrated Bishop, and went by the name of “Star of the Soul.”

In spite of the sentiment of old Tecumseh Sherman, that “the only good Indian is a dead Indian,” he loved John Boucher.  Every day the General spent at the Sault, John was in constant attendance. As with Millard Fillmore and General Sheridan and many others, John went as guide in the woods and on the water with Sherman, and when they walked through the streets of the town, the General showed his friendship by walking hours at a time with his arm round Boucher’s neck.

John Boucher was a Chippewa half-breed, his mother the daughter of the noted chief Oga (Linto Pickerel), and his father a wealthy fur trader, direct descendant of the famous writer and explorer, Pierre Boucher. He was born on the rapids’ bank, their roar had been his lullaby, he had spent his life on their wild bosom, and he loved them. He was often heard to say toward the last, when he was too weak to go down to the shore, and used to sit, listen and look with tearful eyes:

“I hope I shall die before they dam the rapids. John loves them free, and in my grave I want to be near where I can hear them singing always!”

John married a Chippewa squaw and educated a large family of children. He was a devout Catholic. For fifty-three years not a mass was sung that his deep voice was absent from the choir. Never was he known to take his canoe out or to fish on Sunday, and he was one of ten thousand Indians who, when the winter set in, would go to the timbers and camp with the lumbermen until spring.

When john Boucher died he was followed to his grave on the river bank by every citizen of prominence in the region of Sault Ste. Marie, and the Indians came two and three days’ journey to be present. With him passed away a landmark of the great Northwest.

As a rapids’ pilot he was known to the largest numbers; as rapids’ pilot he will be most missed and best remembered.