Shawnowshkung (He Rattles) aka Chief Bemidji and other Cass and Leech Lake Ojibwe made their first permanent settlement on the south shore of Lake Bemidji.  An elder and spokesman for the group, Shawnowshkung later welcomed the first white settlers. When Shaynowishkung shared the name of Lake  Bemijigamaag (lake with cross waters), the settlers thought he was sharing his name, so they mistakenly named the new village Bemidji after him. Forced to remove to his allotment on the Cass Lake Reservation he died in 1904 of pneumonia. He had hoped that he would be buried on his land in Bemidji but was not.  

 

Bemidji is a "golden city" along the river's bank, only miles from where the mighty Mississippi River begins its 2,552 mile journey to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico, a city at the center of the legends of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox.