Chief John Smith lived his entire life in the Cass Lake area of Minnesota,
Chief John Smith lived his entire life in the Cass Lake area of Minnesota, and was reputed to have been 137 years old when he died of pneumonia. He was known as "The Old Indian" to the local white people.[1] He had eight wives and no children, except for an adopted son, named Tom Smith. Local photographers, notably including C.N. Christensen of Cass Lake, used him as a model for numerous stylized images of Ojibwe life, which were widely distributed as cabinet photos and postcards. Smith would carry cartes de visite of himself, selling them to visitors. He was known to travel for free on the trains running through the Reservation, selling his photo to passengers, and becoming something of an attraction or celebrity.[2] Smith converted to Catholicism in about 1914, and is buried in the Catholic section of Pine Grove Cemetery in Cass Lake. The exact age of John Smith at the time of his death has been a subject of controversy. Federal Commissioner of Indian Enrollment Ransom J. ...