His father, Makwabimidem, also spelled Moquabimeten, "Beargrease," was the chief of a small group of Ojibwe that settled in Beaver Bay in 1858 to work in the sawmill.

His mother Newagagamsbag (Otoe) and two brothers named Peter (Daybosh) and Joseph (Skowegan) lived in a wigwam on the edge of town.

Besides his work as a trapper, John's father was also a sailor on a schooner owned by the town's founder, Albert Wieland.

In his late teens, John worked on commercial fishing, passenger, and freight ships that sailed on Lake Superior.

By the 1880s, when John was in his twenties, the North Shore had many small settlements that could be reached by the recently built railroad, but it only went as far as Two Harbors.

The Beargrease family knew the route well because they ran trap lines along it to sell furs to the European markets.

The Minnesota Historical Society writes: "The mail carrier was the link to the outside world for the people living along the North Shore.

[1] Some sources mention that he died from pneumonia caused by saving another mail carrier by diving into the freezing waters of Lake Superior.

One day in 1910, he went out in a storm to rescue another mail carrier whose boat was caught in the waves off Tamarack Point, near Grand Portage.