Pierre Chimakadewiiash Bonga (Ojibwe: Makadewiiyas, "Black-skinned"; recorded as "Mukdaweos") (c. 1770 – 1831, Minnesota) was a black trapper and interpreter for the North West Company, based in Canada near Mackinac Island.
He later worked for John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company, primarily along the Red River of the North and near Lake Superior in present-day Wisconsin and Minnesota.
[3] Mackinac Island had long been a center of fur trade with the Ojibwe and Ottawa people, by French, British and American traders.
Freed by Robertson before his departure, the Bonga couple married on 25 June 1794, with Jean Nicolas Marchesseaux as a witness, in the Catholic church on Mackinac Island.
[4] Growing up on Mackinac Island, Pierre Bonga learned English and Ojibwe, as well as becoming highly skilled at trapping and scouting.
[6][verification needed] The ethnologist Henry R. Schoolcraft recorded meeting the unusual family in 1820 in his Narrative Journal of Travels; he remarked that the children looked more African than Indian.