Born the only child to George and Julia Fleming, in Hayward on January 7' 1902, John Fleming came into this world during a time of bleak transition for Native American peoples. Instead of being raised in the old Ojibway traditions of his ancestors (a bygone era in which tightly knitted clans nomadically roamed the woodlands to hunt, fish, and gather while following the food…a free but often mortally harsh lifestyle during the long, hard Wisconsin winters) John was born during a time when the federal Government deprived young Indians of learning about their heritage and forced them to learn about the ways of the white man's world in some ways a more secure lifestyle, but one which was imposed on them at a high cost...cultural neargenocide. John's father, George Fleming, was born in Odanah in 1863 and worked in the logging industry. Raising beef for the lumber camps during the logging days, George was said to have operated a cattle farm where Fleming's Bar today quietly rests beneath the waters of the flowage - hence the name of this most famous musky haunt. The Fleming homestead was located just off the north shores of Pokegama lake, about ¼ mile southwest of Desire lake (today known as Moonshine Lake) or ¾ of a mile due west of the heart of Old Post village. With the old Chippewa trail coming up from Winter, located about 13 miles to the southeast, and going on to Hayward, which was about 20 miles to the northwest, the closer proximity of the village of Winter to the Post made commerce with Winter a bit more desirable. By the time John was born, the lumbering boom which had begun some 20 years earlier in this area was about over and activity at the Post was beginning to wane. Following the completion of the Hayward Indian boarding school in 1901,
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