Two Score Years Ago...Historical Reflections

March 27, 1967 was a damp, dark, and foggy night. A forty-six year old former U.S. Marine with combat experience in World War II was on his way back to Immanuel Hospital in Mankato, Minnesota, to be on hand for the birth of his second child. Earlier that Monday evening, after finishing work and having supper; he had driven his wife to the same location that he was now anxiously trying to return to in the swirling, milky, darkness. While his wife prepared to deliver their new baby at the hospital; his second mission had been to take their four year old daughter to the home of her maternal grandparents, who lived twenty-five miles away. They would care for her until after the birth of her baby brother or sister. This came at 11:34 p.m. Family lore indicates that the father arrived just in time for the birth of his son; although in those days, men were not allowed in the delivery room itself. Thus began my journey in this life; a journey that with this writing is about to enter its fourth decade.

My earliest recollections are of individual family members, how the rooms of our house were arranged, and of my playpen, where I spent considerable time in those early days. One of my morning rituals was to stand up in my crib and watch my "big" sister leave for school on the shiny, yellow, school bus. Sometimes, I longed to do it too; but more often I was content to stay at home, listen to my mother read me stories and take an afternoon nap. I don't remember all the turmoil generated by the Vietnam War or the assassinations of MLK and RFK in 1968, but I'm sure I was affected by them; because during the social unrest generated by those events, my father was a security guard at Mankato State College (now Minnesota State University, Mankato). Shortly after it was built, my father took me to view the Fourth of July fireworks from one of the top floors of the Gage Dormitory complex.

I entered grade school in the early 1970s. It was a decade of contradictions. On one hand, I was taught by my parents to respect authority and to revere America's traditions and symbols; on the other hand, I saw just the opposite on television (my father insisted that his children watch the news; because as he put it, "it's history--you will have to learn about it some day.) and in public. It was hard to make sense of it all. I don't remember the Apollo Moon Landing in 1969, but I do remember the launch of "Skylab" in the early 1970s. Like many little boys of the time, I wanted to be an astronaut. When Mankato East High opened its doors in 1973, it featured a state of the art (for its time) planetarium that I got to go to once a year on school fieldtrips. This opened my eyes to how large and wonderous our universe really is; an appreciation that I still have. The biggest political event of my early years was the Watergate Scandal. I had no idea what it was or that President Nixon was somehow involved. I thought some dam had broken in the western United States, and had flooded the country. My sister soon dispelled this fallacy with her air of superior wisdom (we had a similar relationship to the Lucy and Linus characters in the Peanuts comic strip popular at the time), but she didn't tell me what really happened, other than that the "Watergate" was a hotel. That made no sense to me at all! Even worse were the hearings that were televised on CBS day after day. I was bored to tears and angry that my favorite programs had been taken off the air. Since we only got one channel, it was almost more than I could bear.

1976 was a big year for me. I was nine years old, and it was the Bicentennial of the United States. At least on the surface, it appeared as if everybody was celebrating. I participated in Mankato's big city parade, riding in a newly painted red wagon, pulled by one of my father's hunting dogs. Late that summer, I took my longest car trip thus far. One of my cousins was getting married in New Mexico. It took two days to get there and three to return home. We crossed seven states (one way), and I realized just how big my country really was for the first time. Before that trip, I hated to travel by car; afterwards, I developed a wanderlust that I still have.

The 1980s was a decade of maturing, with numerous growing pains along the way. I endured both junior high and high school, graduating in 1986. It was during these formative years that I resolved to be a historian, even sneaking a peak at a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin behind the stacks of books in the school library to avoid being ridiculed by my peers. One day, walking into my American Government course, I learned that the space shuttle Challenger had just exploded. We spent the rest of the class period watching the story unfold. The second half of the decade was better than the first. By then, I could choose what I wanted to study in college. I enrolled at Mankato State University as an undergraduate student in the fall of 1986; it was a liberating experience. For the first time since elementary school, I actually enjoyed going again.

I received my undergraduate degree in teaching Social Studies in 1990. The "me-first" generation of the 1980s gave way to the "politically correct" era of the 1990s. When setting out to begin my graduate work in History, I resolved to participate in more social activities and enjoy myself, rather than simply study all the time to earn a degree. This proved to be one of my wisest decisions; because it was at this juncture that I became actively involved with the Mankato State History Club, forming lasting friendships that continue to this day. I also worked as a graduate teaching assistant for two years, another great opportunity. After graduating with a Master's Degree in 1995, I spent the remaining five years of the decade launching my teaching career. With the approach of the year 2000, I realized I was witness to a unique time in history. Most people witness at least one decade change; some people live in more than one century; but to live in two millenniums is unique.

I was traveling to Springfield, Illinois to attend a Lincoln Symposium on September 11, 2001. I will never forget where I was or what I was doing when I first heard the news. For my generation, 9/11 was our Fort Sumter, our Pearl Harbor, our JFK Assassination. At the time, the rumor was that Flight 93 (the one that crashed in Pennsylvania) was headed for Chicago. I was only 80 miles from Chicago that morning. It was rumored that traffic on I90E would be stopped at the Wisconsin/Illinois border and be turned back. This rumor proved to be untrue, and the conference went on as scheduled. However, several of the speakers who were planning on making the trip by air were prevented from doing so on account of the tragedy. To their credit, the National Park Service kept the Lincoln House open as a sign of national unity; I thought it altogether fitting and proper that they should do this.

In the last five years, I have published three books and have written two more dramatic plays that are slated to be published in 2007, my fortieth year. What the new decade holds in store for me is anybody's guess. Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be interesting. There is an old cliche, "Life begins at 40." In that case, I'm ready; bring it on!

--Bryce O. Stenzel

History_haters
Originally uploaded by history_haters.

It is the end of the year and time again for the "infamous history-haters" to meet at that old time cafe known as Bakers Square.

All kidding aside, we did meet and chatted at length about everything under the sun, making good on a past professor's assertion that all we do is sit around and engage in "intellectual masturbation".

We had a great time and look forward to the new year and new discoveries. We plan on continuing our comments on historical sites worth or not worth visiting and we plan on commenting on current historical trends.

We welcome comments and questions to anything pertaining to our posts or that deal with history, particularly Minnesota history.

Have a great new year and keep reading!!

"Coming to Terms With the Past: The Dakota Conflict of 1862"

Below is an essay written and published by historian, Bryce O. Stenzel, in his book, Mankato Milestones. It was originally released in 2002, for the Mankato Sesquicentennial celebration, and is available through Minnesota Heritage Publishing.

The execution of the thirty-eight Dakota warriors at Mankato, [Minnesota], on December 26, 1862, remains the largest mass-execution in American history. Not surprisingly, there have been a wide range of strong opinions and emotional expressions, both on how the event should be remembered, as well as how the location of the execution site should be marked. Immediately after the event, those who wrote the histories of the Conflict described the Indians, who were involved, as "blood-thirsty savages." Consequently, they deserved punishment for "massacring" innocent, white settlers on the frontier. Little attention was given to the underlying causes of the war, such as treaty violations by the government agents sent to protect the Indians, or encroachement by settlers on Indian lands. More recently, efforts have been made to tell the story from the Native American perspective to the point that earlier efforts to commemorate the struggle have been ridiculed and discarded.

The most notable of these attempts to revise history in favor of the Dakota side involved the removal and banishment of the original granite marker that was erected in 1912. On its surface was inscribed in raised letters: "HERE WERE HANGED 38 SIOUX INDIANS, DECEMBER 26, 1862." Critics of the monument argued that the memorial should be removed because it gave no details about the hanging or the events that led up to it. Even worse, the revisionists claimed the marker was blatently racist, on account of the fact that the word "Sioux" was used (a nickname originally given to this group of Indians by French explorers who had borrowed it from the Ojibway Indians they first encountered. The Dakota (Sioux) and Ojibway (Chippewa) had been bitter enemies centuries before the French explorers came to Minnesota. Not surprisingly, the Ojibway called their enemies by an insulting name. Translated, the name meant, "snake").

Those that advocated removal of the memorial marker won the battle. The stone marker, weighing several tons, was taken down and put into storage. In 1987, as part of the "Year of Reconciliation," a new plaque was erected by the Minnesota Historical Society, detailing the the background of the U.S.-Dakota War, the hanging at Mankato and its aftermath. Two new memorials were erected to the memory of the Dakota warriors, the Winter Warrior and the Buffalo. In September 1997, Reconciliation Park was established.

Despite these efforts, there were those determined to destroy the old marker as a way to vent their rage and frustration against past discrimination toward Native Americans. Over the years numerous threats have been made to throw the marker into the river [Minnesota River], grind it up to be used as road fill, pour red paint all over it, etc. Such attitudes have forced less militant individuals to "hide" the marker as a means to keep it from being destroyed. Their purpose in doing so was to ensure that if, at some future date, some agency or organization decided to give the marker a place to be properly displayed as a representation of another time and point of view; they would be able to do so.

It should be pointed out that contrary to popular belief, those who erected the marker in 1912 (the fiftieth anniversary of the hanging) did not intend to insult or humiliate Native Americans. In his dedication address, Judge Lorin Cray (himself a Civil War veteran) admitted there had been some opposition to the erection of the monument at Front and Main Streets, and that he could not refrain from answering the criticism. Cray said, "This marker was not so placed to flaunt before the public that we hanged the Indians. It was erected in an entirely different spirit, to perpetuate the immediate history of the region, permitting handing down the history to the generations to come in a correct manner." Editor John C. Wise, of the Mankato Daily Review, echoed this same sentiment when he remarked that he had no patience for those that indulged in criticism of the marker. He argued that every stranger who landed in Mankato asked to see the location of the hanging. Even President William Howard Taft did so when he visited Mankato. In Wise's view, the monument marked a site and carried neither praise nor blame.

Anna Wiecking, author of: As We Once Were:Stories about the Settlement and Life of Blue Earth County from 1850 to the Early 1900's, summed it up when she said, "Historians, officials of historical societies and other citizens take the view that the monument marks a very important national historic event, and that we need to profit from history, not try to reject or cover it up." Only when the charade of hiding the marker from short-sided destruction has ended and it is allowed to be displayed in its proper historical context, along with proper explanation regarding its controversial inscription will the citizens of Mankato truly come to terms with their past. In doing so, Native Americans and whites will finally [be able to] reconcile their differences.

This essay was written in 2002. Unfortunately, the essay's central message of reconcilaition through objective historical interpretation has gone largely unheeded. It may now be too late to reverse the trend; because those hell-bent on eliminating an alleged symbol of their ancestors oppression, as well as those apologists who assisted them in the name of 'political correctness' have had their way. It is likely that the controversial, granite marker has been sold to or been given over to a minority faction of the Native American community for destruction. In an article published in the May 14, 2006 edition of The Free Press, Mankato city officials all but admitted to doing just that. The revelation came as a result of student inquiry, as part of a history class assignment, led by Minnesota State Professor, Dr. Melodie Andrews. Besides providing an update on the marker's likely fate, the article was revealing in other ways. Below are two direct quotes which illustrate the ongoing historical debate:

' "My personal feelings are that it would stay buried and that people should leave well enough alone." '--Vernell Wabasha, former member of the State Indian Affairs Commission (she claims to know the location of ' "that derogatory rock." ')

' "You certainly don't learn anything if you bury things and try to forget them." '--Melodie Andrews, Professor of History at Minnesota State University, Mankato.

As a historian, I agree with Dr. Andrews' assessement of the controversy. Not only does one not learn anything by burying the past; such ignorance is dangerous in a democratic society. Imagine if the Nazis had been allowed to destroy the evidence of their crimes against humanity; namely the concentration camps (as they tried to do in some areas when it was clear that Germany was losing the war). No one but survivors of the Holocaust would have ever been able to prove what uspeakable horrors were done to them. Once they had died, as many already have, there would be no visual record of the autrocities. Those that deny the Holocaust ever happened would be even more convincing than they already are. The fact that a number of the Nazi death camps have been preserved was done precisely for the same reason that the granite marker should have been kept by some responsible public agency--to serve as a reminder of how one generation remembered a key event in the life of a previous one; and in doing so, linked both generations to our own. Those who deny the past are doomed to repeat it. That is probably the most chilling consequence of this failure to come to terms with the past.

--Bryce O. Stenzel

A Short Elegy on Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address"

Seven score and three years ago this day (November 19, 1863), President Abraham Lincoln stood on the battleground at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where in less than two minutes; he redefined the meaning of American representative democracy by reminding his listeners that America's moral authority to be the "last, best hope of earth" was derived from the proposition "that all men are created equal."

Once again, we are engaged in a great civil war of ideas, testing whether this nation's great moral principles or its insatiable appetite for material comfort and instant gratification will long endure. On one hand, the United States was and still is the land of opportunity. It is the place where people of the world fled to escape political and religious persecution in their own countries. It is the place where some people still believe a person should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin or the profession he chooses.

On the other hand, America has increasingly become a place where the reliance on technology alone as the solution to all problems has become the norm. We have become slaves to devices that seek to substitute artifical intelligence for creative thought. Without these mechanical masters to guide us, we are like lost sheep in a snowstorm. When they fail us, as they often do, we can no longer balance our checkbook, shop at the local supermarket, or vote in a fair, democratic, election. We have enabled Big Brother to spy on us, in the name of national security. We think it is all together fitting and proper that big government should do this. But in a larger sense, we have traded away our freedom for tyranny.

Instead of instilling in our children a sense of pride in who they are as free men and women, we implore them to sacrifice unceasingly upon the alters of standardized testing, in order to appease the false gods of math and science, lest they become the child left behind. We will stand in line for hours (even days) at the mall to acquire the latest gadget that in a few months will be obselete. Worse yet, we will lie, cheat, steal from or kill anybody who gets in the way of our "pursuit of happiness." What have we Americans done to ourselves that no foreign nation or despot could have ever done to us?

Abraham Lincoln challenged his listeners to action by telling them they had a choice to make. They could allow "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" to perish from the earth by overturning the proposition or they could rededicate themselves to the democratic principles (equality, justice for all, personal responsibility, free thought, political accountability) upon which the nation was founded--principles that their own loved ones and countless others had fought to preserve. Only then would there be a "new birth of freedom," in which the dead had not died in vain.

We too have a choice to make. Will we rise to Lincoln's challenge? Will we keep technology in its proper place as a useful tool without allowing it to dictate our entire existance? Will we promote the arts and humanities subjects (including history) to give our children a well-rounded, balanced education? How will the world remember what we did here? Will we experience a "new birth of freedom" or will the moral lights continue to go out all around us?

--Bryce O. Stenzel

November 7, 1876: A Day that Changed History

There are certain historical dates that the mere mention of conjures up an immediate recognition of their significance (at least among those of us who value history): July 4, 1776; November 11, 1918; December 7, 1941 or September 11, 2001. Others, such as November 7, 1876 do not receive the publicity they deserve. Since we are fast approaching the 130th anniversary of this important day, please allow me to explain further.

November 7, 1876 was election day in the United States of America (as it will be in 2006). While it is still too early to tell whether the 2006 election will be a major turning point in American political history, as it promises to be; the Election of 1876 certainly was. Not only was it a presidential contest, but the Election of 1876 was also a referendom on Reconstruction--the period of Northern efforts to dominate the South politically, socially and economically, in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War. As in 2006, the U. S. Senate, Supreme Court and the Presidency were controlled by Republicans. In 1876, Democrats controlled the House of Representatives. Ever since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, the "Radical" faction of the Republican Party had dominated efforts to restore peace and stability in the war ravaged South. The Radical Republicans had imposed harsh Reconstruction measures on their former Confederate adversaries as a way to punish them for seceeding from the Union during the Civil War. Although there were some genuine efforts on the part of Radical Republicans in Congress to give former Black slaves voting rights and other attributes of American citizenship, much of the Radicals' efforts were devoted to preserving their own power by constantly reminding the American people that they alone were the "party of Lincoln," and that the Democratic opposition was the party of treason. Most white Southerners had been Democrats even before the war. It was the Democrats who had supported the continued spread of slavery. It was also the Democrats, who during the Civil War, had been willing to make peace with the South even if it meant the recognition of Southern independence. Worst of all, now that the war had been won, it was the Democrats who still opposed giving civil rights to blacks, even though those rights had been purchased with Northern lives. "Waving the bloody shirt" as it was called reached its zenith in the Election of 1876.

The Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes to be their candidate. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden as their standard bearer. (Had General George A. Custer not been anhiliated at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, he would have likely been the Democrats' nominee.) The Election of 1876 proved to be the most contentious one in American history. It remains so to this day, although their are striking similarities between it and the election of 2000. Hayes received 4,034,311 popular votes to Tilden's 4,288,546. But neither candidate had the neccessary 185 electoral votes to become president. To everyone's dismay it was discovered that four states: Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida and Oregon had sent in double election returns. Which set of voter returns, the Democratic or Republican would be used to determine the electoral votes of each state? Tilden only needed one more electoral vote to win--he already had 184. Oregon's dispute was soon resolved in favor of Hayes, but he still needed all 20 of the votes still in contention in the three Southern states to win by one electoral vote. Who would count the votes to ensure fairness? The country waited with baited breath. Nothing quite like this had ever happened before.

To resolve the dispute, a joint Congressional committee created a special electoral commission to consist of five senators, five representatives and five supreme court justices. Three from the majority party and two from the minority party of each house were chosen. Each party also received 2 supreme court justices. The fifth and most decisive justice would be an independent. This commission would have final authority to rule in cases of double sets of electoral votes, unless overruled by both houses. At the last minute, Judge David Davis of Illinois (Executor of Abraham Lincoln's estate) was appointed to the U.S. Senate by a coalition of Democrats and Independents in Illinois. He was therefore inelligible to be on the Electoral Commission. Joseph Bradley, a Republican was appointed, instead. Although he had the support of Democratic leaders, Bradley voted with his party when the electoral votes were counted on February 1, 1877. Starting with Florida, the Commission voted 8 to 7 to give Hayes all of the disputed electoral votes. The Democratic House of Representatives protested the outcome, but to no avail.

There was some concern that the Democrats in the House might organize a filibuster movement against Hayes while South Carolina's case was being considered, but this situation was remedied by the fact that Hayes had already promised that if he was elected President, he would give the Democrats in the South what they wanted most--removal of the hated federal troops from the region. This promise, known to history as the infamous "Compromise of 1877," did more than anything else to set back black civil rights in the southern United States for almost another century. No longer would there be Union soldiers present to ensure that Southern elections were run fairly and that former slaves were allowed to participate, to say nothing of holding public office themselves.

All of this was in the future; however. At the time, most Americans North and South breathed a collective sigh of relief that the election crisis had been narrowly averted and a possibe renewal of civil war had been averted. Due to the controversy generated by the election, and fearing a coup, it was decided by outgoing President U.S. Grant and other government leaders that Hayes would be privately sworn in as President of the United States on the evening of March 3, 1877. The ceremony took place in the Red Room of the White House. Because Inauguration Day (March 4) was a Sunday that year, Hayes was inaugurated in a public ceremony on Monday, March 5, 1877.

Election night, November 7, 1876, was significant for another reason. It gave a group of counterfeiters, who were determined to spring one of their own comrades from jail, the opportunity to commit one of the most horrific crimes of the nineteenth century--the unsuccessful attempt to steal the body of Abraham Lincoln from his tomb in Springfield, Illinois, in order to hold it hostage in exchange for their comrade's freedom.

The gang, headed by "Big Jim" Kneally was headquartered in Lincoln, Illinois, only twenty-five miles from Springfield. Their master engraver, Ben Boyd had been caught in his workshop and was sent to prison at Joliet, Illinois. He was sentenced to serve ten years. "Big Jim" was unable to find an artist anywhere as talanted as Boyd had been. In order for Kneally's counterfeiting racket to succeed, Boyd must be released from jail. The only way to convince the state of Illinois to give him up was to steal its most precious possession--the body of Abraham Lincoln.

The plan was initially hatched in the spring of 1876, and after some difficulties in organizing, election night was chosen as the best time to break in Lincoln's tomb and steal the body. It would be done after dark, when the crowds of pilgrims had gone home. The contentious nature of the election, in which the Democrats had their first real chance of recapturing the presidency for the first time since the Civil War, further ensured success, because it guaranteed Oak Ridge Cemetery would be deserted both by crowds awaiting election returns and the police who were monitoring rowdy crowds of campaign partisans. Fortunately, the United States Secret Service had infilterated the gang months before, and knew all about the plot. With the support of Lincoln's only surviving son Robert, now a Chicago attorney, they resolved to let the plot go forward and catch the thieves in the act of trying to steal Lincoln's body. Several detectives hid themselves in the series of passages between Memorial Hall (public receiving area of the tomb) and the catacomb where Lincoln's body had been placed in a marble sarcophagus with an easy to open lid on it. The grave robbers almost succeded in their attempt. The casket, containing Lincoln's corpse was halfway out of the sarcophagus before the detectives, hidden on the other side of the inner wall of the catacomb, made it out of the tomb through Memorial Hall and came around the outside of the tomb to intercept the thieves as they left the catacomb. One of the detective's pistols fired accidently and the thieves bolted, leaving the casket behind. After an unsuccessful cemetery chase, the detectives returned to the tomb and reinterred Lincoln's remains the best they could until better improvements could be made. It was months before the thieves were finally caught, tried and convicted.

Although unsuccessful, the raid on Lincoln's tomb proved that the structure was unsecure. Between the fear of having the body stolen again and the need to reconstruct the tomb several times due to structural defects, Lincoln's body was moved a total of seventeen times from 1865 to 1901, when the casket was finally embedded in a cage of steel bars, ten feet below the catacomb floor. Concrete was poured over it and through the bars of the cage, forming a solid cube. Robert Lincoln ordered this procedure to stop the charade of moving his father's body around. He was inspired by the recent death of Chicago's unpopular railroad tycoon, George Pullman, who had been buried this way to prevent desecration of his grave by his own workers, whom he had refused to negotiate with in the Pullman Railroad Strike of the 1890s. When visitors go to see Lincoln's grave site today, they encounter a solid chunk of Arkansas granite inscribed with, "Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865." It is a physical reminder of the influence November 7, 1876 had on the history of the United States.

--Bryce O. Stenzel




Sources:

Lewis, Lloyd. Myths After Lincoln. 1941. 266-281.

Roseboom, Eugene H. and Alfred Eckes Jr. A History of Presidential Elections: From George Washington to Jimmy Carter. Fourth Edition. 1979. 93-97.

Speer, Bonnie Stahlman. The Great Abraham Lincoln Hijack: 1876 Attempt to Steal Body of President Lincoln, 1997. 83-93.

UNCOVERING A REAL HUMAN BEING

It's been a month since my last posting, and I can hardly compete with my colleague's very fine post about Grand Portage. That is truly one of the best places to be in the whole state, if not the nation.

I recently finished reading Marshal Ney: The Romance and the Real by Raymond Horricks (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1982). I've long been a reader of historical works on the Empire (Early Republic here in the U.S.) There are a lot of books written on this fascinating time period, and therefore there are always books I have never seen surfacing on the shelves of my favorite Half Price Books store. I am sure glad this one did as it exemplifies the worth of local history inspired by a monument. Someone put the statue there as a reminder intentionally.

The author started his interest when he chanced on the 1853 statue of Michel Ney in Paris. Horricks notes that no less a sculptor than Auguste Rodin called this bronze statue by Rude "the most beautiful in Paris." Horricks considered that Ney "is an argued-about figure even today: much discussed as a general officer, and with blame frequently attached to some of the things he did. But hardly ever, anywhere, does one find him carefully discussed as a man. Why?"

Horricks comes to the conclusion that the most beautiful statue in Paris offers little clues to who Ney was personally. Writing the book showed him that Ney was not the simple, straightforward hero of legend. Horricks notes that Ney was disgusted with corruption, humiliated at Camp of Boulogne, had love-hate feelings for Napoleon, hard-hearted in compelling Napoleon to abdicate in 1814, drawn back into Napoleon's sphere in 1815, and hesitant as he was bold. He was a husband, a father, and a son.

The statue was placed right near where he was unjustly executed, and in a place where Sunday picnickers might pass by and remember him. But how should people remember Michel Ney?

The author sums up Ney as one whose "majority of youthful ideals had either been chipped away or abruptly shattered in two decades of warfare. So that the man who came back alive from Russia's snows was practical, no longer trapped into any grand gestures or dreams--but also chastened."

Horricks accomplished what he saw as lacking: showing Ney as a man full of complexity and contradictions. Human.

This is a fine lesson for prospective local historians and a good reminder for longtime professionals. History is about people. People need to be shown for their human qualities, warts and all. The triumphs people have come despite their humanity.

Grand Portage National Monument, located within the boreal forest on the north shore of Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota, preserves a vital center of fur trade activity and Anishinaabeg Ojibwe heritage.
The Grand Portage itself is a footpath which bypasses a set of waterfalls on the Pigeon River a few miles from where that stream runs into Lake Superior. This path is part of the historic trade route of the voyageurs between their wintering grounds and their depots to the east. This route, comprised of the Pigeon River and other waterways and Grand Portage and many other portages, was of enormous importance in pre-industrial times, as it provided access from the Canada's settled areas to its interior of Canada. Some 50 miles upstream from Lake Superior, this trade route crosses the Height of Land Portage connecting South Lake on the Pigeon River watershed with North Lake of the Rainy River watershed. This portage crosses the Northern Continental divide and therefore provides passage between the drainage basin of the Arctic Ocean and that of the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean. - Wikipedia

That is a real brief background of Grand Portage National Monument a place I have visited 7 times in the last 13 years. I would of made it all 13 if I was still in state, that is how much I enjoy this historical place.

There are a number of things I like about this National Monument and the first two have nothing to do with it. The weather up on the “north shore” of Minnesota is absolutely fantastic. That alone is worth visiting. In the summer time the temps rarely hit 85 degrees and the over night lows are in the 50’s. The air is filled with the scent of pine and it is so crisp and refreshing that you want to bottle it up and take it home. To get to the “north shore” takes about 2 hours from Duluth and about 5 hours from Minneapolis. There are plenty of great places to stay along the shore and the further north you go the closer you obviously get to the Grand Portage. Cities like Tofte, Lutsen, Grand Marias all have fine resorts and bed and breakfasts to stay at. You can even stay at Grand Portage, the Grand Portage Band of Ojibwe Indians have a casino and a very modern hotel.

Now back to the real reason to visit; Grand Portage Monument entry fee is 3.00 for adult and 6.00 for family. You pay by the honor system at the main entrance to the fort. Once you are in you can either go into the great hall or visit the kitchen. Historical reenactors greet you at each building offering tours and small talk. Depending on the time of the year they will talk about what would be actually happening at the fort at that time. When I was there this past August the cook was exhausted because he had cooked a number of meals for the grand rendezvous which had happened that weekend. This rendezvous is the culmination of a years worth of fur trapping. The fur traders from 150+ fur outposts meet at Grand Portage to load and ship their goods to Sault Ste. Marie and from there to Europe. The cook had all kinds of information about the traders, what they ate, what they did for entertainment, where they were from, and tales from the deep inside the wilderness of present day Canada and the United Stes.

In the Grand Hall you get a tour of the eating area, storage, and offices. There is also a gift shop which has a number of excellent books on the early fur trader, Indian history and culture, and historical prints. You also get some interesting trivia from the guides, for instance there were teas from as far away as China being used at Grand Portage in the early 1700’s. Personally I found that incredible that out in the middle of this wilderness these traders could still have imported tea from the far east.

After visiting the Great Hall you can either go out to the grounds and walk to other building sites which are marked by foundations but no longer stand. You can also go down through the lake gate to the dock and take in the beauty of Lake Superior. From there you can make your way up a trail to the Ojibwe village where historical actors are demonstrating daily life from grinding grain, stitching canoes, or drying hides. West of the village is the canoe shop where a historical actor is building canoes in a 17th century style assembly line. When I was there the actor was actually living the life he was portraying and was filled with knowledge of the fur trade, indian relations at the time, and the politics of competing fur companies. I found him most valuable during my tour.

You can tour the grounds your self using the self guide or you can go on guided tour by one of the actors. I suggest for first time visitors to take these guided tours since a lot of the questions you may have will be answered and you won’t miss anything. After the tour take some time to get into the moment by walking the grounds, visiting with the Indians and actors, smelling the air, feeling the cool breeze of the lake, and if you are adventurous take the hike on the Grand Portage trail which is a 8.5 mile hike up the Pigeon river past the highest falls in Minnesota to Ft. Charlotte.
Grand Portage National Monument

If you are in north shore area this stop is well worth your time not only do you get to take in a piece of early American life but you get to experience the the very best in nature.



Here are some helpful links.

http://www.grandportage.com/
http://www.nps.gov/grpo
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/grand_portage/index.html