Shoto walking with two walking sticks in Shakopee. Father J. J. Girrimondi of St. Mary's Church baptized 90-year-old Shoto in 1894 and buried him 1899. Shoto was one of Chief Shakopee's braves.
St. Mary's Mission, Red Lake Indian Reservation (Red Lake Nation). The Benedictine monks and sisters were preceded in the Red Lake mission by Fathers Francis Xavier Pierz and Lawrence Lautischar. These two missionaries had founded the mission in the 1850s and Father Lautischar remained there as its first pastor. After his untimely death in a snowstorm, Father Lawrence was succeeded by Father Ignatius Tomazin, the Yugoslav missionary who was removed from White Earth for antagonizing government agents at that reservation in1878. In 1883, his zeal for the rights of the American Indians once again brought the soldiers from Fort Snelling to the reservation to remove him. For the next five years, the Red Lake mission was without a priest. In 1888, when the Drexel sisters* paid a visit to the reservation and heard the Ojibwe's plea for priests and sisters, Katherine begged the abbot of St. John's Abbey to take over the mission. She offered to pay the traveling expenses and to rent temporary buildings for them. The following year in November 1889, two priests, Fathers Simon Lampe and Thomas Borgerding from St. John's Abbey and Sisters Amalia Eich and Evangelista McNulty from St. Benedict's Convent made the arduous trip to Red Lake; the last lap from White Earth to Red Lake was by lumber wagons. St. Mary's Mission in Red Lake began in some empty buildings on the reservation. The sisters converted an abandoned Hudson Bay Company's warehouse into a school. In spite of its poor condition, the school opened with an enrollment of 25 day pupils. Years later when Sister Amalia was asked how they kept warm in that drafty house, she replied that they didn't keep warm; they froze. The next spring they took in 27 boarding pupils in addition to the day students. St. Benedict's sent two more sisters and a candidate to help. The candidate, Jane Horn, who later became Sister Marciana, was a former pupil of the sisters at White Earth. She was a helpful bridge for building understanding between the missionaries and the Ojibwe at Red Lake. (*Katherine Drexel and her two sisters, daughters of a wealthy banker in Philadelphia, engaged in charity for the American Indian and African American missions.) [SBMA McDonald, pp. 246-249 Sister Owen Lindblad, OSB, FULL OF FAIR HOPE: A History of St. Mary's Mission, Red Lake, (Park Press Quality Printing, Inc., Waite Park, MN, 1997), pp. 15-17, 34-39]
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). The school at White Earth was so successful that it was noticed by Katherine Drexel who lived in Philadelphia and had devoted her life to working for American Indians and African Americans. (She later founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for the education of these minorities.) Katherine visited White Earth with her two sisters and was so impressed by the work of the Benedictines there that she made arrangements for the building of a new school that would house 150 orphaned and dependent children. During the summer of 1890, the bricks for this four-story building were made near the mission and in the winter months, the lumber and other materials were gathered. Two years later, February 10, 1892, the school was opened for 100 children with the expectation that government funds were available to educate and cloth them. By 1895, the enrollment had grown to 150; the number of teachers and helpers grew to eighteen over the years. However, when government funding was rescinded by the turn of the century, the school faced the challenge of survival. The Benedictines turned to the charity of the Catholics of the Northwest Territory, of St. John's Abbey and of St. Benedict's Convent, and most of all, to tribal funds that the government had held in trust for them in lieu of the land they had given up. These funds could be requested by the Ojibwe as needed. In this way, St. Benedict's Mission managed to continue the boarding school until 1945. When the tribal funds were no longer available, the school became a parochial day school. [SBMA, McDonald, pp. 241-246]
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). About 85 boarding students and six sisters posed in the inner court of St. St. Benedict's Mission School in the early 1890s. Record keeping for this large a group of children was not simple. While the churches constructed and operated the schools on the reservations, government policy allowed the schools an annual appropriation of a flat rate for tuition, board and clothing annually; the amount varied from $100 to $150 per pupil. This policy required careful quarterly reports to be sent to Washington. All expenditures had to be accounted for - the number of pounds of meat, sacks of flour, bushels of beans and potatoes, barrels of sugar, pounds of rice, and gallons of syrup and soap These accounts show the frugality of the mission school's fare. For example, the 1886 end-of-year record shows $2.00 for candy and $2.50 for a pair of geese. [SBMA, McDonald, pp. 240-241]
Studio portrait of local Chippewa band members, including: Jim Cobenas, Tigoble, Red Lake, Joe Cobenas (holding a ceremonial pipe), and Charles Cobenas (holding a ceremonial pipe).
Boy Scout Troop number eighty-one from the Pipestone Indian Training School. Seventeen scouts and four leaders. Back row, second from left, Paul Abraham.
Interior view of the 4th Grade Classroom, Pipestone Indian Training School. Several students seated in desks, bent over work. Teacher standing in back.