This pamphlet, in the Dakota language, includes two pieces. The first is a brief biography of Abraham Lincoln, and the second is a translation of seven of Aesop's Fables into Dakota. The Santee Normal Training School instructed Dakota children in the Dakota language. These children came from families who were removed from Minnesota to Nebraska after the U.S.-Dakota War in 1863. Reverend A.L. Riggs founded the school in 1870 as an academy to train Native teachers. The school developed a printing press in 1871 and produced many materials in the Dakota language.
Contributing Institution:
Synod of Lakes and Prairies, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
This short tract in the Dakota language describes the American Bible Society, founded in 1816. The Santee Normal Training School instructed Dakota children in the Dakota language. These children came from families who were removed from Minnesota to Nebraska after the U.S.-Dakota War in 1863. Reverend A.L. Riggs founded the school in 1870 as an academy to train Native teachers. The school developed a printing press in 1871 and produced many materials in the Dakota language.
Contributing Institution:
Synod of Lakes and Prairies, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
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).
Catholic catechism, liturgy, prayers, and hymns. Text in Ojibwa with some titles in French or Latin. 215 pages. University of St. Thomas, Archibishop Ireland Memorial Library call number: PM854 .B25 1859
Contributing Institution:
University of St. Thomas - Archbishop Ireland Memorial Library
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). One of the boarding school dormitories in the upper floors of the newly-built St. Benedict's Mission School. Unlike the crowded conditions of the early convent school at White Earth, the new school built in 1890 allowed ample space for sleeping quarters (Saint Benedict's Monastery Archives).
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). Students pose with their handiwork in the work room of the newly-built school at St. Benedict's Mission. Domestic arts were considered important. So before and after school hours, the girls were taught to card wool and spin yarn with which they knitted their own stockings. They were taught plain and fancy sewing and took turns in assisting the sisters in the kitchen, laundry and dairy. Under Sister Philomena Ketten's supervision, the boys worked in the garden and helped on the farm with picking potatoes and raking hay. [SBMA, McDonald, p. 241]
This is a print by the artist and military officer Seth Eastman, who was stationed in Minnesota before statehood. The print shows a mounted Native American man about to kill a buffalo with an arrow.
St. Benedict's Mission, White Earth Indian Reservation (White Earth Band of Ojibwe). The newly-built school was completed in 1892. The school day at St. Benedict's School in White Earth was similar to that of any other American school with hours from 9:00 until 4:00 in teaching the basic learning skills. This daily rigid pattern was not a part of the American Indian culture and tested the endurance of both the students and teachers, but music and singing and manual work offered relief. [SBMA, McDonald, p. 241]
This is a print by the artist and military officer Seth Eastman, who was stationed in Minnesota before statehood. It shows a Dakota campsite along a body of water.
This is a print by the artist and military officer Seth Eastman, who was stationed in Minnesota before statehood. It shows several dwellings of the Dakota people.
Dakota language (Santee dialect) primary reader for children, in a variety of type styles with woodcuts. University of St. Thomas, Archibishop Ireland Memorial Library call number: PM1024.R6 D6
Contributing Institution:
University of St. Thomas - Archbishop Ireland Memorial Library
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]
Two men standing in a fishing boat holding fish, the man on the right may be Ojibwe, end of birch bark canoe, hundreds of fish in foreground on the beach, may be Duluth or Grand Marais, may be fish drying stands in background, may be in a cove
Contributing Institution:
University of Minnesota Duluth, Kathryn A. Martin Library, Northeast Minnesota Historical Collections