Saloon #10 - Deadwood, SD Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Head west of the Twin Cities and you’ll observe a slow transition from pretty citified to committed farming that merges into downright cowboy-ing. The sky gets bigger and the conditions are exponentially more tough. Remnants of the Old West begin to appear in montage – a conversation at a breakfast counter, a ranch’s driveway with cattle barrier and branded overhead sign, chaps-boots-hat, memorabilia in restaurants and watering holes. After a week or so of immersion, these remnants weave themselves together in a more general impression.

It’s fun to be at the stage where each little snippet stands out in high relief on its own – when the novelty of the difference in what you’re generally used to is significant. On our latest trip, I saved a variety of these individual impressions from various sources. Together, these glimpses of the west paint quite a “purty” picture.

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Mount Rushmore was named by chance in the 1880s.  Charles E. Rushmore, a New York lawyer, was being driven through the Black Hills on the way to a mining investment. Rushmore asked the name of the mountain, and was told it hadn’t any, along with a subsequent offer to name it after him. Rushmore later donated $5,000 towards the carving effort.

The day we visited Mount Rushmore, a new citizen swearing-in was held. The Rapid City Journal published photos with the headline “Proud to be Americans.”

Burros used to carry Custer State Park’s visitors from Sylvan Lake to the summit of Harney Peak. When these rides were discontinued, the burros were allowed free run of the Park. Today, wild individuals in the herd are not shy with visitors.

Overheard at the breakfast counter of the Hilltop Cafe in Valley City, ND: “Arlen, I thank you for the conversation this morning.” “Well, neither one of us resorted to physical violence today, so that’s a plus.”

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

From the Bozeman (MT) Daily Chronicle, July 20, 2011:

• A property manager was referred to wildlife authorities for a gopher problem.
• An intoxicated 21-year-old man got disoriented when heading to the outhouse at the Greek Creek campground around 2:30 a.m. He tried to get into someone else’s tent and the father of the family of four fired a warning shot to get the man to leave. When the man didn’t leave the father punched the drunken man in the mouth. When the 21-year-old’s friends noticed him missing, they started yelling for him. He heard them and went back to his own campsite.
• G—– enjoyed horses throughout his life; from his early childhood years of farming with horses to later owning and racing racehorses. His retirement years were spent mainly in his pickup. Most days, armed with a Pepsi and a candy bar, he would drive miles in search of the best poker game in town.
• R—- was raised and attended schools in Livingston. He worked summers at Yellowstone National Park, and had the di’stink’tion of working in the business of Huppert & Cantwell, Manure Merchants.

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

“Lee” is the name given to the latest tyrannosaurus rex discovered on the ranch of Lee Brown, the landowner on whose ranch Tate crews have been digging for six years. At first, Brown didn’t believe the creature in the rock was a T. rex. ”All they seem to find is hadrosaur. I’m sick of hadrosaur,” Brown said.

Interesting names: Buffalo Jump, MT; Ten Sleep, WY. Downhome small towns: Spearfish, SD; Hot Springs, SD – average temperature 64 degrees F; Casper and Sundance, WY; Lewiston, MT.  More hardscrabble: Interior, SD; Gallatin Gateway, MT (pretty close to Bozeman for more excitement).

Related articles

• Why Did My Teacher Make Me Read Giants in the Earth? (passingthru.com)
• Contest to Name Historic Hotel Rooms is Part of a Long-standing Western Tradition (prweb.com)
• Deadwood, SD – Deadwood, SD (travelpod.com)

Glimpses of the West is a post from: Passing Thru

When I was in high school, I could have written Mike’s review of O.E. Rølvaag’s Giants in the Earth word for word: “I hated this book. It felt like counting sand. Or corn. Or whatever they were growing…Seriously, this book moves so slow, you could literally skip entire chapters (maybe even 2 or three), and NOTHING WOULD HAVE HAPPENED.” Mike recommends the book for students and masochists interchangeably, and for years I would have heartily agreed. “…did Rolvaag have to make it so dry? To put this in perspective, I’ve read “Paradise Lost” just for fun. And believe me, that is not something to be taken lightly. And that was easier to get through than this.”

But, a funny thing happened to me 40 years later, during our current trip through South Dakota. Sometime during the hours we rolled along I-90, and in the subsequent stops we made in the region, I came to newly appreciate Rølvaag’s classic saga of the immigrant experience on the high plains of the Midwest.

Writing in his native Norwegian, Rølvaag wove within the story his own memories and those of his family members, who battled the elements and their personal demons to set roots in harsh and unforgiving circumstances. The protagonists, Per Hansa and his wife Beret, embody oppositional reactions to the circumstances. In one we see the optimist who envisions a rewarding future out of difficulty and sacrifice, and in the other, a yearning to return to things as they were in order to combat her fear of the unknown.

The first experience of the plains, like the first sail with a “cap” full of wind, is apt to be sickening. This once overcome, the nerves stiffen, the senses expand, and man begins to realize the magnificence of being. - Richard Irving Dodge, The Plains of the Great West (1877)

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

To expect a teenager to appreciate the allegorical depth in Rølvaag’s story-telling is a big stretch. There is little modern affinity to the overall vast nothingness that confronted settlers who looked west from the Mississippi. A virtual sea of grassland which swallowed up any vestigial remnant of human presence, the prairie held unlimited promise or terror, depending. In our world, where one is generally always connected and stimulated by those methods of connection, the distance and isolation encountered by the giants who came before us is hard to imagine.

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Getting a sense of that rugged scale traveling westward, I found myself recalling Beret, dwarfed as I became by big horizons and even bigger sky. It is easy to feel so very small here. The photo at right is of a storm’s cloud formation that, using our weather GPS, we determined stretched a couple hundred miles from its western to eastern point. Taking in these distances with no human point of reference is almost to hallucinate. Framed by his confident self-sufficiency, Rølvaag’s Per Hansa sees the benefits of potential in these vistas – he can literally make his mark on the land; his wife’s reaction is to be overcome by melancholy to the point of desperation.

The sea, the woods, the mountains, all suffer in comparison with the prairie…The prairie has a stronger hold upon the senses. Its sublimity arises from its unbounded extent, its barren monotony and desolation, its still, unmoved, calm, stern, almost self-confident grandeur, its strange power of deception, its want of echo, and, in fine, its power of throwing a man back upon himself. - Albert Pike (1831-32, Journeys in the Prairie)

Photo Credit: prairiehomestead.com

Visiting a restored sod house, we get an even better sense of what Beret’s days must have been like: dug into the earth and surrounded by it on three sides, constant combat with the dirt – sweeping it when it loosened from the sod bricks that made the walls, packing it down into a hard and unforgiving floor, peering through it to the oceans of grass or vast snowdrifts beyond.

Photo by Pete Wuebker

At age 55, Edgar Brown cut the sod bricks that framed this homestead at the edge of the Badlands in 1909, thirty years after the time described in Giants in the Earth. At roughly the same age as he, Pete and I can’t even imagine starting over in this desperate fashion. Standing in the mean little rooms partitioned with boards and bulging dirt bricks, my heart aches now for Beret; I had no empathy for her character 40 years ago, believing her to be a miserable crybaby based upon the Little House on the Prairie-like life I imagined her to have. Instead, reality was harsh and stark, and I am sorry for her and grateful to the thousands like her who were broken by or triumphed over this land.

…the silence out there was greatly favored by every kind of fugitive as was the open country itself… – Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West (1985)

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Had Beret gone further westward, her descent into madness may have been accelerated. The Badlands, barricading migration over 381 square miles, must have seemed like earth’s end to those intent on settling past the tall grass of the prairies. Indeed, the name is taken from the Sioux - mako sica (land bad) – who found the area difficult to travel due to the formations and lack of water. French trappers assigned les mauvaises terres a traverser (the bad lands to cross). The desolation is amplified by the temperature extremes and the weather’s violence in both summer and winter, creating a forbidding absence of the familiar.

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

First rising up out of the grass in deceptive butte-like structures, the treacherous passageways seem designed to impede: “Turn back or face your peril.” In the midst of the Badlands, it isn’t difficult to imagine the giants of Genesis constructing these palaces and spires, now mute and forsaken in seemingly long-lost cities whose skylines cut into the big sky in complicated formations. Each metropolis is more fantastical than the last, and the magnificence of scale is sobered by the abrupt crevasses dropping to hundreds of feet below. The mazes of abutments serve to confuse a wayward traveler into endless circling.

Photo by Pete Wuebker

The rich fossil beds yield evidence of other Giants: saber-toothed cats, brontotheres, camels, and a particularly gruesome prehistoric mammal known in common parlance as the “Hell Pig” (entelodont). Sedimental layers tell the story of millions of years: the Pierre shale at the bottom yielding squid-like fossils, as well as clams, snails and crabs from when the Great Plains were a vast, shallow sea. Additional layers chronicle the land’s transformation from sub-tropical forest to savannah, then to grassland with an exciting array of fossilized remains supporting its evolution.

“The Bad Lands grade all the way from those that are almost rolling in character to those that are so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Nowadays one might be given to think the unearthly Badlands may have guarded some of our most beautiful country to their west - the Black Hills – from European encroachment in the 19th century. Beret, longing for the lovely mountains of her native Norway, would have felt more at home here. The Lakota revered these beautiful pine-covered crags as a place of renewal:

“If a man was starving, he was poor in sprit and in body, he went into the Black Hills. The next spring he would come out, his life and body would be renewed. So, to our grandfathers, the Black Hills was the center of life, and those areas all around it were considered sacred, and were kept in the light of reverence. – Johnson Holy Rock, Lakota Elder

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

The 19th century Giants who boldly passed through these hills made their mark in places like Spearfish Canyon, whose creek by the same name is so clear and teeming with trout you can catch them by sight instead of with hope and a lure. Spearfish Creek moves so fast it is one of only two in North America that freezes from the bottom up. In settlements that sprang up in Spearfish Canyon about the same time as Rølvaag’s Per Hansa was cutting sod to the East, the scions of Center City, Lead and Deadwood were panning for gold with similar determination. Their settlements grew as swiftly as the creek tumbled through the canyon.

The man who ventured the remark that a fool and his money are soon parted must have had in his mind’s eye such a place as [Deadwood]. . . The tenderfoot is here brought face to face with . . . the slick confidence man, the claim jumper, the land shark and the desperado. – The New York Times, August 13, 1877

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Famous denizens such as James Butler (“Wild Bill”) Hickock, John “Potato Creek Johnny” Perrett – who found one of the largest gold nuggets ever panned in the Black Hills, Martha “Calamity” Jane Burke, the Rev. Henry Weston Smith, John Gray, and George V. Ayres all came to seek their fortune amidst the claim-staking and general lawlessness. Their treasure long since won or lost, these Giants now rest in the peaceful pines above Deadwood at Mt. Moriah Cemetery.

Somewhere west of the city of Spearfish, as we headed toward Sundance, my inland sea legs skewed again. From the crest of a rolling butte, I felt gigantic, as if I could stretch my arms up and pluck from the lowest layer of fluffy clouds, submerged below the higher cirrus and the great blue beyond.

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Many years have passed since my teacher tried to impart the classical wisdom contained in what I perceived as tedious, repetitive minutiae in Rølvaag’s prose. But now, I understood what eluded my teenage experience. Like Mike above, I got bogged down in the act of reading and missed the bigger message. This is it: there are two kinds of people in the world.

There are the Giants in the Earth: those who tread with munificence, and optimism that enables confidence in themselves, which results in accomplishments and progress. And there are those who remain small, their minds ruled by fear and limitation, who, if they keep to the safety of a past that is already gone, will be forever bereft.

Perhaps if Beret and so many of the others like her who came before had been bolder of spirit, they wouldn’t have been overpowered by this big land and its fearsome proportions. A Giant in the Earth cuts the environment down to size, conquering hesitation, and moving purposefully through life, seeing the possibilities.

Forty years later, I know what I aspire to be. How about you?

Note: Some of the quotations in this article come from a wonderful little page: Prairie Quotes

Why Did My Teacher Make Me Read Giants in the Earth? is a post from: Passing Thru

Image Credit: LandReport.com

Farms in corn country are looking especially tidy these days. Flush with cash from ethanol subsidies, Midwestern farmers are enjoying a feast-ly economy from high land values which they can leverage into improvements. This economic boon has been steadily growing for over six years. In 2006, an Iowa State Extension economist noted a 10% increase in farmland values. Their compounded change from 2000 – 2010 is a whopping 172%, according to The Land Report’s Farmland: Eye on Iowa, which also noted a big name focus on the value of land:

“If you took all the gold in the world, it would make a 67-foot cube. It would be worth about $7 trillion, about a third of the value of all the stocks in the U.S. So you can own gold, which can do nothing, or stocks. You could also have farmland. If you gave me the choice, between all the farmland in the country, stocks like Exxon Mobil, or gold, I’d choose the stocks and the farmland.” – Warren Buffet, CNBC Squawk Box, March 2, 2011

You don’t have to be a genius investor like Buffet to accurately surmise an investment’s relativity when the S&P compounded return over the same time period was a measly 4.6%. Throughout the Midwest and Plains regions, the value of land is skyrocketing. Higher corn means higher prices for other food producers as well. The Iowa Farmer Today quoted a University of Nebraska economist, “This year should be a price bonanza for cow/calf producers.” It’s a good time to own land on which you can plant corn.

Image Credit: LandReport.com

It may be an even better time to put up a few windmills among your corn. Federal production tax credits appear to be a way for savvy farmer/investors to double dip from the federal trough. Taking advantage of the government’s focus on renewable energy, farmers and ranchers in “flyover” country are harnessing what had been the bane of their existence not so long ago – the wind – for more profits.

Image via Wikipedia

Corn has long been king in these parts. Beginning in 1892, settlers in Mitchell, South Dakota wanted to prove to immigrants who were potential residents that this was a good place to settle. They planned a fall festival to celebrate the fertility of the region and their own productivity. This focus had great appeal to those coming from an Old World where their labors mostly benefited others. The American Dream of self-determination was evoked in a fantastical folk art structure, made entirely of corn, first erected in 1892. (The swastika symbol on the main turret in the photo at right is a Native American symbol for fertility. Its more sinister use would come 40 years hence.)

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

The world is fed from these fields in modern times. Driving along I-90 through the heart of corn country, we see all kinds of different homage to the power of the land.  A hand-lettered roadside message: “The country’s future depends on God.” A whimsical motorcycle trailer in the form of a bright red barn, toting the necessaries for a road trip. An enormous dinosaur led by a human skeleton, fashioned from rusty farm implements, outside of Murdo. A giant metal steer in a kitschy sculpture garden in Porter.

I remember thinking in the weeks following September 11, 2011, “They’ll never prevail. The country is too vast.” It must have felt that way to those who hid and armed the Minuteman Missiles amongst these fields, juxtaposing two forms of strength against two of man’s most basic fears: starvation and subjugation.

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Our country’s elders, both native and immigrant, revered the strength of the land. The Lakota view the earth as our mother, and she enjoyed similar respect from European settlers, whose hard work under harsh conditions was rewarded more often than not with spectacular largesse. The relationship as defined by the ancients remains remarkably unchanged.

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Today, the Corn Palace still stands. Each year it is newly decorated, using over 3,000 bushels of oats, rye and sour dock. When the corn crop comes in, the Palace is adorned by roughly 275,000 ears, halved lengthwise and nailed up in patterns created by local artists. Inside, in a series of murals made entirely from corn, the reverence to King Corn is enhanced. The Palace regularly hosts trade shows, basketball games, and other events, making it a charming multi-use structure with a unique historical heritage.

In an article from earlier this year entitled The Future of Corn, we read “Have no fear, corn is here for good.” If corn is truly king, it is a benevolent and nourishing regent. May its reign continue.

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Where Corn is King is a post from: Passing Thru

Pete’s mom and dad were both “loon counters” on Woman Lake and decided the lagoon in front of the cabin was the perfect spot to encourage loons to nest. Don’t let this beautiful shot taken by Pete’s sister Jenny on the afternoon of April 29 lull you with an impression of warm temperatures. You’d be wrong!

This year the plan was to go up the last weekend in April to get the pontoon in, among other “make ready” chores that need to be done after a long, cold winter up north. We didn’t leave until after work on Friday, April 29th, but Pete’s sisters, Jenny and Teri, arrived early. Soon the text messages were flying in: the loons had arrived in the lagoon and were calling out, looking around for their pontoon! We were grateful they are such creatures of habit – this meant that they might not abandon our location just yet. We arrived late that evening and heard their mournful, unmistakeable calling as we settled in.

The cabin is located about 3-1/2 hours north of the Twin Cities, about a half hour southeast of Bemidji, MN on Woman Lake. The history of this area is tied up with logging in the later years of the 19th century. Resorts and hotels sprang up to accommodate sportsmen and vacationers in the early part of the 20th century. The Wuebker cabin began as a family compound on Pete’s mother’s side. They weren’t the only Iowa farmers who got the crop in and then headed north to enjoy summers full of fishing in the Northwoods. The Kee-Nee-Moo-Sha lodge (a short walk down a wooded pathway from the cabin) and other resorts still operate today.

While spring came early last year in Minnesota, this year is an entirely different story. Freezing temperatures and stormy forecasts were in the prediction. Putting in the loon pontoon was going to be a chilly experience, as well as a poignant reminder that Pete’s parents aren’t here this year to see it. It is important to everyone to keep this tradition.

Pete and son Ben were up early to get things started in the damp and chilly morning. It was 27 degrees F while they worked. Jenny, Teri and I watched.

The loon pontoon is a simple construct of PVC with a mesh platform to hold nesting material. It’s anchored with regular old cement blocks.

With the dock not in, the wind whipped up some significant whitecaps later in the day, but for the most part, Ben and Pete were fortunate to be out there in the calmest moments, if you can call them that.

The loon pontoon is always sited directly opposite of the dock to make sure that there is sufficient cover in the reeds for when the babies hatch. It is not uncommon for loon eggs to be stolen by all sorts of predators. A bald eagle had swooped down right in front of Teri the previous afternoon and snatched a gull right out of the water. As we were driving down the dirt road after our long trip up from the Cities, we spotted a large mink alongside the road, and other predators think baby loons are tasty, too.

Once the nesting materials (sticks, mud, mossy earth, etc) were placed on the pontoon, it was time to put the waders on and drag it out to the site. Brrr!

All the while, the loons were watching and waiting while Pete adjusted the setting and set the anchors.

Whooa, watch yourself! Filling the waders up with near-freezing water would not be fun!

That evening the biggest wind I’ve ever heard up there blew in, and the pontoon was rocking and rolling on the whitecaps like the Andrea Gale in “A Perfect Storm.” The next morning (May the 1st!) dawned with ice galore and even a bit of snow:

All the nesting materials were gone from the mesh platform. Teri kindly gathered more and Pete made another trip out to the platform to try again.

We spent the rest of the day watching for signs that the setting was acceptable. Finally, after we left to return home on Sunday, Jenny reported that one of the loons had clambered on and appeared to be settling in:

The family left for home today leaving me here to watch the loons. At about 5:30, the loons started talking to each other with a very soft “whoooing” noise. I watched them swim around the pontoon a few times checking all sides until one decided to attempt to getting on. I think by tomorrow, they will be moving in for good.

Daughter, Jessica, who had to stay behind due to work schedules, commented: of all gma & gpas traditions that we’ll carry on, this might be the one im most proud of.

I said: Thank God! I feel like a Jewish mother! “The things we do for you!”

And Pete, still feeling the lingering effects, replied: After two trips in those blasted waders they damn well better get up their and start making babies.

If you would like to watch another pair of loons in a similar setting, this loon cam is great entertainment. Somehow I think a similar setup might be in our future if we can figure out how to rig it. But not this year.

Ben is heading up to the cabin again this weekend with a group of friends to make sure all is well with the loons, and we’ve got the rest of the weekends in May planned that someone in the family will be there to keep watch. The egg laying and hatching, as you can imagine, are exciting events reported throughout the family!

What outdoor or nature-related family traditions do you keep?

Photo Credits: Jenny Wuebker, Teri Wuebker

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Putting in Our Loon Nesting Platform is a post from: Passing Thru

As we reminisced, I was transported back to our small town childhood. Last year, when Pete and I visited Michigan, we all went to church one last time in the old building where my parents were married, and where my family attended weekly. While there is a new sanctuary under construction outside of town, this building still remains the standard by which I judge all I have subsequently entered: elegant in its spare New England white clapboard simplicity, frosted windows and brass chandeliers, and a towering spire that our tiny hands mimicked in play: “this is the church, this is the steeple, open the doors and see all the people.” More opulent interiors discomfit me by comparison. It was in this place that we learned to sing and love traditional carols and hymns.

During Advent, we were treated to a wealth of music, and while we each called up our memories, we realized we loved so many of the same carols: Still, Still, Still – which Pete and I used on a Christmas card (with this photo in blog post form: For All Is Hushed); Lo, How a Rose ‘Ere Blooming; O Come, O Come Emmanuel; O Holy Night; and, of course, just about any selection from Handel’s Messiah.

The Winter Solstice collections from Windham Hill are favorites of mine.  The third in the series has simple and beautiful renditions of ancient carols and melodies: Veni Emmanuel, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day (an unexpected, yet better, melody than the traditional one you may recall), Lullay Lulli, and In the Bleak Midwinter. Highly recommended.

John insists that the 1984 version of A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott as Scrooge is the best – superior acting, special effects and everything. My favorite is still the one with Basil Rathbone and Fredric March from the 1930′s. I can remember watching it on our black and white television and being frightened to death of the hooded Ghost of Christmas Future.

We were in agreement on the classic TV movie specials: Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory, narrated by the author, with Geraldine Page winning an Emmy for her performance. The Homecoming: A Christmas Story , with Patricia Neal, which was the pilot episode for the long-running series, The Waltons.

The Gift of the Magi, from the short story by O. Henry. “One dollar and eightyseven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.”  John brought up cartoon favorites: A Charlie Brown Christmas with the classic piano riff.  He still laughs at the character who dances just by moving his chin up and down from his chest. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with the Yukon Cornelius character Johnny loved as a boy.

Amahl and the Night Visitors was one of my favorites – it’s a one act opera which was commissioned by NBC especially for television beginning in 1951, and it was presented live for nine years. The story of the poor boy with a disability who is visited by the three Kings is very moving. Perhaps being influenced by this performance so early in life led me to my very favorite Christmas CD: Luciano Pavarotti’s O Holy Night, recorded at a service in Montreal with a children’s choir.

John favors choral music, too.  He said he still catches himself singing the first verse of Silent Night in German, reminding him of the Christmas Eve he spent in Germany back in 1976. We’re just not ones for all these modern improvisations. I still prefer the King James language of the Gospel, too.

I love classic Christmas movies, so I was delighted to see this post from Hooked on Houses: Vote for Your Favorite Christmas Movie House! I voted for #7, the stone farmhouse from Christmas in Connecticut, a favorite movie of mine. My all time favorite Christmas house, though, was the one Claudette Colbert lived in with Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple while the father of their family was off to World War II in Since You Went Away. They were just so plucky in that movie, taking in a boarder and doubling up on rations and all! And the house is gorgeous.

Other great vintage movie photos of Christmas trees and wintry activities can be found on the SixMartinis site archives: here’s a sample.

An entirely different post would have to be devoted to our favorite recipes. Pete still raves about John’s Cranberry Glaze from last year. For years, I made Baked Ziti in honor of an Italian restaurant that served an incomparable meal to my ex-husband and me one Christmas Eve when we were between homes. This year I modified it to this: Four Mushroom-Cheese Baked Penne, and served it for Pete’s birthday dinner with Stuffed Pork Loin with Roasted Apples.

We spent a wonderful day with the kids and Pete’s sisters on Sunday. This year our donation in the children’s names was made to someone who cooks, as well. Narayanan Krishnan, of the Akshaya Trust, was featured in our December newsletter as Someone You Should Know.

We’ll be traveling over Christmas, so we’ll see you in the New Year. Until then, we’ll leave you with this, our Christmas greeting:

May there be hope in your heart, and angels in your midst during this Season of Light and throughout the coming New Year.

We’d love to know what your Christmas favorites are in the comments, too!  Merry Christmas!

Christmas Favorites is a post from: Passing Thru

This time, we meet Pontiac (Obwandiyag, pronounced Bwondiac), and explore the context from which he arose to plot against and fight the British and their colonists, in a glorious, but ultimately vain attempt to preserve traditional Indian lands from permanent settlement and European cultural expansion.

Although very little is known of Pontiac’s earliest years, various sources have placed his birth between 1712 and 1725, most likely in an Ottawa village located on either the Maumee River or the Detroit River, close to Lake Erie. Most sources also agree that while Pontiac’s father was of the Ottawa tribe, his mother may have been Ojibwe. Even though Ohio History Central indicates the Ottawa didn’t move into northern Ohio (per migrations anticipated by this map) until around 1740, other sources place Ottawa villages in this area much earlier.

Tradition held that the Ottawa and Ojibwe, along with the Potawatomi, were once one clan, descending out of the Proto-Algonquin-speaking people, whose history in the woodlands of northeastern North America goes back over 3,000 years. According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, the Upper Great Lake Algonquins divided at Michilimackinac, the strait at which Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet, with the Ottawa (“traders”) remaining near there. The Potowatomis (“those who keep a fire”) moved southward along Lake Michigan, and the Ojibwe (“puckered moccasin”) north and westerly to the Sault Ste. Marie area. This shared tradition would prove meaningful in the 18th and 19th centuries, when tribes formed alliances to protect their lands against colonial and American expansion.

In the early 18th century, during Pontiac’s childhood, French missionaries and voyageur traders exploited western New France using the Great Lakes and their tributaries for transport. Forts and trading outposts marked their progress. At the time of Pontiac’s birth, the population of New France in its entirety numbered 25,000. It would triple by 1755.

The Far Indians (Ojibwes – by now in Michigan, northern Wisconsin and Minnesota; Potawatomis – in southwestern Michigan; and the Ottawa in the Maumee and Detroit River areas, as well as western Ontario), were also known as the “Three Fires.” They connected with the French through trading and intermarriage in the Pays d’en Haut (literal translation: “country in top”). Stone tools, bone implements and spears gave way to knives, traps, and nets, propelling Native Americans into the modern ways of the Europeans.

Perhaps as early as 1747, Pontiac allied with New France and led his people in battle against the positions of Nicholas Orontony, of the Wyandotte clan of Huron. Orontony had come under the influence of British traders and settled near what is now Cleveland, Ohio, going on to lead a series of skirmishes that resulted in the destruction of the French fort at Detroit. Ultimately, the Wyandotte resettled to the east near New Castle, Pennsylvania, when their parallel coalition against the French faltered. It is possible Pontiac’s efforts to build his own coalition were inspired by Orontony’s example.

British probes into French-held territory occurred frequently. One of the most notable introduced George Washington to the international scene. Sent by Lord Dinwiddie, the Governor of Virginia Colony, in November, 1753 to assess potential British claim to the Ohio River Valley, the 21 year old Washington was treated well by the French at Fort Le Boeuf, who nonetheless rejected British dominion. Washington’s subsequent report was published in London after having been sent by Dinwiddie as a positions and strategic assessment.

Washington was back in the area six months later. Also in 1754, French forces had appropriated a small strategic settlement at what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and expanded it into Fort Dusquesne, intending that it militarily protect French control of the Ohio River Valley. Knowing that economic partnership was the key to strategic alliances with the Indian people, the French had continued to forge strong relationships. Trading with the French had brought the Indians such innovations as guns, alcoholic spirits, powder and ammunition along with supplies of tobacco and food in exchange for fur.

Into this milieu came Washington with a small force of Virginians, provoking an attack in Jumonville Glen. It was by all accounts a debacle. Washington’s Native American allies bashed the French lead man’s head in with a hatchet after he had surrendered. The French retaliated with a force from nearby Fort Dusquesne as Washington’s native allies abandoned him. In less than a day, Washington surrendered, signing a French document in which he admitted to the assassination. Washington rued his participation in these events altogether in a letter to his half- brother:

I doubt not but you have heard the particulars of our shameful defeat, which really was so scandalous that I hate to have it mention’d.

Despite the French victories at Fort Dusquesne and other initial skirmishes, there was a fatal strategic flaw in their activities. VirginiaPlaces.org tells us: The French strategy was to create trading stations to acquire furs from Native Americans, in contrast to the English strategy to flood the colony with Protestant immigrants who would be loyal to England in any fight with Spain/France. The failure of the French to establish colonies on the Atlantic seaboard south of the Saint Lawrence River, and their slow occupation of the Ohio River and Mississippi River valleys, ultimately allowed the English to gain control of the North American continent.

The events at Fort Dusquesne ignited long-standing hostilities between the French and the British, resulting in what some have called the first world-wide war: The Seven Years War, also referred to in North America as the French and Indian War.

In 1755, Pontiac became chief of the Ottawa, and shortly after became head of the Council of the Three Fires. In the same year, British forces headed by General Edward Braddock, along with American Colonials including George Washington, attempted to re-take Fort Dusquesne. Pontiac is believed to have been part of this ambush, which was a disastrous defeat for the British. These events gave rise to the legendary prophecy that Washington, who had 3 horses shot from under him during this battle, was divinely immune to wounding. Taken prisoner, Washington was released by the French, fortunately for him and our future country. Later, in 1758, Washington was among the British forces that retook Fort Dusquesne.

In the meantime, tales of Indian triumphs as allies of the French were often repeated at native councils and campfires. Pontiac went on to fight under General Montcalm, wearing the general’s gift of a French uniform on ceremonious occasions. However, Montcalm was eventually defeated on the Plains of Abraham, a deciding moment in the French and Indian war. Eventually, the Treaty of Paris was signed on February 10, 1763 with France ceding the territories of Canada and Acadia to England, as well as the forts at Niagara, Detroit, Michilimackinac, Great Bay on the Maumee and Wabash Rivers, and other river forks and locations in the west and southwest frontiers.

The Treaty of Paris was followed by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, in which King George III outlined an administrative framework that included provisions for negotiating with the First Nations. Because of this, the Proclamation has been referred to as the Indian Magna Carta, providing for a vast land reserve of the North American interior for them in an attempt at political stability.

All this came about as a result of brief seizures Pontiac and his followers made of British military posts that had been recently captured from the French. Asserting military dominance, Pontiac’s acts created the necessity for the Crown to acknowledge and provide for Indian interests. Strategically, it made perfect sense: appease the Indians who had fought alongside the French and stabilize the frontier by imposing law and order in the most cost-effective way.

The Royal Proclamation geographical line, to the west of the Thirteen Colonies, was intended to hold westward settlement in favor of Indian land reserves. Unfortunately for the British, colonial outrage over this imposition was one of the key factors in the American Revolution.

The Treaty of Paris afforded Great Britain unprecedented empirical power. The French and Indian attacks had been dealt with. In the minds of the American colonists, the West was wide open for expansion up to the Louisiana Territory, which had been given to Spain in exchange for Florida. French positions in the New World were reduced to two small islands off the coast of Newfoundland.

Emasculating the French footprint meant the British could impose their ideas on how to co-exist with Native Americans under their new jurisdiction. These ideas were quite different than those of the French.  The policy was personified by Jeffery Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst, whose methodical strategy involving an advance up Lake Champlain to take Quebec City during the war had awarded him military governance over the newly defined territory.

Almost immediately, Amherst suspended trade in gunpowder, ammunition and weapons with the Indians. Additionally, Pontiac’s characterization of the British as “invaders” was underscored when the British eliminated the French custom of offering gifts and hospitality. Amherst’s opinion was that such gifts were bribes. To the Indians, this discontinuation was perceived as a hostile act on top of the ever-encroaching flow of settlers. Amherst facilitated the sale of Indian lands, which Pontiac and others maintained had never been available for sale pursuant to the Proclamation and earlier treaties. Overall, Amherst’s policies were rooted in contemptible methodology that could “serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race.” Conditions were ripe for rebellion.

Concurrently, Neolin, of the Delaware Indians, was emerging as a spiritual leader and prophet among the Ohio societies. Neolin saw the reliance on European goods as part of the overall problem. Rather than assimilation, Neolin preached reversion to the traditional bow and arrow and other ancient ways. The danger in moving away from traditional Indian customs would be expulsion from Heaven by the Master of Life. Succeeding against the English settlers moving westward would entail a return to tradition. Neolin’s ultimate warning was that if they did not, God’s blessing of game to hunt would be revoked.

Pontiac was in favor of ending Native American reliance on Europeans, but only to the point of not giving up muskets. Realizing that a coalition unarmed with modern appurtenances would soon be doomed, Pontiac still hoped for the Master of Life’s ultimate blessing, which he viewed would be the restoration of traditional lands.

A flood of settlers intending not to trade, but to farm, advanced past the line imposed by the treaties and the Crown’s Proclamation. Seizing opportunistically on overall Indian discontent, Pontiac called for unification based upon the traditional religious values Neolin promoted, and forged a coalition via numerous secretive council meetings that included members of the Ottawa, Objibwe, Huron, Delaware, Illinois, Miami, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Seneca and Shawnee tribes.

The first secret council meeting was held on the shores of the Ecorse River, in what is now Lincoln Park, Michigan, a few miles from the Fort at Detroit, on April 27, 1763. Pontiac, by all accounts, was a charismatic figure, “lithe as a panther,” a powerful orator who possessed a keen intelligence and skill as a strategist. He believed that the French would back up an Indian revolt to reclaim the forts and restore the former relationship with the tribes.

Addressing those assembled, Pontiac’s appearance would have been formidable. Dressed in traditional garb, his skin would have been heavily oiled with bearfat to bring out the details of multiple tattoos. His ceremonial face paint would have been complemented by the pompadour hairstyle favored by the woodland tribes. Ornamenting his person were ear beads, a stone through his nose, and silver bracelets, as well as neck and hair feathers. The message to the more than 400 chiefs and warriors of the Three Fires eloquently invoked the prophecies of Neolin and urged dramatic action against British military positions in order to return control to the French.

Flashing a red and purple wampum belt he said he had been given by the King of France, Pontiac’s oration incited the warriors and the plan was hatched. On May 1, 1763, Pontiac and several young braves appeared at Fort Detroit asking to dance the Calumet, indicating an intention of loyalty to the British. They were really there to case the joint.

The plan was to return under the guise of holding a council at the Fort. However, they were betrayed, some say by the Indian mistress of the fort’s commander, Maj. Henry Gladwin. Instead, on May 7 and again on May 9, when Pontiac and his warriors returned, Gladwin had armed the fort’s soldiers and civilian residents, and informed the Indians their access would be severely restricted. The attack was thwarted.

Instead, Pontiac’s warriors took violence elsewhere. In what must have been the 18th century equivalent of “shock and awe,” British held forts fell to the Indians with remarkable precision in the next few weeks:

May 16, 1763 – Fort Sandusky on Lake Erie, which Amherst had built in 1761 in defiance of local Wyandots

May 25, 1763 – Fort St. Joseph, at what is now Niles, Michigan, seized by the Potawatomi

May 27, 1763 – Fort Miami, seized by the Miami (later renamed Fort Wayne, after “Mad Anthony” Wayne), where the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana now stands

June 1, 1763 – Fort Ouiatenon, close to what is now Lafayette, Indiana, taken without firing a shot by Wea, Kickapoo and Mascouten warriors

June 2, 1763 – Fort Michilimackinac, taken by the Ojibwes in a storied hoax arising out of a lacrosse game entertainment

June 16, 1763 – Fort Venango, near Franklin, Pennsylvania, taken by the Iroquois, Mingo and Senecas

June 18, 1763 – Fort LeBoeuf, burned with survivors escaping to Fort Pitt, the former Fort Dusquesne

June 19, 1763 – Fort Presque Isle, near what is now Erie, Pennsylvania, surrendered to the Ottawas, Ojibwes, Wyandots and Senecas

Within six weeks, nine out of 11 British fortifications had fallen to the Indians, Fort Pitt and Detroit were under siege, and numerous raids had been taken against settlers in the frontier areas of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Colonel Henry Bouquet, writing to Lord Amherst, encapsulated the hysteria and fear that pervaded the region:

There appears to be few Savages yet on these frontiers, but every Tree is become an Indian for the terrified inhabitants.

Amherst was stunned and disbelieving, accusing commanders of cowardice and exaggerating Indian strength. At the end of June, he sent a force west to Detroit. Surprisingly, Pontiac had kept the fort and settlement under siege for two months with the help of its French inhabitants, with whom he had signed promissory notes written on birchbark bearing his emblem, the otter. While the British were able to gain access inside the fort under cover of heavy fog, on July 31 the Indians ambushed them as they ventured out again.

During the rest of the summer and into the early fall, the fighting continued with marginal British gains. Amherst was a man possessed. His correspondence from and to Bouquet shows, and Capt. William Trent’s journal (written during the months of bloodshed from Fort Pitt) corroborates, that Amherst considered biological warfare in a series of letters written that summer (click dates to see actual images in their handwriting):

June 23 from Bouquet to Amherst confirming smallpox at Fort Pitt

July 13 from Bouquet to Amherst referencing blankets “to innoculate the Indians”

July 16 from Amherst to Bouquet approves and suggests no alternative method be left untried

On June 24, 1763, Trent’s diary entry reveals, “Out of our regard to them we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.” Other contemporary letters to Crown bureaucrats assigned to Indian Affairs and Departments confirm a genocidal intent on the part of Amherst, and are cited by 19th and 20th century historians. Amherst eventually returned to England, disappointed that he was forced to defend his ineffectual handling of the rebellion, after which he was demoted from the position of Governor General of North America, though he continued to serve as Governor General of Virginia in name.

Meanwhile, ammunition shortages manipulated by Amherst’s trading policy were making the sieges at Detroit and Fort Pitt untenable. One by one, as fall hunting season approached, tribes dropped out of the coalition. When confirmation came via Fort de Chartres that France had ceded defeat to Britain, the coalition dissolved. By the end of October or mid-November, Pontiac discontinued the siege and withdrew with his remaining followers to the banks of the Maumee.

The following spring, Pontiac attempted another coalition which included French traders, with a plan to beat back the English beyond the Alleghenies. However, the British countermanded his movements with more extensive force throughout 1764. The French, it seemed as well, had lessening interest in such re-engagements.

By 1765, Pontiac was resigned to make peace, with one major stipulation: surrendering the forts to the British did not convey them the right to own or colonize the country, nor did the treaty recognize British sovereignty over native lands. In April, he participated in a peace mission with British representatives at Fort de Chartres, and then in August, traveled to Fort Detroit. On August 17, 1765, at the council of tribes, he declared his peace. By the following July, a formal conclusion was reached in Oswego, NY.

Between 1765 and 1769, Pontiac was a nomad, following traditional hunting and trading routes with a diminished band of mostly relatives and close friends. During this time, Native factions attempted to obtain his support for hostile outbreaks, but he kept his word and the peace, continuing in his declarations of loyalty to the British.

What are we to make of Pontiac’s influence on our history? Here was a prescient warrior chief who fought bravely against the nascent problems of assimilation, land appropriation, disenfranchisement, genocide, and forced relocation that continue to have lasting effects even today. As European culture continued to expand and dislocate indigenous peoples throughout the Western Hemisphere, Pontiac’s fierce combination of militancy and diplomacy appears simultaneously courageous and tragic. While historians may revise their opinions on his significance and influence, the overall effect of his movement was unprecedented. By catalyzing resistance to expanded settlements, British and American political policymakers – beginning with King George III, through President Washington, and continuing even today – were induced toward accommodating and maintaining Native sovereignty against an inevitable advance.

Even though Pontiac’s political influence ultimately waned, the former warrior’s peaceful ways rankled certain Native elements and former allies. On April 20, 1769, he was assassinated with club and knife near Cahokia, Illinois by a Peoria warrior. The exact location of his burial remains a mystery, giving rise to the legend that a burial mound on Apple Island in Orchard Lake, Oakland County, Michigan (northwest of Detroit) is that of Pontiac. This location is just south of the city that today bears his name, and close to several General Motors facilities that formerly produced his namesake brand, which was retired in 2009.

Suggested Reading (affiliate links)

The Ohio Frontier: Crucible of the Old Northwest, 1720-1830

Pontiac and the Indian Uprising

Atlas of the North American Indian

Related articles

• Tecumseh – Courageous Warrior and Statesman (passingthru.com)
• Chief Pontiac’s Siege of Detroit (Detroit News – June 14, 2000)
• Window on the Collection: William Trent’s Fort Pitt Journals (Historical Society of Pennsylvania)

Pontiac – A Fiery Musket Against the British Lion is a post from: Passing Thru

Researching these fascinating individuals has provided a better contextual understanding of how the British colonies and the United States expanded in the 18th and 19th centuries, and how the inevitability of that expansion manifested in heroic leadership as Indian leaders sought to protect and maintain their ways.  This time, we hope you’ll be interested in getting to know Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief who is greatly honored for heroism and service.

“Let us form one body, one heart, and defend to the last warrior our country, our homes, our liberty, and the graves of our fathers.” – Tecumseh

In March, 1768, during a period when astronomers an ocean away were observing and assigning numerical relationships to celestial and planetary patterns, an enormous meteor flashed across the night sky over what is now northern Ohio.  The Shawnee people named it “The Panther,” and a minor Shawnee chief, Pucksinwah, took it as a sign that his newborn son was destined for greatness.

Shawnee tradition held that within ten days of a boy’s birth, an event would occur, an unsoma, which would signify what their God, Moneto, wished the child to be called. That such a significant event had occurred exactly at the time of the child’s birth was of highest meaning. Pucksinwah named the infant Tecumseh, (“Shooting Star”, or “The Panther Passing Across” or “Panther Across the Sky.”)

In the same year, the Six (Iroquois) Nations signed the Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the English at a site in what is now upstate New York.  The treaty was an attempt to eliminate frontier violence against European settlers by redistricting boundary lines agreed to five years previously.

The Iroquois hoped the treaty would contain British colonial expansion by ceding claims south of the Ohio River and roughly east of the northern Appalachian range. However, the Shawnee and other clans who were the primary inhabitants of these areas were not represented at the negotiations.

The Fort Stanwix treaty also settled land claims with the Penn family, whose proprietorship would become the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, east of where Tecumseh was born. This treaty, negotiated and refined within the first five years of his life, would set the stage upon which Tecumseh would play the role of warrior, diplomat and statesman.

Ohio was the “center of the world” to the Shawnee people, whose hunters chased after buffalo, elk and deer on southerly forays into what is now Kentucky.  They returned with their captures to feed their people, who lived in semi-nomadic fashion in a loose sect-based consortium of villages ranging throughout the Ohio River valley.  Fairly quickly, the boundaries established in 1768 became more elastic by skirmishes with British colonials and, later, the new Americans. In 1774, Tecumseh’s father was killed in the winning Battle of Point Pleasant in Lord Dunmore’s War, which was fomented by colonial expansion into the Ohio Valley hunting lands from the colony of Virginia.

By the time Tecumseh was 13 years old, half his family had either been killed or moved westward from Ohio.  In 1783, Britain ceded everything south of the Great Lakes, east of the Mississippi River, and north of Florida in the Peace of Paris to the new United States of America.  Small Indian confederations began to refute the annexation, and a struggle that was greater than any individual tribal affiliation was born.

"Mad Anthony" Wayne

The British still held forts in Detroit and Michilimackinac, and in an attempt to strengthen these reduced positions, began to incite Indian resistance.  This culminated in battles in 1792 in Indiana, and the notorious Battle of the Fallen Timbers in northwest Ohio in 1794, where the British slammed the gates of Fort Miami closed in the Indians’ faces, leaving them to be slaughtered by American troops under the command of General “Mad Anthony” Wayne.  This defeat led to the Treaty of Greenville, which gave much of the state of Ohio to the United States.  Wikipedia tells us, “One veteran of Fallen Timbers who did not sign the Greenville treaty was a young Shawnee war leader named Tecumseh, who would renew Indian resistance in the years ahead.”

Image via Wikipedia

As the Eastern tribes were pushed westward by U.S. territorial expansion, the wild game the hunters depended upon receded. Tecumseh himself retreated to Indiana but the systemic land transfers further hemmed his people in.

William Henry Harrison

Fur trading was encouraged via policy and politicians such as Thomas Jefferson and William Henry Harrison (Northwest Territorial Governor), but utilized a factory system designed to instigate indebtedness in the tribes.  This disenfranchisement from the ways of hunting and previous kinship led to hunger, alcoholism, disease, and kept the Indians on a constant war footing, confining them in misery and suffering to a small part of northwest Ohio and northeast Indiana.

Tenskwatawa

These consequences of colonialism, unintended as they may have been, were personified in Tecumseh’s younger brother, Lalawethika. A violent alcoholic, who abused his wives and depended upon his family for support, Lalwethika parlayed a spiritual epiphany out of a near death experience to encompass a crossroads vision for his people.  Taking a new name, Tenskwatawa (“The Open Door”), he foretold of an opportunity for paradise instead of eternal punishment, and advocated tribal revitalization by rejecting European culture.

By 1806, this advocacy had evolved into a political reunification movement.  Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa (now being referred to as “The Prophet”) moved their village in open defiance to a new location and renamed it Prophetstown, also known as Tippecanoe. That spring, after a series of accusations involving witchcraft and higher profile confrontations, Harrison sent a letter which challenged Tenskwatawa to perform physical miracles to prove himself and his prophecies.  He might have wished he hadn’t.  In the letter, he writes: “If he (the Prophet) is really a prophet, ask him to cause the Sun to stand still or the Moon to alter its course, the rivers to cease to flow or the dead to rise from their graves.”

In June of 1806, The Prophet responded by predicting a “dark sun,” saying, “Fifty days from this day there will be no cloud in the sky. Yet, when the Sun has reached its highest point, at that moment will the Great Spirit take it into her hand and hide it from us. The darkness of night will thereupon cover us and the stars will shine round about us. The birds will roost and the night creatures will awaken and stir.”

Eclipse Chasers tells us, “At around noon on the appointed day, June 16th 1806, a total solar eclipse crossed the region. A long eclipse with a band of totality stretching from near the southern tip of Lake Michigan to just north of Cincinnati it encompassed most of the lands inhabited by Tenskwatawa’s followers. In Greenville, where Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh waited for the event, close to a thousand had gathered to see the Prophet’s sign. The Prophet waved his arms towards the eclipse at the appropriate time, and the people were truly impressed.”

By July 1806, tribes from as far north as the Lake Superior Ojibwe and as far south as the Potowatamis came to join the growing confederation.  Over the next three years, Prophetstown’s population increased and fear proliferated as its inhabitants organize. Tecumseh grew in political stature along with the opposition.

By 1809, Harrison had extended the land grab by accelerating activities in direct opposition to the wishes of President James Madison.  Through the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809, Harrison promised financial subsidies and ongoing payments to tribes who ceded land around Indiana’s Wabash River.  Over 3,000,000 acres were in play. Harrison finalized the agreements in 1810 with several tribes, some of whom had been loosely allied with Tecumseh’s group before the payments were offered.

It may come as a surprise to many to learn that Tecumseh initiated action with decisive precision toward creating the United Indian States of America, showing exceptional foresight and strategic awareness. Traditional American history texts often gloss over or skip this segment entirely in favor of deeper analysis (and easier research?) favoring the former colonies along the seaboard. Tecumseh’s goal – to preserve his people’s culture by creating a unified resistance operating from a land base bounded by the original parameters set in 1768 – reveals him to be a an inspiring, charismatic and persuasive leader.

Building a coalition among many nations, many of which don’t share a language and are spread apart by thousands of miles, and then mounting a unified political and military resistance with that coalition is a course of action, many contemporary politicians find challenging, if impossible.  Yet Tecumseh, embarking on a series of epic tours on horseback, managed to locate allies and supplies by appealing to the warriors themselves if their chiefs didn’t sign on.

This populist strategy required diplomatic communication and military skills.  Tecumseh was driven by his passionate belief that the land is common property of the entire populace, not just the few. He exclaims to Harrison, who views him as “an uncommon genius,”

“Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?” – Tecumseh

Tecumseh’s wisdom and eloquence is evident as he assails his people’s predicament and the struggle he was born to assess and lead.

“Where today are the Pequot? Where are the Narragansett, the Mochican, the Pocanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man … Sleep not longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws … Will not the bones of our dead be plowed up, and their graves turned into plowed fields?”

As the chief traveled in the summer of 1811 recruiting for the cause, Harrison added troops to his command at Vincennes, Indiana, and then headed north in September toward Prophetstown, where his movements were seen as an act of aggression by Tenskwatawa. By early November, the Battle of Tippecanoe had occurred, ending with the Americans entering Prophetstown and plundering the abandoned village.

Even as Tecumseh rebuilt the alliance in the beginning days of 1812, events escalated toward conflict between the British and the Americans. Still seeking to regain the original Ohio boundaries, Tecumseh traveled toward Detroit and an alliance with the British to defend the Canadian line.  Fighting in consort with the British, Tecumseh and his warriors participated in the siege of Detroit, which fell and then was retaken in a series of bloody actions.

Retreating into Canada, the British and Indian coalition was pursued by Harrison, who delivered the decisive military blow at the Battle of the Thames, where Tecumseh is felled.  Shortly thereafter, his confederacy of Indian tribes surrendered to Harrison at Detroit.  The year was 1813.

Within 25 years, most of the Indians east of the Mississippi had been relocated to lands in Oklahoma against their will as part of President Andrew Jackson’s containment policy.  This “Trail of Tears” was anticipated by the revelations of Tenskwatawa and the foresight demonstrated by Tecumseh as he pursued his mission of unification.

Sir Isaac Brock, the British commander with whom Tecumseh fought in Upper Canada reported of him, “A more gallant and sagacious warrior doesn’t exist.”

The falling star on the day of Tecumseh’s birth did foreshadow greatness, yet perhaps also metaphorically hinted of his demise. The timelessness of his courage and wisdom continues to soar by means of these lyrical words two hundred years later:

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

Places named after Tecumseh can be found in Michigan, Nebraska, Ontario, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. Places associated with this story that are named after General Anthony Wayne are found in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. The cities of Wyandotte, Michigan; Miami, Ohio; Algonquin, Illinois; Ottawa, Ohio; Fort Shawnee, Ohio; all are named for native tribes who participated in the coalition.  General William Tecumseh Sherman was named after Tecumseh, and proved himself to be a mighty warrior in the American Civil War.

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Tecumseh – Courageous Warrior and Statesman is a post from: Passing Thru

The most telling example of this phenomenon was when we returned from a long bike ride with friends.  We had ridden the trail from our house to downtown Minneapolis, enjoyed dinner on a rooftop overlooking the city.  On the return trip, my friend and I left our husbands behind on the bike trail, and I confided that I’d been “visited” by Phil’s ghost and that we’d been finding dimes everywhere.  I mentioned I was reluctant to share this, but she assured me she believed every word.  As we rolled up the driveway to our house and lowered our kickstands we looked at the cement step of our front stoop.  Right in the middle on the step’s edge, heads up, was – you guessed it – a dime.  Other placements were in the middle of the driveway directly in front of the garage door, and on the side door’s step.  It must have been that Phil was hanging around outside as well as visiting inside.

Image via Wikipedia

After a while, the dime discoveries tapered off a bit, but there were still occasions where Pete and I would discover a dime during a meaningful moment.  One of the most significant was when we were seated getting ready for takeoff on our trip to Alaska.  We always get adjoining aisle seats if we can, and there in the middle of the plane’s aisle right between us after we settled in, was a dime.  I pointed at it during takeoff and we just looked into each other’s eyes.  There was nothing to say.

I wish I would have researched this phenomenon back then, but it never occurred to me to do so.  On occasion I would share these examples with people and just as likely as not, would get a condescending little smirk in reaction.  There were some who believed that there was a correlation with the beyond, and some who most emphatically did not.  I tended not to mention additional sightings to those who did not, but did share a couple of instances with Pete’s family when we sat around the dinner table and the subject of ghosts came up.

Image via Wikipedia

Fast forward to this year.  In June I returned to Michigan to attend what my side of the family was calling “CousinFest 2010.”  We were on the main outing, all we cousins, which was a Leelanau County winery tasting tour.  Getting into the back seat of a vehicle with my oldest cousin, I spotted a dime on the floor between us.  ”Look,” I said, jokingly.  ”Someone is telling us they’re pleased we’re together today.  I wonder if it’s your mom or mine?”  We chuckled and I put the dime in my purse, thinking surely it fell out of the console where they might keep spare change for a toll or something.  We proceeded into the next stop and were gone for a while.  Back in the car again, and there’s a dime on the seat between us.  Now that was spooky.  I wouldn’t put it past one of my knucklehead rellies to have put it there as a joke, but they would’ve ‘fessed up by now.

In July, we lost Pete’s mom, Joan, not unexpectedly, but still rather suddenly.  In the shock of the next few days, a family friend, Jill, whom Joan had treated as a daughter, was very distraught as they’d been on vacation when Joan passed.  They rushed to our home without stopping at theirs upon arriving into town and we had an emotional visit.  Then, they proceeded to their house to unpack and settle in.  Turning down her bed covers the night before the funeral, Jill found a dime.

Image via Wikipedia

Pete’s dad began finding dimes right away, too.  One appeared on the table beside his favorite chair, one of a pair in their living room where they would frequently sit together while Joan was ill.  Another was under his shoes as they lay beside the bed ready for him to swing his feet into upon awakening.  Another dime was discovered in the lawn at the cabin, just at the moment he looked down at his feet.

By now, we were all on the lookout for dimes.  We suggested everyone make a clean sweep of tabletops and landing places, so we could start an analysis from scratch.  Several more were discovered at the cabin, which is the family’s favorite place, and at home.

Image via Wikipedia

In August, Pete and I decided we would retreat to our beloved Minnesota North Shore.  I wrote about our meaningful experiences in our series, Looking Into Forever – Parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.   Those posts were very difficult to write, as they contained very powerful experiences, messages and reminders.  What I didn’t tell you is that while Pete was breaking our camp for the last time on our last day, he found a dime all by itself in one of the tent’s mesh pockets.  We had never used them for spare change whatsoever.

At findingdimes.org, we’re told by a commenter,

“There is an old adage that says “Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is proof.” So I feel like something is going on here. This is not random. There is a reason why I am finding these dimes. Someone is sending me these dimes. I’m not sure exactly who. Or exactly why.”

Another commenter responds,

“Dimes are a sign of love from someone who has passed on and it’s their way of sending encouragement and peace.”

Another reference I found provided these anecdotal insights:

“Last night a dime suddenly dropped in my house. But the weird thing is…I am from Europe. I have never been in USA.”

“When I find a dime I look to see which side it is on. If it is on the flame side(the torches) I take that to mean direction. The torches are a trinity, a number of completeness. I know that wherever I was in my mind at the moment I found the dime is something I should consider and know that the creator is listening.  If it is on heads I take that to mean “face it.” Face where I am at the moment and except it. I know this may sound silly but since I have been finding dimes for a long time I gave them this significance. I’m glad to know that I am not the only one that finding dimes is weird.”

and this (wishful?) insight:

“Pay phones only used to cost a dime to call somebody… Spirits are asking you to call them. That’s the honest truth.”

Evidently, many people tattoo themselves with a dime and a significant date after a loss.  There are many comments supporting the practice and acceptance that this is a sign throughout the older entries in InkedBlog.

Wilder theories abound in another forum:

“In numerology the numbers 1-9 are used as well as the double digit (master) numbers 11,22,33 and so on. I think that finding a dime could signify a new beginning. In numerology you take the numbers down as far as they go, so 10 would be 1+0=1. The end of the single digit cycle, and the beginning of the double digit cycle. It’s a perfect number. A perfect balance of positive and negative. The Yin and Yang of the number world. So. Take finding dimes as a sign of change (quite literally).”

and

The meaning of number ten deals with returning to our center, coming full circle. Ten holds a vibration of unity, as well as fresh starts.

If the number One symbolizes the beginning (& it does), then we can say that the number Ten represents the outcome, result, or achievement of that first step or beginning.

The most profound message number Ten hails is “whatever we sew, we shall now reap.” In other words, “what comes around goes around.”

Ten also represents fulfillment, attainment, and completion. These attributes are obtained by observing the Ten containing all the elementary numbers from 1 to 9. As such, Ten is a vessel holding all the jumbled up potential found in the language of numbers.

Ten is also a bit slippery because reduced – it turns back to number One – hence, again – a full circle, coming to the beginning – finding unity (all is one, one is all).

That you are picking up a great deal of dimes is quite a good sign. Specifically, dimes may be symbolic of shiny opportunities coming your way that you once thought were lost to you.

Remember Tens are strong representation of recycling events (full circle) – a dime is a superior symbolic symbol of such phenomenon. Consider how many times a dime (or any money for that matter) is recycled through our society.

Symbolic dimes provide messages of lost opportunities regained. Things we thought we should not or could not do are beginning to resurface. Our energies are being recycled. Our intellectual currency is on the brink of change.

Shiny, bright and round…these dimes on your path are beacons of promise. They hold the meaning of number Ten firmly in their vibration and that is: “Events are coming full circle. Cast off the old, and don the new. Step into the beginning that is for your greatest good.”

It’s quite a lot to think about, isn’t it?  So much so, that I’m not sure what to think.  However, I remain very willing to believe these instances are not mere coincidence.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend was over and mentioned she and her husband were going up to the North Shore on their anniversary weekend.  Did I have any recommendations for her?  I walked into my office and picked up our heavy North Shore notebook to get out a brochure for her.  A dime flew out.  It had been on the top page in the looseleaf binder.

And, more recently, in an attempt to declutter, I’ve been consolidating.  When I opened a dresser drawer that hadn’t been used in months, amid all the other items was a lonely dime.  No other spare change.

Can all these instances be explained by a non-believer?  Certainly.  I don’t think we’ll ever know, even though there are anecdotes and tales of dimes appearing mysteriously and literally in thin air, while people were showering (with no pockets for a dime to fall out of), in locations far away where they were unlikely to be, and in places where your first glance would fall.

We’ll probably never know for sure.  I’m hoping, though, I’ll find out once I reach the afterlife so that I can continue the practice with those for whom I care so much who remain here after me.

Have you ever had a similar experience that you took to be a message from beyond?  Did you know there is even a Facebook page topic on Finding Dimes?

Finding Dimes is a post from: Passing Thru

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. – Henry David Thoreau

Photo by Pete Wuebker

Autumn wouldn’t be complete without pumpkins at our house.  This year, Pete’s vegetable garden was designed to need as little attention as possible.  That meant the majority of it was devoted to just two things: tomatoes and pumpkins.

Photo by Pete Wuebker

Last year, a pumpkin shortage put the kibosh on a lot of people’s plans for baking.  Pete’s crop wasn’t particularly exceptional either, as a rainier than normal season resulted in less than ideal product from our little patch and throughout the nation.  Other years, his pumpkins have literally been snowed upon!  It’s a testament to the hardy pumpkin’s adaptability to survive these variable conditions.

This year, though, over the last several weeks, the house has been filled with the spicy aroma of baking pumpkin, softening it up to turn into pies and other delicious goodies.  Aside from Pete’s award-winning pie recipe which I will never stop promoting, my other personal favorite is pumpkin gnocchi.  Pete serves his version with maple syrup topping.  Incredible!

I found recipes for pumpkin gnocchi, including some that get pretty fancy:

Pumpkin Gnocchi

Pan Fried Pumpkin Gnocchi with Brown Butter Sage

Martha Stewart’s Pumpkin Gnocchi with Mushrooms

Pumpkin Gnocchi with California Walnut Brown Butter Sauce

Pumpkin Gnocchi with Parmigiano, Sage and White Truffles

Photo by Pete Wuebker

While most pumpkin recipes call for canned pumpkin puree that you purchase in the store, there is a world of difference when you make it yourself.  Even if you don’t have your own garden, we encourage you to consider purchasing pie pumpkins (the smaller ones you see at the store in the produce section) or larger ones that you might think were just suitable for carving.  Then, go ahead and process the pumpkin yourself.  It tastes so much better!

It’s easy to get one large pumpkin processed on a cookie sheet in your oven.  Click here for Pete’s instructions on how to do it.

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

When we visited farm country several weeks ago, the Barten Pumpkin Farm was part of the tour.  Claiming not to be “your ordinary pumpkin patch,” the Barten farm boasted over 6,000 pumpkins, all displayed in their yard for the event.  Eighteen years ago, the Barten clan switched from selling sweet corn by the roadside to specializing in pumpkins.

Photo by Pete Wuebker

Their display is impressive!  They use a variety of props, including haybales, broom corn, corn shocks and decorative gourds, to enhance their vignettes and complement the orange headliner.  When we arrived there was a veritable sea of pumpkins assembled under the protective branches of a pine grove along the Barten driveway.  Lots of activities were underway with the kiddies in mind.  Pete and I decided just to wander around and take photos.

Photo by Pete Wuebker

Pumpkins were a happy gift from the New World to the Old.  The University of Illinois Extension informs us, “Native Americans dried strips of pumpkin and wove them into mats. They also roasted long strips of pumpkin on the open fire and ate them. The origin of pumpkin pie occurred when the colonists sliced off the pumpkin top, removed the seeds, and filled the insides with milk, spices and honey. The pumpkin was then baked in hot ashes.”

Pumpkins are surging in popularity as a superfood.  Medicinal uses for parts of the pumpkin have ranged from treatment for prostate ailments, snake bite remedies and to reduce the appearance of freckles.

Pumpkins are 90 percent water, and, “are loaded with the antioxidant beta-carotene, which has been shown to help improve immune function and can reduce the risk of diseases such as cancer and heart disease. In addition, pumpkins also contain many vitamins and nutrients including: calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, zinc, selenium, niacin, folate, and vitamins A, C, and E. One cup of pumpkin contains only 50 calories and 3 grams of fiber.”

That stupid blockhead of a brother of mine is out in the pumpkin patch making his yearly fool of himself. – Lucy Van Pelt, in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

There’s a brand new record World’s Largest pumpkin grown in Wisconsin and exhibited at the Stillwater (Minnesota) Harvest Fest this past Saturday (October 9, 2010).

Soon it will be time to carve jack-o-lanterns.  With the beautiful Indian Summer we’re having, carving yours now will mean it won’t last in time for Halloween.

Photo by Betsy Wuebker

Did you know the jack-o-lantern is named after an Irishman who was called Stingy Jack?  The legendary figure was doomed at the pearly gates for his sins on earth to forever inhabit the netherworld between heaven and hell.  Taking an ember from the edges of hellfire, he hollowed out a gourd and placed it inside to light his way through eternity.  The Irish, in turn, placed lights in hollowed gourds to guard against evil spirits and that of Jack himself.  When pumpkins made their way to the Old World, the size of the gourd made it the first choice for this practice.

Photo by Pete Wuebker

The pumpkin farm had some strange-looking gourds in their displays as well.  These are snake gourds, but the farm also prides itself on ornamental and rare varieties that make for interesting textures.  Native Americans used gourds for food and medicinal purposes, treating ailments as disparate as skin conditions, headaches and insanity.  Gourds were made into toys, rattles, water containers and sacred objects.

It’s been our experience at this house that pumpkins and gourds are often “volunteer’ed” into new locations when their seeds are carried by critters and birds taking them out of their original places in the garden.  These surprises have shown up all over the flower gardens and even in the lawn!

Last week, on our outing in St. Paul, two of us ordered a delicious pumpkin soup, a pale puree made with cream and punctuated with crisp, toasted pumpkin seeds.  This delicious soup could as easily have been garnished with a little sour cream and caviar, too.

Roasting pumpkin seeds is easy:  You remove all their pulp, spread them on a cookie sheet to dry after soaking them in salted water overnight, then toss them in olive oil, butter, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, in any combination you think best.  Then just bake them in a 300 degree oven for 45 minutes to an hour, tossing frequently while baking.

There is so much to like about pumpkins.  The orange orbs in the fields seem to reflect the sun hundreds of times over during these last few weeks of the growing season.  As the nights get longer, and we turn toward the warmth of hearth and home, comfort foods and traditional rituals with pumpkins at their center are eponymous with bountiful harvests and days of Indian Summer.

I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. – Willa Sibert Cather

Related articles

• Great Gourds! What’s With Those Warty Pumpkins? (livescience.com)
• From the Garden Pumpkin Pie (Pete’s Prize Winner)
• Pumpkin Carving Stencil selection- a quest to unique Pumpkin … (jacktimes.com)

What’s your favorite pumpkin recipe or memory?

Plentiful Pumpkins is a post from: Passing Thru

Cathedral Hill is situated on a bluff overlooking downtown St. Paul, dominated by the majestic dome and imposing edifice of the National Shrine of the Apostle Paul.  Archbishop John Ireland (don’t you love that name?) commissioned French Beaux Arts architect Emmanuel Louis Masqueray (who’d worked on the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair) to build a centerpiece for the Archdiocese.  Construction began in 1906 and was completed in 1915.  It was during this time that the neighborhood began to flourish, although it had been a place of elegance and grandeur from the mid-19th century on.

When my brother visited recently, we decided upon a whim to go inside the Cathedral, and were fortunate to tag along on a tour already in progress.  Spellbinding details were woven into historical, religious and humorous context by the tour guide, an elderly woman who clearly loves her work.  The French Renaissance interior is magnificent, filled with gilt, marble statuary, stained glass windows, intricate carvings and glorified not only by its ornament but its immense, yet intimate, proportions.  It is impossible to depict how large this building is with photographs, but its detail will remind you of the places, like the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, which inspired its designers and artisans.

Legend has it that one of the city’s most prominent citizens, James J. Hill, was unhappy that the Cathedral next door eventually overshadowed the grandeur of his personal residence not only in expense, but proximity to heaven. Closer to God is the mighty dome of the Archbishop instead of the railroad baron. Perhaps as it should be, no? In the photograph you can see the multi-chimneyed abode of Mr. Hill made modest.

Cathedral Hill, also known as Summit Hill, for the main Avenue where wealthy citizenry built residential monuments where they could literally look down on the crass commercial district and their less fortunate neighbors, began to be developed in the 1850′s.  But the neighborhood’s glory days may very well have been the Jazz Age of the 1920′s and 30′s.

One of St. Paul’s favorite literary sons, F. Scott Fitzgerald, immortalized this insular world in his stories and novels.  Who couldn’t love The Great Gatsby from its first few pages, evocative as it is of something close to deja vu in sepia tones of forced gaiety and underlying melancholy?  Just like the lace-curtained windows on Laurel or Ashland that provide only glimpses of the lives contained within, nostalgia renders Cathedral Hill’s literary portrait.  ”That’s my Middle West,” Nick Carraway tells us.  ”. . . the street lamps and sleigh bells in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on the snow.”

Early in our relationship, Pete and I spent a romantic evening at a table for two next to the fireplace at W. A. Frost and Company, at the corner of Selby and Western in Cathedral Hill.  We’d stumbled and slid through snowbanks into a bar that seemed bathed in Carraway’s golden light, and proceeded into a dining room made intimate and mellowed by woodgrain, oriental carpets, and vintage brick.

As a boy, F. Scott, named after distant cousin Francis Scott Key before his poetry became famous as our national anthem, was sure to have had an ice cream soda here when it was the neighborhood drugstore.  The building is a handsome sandstone edifice in the Italian Renaissance style, ornamented with copper cornices.  Its original tin ceilings gleam in candleglow.

Across the street to its west is the former Angus Hotel, dating from 1887, now refurbished as the Blair Arcade with shops and condominiums, including Garrison Keillor’s bookstore.  Scott’s mother, Molly, lived here for a short time after her husband’s death.  The bay windows and turrets on the building are classic Queen Anne with wrought iron ornamentation.  The Angus alternately deteriorated and rejuvenated in 20 year increments after WWII, and now is at the nexus of the neighborhood.

On this visit, my girlfriends and I headed to Cathedral Hill to shop at First Monday at the Commodore Hotel, which had been a temporary home to Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in 1921-22.  Another of our friends was displaying her handmade jewelry at this shopping event and we were all excited to be there.

The Commodore’s Art Deco bar is a perfectly preserved example of the clean-lines, mirrors and gilding with which the style purveyed swank and sophistication, with a speakeasy’s secret door to where the booze was stashed.  To replenish the bar these days, the bartenders crawl into the same closet on their knees and pass the bottles toward waiting hands.  I ordered a cosmopolitan martini and wished I could have a cigarette, although I haven’t smoked in years.

The Commodore’s details set the mood back to the Roaring 20′s and 30′s in an instant.  Tile, mirror, lighting fixtures, and even the whimsical painting on the ladies room door harkened toward that time, which has always seemed so familiar.

What is it, I am wondering in this month of ghosts, about those who frequented these places who seem so vivid to me?  Not individually do they manifest, but instead there is this overall mood woven from threads of expectation, glamour, hope, and tragedy.  Was life more intense then?  It seems so.

The newly wed Fitzgeralds embarked on an opulent lifestyle from which he drew many of the plot lines in his literature, traveling to Paris and the French Riviera, getting kicked out of the University and White Bear Yacht Clubs for wild parties, and creating financial difficulties that would plague Scott throughout his life.  They became friendly with other ex-pats, including Ernest Hemingway.  This lifestyle accommodated Fitzgerald’s alcoholism and his wife’s flamboyance.

The vestiges of The Lost Generation lived on at The Commodore long after the Fitzgeralds did, mutating into the gangster days of the late 1920′s and throughout the 1930′s.  In John Dillinger Slept Here, we learn that Ma Barker occupied Apartments 215 to 221 starting in 1933, using an alias.  Her son, Fred, moved in, too, and brought his girlfriend, but, according to a 1936 FBI report, on mother’s orders the girl was ensconced in Apartment 404.  Nonetheless, the FBI went on, Ma Barker made the girl’s life “miserable.”

Other scofflaws besides the garden variety Jazz Babies and small-time hoodlums who holed up at the Commodore were Alvin Karpis, Al Capone, and train robber Jimmy Keating.  Karpis hooked up with the Barker gang about this time to kidnap William Hamm, one of the scions of the St. Paul brewing dynasty, netting the princely sum of $100,000 in ransom.  Next, they doubled their money with Edward Bremer, of the banking family, whose father was a friend of Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Residents of the Commodore lived fast and furious.  Things were all over for the Barker gang by 1935, with everyone either dead or captured.  The Commodore declined, as well, particularly after the second World War, along with the neighborhood.

This was all long after young Scott came of age in the shadow of the construction of the magnificent Cathedral.  The cohesiveness of the neighborhood must have impressed the boy as representing haven and strength.  Edward Fitzgerald was fortunate to have “married up” into local McQuillan wealth and Social Register standing.  Whenever he fell upon hard times, and he frequently and inevitably did, the family returned to the financial safety of one of his mother-in-law’s houses in Cathedral Hill.

The sense of stability and place permeating Fitzgerald’s work, according to Patricia Kane, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s St. Paul: A Writer’s Use of Material, was more symbolic than actual. Fitzgerald’s family “lived always in houses on the periphery of the city’s ‘best’ residential district. Fitzgerald’s letter to a friend described himself as living:

‘In a house below the average
On a street above the average
In a room below the roof. . .’ “

while at 599 Summit Avenue, now listed on the National Register, and working on This Side of Paradise. It was here that he learned of his book’s acceptance for publishing, which in turn prompted a renewed liaison with Zelda and led her to consent to their marriage now that he was appropriately successful.

All Fitzgerald’s stories, Kane tells us, include men “whose expectations exceed their experiences.”   Another Minnesota writer, Sinclair Lewis, who also resided for a time at the Commodore, similarly immortalized in the character of Babbitt an “admiration for the energy of the city and the Ivy League athletes come home to business success.” Fitzgerald wrote of an ideal city, whose values and experiences were predictable and sturdy.

The irony of this repetitive theme isn’t lost on someone who traces Fitzgerald’s transient life, his parents having lived at six addresses on and off Summit Avenue between 1908 and 1918 alone.  The newly wed Fitzgeralds lived at the Commodore in the fall of 1921, but also during that short period of less than a year, he and Zelda moved frequently between White Bear Lake and Cathedral Hill, most frequently as a result of eviction for the effects of wild parties they hosted.  By 1922, they were gone from Minnesota for good.

It was a beautiful Midwest autumn evening to walk through the neighborhood from the Commodore to W. A. Frost, where we friends were anticipating good food and wine.  We decided to meander a bit to take in parts of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Walking Tour on our way.  Ambling west on Laurel, we admired beautiful examples of mid to late 19th century architecture as the leaves fluttered from the trees and the streetlights came on.

It wasn’t hard to imagine a young boy skipping down the street and glancing up at the different homes up and down the block, taking in the atmosphere in indelible imprints to be resurrected later in his writing.

Did he notice that these two beauties were twin duplexes?

We wondered if they were painted in such detail during those years?

Did he admire the detailed simplicity of this one, or perhaps know the family who lived here?  Would he and his playmates have scampered in the garden behind the hedge or opened the turquoise door on the spindled porch to beg a sweet treat from someone’s mother?

At # 481 Laurel, one of a twin set called San Mateo Flats by its builder, Scott had been born in 1896, in the third floor apartment at left. On this waning fall afternoon with the sunset filtered by buildings and trees, the golden lamplight such as Nick Carraway described in The Great Gatsby was glowing in the front flat like a beacon for a boy on his way home to dinner.

We turned on Mackubin northward toward Selby, and then east again.  The streetlamps were lit, and the dome of the Cathedral rose up at the end of the street, the ever present landmark that the boy saw on his way for an ice cream all those years ago.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

We friends dined that lovely evening among the shadows of what had gone before.  We spoke of our own hopes and dreams, laughed and confided in one another, in the space of a few golden hours.  Amid the quiet streets, we saw the romance and heard whispers of the past as the city settled in.  The days are shorter now and we will return again.

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In the Footsteps of F. Scott Fitzgerald is a post from: Passing Thru