How did a young Ojibwe warrior from Leech Lake become immortalized on the shores of Battle Lake, over 100 miles from his home? This was a place where he only ever spent about half a day. And it wasn’t a very good day for him all said, except that he survived to see the sun set on it.
The imposing statue of “Chief Wenonga” overlooking Battle Lake would give you the impression that this person was a victorious leader in the battle which gave the lake its English name. The historical account of this battle paints a different picture. Wenonga (meaning Vulture) was part of a 50-man surprise-attack Ojibwe war party. They left Leech Lake late in the fall of 1795 and traveled for four days until they began to hear the sounds of Dakota hunting guns firing throughout the countryside. When a hunting party came into view, the Ojibwe took off after them in hot pursuit. The attack was not very well planned, and the surprise ended up turning unfavorably on the Ojibwe group. After chasing the small hunting party down the beach and through thick woods, three of the fastest runners came out on the open prairie. There they found themselves dressed for war and standing breathlessly on the doorstep of a village of 300 Dakota homes. This was somewhere on the north shore of West Battle Lake. (Supposing just five people per household, this town would have had a larger population than Battle Lake has today).
The Dakota quickly rounded up their own warriors who far out-numbered the Ojibwe and chased them back through the woods and down the sand beaches of the lake to the reedy outlet that runs into Molly Stark. Today this small stream is called Battle Creek. At this point I should tell you that the ensuing battle was not fought with tomahawks and bows and arrows, but primarily with guns, which the Ojibwe and Dakota had access to for well over 100 years [1].
The Ojibwe men hid in the reeds, and by hiding, reportedly shot down many of the Dakota before they knew what was happening. But ultimately the Ojibwe were hopelessly outnumbered. The old Ojibwe chief Uke-ke-waus who had rounded up the war party in the first place, ordered anyone left alive to retreat while he and his three remaining sons bore the brunt of the attack, giving others the chance to escape. Uke-ke-waus and his three sons were killed and scalped by the Dakota warriors. His fourth son had been the first to be shot in front of the Dakota village. Less than one-third of the Ojibwe party made it home alive. Wenonga — who is referred to as a leader, but not a chief — was one of the few who survived. And though he was badly wounded, he was still living nearly 60 years later and boasted of shooting down seven Dakota warriors that day. The Leech Lake Ojibwe called the lake where this event took place Ish-quon-e-de-win-ing; Where But Few Survived. The French fur traders called it “Lac du Battaile.” We do not know what the Dakota called it, but I sure would like to know because it probably had nothing to do with bloodshed. Since the Ojibwe had been on enemy territory, they were never given the chance to bury their dead. William W. Warren, the half-Ojibwe historian who recorded this story, said that at the time of his writing (circa 1852), “Their bones are bleaching, and returning to dust, on the spot where they so bravely fought and fell”.
Warren was the only historian to write an account of this battle. We have nothing from the Dakota perspective. If we had, I imagine that a Dakota warrior, victorious in defending his hometown, might have been given the honor of standing guard over Battle Lake. But unfortunately, history has not given us the name of one. It is good to have statues, monuments and memorials to make us ask “What happened here?” even if the story gets a little messed up along the way. The important thing is to keep asking “What really happened here?” and to find primary historical sources when possible. I hope that if you pass through Battle Lake, you will be able to look at Chief Wenonga and think of both sides of the story that are mixed up in this classic mid-20th century homage to Native American history. Look out at the lake and remember that to the Ojibwe it was “Where But Few Survived”. To the French fur traders who were not involved, it was “The Place Where That Battle Happened”…and to the Dakota, who had lived there for “generations beyond remembering”[2] it had a different name. Probably a beautiful name. A name lost, just like the names of their warriors, their chiefs and their side of the story that day.
You can find the full story (well, the Ojibwe side of it anyhow) in “History of the Ojibway People” by William W. Warren in Chapter 29 “The Pillagers”. It is much more detailed and interesting than this brief summary, and the geography is so well described and so similar to how it is today, that you can read the story while looking at the area on a satellite map and picture how the events played out in the swamp, woods, creek and on the sandy beaches of West Battle Lake.
[1] Wingerd, Mary Lethert. North Country, The Making of Minnesota p. 9,20
[2]Wingerd. North Country, The Making of Minnesota from the opening lines of chapter one: “The Dakota Sioux were indeed a fortunate people. For generations beyond remembering, they had made their home on the lands that would become Minnesota”.
Hello! My name is Sara Ronnevik. I am a Minnesota farm wife, mom, artist and lover of old stories. The more ancient and obscure a story, the more I am interested in it. I love digging up history from the library, local family lore, and the county museum archives. But my favorite place to look for history is in the dirt on plowed fields in my neighborhood.
This blog is a place where I will be collecting some of the stories that I want to share and remember. Feel free to fact-check me or correct me if something I write is not accurate. I hope that these stories will enrich our lives and enable us to see the world through the lens of a different time, a different place, or a different culture.
Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”
They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?” “What things?” he asked.
“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
There is intriguing archaeological evidence that the Hebrew people lived in Egypt within the timeline given by the Bible in exactly the location given in the Bible. But, if you get anywhere close to the library of information on these topics, the gatekeepers will be very quick to tell you (before you enter) that only fringe fundamentalists believe such things. This slur works so well that even conservative Bible commentaries will sometimes take pains to note that there is not yet any archaeological evidence that the Hebrews lived in Egypt.
Historical evidence for the presence of Hebrew people in Egypt from the time of Joseph, around 1876 BC, down to the Exodus at 1446 BC, comes from several places. Any of these could be the topic of more study but I will give a brief outline below. The dates of Joseph’s reign and the Exodus can be debated, but the timeline of Egyptian history is also uncertain because of overlapping reigns of kings, co-regencies and the changing divisions between of Upper and Lower Egypt. The general correspondence is more important than pinning down exact dates which are a bit slippery from any perspective.
The City of Avaris
First discovered in the 19th century, archaeologists have long been excavating a site identified as the ancient city of Avaris. Never heard of it? That’s because the gatekeepers are good at their job!
Avaris was populated by “Semitic-speaking Canaanites” or “Retjenu” or “Levantine People” – all categories to which the descendants of Israel belong. Another common cultural name is “Hyksos” which is an Egyptian term meaning “Foreign Rulers.”
Avaris was established by Amenemhet I in the 19th century BC but began to grow rapidly starting in about 1830 BC due to an “immigration of Canaanites.” Located on a branch of the Nile Delta system, with excellent trade access to the Mediterranean Sea, some archaeologists believe that Avaris was possibly the largest city in the world from 1670 to 1557 BC. Biblical scholars have always identified Goshen in exactly the same region where Avaris is located, and the timeline of this quickly growing city fits in perfectly with the rapid expansion of the Hebrew nation due to high birthrates. The Egyptian name for this city was written (phonetically) ḥw.t wꜥr.t. In Ancient Greek it was called “Auris” and the name has also survived as “Hawara” in association with another ancient Egyptian city called Faiyum.
Note that the name Hawara or Avaris is a perfect linguistic match with Evera/Everis (a place where “Evers” live). Ever, usually spelled Eber in English Bibles, is Abraham’s ancestor from whom the term “Hebrew” is derived. Ebera/Evera/Avara/Hawara in varying pronunciations, would, in that case, be a designation like “China-town” which might explain why Faiyum also had an area called Hawara.
A more concrete piece of evidence connecting Avaris with the Israelites is that the Bible records four times (Genesis 47:11, Exodus 12:37, Numbers 33:3, and 33:5) that the Israelites lived in Rameses and set out for the wilderness from Rameses. This was the city name that would have been familiar to later generations of Israelites, but was anachronistic for the time of the Exodus. Avaris, Rameses and Qantir (the modern town name) are all just different levels of the stack of archaeological pancakes in the exact same location. Most likely, Avaris was the name originally written by Moses. But a later editor changed the name to Rameses when the name of the city had changed. The Pentateuch was always seen as a historical document, and therefore editing a place name was not any kind of textual tampering, but a way to continue to uphold the historical accuracy of the text. Similarly, English Bibles replace the word “Mizraim” with “Egypt” rather than transliterating because the translators know which word is best understood by people today. The purpose of replacing Avaris with Rameses was so that the reader could identify the exact location where these events took place. And it just so happens that today if you were to travel to Qantir with a shovel and started digging, you would unearth the city of Rameses, and directly below that you would begin to dig up Avaris, an ancient city of Canaanite foreigners who lived in Egypt for a good long time.
One objection to Avaris being the home of Israelites turns out to support the hypothesis. The objection is that the Hyksos were polytheistic people who worshipped all the pantheon of Canaanite gods, while Hebrews are thought to have introduced the world to monotheism. Actually, God “introduced” (reintroduced?) monotheism to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but their descendants resisted fiercely. While the patriarchs seemed to possess a genuine faith in the one true God, any cursory reading of the Old Testament will inform us that the Israelites were intoxicated by the Canaanite gods. When Jacob ran away with his family to get away from his cheating father-in-law, what did Rachel steal from her father? The household gods. Although God revealed himself to Jacob very personally, his wife did not seem to fully grasp the exclusivity of the God of Abraham. The wrestling between God and idols continued as they family grew. From the Exodus until the captivity in Babylon, Israel’s history is a story of God and his few faithful followers calling the nation to repent and worship Him only, but being largely rejected. Preaching against disobedience and idol worship often resulted in death threats and execution. It took over 1000 years, the near obliteration of their nation and years in exile to cure the Israelites of idolatry. If archaeologists found that Avaris was a city of monotheists we would know that the idea was a hoax.
Avaris was a city populated by people from the Levant who held varying amounts of power in different time periods throughout their long stay in Egypt. Although influenced by Egypt, they never assimilated and remained distinctly Semitic until they suddenly vanished from the archaeological record. There is nothing about the history of these long-term Canaanite residents that excludes them from being synonymous with the Israelites.
The Alphabet
This topic falls into the category of ‘circumstantial evidence.’ The alphabet is believed to have been invented sometime around 1800 or 1700 BC by a Semitic-speaking person, or group of people, living in Egypt who were not just bilingual, but could read and write at least basic Egyptian (a pretty elite and rare skill set). We know this because the alphabetic signs are derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs but have been given a sound-association and name whose root is Semitic, or to be more precise, Hebrew. The letter A is derived from the Egyptian sign for cattle, but the sound and name are ‘aleph’ – the Hebrew word for ox. The letter B comes from the Egyptian glyph for house, but the sound association is the Hebrew word for house, ‘beth.’ Amazingly, after all these years, the Hebrew words are still easy to recognize in our English word for: Alphabet! Of course they went through Greek, changing from Aleph and Beth to Alpha and Beta, but surprisingly there was no change after that.
Right now, you are interacting with an invention that is an Egyptian-Hebrew conglomeration originating from around 1800 BC. The obvious link between the alphabet and Hebrew is lost on many people because modern Hebrew is written in a completely different script. The ancient or paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used by the nation of Israel from the time of the Exodus until the captivity in Babylon, and probably for some time afterwards.
The alphabet is the most ingenious and flexible form of writing ever invented. According to historians and linguists, it was only ever invented once and then the idea spread around the world. It is also perhaps the most underappreciated tool in spreading the gospel as it makes Bible translation and literacy accessible to ordinary people. Would it not be clever if God orchestrated its origins during Joseph’s time in Egypt or the early Hebrew sojourn? Could some other Non-Hebrew Canaanite person have spent enough time in Egypt to come up with the alphabet? Yes. As of now, the precise inventor of the alphabet is unknown to us. Although it may be worth noting that God’s people have done some pretty amazing things while sitting in jail for the crime of being good, as Joseph did for two years. John Bunyan wrote “Pilgrim’s Progress” while sitting in jail. Luther translated the New Testament while sitting in jail, Paul and John wrote parts of the New Testament while sitting in jail. Were they using an invention that Joseph came up with while sitting in jail?
Apart from wild speculation, the things that we do know about the origin of the alphabet support an exceptionally strong Hebrew-Egyptian connection during the period that the Bible says such a connection existed. The following chart shows how the early Semitic alphabetic signs from around 1800 BC (column 2) came directly from Egyptian hieroglyphs (column 1) and then became the standardized Paleo-Hebrew (column 3). But the sound values come from Hebrew words, not Egyptian. This is true for all the letters, although I only have a short sampling here. If you are unfamiliar with the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, you will quickly notice that it is much closer to the English and Greek alphabet than it is to modern Hebrew:
A – Aleph…Ox
B – Bet…House
N – Nahas…Snake
Q – Qoph…the original picture comes from a ball of spun yarn on a spindle
M – Mem/Mayim…Water
The Pleas for Help in the El-Amarna Letters from Canaanite Kings
The El-Amarna tablets discovered in Egypt were written during a very brief period of history which would seem to correlate with the timeframe in which the Hebrews conquered Canaan.
They include letters written on clay tablets from kings in Jerusalem and Gezer who were requesting help from Egypt because of the military threat from the ‘Apiru’ – a term which also sounds quite similar to ‘Hebrew.’ In these paintings (recreation on top, original below) from the tomb of Rekhmire circa 1450, Chiefs of Retjenu (Canaan/Syria) are delivering tribute gifts for Thutmose III.
So, we have a “Canaanite” city, Avaris, that exploded in population in the area identified as Goshen at the exact time that the Hebrews lived and greatly multiplied in Egypt according to the Bible. Exodus tells us that the specific place that the Hebrews departed from Egypt was Rameses, the later city that sits on top of ancient Avaris. Then, we have an alphabet invented by a bilingual (and literate) Hebrew and Egyptian speaking person around the time that Jacob’s family arrived in Egypt as politically powerful and welcomed people. And finally, we have letters from kings in Canaan sent to Egypt requesting help because the ‘Apiru’ were threating to take over their cities during the same time period that the Bible tells us that the Hebrews began to invade Canaan.
Yet, according to the experts we have NO EVIDENCE that the Israelites ever lived in Egypt. What do you think?
acrylic paint, myrrh, agarwood, and spikenard on canvas
A Lenten Painting and 7 Meditations
No. 1
“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” Psalm 33:6 ESV.
What happens when the breath of God leaves the body of God?
No. 2
“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split.” Matthew 27:50-51 NIV
We are often taught that the curtain tore because Jesus’ death opened up the way to God. This is not untrue, but it may not have been anyone’s first thought at the time it happened. In ancient Jewish culture, garments were torn as a sign of lament especially in response to the death of a loved one.
If God had a garment on earth, it was the curtain in the temple.
When the centurion on duty at the crucifixion felt the earthquake and saw rocks break open at the moment of Christ’s death, he was terrified and cried out, “Surely this was the Son of God!” People do not cry out carefully thought theology when they are terrified. They say primal words, immediate emotions, unfiltered thoughts. (They might even unsay the same things a few days later when things calm down).
Was the centurion’s cry echoed in the temple?
God had torn a garment that only God could tear. Top down, just like a grieving father.
“Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster.” Joel 2:12-13
No. 3
Excerpt from the poem Devastating Beauty by Gideon Heugh
On Friday my hope died
The sky wept itself dark
the ground broke apart
and all creation cried
for the bloodied innocence
hammered into a tree
There were whispers of a torn curtain
but they didn’t reach my ears
or mend my mangled heart
or stem the bitter tears
as we took
the body down…
No. 4
“After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.”. John 19:38-40 ESV
As is the burial custom of the Jews
According to ancient Jewish tradition, the body of a person who has died a violent death or lost a great deal of blood at the time of death, is not washed. This custom is still carried out by orthodox Jews today. This is due to the strong conviction that the life is in the blood and therefore the blood must be buried with the body and not separated from it.
For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life. Leviticus 17:11 ESV
No. 5
Aromas
We can be fairly certain of four aromas present at the burial of Christ: Blood, Spikenard (from the anointing at Bethany), Myrrh and Aloewood. Although many kinds of aloe plants were common in Israel, Scripture tells us that the aloe at Jesus’ burial was a spice which would indicate that it was probably powdered aloewood, completely unrelated to the succulent plants. Aloewood also goes by the name agarwood and “wood of the gods”. It is an aromatic tree-resin which was used in incense, perfume and embalming. But only very wealthy people could afford to buy tens of pounds of aloewood that would be needed for a burial.
Aloewood is formed in the heartwood of the Aquilaria tree after it has been infected with a mold parasite. The tree then defensively secretes a resin to combat the fungal infestation. Before the infection, the heartwood is light, pale and has little scent. As the infection advances, the tree produces its fragrant resin as a final defense. Then the heartwood becomes very dense, dark and saturated with the fragrant resin.
Myrrh comes from the nasty-looking, thorny Commiphora myrrha tree. To quote Wikipedia, “Myrrh is harvested by repeatedly wounding the trees to bleed the gum, which is waxy and coagulates quickly.”
Commiphora myrrha tree, one of the primary trees from which myrrh is harvested
(Image Credit: Wikipedia)
Myrrh and aloewood powders were used in the creation of this painting, and pure spikenard oil was dripped on the surface. The combined aroma is hard to describe. It is haunting, mysterious, and woodsy. It beckons quietly, and is so natural in its winsome earthiness you might think it the smell of the world before anything went wrong with it. And yet these fragrances came from bleeding thorns and pestilence.
In The Broken Leaf, Roger Lowther shares reflections on Japanese artforms that have a long history of creating beauty from brokenness. This is not just the idea of finding beauty in spite of brokenness, but a belief the most beautiful things can only come from brokenness. In the book he writes about Shotoku Taishi, a Japanese prince and influential leader in the 7th century, who said that “sickness is saved by sickness.”
He himself bore our sins
In his body on the tree
So that we might dieto sins and
Live for righteousness
By his wounds you have been healed
In these words written by the apostle Peter, the branches of the diseased Aquilaria tree and the beastly thorns of the Commiphora are tangled throughout.
Sickness is saved by sickness, death is undone by death.
No. 6
Isaiah’s Poem: The Suffering Servant
A prophecy written in the 8th Century Before Christ
Behold, my servant shall act wisely;
He shall be high and lifted up,
And shall be exalted.
As many were astonished at you —
His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance
And his form beyond that of the children of mankind,
So shall he sprinkle many nations.
Kings shall shut their mouths because of him,
For that which has not been told them they see,
And that which they have not heard they understand.
Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
And like a root out of dry ground;
He had no form or majesty that we should look at him
And no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
As one from whom men hide thier faces
He was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
He was crushed for our iniquities;
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.
And with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned – every one – to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on him
The iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and he was afflicted
Yet he opened not his mouth
Like a lamb that is led the the slaughter,
And like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
So he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
And as for his generation, who considered
That he was cut off
Out of the land of the living,
Stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
And with a rich man in his death,
Although he had done no violence
And there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
He has put him to grief;
When his soul makes an offering for guilt,
He shall see his offspring;
He shall prolong his days;
The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant
Make many to be accounted righteous,
And he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,
And he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because he poured out his soul to death
And was numbered with the transgressors;
Yet he bore the sin of many,
And makes intercession for the transgressors.
Isaiah 52:13 – 53:12ESV
No. 7
And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. Matthew 27:50-52ESV
The gospel of Matthew tells us that when Jesus died, holy people who had passed away were raised to life. In living, fleshy human bodies they walked into Jerusalem and visited people after Jesus’ resurrection. The end. Wait, what? This bit is often glossed over when we tell the story. It is an awkward place to have people being raised from the dead. We are, at this moment, supposed to be in deep mourning for the death of Christ, and for our own sins which caused his death. This is supposed to be the most sober moment in Christian history. The tearing of the temple curtain? On que. Earthquakes and complete darkness? Totally appropriate. Holy people being raised from the dead right now? Unsettling. Except that this is a part of the story, astonishing and understated as usual, so we had better sit with it for a bit. Feel the strangeness of it. The tombs, it seems, broke open in the earthquake. Did the holy people come alive right away, or later when Jesus did? You could read it either way, but the most natural reading is that these events happened simultaneously: there was an earthquake, rocks split, tombs broke open, and holy people who had died came alive. If they didn’t come out for two days, is that so surpising? A body might need to sleep off death’s hangover. Maybe ravens brought them breakfast. Who knows? It is better to enter the story with wonder and imagination than not at all. If this is the one part of the story that hasn’t quite settled with us, then we had better take it by the shoulders and stare it in the face. Or sit next to it in an uncomfortable silence until we feel ready catch its eye. If not, we may be missing a very important piece.
For what else could possibly happen when the breath of God leaves the body of God?
In the year 75 AD a young woman named Justa (Petronia Sp.f. Iusta) brought a lawsuit against her mother’s former owner, Calatoria Themis. This lawsuit was filed in Herculaneum, a breezy seaside city that was populated by a number of well-to-do families along with many slaves and freed slaves. The city also had a luxurious public bath and many wealthy homes overlooking the Bay of Naples. Across the river from Herculaneum proper, a posh suburban villa housed a large personal library and a stunning collection of art in mosaics, wall paintings and bronze and marble statues of incalculable worth. In todays terms, this villa belonged to a first century billionaire.
You would have wanted to live in Herculaneum when Justa lived there. Except that just a few years later, in 79 AD, it was buried along with Pompeii in the devastating eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The eruption destroyed the two cities, sealing them in deep layers of volcanic ash. But in destroying, the volcano also preserved the most intimate details from the lives of the people who lived along the bay. Archaeologists would one day unearth things as ordinary as the uneaten lunches that had been set at tables just before the eruption, as well as extraordinary insights into first century Roman life, such as Justa’s court case. The court records, written on wax-covered boards, survived in a room that was undisturbed by pyroclastic flows and rushing surge clouds of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit that exploded through buildings nearby. I think we were meant to find them.
In the lawsuit Justa wishes to prove that she was born free. Calatoria claims that Justa was her freedwoman, in other words, that Justa had been born a slave and had been freed by Calatoria later. Justa’s freedom was not at stake, but her status as a member of Roman society was in jeopardy. According to Roman slavery laws, a freed slave did not have the same rights as a free-born person. Freed slaves, sometimes called ‘Junian Latins’, could not vote (which did not affect Justa as women could not vote). A freedwoman could not marry a Senator or the son of a Senator, and was considered somewhat ‘loose’ in Roman law, and therefore was not covered by adultery laws [1]. Consequently, a mixed marriage between a citizen and a freedwoman was regarded as a bit second class in Roman law. So it seems likely that Justa, as a young woman, was seeking to clear up the matter of her birth because both marriage and inheritance laws were wrapped up in her birth status. Calatoria may have opposed Justa’s claim because a freedwoman was obligated to leave her inheritance to her former owner. If Justa was free at birth, Calatoria had no claim on Justa’s wealth.
I met Justa for the first time in the pages of a book I found at the library – Ghosts of Vesuvius by Charles Pellegrino (2005). The book is a dramatic “non-fiction” thriller about the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Amidst descriptions of a collapsing Plinear eruption tower and the catastrophic physics of a volcano, Justa came to life. She jumped through the billowing ash and grabbed ahold of my heart. Like any ghost worth writing about, she kept me up at night. Did she die in the disaster? Did she escape across the bay in a boat? Was she one of the 300 people left stranded on the beach who died instantly when they were overtaken by a surge cloud? Maybe, just maybe, she was out of town (hopefully, not in Pompeii) and a safe distance away that fateful day. Anything was possible.
As I read and re-read Justa’s story, I became aware that the author, who has claimed questionable credentials and is given to sensationalism, might not fully be trusted. I began to look for more credible information about Justa. Pellegrino’s source for the story is Joseph Jay Deiss’s book Herculaneum: Italy’s Buried Treasure (1985). Deiss was also fascinated with Justa and wrote a whole chapter about her. It was clear that Pellegrino had taken Deiss’ account and wildly embellished it. But as I pushed past Pellegrino’s gripping tale and examined Deiss’s version, I wondered how much of it was true. I was certain that Pellegrino was making up a lot of the details in his book. It was interesting to read, but much of what he wrote could not possibly be known. Deiss, an avocational archaeologist, was devoted to uncovering the people and stories of Herculaneum. But sometimes he filled in the blanks with his own ideas and passed them off as true. I appreciate Deiss and Pellegrino for introducing me to Justa’s story. But their accounts are best read as historical fiction, and I really wanted to know the truth. Searching Justa’s name on the internet only brought up rather drab academic papers on Roman Law. For a few years I rolled the story around in my mind, wondering and searching for more information and then giving up when I could not find anything.
In 2011 a new book by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill was published; Herculaneum: Past and Future. This is only the third book written in English that is solely devoted to Herculaneum. This beautifully written book makes you feel like you lived in Herculaneum, and in spite of its fate, that you would have been quite happy living there. The author accomplishes this enchantment by walking you through the excavations, documents, public monuments and artifacts that have been uncovered by archaeologists. Wallace-Hadrill does not have to make up stories about the people who lived in Herculaneum to make you feel like you know them. In Herculaneum: Past and Future, I finally had a source that was telling Justa’s story without frills.
The only problem was that while I trusted the information in Herculaneum: Past and Future, I still did not know which parts of Deiss’ story were made up. The only way I could know what was true was to read all of the words in the original lawsuit. And apparently, anyone who is really interested in this story can read Latin. I could find no English translations of the text. I was more than willing to sit down with google translate and a Latin dictionary and try to (poorly) translate them myself, but I was never able to find anything with the entire document in Latin. I emailed the museum in Naples a few times, but my emails always got passed on to someone who did not answer. Eventually I tried emailing Wallace-Hadrill. He responded and shared with me the English translations that he had used for various presentations. Finally!! After more than ten years of searching, I was able read the court records.
Relying on the translations by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, I would like to preserve (in English) what can truly be known about Justa of Herculaneum. I hope that this can be a resource that would counter some of the false information in Deiss’ and Pellegrino’s popular books.
The Court Records of Petronia Sp.f. Iusta’s lawsuit
Filed in 75 AD
Verdict Unknown
The actual dossier is a collection of documents numbered 13 to 29 by archaeologists. The house where they were found is believed to have been Calatoria’s home as other documents were found there which bear her name and have nothing to do with Justa’s case [2].
Documents 13 and 14 which both say the same thing, state that a vadimonium of 1000 sesterces has been paid to Justa by Calatoria Themis’s legal representative, a man named Telesphorus. The payment is to guarantee that Calatoria will appear at a legal hearing in Rome on December 7th [AD 75] before the Urban Praetor. The document is dated September 3rd of the same year, so this was three months before the hearing scheduled in Rome.
A translation by Wallace-Hadrill reads like this:
Guarantee to appear made by
Calatoria Themis on the 7th December
at Rome in the forum of Augustus
before the tribunal of the urban praetor
at the second hour in the sum of 1000 sesterces,
The woman who asserts she is
Petronia Sp. F. Iusta stipulates
Calatoria Themis on the authority of her tutor C. Petronius Telesphorus
Makes the undertaking
On that day at that hour in that place
Petronia Justa stipulated the payment of 1000 sesterces, the undertaking made by
Ce Petronius Telesphorus
Agreement made on the 3rd of September
In the consulship of
C. Pomponius and
L. Manlius Patriunus [AD 75][3]
What does this document tell us? This was no petty trial. Romans took citizenship very seriously, so this case was to be settled by the Urban Praetor in Rome.
Document 15 is another vadimonium guarantee.
A man named Marcus Calatorius Speudon is subpoenaed to give testimony on March 12th of 76 AD. From this we know that the matter was not settled at the hearing in Rome in December of 75 AD.
Documents 16 is the witness statement of Telesphorus
Telesphorus had previously been a slave of Calatoria, had been freed, and was still employed by her as a free man. Furthermore, as women could not testify in court, he was acting as Calatoria’s legal representative in the lawsuit. In spite of this curious fact, in his personal testimony he testified against Calatoria and in favor of Justa. The testimony reads:
C Petronius Telesphorus
I wrote and swore by the genius
Of the emperor Augustus
And of his children that I know the girl
In question, Iusta
Was born free by Petronia Vitalis, my fellow freedwoman;
And that I made an agreement
With Petronius Stephanus
And Calatoria Themis
That she should recover upbringing costs and restore her daughter to her
From this I know that the woman in question, Iusta
Was born free from Petronius Vitalis.
From this document we learn a number of things about Justa’s life. Her mother was a former slave legally belonging to Calatoria’s husband, Petronius Stephanus. She was freed by Petronius, according to Justa and Telesphorus, before Justa was born. For unknown reasons, Vitalis left Justa in the home of her former owners for an extended period of time. At some point, perhaps after marrying or coming into some wealth by her own means, she wanted to reclaim Justa back to herself. In order to do this, she paid back her former owners for the cost of Justa’s upbringing. Telesphorus negotiated this exchange and stated that from his intimate knowledge of the Petronius household, Justa was born free. At the time of the lawsuit, neither Calatoria’s husband, nor Justa’s mother were present as witnesses in the case which suggests that they had both died. If they had been alive their testimony would have certainly been crucial. And in fact, Petronius should have been the principle defendant rather than his wife. Instead, the case rested on the witness of other members of the household or acquaintances who could have been swayed by various motives.
Documents 17 and 18 are duplicates of the testimony of Marcus Vinicius Proculus.
I, Marcus Vinicius Proculus, son of Marcus,
Have written [and sworn by Jupiter (?) and by the Genius] of the Emperor Vespasian
[Caesar Augustus and his sons] that I [frequented the home of]
Petro. Stephanus, husband of Calat. Themis [and patron of Vitalis]
at Herculaneum [and I was present when…[(the next lines are fragmentary)…]
that I heard Petronius Stephanus saying on the 12th/14th day of [month?]
about Vitalis, ‘the one we intend to manumit,
we have [her alone] and on the Ides afterwards
she was manumitted; from which I know that the woman
who is the object of this suit was born free, from Petronia Vitalis. [4]
This is another testimony in favor of Justa. Marcus, son of Marcus, here testifies that he was present when Stephanus said that he was going to free Vitalis and that shortly after, Vitalis was freed. The witness states that he knew that Justa was born after Vitalis was manumitted.
Document 19 is the affadavit of Publius Arrius Manceps who was a freeborn man.
P Arrius P.f. Manceps wrote and swore
By Jupiter O.M. and the genius of Imp. Vespasian
Caesar Aug and his children that I was present
With Petronia Vitalis when she had a discussion
With Calatoria Themis about the girl her daughter, and that on that occasion I heard
Petronius Stephanus the husband of Calatoria Themis
Say to Petronia Vitalis
‘Why do you envy your daughter when we treat
Her like a daughter?’ from which I know
That the woman in question was born free to
Petronia Vitalis
We do not know the relationship between Arrius and the Petronius household. Perhaps he was a friend or neighbor who had been present when an argument took place between Petronius Stephanus and Justa’s mother. Vitalis wanted her daughter back but Petronius and Calatoria did not want to give her up. “We treat her like a daughter” they insisted, “Why would you want to take her from us?” Arrius states that Justa was born free.
In Document 20, Publius Tamudius Optatus agrees with the testimony of Telesphorus, Marcus and Arrius, that Justa was born free, and appears to have been at the same heated discussion mentioned above.
Q Tamudius Optatus, wrote and swore
By Jupiter O.M. and the genius of Imp. Vespasian
Caesar Aug and his children that I was present
With Petronia Vitalis when she had a discussion
With Calatoria Themis about the girl her daughter, and that on that occasion I heard
Petronius Stephanus the husband of Calatoria Themis
Say to Petronia Vitalis
‘Why do you envy your daughter when we treat her like a daughter?’ from which I know
That the woman in question was born free
to Petronia Vitalis.
Document 21 is a list of witnesses to another deposition.
Document 22 is another list of witnesses.
Document 23 is the first witness who favors Calatoria’s position.
Witness statement of Sextus Vibidius Ampliatus.
Sex Vibidius Ampliatus, wrote and swore
By Jupiter O.M. and the genius of Imp. Vespasian
Caesar Aug and his children that I always had close domestic relations with
Petronius Stephanus and his wife Calatoria Themis, and I was present
[when Justa was manumitted??]
From which I know
That the girl is the freedwoman of Calatoria Themis
Document 24 is the witness of another of Calatoria’s former slaves, an illiterate man who claims that he was freed along with Justa, and from this he knows that Justa was not born free.
Witness statement of Marcus Calatorius Marullus (illiterate)
?Mammius?, wrote at the request of M Calatorius Marullus in his presence,
Because he says that he does not know how to write, that he swore
By the genius of Imp. Vespasian
Caesar Aug and his children that I know that Calatoria Themis manumitted the girl,
And me likewise
From which I know that the girl
Is the freedwoman of Calatoria Themis
Documents 25 – 29 are lists of witnesses. Roman legal documents had to have at least seven witnesses and so some of these lists probably go with the above documents [5].
So what details from Justa’s life can be known with some certainty from these affidavits?
Justa was born to Vitalis, father unknown (at least legally). In the name Petronius Sp.f Iusta, Sp.f indicates that Justa’s father was ‘spurious’ ie. unknown.
Justa’s mother was manumitted and moved out of the home, leaving Justa behind.
Justa was raised ‘as a daughter’ by Petronius and Calatoria.
Justa stayed with Petronius and Calatoria for several years until Vitalis was able to reclaim her and had enough money to reimburse the cost of her upbringing.
Telesphorus helped negotiate the terms of Justa’s return.
Justa brought the lawsuit to prove her freeborn status.
Calatoria opposed Justa’s claim.
Vitalis must have died by this time as she was not brought forth as a witness (via a male speaker).
Petronius had also died or he would have been involved in the case as a witness and defendant.
For its brevity, this is a remarkable and intriguing biography!
The curious details in Justa’s lawsuit certainly leave us with many questions. Why, if Calatoria had once regarded Justa as her own child, would she oppose her in this lawsuit? Who was Justa’s father? How did Vitalis get enough money to pay for her daughter’s upbringing (presumably room and board for a number of years)? What happened in Justa’s life to cause her to bring this lawsuit?
Now that we have the facts straight, we can do a little bit of speculating about some of these questions.
Deiss and Pellagrino go far beyond what can be known, making claims that are flatly contradicted by these testimonies. For example, both wrote that Justa was in danger of being returned to slavery [6,7]. And both strongly suggested that when Telesphorus gave testimony in Justa’s favor he was revealing himself as Justa’s biological father in order to save her from slavery [8,9]. While that’s a fetching storyline, they were mistaken in even a basic understanding of the lawsuit.
Justa would not be returned to slavery if Calatoria won the lawsuit. She could only be denied some of the rights that freeborn women were given in Roman law.
Justa had four different men testify in her favor so it is unreasonable to assume that any of them were testifying out of paternal love. Telesphorus’ testimony is the strongest, because he had the most to lose by testifying in Justa’s favor. As Calatoria’s employee at the time of this hearing, and as her own legal representative, it would seem that he had nothing to gain by stating that Justa was born free. He could lose his job or at least get on Calatoria’s bad side for a good long while. I like to imagine that Telesphorus and Calatoria were such old pals that he knew he could stand up to her and she would eventually forgive him.
We could never know who Justa’s father really was, but some guesses might be more likely than others. The most probable scenario is that Justa’s biological father was her mother’s owner, Stephanus. If that was the case, the complicated relationships that developed between Calatoria, Stephanus, Vitalis and Justa strike an interesting parallel with the Biblical story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael.
Whatever the situation, we can certainly understand why Vitalis came back for Justa once she had enough money to negotiate her return. Losing Justa may have been very painful to Calatoria even if she had other children, but particularly if she had none. It is possible that this loving relationship turned bitter when Justa left to be with her mother. Although the lawsuit seems to cast Calatoria as the cold and unyielding adversary, she may have been a very hurt woman. Perhaps she was facing off with the child who had been like a daughter and then was taken away from her.
Justa was young, free, and independent. In addition, she must have come into some wealth if Calatoria felt that her inheritance was worth fighting for. Justa was probably going to be okay. If it was love that she wanted, she would find it. If it was justice that she wanted, she would fight for it.
But whatever the fortunes or misfortunes of Petronia Justa and Calatoria Themis, the somber reality is that they lived in the shadow of Vesuvius in 76 AD, and their beautiful city on the Mediterranean had just a few years left to live.
3. All English translations of the court documents (except for 17 and 18) are by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill via personal emails in 2021
4. Gardner and Wiedmann, The Roman Household: A Sourcebook p. 164
5. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, personal email 2021
6. Pellegrino, Ghosts of Vesuvius p. 229, 233
7. Deiss, Herculaneum Italy’s Buried Treasure, p. 99
8. Pellegrino, p. 238
9. Deiss, 101
Endnote:Interestingly, both Justa’s and Calatoria Themis’ names mean “justice”. In Greek mythology, Themis is the goddess of divine justice, law, and order.
The artwork in this post was done by the author. This painting is a copy of a painting uncovered in the excavations of Pompeii. Although this woman looks like she could be a 1920s fashion plate, the original painting was meant to be an imaginative portrait of the Greek poetess Sappho (with her stylus and wax tablet) who lived from 630 to 570 BC. The original was probably representing the fashions of first century Roman women. Here we will swap it out as an imaginative portrait of Justa.
“What do you think those lumpy rocks are?” my sister asked as we wandered past tables of knick-knacks, toy tractors, and antiques at the flea market.
I admit that I have an unusual obsession with rocks. When we go on a family vacation, I can be found sifting through the landscaping rocks outside of our cabin saying, “Wow! Look at the olivine phenocrysts in this basalt. These are amazing!” (I just say this to myself of course, because I don’t think anyone else in my family is that interested in olivine phenocrysts). Once we went hiking in a local state park and we were walking up a newly laid trail. I vividly remember the landscape that day, which I glanced at momentarily now and then. The blue sky was set like an open dome over the world. The land was a rolling circle of late-summer green slashed through by ellipses of blue lake water in every direction. But I had a hard time taking my eyes off the gravel on the new trail, kicking at it, turning it over, taking pictures and muttering all the while: “This is not local rock. This is like… Iron Range or Lake Superior stuff…why did they haul this all the way here?…it must be really good for paving hiking trails or something.”
But on that day at the flea market I almost ignored my sister and the lumpy rocks. I was on a single-minded mission for certain pieces of furniture, so I was screening out everything at the flea market that was not furniture. “I don’t know,” I answered, hardly giving the lumpy rocks more than a passing glance.
“I think they’re dinosaur poop,” she said.
“WHAT??!!” I wheeled around and really looked at the lumpy rocks this time.
“No way. Who sells dinosaur poop at the flea market?” I wondered out loud. By now I was back to my normal rock obsessed self and was not going to let the matter drop…
So I marched over to the stand with the “lumpy rocks”. Some of them were sitting among the jackknives, rusty vintage coffee cans and such, and some were unceremoniously tied to tent poles, helping to hold down the umbrella tent covering the stand. I looked at the rocks. They were like large bubbles of cement clumped together. They came in varying shades and most were broken. Although I remember one large, long specimen that was wholly intact. They did look like very large coprolites — the scientific term for fossilized poop. “What are these rocks?” I asked the lady behind the table. “They’re dinosaur poop,” she said as if every third table at the flea market was selling Jurassic fossils. “Where did you get them?!” I asked, somewhat incredulous, somewhat suspicious. “Well, I grew up near Mandan, North Dakota, and my parents still live there. My parents’ neighbor, a farmer, has been finding these in his field each spring for years. At first, he didn’t know what they were and just threw them in his rock pile. But then he found someone and asked about them and found out they were dinosaur poop. He has so many of them, he sells them to whoever wants them. We buy some each year to sell at the flea markets we go to.”
“Oh. Wow.” I said, looking them over for a bit.
“You were right…!” I told my sister who showed me that she could smile ‘I-told-ya-so’ every bit as glamorously as when she was thirteen.
I did not buy any that day because I felt like I had to think this story through. Could they have possibly faked them? Made them out of cement molds…applied different stains to create the varying gray to light brown colors? But true coprolites are fossilized with silica rich minerals. The “lumpy rocks” were all different shapes, clearly not from one mold, and the broken ones showed a smooth silica interior. That would be practically impossible to fake without a lot of money and a science lab. Even if someone could make fake coprolites, they could not turn around and sell them for $40 at the flea market. But if you were a farmer finding them for free and selling them for $20 to $40 a piece, a buyer could certainly turn around and sell them for double that and call it good business. Furthermore, the story made sense. Mandan is in the unglaciated part of North Dakota where the rocks found on the surface are associated with the underlying bedrock of the region [1]– some of that bedrock being of the Hell Creek formation which contains dinosaur fossils.
Two weeks later I went back and bought my first piece of dinosaur poop. And two years later I went back and bought almost everything they had left; three more pieces. The dinosaur-poop sellers said that they might not be getting any more. The farmer-neighbor in Mandan sold his farm and they didn’t know the new owner, and didn’t know if he even knew about the dinosaur poop.
So why all the excitement about dinosaur poop? Like most of the rocks I collect, I consider these to be flood souvenirs. And I love flood souvenirs. They are quiet reminders of the greatest disaster to befall the planet.
Water from the Tortoise Shell
The global flood is often called “Noah’s Flood” with good reason. It is recorded over five chapters in the Bible, and Noah is the patriarch of the family who survived it. If you did not happen to hear about it in Sunday school, you probably at least noticed the 2014 release of Darren Aronofsky’s version of the story in the film: Noah.
But I also like to think of it as “The World’s Flood”, because the story does not just belong to Bible-believing people, or cultures which have had a Bible-influenced history. Versions of the flood story exist among every people group on earth. The stories vary widely in the details, but are remarkably similar as to the cause, scale and small number of people and animals who survived the flood. The basic story is repeated over and over; the Creator, or the gods sent the flood as punishment for human wickedness. The earth split open, the whole earth was flooded, and only a few animals and people survived in some kind of boat, raft, canoe or sealed box. From the legend of the Lost City of Atlantis, to the Sioux Dakota Creation-Flood story, from China to South America, from Australia to the Arctic Circle and everywhere in between we have hundreds and hundreds of ancient flood stories [2,3]. In the Bible, as in many of these stories, the flood is a geologic event. The earth itself splits open, and this is the primary source of the flood waters.
For example, since we started talking about dinosaur poop from Mandan, ND, here is the flood story according to the Mandan people who originally lived there: “The earth is a large tortoise. Once a tribe, digging for badgers, dug deep into the earth and cut through the shell of Tortoise. Tortoise began to sink, and water rose through the knife cut. The water covered all the ground and drowned all the people except one man, Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah, who escaped in a large canoe to a mountain in the west.” [4]
And here is a fragment from the Lakota version: “The earth split open, and water flowed from the cracks and covered everything. The Creating Power floated on the sacred pipe and his huge pipe bag. All people and animals were destroyed except Kangi, the crow. It was very tired and three times asked the Creating Power to make a place for it to rest”. [5]
And here is what the Bible says, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month – on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth….”[6]
Did you know that in a volcanic eruption 70% of the material released is water vapor? We have evidence of an age of massive volcanic activity on a scale unimaginable to us today. If the ash and rocks left behind from these events represent only 30% of the material expelled, and the rest was water, then we indeed have evidence for a steamy hot global flood.
A few examples: Lake Vermillion in northern Minnesota is the 35-mile-long mouth of a tipped over, eroded volcano. Furthermore, the lake is flanked by pillow lava which only forms when lava is released under water. Minnesota was under water when the Lake Vermillion volcano was erupting. [7]
The Yellowstone volcanic crater measures 35 x 45 miles, making it a 1,575 square mile opening. The ash believed to have formed from this eruption is called Huckleberry Ridge Tuff. This ash alone consists of 2,500 cubic kilometers of material [8]. (In comparison, when Mt. St. Helens erupted it left behind a crater that varies from one to five miles across and deposited one cubic kilometer of ash).
The Mid-continental rift system runs in part beneath Lake Superior and down the eastern edge of Minnesota. This is a massive break in the earth’s crust that is 50 miles wide. The rift contains an estimated 480,000 cubic miles of volcanic rock which is at least 11 miles deep [9]. The volcanic rock was then covered by layers of sedimentary (water-deposited) rocks. The layers of sedimentary rock beneath Lake Superior are 30,000 feet thick [10]. The Pacific Northwest is similarly blanketed with enormous lava flows that dwarf the largest volcanoes in historic times. [11]
The geologic record is a layer cake of volcanic materials and sedimentary rocks thought to have been laid down in a succession of “shallow in-land-seas” (which would be a good, albeit calmer, description of flood waters lapping up over the continents). Certain sequences of rocks are completely wiped out in some regions by massive erosion (which, by the way, requires “massive” amounts of water) [12].
While these events are conventionally thought to have happened slowly over billions of years, it is also quite reasonable to consider that the earth is capable of experiencing a massive all-at-once disaster in a chain of catastrophic geologic events; one leading to the next like dominoes falling. In this scenario, a series of violent volcanic eruptions caused the earth’s crust to break up, spewing out lava and water in quantities great enough to cause global flooding, mass extinction and fossil formation. In this view, the earth’s geologic features formed quickly under violently strong forces, rather than by weak forces acting over a great deal of time.
I honestly think that the rocks are screaming out this sort of violent scenario, and I think it would be the go-to explanation if it were not for one problem: While the disaster is explainable in natural terms, surviving it would take a miracle. And the scientific community today is not fond of miraculous explanations.
But what if all the flood stories are remembering something true? When the Mandan children gathered around their village’s great-great-grandmother and begged for their favorite story…what if her story was closer to the truth than the one in the geology textbook?
Fast Fossils
Fossils, including dinosaur coprolites, do not take “millions of years” to form. You can argue that they have sat around for millions of years if you want to, but they do not require millions of years to form. In order for an organic thing to become fossilized it has to be buried quickly and in just the right conditions or it will rot, be scavenged or disintegrate. This is every bit as true for a hadrosaur as it is for a leaf, a jellyfish, or any sort of animal dropping – all of which have been beautifully preserved in the fossil record. None of these things can die or sit around for very long without dissolving. In order to preserve anything organic – especially something ‘delicate’ like a jellyfish, or a pile of scat — it must be buried rapidly and completely in the right kind of sediment. It also must have just the right amount of heat and pressure to quickly transform it into a rock or carbon imprint. In the case of a coprolite, which is transformed by permineralization, it is not millions of years which are required to change it into rock. It simply needs to be submerged in water or sediment that is very rich in dissolved minerals like silica. There are many modern man-made objects that have been permineralized in a matter of days or weeks just by suspending them in mineral rich waters. (Google fossilized teddy bears if you would like to see some examples).
Scientists have already proven that by using heat and pressure, carbon-imprint fossils can be made in a laboratory in just twenty-four hours [13]. However, because there is an absolute commitment to the paradigm of deep time, the researchers insist that what they have actually done is smooshed the work of millions of years into a day.
Interestingly, the same scientists found that their attempts to ‘slowly’ make fossils did not work. (By slowly, we are talking about a matter of weeks, which is still lightning fast compared to millions of years). The organic matter in the longer experiments turned to mush before it could be formed into the sort of pristine fossils that we find in the fossil record. This would seem to imply that in fact, pristine fossils only can be made in twenty-four hours or thereabouts, and that taking any longer — be it three weeks or three million years — is actually impossible since organic matter decays very quickly.
The last time I was buying dinosaur poop at the flea market, the seller (the husband this time) and another curious customer were speculating as to its origin. “I guess it must have sat there for a really long time in order to turn into a rock,” said the seller. I listened for a while and then asked, “Do you have a dog?” He said he did.
“When it does its business all over your yard, is any of it lasting long enough to sit around and turn into rock?”
“Well, no.” he said.
“In order for a piece of poop to turn into a rock, it has to be quickly buried by just the right kind of mud and be exposed to heat and pressure,” I explained. “Otherwise it will disintegrate into the ground just like your dog poop.”
“That makes sense,” said the seller, thinking for a moment. “Well, the river there does flood sometimes, I guess.”
“Mmmm, no, bigger flood.” I suggested as I gathered up my heavy-as-a-cement-block dinosaur poop, and set off for my car. A bigger and hotter flood.
Suppose you are of marriageable age and your successful,wealthy, strong-willed father does not think that your girlfriend is quite good enough stock to be grafted into the family tree. And suppose that you quarrel bitterly about it. If you had inherited your father’s strong will in equal portion and then some, what would you do? The average young man, exerting his independence, may simply ride off into the sunset and elope. But Enoch Broker took a different path. Instead, he fell in love with a young woman whom his father disapproved of even more, and got married without sending invitations. Enoch left behind a fascinating life story with far too few details for my curiosity. And I cannot help but think that, among other qualities, he had a wonderfully ironic sense of humor.
Ignatius (Enoch) Broker was born in 1854 in Wisconsin. His father, Joseph Broker, moved the family west into Minnesota as the territory was opened for settlement. An enterprising and savvy businessman, Mr. Broker opened the first hotel in St. Cloud, and is listed as one of the contractors for the St. Cloud Courthouse [1]. In the first election of city officials, Joseph Broker was elected as one of four “Aldermen” of St. Cloud [2]. By all measures, the Broker family qualified as frontier-town aristocracy. Because the family was quite wealthy, Enoch grew up with every indulgence a child could dream of in the mid-19th century. At this time, most children in Minnesota were sheltered from the bone-chilling winters by tipis, wigwams, rough log houses or ‘soddies’. Or, if you were a pioneer family without the time or supplies to build a four walled house, you might live in a dugout, which was little more than a shallow dirt cave. In stark contrast, Enoch’s childhood home was considered palatial for its times. Later, in 1907 this home was the residence of Bishop Trobec of St. Cloud [3]. Following the path of wealth and prestige that was smoothly paved before him, Enoch attended St. John’s College (now St. John’s University) in Collegeville from 1867 to 1871. He then began to study Law in the office of Judge L. W. Collins who was a prominent St. Cloud attorney.
However, before completing his Law degree, Enoch traveled to Perham to help run one of his father’s new businesses. This was a general store or trading post of sorts which was located on the present-day Thoelke block. Perham was platted in 1873 when the railroad came through, and so it seems likely that the Brokers showed up at about this time. This move drastically changed the course of Enoch’s life in quite an interesting way. Before coming to Perham, Enoch had fallen in love with a girl from Stearns County. But his father did not approve of the match and the two had a bitter dispute over the matter. One could speculate that Mr. Broker sent his son to the Perham business in order to help him forget about the young lady. If that was the case, he succeeded marvelously. Enoch did entirely forget about his first love while he was in Perham.
At the store, Enoch bought items like highbush cranberries and furs from the Ojibwe locals. He also sold these and other goods to native residents and new settlers to the area. So it happened, that while running this business, Enoch happened to make the acquaintance of a beautiful young Ojibwe woman from the Fineday family. According to one personal acquaintance, this woman was “one of the handsomest girls of the Indian or any other race that he [had] ever seen” [4]. Her English name was Charlotte. Her Ojibwe name was Ogabe-giizhigookwe.
This time, Enoch was really, really, really in love. So, without asking for his father’s blessing, Enoch Broker just went ahead and married Ogabe-giizhigookwe. His family was utterly shocked and completely disowned him. He sold out his ownership in the store and went out to live with his new wife and her family in the woodlands north of Perham. He fully assimilated to the Ojibwe culture, sharing in their burdens and joys for the rest of his life. The Brokers had ten children together. And despite the rift with his family, Enoch named one of his sons Joseph, and a daughter Josephine, apparently after his father.
The marriage created quite a sensation beyond Enoch’s own family. Many white people at that time found it impossible to believe that a brilliant, polished young man who had been ‘reared in the lap of luxury’ would willfully marry into the Ojibwe culture. In the 19th century, many Americans thought of their Indian neighbors as interesting and exotic at best, but “ignorant and untutored” people who “tramped through the forest in true aboriginal style” as one newspaper put it [3]. Nonetheless, for all his education and high society upbringing, Enoch Broker found himself perfectly at home among the Ojibwe. Because of their many children, Enoch’s family received a large portion of lands allotted on the White Earth Reservation, and were living well-off at the time of his death in 1907. Some of his children attended St. John’s University just as he had, or attended the Indian Industrial School at St. John’s. The Indian Industrial School — which ran from 1884 to 1896 — was a boarding school with elementary through high school grade levels. Frank and John Broker are listed as students at this school in a catalog dated 1888-89. John Broker also attended St. John’s University in 1900 and is mentioned as being among the “Indian alumni of the school in the early days” [5].
After Enoch died, his wife Charlotte/Ogabe-giizhigookwe outlived him by at least thirty years. She was still living on the White Earth reservation in 1936. A Fergus Falls Daily Journal article reported that she had been recently visited by an acquaintance, Mr. E. H. Pelton and his wife. Enoch Broker had worked for Mr. Pelton in the logging industry at one point and the couples had become friends. Mr. Pelton shared that Mrs. Broker was a very intelligent woman and said that she deeply mourned the condition of her people at that time.
Enoch Broker’s gravestone can still be seen at the Grand Medicine Cemetery in Becker County. The name on it reads: Ignatius W. Broker. The “W” does not appear in any other official records of his birth, education or death. It could stand for an unknown middle name, or it could be a hint that he had also taken an Ojibwe name for himself. There are surely many interesting stories about this family that will remain unknown.
History of the Upper Mississippi River Valley; Winchell, Neill, Williams and Bryant p. 377
Fergus Falls Daily Journal, January 19, 1907, Broker, Enoch, Fineday; Article Headline: Romantic: Former Perham man who Dies at his Home on Indian Reservation – Unusual Career from the Collection of the Otter Tail County Historical Society Archives
Fergus Falls Daily Journal, Friday, March 20, 1936 Headline: Ran Log Drives Through. Interview with E.H. Pelton from the Collection of the Otter Tail County Historical Society Archives
A HUGE Thank you to Peggy Roske and Liz Knuth at the St. John’s University archives who dug up many of the details in this story — in particular, the historic postcard linked above, the names of Enoch’s wife and some of his children, the cemetery where he was buried and additional information about the Indian Industrial School, and other details about the life of Joseph Broker. (This story would have been much less interesting without their help!) And thank you to Brendan Fairbanks, Director of the Ojibwe Language Department at the University of Minnesota, for sharing the current standardized spellings for the Ojibwe names.
It is not entirely clear whether “Enoch” was a nickname or a given middle name. In some records it appears as a middle name. But since it does not appear on his gravestone, it seems possible that it was a nickname derived from “Ignatius”.
Ogabe-giizhigookwe is rendered: O-gub-ay-ge-shig-o-quay on Ancestry.com.
Enoch’s son Joseph also has an Ojibwe name listed on Ancestry.com: Gaa-biimaa, written as Kah-be-mah on Ancestry.com.
A page from the school store ledger showing Ignatius Broker’s account. Note that board and tuition were $175.00 which was the cost for one year. Used with Permission from St. John’s University Archives
Normally we would be hard-pressed to find anything in common
between a confederate army major, a mammal’s tail, and the heart-breaking story
of a local mass shooting. However, each of these is responsible for the name of
a lake in Otter Tail County.
Dead Lake
I grew up a few miles south of Dead Lake, and so when we would drive on County Road 35 between Dead Lake on the Southeast and Star Lake on the Northwest, I wondered how one lake got so lucky and one lake so not lucky in being named. Was the water in Dead Lake murky? (It didn’t look like it was). Were there no fish in it??…but that is not the case either. So, I never knew why Dead Lake got that unfortunate name until I came across a document titled “Alleged Indian Battle Attributed to the Naming of Dead Lake” while paging through a file at the museum library. The details of this story had never even entered my imagination.
Around the year 1843 or 1844 a young Ojibwe boy named
Ma-king was camping with his family on a heavily wooded point of land on the
east shore of this beautiful lake. All of the able-bodied men of the camp had
gone away leaving about fifty elderly people, women and children in the
seclusion of the woods. After a few peaceful days, a war party of Dakota suddenly
attacked the defenseless camp from the east, blocking off every route of escape
through the woods. The terrified Ojibwe fled to canoes and tried to escape by
water. What followed could not be described as a battle in any sense of the
word, but was “cold-blooded murder, a veritable massacre of old men, women and
children” [1]. Just one old man and thirteen women and children escaped.
Ma-King, his mother, and a small brother were among the few who escaped. However,
Ma-King’s father had already been killed by Dakota in the vicinity of the Red
River during the previous winter. (At this time the Ottertail River was called
the Red River and considered to be part of it, so this could have happened in
the same general area).
Because so many people were shot down in the water or in
their canoes as they tried to escape, the lake was known from that day forward
as “Lake of the Dead” and shortened to “Dead Lake” in the years to follow.
Homesteading settlers began entering Otter Tail County about twenty years later
and the story was still fresh in the memories of local Indians and fur traders.
So, the name of the lake stuck although the story behind it has been all but
forgotten. Ma-King was around 70 years old and living near Pine Point,
Minnesota in 1905 when this story was recorded by Alvin H. Wilcox. Ma-king
believed he was between five and ten years old when the massacre happened.
Personal interactions between Minnesota’s Native Americans and white immigrants to their land were, for the most part, amicable and of mutual benefit to all parties throughout the fur trading era. At the national level, U.S. government policies had long been pushing towards a disadvantaging of Native Americans and their land rights. But still, at the personal level, homesteaders and local Natives got along peacefully more often than not. The most notable exception to this rule — the Dakota Conflict of 1862 — came from State and Federal mishandling of the interests of the Dakota who had been living south of the Minnesota River. However, the Ojibwe and Dakota encountered one another as enemies almost from the start. They consequently suffered for generations from a seemingly endless cycle of revenge killings and battles over territorial rights. At some point I would like to delve more deeply into the circumstances which led to the years of conflict between these two nations, but the history is beyond the scope of my present purpose.
Clitherall Lake
From 1858 until 1861 a Major George B. Clitherall was registrar
of the United States land office at Otter Tail City. Although his tenure in
Otter Tail County was brief, Clitherall Lake was named after him, and the first
homesteaders to build a town on the shores of the lake took “Clitherall” for
the name for their town as well. George Clitherall was a Southerner, so when
the civil war broke out, he returned to his home in Alabama and fought for the
Confederacy. The patriotic Clitherall settlers were somewhat dismayed that
their lake and town bore the name of a confederate major. But the name stuck
and has stayed with us to this very day [2].
Ottertail Lake
A quick glance at Ottertail Lake on a map, or a drive past
the east end of the lake will tell you that the lake’s name is a very sensible
one. With a little imagination, the lake kind of looks like an otter’s body,
and the long sandbar at the east end where the river flows into the lake does
look like an otter’s tail and happens to be in just the right place. But I
always wondered who gave the lake its name. Did Indians name it? Fur traders?
Settlers? The earliest documentation of the lake’s name came from around 1750 when
a Frenchman and an Englishman traveled through the area. They met with a band
of Indians on the shore of “Lac de la queue de la outre” which translates to
“the lake of the otter’s tail”. The Indians (presumably Dakota at this time in
history) explained that they had named it this because of the sand bar that
looks like an otter’s tail [3]. I like to think that they knew the lake kind of
looked like an otter’s body as well.
Native Americans had a keen sense for the shape of a lake without having maps and satellite photographs. For instance, they had a very accurate grip on the shape of Lake Superior in spite of its 2,726 mile shoreline. The Ojibwe name of the lake, “Gichi-gami” means “Great Sea”. They thought of this Great Sea as a bow with an arrow pulled taut as if ready to fly. The North shore being the bow, arching back, and the Keweenaw Peninsula on the south shore is the arrow pulled against the bowstring [4].
With these lake stories in mind, I encourage you to think
about the names of lakes, rivers and towns in in Minnesota. Are they recent
names? Ancient names? Dakota, Ojibwe, English, French, German, or Norwegian? Being
mindful of these details can help us be more aware of the many cultures, past
and present, that have come to this state looking for a new start and better
opportunities.
[1] From the archives of the Otter Tail County Historical
Society, ‘Alleged Indian Battle Attributed to the Naming of Dead Lake” by
Gerald P. Greenwood, quoting an earlier history written by Alvin H Wilcox.
[2] “Old Clitherall’s Story Book” p.12
[3] Otter Tail County Historical Society Archives, Native
American file. Listed under Donald McDonald. Original Publication Unknown.
[4] “Talking Rocks” by Ron Morton and Carl Gawboy, p. 83
The Library Card Historian 