Description: The collection contains materials on the history of the Catholic Mission and Catholic churches established to minister to Ojibwe people in the area of the Fond du Lac reservation near Cloquet, Minnesota. Materials were compiled by Father Alban Fruth of Holy Family Church in Cloquet in the late 1970s.The collection also contains copy prints of photographs including a 1908 group portrait at Holy Family Church; individual portraits of clergy; interior and exterior views of the old Sts. Mary and Joseph Church building; and two images of early parishoners Joe Posey, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Petite, Mrs. Shotley, Nancy Houle, and Mary Jackson.

The materials in this collection concern disputed claims regarding land in present day downtown Duluth, Minnesota that was initially granted to the Ojibwe Chief Buffalo.
The collection contains seven land abstracts (1871-1895), an agreement (September 11, 1856) between Benjamin G. Armstrong and Frederick Prentice and a three-page, 1953, letter to Duluth Mayor George W. Johnson from attorney Arthur Roberts about the Mayor’s inquiry of "the possibility of determining the location of the so-called Chief Buffalo Rock."
The abstracts only mention Chief Buffalo as having disposed of the land. There are no actual deeds.

Edmund Franklin Ely (1809-1882) was one of the first English speaking missionaries to settle in northeastern Minnesota. He was born in Wilbraham, Massachusetts on August 3, 1809 and came to Sandy Lake, Minnesota in September, 1833 under the auspices of the American Board of Foreign Missions. At Sandy Lake, Ely, a Presbyterian, began teaching his mission classes and began learning the Ojibwe language. In 1834, he took his teachings to Leech Lake, Minnesota and then to Fond du Lac, Minnesota.

Ely married Catherine Bissell in 1835 and they both stayed in Fond du Lac until 1839, when they removed to Pokegama, Minnesota. Ely continued his missionary work at this post for ten years, and then moved his family to St. Paul, Minnesota. Ely returned to developing the town of Oneota, Minnesota and was postmaster there for six years.

Handwritten autobiographical information supplied by Edmund F. Ely to the Minnesota Historical Society says that he was an American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions missionary to the Ojibwe Indians in several locations in Minnesota, including Pokegama Lake, 1833-1849, and Oneota, 1855-1862. Ely served as the Oneota postmaster, 1856-1862, and as a St. Louis County commissioner, 1861-1862. He eventually settled in Santa Rosa, California and died there.
The collection contains correspondence, contracts and agreements, journals, transcriptions of these materials, and reference materials and photographs.

The correspondence, 1835-1904, and journals, 1833-1854, represent one of the few complete sources of missionary narrative for the northeastern Minnesota region. The correspondence contains letters of many missionaries of the region, including Frederick Ayer, W. T. Boutwell, David Green, and Sherman Hall. Other major correspondents include Daniel Rohrer, Albert W. Ely, Ely's cousin Lucinda Day, Delia Cook, and L. H. Wheeler.

The collection also contains photographic portraits, 1856-1898, and a copy of Catherine Ely's diary, 1835-1839. The location of the original diary is unknown. Additionally, the collection contains a volume, Diary and Letters (1833-1854) of Edmund F. Ely Together With Many Documents and Diverse Reports Found Among the Ely Papers, including a Brief Diary Kept by Mrs. Ely, 1833-1834, transcribed for the Superior, Wisconsin Public Library by June D. LaChapelle in 1936 as W. P. A. project 3264.

The journals are intermittent and some parts are illegible. Both the correspondence and journals have been transcribed by various sources.The correspondence and miscellany was transcribed by the St. Louis County (Minnesota) Historical Society. The transcriptions contain typographic errors and information they contain should be verified against the originals. The journals were transcribed by the Minnesota Historical Society and extracts of the journals were copied by Henry S. Ely. These transcriptions, especially the extracts, should also be suspected of errors.

This collection holds research files related to Elizabeth Dahl's interests in American Indians spanning approximately 1974-2008. She studied pre-contact, contact, and removal, and the effects of United States Indian Policy on Indian communities, reservations, and individuals. She focused on how Ojibwe people lived in duluth and Fond du Lac during the 1920s-1990s compared to the white majority living in Duluth. Dahl worked informally until she earned university degrees; then she worked systematically as a professional archaeologist and as staff for the State Archaeologist’s Office and UMD's Archaeometry Lab.

The materials comprising this collection are secondary resources Dr. Carlson gathered over time to support her research, including the publication A Childhood in Minnesota : Exploring the Lives of Ojibwe and Immigrant Families, 1880s-1920s . The collection consists of photocopies of relevant resources from state and local archives and photographic reprints of primarily Swedish, Finnish, and Ojibwe families and children.

Jimmy Jackson, Sr., revered Ojibwa medicine man, tells how he became a medicine man. The interviews, conducted from 1987-1992, describe traditional Ojibwa culture as well as the practices of the medicine man.

The collection consists of a report compiled for Beck and Associates, Inc. of Duluth, Minnesota by Barbara Sommer. The purpose of the report was to identify historic sites on the Fond du Lac Reservation which is located in Carlton and St. Louis Counties near the town of Cloquet, Minnesota. This report also includes audiorecordings and an index to interviews with Frank Whitebird and Mike Shabaiash which were recorded as part of the Historic Resources Inventory.

This collection consists of originals and typed transcripts of the following records: correspondence, receipts, lists of Hudson's Bay Company property loaded, transported, and unloaded, inventory records, record of Indian annuity - Long Lake District 1864, and a record indicating that the heads of families of different Indian tribes along the North Shore of Lake Superior have received interest from the provincial government for the year 1866. The records in this collection largely deal with the lands formerly known as Rupertsland. In addition, some of the papers found in this collection document the Hudson's Bay Company's activities in New Brunswick.

The collection contains a copy of a license to trade with Indians at Fond du Lac, Minnesota, granted to John Baptiste Lamarie. by the sub-agency of La Pointe, Wisconsin.

The collection contains video interviews and transcripts, scenic video footage, and dramatic re-enactment video footage for production of a six-part public television documentary about the history and culture of Anishinaabe Ojibwe people titled Waasa Inaabida: We Look In All Directions that aired in 2001. One topic is featured in each of the six parts. Each part is structured on interviews with tribal elders, historians, entrepreneurs, scholars, and leaders from the nineteen Great Lakes Ojibwe Bands of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The documentary was directed and produced by Lorraine Norrgard, written by James M. Fortier, edited by Chris Bacigalupo, with assistant direction/post-production supervision by Thomas Selinski, and primary research by Lyz Jaakola, narrated by Winona LaDuke, soundtrack by composer Peter Buffett, artistic design by Nick and Charlotte Hockings. The documentary was a production of PBS eight, WDSE-TV, Duluth, Minnesota, and produced in association with The Aboriginal People’s Television Network. The documentary is available to stream on WDSE's website https://www.wdse.org/node/7464

Frederic Baraga was born on June 29, 1797, in the castle of Malavas, near Doberina, Austria. After receiving a law degree from the University of Vienna in 1821, he went to Laibach, Austria where he was ordained a priest September 21, 1823. After the founding in Vienna of the Leopoldine Society for Foreign Missions in 1830, Baraga volunteered for service in the United States and was sent to Cencinnati in 1831. In 1835, he was transferred from the Ottawa Missions to Western Lake Superior. Baraga arrived at La Pointe, Wisconsin, the American Fur Company's station on Madeline Island, on July 27, 1835. In his work he visited Grand Portage and Fond du lac, Minnesota. Baraga built the first Roman Catholic Mission at La Pointe, and the first Catholic Chapel, St. Joseph's, was dedicated August 9, 1835.

Baraga is well known for his study of the Ojibwe Language, on which he wrote several books, the most famous being Dictionary of the Ochipwe Language. Baraga died at Marquette, Michigan, on January 19, 1868.

The collection consists of photocopies or carbon copies of typed transcriptions. Papers are divided into three folders. Folders one and two contain correspondence from 1835 to 1847, from and pertaining to Reverend Baraga. Folder three contains Baraga's personal diary, the majority of which is written in German.

Correspondents include:

Ramsay Crooks, President, American Fur Company

T. Hartley Crawford, Commissioner of Indian Affairs

Robert Stuart, Acting Superintendent of Indian Affairs

William Medill, Commissioner of Indian Affairs

James Olto, Superintendent of Indian Affairs

James D. Hayes, Superintendent of Indian Affairs

Henry Schoolcraft, Explorer and Indian Agent

Rev. Edmund Ely

Antoina (Antoinette) De Hoeffer, Baraga's youngest sister

Stella Prince Stocker was a Duluth musician, composer, and founder of the Duluth Cecilian Chorale Society. She was born in Jacksonville, Illinois, April 3, 1858, graduated from the University of Michigan in 1880, and came to Duluth in 1885. This collection includes handwritten diaries/journals and photo album that are accounts of camping trips onto Minnesota's White Earth and Red Lake Indian reservations and other visits to Mille Lacs, Leech Lake, Nett Lake, and Fond Du Lac. The photograph album holds snapshot illustrations of the same trips (1916, 1917). The trips were apparently made in preparation for writing the Sieur duLhut pageant. The 1916 volume contains 52 pages. The 1917 volume is 31 pages written in pencil.
The photograph album holds 145 snapshots, the largest of which are 3x3 ¼ inches. The photographs document individuals, scenes, dwellings, structures, campsites, dance, peace pipes, ceremonies, garments (including bandolier bags and beadwork), family groups, individual women, men, and children. Many of the snapshots are identified but many others are not.

The collection consists of one letter written in Ojibwe to Vincent Roy from Peter Beaver of Grand Portage, Minnesota. Vincent Roy, Jr. operated a General Store and Trading Post in Superior, Wisconsin.