Sandy Roggenkamp's Rhubarb Pie recipe

Sandy Roggenkamp was in last Friday answering phones on our final day on the raft for the "Staying Afloat" KAXE fundraiser. Not only that, but she brought pie! Judging by how within an hour it was completely consumed, it was a winner.

Here's her mom's recipe for Rhubarb Custard Pie

2 tbsp. butter, melted

1 c. sugar

2 c. diced rhubarb

Melt butter, add sugar and rhubarb, cook and stir mixture until rhubarb is tender.

Mix together:

¼ c. sugar ¼ c. cream

2 tbsp. cornstarch 2 well beaten egg yolks

Pinch of salt

Add to rhubarb mixture and cook until thick. Pour into baked pie shell. Chill.

You are welcome ANYTIME at the KAXE studios in Grand Rapids, but especially if you bring pie!!!

Grand Rapids Before the Dams

by Molly Macgregor

Joseph Nicollet visited the Headwaters four years after Schoolcraft, and in his journal he recorded the falls at Pokegema, which now are inundated by the dams near Highway 2 and at the Blandin Dam.

“The falls of the Mississippi represent a drop of nine feet over a stretch of 260 or eighty-six yards of river. The falls form three tiers. The first one is a five-foot drop stretched over an incline twenty to twenty-five feet long. The other four feet dived the remaining distance into two sections, each one dropping another two feet. “These falls are a lovely prelude to the Falls of St. Anthony, five hundred miles downstream. They have the additional advantage of giving the traveler the sensation one feels only in mountains, this in a region where there are none. One’s imagination, dulled by a monotonous and tiring navigation over so many slow winding rivers, is enlivened by the sight of the impetuous torrent.”

There is an outcropping of bedrock above the first dam. It is part of the western terminus of the Mesabi Iron Range, and the only bedrock visible in the river corridor. The geological formation of the range reaches almost to Longville. In this whole area, springs percolate to the river, and its tributaries the Vermillion and Prairie; many of the springs are stained orange and red by iron.

Rivers are meant to flood, to dry up and to meander. When a river floods, it spreads out on its flood plain and that becomes a place for pike to spawn, for ducks to build nests, for plants to grow. When it dries, the upland mammals move in to eat or loaf.

The Mississippi’s delta in the Gulf of Mexico was created by the sediment the river carried with it and dumped when it hit the ocean. The river’s course was changed, so it doesn’t dump dirt there, and coastal Louisiana lost its barrier islands and protection against fierce hurricanes.

We want to live on rivers, but we aren’t very good at living with them. Today, people are taking dams out and letting rivers meander; that brings back habitat for fish and fowl, and it will ultimately keep our rivers clean and healthy.

Molly MacGregor was the Director of the Mississippi Headwaters Board for 12 years. She's the author of "The Mississppi Headwaters Guidebook".

"Kimono Seasons" Monday on KAXE

Katie Carter interviews Minnesota artist, Emily Chesley, Monday on KAXE's Morning Show. Chesley's "Kimono Seasons" is the current exhibit at the Fleur-de-Lis Gallery in Bemidji.

More On Flatmouth

by Scott Hall

Our Headwaters guide, Molly MacGregor, has sent along more information about the powerful and influential Anishinaabe leader, Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay, also known as Flatmouth to the French and English explorers between 1805 and 1860. This information comes from various sources.

Molly: The translation I have of his name – Without Fear – comes to me from Mike Swan, who is the Natural Resources Director at White Earth. The name is spelled many ways, and I am no expert.

Flatmouth is one of two Indians with busts in the US senate (the other is of Besheekee or Buffalo). I’ve attached a photo from the US Senate website of the bust.



In looking for this photo, I found the following – which is interesting. I was aware of the relocation. It is a pretty huge event in American-Ojibwe relations.

"A powerful Ojibwa, or Chippewa, chief in the Leech Lake area of present-day Minnesota, Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay, or Flat Mouth, visited the nation's capital in 1855 as a member of the Indian delegation from the Midwest. The tribal leaders were brought to Washington to negotiate land treaties. Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay spoke on behalf of his people in negotiating the cession of more than ten million acres in north-central Minnesota—a land package that included the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The Native Americans received more than one million dollars in funds and services, but aspects of this cession and others in the region continued to figure in government discussions with Native Americans for the next hundred years.

Aysh-ke-bah-ke-ko-zhay (other English spellings are also known) means "bird with the green bill" in the Ojibwa language. "Flat Mouth" did not derive from this native name but was instead an English translation of the nickname "Gueule Platte," applied by early French traders. In 1911 Smithsonian Institution ethnologist James Moody characterized the great leader as "probably the most prominent Ojibwa chief of the upper Mississippi region from at least 1806, when he held council with Lieutenant [Zebulon] Pike...probably to his death, which seems to have occurred about 1860."

The quote below indicates how angry and betrayed many Anishinaabe felt in their dealings with the Federal government well before Minnesota statehood.

“Tell him I blame him for the children we have lost, for the sickness we have suffered, and for the hunger we have endured. The fault rests on his shoulders.” —Flat Mouth, Leech Lake Ojibwe speaking of Territorial Governor Alexander Ramsey

Molly MacGregor was the Director of the Mississippi Headwaters Board for 12 years.
She's the author of "The Mississppi Headwaters Guidebook",
and will be our guide as we go down the River.

June 2: Dams and Damages

by Molly MacGregor

Cass and Winnie lie in a plain of sand, created when glaciers dropped ice blocks, and then melted around the blocks. The shape is uniform and the lakes are shallow. It’s a wide open space, paralleling the big wide sky.

People have lived around the lakes for thousands of years. The lakes provided a living, and the living sustained a culture. The parts of the living – land for homes, gardens and cemeteries, wild rice, fish, fowl, animals – can be priced, but today’s lesson is that the value of place in culture can’t be priced like a commodity.

Since the Civil War the American government had been working to gather Native Americans in a single location. In Minnesota, the Ojbiwe had been moved closer and closer to the headwaters lakes. Many advocated a single large reservation, but the Ojibwe resisted, recognizing that doing so would disrupt their lifestyle and their culture. “Every year what supports us grows on this place. If this dam is built we will all be scattered, we will have nothing to live on,” said Sturgeon Man at a council at Leech Lake on the matter.

The headwaters lakes had been awarded to the Ojibwe through treaties in 1855 and 1863; in order to build the dams, the U.S. Government had to find a way to take the land back. The Ojibwe understood their rights under the treaties and objected – consistently and through a long, hard campaign.

The Mississippi often ran dry in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The lumberman at St. Anthony wanted a steady flow for their mills. In order to take back the land from the Ojibwe, the Congress had to find a public purpose for building dams. Navigation below Minneapolis was the chosen public purpose. Construction of the Winnie dam was approved in 1880, but the U.S. Attorney General ruled it could not proceed, since doing so would have dispossessed the Ojibwe unfairly. The remedy was to compensate the Ojibwe, but the 1881 Congress limited the award to 10 percent of the cost of the dam. A commission was appointed to make a formal recommendation, and they recommended even less - $15,000 – be awarded as compensated.

The Ojibwe, led by the Pillagers at Leech Lake, were furious. They refused to accept the offer, having already determined that any award would have to be at least $250,000. The anger was so intense that the Minnesota politicians and churchmen asked the U.S. Government to hold a commission with the Ojibwe.

“The Chippewas hold their present lands under the guarantee of the Government. They are poor, have always been our friends..A visit to Washington of the chiefs…will settle this whole question…Highly as I do esteem some of the gentlemen who were connected with the commission last fall, I believe they failed to place before you the Indian side of the question, and the Indians did not accept their offers,” Bishop Benjamin Whipple wrote to the head of the Indian Claims Commission.

White Cloud was a leader from White Earth who had first counseled patience, but demanded action as construction of the dams proceeded without addressing the Indian claims, “In Washington is an understanding, a strong one…that a white man should take nothing from those reservations…We could not and did not give assent to the damming of the river.”

The Pillagers insisted that the representatives of the claims commission swear, with hands upheld, to resolve the matter, and placed on honor guard on them to keep them attentive to the business at hand. But, the settlement of the claims dragged on, and the dams were built and operations began. In this angry climate, the government then added the condition of removal of the Indians from the headwaters lakes to the settlement of the claim for compensation.

Within 10 years, there was an uprising at Leech Lake: the Battle of Sugar Point. The historical record tends to trivialize the cause of the battle, focusing on the steamboat of soldiers putting across Leech Lake. But, taken in context of the relationships with the Ojibwe and the American government, the deep lines of resentment that boiled over in October 1898, were hardened as the dams were built at Winnie and Leech. And, the irony is that the dams probably don’t serve their stated purpose. About two-thirds of the water entering the river from the headwaters lakes evaporates before it hits the Twin Cities.

Read more about "Dams and Damages" and the "Rhetoric of Reservoirs"...

Molly MacGregor was the Director of the Mississippi Headwaters Board for 12 years.
She's the author of "The Mississppi Headwaters Guidebook",
and will be our guide as we go down the River.

June 1: Flatmouth and the Headwaters Lakes

by Molly MacGregor

From Bemidji to Grand Rapids, the Mississippi rolls through three large lakes, Bemidji, Cass, and Winnibigoshish; and picks up a tributary from a fourth, Leech - four of Minnesota’s most beautiful lakes. They lie in a bed of sand, which Henry Schoolcraft called “the great marine district”. This white sand is visible at the river’s outlet from Winnibigoshish. It was laid down by wind during the altithermal, a period of dry temperatures more than 4,000 years ago that turned northern Minnesota into a vast prairie. The sands can always be seen in the sand dunes that remain west of the river south of Brainerd.

Bands of Ojibwe people lived in villages around these lakes, on Star Island in Cass Lake, at several locations on Winnie, on Leech’s Ottertail point and Bear Island. Flatmouth was a leader of the people living at Ottertail Point. All the explorers met him: Zebulon Pike in January 1806; then Schoolcraft, Beltrami and Nicollet. Schoolcraft described him as “both a warrior and a counsellor, and these distinctions he holds, not from any hereditary right, for he is a self-made man, but from the force of his own character.”

Flatmouth, or the French, Guelle Plat, was a nickname. His Ojibwe name was Esh-ke-bug-e-coshe, which means “without fear” according to a White Earth elder. He lived that name, as a charismatic leader devoted to his people’s well-being in a time of huge changes and conflict for them. If history had been written from another point of view, we’d all have memorized his speeches and seek to live up to his lessons.

When Pike met him in 1806, he persuaded Flatmouth to give his allegiance to the Americans, important economically for the young nation, not too long after the Indian wars before the revolution and the war with Britain that erupted in 1812. It was the U.S. Department of War that funded Schoolcraft’s journey to the Mississippi’s headwaters in 1832. He promised to help resolve the conflicts between the Ojibwe and Dakota. Twenty years after the last war, the British retained an economic presence in the region, and the American government needed Indian support to make the American fur trade and trading posts successful.

On July 17, 1832, Flatmouth invited Schoolcraft and his party to breakfast and to make his case for American support in the Ojibwe war against the Sioux. Reverend Boutwell spoke Ojibway and he recorded the speeches: “He had before heard the Americans say peace, peace! But he thought their advice resembled a rushing wind. It was strong and went soon. It did not abide long enough to choke up the road… He then lifted up four silver medals, attached by a string of wampum, and smeared with vermilion. Take notice, he said, they are bloody. I wish you to wipe off the blood. I am unable to do it. I find myself irretrievably involved in a war with the Sioux.”

Schoolcraft was funded by the U.S. government, but, unlike Flatmouth, had no authority. Perhaps, like Beltrami, he was frightened by the emotional power of Flatmouth’s appeal. In any case, there’s no record of his response. He did strike camp early and left Ottertail Point at night – a choice which suggests the desire to get away.

Flatmouth attended their late departure. Reverend Boutwell wrote that Flatmouth changed from his “native costume…to a uniform of blue military frock coat, with red collar and cuffs, with white underclothes, a linen ruffled shirt, shoes and stockings, and a neat citizen’s hat.” Boutwell recorded Flatmouth’s gesture as one of respect. But I think it was one of alliance: offering renewed allegiance to the Americans that needed his support for its own economic success. If so, then Flatmouth recognized that aligning similar objectives builds strength. Unfortunately, Schoolcraft paddled away, and we are left with the power of the moment, and the anguish of an opportunity squandered

Molly MacGregor was the Director of the Mississippi Headwaters Board for 12 years. She's the author of "The Mississppi Headwaters Guidebook", and will be our guide as we go down the River.

Cape May Warbler by Marshall Helmberger

A Cape May Warbler takes a break from feeding in a balsam fir near Tower. This spectacular bird is just one of more than two dozen species of warbler that can be found in the North Country right now. Photo by Marshall Helmberger from the Timberjay newspaper in NE Minnesota.

Tune in to KAXE's Morning Show every Friday at 7:20 for Marshall's "Border News Roundup".

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