Old Man Black Gown

On November 2, 1795, James K. Polk (aka: Napoleon of the stump) was born. Forty nine years later, he would be elected eleventh president of the United States. That is established fact. Shortly after being sworn in, his blood was infected with the memetic super virus with the euphemistic appellation of manifest destiny. Epidemiologists of my current time identify ground zero of the outbreak as New York City, and attribute its initial release to a lawyer-turned-newspaperman named James O’Sullivan by way of the July 1845 issue of Democratic Review. Despite the journal’s low readership, the meme replicated along a disease vector exclusively dominated by a small subset of white New Yorkers whose wealth and social status conferred a host of privileges: some real, some imaginary.

Through no fault of his own, Polk was exposed - perhaps right away in a speech, or via newspaper, or perhaps through second or third hand account from a reader who came into contact with O’Sullivan’s published words - that is not clear to us at the moment. What is obvious is the swiftness of the aftermath.

Take the case of Minnesota 

In 1849, though it was an official territory, most of the place was not what you’d call move-in ready. It was occupied by hundreds of thousands of Sioux Indians. No person in their right white mind back in those days, would want to live in a wilderness swarming with mocassin-wearing killers. Measures had to be taken, something had to be done.

So, in 1851, Minnesota’s commissioner of Indian Affairs - a little peckerwood named Luke Lea - printed a beautiful color map with lots of numbers and lines. The greatest feature of this map was the line that followed the Mississippi river - the one making a diagonal cut across Minnesota, and up toward North Dakota. Everything to the left of that line, for all intents and purposes, was Indian. On the right, were the white folks. With respect to that map, Luke Peckerwood assembled a group of wordsmithing lawyers to produce a contract, which was then foisted upon representatives of the Sioux Indians, along with several crates of whiskey, and it basically went something like this...

“The following articles of a treaty between the See-see-toan and Wah-pay-toan bands of Dakota or Sioux Indians and the United States government, signed on the twenty-third day of July, eighteen hundred and fifty-one shall lay out the terms by which said Indians agree to cede and vacate the twenty four MILLION acres of land to the south and west of the Mississippi River, heretofore referred to as Area 289, and to never return. 

In full consideration of said cession, we, the government of the United States, agree to pay said Indians a total of $1,665,000. We also agree to throw in two skinny strips of land along the Minnesota River, each twenty miles wide and fourteen miles long, where said Indians may hunt, fish and engage in recreational activities. 

We reserve the right to unconditionally reinterpret this agreement at any moment of our choosing.” 

-- Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, 1851

This was an ALL CASH, YOU MUST ACT NOW offer. So the Indians agreed, and lickety-split, Area 289 became a bonafide manifest destiny zone. Every white person around was suddenly ready like Freddy to build towns, plow land, and make babies. Newspapers like the Minnesota Pioneer cheerfully predicted…

“a rapidity of growth unparalleled even in the annals of Western progress… Here [settlers] will find an unqualifiedly healthy climate, fertile and well drained lands, and upon the Mississippi the best market for mechanical products in the Union. With such a population will come not only the arts but science and morals. Our Falls of St. Anthony with hundreds of water powers upon other streams will be turned to manufacturing purposes. Thrifty towns will arise upon them. 

Our undulating prairies will rejoice under the hand of husbandry; these hills and valleys will be jocund with the voices of school children, and churches shall mark the moral progress of our land.” 

-- James Goodhue, Editor of the Minnesota Pioneer

Old Man Black Gown (aka: Francis Pierz)

In the early days after the signing of the treaty of Traverse des Sioux (yes, that is what they called it), just twenty miles inside Area 289, small settlements began springing up along the Sauk River that branched off of the Mississippi. One was Munson Township, later renamed Richmond. It was entirely composed of German Catholic immigrants, who had come at the urging of one of their own countrymen - a missionary by the name of Francis Pierz. In the spring of 1852, Pierz left the diocese of Detroit - some say on bad terms - and joined up with Bishop Joseph Crétin, the newly appointed Bishop of Area 289. Crétin and Pierz weren’t a likely pair, but as it turned out, were well suited to work as partners.

Crétin was a Frenchman with smooth hands and philosophical leanings. At seminary, he established himself as a well read, pompous and ambitious kind of prick who took an especial delight in poking holes in the epistemology of Descartes - in Latin of course. His letter writing abilities and powers of persuasion were key factors in obtaining funds for Pierz’s guerilla tactics with the Chippewa during the brutal winter of ‘56.

Pierz was a pragmatic man of action - a point man - sort of the Magnum PI to Pierz’s Higgins. After a face-to-face meeting with Crétin in St. Cloud, in which the men divvied up the territory, Pierz agreed to take everything north of the Twin Cities. He wound up establishing relations with small bands of Chippewa while operating out of the northern river town of Old Crow Wing. When he wasn’t ministering to the Indians, he’d write lengthy promotional articles in the Minnesota Pioneer and the Sauk Rapids Frontiersman, extolling the virtues of the region.

“More than half the open meadows in Minnesota have an excellent black loamy soil, with a splendid mixture of sand and clay and a rich top-soil formed by the plant decay of thousands of years, so that it would be hard to find anywhere in the world a soil better suited to yield a rich return for the farmers' toil… [and] … I can assure my readers that not half the rivers and hardly a third of the lakes of this beautiful region are indicated on the maps. Moreover, in many places one will find springs of ice-cold drinking water, and if here and there a farmer does not happen to have such a supply at his door, he can in a few days and at little cost dig a splendid well at a depth of from eight to twelve feet. Hence immigrants need not fear any lack of water.” 

-- Francis Pierz, 1853

Of course, he left out the part about the thirty below zero winters, and the dirty swamps teeming with mosquitoes. But that was how Pierz was - a man of action who, when even slightly pressed to defend an action, eagerly deferred to the teleological suspension of the ethical. His aim was to persuade the thousands of German Catholics living in Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana to abandon their current towns, and pack up for Minnesota to stake land claims along the Sauk River region. He envisioned a Teutonic eden of dairy farms, flour mills, and foundries.

Though fourteen years older than Crétin, Pierz was still physically imposing. He had a thick back and chest, and lunged around on top of large powerful thighs. At the age of sixty eight, he was still able to trek forty miles on foot through marshland, while lugging around seventy pounds of blankets and supplies. The catechist was made to drag the two hundred pound birch bark canoe, and the cook had to carry a hundred and fifty pounds of food and utensils. The Chippewa at first thought Pierz was touched in the head, but later came to hold the view that he was a powerful spiritual man - perhaps even, a reincarnation of one of the original seven fires. Over time, as Pierz became a regular fixture, the Chippewa children were frequently deployed to steal his socks. They would give them to the elders, who would boil them along with other ingredients to make home remedies for rheumatism. They even gave him a nickname - old man black gown. Their affection for him developed slowly, but was genuine. It took two full years, but Pierz won over the Indians’ trust. That changed after the winter of ‘56.

Spring 1855

The Willenbrings were among the original sixty five families that arrived by covered wagon in the spring of 1855. By June, Frank Arnold Willenbring established good relations with Father Pierz, and convinced him to finance the purchase of a large floor loom. Willenbring worked out an arrangement with Pierz whereby he was allowed to operate the loom in exchange for weaving a fixed number of bolts of cloth, which he would sell to the church at cost. Anything beyond the agreed-upon number of bolts were his to sell or keep as he chose. That arrangement held for a year and a half, at which point, Frank used his earnings to purchase the loom outright from the church, freeing him from the original agreement with Pierz. The loom, which had been housed in the log cabin parish house, was moved to the Willenbring family house less than a mile away.