RAMSEY COUNTY Mystic Caverns And Their Short-lived Days of Glory

A Publication o f the Ramsey County Historical Society Page 21

Spring, 2000 Volume 35. Number 1

The Two Worlds of Jane Gibbs The Gibbs Farm and the Santee Dakota —Page 4 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Executive Director Priscilla Famham Editor Virginia Brainard Kunz

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY Volume 35, Number 1 Spring, 2000 BOARD OF DIRECTORS Laurie A. Zenner CONTENTS Chair Howard M. Guthmann 3 Letters President James Russell 4 The Two Worlds of Jane Gibbs: First Vice President The Gibbs Farm and the Santee Dakota Anne Cowie Wilson Second Vice President Julie A. Humann Richard A. Wilhoit Secretary 14 Gummy, Yellow, White Flint Com Ronald J. Zweber The Dakota Garden at the Gibbs Farm Museum Treasurer Janet Cass W. Andrew Boss, Peter K. Butler, Charlotte H. Drake, Mark G. Eisenschenk, Joanne A. Englund, Robert F. Garland, John M. Harens, Judith Frost 17 The Gibbs Farm, Its Neighbor, the University Farm Lewis, John M. Lindley, George A. Mairs, Mar­ And How They Influenced Agricultural History lene Marschall, Richard T. Murphy, Sr., Linda Owen, Marvin J. Pertzik, Vicenta D. Scarlett, William R. Hueg, Jr. Glenn Wiessner. 21 Growing Up in St. Paul EDITORIAL BOARD John M. Lindley, chair; Thomas H. Boyd, Mystic Caverns and Their Short-lived Glory Days Thomas C. Buckley, Pat Hart, Virginia Brainard R ay Barton Kunz, Thomas J. Kelley, Tom Mega, Laurie Murphy, Vicenta Scarlett, G. Richard Slade, 23 Books, Etc. Laurie Zenner.

HONORARY ADVISORY BOARD Publication of Ramsey County History is supported in part by a gift from Elmer L. Andersen, Olivia I. Dodge, Charlton Clara M. Claussen and Frieda H. Claussen in memory of Henry H.Cowie, Jr. Dietz, William Finney, William Fallon, Otis and by a contribution from the late Reuel D. Harmon Godfrey, Jr., Robert S. Hess, D. W. “Don” Larson, George Latimer, Frank Marzitelli, Joseph S. Micallef, Robert Mirick, Samuel Morgan, Marvin J. Pertzik, J. Jerome Plunkett, Message from Editorial Board James Reagan, Rosalie E. Wahl, Donald D. Wozniak. ost of this issue of Ramsey County History focuses on the Gibbs Farm Museum, Mwhich the Ramsey County Historical Society owns in Falcon Heights. Over the past RAMSEY COUNTY COMMISIONERS several years, the Society has expanded its interpretation of the Gibbs Farm to encompass Commissioner Rafael Ortega, chairman both the white culture of the original owners, Jane and Heman Gibbs, and the Native Amer­ Commissioner Susan Haigh ican culture of the young Jane’s friends, the Santee Dakota, in the first half of the nineteenth Commissioner Tony Bennett Commissioner Dino Guerin century. Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt Historian Julie Humann begins her article with an analysis of how Jane and the Dakota Commissioner Janice Rettman came to know and understand each other, beginning in 1835 when as a little girl, she lived Commissioner Jan Wiessner hear the village of the Dakota chief, Cloud Man, in today’s south Minneapolis. A key part of Paul Kirkwold, manager, Ramsey County their mutually supportive relationship depended upon the genuine reciprocity that these rep­ resentatives of the two cultures had for each other. Ramsey County History is published quar­ terly by the Ramsey County Historical Writer Janet Cass complements Humann’s descriptions of Dakota culture with an exam­ Society, 323 Landmark Center, 75 W. Fifth ination of Dakota gardening at the farm Jane and her husband, Heman Gibbs, later estab­ Street, St. Paul, Minn. 55102 (651-222- lished. Cass writes of the plant species the Dakota commonly used, their gardening tech­ 0701). Printed in U.S.A. Copyright, 2000, niques, and the relationship their gardening had to other aspects of their culture. Lastly, she Ramsey County Historical Society. ISSN explains how the Dakota garden at the farm’s site fits in with the museum’s expanded inter­ Number 0485-9758. All rights reserved. No pretation. The Society welcomes any additional information that readers of this magazine part of this publication may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced without written can supply about these aspects of Dakota material culture. permission from the publisher. The Soci­ This issue next moves to the world of commercial agriculture practiced by the Gibbs ety assumes no responsibility for statements family and other Minnesota farmers from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. made by contributors. Fax 651-223-8539; Retired University of Minnesota agronomist William R. Hueg, Jr., explains how the Uni­ e-mail address [email protected].; web site versity acquired the rich farmland that once belonged to the Gibbs family and other early address www.rchs.com residents of Rose Township and built a world-renowned agricultural experiment station. John M. Lindley, Chair, Editorial Board

2 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY Gummy, Yellow, White Flint Com The Dakota Garden at the Gibbs Farm Museum

Janet Cass Fluffy clouds float by on a picture-perfect May afternoon. It is the “moon for plant­ ing” according to the Dakota Native Amer­ ican lunar calendar, and Tom LaBlanc is busy hoeing last fall’s cornstalks out of the soil in the Dakota Garden he oversees at the Ramsey County Historical Soci­ ety’s Gibbs Farm Museum, a National Historic Site in Falcon Heights. Although the farm was established by Euro-Ameri­ can pioneers Jane and Heman Gibbs in 1849, some land in the region was al­ ready under cultivation by the Dakota and the museum offers a rare opportunity to see pioneer and native gardens side- by-side, and to compare the gardening techniques of two very different cultures. Take those cornstalks, for example. Gardens generally are cleaned up in au­ tumn as vegetation left standing in the fall can harbor overwintering pests. But for the native peoples of the Upper Mid­ west, it made sense to leave the vines and stalks of their beans, com, squash, and sunflowers in the garden as winter fodder for their horses. Come spring, what little remained would be burned, its ash returning nutrients to the earth. Sim­ ilarly, trees felled while clearing ground for a new garden were burned into fertil­ izer. This “softened the soil and left it loose and mellow for planting,” Buffalo Bird Woman recalled in a memoir. Although Buffalo Bird Woman was Owl Woman with Antler Rake, 1914. Photograph by Gilbert Wilson and used by permission of the American Museum of Natural History. bom around 1839 into a Hidatsa tribe in present-day North Dakota, her gardening methods were typical of those used by terms of crops grown (com, beans, had grown about a foot, a village would other peoples in the region, including the squash, sunflowers, and tobacco), tech­ leave almost en masse to hunt buffalo. Santee Dakota, who occupied the eastern nology (digging sticks and hoes and They would return during the “moon part of Dakota-controlled territory. “All maybe a rake ...) and techniques ...”. when com is gathered” (August), cued by [Native American] gardens in the Upper While the Dakota of the mid-1800s ripening milkweed pods. Midwest were pretty much alike,” ac­ and earlier were skilled hunters and for­ Another cue was observed by French cording to ethnobotanist Michael Scullin, agers, some bands also gardened near the cartographer Joseph Nicolas Nicollet professor of anthropology at the Min­ bark lodges of their summer encamp­ (1786-1843), whose United States nesota State University at Mankato, “in ments. Every summer, after their com government-sponsored expeditions in

14 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY have been introduced to the Dakota via trade with the agriculturally sophisticated Arikara peoples who lived in present day South Dakota. Lewis and Clark encoun­ tered the Arikaras while trekking west­ ward in 1804, subsequently traveling north and bartering for vegetables with the Hidatsa, who, in turn, traded produce for Dakota animal hides and meat. A crude harrow, used to break up the topsoil so it could be planted or seeded. A pioneer The Arikara Shield Beans (Phaseolus farmer would fashion this by driving pegs into forks from trees but Dakota women often used vulgaris) in the Dakota garden are tradi­ a wooden stick or their own hands. Sketch from Farming in Early Minnesota. tionally planted in a row of mounds be­ tween every few rows of com. This bene­ 1838 and 1839 produced The Hydro- Gummy com was traditionally made fits the com, since bean roots, like those graphical Basin of the Upper Mississippi into balls which were eaten while travel­ of other legumes, increase the soil’s con­ River map and report. Nicollet’s diary ing, as well as used to flavor other foods. centration of nitrogen, which is important entry for Monday, August 13, 1838, Yellow Flour com was cooked into mush for overall plant health. notes: “The Liatris spicata indicates, or parched so that it could be carried as Which may be why Buffalo Bird when the flower is blue-red, that the com traveling food. White Flint com was Woman recalled that com leaves yel­ is good to eat.” L. spicata is commonly added to stews or cooked into mush. In lowed—a sign of nitrogen deficiency— known as gay feather, dense blazing star, addition, com sometimes was harvested when grown too close to another nitro­ or button snakeroot. while unripe, to be roasted and eaten on gen-hungry crop, tobacco (Nicotiana Not far from the Gibbs farm was the the spot, made into bread, or dried for quadrivalvis). Tobacco was grown by na­ Santee Dakota village of Chief Cloud winter consumption. tives of the Upper Midwest for spiritual Man, who decided to try agriculture after Northern Flint corn’s sixty to seventy- and ceremonial use, its rising smoke be­ nearly perishing in a snowstorm while day maturation is well suited to the short lieved to carry prayers to spirits. Thus hunting buffalo. Missionary Samuel Pond growing season of this zone 4 region. But horticultural reasons and sacred attrib­ lived near Cloud Man in the 1830s, and such rapid growth makes it top heavy, utes both may account for the native noted that the Dakota women “... never and easily blown over by wind or driving practice of growing tobacco in a plot sep­ planted [seed com] until they found ripe rain, hence the native practice of mound­ arate from the main garden. strawberries.” (A useful reminder to those ing dirt around the base of the com stalk In another example of successfully of us whose eagerness dooms plants to a to promote growth of prop roots and to working with the challenges presented by late spring frost.) Dakota women, in fact, mechanically stabilize the plant. (Until I a particular plant, sunflowers (Helianthus would have owned the gardens because tried this technique, my com plants were annuus) were grown only along the they worked them. routinely toppled by summer storms.) perimeter of Dakota gardens to minimize And work they did, cultivating up to “Striped pumpkin” squash (Cucurbita their tendency to inhibit the growth of one acre per adult. The estimated yields of pepo) also is grown in the Dakota garden, other plants (i.e. their allelopathic effect). twenty to forty bushels of com (iZea mays) similar to squash cultivated in the area Then, too, says Buffalo Bird Woman, per acre is impressive considering their nearly 1,000 years ago. These would "We thought a field surrounded thus by a tools: a wooden stick or bison jawbone have been eaten at every stage of plant sparse-sown row of sunflowers had a used to break up the ground, their hands for development, from flower to fmit, with handsome appearance." Sunflowers were patting seeds into the soil and for pulling squash leaf stems serving as spoons for cultivated for their oil and protein-rich small weeds, a bison shoulder blade hoe stews. The old women of a village some­ seeds. (For more about sunflowers see for extracting larger weeds, and a rake times were hired within their community Early American Homes Gardens 1999.) made from willow shoots or an antler. to help during the busy harvest season, With these tools the women grew using a bone knife to slice squash into Northern Flint com, cultivated in this rounds which were dried for winter food. area since at least 1100 AD. Hardy, pro­ Buffalo Bird Woman recalled that grand­ ductive, and shorter than modem hybrid mothers sometimes would bring their com, it grows to an average height of granddaughters along to help at this task, four feet, with low-growing cobs that are and that little girls were allowed to select shorter than modem ones. The three a squash from among those harvested. types of com grown in the Gibbs Farm “Each little girl carried her squash about Dakota Garden—Gummy, Yellow Flour, in her arms and sang for it as for a babe.” Wild rice winnowing tray made of birchbark. and White Flint—are all varieties of this Also growing here are large white This is another of the replicated artifacts at plant. beans with a brown “shield,” believed to the Gibbs Farm Museum.

RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY 15 For traditional Dakota, a successful Shield Figure Bean) is available from and from harvest could mean survival in times of Seed Savers Exchange, seeds for most of Seeds of Change poor hunting. But just as importantly, the the plants grown in these gardens aren’t www.seedsofchange.com garden was a reflection of Native spiritu­ yet commercially available. However, 888-762-7333 ality, both as a source of sacred tobacco it’s clear that the soil at Gibbs Farm is and as an annual reminder of the people’s nourishing something equally important: Sources kinship with the natural world. an understanding of some of our coun­ Like many other Native American try’s earliest inhabitants. “A Day in the Life: Maza Okiye Win,” by Angela cultures, Siouan tribes—linguistically re­ Cavender Wilson, Minnesota History Magazine, 56/4, Winter 1998-99, pp 200-201, Minnesota lated groups which include the Dakota— Minnesota-based freelance writer Janet Historical Society, St. Paul, 1986. i revered com as a symbol of Mother Earth Cass gratefully acknowledges Early Amer­ and her abundance. That reverence con­ ican Homes magazine’s permission to Brother Crow, Sister Com: Traditional American Indian Gardening by Carol Buchanan, Ten Speed tinues today, with prayer ties fastened reprint this article, most of which first ap­ Press, Berkeley, CA 1997. J onto each of the four sides of the Gibbs peared in Early American Homes Gardens Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden, as told to Gilbert Dakota Garden. 2000. Reprinted with permission o/Early L. Wilson, Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. American Homes magazine, a publica­ Paul, 1987. tion of Celtic Moon Publishing, Inc. She Com Among the Indians o f the Upper Missouri by also acknowledges the generosity o f Pro­ George F. Will and George E. Hyde, University of fessor Mike Scullin and of the Ramsey Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 1964. County Historical Society staff in provid­ Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and ing some o f the information used herein. Wild Plant Conservation, by Gary Paul Nabhan, North Point Press, San Francisco, CA, 1989. Indian Agriculture in America, by R. Douglas Hurt, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, 1987. Visitor Information Joseph N. Nicollet on the Plains and Prairies, The Indian sap bucket. Sketched by Edward J. Gibbs Farm Museum, Expeditions o f1838-39 with Journals, Letters, and Letterm ann for Farming in Early Minnesota. Notes on the Dakota Indians, Translated from the open May through October French by Edmund C. Bray and Martha Coleman 2097 West Larpenteur Avenue Bray, Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, 1976. Another horticultural connection to Falcon Heights, MN 55113 Native American heritage began last 651-646-8629 Myths and Legends o f the Sioux, by Marie L. summer with the installation of the Gibbs www.rchs.com/nuGrdn 1 .htm McLaughlin, Bismark Tribune Company, Bis- mark, ND, 1916. Farm’s first ever Native American Chil­ Owned and Operated by dren’s Garden. Here, Native American Native American Gardening: Stories, Projects and The Ramsey County Historical Society Recipes fo r Families by Michael J. Caduto and youngsters worked alongside tribal el­ 323 Landmark Center Joseph Bruchac, Fulcrum Publishing, Golden, CO, ders, who orally transmitted their cul­ 75 West Fifth Street 1996. ture’s lore. Seeds representing a variety St. Paul, MN 55102 The Dakota or Sioux in Minnesota as They Were of native people were planted, including New this year: in 1834 by Samuel W. Pond, Minnesota Historical Mandan red pole bean, Cree com, and bark lodge and Dakota Society Press, St. Paul, 1986. Winnebago (Oklahoma) pumpkin. Beans interpreters at the garden The Village Indians o f the Upper Missouri—The and com were planted in the same hills in Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikaras, by Roy W. Seneca fashion. Meyer, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Seed Savers Echange Seeds for both the Children’s Garden 1977. 3076 North Winn Road and the Dakota Garden came from scat­ A Decorah, IA 52101 What This Awl Means, by Janet D. Spector, Min­ tered families who maintain traditional nesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, 1993. 319-382-5990 crops, and from Michael Scullin. Chil­ FAX 319-382-5872 The Dream of Wild Health Network, 459 Wheeler dren’s Garden director Paul Red Elk says Street North, St. Paul, MN 55104,651-646-8167. that his sponsoring organization, The Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden, Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, 3675 Arbore­ Dream of Wild Health Network (which is as told to Gilbert J. Wilson tum Drive, Chanhassen, MN 55317-0039, 612- lent space by Gibbs Farm), is propagat­ 443-2460. is published by and available from ing these plants in hopes of becoming Paul Red Elk, 651-771-4503. “the Seed Savers Exchange for Midwest­ Minnesota Historical Society Press Michael Scullin, Professor of Anthropology, De­ ern Native American seeds.” www.mnhs.org/market/mhspress/ partment of Anthropology, Box 175, Minnesota Although a bean closely resembling (651) 297-3243 / 800-647-7827 State University, Mankato, MN 56002-8400,507- the Arikara Shield Bean (the Hidatsa Fax: (651)297-1345 389-6504.

16 RAMSEY COUNTY HISTORY )ux Indians,” an 1851 watercolor by Johann Baptist Wengler, Öberösterreichisches Landes- seum, Linz, Austria. Wengler painted this at a time of transition for the Dakota people. The dress of the man suggests a ceremonial costume and the lance probably was for parade use, but the women’s dress reflects their gradual adoption of the clothing of the white community. by F. GangI and reproduced by permission of the museum. See article beginning on page 4