Compiled and written by David R. Schleper

Thu Anh Tran was born in 1944 in Vietnam. He was a poultry farmer, owning 700 chickens, according to an article in the Shakopee Valley News on September 10, 1975. His wife was Vu Thi Hieu.

Thu Anh Tran served eight years in the Vietnamese Army, was a sergeant in the agitate general’s staff and an interpreter for the United States Army. He holds a citation from the U.S. Military Assistance Command and in 1971 received the U.S. Army Commendation Medal. He was wounded in combat three times.

Along with his wife, his mother-in-law, and their three children, Tran Hoy Cuong, age four, Trun Trung Hau, age three, and a girl, Tran Thi Anh Tuyet, who was a year old, they immigrated to Shakopee to escape the communist rule in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam after the war was over and Vietnam was reunified under one communist regime in 1975.

Có chí thì nên is a Vietnamese saying that means, “Where there is will, there is a way.” This describes the determination Vietnamese immigrants displayed in their exploration of new homelands after the Fall of Saigon, according to the article “Có Chí Thì Nên: Vietnamese Immigrants Explore a New Home in Minnesota After the Fall of Saigon” from the International Journal of Naval History.

On April 30, 1975, after twenty years of fighting, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong took over Saigon, ending the war and reunifying Vietnam under one communist regime. Many South Vietnamese experienced risky journeys to explore new homelands and be free of communism.

Because of his service, Thu and his family were part of the group that immigrated to Shakopee. With help from parishioners of St. Mary’s Catholic Church and the Anderson family, Thu Anh Trun and Vu Thi Hieu, along with their family, arrived here. Vu Thi Hieu was pregnant, and in a few months, John Tran was born at St. Francis Hospital in Shakopee on November 6, 1975. Two other children also were born in Shakopee.

Minnesota had little racial or ethnic diversity until the mid-1970s. The South Vietnamese immigrants who fled after Fall of Saigon were the first to bring significant racial and ethnic diversity to the state, but since the late 1990s, Hmong, Somali, Indian, and Mexican immigrants have added to Minnesota’s newfound melting pot, according to Lisalan Thai from the Vietnamese Community Oral History Project.

By the late 1980s, there were over 231,000 Vietnamese immigrants living in the U.S., with approximately 18,000 settling in Minnesota. The influx of refugees resulted in cultural exchanges as immigrants accepted Western ways of life, while trying to hold onto their Vietnamese heritage. At the same time, Minnesotans began to slowly embrace aspects of Vietnamese culture. These cultural exchanges between Minnesotans and Vietnamese immigrants helped pave the way for the immigrant groups of today.

The immigration of Vietnamese people has led to cultural exchange in Minnesota. Today more than 26,000 Vietnamese call Minnesota home. Many immigrants now own shops, businesses, and restaurants that contribute to the economy. Phuoc Tran in an oral history project from the Minnesota Historical Society, October 22, 2010, says, “We get a lot of blessing from America, and it is time for us to pay back.”

Thu Anh Tran and family eventually moved to St. Louis Park, where he industriously worked hard at the Spectrum Plastic Group in St. Louis Park.

He was a generous husband, father, grandfather, and friend, willing to make any sacrifice to help friends and family. Thu Anh Tran also had a passion for fishing.

Thu Anh Tran died about two months after his wife died. He died on December 27, 2011, and was buried at Gethsemane Cemetery in New Hope, Minnesota.

Bibliography

“Có Chí Thì Nên: Vietnamese Immigrants Explore a New Home in Minnesota After the Fall of Saigon.” International Journal of Naval History, vol. 13, no. 2, Aug. 2016.

Shakopee Valley News, 10 Sept. 1975.

Thai, Lisalan. Vietnamese Community Oral History Project. Minnesota Historical Society, 22 Dec. 2010.

Tran, Phuoc. Oral History Project. Minnesota Historical Society, 22 Oct. 2010.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Thomas J. Galbraith was born in Turbot Township in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania on October 3, 1825. After attending local schools, he finished his education at the college at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (now Bucknell University). Thomas then taught school, while he read law under the direction of Joshua Comly.

Galbraith was admitted to the bar in September 1852. In the first election after his admission to the bar, he was chosen as county surveyor and was soon appointed county clerk of Montour County in Pennsylvania.

In the spring of 1854, he moved west to the Territory of Minnesota. He came back to Pennsylvania briefly to marry Henrietta Garretson, on April 5, 1855, in Danville. The couple returned immediately to Minnesota, settling in Sha K’ Pay, Minnesota Territory, where Thomas was elected to the House of Representatives of the Territorial Legislature. In 1857, he was elected a member of the Constitutional Convention and was one of ten men, five Republicans and five Democrats, who formulated Minnesota’s first constitution. He then served the 18th district in the Minnesota State Senate in 1861, living in Shakopee at the time.

In the spring of 1861, he was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as the agent of the Sioux Indians of the Mississippi and removed to the agency’s headquarters in Yellow Medicine, Minnesota, succeeding Joseph R. Brown. Galbraith also had to deal with Dakota people who did not want to convert to a “new” way of life.

On August 15, 1862, Galbraith was involved in a confrontation between some Dakota tribesmen, U.S. troops, and local traders. Galbraith refused to distribute food to the Indians, although they were suffering from famine. The government’s treaty payments were late. It proved one of many causes of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 that began 12 days later.

In August 1862, as he was heading with a company of recruits to join the Union forces in the Civil War, the Indians broke out in rebellion. Returning immediately to Fort Ridgely, he and hundreds of refugees were besieged by Indians for ten days until General Sibley and a force of 1,000 men arrived to secure the area.

Henrietta and their two children were led to safety from their home at the Upper Agency by the Wahpeton Dakota leader Anpetutokeca (John Other Day). Galbraith helped defend Fort Ridgely and was wounded at the battle of Birch Coulee.

In 1863 he resumed the practice of law in St. Paul, but in 1868 the family returned home to Pennsylvania.

Henrietta Garretson Galbraith never left again and died in Danville in 1883.

Thomas, however, could not resist the lure of the west and made a trip to Idaho in 1879. He remained there and in Montana for the rest of his active legal career. After their mother’s death, his five youngest children eventually joined him in Montana.

In 1889, he was elected the first district judge of the Fifth Judicial District in Montana (including Beaver Head, Madison, and Jefferson Counties), serving until 1893. His portrait still hangs in his original courtroom in Boulder, Montana.

By 1900, aged 74, he had moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and was living with his eldest son, Jacob Garretson Galbraith, who was a cavalry captain at Fort D.A. Russell.

Thomas Jefferson Galbraith remained in Cheyenne for many years until his death on February 3, 1909.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Thomas Andrew Holmes was born on March 4, 1804, in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, son of William Holmes and Rachel Day Holmes.

He slowly moved west, from Ohio (where he married Ursula L. Kennedy), Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin Territory. Thomas and his brother-in-law, Robert M. Kennedy and families tried to settle in the Winona prairie in what was later Minnesota, but Dakota leader Wapahaṡa refused. So, Holmes and his group moved and opened a trading post at Wah-ma-dee, or Eagle Bluffs. It was soon named Holmes Landing and later was called Fountain City.

Ursula Kennedy Holmes stayed in Dubuque for treatment of periodic attacks that made her frantic with pain. She started using opiates and died in 1841. Ursula was one of four wives of Thomas Holmes. Other wives include Witch-e-aim (died within a year), Helen M. Taisey (divorced after four years), and Harriet Richard Woodbury Holmes.

Holmes headed to Minnesota Territory ten years later, arriving in Sauk Rapids in the winter of 1849. He served in the Territorial House.

Meanwhile, the area of what was later Shakopee was not open for settlement for white people in 1851. They had to wait until February 1853 after the ratification of treaties. But Thomas Holmes wanted to establish townsites with an eye to the profit they represented. He asked for carte blanche trading rights but was denied. He was then allowed a license for two sites.

By getting a license to trade in 1851, Holmes was a squatter on Indian land. It gave him a toehold on townsites before claims could be legally settled. He “improved” the land with dwellings, warehouses, and stores, and thus was less liable to be taken over by settler-colonists and promoters who came along later. “In other words, fur trading was not an end in itself with these men as it had been with some of the earlier traders in the valley. Rather, it was a means of obtaining a legal or quasi-legal claim on the land they staked out before they could actually file their preemptions with the government,” said Roberts and Dobbs.

Holmes conferred at Ft. Snelling with William L. Quinn and engaged him as a guide and companion on the investigating tour.

“In a good canoe, with a week’s provisions, Holmes and Quinn started out from Ft. Snelling. In a hollow near the Shakopee Indian Village, they landed and looked over the ground,” said the Compendium of History and Biography of Carver and Hennepin Counties, Minnesota. Holmes and Quinn also traveled up the Minnesota River where a twenty-acre clearing in the Big Woods attracted his attention. He claimed it as his second site, the Chaska town site.

When they returned to Ft. Snelling, Holmes went to Itasca and began bringing a stock of goods back to Holmes Landing for trading. It was said he brought the logs to build the post upstream on his flatboat. “There he (Thomas A. Holmes) loaded his stock of goods and some building materials on the flat boat ‘Wild Paddy.’ The boat was propelled by sails and pikes, the latter being operated by John McKenzie and Emerson Shumway,” said Julius Coller II.

The Holmes’ Log Trading Store was built in the summer of 1851 on the riverbank of the levee of the St. Peter’s River, in what is now downtown Shakopee. (It became the Minnesota River on June 19, 1852.)

It was on the east side of Holmes Street. According to Donald P. Wagner, in a footnote in The Diary of Daniel M. Storer, Holmes “personally burned the lime for chinking the logs.” It was located at the riverbank, between the present Holmes Street Bridge, with the front door facing the river.

According to Henry Hinds, the store in the winter of 1852 and early 1853 did not furnish a very extensive assortment of goods. It was basically supplied with powder and lead, some calico, some blankets, some tobacco, and some Indian trinkets. The Dakota Indians would pay Holmes in money and furs. Sometimes the Dakota bought on credit and were paid when they received their annuities from the government. When the Dakota were forced to move to the reservation, they frequently still stopped at the store with their annuities.

“Hundreds of birchbark and dugout canoes, wedged closely together, lined the south bank of the river from the present Lewis Street eastward for nearly a mile downstream to Pond’s Creek. The Shakopee band, joined by several other groups, numbered more than 2,000 by the time they left Shakopee on October the 19th (1853),” said Julius Coller II. “Silently and sadly, the glum redmen departed from the hunting grounds of their fathers to make a new home in an unknown country.”

Holmes was stricken with “town-site fever. He also went further west, heading to the gold fields of what later became Montana in 1862, 1864, and 1866. He left Shakopee in 1878, and moved to Cullman, Alabama, where he was a farmer. Thomas Andrew Holmes died on July 2, 1888, at age 84.

His fourth wife, Harriet Woodbury Holmes, returned to Shakopee, where she lived at her home on the northwest corner of Fifth and Spencer Street until just before she died, at age 87. Harriet was buried at Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

Bibliography

Compendium of history and biography of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, Minnesota. Chicago: H. Taylor & Co., 1914.

The Diary of Daniel M. Storer from 1849 to 1905: A Pioneer Builder and Merchant-His Personal History of Shakopee, Minnesota from August 1853 to January 1905. Shakopee Heritage Society, 2003.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Mexicans and Mexican Americans first began migrating to Minnesota in the late 1800s as seasonal field laborers. As the sugar-beet industry expanded in the state so too did the need for more labor. In 1927, a sugar-beet company representative estimated the total Minnesota Mexican migrant population to be at 5,000 and increasing in 1928 to 7,000, according to Cultural Crossroads: Migration and Community Transformation. Gradually, seasonal laborers began to settle in Minnesota.

The first Mexican settlements in Minnesota are reported to have resided principally in the state’s capital of St. Paul. At that time, many of the state’s railroad headquarters were centered in St. Paul and employed a great number of the earliest Mexican residents. By 1930 there were a reported 3,636 permanent residents of Mexican descent living in Minnesota, 70 percent of whom resided in St. Paul or adjacent Ramsey County, according to an article, “Toward a Better Land: Migration on the Minnesota Prairie.”

In Scott County and in Shakopee, Mexicans arrived here for seasonal farm work, and for work in places like Gedney Pickle Factory in Chaska.

Compared to other Midwestern states, whose migrants were mainly single men, Minnesota had a high concentration of women and child migrants due to the lack of enforced labor laws early in the state’s history. This changed the social fabric of the state. Mexican women contributed to the economy by working outside of the home and becoming positive role models for their children.

In the Shakopee Valley News, Maddie DeBilzan talked to a woman who lives in Shakopee in an article “Residents of Scott County are out of work, and it’s leaving some groups in the margins.”

Theresa Garcia is a single mother from Puebla, Mexico who spoke across a crackling phone in broken English, wondering aloud when she’d finally be able to report back to work as a housekeeper at a local hotel.

Garcia is undocumented, and DeBilzan changed her name for this article for fear of being identified. She had been out of a job for a month, with the rent bill coming up soon. With a 17-year-old son to feed and a sister in Jordan, also a single mother, who had three little girls to feed, Garcia was scared.

Her cleaning shifts at the hotel were barely able to make ends meet. With an $825 check she received every two weeks, she had to find a way to pay her $600 rent bill, plus food, car insurance, and a cell phone plan.

Now, those expenses still demand her money, but she didn’t have a paycheck to fall back on.

Garcia, who had lived in Shakopee for 21 years, couldn’t qualify for the unemployment benefits or the stimulus checks others in her position received for being furloughed or laid off, according to the article in the Shakopee Valley News. Ana Vergara, the president of Shakopee Diversity Alliance, was advocating to raise money for others in the community like Garcia, who couldn’t receive government assistance but still needed the help.

“Right now isn’t the time to exclude those people,” Vergara said.

A local group called Esperanza, of hope in Spanish, made a point to cover at least the food portion of the bill for any family that needed it. For example, in early April 2020, at New Creation Lutheran Church, 235 families received groceries. Of those families, 75 were Latino, 10 were Somali, and 150 were white. Other local groups and companies, such as the Scott, Carver and Dakota County Community Action Partnership, Heart Ministries, New Creation Lutheran Church, and several other local agencies have donated money, volunteers, or space for the cause.

Families like Garcia’s received essentials such as milk, bread, meat, spaghetti, cereal, and toilet paper to last her and her teenage son the next seven days.

Shakopee City Council Member Angelica Contreras, who also served on the board of the Shakopee Diversity Alliance, said the goal of the food distribution was to allow people to save money on groceries so they can pay their bills.

In Shakopee, about eight percent of people are Latino. Many Latinos work in hotels and restaurants. A high percentage of those people don’t have insurance or might not qualify for unemployment benefits if they are undocumented. “The cleaning industry is dominated by the Latino population. Cleaners are putting themselves at risk during COVID-19 here.”

The impact of COVID-19 caused millions of people like Garcia to lose work. “It’s scary because you don’t have money for insurance or the doctor,” said Garcia, whose son has health insurance, but who isn’t covered herself.

Bibliography

DeBilzan, Maddie. “Residents of Scott County are out of work, and it’s leaving some groups in the margins.” Shakopee Valley News, 10 April 2020.

“Toward a Better Land: Migration on the Minnesota Prairie.” Cultural Crossroads: Migration and Community Transformation. xroads.coplacdigital.org/morris/mnmigration/mexicansinminnesota/.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Theodore (Theo) Weiland was born in Brown County, Wisconsin on January 15, 1849, and was raised on a farm near Fond du Lac.

In 1857, he went to Green Bay and attended school for four years.

Theo’s parents died when he was young, and at age ten he was sent to work with a farmer.

In about 1869, Weiland moved to Jordan, Minnesota from his native Wisconsin where he was employed on a farm and later opened a carriage and wagon shop. On January 25, 1874, he married Louisa Mayer, and they had seven children. Louisa died at age 55 in 1907.

The Shakopee Argus-Tribune described Theo as “a prominent, respected and highly esteemed resident and citizen.” Theo was self-made and worked his way up from comparative poverty to affluence and prominence.

In 1876, he was elected marshal of the village of Jordan, holding this office until 1879 when he was elected sheriff of Scott County. He held the office of sheriff for ten years. Theodore Weiland was involved with horse thieves which almost caused his death.

“The horse thieves who operated in this community were pretty hard characters, usually from the Twin Cities,” Theo recalled.

“In those days, it was easy for them to cover their trail, and if they got out of the neighborhood they usually went clear.”

“It was my duty to see that they didn’t get away,” said Theo, according to Elizabeth Johanneck in the book Hidden History of the Minnesota River Valley.

“One day I received a tip that Hank O’Keefe, a notorious character living near Shakopee, had bought a $200 horse stolen in St. Paul for $10. My information led me to believe O’Keefe was planning to work his way Eastward on the other side of the Minnesota River. I started out after him at night, taking with me a man who knew the horse.”

O’Keefe saw Theo approaching and jumped and ran.

“Drawing my revolver, I followed. It was too dark to shoot effectively and I didn’t want to kill my man anyway. But he emptied his gun at me and several of his bullets missed me only by a fraction of an inch.”

“We found him later in a physician’s office being treated for gunshot wounds, and he was sent to the penitentiary.”

When Sheriff Weiland arrived home from the hunt, Louisa saw Theo’s hat with a bullet hole right in the middle!

Soon after his last term as sheriff, he was elected mayor of Shakopee and held the office for four years. In 1890, Sheriff Weiland bought the “Reis Block” from George Reis, a venerable commercial building that long stood at the center of Shakopee’s downtown district that also housed an opera house. He ran a flour and feed store during his possession of this property as well.

For decades he was president of the strong First National Bank of Shakopee, of a loan association and one or more banks affiliated with the parent institution. Theo Weiland was a keen sportsman, a lover of the outdoors, one of the best marksmen in the section, and he retained his skill and firearms right into his old age. He was a pleasing man to meet, quietly companionable, slightly reserved. He was widely known and highly respected.

Theodore Weiland of Shakopee died at 82 in his home of pneumonia on March 18, 1931, according to the Jordan Independent. He had been ill for about a month.

Of a calm, equable disposition, he conserved his health and strength and lived a long and active life. He was buried at the Shakopee Catholic Cemetery, next to his wife, Louisa.

Bibliography

Johanneck, Elizabeth. Hidden History of the Minnesota River Valley. The History Press, 2010.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Theodore Joseph Ted Lefty Odenwald was born on Saturday, January 4, 1902, in Hudson, Wisconsin.

For a few weeks in 1921 and 1922, Ted Odenwald stood at the top of the baseball world, according to David M. Newman in the Republican Eagle on March 27, 2011.

Odenwald pitched in the major leagues with the Cleveland Indians in 1921 and 1922. He even got to be part of the customary trip to the White House with the Indians, who were World Series champions in the 1920 season.

Odenwald’s story starts in Hudson. It was during his junior season in high school in 1917 that Odenwald began pitching. He quickly became a sensation. Nicknamed “Dud” or “Duddy” in Hudson, he had games where he struck out 19 and 22 batters. After he reached the pros, he forever became known as “Lefty.”

According to David Newman, “The baby-faced 18-year-old had long before agreed to a contract to pitch for the Cleveland Indians in the major leagues. He had pitched so well in high school ball and city league ball that the Indians signed him to a contract as a 17-year-old.”

The Indians wanted to get a good look at their investment. So, on June 7, they sent Odenwald to the mound in an exhibition game against the Pittsburgh Pirates of the National League. The rookie, who at 5-feet, 7.5-inches was the shortest player on every roster he played on, looked like a boy against men, said Newman. But his left arm spoke volumes. He threw a complete game victory, beating Pittsburgh on eight hits, 5-3.

Reassured that they made a solid investment, the Cleveland management assigned Odenwald’s contract to Des Moines in the Western League, according to Newman. He went 4-5 in 13 games at Des Moines, getting the start in 11 of those games.

In 1921, the Indians gave Odenwald the chance to make the roster in spring training. He ran with the chance. He pitched solidly in spring training, earning a place in the Cleveland bullpen.

That was quite an accomplishment. He was joining the defending World Champion Cleveland Indians. Though he only pitched in ten games with the tribe in 1921, his 1.56 earned run average was the best on a potent pitching staff.

“Odenwald made his major league debut on April 13, 1921, pitching one inning of relief in the 1921 season opener in St. Louis. He was thrown back into the fray the next day, and he was solid gold. Pitching four innings of relief, he allowed three hits and three walks, while striking out one. This gave the Indians time to come back, beating the Browns 12-9. This would be Odenwald’s only pitching win in the major leagues. Odenwald didn’t pitch again for 10 days. He began facing the difficulties of a rookie on a veteran pitching staff. The Indians’ pitching staff ranked among the best in baseball.”

On April 26 Odenwald got to be part of the ceremony where the Indians raised their 1920 World Championship pennant, the first Cleveland title in 45 years. Odenwald also was one of six Cleveland pitchers to work that day, in a 9-8 win over Detroit.

Odenwald was short and roundish and his weight was a constant battle. When he arrived for the 1922 season, reports had him overweight and out of shape. The Indians brought him north, and they gave him one game to show his worth. He was bombed in that outing. He gave up six hits and two walks in one and one-third innings. It was his only chance, leaving him with a 40.50 earned run average for the season. That one game caused his career ERA to balloon from 1.56 to 4.34. In his 11 games in the majors, Odenwald didn’t allow any homers, according to Newman.

He was sent back to Des Moines for the 1922 season, where his arm was still recovering from an injury the previous season, said Newman. His struggles in 1922 led to his release and he was signed by the Minneapolis Millers. The Millers optioned Odenwald to Omaha and he split the 1923 season between Omaha and Denver. In 1924 Odenwald pitched in Albany, New York, in the Eastern League. He became a fixture in Albany. He would pitch there for four seasons, usually as the ace of the pitching staff on a bottom-tier team.

Theodore Joseph “Lefty” Odenwald married Lucille M. Hauer on November 11, 1925, at St Mark’s Catholic Church in Shakopee. Lucille was born on April 3, 1913, the second of nine children born to Peter and Clara Kopp Hauer. Theodore and Lucille had two children: Theodore Charles and Michael Francis.

The 1927 season was Odenwald’s final season in the pros.

Odenwald retired to Shakopee. He remained active in baseball. He was signed to play with a town team in Shakopee and he settled there. He pitched well into the mid-1930s for Shakopee. There he worked as a shipping clerk for the Reis Bottling Company, working at the Rock Spring Bottling Company. He was also active in civic affairs in Shakopee, serving for many years on the Shakopee City Council.

Theodore died at age 63 on September 23, 1965, and was buried at the Catholic Cemetery in Shakopee.

Lucille Hauer Odenwald died on April 19, 2002, at age 89. She was buried at the Catholic Cemetery in Shakopee, next to his husband, Theodore Joseph “Lefty” Odenwald.

Bibliography

Newman, David M. “Odenwald made it to the top of the baseball world.” Republican Eagle, 27 March 2011. www.republicaneagle.com/sports/odenwald-made-it-to-the-top-of-the-baseball-world/article_fb60b5dc-f499-5a3b-81ef-47ea55f2ef36.html.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Thaóyate Dúta (tah-o-yah-tay-dew-tah) was a Dakota leader and orator. He was born in Kapożia (ka-po-zi-az), in what is now South St. Paul. Kapożia translates to swift-footed or unencumbered, reflecting how easy it was to move from the east to the west side of the Mississippi River, close enough to the St. Croix and Minnesota rivers to serve as a beehive of trading. He was the eldest son of Waŋbdí Tháŋka (Big Eagle) and Minnei-okha-da-wiŋ, or Musical Sound of Water Running Under the Ice.

Thaóyate Dúta, also known as Little Crow, often visited the Faribault Trading Post in Prairie des Français (later called Shakopee). Sarah-Iréne was the seventh of nine children of Oliver Faribault and Wakan Yaŋke Wiŋ, or the Woman Who Sits at the High Place, and was born in 1847. She was one of the four girls who grew up at the Faribault Cabin and Trading Post on the Prairie des Français (French Prairie) on the Rivière Saint-Pierre (St. Peter’s River), and she remembered Thaóyate Dúta.

Sarah-Iréne recalled that Little Crow would stop on his way from St. Paul and usually camped with his attendants on the vacant prairie opposite the Faribault Trading Post (and across the road from Dangerfield’s in Shakopee today).

Thaóyate Dúta (ca. 1810 – July 3, 1863)’s given name translates to His Scarlet Nation, but he was known as Little Crow because of his grandfather’s name, Čhetáŋ Wakhúwa Máni, (literally, Hawk That Chases/Hunts Walking) was mistranslated by the whites to Little Crow.

According to Sarah-Iréne, “My father was fond of him (Thaóyate Dúta) too, and said he was always honest. Little Crow was often at our house and was much loved by us children. He used to bring us candy and maple sugar.”

“We used often to go to the sacred stone of the Indians, and I have often seen the Sioux warriors (Dakota) around it. It was on the prairie below town. There was room for one to lie down by it, and the rest would dance or sit in council around it. They always went to it before going into battle,” said Sarah-Iréne in the book Old Rail Fence Corners: The A.B.C.’s of Minnesota History, edited by Lucy Leavenworth Wilder Morris. “They left gifts which the white people stole. I can remember taking some little thing from it myself. I passed a party of Indians with it in my hand.”

Sarah-Iréne remembered that one Dakota woman saw what she had and became very angry. “She made me take it back. She seemed to feel as we would if our church had been violated.”

Sarah-Iréne remembered, “The Indians did not understand the white man’s ways. When the white man had a big storehouse full of goods belonging to the Indians and the Indian was cold and hungry, he could not see why he could not have what was there, belonging to him, if it would keep him warm and feed him.”

Thaóyate Dúta is notable for his role in the negotiation of the Treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mdota of 1851, in which he agreed to move his band of Dakota to a reservation near the Minnesota River in exchange for goods. However, the government reneged on its promises to provide food and annuities to the tribe. He was also a leader in the Treaty of 1858.

Artist Frank Blackwell Mayer described his as “a man of some forty-five years of age and of a very determined and ambitious nature, but withal exceedingly gentle and dignified in his deportment. His face is full of intelligence when he is in conversation and his whole bearing is that of a gentleman.”

Thaóyate Dúta participated in the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. His diplomatic and oratorical skills caused him to be head speaker for the Dakota people. As Thaóyate Dúta told the U.S president, “Tell our Great Father that it is hard for him to expect our hearts to be good when he permits men with bad hearts to do us wrong so often.”

By 1862, the Dakota people were dying. “A plague of cutworms in the fall of 1861 had ravaged reservation crops that could have been stored. Late treaty payments made buying food impossible. Dakota women and children moaned with hunger, their muscles wasting, arms thin as sticks, abdomens distending with the classic symptom of extreme malnutrition. They began to die of starvation,” said Curt Brown in a series of articles in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in April 2015.

“Dakota families ate whatever they could scavenge: unripe potatoes, roots, berries. When government officials agreed to pass out some soda crackers, one soldier described the scene in his diary as men scrambling ‘like wild cats’ over each other.”

“‘These poor creatures subsisted on a tall grass which they find in the marshes, chewing the roots and eating the wild turnip,’ wrote Sarah Wakefield. ‘Many died from starvation or disease caused by eating improper food. It made my heart ache.’” Curt Brown noted, “While Dakota parents watched their children starve to death, pork and grain filled the Lower Sioux Agency’s new stone warehouse…”

Thaóyate Dúta participated in most of the battles during the U.S.-Dakota War. After a defeat at the Battle of Wood Lake, Thaóyate Dúta fled west.

Thaóyate Dúta was on foot, slipping back into Minnesota in 1863, along with fewer than twenty, including his son, Wowinape, 16. Thaóyate Dúta and Wowinape were just northeast of Hutchinson as evening fell on July 3, 1863. They stumbled upon a raspberry patch and laid down their guns. The father and son stood munching red berries in the twilight.

Nathan Lamson, a 62-year-old farmer, and his son, Chaucey, knew there was a state bounty on Dakota caught wandering in the Big Woods if a private citizen brought in a scalp, according to Curt Brown. Lamson’s first shot hit Thaóyate Dúta just above the hip. Thaóyate Dúta headed toward the gun smoke near the poplar tree, his gun cocked against his shoulder. Chauncey jumped from behind some cover and they both fired. Thaóyate Dúta’s shot whizzed by Chauncey’s head. Chauncey’s bullet struck Thaóyate Dúta’s gun stock and ricocheted into his chest.

Knocked to the ground, Thaóyate Dúta died gazing up at the sky above the land he loved. Chauncey would get $75 for the scalp, and his father would net $500 — double the annual salary of the era – from the 1864 Minnesota Legislature for “great service to the state in shooting Little Crow.” Not everyone approved. “Such a spectacle reflects sadly upon the humanity of Christian people,” Dr. Asa Daniels wrote in 1908, noting that other states fought Indians but didn’t display “the scalp of a fallen foe.”

The Minnesota Historical Society received his scalp in 1868, and his skull in 1896. Other bones were collected at other times.

In 1971, Thaóyate Dúta’s remains were returned to his grandson, Jesse Wakeman (son of Wowinape), for burial. Unlike most tombstones, Little Crow’s bears three dates. The first is his birth year, estimated as 1818. Then comes July 3, 1863, the day of his death in the raspberry bushes near Hutchinson. Finally, there is September 27, 1971, the day his remains were buried.

For more information about Thaóyate Dúta, Ṡakpe II, Tínṫa Otuŋwe, and the Dakota, Hoċokata Ti [ho-cho-kah-tah-tee], the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community’s (SMSC) cultural center and gathering space, is worth visiting. The public exhibit, “Mdewakanton: Dwellers of the Spirit Lake,” enhances the knowledge and understanding of the Mdewakanton Dakota people and their history. Hoċokata Ti is at 2300 Tiwahe Circle, Shakopee, MN 55379. (952) 233-9151.

Bibliography

Brown, Curt. Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 2015.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2021

Tamaha was born around 1776 at Prairie à l’Aile (present-day Winona, Minnesota) and was originally part of leader Wapahaṡa’s band of Mdewakaŋtoŋwaŋ Dakota. He was also known as Standing Moose or L’Orignal Levé.

Tamaha lost an eye in an accident as a 17-year-old, so he was called Tamaha, or One eye, in the Dakota language. The French called him “Le Borgne”, or “One Eye.” English picked up the name as “the One-eyed Sioux.”

There are many colorful stories about his youthful exploits. In Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains (1918), Ohíye S’a (Dr. Charles Eastman) portrays Tamaha as a young man with “heroic proportions, herculean in strength, a superb runner; in fact, he had all the physical qualities of an athlete or a typical Indian. In his scanty dress, he was beautiful as an antique statue in living bronze.”

Ohíye S’a said that the injury to his eye was devastating to Tamaha, who then “sought glory and defied danger with even more than the ordinary Indian recklessness.” On one occasion, young Tamaha and his best friend disguised themselves as Ojibwe warriors to flirt with Ojibwe girls. On another, he was hunting for buffalo when he was thrown off his pony and attacked by a bull. He quickly straddled the buffalo on its neck and held it by the horns, earning him the name Held-the-Bull-by-the Horns.

According to Ohíye S’a, it was during his escapade running from the Ojibwe that Tamaha famously said to his friend, “I’ll meet you at the mouth of the St. Croix River, or in the spirit land!”

In 1806 and 1807, Tamaha became a friend of U.S. Army Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike. He was one of two Mdewakanton Dakota scouts for the United States in the War of 1812. He retained his loyalty even after his capture by the British, during which he refused to divulge information about the Americans on pain of death. The threat turned out to be a bluff.

Tamaha was presented with a medal and certificate by Governor William Clark of Missouri Territory for his loyalty to the U.S. He often wore the medal.

Tamaha was known as a powerful orator and a diplomat of unusual ability. Wearing his trademark stovepipe hat, he managed to maintain amicable relations between whites and Indians. At one time he was confined to a fort called McKay, where now stands the town of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. He had just returned from St. Louis and was suspected of exciting his people to rebel against British subjects. His life was even threatened, but to this Tamaha merely replied that he was ready to die.

On May 27, 1858, Tamaha, who was 86 years old, was living at Tínṫa Otuŋwe, which was located on the south side of the Minnesota River. Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) from the Watpa waḳaŋ (Dakota) or Misi-zaaga’iganiziibi (Ojibwe) area headed south. On May 26, 1858, between 150 and 200 Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) warriors approached an encampment of Dakota on the Minnesota River near Shakopee.

The next day, shots were fired and a Dakota man was killed. “I saw the Indians and whites pass our house, the former rushing into battle ten minutes after the first shot was fired,” said E. Judson Pond.

The Dakota had old men, boys, and even some men who were disabled in the battle, a total of 65 men. And one of them was Tamaha. According to the History of Carver County, “There were but few good guns among them, all being common fowling pieces, some of them old and unreliable, while a dozen or more men had no guns at all. But the white men of Shakopee supplied this deficiency; they gave the Indians every gun in town.”

During the Battle, Tamaha killed one Ojibwe.

A St. Paul newspaper described Tamaha as “a very old warrior, bent nearly double, but he had the good luck and grim satisfaction of putting the finishing touches to a gentleman of the enemy, of which the fellow feels very proud.”

The Dakota leader and historian Ohíye S’a said during the first alarm, Tamaha seized his gun and hobbled across the Minnesota River and provided a good fighter.

Ohíye S’a said that all the remaining old members of Ṡakpe II’s tribe enjoyed telling of the exploits of Tamaha in Shakopee.

Wearing his trademark stovepipe hat, Tamaha was a vocal advocate of amicable relations between whites (particularly Americans) and Indians, Before the Dakota War of 1862, Tamaha stood before Little Crow and advised him not to go to war against the whites.

Tamaha died in 1864 at Fort Pierre South Dakota.

Bibliography

Eastman, Charles A. (Ohíye S’a). Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains, 1918.

History of Carver County.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

Takejiro Higa was born in Hawai’i, a U.S. territory, on April 22, 1923, in Waipahu on the island of O’ahu. His parents were Takeo and Ushi Higa. He was the youngest of three children.

At age two Takejiro was taken to Okinawa, Japan, to visit his grandparents. Because of his young age, he stayed behind in Okinawa with his sick mother while his older siblings returned to the U.S. with their father, according to The Hawai’i Nisei Story: Americans of Japanese Ancestry During WWII.

Within two years, both his parents and grandparents had died. Takejiro stayed with his uncle in Okinawa until he was 16. He reunited with his older brother and sisters in Hawai’i to avoid military conscription in Japan. Takejiro could speak Japanese and Okinawan, but he could not speak English well.

In early November 1941 the United States established an intensive Japanese language school on the Presidio military base in San Francisco. It came to be known as the Military Intelligence Service Language School (MISLS). According to an article called “Camp Savage, WW II Asset for Victory in the Pacific,” by Charles Pederson, “A scant $2,000 budget for the school was used to gather 60 students (58 Nisei Americans and two European Americans), along with 18 instructors in an unused hangar. English was the first language for many, but they volunteered anyway. Clearly, these patriots loved their country.”

A month later, on December 7, 1941, Takejiro ran to the roof and saw the bombings by Japanese military planes and the entry of the U.S. into World War II.

A new school was needed in the Midwest. While several states refused to host the camp, Minnesota said yes. In the area between Shakopee and Savage was 132 acres that had been part of the NYA camp between Shakopee and Savage. (Later, much of the land later became The Landing in Shakopee). Just east of this area, in the west part of Savage, Camp Savage was established in June 1942.

Takejiro was recruited for a secret unit that would use the Japanese language to break codes and collect military intelligence in the Pacific. President Harry Truman later called them “our human secret weapons.”

The studies were nothing less than rigorous. Charles Moriyama spent the mornings taking classes, the days studying, the nights taking more classes, and the late nights studying some more. “The study was really intensive,” he said. “We not only had to learn the language itself, we had to learn the military part of the Japanese language, which is completely different.

“The dictionaries were so thick,” he remembered, laughing.

As tough as their studies were, they still had plenty of time for fun. Moriyama bought ice skates since the camp had built their own skating rink.

The troops also made plenty of trips to Minneapolis and St. Paul, as well as other places around the state, including the movies in downtown Shakopee. And while anti-Japanese sentiment may have been prevalent around the country at that time, Moriyama said he encountered none of that in Minnesota.

Betty Dols remembered the Nisei soldiers, who would watch the movies in downtown Shakopee. They were always very nice.

Takejiro Higa, learning from his brother’s military experiences in Mississippi, appreciated the fresh food, including milk and eggs. His brother got powdered eggs. In Minnesota, “summer months were nice and green,” added Higa. “You can roll around in the grass. Whereas Mississippi, hell, it’s sandy, it’s a dusty place.”

Takejiro Higa remembered what happened next in an article called “Unforgettable Encounters: Battle of Okinawa.” “In late November 1944, I was ordered to report to the 24th Army Corps HO, G-2 Photo Interpreters Section. The minute I entered the tent my heart nearly stopped beating as I saw hung before me a large blown-up map of the southern half of Okinawa. Chills ran up my spine as I realized the next target would be that part of Okinawa where I had lived for 14 years and left merely six years before.”

A bit later, Takejiro saw two shabbily uniformed young men who were brought in to be interrogated. They were very hungry and fatigued. “I offered them a D-ration candy bar, which they refused because they feared it was poisoned, I yelled ‘bakayaro’ (you idiot!) and nibbled a portion to show it was safe. They gobbled up two candy bars each and gulped down a lot of water before I started my interrogation” said Takejiro.

“At that moment I yelled at them, “Bakayaro, dokyusei 0 mite wakarana no ka?” (You idiots! Don’t you recognize your own old classmate?”) They looked up at me in total disbelief and then started crying. They thought they would be shot when the questioning was over, but they realized that with a classmate as the interrogator, their lives would now be spared. They cried in happiness and relief. That hit me very hard and I, too, could not help but shed some tears,” said Takejiro.

Because the unit’s mission was classified until the 1970s, Takejiro could not publicly share his experiences for decades.

The Military Intelligence Service’s accomplishments were not a secret to leaders.

According to Major General Charles A. Willoughby, “Six thousand Nisei in the War in the Pacific saved over a million American lives and shorted the war by two years,” noted an article at the Smithsonian.

Takejiro Higa died at age 94 on October 7, 2017, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on November 26, 2017. He was buried at the Hawai’i State Veteran Cemetery in Kāneʻohe, Hawai’i.

Bibliography

Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 26 Nov. 2017.

Pederson, Charles. “Camp Savage, WW II Asset for Victory in the Pacific.” Scott County Historical Society, 24 May 2021. www.scottcountyhistory.org/blog/camp-savage-ww-ii-asset-for-victory-in-the-pacific.

“Takejiro Higa.” The Hawai’i Nisei Story: Americans of Japanese Ancestry During WWII. web.archive.org/web/20181025031851/http://nisei.hawaii.edu/page/takejiro.

“Takejiro Higa.” Smithsonian. cgm.smithsonianapa.org/stories/takejiro-higa.html.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2023

Susan Xian Jeung was born around 1957 in Canton, Shunde, Guangdong, China. Her parents were Wiley Xian and Bao Xian. Her brother, Vincent, was also born there.

Guangzhou, formerly Romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province in southern China, according to Wikipedia. Located on the Pearl River about 75 miles north-northwest of Hong Kong and ninety miles north of Macau, Guangzhou has a history of over 2,200 years and was a major terminus of the maritime Silk Road. It continues to serve as a major port and transportation hub as well as being one of China’s three largest cities. For a long time, the only Chinese port accessible to most foreign traders, Guangzhou was captured by the British during the First Opium War. No longer enjoying a monopoly after the war, it lost trade to other ports such as Hong Kong and Shanghai but continued to serve as a major transshipment port.

Most of Guangzhou’s population is Han Chinese. Almost all Cantonese people speak Cantonese as their first language.

China’s Laogai prison system was created soon after Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949 and it still exists today in its essential form.

In concept, it is rooted in communist revolutionary ideology blended with traditional Chinese views on punishment, namely that anti-social behavior (whether criminal or political in nature) can be “reformed” and eliminated through forced labor and re-education.

Originally patterned after the Soviet Gulag, and put it place with Soviet assistance, the Laogai prison system has fostered similar inhumane treatment and been used as a vital tool in suppressing dissent and maintaining Communist Party Power, according to LaogaiResearch.org.

The system was introduced by the ruling Communist Party in China in the 1950s and is used to lock up petty criminals. But it is also a convenient way to get rid of people considered to be troublemakers, such as dissidents, according to BBC. The system gives the police immense power. Many argue they use this in an arbitrary manner.

Research reported that Chinese have 350 camps and about 150,000 prisoners.

When Susan was two years old, the Chinese government sentenced her mother, Bao Xian, a banker, to a labor camp. According to the article “Force relocation a quandary for family” in the March 13, 1997 Shakopee Valley News, when Susan was 12, her mother was imprisoned a second time, and this time Susan’s father, Wiley Xian, a civil engineer, and her grandfather, a doctor, had also been interred in labor camps. They were intellectuals, and “the Chinese government is very afraid of intellectuals. The government wants to reform intellectuals because they think the intellectuals want democracy,” said Susan.

Susan and her family did want democracy, and they fled Communist China, settling first in Hong Kong, and then moving to the United States in the early 1980s. Eventually, they ended up in Minnesota. Susan and her family were new to the language and culture here, but they decided that opening a Chinese restaurant was a good fit for survival. Susan, her husband, Warren, her brother, Vincent and his wife, Bi Xian, and her parents began looking for a place to open a restaurant, according to the Shakopee Valley News. They wanted a place for sanctuary, a place they owned, without the possibility of increase rent prices or problems with landlords.

“We realized Shakopee was a growing city and we were excited to share in that growth,” said Susan.

They opened the Imperial Wok Restaurantin downtown Shakopee.

By 1978, the streets in downtown Shakopee were a mess. The city of Shakopee decided to tear down the north side of First Avenue. It was part of a plan that also included a highway 169 bypass south of the city. Judy Case noted, “This venture to renovate downtown must be done carefully and correctly.”

The redevelopment meant that buildings on Blocks 3 and 4 would be torn down, and a joint county-city housing and retail complex would be built.

For Susan Xian Jeung and her family, it meant the Imperial Wok Restaurant would be torn down. And so, the restaurant closed on March 4, 1997. Susan and her family learned firsthand about eminent domain – the right of a government entity to take private property for public use, with compensation to the owner.

Former Shakopee City Administrator Mark McNeill noted that, “Whenever a city or government acquires a property, we must be able to show a public purpose for that.” And so, the Imperial Wok Restaurant location was on a redevelopment, and the downtown development is a benefit to the entire community.

The three families of the Jeungs and Xians were the last of the owners to vacate the non-empty building, which was soon torn down. “We try to make a living, but now, what’s the road for us? It’s very sad and painful. I can’t sleep. I have nightmare after nightmare, tear after tear,” said Susan in the Shakopee Valley News article.

As Susan noted, “Our family wants to work to support our children, get them through college so that they get out of this kind of work, which is 14 hours a day with no holidays, no vacations. Now, we have no options. We’ve basically been thrown out on the streets.”

And while the city has been very nice, Susan and her family would have to move to a new place, probably not in Shakopee. “We don’t know when and where we’re going to be able to open a new restaurant, but we will open one, that’s for sure.”

Bibliography

Brands, Sandra. “Force relocation a quandary for family.” Shakopee Valley News, 13 March 1997.

“China’s Guangzhou to empty labour camps ‘by year end’.” BBC, 9 Sept. 2013. www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-24019666.

“Guangzhou.” Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangzhou.

LaogaiResearch.org. laogairesearch.org/laogai-system/.