Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020
Albert LeClaire was born May 12, 1885, in Mendota, the first of seven children of Frederick LeClaire and Celina Robinette.
Albert’s grandparents were Jean Baptiste Octave Wakon LeClerc and Marguerite Dupuis, and Vanosse Robinette and Mathilde LaBatte.
Albert married Lillie Felix on July 12, 1904, in Hastings. Lillie was born Sept. 6, 1881. Her parents were Peter Felix, Jr., and Margaret Bellecourt. Her grandparents were Peter Felix and Mazasnawin Iron Woman Rosalie Frenier.
Albert, Lillie, and their three children moved just outside Shakopee to a 17-acre farm in 1919.
Albert’s farm was part of Shakopee until 1972, when the city of Prior Lake annexed the reservation.
The Prior Lake Indian Settlement became the Shakopee Mdewakanton Dakota Community and is the site of the Little Six bingo parlor, according to Mary Losure in Our Way or the Highway: Inside the Minnehaha Free State, which was published in 2002 by the University of Minnesota Press, p. 85-87.
At a school in Shakopee, Albert and Lillie’s older children were called “half-breed” and “dirty Indians.”
The two youngest would come home with cuts and bruises. Lillie complained to the teacher but was told that her children just needed to toughen up.
Lillie decided to move back to Mendota with the older children, while Albert and Russell stayed and farmed.
Albert applied to get more land for farming. He had to note the “degree of Indian blood.” He noted that his father was one-quarter Mdewakanton Dakota, while his mother was one-half Mdewakanton Dakota.
Albert ended up with forty acres of land for farming.
He was not very successful with farming.
Four years later, Albert was thrown from a car that overturned into the ditch near his farm outside Shakopee in December 1941. The hospital and Dr. J. Anthony Malerich refused to treat him because he was an Indian.
“What kind of arrogance would lead someone in an emergency room to turn somebody away?”
Bob Brown, Albert’s grandson, noted. “His hip was protruding out of his side; he had a massive skull fracture – it pissed me off!”
Dr. Malerich said that he needed to go to the Pipestone Indian Hospital by ambulance, which was several hours away.
When Albert, Jr., arrived a week later in Pipestone, his father was still covered with dirt and blood.
Because of the delay in treatment, Albert passed away in Pipestone of a fractured skull.
The family shipped his body home in a train and buried it in St. Peter’s cemetery in Mendota.
They abandoned the land at Shakopee, and it lay fallow for years.
Albert LeClaire died Jan. 28, 1942, hastened by the discrimination of Dr. Malerich and the first hospital in Shakopee.
This information from the Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Tribal Community.