Books

A celebration, illumination, and study of the spectacular beaded bags made by the Ojibwe of Minnesota.

Description
Bandolier bags, or gashkibidaaganag—the large, heavily beaded shoulder bags made and worn by several North American Indian tribes around the Great Lakes—are prized cultural icons here and around the world. From the 1870s to the present day, Ojibwe bead artists of Minnesota have been especially well known for their lively, creative designs. Neighboring Dakota people would trade a pony for a beautiful beaded bag.

Over the years, non-Indian collectors and ethnographers, struck by the bags’ cultural significance and visual appeal, bought them up. Today, there are hundreds of bags in museums around the world, but not so many in the hands of community members. In A Bag Worth a Pony, Marcia G. Anderson shares the results of thirty years of study, in which she learned from the talented bead artists who keep the form alive, from historical records, and from the bags themselves.

Anderson examines the history, forms, structure, and motifs of the bags, giving readers the tools to understand a bag’s makeup and meaning. She also offers a tour of Minnesota’s seven Ojibwe reservations, showing the beautiful beaded bags associated with each along with the personal insights of seven master beadworkers.

Author information
Marcia Anderson was curator of the Minnesota Historical Society's museum collections for 30 years.

Softcover book written by Amy McVee, Jon & Candy Severson, Naomi Purves-Adams and Alice Robinson.

"A dozen miles or more down the Mississippi from St. Paul is Grey Cloud Island, a singular formation rising out of the river - " wrote a Pioneer Press journalist in 1894. Long inhabited by Native Americans, treaties forced their removal. Starting in the 1860s, a small community of predominantly mixed-heritage people bought property on the Island where they farmed and raised families. The book chronicles their lives over a hundred-year period from the fur trade era to the 1940s, and addresses the complexities of family relationships, work, and ongoing migration. "The first burials, from 1873, were from early French-Canadian families..." reads a plaque at the Grey Cloud Island Cemetery. Stone markers reveal names with little additional information - Civil War veterans, mothers and fathers, babies - and there are over 100 unmarked graves. These are the stories of the families - Bourcier, Brunell, LaBathe, Leith, Mavis, McCoy, and Turpin - told by their descendants.

In 1916, Company K of the Stillwater National Guard was dispatched to the Mexican Border to defend against attacks from the famous Mexican rebel, Poncho Villa.

Through letters and photographs from the WCHS collection, "Company K in the Border War" details the in-glamorous reality these Stillwater men faced while stationed in Texas.

In 1858, Minnesota became a state; in that same year Grant became one of the very first oragnized townships in the state.

This soft-cover book was written by Eileen Allen Sletten, a fourth-generation resident of Grant. Partnered with the Grant Heritage Committee and the City Council of Grant, this book covers the whos, whats, whens and whys of this Washington County community.