A Note from the Author
The author standing on the rocks next to Father Baraga's Cross in September of 2022, almost 2 years after her first walk up to the cross.
Heidi Swalve
Author & Researcher
When I first walked up to Father Baraga's Cross with my mother in September of 2020 I read the cross and knew instantly that I wanted to know more about Father Baraga: he was a Catholic Missionary who lived with the Ojibwe Natives. My mother and myself just stepped off the Superior Hiking Trail after trekking 260 miles over a two year period performing the Ojibwe water ceremony with the main rivers that fed into Lake Superior. We were taught this ceremony by an Ojibwe elder who lived on the northern side of Lake Superior.
While hiking and performing this ceremony the first year I was also simultaneously working at a Catholic school. During the weekends my mother and I would travel north on this journey and then go back to work again the next week. Fortunately there was a priest there that helped me to see the positive side of Catholicism. Previous to working here I had only heard of what transpired at the boarding schools and so I had great challenge with the Catholic faith.
While at the cross I also ran into a priest who was dressed in plain clothes. Both my mom and I could sense that there was something different about him and suspected he was a priest due to this. Finally, conjuring up enough nerve, prior to leaving the location I found out that he was indeed a priest and was just visiting the location. I left with his contact information wondering what that experience was about.
My mother and I then went to a motel to rest up for several day. While there we searched out images of Father Baraga in hopes of being able to see who this man was. When learning more about him however, I saw that he was presented only as a man who help to convert the natives to Catholicism. My first thoughts about him was that he just looked a little grumpy. I was unimpressed and so I just put away the information about him and chalked him up to him just being a missionary to the Ojibwe and left it at that. (Insert sign of the cross here). Then a moment occurred that completely changed the trajectory of my belief, threw me into spending my mornings and evenings learning about him, and had me dedicate my life to doing the work that he had done in the world.
About a day after doing the research on Father Baraga and putting it away my mother and I were sitting across from each other and discussing the experience of being at the cross. We were discussing the priest that we met there. I was also talking about the priest that I had known at the Catholic school that I had worked at. I was in the middle of a conversation that went like this...
Myself: I'm curious about this then. How did we know that he was a priest? He had this energy about him that felt like that but if someone asked how we know, how would we explain that?
Mom: I don't know. They just have a feeling of peace.
Myself: Right...but how would you explain that peace? How does one share that with another?
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Inscription at Father Baraga's Cross which shares his journey with the Ojibwe and his connection to Madeline Island.
I then started to talk about chocolate and vanilla. "I suppose I would try to compare it to chocolate and vanilla. Vanilla is just a very relaxing kind of flavor...". I was mid sentence and then out of nowhere I felt a stark presence in the room to the left of me. That presence completely took me by surprise so much so that I literally, which I have never done before, stopped mid-sentence and announce, "Whoa...who just came into the room?"
It was in that moment and after sharing those words that I turned to my mom who wasn't even looking at me anymore. She was now looking to the left of me. She then said these words, "It's Father Baraga". I then said, "What is Father Baraga doing in the room with us?!" The next sentence that she said would later confirm that it was indeed him in the room. "He's a lot shorter than I expected him to be." My mother and I are both tall people and so thus we expect everyone in the world around us to be tall as well. I am 6'0 and she is 5'10. Later on, after doing this research I found out that Father Baraga was only 5'4" tall. When I read this I knew that she in fact had seen him. I later confirmed that with her when I went back to the motel room and made a lamp in the location of where he would have stood and verified that indeed that 5'4 rested exactly where he stood using a lamp as the locator and stacking books underneath it until the lamp was 5'4" high.
Life After Baraga
After this experience I went back home to do research on this missionary and to find out who he was. My mother and I stopped at half priced books to pick up books for around this time period and to help me learn more about the histories of Catholicism and what happened in the United States around that time in relation to the Native histories and Europeans. I also wished to be able to learn about that year in particular, 1846, in which Father Baraga attempted this perilous journey for the Native populations, but first I needed to remember the year! Instead of going to my photos which would have taken time to go through I decided to do a quick search on the internet to see. I looked up "Father Baraga's Cross" and then scrolled down. It was at this point that my heart stopped. There, in the photos was a picture of a man that was familiar to me. It was the priest that I knew from the school that I worked at. It turns out that he had, without me knowing it, gone on a pilgrimage for Father Baraga the year that I started working at the school just prior to my starting. I found out later on that this priest who I had met at the cross that day also went to school with the chaplain who first introduced me to Catholicism.
After this pilgrimage I was brought down to work in Pipestone, MN. In the morning I would do research on Father Baraga and the Native histories and in the afternoon I was then able to teach about the things that I would learn. While down there I founds out that the person I was working with, Bud Johnston, was from the Bad River Reservation. While doing this research I learned that many of the people that I was learning about were relatives of Bud's. So while we had lunch we also discussed his relatives. These people included Chief Buffalo, William Warren, and Ikwesewe.
The Bad River Reservation was one of the two reservations that were created in the year 1854 just south of Madeline Island where Father Baraga worked from the years 1835-1842 and visited often afterwards. One was named the Red Cliff Reservation which is just west of Madeline Island which was created for the Protestant natives and the other was the Bad River reservation which was created for the Catholic Natives. Chief Buffalo resided on the Bad River Reservation who worked with Father Baraga when he worked on the Island. John Johnston was one of the prominent fur trader who worked between Montreal and Sault Ste. Marie which was the trade line for the Native goods to Europe. William Warren was both of European and Ojibwe descent and was gifted the ability to write the stories of his family in his book "The History of the Ojibway People". Father Baraga would have met William Warren when he was ten years old as he lived on Madeline Island at that time.
My Personal Journey to this moment
I know this is my calling to learn Father Baraga and what happened with the Native populations during that timeframe. For those who wish to know me...My day job is recording numbers as a bookkeeper to track and share historic data in the form of numbers. I have a love for the deep dive into this research to find out what things are not lining up and to try and to resolve it. This talent just as much as this site has been used to track and keep record of the histories that transpired during Baraga's time and to attempt to do so in an orderly way. My favorite page is Father Baraga's timeline as it not only gives a person at at a glance view of what transpired during his life, it also gives the understanding as to what was transpiring for the Ojibwe at that time as well.
These gifts though also translate into wanting to ensure that my information is accurate and factual. I am still trying to determine a way to include references in this site as Wix does not have a way to create footnotes in their program, but I have included a list of resources on the resources page to share where my information is being derived from in the meantime. I can also certify though that the information presented above in this timeline is factual and correct in which I have pictures and their timelines to show that they are all true.
My work though is also heart driven. This is where this journey in learning of Father Baraga is also a deeply personal journey. Only through this journey can one understand my deep regard and respect for the two different sides...Father Baraga and his love of Christ and the Native populations and their traditions. For this reason I will share my person journey so one understands that this calling extends beyond the years in which I started work at a Catholic School.
When I was 18 years old I joined a church where I threw myself into learning about Christ and his ministry on a daily basis. I have read the new testament in it's entirety and reread the four gospels often. I have built a relationship with Christ and indeed I can say at this time that I know my shepherd's voice and I know his love. It is with difficulty I find myself at times talking about Christ as this relationship is deep and personal. It was through prayer one evening, as I would kneel down each night and morning to pray and lay on God's feet my daily challenges seeking guidance and direction, that I was called into this journey with the Native populations.
Due to that prayer I would meet a man who would introduce me to the Native teachings and the Native population themselves. I still remember the first time that I crawled into a sweat lodge in my Sunday skirt. It was so incredibly different than the tradition of being in a church and so incredibly foreign. I remember thinking in that moment...'God, why did you have me go down this path.' During this time though I set down my Sunday practices to be able to fully and completely learn of the Native way. I carved my own pipe, I went on a vision quest for four years (which is the most incredible experience of my life), I learned of the Ojibwe water ceremony where I did this trek. I even had a sweat lodge on my property in which Native water pourers were welcomed to have sweats.
It was at the vision quest that brought into my work at the Catholic school. I knew that while I was in the lobby prior to my interview, that I would have the job working at the Catholic School because of something that happened at the vision quest. I got the job. In this location I learned about the Eucharist, Adoration, and Mass and I was given opportunity to once again partake of communion which was the greatest feeling in the world. With greatest gratitude the priest that was there listened readily to the story's of how this journey transpired which allowed me to open my heart up more to Catholicism. So when I went to Father Baraga's Cross...one can understand then how this one man made sense of my two worlds in this moment and why I wanted to initially research him to learn more about who he was.
Healing the Histories
In addition I have had a number of things happen that have me know that it is also my calling to help and heal the histories of the boarding schools which transpired after Father Baraga's passing. I have learned the histories of the Dakota and their positive Catholic connections before these histories began and I have learned about the boarding school histories themselves. I know that the reason that there were so many Catholic boarding schools in the first place is because the Native people had the greatest positive relationship with the Catholic religion. Indeed, the Catholics were one of the few people that stood up for the Native populations during their greatest time of need as can be seen with Father Baraga's histories. The government, after Baraga's passing, enacted the peace policy which forced the Christian religion onto each reservation. This policy disproportionately disallowed the Catholic religion onto these reservations. Even Father Baraga's region (including where Madeline Island has spent most of his time) where most natives chose to be Catholic was given to the American Missionary Association. The black and Indian Mission, from what I understand, started in response to this disproportion. Chief Red Cloud, who is one of the greatest names among the Dakota Natives, went to Washington three times to elicit having the ability for the Catholics to come to his region rather than the Episcopal Church. Finally they were allowed to come and the Holy Rosary Mission was established which is now called the Red Cloud Indian School.
I know that it is just as much partially my responsibility to ensure that this healing happens in relation to these histories and for others to understand these histories themselves. As a result I have dedicated the land that I live on to these healing and reconciliations.