Tag Archives: 1903

20th Century, Exploration, History, Intercession, Judgment & Counter-Judgment Cycle, Mining, Minnesota

Cuyuna Range Named 1903

Kennedy-Mine

1903

“While surveying his land in the 1880s, Cuyler Adams noticed that the point of his compass was spinning. Over 20 years he explored the area for the underground metals that distracted his compass. He forms the Orelands Mining Company in 1903 and names the range by combining “Cuy” from Cuyler with “Una” after his pet St. Bernard.

The first ore is shipped from the Cuyuna Range in 1911. The 147,649-ton shipment to Duluth-Superior culminates years of searching, digging, flooding, and failing. More mines quickly open on the range, and immigrants from Finland, Italy, and Yugoslavia find themselves in new villages with names like Orelands, Klondike, Steelton, Ironton, Iron Hub, and Iron Mountain.” * 

What a shock it must have been when Mr Adams’ compass needle started spinning! Did his hair stand on end? Did he calmly and rationally start thinking of possible explanations? Thank you Lord, that this wonderfully odd day in the life of Cuyler Adams was part of Your plan for Minnesota! Thank you for the curiosity You implanted in this man to explore; to seek and find! How many lives were changed by this single moment of the “spinning compass”?

This leads me almost instantly into feelings of remorse for my personal lack of intuition and imagination of Your possible purposes for such odd moments of my life. How many times have You placed me into a potential moment of discovery, and my response is to blame the defective spinning compass in my hands? My rational mind is often the killer of opportunity! I find myself in analysis paralysis, instead of simply continuing the process of looking for answers like Cuyler! Will You forgive this blockage to Your eureka moments? 

This discovery acted as a catalyst for the movements of people and cultures from across the world to northern Minnesota. What was your purpose in this? Why is this ore important other than its obvious applications to industry? In any case, I thank You for using this valuable resource to facilitate the meetings and intermingling  of peoples from Finnish, Italian, Yugoslavian, and Native Minnesotan cultures! You provide us with innumerable introductions to those of other cultures, and yet You do not force our hand in how we respond! You are the perfect travel agent!

I say thanks this day for the blessings and benefits of iron ore, and any of its other common metallurgical applications! Good Father, what a great medium You allow your people to play with?! What a useful material to bless past, present, and future generations! 

Yet, as with any technology, it must be subject to self control. We used mountains of metal in World War I from this mine to assert our political will! We have beaten our plows into swords, and still we continue to do so! Will You forgive our defiant uses of natural resources? Will You help us learn to sidestep political manipulations into war? Will you forgive our resentment, hatred, and fear of others that germinates into the seeds of death? Will You mature our response to the spirits of accusation, provocation, and offense?

Will You also forgive our tragedies based on trust of our knowledge? We study and learn, which is good. But we often allow our knowledge to cloud our judgments! We do not retain a sense of scientific humility and curiosity. We often rely on our observations, and find that they are sadly based on a minuscule understanding of the natural world. For example,

“At the height of the mining, the Cuyuna Range was the location of the worst mining disaster in Minnesota, the Milford Mine disaster.[1] On February 5, 1924, a new tunnel was blasted too close to nearby Foley Lake, and water rushed in, killing 41 miners.” **

Will You forgive how we have hurt our fellow man, and Your world as a result of our miscalculations and arrogance? Lord have mercy! Will You remember our successes, our faithful and bold risks to grow and learn, and the ways we’ve sought to better the lives of others and ourselves? 

* http://www.mnhs.org/about/dipity_timeline.htm

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyuna_Range

*** A very readable resource on Cuyuna with brief bios by author Dean Klinkenberg.

http://mississippivalleytraveler.com/cuyuna-iron-range/

**** A wonderful read on Mr. Adams! https://ipeopleblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/1922-mining-engineer-cuyler-adams/

 

 

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20th Century, cars, History, Intercession, law, Minnesota, omnipresent history, State Government, Transportation

First Automobile License Issued 1903

Unknown-1

May 2, 1903

“The automobile era kicks off in Minnesota as a Packard in St. Paul receives license number 1. St. Paul’s first automobile fatality occurs just weeks later when a child is hit on Selby Avenue between Dale and St. Albans streets.** The city’s first automatic traffic signal lights up 20 years later; it stands on a ten-foot-tall pedestal at the intersection of Fifth and St. Peter streets.” * 

Why is it that we take delight in travel, exploration, and pure speed, Lord? Let’s think about the progression a little. Human beings have used their legs for eons, then the legs of various animals, and next the vehicles of their own invention: boats, carts, sleds, etc. Soon, we figured out mechanical means to augment our human, wind, or animal-powered vehicles with the refinement of the steam engine. Eventually the limitations of that power pushed us to adopt the internal combustion engine. Now we are in the era of fuel cell engines, and the dawning of practical electrical-powered vehicles.

Again, moving around the wheel, full circle; why do we want or need to move faster, farther, on less fuel? Why is it that the human creature wants to explore its habitat, which is natural, but then push far past the limitations of its home? Are there examples in the animal kingdom of creatures that explore out of curiosity rather than as a means of survival?  A dog will happily sniff the scents of Lake Superior if it has never visited it, but will it long to cross it and see the other side?

Or do we long to see that other side because of discontent? We may not appreciate or flourish in our current environment, and we wonder “ Is there a greener pasture out there somewhere?” Perhaps it’s boredom? We adopt routines that shape how we use time, but break with them in varying degrees dependent on our personalities and discipline. We feel the impulse to stop the cycle of repetition.

Regardless of our motives, I thank You for the gift of the automobile. I thank you for the day of May 2, 1903 and the willingness of the owner of the first car in Minnesota to explore a new mode of transportation. Thank you for the gift of the freedom to travel, and how that travel has benefitted generations of our state. Thank you for all the goods and services we access because the automobile led to the truck. Thank you for the imaginations of individuals like Etienne Lenoir, Niklaus Otto, Gottlieb Daimler, Wilhelm Maybach, Karl Benz, James Atkinson, Edward Butler, and Rudolf Diesel!

* http://www.mnhs.org/about/dipity_timeline.htm

**See how far we’ve come in terms of safety over the past 115 years? http://amhistory.si.edu/onthemove/exhibition/exhibition_8_2.html

 

 

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20th Century, baseball, History, Indian, Intercession, Judgment & Counter-Judgment Cycle, Minnesota, Native Americans, Ojibwe, omnipresent history, sports

Charles (Chief) Bender Makes Major League Debut 1903

Unknown

Chief Bender

sabr.org

April 20, 1903

“Charles Albert Bender, an Ojibway Indian, plays his first major league baseball game for the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team. Known as “Chief” Bender, the Brainerd pitcher helps the A’s win five pennants, sets a World Series strike-out record, and in 1953 becomes the first Minnesotan inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His career record is 212 wins and 127 losses.” * 

Thank You for the life of Charles Albert Bender, his contributions to the Athletics, and the inspiration he gave to Minnesotans. Thank You for ensuring his well-being in childhood. As scholar Melissa Meyer writes, “during the early years of Charley’s childhood White Earth was destitute. At White Earth, the family lived in a log house on a small farm. The Benders had to be self-sufficient and they were not the only ones. Things were so meager that as a young boy Charley supposedly went to work, taking a job as a farmhand for a dollar a week.”**

Thank You for his perseverance in the face of ethnic prejudice. He did not allow slights, contempt, and assumptions made by his detractors to drag him down!

“Though proud of his American Indian heritage, Bender resented the bigotry and the moniker he and nearly every other Indian ballplayer of the time received. ‘I do not want my name to be presented to the public as an Indian, but as a pitcher,’ he told Sporting Life in 1905.”***

Lord, forgive our assessments of another based on an kind of external measure. We have failed to see past our prejudices. We have failed to see Your gifts within those of a group deemed “unacceptable”. We write our brothers and sisters off before we even know them a little!?

There could be many causes for prejudice, and I do not pretend to know what the root causes were for discrimination for Ojibway people. I do not know what fears, in particular, there may be towards Ojibway men. I will only try to acknowledge to You things that are common roots of judgement. 

Lord, forgive us our stereotypes, past, present, and future of Native American men. Forgive our misbeliefs that may place us higher or lower, inferior or superior! We love and embrace our heritage, our cultural DNA, but we, like Bender, do not want to be limited by it. Will You free Minnesotans of our judgments of the Ojibway nation, and all first nations of our state? Conversely, will You free the Ojibway from their counter-judgments of all non-native nations and peoples that have, are, or will reside here? 

Lord, will You forgive us our vanity that comes through expertise? Often, we seem to be the most blind in the areas we excel. Perhaps it is because we invest so much in our areas of strength that we become less aware of our need of relationship with others, or Your Eternal Mind. Bender probably was the most hurt by the prejudice of those on his own team. Lord, we have betrayed those on our own team. Will You show us a new way? Will You give us your unshakable security, so that we do not need the accolades of our peers? Will You give us humility if they do not worship us or our achievements properly? 

* http://www.mnhs.org/about/dipity_timeline.htm

**The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889-1920 by Melissa L. Meyer (University of Nebraska Press, 1994)

***Swift, Tom.”Chief Bender.”Society for American Baseball Research.2013.Web.14Aug.2013. http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/03e80f4d

****Need to see the Chief’s statistics? http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bendech01.shtml

 

 

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